Chapter 135 - The Lion? A Kindly Cat-Dad!
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Happy as he was, Lion El'Jonson's emerald eyes were far from idle. He was quietly evaluating Horus.
There was no helping it. This brother had left far too deep an "impression" on the Imperium and humanity.
Lion discreetly sniffed the lingering Warp fluctuations in the air.
Not a trace of Chaos corruption.
The Wolf Shepherd was clean through and through. Not even the edges of his soul bore any taint. Among all the returning primarchs, that was nothing short of a miracle.
Combined with what Horus had just said, "the last time we met was on Ullanor", Lion formed a bold hypothesis.
Someone had plucked Lupercal straight from roughly the Ullanor timeframe and brought him to the present. And that someone was most likely the mysterious mortal his son had mentioned. The one named Kullen.
Lion reached this conclusion quickly because, in his youth, he had browsed quite a few similar books in the libraries of Caliban. Power-fantasy stories about mighty knights traveling to the past or future and carving their way to glory. The prose was rough, but the plots were gripping, and the young Lion had devoured them with great relish.
So time displacement didn't surprise him. If anything, deep down, he quietly hoped his theory was right.
The moment that thought surfaced, the stone pressing on his chest loosened just a fraction.
And so he made a decision.
Under the astonished gazes of his assembled sons and his two brothers.
Lion stepped forward and embraced Horus.
The Wolf Shepherd's mouth fell slightly open. If that expression had been captured on pict, it would have become one of the most precious visual records in Imperial history.
The Wolf Shepherd, in this moment, was actually stunned speechless by a hug.
He had never imagined such a scene. Even in his wildest dreams, he had never dared to dream that the Lion would embrace him of his own accord.
"It gladdens me to see you again, Lupercal."
The embrace was brief.
Lion released him quickly, as if that single gesture had exhausted every ounce of courage he had accumulated over his entire lifetime.
In truth, it had. Had it not been for the phantasmal ordeal during the claiming of the Emperor's Shield, where he had already fought a psychological battle against those illusory brothers, that embrace would likely not have been an embrace at all, but a solid right hook. The vision had inoculated him. The effect had been better than expected.
Horus finally came back to himself, and then he laughed.
The laughter held surprise, relief, and a warmth he himself couldn't quite name.
"I never expected you to embrace me, Johnson. I never imagined such a scene." He paused. "To be honest, I've imagined all sorts of reactions from you upon seeing me — most of them ending in a duel. But at this moment,"
He paused again, and his smile grew more open, more unguarded.
"I think we are no longer rivals. We are brothers fighting side by side. Your transformation is admirable. I must admit, even I have been won over by your charisma. The image of a steady, reliable old knight is quite popular in the Imperium, you know."
That last line was deliberate.
But Lion fell for it completely.
The Lion let out a chuckle, and in that instant, the lines at the corners of his eyes smoothed out.
Then he turned to Curze.
"Konrad."
Lion narrowed his eyes and swept his gaze over Konrad Curze from head to toe. He had steeled himself for the sight of a flayed-skin cloak, bone necklaces, the trademark lunatic expression of the Night Haunter.
He found none of it. The Night Lord's power armor was clean, none of those nauseating decorations of human skin and bone from the past. Only a few of the Night Lords Legion's signature markings remained, understated and coldly sharp.
His long hair was tied back in a ponytail, his features groomed. His eyes were still deep and shadowed, but the madness that had always seemed one breath away from collapse was gone.
If one ignored those obsidian pupils, Lion could almost, just for a fleeting moment, mistake the man before him for the youngest brother. The Raven Lord. Corvus Corax.
That cold, austere, composed bearing was nearly identical.
Still, a test was necessary.
"I am not glad to see you."
Curze responded with a mournful sigh, tone lazy, the final syllable drawn out long:
"As if I'm glad to see you either. If those two hadn't dragged me down here, I wouldn't have bothered. Can't a man just drink tea and read on the ship in peace? And that business of you breaking my spine — I remember it crystal clear, old lion."
He raised his middle finger at Lion.
