Chapter 299: This Galaxy Has Too Few Sane Men
The sky wept blood and tears.
Lead-grey clouds churned like festering wounds, and the very heavens roared with thunder, protesting the profane presence that had descended upon the world.
Upon the wasteland, two Primarchs fought. A third stood beyond the battlefield, crozius in hand, chanting a dark litany.
Hal recognized them all.
Roboute Guilliman, the noble lord of the Ultramarines.
Lorgar Aurelian, the contemptible master of the Word Bearers.
And—
Hal's gaze fell upon the brass-skinned giant locked in combat with Guilliman, wading through a sea of gore.
Angron.
His eyes were first drawn to the Butcher's Nails coiling from the Primarch's skull, then to the aura of bloodlust clinging to him—an aura born from an unprecedented desire for both slaughter and death.
Angron. A slave. A wretched, pitiable slave.
The twisted benedictions of the Word Bearers' chant pierced the shrieking souls of countless sacrifices. The syllables were like white-hot chains, binding and manipulating Angron's dying mortal form. The very air convulsed, and every mote of dust hung suspended in a tremor, as if the material realm held its breath for the arrival of something terrible—a power that could shatter the core of the planet Nuceria, a storm that could tear a primarch apart and remake him.
As the sky cracked under an unseen, immense force, the blood-soaked clouds peeled away like flayed skin. The spear of light that rent the firmament was no lightning strike, nor was it the orbital lance that signified the arrival of mankind's might.
It was fury made manifest, a crimson javelin forged of pure hatred.
The Lord of Ultramar had retreated, carried away by his Invictarus Suzerains.
BOOM!
With a thunderclap that threatened to shatter eardrums, the lance of blood impacted the rust-coloured earth. Countless skeletons were pulverized by the shockwave, and a crimson tide rolled over the skeletal remains of human cities.
For a moment, all life was struck deaf. The war itself seemed to freeze. From the crater of the blood-spear's impact, shadows writhed and slithered. They clawed at the small figure of the Primarch at the center, their burning talons intent on devouring his broken body.
A daemon was being born upon a throne of skulls.
In the heart of the fading, calamitous light, a silhouette far larger and more terrible than the others slowly rose. It was no longer the body of a man.
Blood-red wings unfurled. The Butcher's Nails, now like shackling chains, cascaded down his back. The torrent of blood seemed to have been absorbed into his very being, casting his body in a malformed, crimson hue. When the Primarch lifted his gore-caked face, blood mixed with saliva dripped from between exposed gums and lips bitten through with rage.
And still, the other Primarch's dark hymn continued, the blood in the sky growing ever deeper.
"ROOOOAR!"
Angron bellowed. A sound of fury. Of grief.
This was the truth he had witnessed. The vision revealed the birth of a Daemon Primarch. With each surge of blood and warp-stuff, the process of its creation unfolded. To understand this process, to hear the whispers within it, was to know the True Name that even the gods dared not speak.
"A fragment of the True Name," Ramesses murmured. He sealed the memory within his mind as the Daemon Prince's remains crumbled to dust and slipped through his fingers.
Now he understood how Constantin Valdor, first Captain-General of the Custodes, could learn a being's True Name with a single thrust of the Apollonian Spear. The so-called True Names were intrinsically tied to memory.
"Ugh—spit, spit!"
Just as he was about to review the memory again, Ramesses felt a vile taste rise on his tongue. He immediately severed the portion of his soul he had used to witness the ritual. It was common knowledge that the ritual to ascend Angron had been fueled by the slaughter of a hundred worlds in Ultramar, a genocide perpetrated by Lorgar and Angron himself. All that blood had been focused on Nuceria. As a witness to this sacrifice, Stoffer had naturally taken a deep draught, a fact that had paved the way for his own eventual ascension to daemonhood.
The taint of Chaos was insidious. Without the protection of another, equally potent warp entity, a single glimpse was enough to ensure damnation. No wonder the Grey Knights were the only Imperial organization that had mastered this method of acquiring True Names. It took the minions of one dark god to counter the corruption of another.
He instinctively moved to wipe his mouth, but his hand met his golden helm. Ramesses's gaze, along with that of his two Astartes guardians, settled on Hal, who was still standing in a stunned silence.
"Are you alright?" Ramesses asked. "Pay no mind to the ramblings of these clowns. Even if the Emperor is, in essence, no different from the Ruinous Powers, even if his methods are those of a slave master, it doesn't change the fact that ninety-nine percent of humanity suffers in this galaxy. The Emperor's goal is to save our species, not to make you his hounds like those gods do."
He paused, his voice firm. "You are nobler than them. You are better than these jesters. There is no need to dwell on such meaningless things."
At this, the expressions on the nearby Grey Knights and Custodians became strained once more. What kind of comparison was that?
