Chapter 149 - A Shame the Emperor Never Made Female Primarchs
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Kalen couldn't explain how he'd arrived here.
Not because he'd forgotten. There simply hadn't been anything to feel.
No pull of a teleportation gate. No vertigo from a spatial jump. Not even the brief darkness of a blink.
One second he was in a cabin aboard the Pride of Macragge, holding Trazyn's hand. The next, awareness snapped back and he was standing in the main hall of the Solemnace Museum.
"How did you bring me here?"
He turned to look at Trazyn.
The Infinite had shed his mortal captain's disguise. He stood in his true form now, living metal, silver-green plating catching the museum's dim light in cold, faint gleams. That lipless face showed nothing. Kalen still had the distinct impression he was smiling.
"A chrono-trap device packages you first, then initiates the phase transit," Trazyn said lightly. "Dragging your body directly through the transfer would have killed you. Human flesh is far too fragile — especially for a precise cross-dimensional jump."
Kalen was quiet for 2 seconds, then nodded slowly.
Fair enough.
Necron technology. Always stunning.
He stopped dwelling on it and turned to look around.
And then the sight ahead simply conquered him.
The Solemnace Museum.
He'd tried to imagine it before. Imagination was nowhere close.
The space was vast and hushed, extending outward in every direction without visible end. The dome overhead soared so high it seemed to have swallowed a whole field of stars, and the floor mirrored that starlight back, until it was impossible to tell whether you were walking or drifting through the Milky Way.
Exotic creatures hung suspended in transparent force fields, every hair and every scale rendered with lifelike precision. Precious antiques rested in crystal cases, some radiating a luster older than human civilization itself. And farther in, beneath the enormous dome, whole Legion formations stood frozen mid-charge, complete battle scenes restored at full scale. Charging postures. Mouths caught open in a battle cry. Cannon fire locked in the split-second of detonation. All of it fixed with exact precision, like a three-dimensional historical mural.
But what surprised Kalen most was that the museum was not entirely made of dead things.
There were birds flying in the replica section.
Real, living birds, wheeling freely beneath a simulated sky.
In the botanical zone, vines crept slowly along their frames. Flowers were recorded at the instant of blooming, then permitted to wither, then permitted to bloom again.
"This place..." Kalen couldn't help himself. "Not everything is locked in a Stasis Field?"
Trazyn tilted his head.
"Of course not. Something completely motionless is too tedious — that's merely a specimen." His voice carried the obsessive pride unique to a true collector. "I made certain improvements. An empathy matrix records their emotional fluctuations. Habitat domes allow them to continue growing and reproducing within a defined range. Things with a soul, things with vitality, those are the treasures worth keeping."
Kalen watched the birds drift through the museum's quiet air.
This great collector had never been seeking death in any temporal sense. Not the freezing of everything into immutable amber. What he wanted was a living collection. Things that breathe, that think, that blaze with their own unique light across the arc of their lives. Even knowing they would one day fade, that process itself was the specimen Trazyn most wanted to possess.
Trazyn led him forward.
They walked side by side through the Solemnace Museum's endless galleries, and with every step the world around them shifted. One moment, a Legion battle formation from the era of the Great Crusade. The next, the royal banquet hall of some long-extinct alien civilization. Time and space here had been folded like a book leafed through countless times, each page a frozen era.
The Infinite moved slowly.
This museum had gone far too long without an outside visitor.
He was like an old man desperate to show off his collection, pausing at every display case they passed, introducing each piece in a tone that couldn't quite contain its pride. This one was the last native great beast of a particular planet. That one was the final monarch of a particular dynasty, frozen in the instant before the kingdom fell.
Kalen listened attentively. He nodded from time to time and occasionally asked follow-up questions about certain details.
He was genuinely appreciating it.
And that, precisely, was what Trazyn found most gratifying. A true connoisseur. A guest who understood the value of a collection. That satisfied the Infinite more than any flattery could. His lipless face was incapable of expression, but his tone grew progressively lighter, and a chuckling laugh escaped him more than once. This great collector was in an exceptionally fine mood.
So the two of them happily toured... a small portion of the Solemnace Museum.
Perhaps one ten-thousandth of it.
Who could say.
They still had real business to discuss.
"By the way, Mr. Kalen."
Trazyn stopped walking. He tilted his head, and his tone shifted abruptly into something serious.
"Those Aeldari call you the 'audience beneath the stage.' I rather like that phrasing." His staff tapped lightly against the floor, a crisp note ringing through the quiet. "If the world we inhabit is, to you, merely a grand stage play, then as the audience, how do you regard the character of Fulgrim?"
Kalen considered for a moment.
Not an easy question.
Fulgrim was too complicated. All the Primarchs were too complicated. He needed a different angle.
