Chapter 157 - The Fallen Primarchs Reunite
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Two Terran-standard hours earlier.
The Dark Imperium.
The Dark Angels had not yet reached the Dark Imperium, so the Lion and his Absolved Angel sons were temporarily quartered with the Blood Angels.
That day, Sanguinius came looking for his elder brother.
His expression was graver than usual. The Lion could see it the moment he walked in.
Sure enough, Sanguinius laid out every detail of his psychic vision without omitting a word:
Kaelen had succeeded. The uncorrupted clone of Fulgrim had awakened, and that event would inevitably draw the attention of their fallen brother. The fallen serpent would never tolerate a perfect version of himself walking free in the material universe.
"Are you certain?" The Lion's brow furrowed, a flicker of thought crossing his face.
"Obviously." Sanguinius spread his hands. "Kaelen moved faster than I anticipated. The psychic ripple when the clone woke — I felt it clearly from all the way out here in the Dark Imperium. That force carried traces of both my essence and Fulgrim's. Our fallen brother could not have missed it."
"But we are in the Dark Imperium."
Lion's voice was steady, practical.
"Setting aside our mission here, consider the distance alone. Traveling from here to the Imperium Sanctus to aid Guilliman and the others would require a long detour. By the time we arrived, the war would already be over."
The Great Angel didn't answer. He looked at the Lion, and the corner of his mouth curved into a smile that was impossible to read.
"I never said anything about going to the Sanctus to help them. I know perfectly well that's not realistic."
"Then what is your plan?"
As the Lion finished speaking, his gaze landed on his brother's expression, and he stopped. Sanguinius was practically beaming. There was a glint in the Angel's eyes, something bright and sharp and thoroughly pleased with itself.
Like a child who had been sitting on a terrible idea for a very long time.
The Lion paused. Then something clicked.
Right. Had he not already mastered the forest-walk? Back when they'd moved on Blacksable, he had cut straight through the planet's psychic shielding and struck directly onto the surface. If that was possible, then surely he could board an enemy vessel while it was traveling through the Warp.
Sanguinius smiled. He could see Lion had worked it out.
"We go directly to the Pride of the Emperor."
The Angel's tone was perfectly casual, like he was suggesting they drop by a neighbor's house.
"A little payback for Roboute."
"Roboute?" The Lion frowned. "What does he have to do with Fulgrim? Is there some history between them?"
Sanguinius leaned in and told him. How the fallen Fulgrim had opened a cut across Roboute's neck. How it had left Guilliman nearly unable to remove his power armor to rest.
The Lion went quiet after that.
Then he gave his answer.
"A fine suggestion, brother." His voice was low, but the fire underneath it was unmistakable. "Roboute is insufferable, yes. But he's mine to find insufferable."
"We do need to settle accounts with Fulgrim."
And so, without a word to their sons, the two brothers activated the forest-walk.
The forest brought them to the Pride of the Emperor.
The moment two loyalist primarchs set foot on the fallen flagship's deck, bloodshed was inevitable.
The fallen Emperor's Children couldn't even react in time. Some of them had seen these two primarchs before. They knew exactly what they were capable of. That knowledge didn't save them.
Every swing of the Lion's sword and the Great Angel's blade cut down another swath of fallen warriors. Screams and mad laughter tangled together, and the noise traveled far enough to reach Fulgrim.
The fallen serpent came.
Finding two of his brothers tearing through his own flagship sent Fulgrim into a fury. All four arms raised blades, and he charged.
The Lion met him. He fought with his shield, much like Rogal Dorn had once done against Fulgrim, absorbing the serpent's flamboyant, lethal strikes with the Emperor's Shield, rolling behind it, waiting for the right moment, then driving his blade clean through Fulgrim's flank.
Efficient. Relentless. No wasted motion.
The fallen primarch was so infuriated he almost laughed.
But what truly drove him past the edge was the golden shape that wouldn't leave him alone. Sanguinius circling above him, patient and precise, like a hawk that had already decided.
The Great Angel picked his moments and dove. And every time he dove, he put a boot into Fulgrim's face.
One kick. Two kicks. Three. Fulgrim lost count. He only knew that his face, the face he had spent ten thousand years perfecting, was now covered in shoeprints, each one glowing faintly gold, burned in by something holy, impossible to scrub away.
