Chapter 153 - The Tau Failed (End)
~ 💎 WEEKLY POWER GOALS 💎🔥 60→1ch | 100→2ch | 200→5ch ⏰ Resets Monday! Thanks!
In the end, Shadowsun and her subordinates were released.
A Tau transport ship landed on the shattered landing pad of the Agrellian Gulf. The Fire Caste warriors who had come to receive them fell silent the moment their supreme commander walked out.
Shadowsun's steps were steady. But those eyes, once sharp as blades, held something new — something that had no name. Like a mist that had been stirred and refused to settle.
No one asked what had happened.
No one dared.
The Battle of the Agrellian Gulf ended with the Tau Empire officially declaring defeat.
The Ethereals dispatched plenipotentiary envoys to sign a ceasefire treaty with the representative of the Imperium of Man, Supreme Commander Horus Lupercal.
Every word of the terms cut like a blade pressed into the Tau Empire's chest: return the key Imperial worlds seized during the Third Sphere Expansion, and pledge never again to encroach upon the southern territories of Ultramar.
When the news reached the Tau homeworlds, many Tau nearly ground their teeth to dust.
They were furious. They were unwilling. What the Ethereals had signed wasn't a ceasefire treaty, it was a document of humiliation that ground the entire race's face into the dirt.
But the Ethereals knew the truth.
Their finest commander, Shadowsun, had been crushed by the being across from her with an attitude that barely qualified as effort. It wasn't a battle between equals. It wasn't one tactical genius narrowly losing to another.
It was a dimensionality strike.
A grown adult casually waving a hand at a group of toddlers who had just learned to walk, and then every child toppled over.
What did that mean?
Before the gene-primarchs created by the human lord known as the Emperor of Mankind, everything the Tau Empire took pride in — its tactics, its technology, the Greater Good itself — looked inadequate. Not even worthy of being called an opponent.
The worlds they had taken from the Imperium before weren't proof of Tau strength. They were proof that the Imperium hadn't yet gathered its fist.
Now, as the gene-primarchs returned one by one, that ancient empire was closing its hand.
The Tau Empire had to make a new strategic decision.
Surrendering those once-annexed Imperial domains would buy not glory, but time.
The loss of those resource worlds would rot the economy. Abandoning expansion would stir unrest within. But it would purchase decades of breathing room.
The Ethereals regarded that time as a countdown.
They had to find a way to contend with those superhumans before the ceasefire ended. Because when the next war came, the Tau Empire wouldn't be facing a localized defeat.
It would be facing annihilation.
---
Meanwhile, aboard the Imperial expedition fleet's flagship, the Glory of Terra, a celebration was underway.
The war, from beginning to end, had taken one Terran standard month.
A number so staggering it deserved its own chapter in Imperial military textbooks.
Every person in the hall, Astartes captains, mortal commanders, Mechanicus tech-priests attached to the fleet, looked at Horus with the same word in their eyes.
Reverence.
"The Wolf God!"
"The Wolf God!"
The shouts rose and fell, sweeping from one end of the long table to the other, from mortal officers to Astartes warriors. Countless goblets lifted high.
But Horus didn't stand on the dais to receive it.
Goblet in hand, he moved through the crowd. He paused to clap a captain on the pauldron. He leaned in to exchange a few quiet words with a mortal officer. He stopped in front of a wounded soldier and personally pressed a drink into his hand.
Warm. Equal. Genuine.
The Wolf God's charisma filled every corner of that hall.
And at his side, steady as a shadow, was his proudest son, Loken.
In the most unremarkable corner of the banquet hall, Curze sat hunched in the dark, methodically chewing a strip of dried meat.
He hated these occasions. Too loud. Too bright.
Everyone was laughing, everyone was toasting, everyone was drowning in the high of a victory. The atmosphere crawled under his skin like something wrong, a nocturnal creature dragged forcibly into sunlight.
Sevatar stood faithfully at his father's side, holding a goblet he hadn't touched.
"The Wolf God is still the same as ever, my lord." Sevatar watched the figure at the center of the crowd, something complicated in his tone.
Curze took another bite. Chewed.
"He's the socialite," he said, voice muffled but flat. "The most conspicuous presence in any room. That was true during the Great Crusade ten thousand years ago. It's true now. His charisma has never wavered."
"You possess charisma as well, my lord." Sevatar lowered his head, his tone earnest. "You are not inferior to Lupercal."
Curze stopped chewing.
"Don't flatter me, Sev. I don't need any of that."
He stuffed the last of the dried meat into his mouth and brushed the crumbs from his hands.
"I am the blade that does the dirty work in the shadows." His voice was quiet, the tone of a man stating something obvious. "Same as the Lion. Standing in the spotlight is exhausting. You don't actually think I envy Horus up there, soaking in the world's praise and admiration?"
"You have never accepted praise from others." Sevatar paused. "Except from our former Legion. Your sons."
Curze said nothing.
Then he smiled.
It was a strange thing to see. This was a face the galaxy associated with terror and madness, and yet what crossed it now was something else entirely. Something almost tender.
He raised his hand and rested it on Sevatar's head. A slow, quiet pat.
Sevatar went rigid. He had lived ten thousand years. He was long past the point of being startled by anything.
But when his gene-father's cold hand settled on his crown, something rose in this old veteran's chest that he had no clean word for. Pride. Honor. A warmth he hadn't been prepared for.
He lowered his head and accepted it in silence.
Then Curze's hand stopped.
Sevatar caught it immediately, that sudden stillness. He looked up at his father's face, and his heart dropped.
Curze had frozen.
The muscles across that pale face tightened inch by inch. His dark eyes were wide, pupils shaking violently, as if something had struck him from across time, something from the future, something he couldn't stop.
"My lord?" Sevatar's voice sharpened. "What's wrong? Have you seen another ill omen?"
Curze blinked.
Those trembling pupils steadied. Slowly, he came back to the present.
"No." There was an odd calm in his voice. "Not good, not bad. It's my brother Fulgrim. He's coming back." A pause. "And there is another."
The lord of the fallen Third Legion was returning.
Sevatar's breath caught.
He had no time to process it. The question came almost before he'd decided to ask it. "Who is the other one? Father."
Curze surfaced gradually from the residue of the vision. He tilted his head, those deep-set dark eyes shifting toward Sevatar, and his expression carried something unusual.
Confusion.
"Sev." He paused, as if searching for the right words. "Do you know someone named Nykona Sharrowkyn?"
Another pause.
"A son of my brother the Redeemer."
➤ Next: Guilliman: I Dare Not Hope for Too Much
— .—— .—— .—— .—— .——
📚Read 70+ chapters ahead on Patreon.
💎Join the free community tier for early access to the latest updates:
🔥patreon(.)com/DarkGolds