Chapter 91: Patient Review
"There are other titles available. Perhaps 'Peerless Through the Ages'? Or 'Don't Bully a Young Man for Being Poor'?"
"Either suits me fine. I am not difficult to satisfy."
"I understand your sons were recruited from Nostramo's criminal underworld?"
"Yes. Why do you ask?"
"No particular reason. I happen to have some criminals and gang associates available. Consider them gifts for your children."
"You are remarkably generous!" Konrad Curze's hands moved swiftly to accept the offered materials.
Guilliman and the others exchanged glances. Something about this felt wrong, though none could say exactly what.
"Konrad Curze," Guilliman ventured carefully, "have you formulated a strategy for their persuasion? What if they refuse to hear you?"
The Primarch of the Ultramarines had brought contingents of his finest warriors—a precaution masked as support.
"They are my sons," Konrad Curze replied with absolute certainty. "They will hear me. If they do not, then they are not my sons. Then they are rebels."
A frost crystallized in his gaze, brief, lethal, utterly genuine.
Yet that icy declaration reassured them. This was still Konrad Curze. Not some hollow simulation, but the Night Haunter himself.
Silence returned.
"Francis." Sanguinius broke it deliberately. "How about we save Horus? His corruption suggests confusion of purpose, not irredeemable taint. Could you provide similar intervention?"
Every eye turned toward Francis. Konrad Curze's gaze lingered longest, he remembered the storybook passages about rewriting not merely one's own fate, but that of others.
Francis drew a slow breath. "It is complicated. Nearly impossible. Horus has drawn the attention of the Warp itself. Those entities in the immaterium have marked him thoroughly. There is scant hope unless those powers begin infighting amongst themselves, or should the Emperor himself intervene. But I cannot envision either scenario unfolding favorably."
He raked his fingers through his hair. "I have no adequate answer. The Four Chaos Gods possess authority I cannot currently match. Only a god defeats a god, and I am no such thing."
The others watched him spiral, equally frustrated.
"A god," Sanguinius mused aloud, with desperate irony. "Where precisely does one acquire a godhood?"
"By the way," Sanguinius continued, "where is Carlos?"
The name hung in the air between them. In their relief at Konrad Curze's transformation, they had nearly forgotten their other patient.
Here it comes, Francis thought with resignation. He rubbed his face, his gaze intentionally unfocused. "Do we truly require his company right now?"
Sanguinius nodded with unmistakable resolve. His concern for the Red Angel was plainly genuine.
"Very well." Francis retrieved a specialized serum and poured the contents across his scalp. His previously bare head erupted with vibrant green hair, a transformation so absurd it warranted no explanation.
"..."
Hiss.
Unlike Konrad Curze's standard ward, Carlos's chamber fell under severe protocols.
When the doors unsealed, the air carried a reek, the stench of a living being pushed beyond sanity. A warning scent, encoded into primordial biology.
Their bodies responded instinctively, tensing for whatever nightmare awaited.
The doors fully retracted.
Every surface displayed the same repeating sequence:
"Makka Pakka Akkawakka~"
"Mikka Makka Mm~"
"Makka Pakka..."
Carlos, the Red Angel, stood trapped within a containment box, his head alone protruding. He swayed in hypnotic rhythm to the childlike melody, his voice joining in with no consciousness behind it.
Guilliman and the others stared. The scene radiated unsettling cuteness, yet something fundamentally malevolent permeated the chamber.
Clap.
The projection ceased. Normalcy returned to the sterile white walls.
Carlos continued singing in an infant's voice. Several minutes passed before consciousness finally resurfaced behind his eyes.
When awareness returned, he looked around in genuine bewilderment, then spotted Sanguinius. "My Primarch? Where am I? Why am I... not dead?"
"Carlos!" Sanguinius moved forward, hope blazing across his features. "Is that truly you? How do you, "
Francis intercepted him with a raised hand.
"What are you doing?" Sanguinius demanded.
"You must not touch him." Francis's voice carried the weight of medical certainty. "The daemon likely remains within him, merely dormant, having retreated so deeply that only fragments of Carlos's authentic consciousness remain. Release him prematurely, and you may well resurrect the very entity you want to banish. He exists in a fragile equilibrium. Disturb it, and both daemon and man may again be transformed."
"So I am merely a failure," Carlos said quietly, his bitter smile sharp as a blade. "Released only because the demon feared your methods? I wish to understand why I have awakened at all."
"Is there truly no method of permanent expulsion?" Sanguinius's frustration emerged plainly.
"Two approaches remain." Francis settled into the explanation with professional detachment. "The first: locate the Emperor and request his direct intervention."
Sanguinius immediately shook his head. "If my calculations hold, our father would elect to destroy both the daemon and the host simultaneously. I refuse."
"Then I choose your second method."
