Chapter 169 - Battle Among the Primarchs
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Mortarion recovered quickly.
The Lord of Death was the Lord of Death. Two mocking remarks weren't going to break him.
He refocused on the three brothers before him, gaze sweeping across Horus, Guilliman, and Curze in turn. When it finally landed on Clone-Fulgrim, he let out a single contemptuous snort.
In his eyes, this counterfeit didn't even qualify as a brother.
All he sensed from the clone was a pitiful scrap of soul, forcibly crammed into a body that wasn't built to hold it — a dying lamp that the winds of plague could snuff out at any moment.
The Lord of Death let out a low, sinister laugh. The insectoid wings on his back quivered slowly, shedding a drifting cloud of dark-green spores.
He stared at the four of them with those nearly blind white eyes, the eyeballs filmed over with a milky cataract — and yet no one doubted that he saw more clearly than any of them.
"Well met, my brothers."
His voice came through the respirator's filter muffled and thick, carrying a sickly pleasure.
"I had assumed only Guilliman would accept my invitation. I did not expect you as well, Horus."
"Your fall pains me, brother."
Horus's voice held genuine grief. His hands, however, never loosened their grip on Worldbreaker.
The warhammer's light pulsed in the toxic fog, silent, steady, carrying the weight of the Emperor's fury.
"Ha." Mortarion sneered. "And who was it that led us to betray the False Emperor? You, Lupercal. And now here you are, crawling back to the side of our accursed father. Fate does love its cruel jokes."
"At least he has more spine than you, you filthy wretch."
Curze's laugh had a sharp, theatrical edge to it. An exaggerated sneer spread across his pale face.
"He held on for seven days with a wound that should have killed him. What did you manage?"
Mortarion's head snapped toward Curze. His eyes burned.
"You surrendered to fate like a broken dog. You have no right to speak to me!" The Lord of Death's voice cracked upward, the insectoid wings on his back thrashing violently.
Then he reined it in.
He turned away from the Lord of the Night and fixed his attention on Guilliman instead.
"Guilliman." The sinister calm returned to Mortarion's voice. "I imagine you have already seen through the trap waiting for you. But I also know you don't mind using it as bait, a scheme folded inside a scheme. No matter. Our game continues regardless."
His respirator belched rolling smoke. Dark-green toxin churned through the air.
He knew his brother Guilliman well enough. The Lord of Ultramar had almost certainly known about the Godblight and what was coming before he ever set foot on this battlefield.
So what? Scheme within scheme. Trap within trap. Against absolute power, all stratagems were dust.
"I will defeat you, brother!"
Guilliman's gaze blazed. The Emperor's Sword burned in the toxic fog, its flames roaring against the murk.
"And this time, do not run. Your flight on Parmenio disgusted me."
"As you wish." Mortarion's reply was unhurried. Then something shifted in his tone, a sly, almost amused contempt. "Though it won't only be me you're fighting. Fulgrim has also come. I think I finally understand why." He laughed, a dull sound trapped behind the respirator. "A rotten snake-daemon, jealous of an imperfect phoenix. What a wretched joke."
The Lord of Death was still laughing when he raised one finger and leveled it at Horus and Guilliman. His voice went cold.
"Your heads are mine."
Curze and Clone-Fulgrim he didn't even acknowledge.
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"First Captain!"
Kaelen pushed through the formations at a stride, moving back through layer after layer of ranks until he reached the rear command post, where Felix and the others were directing the Librarian company.
"That thing is about to show itself. Has Chaplain Mathieu reached the designated position yet?"
The command post was packed, every psychic Librarian they had, including the Aeldari Farseer Natas. Guilliman's psychic advisory team, assembled in one place.
After getting burned in the psychic dimension one too many times, the Lord of Ultramar had learned his lesson. This Librarian company was the trump card he had prepared for this war.
"Almost there, Lord Kaelen."
Felix answered without taking his eyes off the front.
"The stench of corruption is spreading. It's coming."
Farseer Natas spoke without warning, a thread of unease running through his voice.
Everyone followed his gaze. In the densest knot of toxic fog behind Mortarion, a massive winged shadow was taking shape.
It hadn't fully emerged yet. But the stench it carried had already punched through the psychic void-barrier the Librarians had raised, wrapping around every person's throat like an invisible hand.
Kaelen lasted about 2 seconds before he gave up and pulled on his filter mask. Cold sweat was already beading on his forehead underneath it.
When the monster finally walked clear of the fog, he stopped breathing entirely.
Not just him. Every Imperial soldier on the field. Even the four Primarchs braced at the front line.
Everyone went still.
It was twisted. Bloated. Every inch of its body covered in weeping, festering pustules, dark-green fluid seeping continuously from its skin.
A pair of tattered flesh-wings spread from its back, ragged feather remnants clinging to the edges. Each slow beat released clouds of toxic spores, enough to kill a mortal outright.
It carried a spear and a sword. And its posture was elegant. Its steps unhurried, as though it were arriving at a formal occasion rather than a battlefield.
That gait. That bearing.
Identical, in every detail, to the Great Angel Sanguinius.
What blasphemy.
The monster touched down slowly. Its spear and sword caught the light of the toxic fog and gave it back as a sickly green glow.
Mortarion spoke in front of every one of his furious brothers, his tone almost like an introduction.
"The Pale Plague. The Angel of Death." A pause. "I despise this existence, it defiles our brother Sanguinius. But to deal with you, I had no other option."
Kaelen stared from the rear and felt the absurdity hit him like a slap.
If you're going to fight dirty, just fight dirty. Why are you stopping to announce that this wasn't your first choice?
Mortarion and the Angel of Death stood side by side. Four wings moved slowly in the toxic fog. Mortarion's insectoid wings, dark-green and rotting. The Angel of Death's flesh-wings, tattered and foul.
