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Brother. We need to talk.
He looks at the words as they glow on the cogitator screen. He has been looking at them for seven hours.
Endless screeds of data pour down the other pict-screens upon the massive desk in his sanctum aboard the Macragge’s Honour. Printouts pile up upon themselves, the machineries of empire and conquest toiling ceaselessly. Readout lights blink dumbly, advising over and over the waiting ultra-priority messages from the various fronts in the campaign to retake the whole of Ultramar.
He ignores them.
His latest equerry, a Primaris marine named Gaius, entered three hours ago, a dataslate clutched in his armored hands. When his initial attempts to rouse his lord fell on seemingly deaf ears, he took up silent station in a corner of the chamber. He has not moved since.
He ignores Gaius, too.
Roboute Guilliman, Lord Commander and Regent of the Imperium of Man, rarely turns the entirety of his gene-crafted mind on any one thing. Indeed, it is more common, as well as his personal preference, to handle many issues simultaneously.
But today one thing occupies the entirety of that demigod intellect. The message, analyzed thousands of times by hundreds of verification techniques, is genuine. It came from the fortress-monastery of the Dark Angels, which even now is, by all signs that his augurs can read, on its way to Ultramar, inbound on a realspace vector. For reasons he can only guess at, the Rock is apparently approaching at sublight speeds, coasting toward the Protos Front at a rate that will see it achieve orbit of the nearest inhabited world in eight hundred and ninety-seven years.
Brother. We need to talk.
Roboute has been analyzing for these last seven hours, furiously formulating, examining, dissecting, and – much to his continued frustration – ultimately discarding myriad hypotheticals to try to make sense of this one practical.
Or, rather, two practicals, one clearly following from the other.
He has, in point of fact, been done with his analysis for almost six minutes. He recognizes, to his chagrin, that he is being stubborn. He does not like the conclusion he has drawn.
“Why him?” he sighs. It is the first thing he has said in quite some time.
“My lord?” Gaius immediately asks.
Glancing back at his equerry, Roboute motions for him to approach. “Apologies for making you wait, Gaius,” he says. “I was occupied.”
Though the Primaris marine has been serving him directly for almost five months, his dour features still seem to compress as he consciously stifles his automatic reflex to vehemently deny the nicety of the apology. “My lord is kind,” he says instead. “I passed the time peacefully in meditation.”
Roboute nods distractedly. “Are those the updates from the Tetrarchs?”
“Yes, my lord,” Gaius confirms, placing the slate on the desk. He hesitates, then says, “Forgive me my presumption, lord –”
“Gaius,” Roboute reminds him gently. They have had this discussion about forgiveness and apologies at least eight times by now.
The marine stops, visibly suppresses the urge to apologize for forgetting not to apologize, and reformulates. He is getting better, Roboute thinks. “Permission to ask a question, my lord.”
“Granted, Gaius.”
“I have never seen my lord in such a state of deep contemplation. Does something trouble you?”
“Very much so.” Roboute indicates the message on the cogitator screen. Taking that – correctly – as permission to read it, along with the attached information about its probable origins, Gaius leans forward to get a view around the terminal’s auto-obfuscator field. He cannot hide the depth of his surprise.
“The Lord of the First returns?” he asks, quietly, as though anyone or anything might somehow hear the words from here in Roboute’s sanctum.
“Yes.”
“You believe it to be genuine? Could not this be a device of the Archenemy?”
In answer, Roboute opens his right hand, revealing the second practical that defies all his superhuman faculty’s attempts to explain. It is a small piece of parchment, potentially manufactured on any of a million worlds in the Imperium. On its surface, in a simple yet sophisticated script, drawn with the surety of a master calligrapher, is a short message.
Chapel of the Nine Sainted Sons. Alone. Midnight.
To his credit, Gaius reads it and thinks before asking any of the obvious questions. The one he ultimately chooses reflects his concerns about security. “How did this come to be in your possession, my lord?”
“It was here on my desk,” Roboute replies. “I was on the bridge when the initial vox-cast reached us. When I came here to review it due to its clearance level, this note was already present.”
His equerry’s dark eyes flash and his brows furrow with concern. “What of the security cams?”
“I keep none here. I value having a sanctum where I might, for once, be unobserved.”
