Chapter 134 - Brothers Reunited
~ 💎 WEEKLY POWER GOALS 💎🔥 60→1ch | 100→2ch | 200→5ch ⏰ Resets Monday! Thanks!
The void battle in Blacksable's near-orbit went as smoothly as a training exercise.
Horus Lupercal stood on the bridge of the Glory of Terra, arms folded, watching the red markers on the holographic star chart wink out one by one.
His expression never changed. The senior naval officers behind him exchanged uneasy glances, struggling to believe what they were seeing was real.
The Thousand Eyes Warband's main fleet had been turned into scrap metal before they could even finish forming up.
The tactic Horus used wasn't complicated. Not when you understood it.
He had ordered the entire expeditionary fleet to cut their drives and run silent, using the Blacksable system's stellar gravity to execute a ghost maneuver. Dozens of capital ships rode the gravity curve like dark shapes drifting through deep water, sliding around behind the Thousand Eyes fleet without a ripple. No engines meant no active signals. On the enemy's detection arrays, the expeditionary fleet simply didn't exist.
By the time the Thousand Eyes warships picked up those heat signatures on passive scan — sources practically on top of them, it was already over. The first torpedo volley gutted their flagship. The second wave of lance fire bisected three cruisers clean through the middle. Before the third wave hit, boarding torpedoes were already clamped to their hulls.
Sanguinius and Curze were on those boarding torpedoes.
When the Great Angel spread his wings and dropped from the boarding bay, half the garrison on that Chaos warship was dead before they could organize any resistance at all. Curze came through right behind him, power claws shredding bloody lanes through the dark, humming something tuneless under his breath.
Their objective was to clear the enemy warships positioned above the governor's palace, vessels Horus had specifically flagged, because their orbital angles were sufficient to launch a ground bombardment. The meticulous Wolf Shepherd wasn't about to let a single shell have the chance to threaten Lion while his brother was still inside that building.
A Primarch who commanded like a god and calculated everything in advance, holding the flagship. Two Primarchs who could tear armies apart, leading the boarding parties. The elite expeditionary fleet that Guilliman had personally assembled backing them up.
This battle had never been in doubt.
The Thousand Eyes fleet was carved into isolated pockets with no way to support each other. Imperial warships worked in tight clusters, circling their prey like wolves, tearing off chunks until the prey ran dry and stopped moving.
From the first shot to the last, the Imperial expeditionary fleet took almost no damage worth counting.
Kellen stood on the bridge and watched the whole thing from start to finish. He had seen Horus command void warfare before, back when the Indomitus Crusade first launched, but seeing it again still hit him with something he couldn't quite put words to.
He exhaled slowly and turned to look at the Primarch beside him.
"Should we head down to meet Lion now?"
"Yes."
Horus nodded, but Kellen caught the faint curl at the corner of his mouth, and the way his right fist clenched and slowly opened again without thinking.
The Wolf Shepherd was eager.
After the last enemy capital ship went dark, he handed command over to the mortal naval officers and told Loken to have a Stormbird standing by.
"Kellen." Horus's voice was light, carrying the particular warmth of a soldier picturing a long-overdue reunion. "I can already picture my brother's face."
"Disgusted, but cornered. Mouth pulled down, eyes half-shut. Probably a sigh too — he always does it through the nose, you know." A short laugh. "Ha."
"You were rivals, once. Evenly matched."
Kellen said it simply, picking up the thread.
Horus went quiet for a beat. Then he laughed, a real one.
He didn't follow the thread further. Instead he reached over and clapped a hand on his mortal friend's shoulder.
"Let's move. We still need to swing by those boarded ships and collect Sanguinius and Curze."
---
After Bela killed his own Knight-Commander Seraphax, Lion killed Bela.
At Bela's own request.
The Fallen Angel knew there was no road back for him, no absolution waiting. So he asked his gene-father for a clean end.
Lion had sworn he would never again kill his own sons. He understood the stakes. He didn't agonize over it for long. He raised the Lion Sword, and under his son's waiting gaze, he gave him what he'd asked for.
He watched his son's head hit the floor. He allowed himself one second of grief. Then he ordered the Lionsons to burn the body to nothing with pyreblasters.
They took their wounded and left the governor's palace. Messages were coming in from the Imperial fleet on the comm channel, so they made for the landing pad and waited.
Before long, 3 Stormbirds descended through the haze.
Lion fixed his gaze on the middle one. He could already sense his brothers aboard.
He drew a slow breath.
