Chapter 156 - The Great Angel's Retribution
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The Clone Phoenician's mind was in chaos.
It was as if he stood before two screens playing at once. One showed his fall and betrayal. The other showed his loyalty and perfection.
Guilliman.
Roboute Guilliman.
Fulgrim remembered that in that other world, he had betrayed the Imperium and the Emperor. The same as himself.
The Phoenician shook his head.
Three seconds. That was all it took for a Primarch's mind to pull itself back into focus.
"Roboute. Is that you?"
"It's me, brother."
Guilliman stepped forward and draped a blanket from the sofa over his unclothed brother in one easy motion. He watched the Phoenician carefully, breathing in, reading him.
The Clone Phoenician could confirm it. His brother was not the version who had betrayed. His brother was loyal.
"Are you loyal, brother? Are you still loyal to our father, the Emperor of Mankind?"
Guilliman simply nodded.
"I have always been loyal to him. But how are you, brother? How are you faring?"
"My head is spinning. I haven't fully processed what's happened..."
Fulgrim was helped to sit. Guilliman opened a comm channel and ordered an attendant to bring a Primarch's garments.
While they waited, the Phoenician looked toward Kaelen.
Kaelen wasn't expecting the smile he received. Captivating was the only word for it.
"My brother Sanguinius's feather told me a great deal. How should I address you?"
"Kaelen."
As the word left his mouth, Kaelen hoisted the unconscious Eldar Farseer onto his shoulder. The xenos was light as air, far easier than hauling Sanguinius off the ground had been.
He settled the Farseer onto the sofa, then came and sat down across from the Phoenician.
"Do you know who you are?"
Kaelen asked.
"I'm confused." Fulgrim raised his hands and stared at them, studying those long, perfect fingers as if confirming they belonged to him. "I can't tell which is real and which isn't."
"I remember two completely different lives. In one, I slew Ferrus Manus, betrayed the Emperor, and have been sinking in the embrace of the Prince of Pleasure ever since..."
A trace of disgust and pain moved through the Phoenician's voice, barely concealed. Like being forced to swallow rotted meat.
"In the other, I endured hardship and found clarity at the moment it mattered most. Not perfect, but already flawless. I fought alongside my brothers, defending the glory of the Imperium until the very last moment."
His hands settled slowly in his lap. His gaze drifted between Kaelen and Guilliman.
"Both memories are vivid. Both feel real. Like two dreams pouring into a single mind at once. I know my name is Fulgrim. I know I am the Primarch of the Third Legion. I know I once pursued perfection and paid the price for it." He paused. "But I do not know which of those two selves is the real one."
Guilliman began to speak. Kaelen stopped him with a look.
"Do you think you are Fulgrim?"
The Clone Phoenician was quiet for a long time.
"I think..."
--------
"He will never be."
"A counterfeit. A fake. A replica. What power could he possibly have to stand against me?"
The Pride of the Emperor. Gloriana-class flagship. Glory queen of the Emperor's Children Legion.
The great vessel that had once carried the Third Legion's honor had become a floating palace of desire. Uneasy murmurs drifted through the bridge. Living decorations crawled along the walls. Souls fused permanently into the hull still issued their soundless moans.
The fallen serpent, Primarch Fulgrim, had summoned every son capable of taking the field.
Those once-proud warriors of the Emperor's Children had long since become monsters of every shape and description. Still, they answered their gene-father's call.
A Chaos warband of Legion scale, fully assembled. One objective.
The Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar.
Roboute Guilliman's domain.
For 10,000 years, the fallen Primarch had never taken a single step beyond the Eye of Terror. He had been content to drown in eternal ecstasy within his daemon world, certain he had long since transcended everything mortal.
Then the news arrived, and it changed everything.
In the Primarch's private chamber, the serpent Fulgrim stood before a brand-new floor-length mirror.
He shifted through poses, slender fingers trailing from his waist to his throat, from his throat to his cheek. Every angle was a display. Four arms. Serpentine tail. Violet eyes. Every inch of skin radiating a suffocating, Slaanesh-blessed allure.
But in truth, he was furious.
This was the uncountable-th mirror replaced today. Before it, he had already shattered 666.
Every time he looked at his reflection, the same indescribable agitation seized him. Clearly flawless. Clearly beyond compare. Yet that thought coiled in his skull like a venomous serpent, and he could not shake it loose.
The dying Librarian's unfinished words played in his ears again and again.
"There exists one who rivals his..."
Rivals what?
Beauty?
Ability?
Or something deeper. Something even he refused to name.
"No!"
The serpent lashed his tail. The mirror exploded, shards scattering across the floor, each one refracting a different twisted image of himself.
He roared at the fragments, voice shrill enough to nearly pierce the bulkhead:
"I am the perfect one! I am the chosen of the Prince of Pleasure! He is nothing but a counterfeit! A pitiful copy that Fabius Bile stirred up out of a test tube!"
His chest heaved. Silver hair spilled across his shoulders. The broken shards reflected his expression back at him from a hundred angles.
Ferocious. Enraged.
And beneath both, something he refused to acknowledge.
Fear.
"What power has the Prince of Pleasure poured into me?" The fallen Fulgrim's tail slapped the deck in agitation, grinding the fragments into fine powder. "What does that thing have to match against me?"
"I fell. I sank. I have experienced extremes he could never even imagine. A pure, untainted clone, what does he understand? He has experienced nothing."
He didn't notice that he'd lost composure.
Or rather, he noticed, and refused to admit it.
Beneath that ferocious face, something both foreign and familiar was quietly taking root. The same thing Fulgrim had felt, all those ages ago, when the Laer Blade first murmured to him.
Envy.
The clone's very existence was the greatest denial of everything he was.
It told the entire galaxy: This is what Fulgrim should have been. That pure, unfallen warrior who had no need to grovel at the Prince of Pleasure's feet. He could have become that. He could have been that.
No blade had ever cut him this deeply.
"I will kill you," the fallen Fulgrim hissed to the shards on the floor. "Damned copy."
His resentment needed no amplification.
But retribution arrived sooner than he expected.
While his fleet carved through the Warp, green vines crept out of nothing. Mist gathered. Two figures stepped out of it and onto the deck of the Pride of the Emperor.
The Emperor's Children froze. Fulgrim froze with them.
It was Lion El'Jonson and the Great Angel, Sanguinius.
"Long time no see, Fulgrim."
Sanguinius's voice was as gentle as ever.
His words were not.
"That scar you left on Roboute's neck. My brother and I have come to collect."
➤ Next: The Fallen Primarchs Reunite
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