Opposite them, the four loyal Primarchs stood with their father's weapons in hand. The Emperor's Sword blazed. Worldbreaker pulsed. The Lightning Claws shed their eerie glow. The Phoenix Blade, retrieved from Guilliman's armory by Clone-Fulgrim, gleamed sharp and clean. Together, the lights cut back and forth through the murk like answers to a challenge.
At the rear, the psychic Librarians cast in unison under Farseer Natas's amplification.
A massive circular energy field surged up from all sides, sealing the entire dueling ground, Primarchs and fog and scorched earth alike, cut off from the outside world.
The signal.
Both sides charged at the same instant.
The sons of the Emperor of Mankind went to war.
In the single breath that their eyes met, Guilliman and Horus had already sorted it out between them. No words. No gestures. Guilliman and Curze would take Mortarion. Horus and Clone-Fulgrim would meet the Angel of Death.
Two duels. One field of scorched earth. The energy barrier humming overhead.
Mortarion opened with Silence, trying to seize the initiative.
The massive scythe, housing a Great Unclean One of Nurgle within its cursed blade, swept a dark-green arc through the air straight at Guilliman's throat. The Lord of Ultramar threw up his sword. The Emperor's Sword and Silence met with a crack that shook the ground, and the earth beneath their feet couldn't take it, spiderweb fractures tearing outward in every direction.
Curze moved the instant Mortarion's attack locked onto Guilliman. He looped around the Lord of Death's flank like a shadow-viper finding a gap in the defense.
The Night Haunter grinned. Both Lightning Claws punched through Mortarion's side simultaneously. Pain, real, unfamiliar pain, detonated across the Lord of Death's nerve endings. Mortarion roared with fury and swung his scythe back at Curze in a vicious backhand.
Curze had already seen it coming. His form blurred like smoke, the scythe passing through nothing. And as he slipped clear, he brought his leg up and drove his boot squarely into Mortarion's face.
Sanguinius had taught him that one.
Guilliman didn't waste the opening. He surged forward, the Emperor's Sword's flames slicing through the toxic fog as he drove the blade toward Mortarion's chest.
But the Lord of Death was a master with the scythe. One small twist of his wrist, and the butt of the weapon hooked behind Guilliman's ankle. The Lord of Ultramar went down hard.
Curze pushed to attack again. Mortarion had already read him. The insectoid wings hammered the air, and the Lord of Death shot backward dozens of meters on a blast of putrid wind, reopening the distance between them.
On the other side of the field, Horus and Clone-Fulgrim held the line against the blasphemous creation.
The Angel of Death fought with both spear and sword, and it was devastating, technique so refined it could almost match the true Sanguinius, every strike finding the most lethal angle available. To Horus, every movement was a deliberate insult.
He would not allow anyone to wear his brother's face like a costume.
He swung Worldbreaker. The warhammer came down carrying the force of shattered stars, aimed directly at the Angel of Death's skull.
The monster raised its spear crosswise to absorb the blow. The spearshaft groaned under the impact, protesting the weight it was never built to bear.
The Angel of Death used the contact to pivot, sword snapping forward, point aimed at Horus's exposed throat. It nearly made it. The tip was a hand's width from the Wolf of Luna's larynx when a streak of purple cut in from the side.
Clone-Fulgrim's blade hooked the killing thrust wide. The Phoenix Blade and the Plague Sword screamed against each other and left a trail of sparks hanging in the air.
The plague emanating from the Angel of Death should have been grinding both of them down. This was the Godblight, personally cultivated by Ku'gath, the Plague God's masterwork, something not even gene-forged Primarchs could resist.
But neither Horus nor Clone-Fulgrim was deteriorating.
Horus could feel it, the feather tucked inside his power armor, the token Sanguinius had pressed into his hands. It was warm. Active. A golden warmth radiating outward through the ceramite like a shield made of light, turning back every wisp of toxin before it could reach him.
Clone-Fulgrim carried the Great Angel's feather within his own body, fused at a deeper level. Golden light bled outward from inside him, burning away the plague aura the moment it tried to take hold.
Two feathers. From the same angel. Alive in two different bodies, resonating across the space between them, holding open a pocket of clean air inside all that rot.
Outside the energy field, none of it was readable. Kaelen could catch only afterimages, golden flame, dark-green scythe, silver sword-light, black talons, blurring through each other at a speed no mortal mind could follow. Every impact hit like a thunderclap. The energy barrier shuddered with each shockwave.
Then Farseer Natas went tense.
"Not good. He's here."
Before the last word landed, the Angel of Death and Mortarion beat their wings together and launched skyward.
Not retreating. Gathering.
They came back down like two meteors.
The Angel of Death hit Clone-Fulgrim. Mortarion hit Curze. The impacts were massive, both Primarchs blasted clear of the energy field in the same instant, their bodies plowing long furrows into the scorched earth, rubble and toxic fog rolling up in waves along the edges.
And then, from the corrupted forest at the edge of the field, something else arrived.
A purple figure, unhurried and languid, slipping out from between the dead trees. Four arms moving slowly at his sides. A serpent's tail dragging a winding groove through the ash.
The fallen Primarch Fulgrim had finally come. Behind him moved an elite Phoenix Guard in full arms, their Slaaneshi markings throwing off obscene flickers of light through the fog.
The moment Clone-Fulgrim saw the original, rage closed over him completely. Curze felt the same.
The Phoenix Lord reached down and pulled his brother Curze to his feet. Then he raised his sword and looked at the fallen serpent across the field.
"Fulgrim."
"You finally came."
➤ Next: I Am the Phoenician, and Today I Vow to Bring Judgment Upon the Fallen Serpent!
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