Warhammer 40K: System Error, I Summoned the Arch-Traitor!

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"An unexpected answer."

Guilliman raised an eyebrow, but a faint smile touched the corner of his mouth.

He wasn't angry. If anything, it seemed like the words had stirred something distant in him.

"Would you care to explain your reasoning?"

Kullen took a deep breath. He knew what he was about to say might reach the softest part of the Regent's heart.

He said it anyway.

"If Lady Euten shaped your humanity," Kullen paused, steadying his voice, "then Lord Konor shaped your political philosophy. Your soul. Every word and deed you present in public, that unflinching dedication to order and duty, all of it carries Lord Konor's imprint."

He watched Guilliman's smile fade. The Primarch's gaze deepened.

"And then there's that chapter of history, when Consul Konor was assassinated, and you came racing back from the stars to be at his side." Kullen's voice dropped. "It puts me in mind of an ancient Roman consul. Julius Caesar. After his assassination in the Senate, his adopted son Octavian returned to Rome and inherited his name, his legions, and his cause."

"I believe Lord Konor's death was the defining blow that shaped who you became."

Guilliman went quiet.

The smile disappeared entirely, replaced by something rare. Grief, undisguised and unguarded.

"You're not wrong, Kullen."

His voice had gone very soft.

"My father, Konor Guilliman, was the first person who ever accepted me. He gave me my name. He gave me an identity. He made me 'Roboute Guilliman.'"

A pause.

"I have a faint memory — very young, barely formed — of Lady Euten looking at me the way people look at something they don't understand. Those extraordinary gifts of mine frightened her, at first. She saw a monster."

Kullen's brow furrowed slightly, but he didn't interrupt.

"I was still a child then, but I could feel it." Guilliman smiled, something wry in it. "A child's sense of what the adults around them are feeling is far sharper than most adults ever realize."

"Black and white, my lord." Kullen folded his arms, his voice quiet. "That was your philosophy as a young man, if I recall correctly. The world was either order or chaos. People were either comrades or enemies."

"You're right." Guilliman let out a slow breath, and the exhaustion in that single sound carried the weight of ten thousand years. "That near-paranoid worldview is exactly why Lady Euten's early impression of me was so... limited. But the truth was more complicated than that. The world is not black and white. Neither are people."

He shook his head, as if looking back at the rigid, stubborn creature he had once been.

"In time, she changed her view of me. But I'll admit what you said is true: my father's influence was the deepest. He practically shaped my very godhood, forging me into a consul who pursues logic, order, and absolute responsibility."

"Your adoptive mother was just as important, my lord," Kullen said, stepping in at exactly the right moment.

Guilliman looked up.

"Lady Euten shaped your humanity." Kullen said it plainly, without flourish. "A cold, detached politician earns no one's genuine affection. A life lived only in that register would have crushed something essential in you."

"On the road Lord Konor laid out for you — the road leading to consulship, and beyond, she made sure the journey didn't break you. She taught you what love is. What grief is. What it means to be a person made of flesh and blood."

Guilliman smiled.

It came from somewhere deep, the quiet release of a man who rarely gets to feel understood.

For many years, from his time as consul on Macragge, to claiming his identity as a Primarch and leading the Ultramarines, to waking from ten thousand years of silence to find himself Regent of the Imperium, he had almost never heard anyone speak of his adoptive parents with such clarity. People who praised Konor tended to see only the wise ruler. People who mentioned Euten tended to see only the resilient mother. Very few ever grasped what each of them had actually written into his soul, and how differently they had written it.

He reached out and put a hand on Kullen's shoulder. A brief, easy pat.

The gesture said more than any words could. Recognition. Trust. The quiet acknowledgment that the person standing in front of him was a genuine friend.

"My adoptive mother," Guilliman said, his voice unhurried, "gave me the right to be human. The things any ordinary person deserves to have: love, joy, sorrow, and..." He paused. "Vulnerability."

"And my adoptive father taught me how to govern. The craft and the wisdom that a ruler must possess."

As he spoke, the grief in his eyes receded. Something sharper came up in its place.

The eyes of the Regent of the Imperium.

"Take this war against the T'au Empire, for instance."

He straightened. The quiet sorrow that had settled around him was gone, burned off, replaced by something cold and deliberate.

"The purpose of this war is not peaceful coexistence. It is to compel them to come to the table. To force them to make concessions. The initiative will be ours."

"We will reclaim the key Imperial worlds they hold. And those worlds will become the spearhead pointed at the heart of the T'au Empire when the next campaign begins."

"A temporary non-aggression pact, my lord?"

Kullen asked.

Guilliman shook his head.

"Non-aggression is merely one clause in the treaty." The corner of his mouth curved slightly, the smile cold and precise. "I prefer to call it a brief armistice. And during that armistice, we will gather everything there is to know about the T'au: their technology, their social structures, their weaknesses. Everything."

His voice dropped, and somehow became more forceful for it.

"So that when the next war comes, we can destroy them completely."

He paused, then added:

"They will also absorb some pressure on behalf of the Five Hundred Worlds. Drawing the Tyranids' attention, for instance."

Kullen listened to all of it, then looked at the man standing before him.

"My lord, this isn't compromise."

"No, Kullen. It is not." His tone was matter-of-fact, like a man explaining arithmetic. "Compromise means both sides give ground. Both sides yield. But with enemies, most enemies, as long as I have the means and the leverage, I don't yield. I compel. Unilaterally. Without negotiation."

He let that settle for a moment.

"The only parties I genuinely sit down and compromise with are allies. Internal ones."

"The Mechanicus, for example. I compromised with them."

His gaze went distant.

"Because they control the most critical production infrastructure and networks in the entire Imperium. Breaking with them openly would cost more than it gains."

Kullen nodded quietly.

"Horus can do this."

"I believe he can."

Guilliman's reply was simple and immediate.

"I've reviewed the available intelligence on the T'au Empire recently. Compared to the xenos the Great Crusade faced at its worst, the T'au aren't in the same category. The reason the Imperium was struggling against them before our return is straightforward: the Imperium wasn't trying. It never committed."

"A Primarch who excels at operational command, fighting alongside a Primarch who excels at terror warfare, supported by Firstborn Space Marine brotherhoods and a full expeditionary fleet, knowing Horus and Curze the way I do, their victory isn't a possibility."

He said it the way other men might note the weather.

"It's a certainty."

➤ Next: Loken Earns the Title of 'Justaerin' First Captain

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