The hatch opened as that breath left him.
Three figures stepped out into the open air.
Hearing that the three Primarchs had returned was one thing. Standing here and watching them walk out of a Stormbird was something else entirely. The Fallen Angels stared at Horus, Sanguinius, and Konrad, and fear moved through them, raw, unfiltered, accompanied by shock and something that had no name.
Sevatar, old and scarred and unshakeable by almost anything, lost his composure completely.
He didn't look at Horus. He didn't look at Sanguinius. His gaze crossed both of them, bridged 10,000 years of absence, and locked onto Curze and didn't move.
His mouth opened. He wanted to say something. His throat wouldn't cooperate. Not a single word came out. Only the reddening at the corners of his eyes.
Lion looked at Sanguinius.
The Angel was smiling at him. The same smile as 10,000 years ago. Exactly the same.
Heat surged from Lion's chest straight to his eyes. Tears gathered at the rims of his emerald irises, pressing at the edge, almost breaking through.
Then his gaze moved, had to move, across Horus and Curze.
Horus wore a nervous smile he was trying to hide behind something more composed. Curze looked like himself: slouched, easy, utterly irreverent. The bastard wasn't saying a word, but his eyes were absolutely waiting to enjoy whatever happened next at Lion's expense.
The heat pressing against Lion's eyes retreated. He drove it back with something harder than bone.
A breath out through the nose. Mouth corners down. That habitual expression, disdain wearing a thin coat of suppressed irritation, settled back across his face like armor.
He stepped forward to meet them.
"To see you again." Sanguinius opened his arms, his white wings spreading wide with the motion, wrapping Lion in an embrace that carried a faint trace of golden warmth. "I am glad, brother."
The turbulence in Lion's chest went still. He closed his eyes and let himself feel it, the weight of those arms, the warmth in them, the reality of it.
In that moment he knew. The Sanguinius in front of him was his brother. The Great Angel of Baal. The hero who died on the Vengeful Spirit fighting for the Emperor and the Imperium.
Not a Warp trick. Not a dark god's illusion.
"Same." Lion released the embrace. His voice found its usual steadiness, though something warmer than usual moved underneath it, quiet enough that most wouldn't catch it. "Your resurrection still hasn't fully settled in my mind. The news astonished me."
Then he looked at Horus and Curze.
His expression flipped back to disdain at a speed you could actually track.
"Hmph. I didn't anticipate you two."
Horus didn't bite back.
He just smiled and extended his hand, holding it out in the space between them.
Lion looked at that hand.
One second passed.
He took it.
Their palms met with exactly the right amount of force, not a contest, not a formality. Just enough to feel real.
"Lion." Horus's voice came out quiet, something tightly controlled underneath it. "The last time I saw you was on Ullanor."
He paused, studying Lion's face with the attention of someone actually looking. Then a surprised sound escaped him, and there was something genuine in it, real disbelief worn lightly:
"By the Throne. You've aged. And not just a little — you're the oldest-looking of all the brothers who've come back. Look at these crow's feet. These temples." He shook his head. "I almost didn't recognize you."
"Is that a provocation, Lupercal?"
Lion's tone was stern. Deliberately so.
"No provocation intended." Horus paused. A broad, easy laugh broke through. "Elder brother, you're going to be the Imperial Warmaster. How would I dare provoke you?"
The moment the words landed, all three Primarchs caught it simultaneously, a shift so small it should have been invisible.
The lines at the corners of Lion's eyes eased, just slightly. Those ever-watchful emerald eyes softened.
Not because his guard came down. His guard stayed exactly where it was. But behind the guard, something else appeared, something he never showed, and had never been willing to show.
Lion cleared his throat. He lifted his chin and looked at nothing in particular, pulling his usual expression of cool hauteur back into place.
"Ahem. I have no particular interest in the title of Warmaster."
His gaze moved slowly across the three faces in front of him.
Sanguinius, warm and smiling. Horus, openly amused. Curze wearing that unmistakable look, the one that said: go on, keep pretending.
Lion added one more line. Same measured tone as before, but the pace came out half a beat faster than it should have, like he wanted to get the words out before Horus could take them back.
"We all serve Father. That is what matters. But if Father required it of me — I would not refuse."
➤ Next: The Lion? A Kindly Cat-Dad!
— .—— .—— .—— .—— .——
📚Read 70+ chapters ahead on Patreon.
💎Join the free community tier for early access to the latest updates:
🔥patreon(.)com/DarkGolds