Interlude: The First Awakening of Calas Typhon
Pain. Agitation. A low, droning hum.
Calas Typhon rose from the depths of a dark, parched sea—dizzy, weak, and half-conscious. The searing light above blurred his vision into a white haze.
He instinctively tried to lift a hand to rub his aching temple, but the slow, lagging feedback of motion reminded him of his current condition.
He wasn't dead yet.
"Shit."
Calas muttered the word under his breath.
Realizing that simple truth, he ceased all movement. He stayed perfectly still, patient, waiting for his mind to steady.
His eyes began to adjust to the light—and only then did he realize the light was not blinding at all. It was dim, muted—the peculiar gloom of the Endurance.
When he had finally grown accustomed to it—to the damaged shell that now served as his body, to the miserable state he was in—Calas raised his gaze. And, as expected, he saw a familiar, towering silhouette.
"Mortarion?"
Calas spoke the name with hesitation—and with a trace of mockery. He wasn't sure whether that edge in his tone was aimed at Mortarion… or at himself.
The Lord of Death sat quietly on a crude metal chair, his armor caked with dried blood and dented from battle. He looked as though he had just emerged from a vicious fight.
Calas allowed himself a single, fleeting second of dark amusement—imagining those wounds had come from killing Hades. The thought brought him a strange, bitter satisfaction, as though it could somehow make up for his own broken state. Then he focused directly on Mortarion's eyes.
The Primarch looked exhausted—utterly so—yet the twin yellow flames beneath his hood glimmered with a sharp, unnatural light.
[Calas. It has been a long time.]
Mortarion's voice came like a sigh. It seemed as though he wanted to say more, but the words caught in his throat.
Calas scanned his surroundings in silence. Two Death Guard stood at the hatch—he recognized one as Garro, the other a techmarine.
—But Hades was nowhere to be seen.
"Where's Hades?"
Calas asked bluntly.
Mortarion paused before replying, his tone hoarse and weary.
[He's gone. He went to Terra.]
Calas raised an eyebrow.
"So he's abandoned you too, then? Just as you all abandoned me?"
"A pity, Mortarion. I was hoping to see him here—so that I could mock him for leaving you behind."
After all, Primarchs were always different. They were born to stand apart.
Calas watched with satisfaction as Mortarion's brow furrowed deeply.
Yes, that was it. Now Mortarion would storm out, spitting his usual grim words, and leave him rotting in this forgotten corner of existence.
But Mortarion did not leave. Though clearly displeased, he remained seated—steady and unmoving.
[If you still regret what happened that day,] Mortarion began softly, his tone disturbingly calm. Calas almost thought—absurdly—that the Primarch was trying to comfort him.
Then came the real nausea.
[Then I apologize, Calas.]
Calas felt bile rise in his throat—an empty, acidic burn in the hollow where his stomach used to be. Mortarion was still speaking, impossibly unshaken. The strange part was that he didn't even argue back at the insult he had given to him.
[It was my negligence. I should have seen it coming.]
Mortarion's gaze lingered on the massive sarcophagus that housed Calas Typhon—his new iron shell, the Dreadnought that had become his body.
Since Hades's departure, the Death Guard had thrown themselves into another campaign—Carchor. There they had met the roaring savages of blood and skulls, and the altars built from the bones of the slain.
It took them three full months to end that campaign. Even though their enemies wielded only crude blades and flintlock muskets, each night, when darkness fell, blood-red monsters surged forth from the shadows and the unholy fire—and the primitives of that world clearly knew how to summon and command them.
Witchcraft again.
Mortarion sneered at it.
The Lord of Death had long since learned how to deal with such things. He deployed the Zero Company with deliberate precision, and by now even the Hounds of the Warp knew that the Death Guard possessed a unit trained specifically to counter psykers and their kind.
At last, with the support and suppressive fire of three Wraith Knights, Mortarion beheaded the chieftain of the Carchor tribe—a hulking madman whose strength had already warped beyond the human form.
Without the Zero Company, the Death Guard would have paid dearly for victory, and taken far longer to achieve it.
Mortarion understood that clearly.
But when he led his sons into the forests, hacking apart those blood-drunk beasts; when he directed his knights over the vox, ordering them to flank the enemy sorcerers; when he fought the tribal leader face-to-face while hearing Raibo's furious roar in his comms—what was he thinking?
