Chapter 154 - Guilliman: I Dare Not Hope for Too Much
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Numb.
Guilliman was numb.
First Horus had come back. Then Sanguinius had risen from the dead.
And now this, a clone, yes, but still Fulgrim. Still the Phoenix Lord before the fall.
The Lord of Ultramar had to admit it: this kid Kaelen was something else.
"So what do we do now? Wake the cloned Fulgrim up?"
He'd been studying his brother's likeness inside the cube on the table. Now he looked up at Kaelen.
The Eldar Farseer stood with them.
When Kaelen reached into his magical mystery pocket and produced the pure soul shard of the Phoenix Lord, then laid out his plan to both of them, the two listeners went quiet.
Guilliman's silence was elation.
The Farseer's was something else entirely. He kept muttering under his breath:
[Asuryan above, how do these monkeys have access to someone like this?]
Kaelen had no idea how to place a soul shard into a clone body. That was why he'd brought the Farseer in.
As for whether the Aeldari might try to sabotage things...
The Emperor of Mankind: Aeldari. You will listen.
But Farseer Illiyan Nastase wasn't foolish enough for that. He knew what Kaelen was capable of. He knew what the Aeldari's future looked like without help. He had no motive to interfere.
As if the Aeldari needed more reasons to suffer.
"So, Farseer."
Kaelen finished explaining the origins of the soul shard and the clone, then turned to him.
"Could you help us? Merge the soul shard with the cloned Phoenix Lord?"
"It can be done."
The Farseer nodded. Then shook his head.
"But I cannot guarantee the soul shard will be enough to keep the cloned primarch from sliding into the Dark Prince's embrace. My race's greatest farseer looked into this clone's future. Fabius Bile was right to make that deal with Trazyn when he did — that damned Necron."
"Without it, the cloned primarch would still follow the path of fate. Straight toward corruption."
"What if I also brought out Sanguinius's feather?"
Kaelen reached into his coat and produced the feather the Great Angel had given him.
The Farseer's pupils shrank. He took it carefully and held it up, studying it in silence.
After a long moment, he looked at Kaelen.
"Your Great Angel's divinity could suppress the Phoenix Lord's inner darkness. It may be enough. He may yet avoid the fall."
Kaelen glanced at Guilliman. Guilliman gave a slight nod.
"Then go ahead, Farseer."
"For both our peoples. For the material universe. We will claim another victory over the Warp."
The Farseer didn't argue or stall. He agreed, and got to work.
The mortal and the primarch stood back and watched the Aeldari perform rituals neither of them could follow. To avoid breaking his concentration, the two drifted to a corner to talk.
Kaelen filled Guilliman in: the deal with Trazyn the Infinite, the Emperor of Mankind's guidance, the coming shifts in the Plague Wars, and the fallen primarch Fulgrim's role in all of it.
At the mention of his fallen brother, something dark moved through the Lord of Ultramar. The wound Fulgrim's sword had left behind was not something he'd forgotten.
But there was bitterness too. Once, the Lord of Ultramar and the Phoenix Lord had been close.
"He is very powerful," Guilliman said quietly.
"But we'll beat the fallen serpent, my lord."
Guilliman was quiet for a moment. "I hold no great expectations for the clone. As a primarch, I know what we are — each of us a unique creation of the Emperor of Mankind. You can clone new bodies from our blood. But without the soul, without whatever lives at the core of us..." He paused. "It's still just a shell."
"Then will you treat this cloned Phoenix Lord as a stranger? A thing?" Kaelen's gaze held steady on Guilliman. "Not as a true brother?"
Guilliman didn't answer right away.
He looked at the face in the cube, familiar in a way that reached across decades, and something in him drifted back. Flashes of time spent with Fulgrim. Campaigns. Conversations. Laughter that had no place in a warzone.
He let out a slow breath.
"I don't know. Reason and feeling are fighting each other."
Then, quieter: "But I am willing to call him brother. Provided he never again betrays the Imperium or the Emperor of Mankind."
Something loosened in him after that. Guilliman began to reminisce.
"We worked together several times. He made an impression." A faint smile. "He told me once that I and my Ultramarines had no understanding of the art of war. That he and the Third Legion were the ones who created spectacles on the battlefield."
"I will always miss the days we fought side by side. The arguments. The laughing."
Kaelen blinked. Then, at exactly the right moment: "Does that include when the Phoenix Lord had to mediate between you and Ferrus?"
Guilliman looked mildly surprised. Then he smiled properly.
"Yes. Without Fulgrim, Ferrus and I might never have gotten past stiff and formal. We may have never gotten along at all."
During the Great Crusade, Fulgrim and Ferrus had been close enough that eyebrows were raised. Guilliman had admired Ferrus greatly, and Fulgrim had liked Guilliman well enough in return.
That engineering meathead Fer-senpai had a surprisingly good way with people.
Kaelen couldn't help thinking it.
If Fulgrim was the elegant, aristocratic student council president, and Guilliman was the straight-laced, order-obsessed disciplinary committee rep, then Ferrus was... what, the toughest, coldest, most domineering hardman on campus?
Yeah. He could see it perfectly.
So it went. Guilliman talked and Kaelen listened, the stories rolling out from the Great Crusade: the primarchs' old rivalries, old friendships, old jokes that had survived betrayal and ten thousand years of war. The Lord of Ultramar reserved most of his complaints for Lion El'Jonson.
With no small amount of lingering sourness, he recounted how the Lion had arrived on Macragge in the early days of the Heresy, First Legion in tow, chin up, the picture of insufferable swagger, and staged a full parade. The locals had lost their minds. The Emperor of Mankind's firstborn son. The First Legion. Merchandise practically sold out across the city.
What the Lion had neglected to mention was that Konrad Curze had come with him. The Nostraman bat had slipped off the Invincible Reason and proceeded to cause chaos across Macragge for an embarrassing stretch of time.
Guilliman had not forgiven the Lion for that. He never planned to.
Kaelen laughed out loud. He already knew the story, but hearing it from someone who'd lived it was something else entirely.
Then Guilliman mentioned his foster mother.
The warmth drained out of his voice. The nostalgia, the dry humor, gone like a tide pulling back from the shore. Fast and silent. He moved past the subject almost before Kaelen registered it.
Kaelen caught it.
He thought about what Trazyn had mentioned. That particular item in the Infinite's collection.
Tarasha Euten. Sealed away in Trazyn's museum.
He tested carefully: "My lord. If, hypothetically, your foster mother were still alive. What would you do?"
Guilliman was silent for a long time.
The silence said more than any answer could.
"I hope Lady Euten has already passed away."
"Why?" Kaelen didn't understand. "Given how much she means to you, my lord, surely you wouldn't just—"
"Kaelen." Guilliman cut him off. There were no tears in the Lord of Ultramar's eyes. But in the deep blue of them, something moved. Something that had been held down for a long time.
"If you were in my position. Supreme ruler of the Imperium. Grand ideals, grand responsibilities. Pressure from every direction. A galaxy full of things that want to destroy everything you've built." His voice stayed level. "You cannot protect everyone. That is simply true."
He paused.
"And those things, if they want a way in, they will find one. Every defense has a moment when it slips. If the people closest to you are taken, used against you, and you must still face them while also refusing to abandon the Imperium and everyone within it..." He stopped. "You have to cut that connection. There is no other choice."
Grief surfaced on the Lord of Ultramar's face. Just for a moment.
"Besides, Kaelen."
His voice dropped until it was barely there at all.
"I dare not hope for too much."
➤ Next: Return of the Perfect Phoenix
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