"The second requires something far more challenging." Francis's words fell like stones into still water. "Carlos himself must overcome the daemon through disciplined will. He must undergo rigorous training, spiritual, intellectual, philosophical, to fortify himself against corruption."
Train his will?
The abstraction confounded them all. Sanguinius himself possessed no training; such strength emerged naturally from his fundamental nature. How could one deliberately cultivate what was not innate?
Recognizing their confusion, Francis manipulated a holographic controller. Characters materialized in the air: the concept of lǐ, reason, principle, natural law itself.
"Beyond the Imperial Truth, he requires immersion in universal principles. Plato's Forms, the Analects, the School of Mind, the Dharma's order, the stillness of Zen, Musashi's discipline. Doctrines of benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and trustworthiness. These strengthen the will as steel strengthens through tempering."
His words cascaded over them, leaving them uncertain whether revelation or madness proceeded from his lips.
"So Carlos remains confined here?"
"Precisely."
Sanguinius sighed, resignation heavy in the sound. "At least his consciousness has returned. That alone grants us foundation upon which to build."
In the depths of Carlos's mind, the Red Angel crouched invisible, experiencing everything, a daemon imprisoned by poetry and philosophy.
Honored Blood God, I beseech you. Deliver your servant. If you do not arrive swiftly, I shall not survive. This torment is barely distinguishable from existence itself!!!
Time poured like water through fingers, precious, irretrievable. Soon enough, the stellar void transformed into fever dreams rendered in weaponry and fire.
Laser beams cut twisted geometries through the darkness. Plasma explosions bloomed like malignant flowers. Ordnance streaked across the abyss, each shell a prayer written in violence.
The Night Lords' fleet struck first.
Their targeting systems prioritized disruption and system shutdown. Plasma shells penetrated the Imperial shields with devastating precision. External hull plating ignited in cascading fire. A frigate detonated instantly, its structural integrity catastrophically violated, sending debris spiraling through the void. Uncontrolled fragments scraped across nearby shield generators, igniting secondary explosions.
"Enemy has breached our flank formation!" An Imperial captain's voice crackled across the vox, tension undisguised, bordering on panic.
The nearest battleship rotated its massive frame, bringing its broadside weapons to bear against a Night Lords cruiser. Dozens of macro-cannons discharged in unified fury, orange shells brilliant and terrible, stripping away the enemy's shield envelope and hammering directly into the hull's primary structure.
The Night Lords vessel shuddered. Starboard plating shattered. The vacuum claimed entire compartments, crew, equipment, supplies, swallowed into the void.
Simultaneously, an Imperial attack craft initiated a ramming vector. Its reinforced prow struck the enemy underbelly with brutal force.
The Night Lords' ship performed evasive maneuvers with unsettling precision, scattering assault pods in sporadic defensive patterns.
Warriors in midnight blue armor boarded Imperial vessels. Where they tread, order transformed to chaos. Crew members fell screaming, the disciplined slaughter of trained killers consuming their prey.
Francis and the others observed this unfolding battle from the approaching battleship.
Francis turned to Konrad Curze and nodded.
The Night Haunter understood immediately. He moved toward the external observation port, communication device in hand, and roared, his voice magnified and projected across every frequency, reaching both fleets simultaneously.
"My sons! The galaxy burns. Witness the fundamental truth: my fate belongs to me alone, not to heaven's dictates. You too shall stand before the Emperor. You too shall wear the Imperial Aquila. Nothing remains impossible. You have fought for centuries as the severed claws of God, stained crimson with the blood of countless foes. Rise in my name, sons. Declare your wrath against Chaos. Return to me. Return to your Primarch. Return to the Night Lords."
His amplified voice reached every warship, every warrior. Combat stilled. Both fleets ceased hostilities, suspended in collective disbelief.
"Captain! The Primarch! He's returned!"
"Captain! Do we maintain engagement?!"
"Captain! The Primarch has returned to the Imperium again!!!"
The Night Lords fell into cascading confusion. Their lord and father had betrayed them, again, to the Golden Throne's service.
What treachery had occurred? What fate had twisted their Primarch from his true course?
Then, another battleship erupted from the Warp behind them.
Another Konrad Curze materialized on its decking, his voice layered with something far darker than the first.
"Annihilate the Imperium! They cast me into Chaos! That one is falsehood! I am the authentic Night Haunter!"
The false Konrad Curze launched himself toward the nearest Imperial vessel, his form blurring with predatory velocity. He struck the hull plates running, his weapons blazing.
Everything alive in his path fell screaming, cut down by something that wore the Primarch's face but carried none of his newly-earned conviction.
"Slay the False Emperor! Humanity belongs to Chaos! Humanity belongs to me!!!"
[End of Chapter]
Sorry for the missing day, I was knocked out, man, this cold and stuffy nose is gonna be the death of me one day, why is my nose always stuffy, why can't it be clear, am I cursed or what.