Gaius presses his lips together in a thin line, swallowing whatever his initial, gut response to that might have been. Instead, to Roboute’s approval, he reexamines both the note and the decoded vox-cast. “The report suggests the vox came from the Rock, which is apparently approaching the Protos Front. We are at least a week’s travel through the Empyrean from there. Accepting for the moment the evident practical of the Lion’s return, have you any theoreticals which might explain the presence of this scrap here?”
“Many which could,” Roboute says. “But none which do so to my satisfaction.”
Nodding slowly, Gaius thinks for a moment more. “What does my lord intend?”
“There is nothing for it. I must meet him.”
Rather than immediately object, Gaius stands a little straighter and clasps his armored hands together behind his back. Roboute has learned that this standing-ready usually precipitates a polite argument.
“My lord is wise,” Gaius begins, starting off with the most familiar of his not-quite-apologetic preambles. “But do you intend to cleave to the very letter of the message?”
“By which you mean, am I going to do the foolish thing and go alone?”
“My lord jests. I would never think him foolish.”
Roboute snorts gently. “You will note I did not comment upon my own faculties, but rather the disposition of the act itself. Even the very wise do foolish things.” The memory of his being baited out and killed by Fulgrim rises unbidden. His throat scar throbs faintly.
“I must confess I do not grasp the implications of this twinned message, my lord. Our security procedures are impressive –” he pauses as though remembering that Roboute himself designed many of them, then decides to continue his train of thought regardless – “but no system is perfect. News of the vox-cast and the approach of the Rock will spread.”
“It already has,” Roboute says, eyes playing over the rest of his readouts and absorbing in a glance what would take a mortal the better part of a day. “Fleet Tertius is already moving to intercept and, presumably, escort the Rock. No official reason has been given for its presence, but tongues already wag.”
“Then, why the secrecy of this second message? It smacks of –”
This time he does stop abruptly in midsentence. Roboute gives him a knowing look. “Of treachery?”
Gaius looks very much like a man pinned in the glare of an enormous search-lumen, caught in the middle of a forbidden and especially heretical act. “Nothing is known about the disappearance of the Dak Angels’ gene-father, only that it occurred in the battle that sundered Caliban. There are many possibilities which, in respect of your honored brother, I hesitate to voice.”
“I am aware, but thank you, Gaius. I have no way to explain the practical of how this note came to be here. However, this does conform to my brother’s tactics. He sends a message which he knows cannot but be exposed to the eyes of many, including the spies that Abaddon doubtless maintains within the ranks of the Ministorum, the Ecclesiarchy, and the Auxilia. Thus are all gazes turned to the approaching Rock, leaving him free to maneuver without.”
“And the stipulation that you come alone?”
Roboute feels his expression darken. “He does not wish witnesses to our conversation.”
“Indeed, but what has a loyal son of the Emperor to hide?”
That, remarkably, makes Roboute chuckle, a genuine expression of bitter mirth.
“Oh, Gaius,” he sighs. “Truly you know nothing of the Lord of the First.”
Roboute used to know every inch of Macragge Civitas by heart. There is an insidious grief attached to the simple fact that such a thing is no longer possible, even for him.
Thus it is that he does not know the Chapel of the Nine Sainted Sons. A simple query of Macragge’s noosphere vouchsafes what little is known, or at least logged officially: built only five centuries ago, the Chapel belonged to a brief-lived denomination of the Imperial Cult which venerated the Primarchs especially, even above and beyond the devotion accorded them in the mainstream catechism.
Naturally, the sect’s name has since been obliterated by the Ordo Hereticus, every member and every member of their families executed for heresy. They were accused of venerating the Emperor’s sons above even Him.
When the Ecclesiarchy moved to destroy the Chapel, however, Chapter Master Theo Leonus – Calgar’s direct predecessor, Roboute notes – intervened. He told them in no uncertain terms that under his aegis no monument to the Lord Guilliman would fall, regardless of whatever the circumstances of its creation. An addendum written shortly after Leonus’s death adds, with more than a touch of poorly-veiled opprobrium, that the Chapter Master was known to be especially intolerant of the Ecclesiarchy, often coming into conflict with members of the clergy over matters of state.
Roboute values Marneus Calgar more than mere words can express, but he does have a moment of idle reflection about how he might have gotten on with this Leonus. He seems to have been a kindred spirit.
As a result of the Chapter Master’s pronouncement, the compromise reached was to designate the chapel a subsidiary shrine to the Cathedral of His Blessed Martyrs two blocks away. Then it was sealed “for renovation” and never touched since.
