Chapter 155 - Return of the Perfect Phoenix
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By unspoken agreement, neither of them brought up the topic again.
Everything that needed saying had been said. All that remained was silence.
In the corner of the command room, Guilliman and Kaelen stood side by side like two motionless statues, both watching the Eldar Farseer conducting his ritual at the center of the room.
Illiyan Nastase's hands traced complex patterns through the air. Wraithbone runes flowed between his fingertips like living things, weaving a net beyond mortal comprehension, slowly enveloping the cube, the soul fragment, and the feather threaded through with golden light.
Kaelen's mind, however, was anything but still.
A thought had snagged on something: after the clone Fulgrim, fused with the soul fragment of the alternate-timeline Phoenician, awakened, whose personality would be in control?
He replayed the conversation with the Emperor of Mankind from the dream, turning it over until a rough answer settled into place.
Most likely, the clone had observed his own experiences from a parallel world and absorbed the states of mind and epiphanies he had never personally lived through. The soul fragment wouldn't have directly seized control of the body.
If it were the latter, things would go very badly, very fast. The first thing the alternate-timeline Fulgrim would do upon waking would probably be to put a blade through Old Thirteen.
In that world-line, Guilliman was the traitor.
Kaelen glanced sideways at the Lord of Ultramar.
Guilliman stared at the ritual, his expression somewhere between anticipation and tension, impossible to read.
Kaelen shook his head and swallowed the words before they reached his lips.
The alternate-timeline story could wait. He'd tell him later.
Right now, getting the clone safely settled was all that mattered.
At that moment, the Farseer's ritual entered its final stage.
He guided the feather of the Great Angel Sanguinius and the soul fragment from the parallel world together into the body of the clone Fulgrim. The instant those two utterly different forces converged, the Clone Phoenician's body detonated in a burst of blinding, radiant light.
The moment of fusion released a shockwave powerful enough to shake reality itself.
Across the entire Macragge's Honour, every psyker felt it simultaneously, each in their own way.
Some collapsed straight to their knees. Others clutched their heads and cried out in pain. The most sensitive among them beheld something in the light, a vision that defied naming.
A burning violet phoenix and an angel with outstretched wings, blazing together in golden fire.
The Farseer was hurled backward by the shockwave, his back slamming hard onto the floor, wraithbone runes shattering around him.
Guilliman turned the instant the light erupted and stepped in front of Kaelen. The primarch's broad back filled the space like a fortress wall, absorbing the full brunt of the shockwave.
Kaelen poked half his head out from behind him. Both of them squinted against the searing glare, eyes fixed on the center of the light.
The perfect one was returning.
The light faded.
Kaelen and Guilliman finally made out the figure standing before them.
Tall. Elegant. Every proportion calibrated as though by a creator who had pursued perfection and found it.
His face was so handsome it bordered on unreal, a living work of art. The beauty of divinity and humanity had reached some subtle equilibrium within him. It was not the sacred beauty of Sanguinius, the kind that made you instinctively avert your eyes. But it was far beyond anything mortal senses could fully process.
Lustrous silver hair cascaded over his shoulders, catching a cool, moonlit glow in the residual psychic light.
He was simply standing there. It was enough to make the room feel like a goddess had walked into it.
The clone Fulgrim slowly opened his eyes.
No confusion. No disorientation of first waking.
His gaze was clear and bright, carrying the composure of someone who had stared into the abyss and climbed back anyway.
He looked around the room, first at the dissipating trails of psychic energy, then at Kaelen, then finally resting on Guilliman's face.
His lips moved. His voice carried the dazed quality of someone who wasn't quite sure what they were seeing.
"Roboute? Is that you?"
---
Deep within the Eye of Terror. A daemon world of Slaanesh.
The palace of Callax, should any mortal dare to set foot here, the sight would break them before they crossed the threshold.
Inside was a world of depravity taken to its absolute extreme.
A cloying, sweet fragrance hung beneath the dome, luring everything it touched toward ruin. Thousands of men and women filled the space in endless revelry, every one of them flawless, smooth skin, exquisite faces, perfect forms, like living sculptures carved with obsessive care.
But beneath those perfect shells were walking corpses. Whatever had once animated them had long been swallowed whole by desire.
At the very center of the palace sat a bed large enough to hold several dozen people.
The fallen serpent Fulgrim lay on it. His beloved consort lay beside him.
His consort's name was N'Kari, a Keeper of Secrets.
Among the greater daemons who served the Dark Prince, N'Kari was the one who least resembled anything Slaanesh should have produced. Grotesquely bloated, covered in coarse bristling hair, his body twisted like an obese worm. Every breath expelled a stench thick enough to suffocate a mortal on the spot.
His face, though, that face, nearly identical to Fulgrim's own, was the one thing about him that could be called perfect.
Which was precisely why the fallen serpent was infatuated with him.
At this moment, the two of them were locked in a fierce kiss.
Their lips tore at each other. Blood seeped from the corners of their mouths and dripped down, one drop at a time.
The instant that blood hit the floor, the men and women below, who had been tangled in their languid embraces a moment before, went mad.
They fought for the drops of primarch blood like wild beasts. Fingernails tore into cheeks. Teeth sank into necks. The decadent, elegant reverie turned in a heartbeat into a concerto of screaming and blood.
The fallen serpent kept kissing his consort and watched the carnage with satisfaction, the way a couple, occupied with one another, might absently turn on music and let a piece of classical work play itself out in the background.
Then a son of the primarch burst in.
He was a fallen Librarian of the Emperor's Children Legion, and everything about him was wrong. His eyes were bloodshot. Drool ran uncontrolled from the corner of his mouth. His gaze landed on the two figures on the bed, and the jealousy in his eyes was so raw it was almost its own kind of violence.
How desperately he wanted it to be himself kissing his gene-father, not that grotesque Keeper of Secrets.
But he had not forgotten why he had come.
Fulgrim's displeasure at being interrupted was unmistakable.
His serpentine tail hooked out with a lazy, unhurried motion and dragged the Librarian in front of him, casual in delivery, irresistible in effect.
The primarch extended slender, graceful fingers and stroked his son's cheek. The touch was feather-light, the way you might pet an animal.
"By the Prince of Pleasure on high—" The fallen serpent's voice was low, husky, and seductive, the final syllable curling upward like the opening bar of a song not yet finished. "What could possibly bring me surprise? Or some exciting new diversion?"
"My lord..."
The Librarian was shaking. He forced out the words with visible effort.
"Your clone has awakened once more. He possesses a beauty comparable to your own—"
He didn't finish.
The fallen serpent's mouth opened wide. That elegant face twisted in an instant into something that looked like a chasm opening in the dark.
He bit off his son's head in a single motion. The crack of bone was clean and brief. Blood fountained from the stump and soaked his chest red.
He chewed. Once. Twice. Then he stroked his slightly rounded stomach with an air of contentment and tossed the headless body aside like a gnawed bone he had no more use for.
"My dear." N'Kari's voice was thick and fetid. "I can feel your anger."
"Yes, N'Kari. I am angry." The fallen serpent licked the blood from the corner of his lips. Something complicated and dangerous moved behind his eyes. "But anger brings its own kind of excitement. And I find I must also admit — I am jealous."
His serpentine tail slid slowly off the bed and swept through the men and women still scrabbling over the blood, grinding them to nothing.
"I apologize, my dear. We end here for today." He was already moving. "I need to pay a visit to my brother Mortarion."
➤ Next: The Great Angel's Retribution
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