"By my own standards..." He picked his words carefully. "The Master of the Third Legion's character archetype resembles a certain type from early human literature. The noble, high-born young lady in a school story. Student council president, specifically."
Trazyn's optical lens flickered once.
"Before his fall," Kalen continued, "this young lady was gentle, genuinely wanted to help others, upheld order, constantly pursued perfection. By those qualities alone, a very fine person."
The Necron let out a chuckling laugh. That sound like grinding metal echoed through the vast, empty hall, carrying undisguised delight. He had read books of that sort. Across the long ages, Trazyn had collected the literary works of countless civilizations, and human novels were naturally among them. He knew exactly what Kalen was describing, and he found the comparison precise enough to be genuinely funny.
"A very exact and accessible assessment, sir." The Infinite leaned forward slightly, composing himself into the posture of someone eager to listen. "Is there more?"
"But he lacked experience with failure and setbacks." Kalen's tone went a shade more serious. "When you pursue perfection that obsessively, you inevitably leave imperfect traces behind. The fixation itself accelerates the birth of inner demons. And the Laer Blade was the single most critical factor."
He left the rest unspoken, but he'd already finished the analogy in his own head.
The Laer Blade was the classic school-story troublemaker. The flashy outsider who shows up and ruins everything. First seducing the beautiful student council president with words, getting her to try things utterly foreign to herself, then systematically driving wedges between her and everyone she loved.
Take Ferrus Manus, the "school tough guy" Fulgrim cared for most deeply. The Laer Blade manufactured friction between them, over and over, until they were barely recognizable to each other.
Emperor's name. Looking at it this way, Fulgrim's storyline really did read like the female lead in an NTR manga.
Kalen shook his head and threw those associations out of his mind.
Though, to be fair, none of it was entirely the character's fault. The writers had their share of responsibility too.
ADB's version painted a gentle older-sister figure, quietly looking after Curze. No wonder she became Curze's idealized, unreachable love.
Dan's Fulgrim was purely a stepping stone, getting kicked around endlessly by Dorn's shield tactics, and after the fall he just gives up entirely.
The best version was still Gavthorpe's, the helpful, enthusiastic senior colleague in a workplace political drama. The most fully human of them all.
"Fulgrim has an extremely powerful tendency toward both narcissism and self-destruction." Kalen reined his thoughts back in and delivered the final verdict. "When things are going his way, he's in his element. When they turn against him, he falls apart, because he has no experience with that. The moment setbacks hit, his emotions crater. And when his emotions crater, the fall to Chaos follows naturally."
He paused.
"But the Fulgrim in that other parallel world is different. He made peace with things. He had an awakening. Not perfect, but already without flaw."
A trace of anticipation had crept into his voice without him quite meaning it to.
"That's the source of inspiration behind combining the clone body with the soul shard. I want to know whether, under the influence of that soul shard from a parallel world — a shard that has already awakened — this clone Fulgrim will walk a completely different path."
Trazyn was quiet for a moment.
"It seems we are alike in that way, Mr. Kalen."
There was a rare sincerity in the Infinite's tone.
"We both want to witness with our own eyes how things change. Toward the better. Toward hope."
"Of course." Kalen smiled, a thread of self-deprecation in it. "Who wouldn't want to see the better side?"
They kept walking.
Soon they arrived before a Stasis Field.
Kalen stopped.
His mouth opened slightly.
He had seen Sanguinius's face before, a beauty charged with divinity, the kind you couldn't quite bring yourself to look at directly. Like an angel descending to the mortal world, before whom common men could only fall to their knees.
The clone Fulgrim before him now was something else entirely.
Eyes closed. Still within the Stasis Field. And beautiful in a way that had nothing to do with the divine.
This was a beauty that belonged to mortal things. Pushed to an extreme that transcended every worldly definition, yet carrying not a trace of celestial distance. That face was perfect in the way a creator's very first sketch might be, drawn before the world itself existed, every line falling precisely where it most needed to fall. Long silver-white hair hung motionless in the Stasis Field like a bolt of frozen moonlight.
Kalen had to admit it: if his composure were any less than it was, he'd have already lost himself completely.
Damn that old man on his golden throne.
He cursed inwardly.
Why hadn't he designed a few female Primarchs? Just one. Was that so much to ask?
Take Fulgrim, how much better would that have been? This face, this bearing, this gentle-yet-earnest personality, dropped into a gene-sire line that was wall-to-wall men. She'd have been a natural pressure valve. All those conflicts between brothers, all that simmering heat, what is there that a gentle sister couldn't smooth over?
And if one wasn't enough, make it two. Throw in a Primarch with a scheming villainess personality while you're at it. That'd be even better.
What a shame.
The Emperor wouldn't have it.
➤ Next: A Green Radish Is Still a Radish
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