Above and below, no quarter and no opening. Fulgrim finally broke.
He let out an indignant shriek. His serpentine tail whipped hard, and he drove himself deep into the bridge and fled, fast as a snake that had just been struck on its kill spot.
The Lion and Sanguinius didn't chase him. The objective was met. The forest-walk opened, and both of them vanished into the green mist.
Hit and run. Exhilarating.
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The Death Lord Mortarion came in person to receive his brother.
He despised Fulgrim. No reason required.
But Nurgle's instructions were clear, and he had no choice. This Plague War had drifted in directions even he hadn't anticipated. Tzeentch and Khorne had joined to strike at the Scourge Stars. Slaanesh had drifted, somehow, into alignment with Nurgle. And on the Imperium's side, loyalist primarchs kept returning.
What came next? Mortarion didn't know.
His mind drifted back to Fulgrim, and further back still, all the way to Ullanor. The gathering where Horus was named Warmaster. He, Fulgrim, Sanguinius, and Jaghatai Khan had been thrown together in rare idle conversation. He had looked at Fulgrim's obscenely ornate decorations and let two words fall from between his teeth, cold and flat.
Peacock.
There were no peacocks in the death swamps of Barbarus. If there had been, the poison gas and the mire would have stripped every feather from them long before they could preen.
Mortarion had always believed that if Fulgrim ever set foot on Barbarus, he wouldn't last a day.
That was why he had never respected him.
His own turn toward Nurgle had been necessity. To save his sons from the plague's torment. He had been forced into it. But Fulgrim? That stupid peacock had walked into Slaanesh's arms on his own.
He was the Death Lord. Gene-sire of the Death Guard. The most enduring thing in the galaxy.
No one's slave. Not the Emperor of Mankind's. Not Nurgle's.
He was Mortarion. He chose his own road. Even if that road led to eternal rot, it was a door he had pushed open himself.
The thought made him stand a little straighter.
He stood on his flagship's bridge, watching the Mandeville Point churn and roil through the observation window, waiting to receive that peacock with all the arrogance he deserved.
The Mandeville Point tore open. A fleet punched through the barrier between realspace and the Warp, dropping squarely within Death Guard firing range.
Fulgrim's fleet.
There was no warmth between Chaos forces, regardless of whatever alliance they were nominally maintaining.
Mortarion didn't extend any courtesy. He raised one hand. The Death Guard fleet's gun barrels rotated slowly, tracking and locking.
Only then did he open a channel to the other side, his tone carrying all the condescension he could muster: the Death Lord Mortarion was here to visit his brother Fulgrim. Prepare a landing platform.
On the other end, the Emperor's Children officers exchanged glances. Under any other circumstances, they would have opened fire already.
But this was Mortarion's battlefield. He held every advantage.
The handful of senior officers who still possessed something resembling sanity ground their teeth and gave the order. The Death Lord would be accommodated.
Mortarion led his Deathshroud onto the Pride of the Emperor.
He noticed something wrong the instant he stepped onto the bridge. The deck bore the marks of a recent fight, bolter craters, scorched plating, fallen warriors still sprawled where they had dropped across both sides of the corridor, not yet cleared away.
Something lingered in the air.
Not Slaanesh's cloying sweetness. Not Nurgle's deep rot. Something older. Something cold. The kind of chill that came from deep inside a forest, ancient and unhurried.
Mortarion turned it over in his mind, wondering who could have hit this place.
Then he saw Fulgrim, and all of it made sense.
Fulgrim was standing, or making an attempt at standing. The armor across all four of his arms was cracked in multiple places. His flanks were wrapped in hastily applied bandages, the purple blood beneath them long since dried and congealed.
But none of that was what drew the eye.
His face did that.
Printed clearly across it, several distinct shoeprints. Each one glowed faintly gold, a soft and holy light, like marks burned in by something sacred. No matter how many times Fulgrim had wiped at them, they remained.
Mortarion looked at him for a long time without speaking.
Then the Death Lord laughed. Low and slow, filtered through the respirator of his gas mask, slightly muffled. But the pleasure in it was completely undisguised.
"Peacock." His voice was thick with contempt. "Looks like someone's plucked quite a few of your feathers."
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