He didn't know.
He ended the campaign quickly, returned to his quarters, and with blood-stained hands grasped a steel pen to write the final report that declared the war concluded. Then he looked up—at the two framed letters on the wall, so out of place amidst the gloom.
How foolish, he thought.
Then, without any further thought, he opened a channel and called for Enrique—the Death Guard's master of the forge, a son of Terra, one with whom he had never been close.
[Enrique, wake Calas Typhon. And summon Garro.]
That was what he said—though even he wasn't certain why he said it.
And now here he sat, facing the awakening Calas Typhon.
He had heard Calas's curse echo through the chamber, and the impulse to leave surged within him. But he could not simply awaken a Dreadnought and then shut it down again—even for a Primarch, that would be unthinkable.
Calas Typhon was still the same as ever, his words sharp as blades, cutting straight into Mortarion's armor of stoicism. And yet, every word he spoke was true.
Mortarion forced out a dry apology.
The words caught in his throat. This was not like speaking with Horus, when he could so easily say the things that sickened him; nor like speaking with Hades, when he could speak freely and mean it.
He faltered. Mortarion wanted to know—truly know—what Calas had endured back then, what he was now…
And, perhaps, whether Calas still possessed the will to move forward—though that, Mortarion knew, would have to be judged carefully.
In some ways, the sleeping Calas entombed in his Dreadnought was like one of the Legion's honor badges displayed in the Hall of Glory—a relic of the past, a symbol of Mortarion's own failures.
A past of stubbornness and prejudice.
Behind his rebreather, Mortarion breathed quietly, then resolved to say what he needed to say.
[Calas, while you slept, the Death Guard has seen much—the Drune Campaign, the Rust Campaign, the Absyrtus Campaign, and others…]
"What are you trying to say, Mortarion?"
Calas Typhon—always incisive, always sharp.
Mortarion paused.
[…I want you to march with the Death Guard again, not to linger as a shattered relic of the past—dragged into battle only when we are desperate for manpower, then cast back into forced sleep.]
This time it was Calas who fell silent. After a pause, he gave a short, dry laugh.
"Appreciate the thought. But it comes a little late."
[Better late than never.]
Another silence followed—the kind that only old comrades who had long since run out of things to share could hold.
At last, the Lord of Death spoke again.
[Calas… if you still wish for death.]
[Then perhaps… I can help you.]
Calas's pupils trembled violently.
Of course he wished for death. He had longed for it since Barbarus—he should have died there, rather than end up as this half-living lump of flesh trapped in a metal coffin, exiled to some forgotten corner of the galaxy. He had taunted Hades countless times, hoping to drive him into a rage so that he'd finally finish the job.
But fate, as always, was twisted.
Now, looking at Mortarion—bloodied, broken, and silent—perhaps something long-buried inside Calas stirred again. Maybe it was survival instinct, flaring up after so much sleep. Maybe it was the stories of the Death Guard's endless campaigns, kindling something like purpose. Or perhaps it was simply the perverse satisfaction of hearing that even Hades had abandoned his Primarch.
Calas hesitated for a moment.
All right, fine—he wasn't ready. He was bitter, yes. But he wasn't ready to die.
So he shifted his tone, light and mocking again.
"No, Mortarion. I think I'll wait until next time. Maybe when I wake again, I'll hear better news—like this time, when Hades left you behind."
Mortarion shook his head slowly.
[You needn't be so cruel, Calas.]
[If you truly take pleasure in others' misery, then… perhaps I have other news that might amuse you.]
Calas's voice sharpened with interest.
"Oh? Such as?"
[Among the Death Guard, there have been… rumors about Hades.]
Calas frowned.
[And I've only recently learned that those rumors have nothing to do with his valor or heroics. Rather… it's said that he broke a recruit's bunk—sat right through it—and tried to flee the scene, only to be caught by the poor recruit himself.]
Mortarion looked at Calas.
Calas looked back at Mortarion.
Mortarion's expression—or what little could be seen of it—seemed to ask: Wasn't that funny?
For a heartbeat, absolute silence filled the chamber.
Then, from within the Dreadnought's iron shell, erupted an explosive, echoing laughter.
Calas wasn't sure which part was more unbelievable—that Mortarion had just told a joke, or that it had actually worked.
Or perhaps he really was just laughing at Hades's humiliating misfortune.
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