The Fallen Angels collectively drew a sharp breath. The squad comms channel filled with the sound of grinding teeth.
Lion let out a scoff.
Confirmed. Konrad in the flesh, no doubt about it.
That blend of insufferable, unhinged, and strangely peculiar, there was no second one like it in the entire galaxy.
He stepped forward and extended his hand.
Curze stared at it for half a second, then lazily took it, still muttering.
"Don't you dare break my spine again while shaking hands. My current health coverage doesn't extend to primarch-level fractures. That would generate a very unnecessary amount of paperwork."
"As long as you don't do anything stupid, I won't."
The Lion gave a cold huff.
To this, the Night Haunter merely shrugged, then shifted his attention toward the dumbstruck old man across the pad, his son, Sevatar, and walked over to him.
Let the sole remaining captain and the Legion Champion of the Eighth Legion have their reunion, Lion thought. His gaze moved to Horus and Sanguinius.
"Roboute. How is he?"
A long silence, then the question.
"Guilliman is now the Imperial Regent, prosecuting the Indomitus Crusade. We told you all of this in the vid-projections..."
Sanguinius looked at Lion and smiled. A smile with a certain teasing glint tucked inside it.
"He is even younger than you imagine. After Fulgrim wounded him, he lay in a stasis field for ten thousand years. His appearance has barely changed at all."
Lion's eye twitched.
Why did every one of his brothers love to use his age as a topic? First Horus, now Sanguinius.
Angel, you've changed. You weren't like this before.
A nameless irritation simmered in his chest, but he could find no justification to vent it. He exhaled heavily through his nose.
"Any news of the other brothers?" Lion changed the subject.
"We encountered Magnus on our way back to Terra." Horus picked up the thread, his tone dropping a few degrees. "He has become a puppet of the Chaos Gods. The other fallen brothers are no different. I expect they'll be stirring again soon, now that we've returned."
"That figures." Lion inclined his head slightly, a cold gleam passing through his emerald eyes. "They will not leave us in peace. They will not leave the Imperium or humanity in peace. We must hold fast to Father's legacy."
"But before that —"
His tone shifted. His gaze moved past his two brothers and settled on the direction of the Stormbird's hatch.
"Are you not going to introduce me to that mortal gentleman? The key figure who aided and saved you all."
The Lion was not about to forget the main business just because his brothers had returned.
Sanguinius had spoken in the vid-recording of the Emperor's great power. He would not accept that so easily.
A being capable of bringing Horus to the present, of resurrecting Sanguinius from death, of pulling Curze free from the abyss of madness, he had to see such an existence with his own eyes.
As Lion's words fell, Kullen followed Loken out of the Stormbird. The moment his foot touched the landing pad, he felt an intense gaze settle on him.
He met those emerald eyes.
The gaze of the Master of the First Legion was exactly what the name implied. A lion's gaze, measuring him, precise enough to raise goosebumps, as if it could disassemble him into components within seconds and analyze each one in turn.
As Kullen walked up to Lion, still mentally weighing what form of address to use and what etiquette to observe, the Lion did something no one present expected.
He dropped to one knee, bent low, and brought himself level with Kullen's eyes.
"Thank you for your help, sir. I do not know how to address you. I am Lion El'Jonson, Master of the First Legion."
Lion's voice was unexpectedly gentle. Not the kind of deliberate, measured gentleness, but something genuine. Clumsy, almost. Sincere in a way that clearly didn't come easily to him.
He extended his large hand.
Kullen didn't hesitate.
He grasped it, that hand several sizes larger than his own, with open confidence, and felt the other return the grip with exactly the right amount of force.
Not so light as to seem perfunctory. Not so heavy as to cause discomfort.
Precise. Restrained. That was the Lion's style.
"Kullen, Lord Lion."
Standing nearby, Sanguinius laughed at the sight, heartened by his brother's change of heart.
Horus, however, felt a quiet discomfort settle in his chest.
Not for any complicated reason. It was simply that he had seen it, there in his mortal friend's eyes, unmistakable.
A flicker of hero worship. Directed at Lion.
➤ Next: Fulgrim Soul Fragment, but Apocrypha
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