Chapter 166 - The Final Battle Begins
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The reunion was brief. There was no time for pleasantries.
Clone-Fulgrim stood before Horus and the other Primarchs, and not one of them treated him as anything less than a true brother.
No one said the word "clone." No one let their gaze linger on that body born in a laboratory, measuring it, questioning it.
To the Warmaster and the Lord of the Night, the figure before them was not Fabius Bile's creation. Not an exhibit from the Infinite's collection. He was the Phoenician, the brother who had ridden alongside them through the golden age.
Horus and Fulgrim had always been close.
The Warmaster would never forget that when the vote came to name a Warmaster, Fulgrim had cast his ballot for him without a moment's pause. Not for Ferrus Manus.
By then, Ferrus Manus had already recognized what he lacked. Horus's personal magnetism and command instinct were not things that could be taught or willed into being. After a command blunder during a joint campaign, the Gorgon of Medusa had withdrawn from the running on his own terms.
But Fulgrim's vote had nothing to do with that. He had raised his hand first, without hesitation, before anything else had been decided.
That trust, Horus carried with him always.
As for Konrad Curze and Fulgrim, even less needed to be said.
Even as a clone, Clone-Fulgrim still held every memory of guiding that younger brother. The broken one. The sensitive one. The one who kept everyone up at night with worry.
No one willingly drew near the mad bat of Nostramo. No one had the patience to tend a soul that terror had eaten hollow.
No one except Fulgrim.
the Phoenician had taught him, hand in hand, how to find beauty even in darkness. How to reach for even a thread of light in a world that offered none. He had been the Lord of the Night's fixed point, his north star. The gentle "Third Sister" that Konrad Curze carried somewhere deep in that ravaged heart.
And so when Clone-Fulgrim had sifted through his memories and understood what the original had become, the shame had hit him like a blade to the chest.
The exemplar had fallen. The original had become a serpent-demon. The light he had once promised Konrad Curze, he had snuffed out with his own hands.
That guilt sat heavier in him than what he felt toward Horus, toward Guilliman, toward any of the others.
Konrad Curze stood motionless behind Horus, his pale face unreadable.
But the moment he had laid eyes on Clone-Fulgrim, grief had surged through him like a tide coming in.
Those eyes of his, the ones that could see through any darkness, studied this brother who was both familiar and wrong. He could see Clone-Fulgrim's soul. A flame not yet swallowed by the dark. Faint, but clean.
He could also see the flinching. The shame the clone was trying to hide.
Konrad Curze stepped forward.
He said nothing. He just opened his arms, his movements stiff and uncertain, like a man performing an act he hadn't attempted in ten thousand years.
Clone-Fulgrim went still for half a breath.
Then he gripped him tight.
The two Primarchs held each other in silence. No words. No words were necessary. Everything that needed to be said was already in the grip of those arms.
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Days passed. On the surface of Yaksis, preparations for the final confrontation with Mortarion's forces ground forward at a relentless pace.
Guilliman, Horus, and Clone-Fulgrim coordinated the loyalist deployment together. On humanitarian grounds, transport ships lifted the surviving local population off the surface and into the fleet waiting in low orbit. Space Marines, Astra Militarum regiments, armored columns, and the Mechanicus's Cybernetica Legions dropped from orbit in a continuous stream, and steel and flesh built a new defensive line across the ruins of Yaksis.
Guilliman spent nearly every hour with his brothers.
In the strategy room, they wargamed the assault again and again. 3 Primarchs sat at the main table alongside one Astartes: Sevetar, attending on behalf of his gene-father Konrad Curze.
Konrad Curze himself had taken a corner of the room. Horus had invited him to join the discussion 3 times. He hadn't moved once, a pale statue bolted into the shadows.
Horus didn't want his brother ignored. He also wasn't willing to drag him out against his will. So he asked Kaelen to keep the Lord of the Night company for a while.
Kaelen brought Cullen and made his way over.
Konrad Curze shifted left, clearing a few inches of wall.
Kaelen sat down and followed the Lord of the Night's line of sight.
It had never moved from Clone-Fulgrim.
"I noticed you haven't taken your eyes off Clone-Fulgrim," Kaelen said, voice low, just enough for the two of them. "Are you seeing something? A prophecy about his future?"
Konrad Curze gave a small nod. His voice came out hoarse and hollow, like sound rising from a dry well.
"A future that isn't good. He will die." The Lord of the Night spoke with an odd, almost detached ease, tracing the flickering fragments that surfaced in psychic sight.
Kaelen made a good audience. Quiet, but not stonily silent. He found the right moments to ask the right questions, and the conversation stretched on longer than most.
"To quote my nephew Loken's favorite line," Konrad Curze said. The corner of his mouth pulled into something that might generously be called a smile. "I will be present when Clone-Fulgrim is killed. I will watch it happen. The fallen serpent-demon will run him through. The clone is nothing before the original. He won't last a single blow."
Kaelen was quiet for a moment.
"And after?"
Konrad Curze shook his head.
"I can't see it clearly. That stretch of the future is fog. I haven't used this ability much since you gave me that simulator, and the sight has gone rusty on me."
He said it plainly, without drama. Just a tired honesty.
A knock at the door interrupted them both, and cut the strategic discussion at the table short as well.
Guilliman frowned, then gestured for the Custodian to open it.
A mortal messenger stepped inside. He saw 4 Primarchs. His legs nearly gave out beneath him at the realization of where he had just walked.
He gritted his teeth and crossed to the table anyway.
"My lords. Your Militant-Apostolic has led his forces out without waiting for orders."
Felix and the other senior officers at the table went visibly rigid with anger.
The Militant-Apostolic had done it again. No orders. No coordination. Acting entirely on his own authority, in defiance of the Primarch's.
Guilliman let out a short breath and waved a hand, then turned to Felix.
"Send one company from the Novamarines to support Mathieu."
Everyone in the room understood what that meant.
The final Plague War had started.
But Mortarion was not the only one coming.
The mortal messenger had barely cleared the doorway when a communications officer pushed in behind him.
"My lords. The fleet has detected severe fluctuations at the Mandeville Point. Estimated arrival of a large fleet in the Yaksis system — imminent."
"Our fallen brother's fleet."
Guilliman's voice was quiet and flat. His gaze moved to Horus.
"His target is our cloned brother."
"I know." Horus's voice was low, and certain.
"I've already positioned forces along the system edge and inside the asteroid belt. My guess is the fallen Fulgrim will come down to the surface personally, try to settle this face to face. When he does, the fist is already waiting for the back of his head."
➤ Next: Loken's Boarding Action
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