Chapter 181 - The Granting of the Legion Standards
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The sunlight lay across every stone in Macragge's great square.
This was a day history would not forget.
Before dawn, the residents had poured in from every direction. Old men with walking canes. Women holding children against their chests. Retired veterans with faded Imperial Aquila badges pinned over their hearts. All of them facing the same direction, waiting.
The Ultramarines and local mortal auxiliaries formed a silent wall of bodies, holding back a crowd that was enthusiastic to the edge of uncontrollable. No one complained about the crush. No one complained about the wait. What they were here to witness was history itself.
Roboute Guilliman, the Lord of Ultramar, stood at the highest point of the square and looked down over the sea of people below, his gaze steady and calm.
He was waiting for his brothers.
A fanfare rose, brass instruments in full voice, drums striking slow and heavy, each beat landing somewhere deep in the chest.
The entire square held its breath.
Three massive figures emerged from the morning light.
Horus Lupercal walked at the front, head high, shoulders back. Fulgrim came close behind him, his stride carrying neither arrogance nor submission. Konrad Curze followed a few steps back, his pale face caught somewhere between unease and a blank, unreadable distance.
These names had been hammered onto pillars of shame in the Imperial histories ten thousand years ago.
Today, under the Emperor's pardon, within the Regent of the Imperium's forgiveness, facing the burning war that was consuming the galaxy and the extinction pressing down on all of humanity, they had come back.
Behind the three Primarchs marched the representatives of their newly rebuilt Legions. Primaris Astartes, heads high, steps perfectly aligned, their war boots striking the stone in a rolling thunder that didn't stop.
They followed behind their Legion masters. Every young face was full of pride.
At the Primarchs' sides walked their closest.
Kaelen, Cullen, and Loken flanked Horus. Sevatar walked at Curze's side, his crow-black armor a sharp shadow among the brighter colors around him. Behind Fulgrim, three senior Phoenix Guard officers flanked their lord with near-perfect bearing.
When the three Primarchs set foot on the steps leading to the high platform, the cheers that erupted from both sides of the square hit like a wave.
It was a sound torn from the lungs. Countless voices screaming the Emperor's name until they broke, eyes red, tears running down the lines and scars of faces that had lived long and hard.
Horus climbed the final step.
The three brothers came before Guilliman.
Guilliman raised one hand.
A single gesture. The roaring square went quiet by degrees, like a tide drawing back from the shore.
The Lord of Ultramar spoke.
His voice needed no amplifier. It reached every corner of the square, steady and precise, each word carrying the weight of something long and carefully forged. He spoke of the darkness the Imperium had walked through. He spoke of the war now consuming the galaxy. He spoke of the countless souls who looked up at the stars in fear, waiting for someone to come. His speech was an arrow drawn back one careful inch at a time, winding the crowd's emotions tighter and tighter until they had nowhere left to go.
Then, just as the tension was about to break.
He turned it.
He brought the three brothers standing behind him into a declaration that was always going to be recorded in the histories.
The Emperor has pardoned. The Regent of the Imperium has forgiven. And today, the Imperium needs them to put their armor on again.
Guilliman's voice rang out across the square like a struck bell.
He formally announced it: the Luna Wolves, the Emperor's Children, the Night Lords. The battle standards of all three Legions would fly across the galaxy once more.
Horus stood in the light of it, ten thousand voices crashing over him, his expression calm. But something in the depths of his eyes trembled, just slightly.
Fulgrim raised his chin. The sunlight caught his violet pupils.
Curze pulled his neck in slightly, like a ghost who had been pushed onto a stage he hadn't asked for, but Sevatar stood just behind him, back straight as a blade.
The cheers nearly took the sky off Macragge.
"Now, by the name of the Emperor of Mankind, I formally bestow upon my three Primarch brothers their Legion standards!"
The words were barely out before mortal attendants came forward bearing the three standards, each one woven with painstaking care by Macragge's finest artists and clothiers.
Horus, Fulgrim, and Curze turned first to the statue of their father at the center of the platform and saluted. Then they turned to face Guilliman.
The Lord of Ultramar raised the Emperor's Sword. The blade burned. It was the will of the Emperor made manifest, and the Primarchs bowed in the Aquila salute.
Then Guilliman brought the sword down before him, both hands on the hilt, its burning tip touching the stone. As Regent of the Imperium, as gene-sire of the XIII Legion, as a brother, he spoke.
"Horus Lupercal."
"Are you willing, in the name of the Luna Wolves, as gene-sire of the XVI Legion, to cast off the darkness that once consumed your soul — and from this day forward, fight only for humanity's dawn and the Emperor of Mankind?"
Horus raised his head.
"By the glory of our father and the Imperium of Man. By the blood debt we can never repay." A pause, short and absolute. "I am willing."