"I am fine," Hal finally said. The old veteran, who had fought since the days of the Thunder Warriors, uncharacteristically relaxed his tightly clenched fists. He removed his helmet, allowing the smoke-filled air to wash over his scarred face.
The taste of Nucerian dust still lingered on his tongue. It was a memory that tasted of rust and iron, the feeling of bone ground between teeth, the ashes of a million unfulfilled dreams. As one reborn with the blood of a World Eater, his soul and body had felt the raw, primal emotions of his primogenitor while viewing that memory.
Hal had felt the Primarch's rage. Angron should have been a being of perfection, yet he had endured endless suffering until he broke, leaving nothing but hatred in his heart. And for all the cruelty he suffered at the hands of the Nucerians, the treatment he received from those in the galaxy who should have understood him better was even more savage.
The Emperor had ignored his broken son, ignored the injustices he had suffered. He had forced a Legion upon him, a command, and held him to the standards of a slave master, constantly reminding him of the comrades and brothers he had lost, proving how far he had fallen from his former ideals. Lorgar, one of Angron's few friends among the Primarchs, had misunderstood him completely, and in a misguided act of salvation, had offered the death-seeking primarch to the Blood God, damning him to an eternity of undeath.
A slave on Nuceria. A slave to the Emperor. An eternal slave to the Blood God.
"Angron deserves no pity," Hal said, his expression hardening. "But this was not a fate he designed for himself, nor was it a transformation he willingly accepted."
As a Thunder Warrior who had survived two purges, fought through the entire Great Crusade, and during the Heresy, boarded a Sons of Horus warship unarmoured, killed its crew, captured its officers, and returned to Terra—only to be imprisoned by Valdor, then kill a Custodian and two hundred loyalist Astartes bare-handed before being tasked by Malcador the Sigillite to form a Blackshield company with loyalists like Garro and Loken, and fighting until the very end of the Siege of Terra—Hal felt he understood the Emperor's vision better than anyone. He was also more clear-headed than anyone.
He was not a butcher, not a slave. He was a tool, forged by the Emperor to save all mankind. He would not question the Emperor; he would only execute his orders, and he would never allow emotion to cloud his judgment. For this reason, he had always held Angron and his nail-ridden brothers in contempt.
But now, his perception of Angron himself had changed, if only slightly.
"This universe is not kind to anyone," Ramesses said. "And that is particularly true for Angron." He, too, felt the Emperor's handling of Angron had been… abstractly cruel. If he had simply dealt with the broken Primarch as he had with the Second and Eleventh, then given the War Hounds to Horus or another of his brothers, as he did with their Legions, it would have been a better outcome for everyone. Angron himself would likely have welcomed it.
He turned back to Hal. "I am glad to see you remain lucid."
"A justifiable motive only serves to explain why a person commits a crime," the Emperor's Children warrior beside them interjected. "It does not lessen the crime by a single measure."
It was Ancient Rylanor. After surviving the loyalist slaughter on Isstvan III, he had broadcast a signal for years, eventually luring three Thousand Sons and the fallen Fulgrim to his position before detonating the virus bomb buried beneath him. It was almost certainly a Tzeentchian plot, using the loyalist as a pawn. The Dawnbreakers had been searching for the Isstvan system for years, but while they found its star, the planet itself was gone. Fortunately, their "Old Man Gold" had been kind enough to pull the ancient warrior back from the brink of oblivion.
Ramesses had wanted to pull another hero, a Vespian, from the timestream. The Emperor's Children had a surprising number of loyalists willing to stand up to Fulgrim, second only to the Dark Angels who dared defy the Lion. But whether they had died too early or the Emperor refused to let them go, he hadn't managed to acquire one.
Ramesses's gaze swept over his three Astartes. These warriors, along with Garro, had all personally faced the trials of their Primarchs and had never fallen. They were now his channels, his means of understanding the Daemon Primarchs through the lingering connection they shared.
"If only everyone thought as clearly as you all do," Ramesses said, almost moved to tears by their reasoned analysis.
Dammit, there were so many more sane people in 30k.
He couldn't help but glance at the Custodian Shield-Captain, who was subconsciously assuming a bodyguard's stance nearby, and at the Grey Knights, who were enthusiastically hunting down the remaining daemons. He understood, on some level, why these warriors held them in such high esteem. The Imperium was rotten to the core, and only an extraordinary Primarch could bring change.
But he couldn't stand how they always insisted on layering extraordinary significance onto their saviors.
Karna was the second coming of Sanguinius. He himself looked like the Emperor, so he must have some special connection to the Emperor. They projected their feelings for Sanguinius or the Emperor onto them. The entire galaxy was trapped in a colossal psychodrama of 'I love my father, and my father loves me,' making a truly sane individual the rarest commodity of all.
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