Guilliman gave a slight nod. The flames on the Emperor's Sword flickered once beside him, as if something had heard and acknowledged.
His gaze moved to the second figure.
"Fulgrim."
"Are you willing, in the name of the Emperor's Children, as gene-sire of the III Legion, to sever the past of excess and ruin — and from this day forward, fight only for our father's glory and the purity of humanity, until the last star goes out?"
Fulgrim's eyes held nothing but absolute resolve.
"I sank into the mire of desire. I know what I was." His voice was clean and final. "Now I wish only to raise the purple-and-gold standard again, and never again let it touch the dust. I am willing."
He let a beat pass.
"The Emperor's Children shall slay all enemies of our father!"
Guilliman's gaze came to rest on the last figure.
"Konrad Curze."
"Are you willing, in the name of the Night Haunter, as gene-sire of the VIII Legion, to lay down the prophecies and the fears that have devoured you — and from this day forward, bring the blade of terror only upon those who would harm the humanity you protect, rather than becoming terror itself?"
Curze was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, it was with a gravity so slight that only Guilliman, standing close enough to see it, could have caught it.
"By the name of the Emperor of Mankind. I am willing."
Guilliman raised the Emperor's Sword.
The golden flames blazed across the blade. The firelight fell across three unfurled Legion standards, catching the color in each one.
"Standard-bearer. Step forward."
Under ten thousand watching eyes, Kaelen stepped out from behind Horus and walked to stand before Guilliman. The gray-robed mortal was small against the backdrop of Primarchs, but his steps didn't waver once.
"Kaelen." Guilliman spoke his name at full volume, letting it carry across the square. "On behalf of the Emperor of Mankind, I ask you to join the Imperium of Man. Are you willing?"
Kaelen blinked.
Then it hit him. This wasn't verbal acceptance. It wasn't the tacit approval of a battlefield. This was official. This was formal. Standing in the sunlight of Macragge, under the eyes of four Primarchs, with the Regent of the Imperium saying his name out loud for the record.
"I accept," he said.
"Do you dare swear an oath before the Primarchs and the Emperor of Mankind?" Guilliman's gaze was steady and sharp.
"I swear."
"Do you accept our friendship and pledge to return it?"
"I accept — so long as human civilization and the human race continue to endure."
"Will you give your aid? Whether to Horus, commander of the Luna Wolves, or to the Emperor of Mankind and the other Primarchs?"
"I am willing."
"Do you swear to defend the dignity of the human species to the death, against any enemy, fighting to the very end?"
"I swear."
Kaelen raised his hand and struck his own chest, hard.
Pinned to the front of his coat was a medal. The one Castellan Creed had pressed into his hands himself, on the battlefields of Cadia.
Guilliman raised the Emperor's Sword and leveled its tip at Kaelen.
"By the witness of the Emperor's Sword, are you willing to become our true friend?"
Kaelen lifted his head and looked straight into that burning crown of golden fire.
"I am willing."
Guilliman let the formality go. He smiled, reached out, and took the first standard in hand.
The Luna Wolves' battle standard. The wolf's head encircled by the moon, stitched in thread and care, snapping open as the wind caught it.
Kaelen gripped the flagpole with both hands. It had some weight to it. He held it steady without trouble. He turned around to face the mass of people below.
Countless eyes looking up at him.
He raised the Luna Wolves' standard as high as his arms would go and put everything he had into his voice.
"Humanity stands unbroken!"
The words rang off the square, bounced back from the high tower walls, and collided with what came next.
"Fight for the living! Fight for the dead! My life and my soul, given to human civilization and the human race!"
The Luna Wolves' standard opened in the wind. The wolf's head encircling the moon flew again beneath the skies of Macragge, for the first time in ten thousand years.
One after another, the purple-and-gold standard of the Emperor's Children and the pitch-black bat-winged standard of the Night Haunter climbed into the sky beside it.
Three standards. The same square. The first time in ten thousand years that all three had flown together.
The crowd broke.
Cheers, screams, and sobs ran together into one sound, like a flood that had been held back for ten millennia finally finding the gate.
Veterans dropped to one knee and pounded their fists against their chests. Young men grabbed each other by the shoulders and roared until their voices were completely gone.
The children didn't understand what was happening. But they waved their small hands from their mothers' arms, because the air itself, in that moment, tasted sweet.
The three Primarchs stood side by side on the high platform, facing the wind.
Horus looked out over the sea of people below. The faintest trace of a smile touched the corner of his mouth.
Fulgrim's gaze moved past the square, out toward the stars somewhere beyond. Something in those violet eyes had been lit again.
Curze still wasn't entirely comfortable. But his shoulders had come down, just a little.
Just a little.
It was enough.
➤ Next: The Mournival — Face to Face
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