The fact that his long-lost brother knows of this marginal place within Roboute’s own capitol city, when he previously did not, causes him a mixture of consternation and irritation.
His attempt to leave the Macragge’s Honour alone is stymied almost before he undertakes it. The massive ship is in drydock undergoing repairs from damage suffered in the return crossing of the Cicatrix Maledictum from Imperium Nihlus. He spares a moment of thought for Commander Dante, regretting that he was obliged to ask so much of the ancient marine and was able to offer so very little in recompense.
Hence, no quiet ship launch for him, undetected in the dull hours of third watch. Instead he is obliged to make for the teleportarium.
He is not exactly surprised, though he is a little aggravated, to find five members of his honor guard there. They wear Terminator plate, the inbuilt homing systems useful for ensuring teleport accuracy.
Roboute crosses his arms across his chest. He is clad in the Armor of Fate and wears the Hand of Dominion. Sheathed at his side is the Emperor’s Sword. His helm is mag-clamped at his waist.
“As you can see, my sons,” he says, “I am far from helpless.”
The lead Terminator, a doughty fellow named Vincenzo, steps forward and salutes smartly, his chainfist clashing noisily off his immense armored breastplate. “None of us doubt your puissance, lord,” Vincenzo says. “And we need not stay. But we must teleport down first, to ensure it is not an ambush or bomb.”
Roboute raises an eyebrow. “Did Gaius so order you?”
“No, my lord. Lieutenant Gaius felt it important to inform Tribune Colquan that you would be taking a brief leave to visit Macragge Civitas. He is the one who has so ordered us.”
A brief flash of anger threatens to break Roboute’s calm, but he masters it in a moment. He did not, in fact, specifically order Gaius to speak of his errand to no one. And, upon further reflection, Roboute sees how his equerry must have felt trapped between his duty to the Imperium and his love and respect for his gene-father. Telling Colquan and letting the Custodian make his own decision offered a third option that satisfied both.
Roboute glances at the chrono in a corner of the teleportarium. 1156 local time. He debates the merits of countermanding Colquan’s orders. The Custodian has never liked him, but they have reached a functional working accord. And Roboute has learned to trust Colquan not to be over-protective; his firm hand and calm demeanor kept the fleet from disaster at the battle of Iax. The fact that he sent members of Roboute’s Ultramarines honor guard instead of a squad of his own Custodes is a subtle message itself. Not endorsement, but neither a direct challenge.
“Two minutes,” Roboute tells Vincenzo. “Then I will be teleporting down myself, cleared or not.”
All five Terminators salute again before filing smartly onto the teleport pads. “Initiate,” Vincenzo orders the tech-priest manning the controls. There is a rising whine as the devices power up, and then his honor guard is gone in a blaze of light and crackling energy discharges.
Seconds tick by with no word. Roboute expects them to at least confirm successful arrival at the Chapel. The fact that they have not is worrisome.
Twenty seconds pass. Thirty.
“I am going down,” Roboute tells the tech-priest, ramming on his helm. “Initiate teleportation sequence as soon as the capacitors are charged.”
If the priest has any misgivings, he wisely chooses to keep them to himself. A burst of binharic squawks from his vox unit in an affirmative, and he begins initializing the sequence. Roboute draws the Emperor’s Sword, the flames immediately springing to life across the blade, and stands in readiness on the pad. The most likely scenario is that this is indeed an ambush, and the Terminators have sprung whatever trap was laid. Roboute’s sudden arrival may well tip the odds back in their favor.
He knows, as the energies crackle about him, that this is foolish, just as Gaius knew it would be. It seems now more than likely this is the work of the Archenemy, not his brother.
However…
Roboute Guilliman would be the first to protest that he is not a god. That he is flawed. This, of course, demonstrates the depth of his atheism, as anyone with even a passing knowledge of divinity knows that the flaws of gods are their entire point.
His greatest one, regardless of whether its origin is divine or mundane, is that he must always know for certain.
The first thing Roboute sees as the teleportation flare fades is the portrait of Sanguinius.
His brother is rendered in profile, commemorated in an enormous stained-glass window. Flanking it to either side are portraits of himself and the Lion. He feels his throat tighten. No one can possibly know of Imperium Secundus in this age. The only testament was in the Library of Ptolemy, and was lost when Rotigus manifested within its walls. Nevertheless, seeing the ruling triumvirate of that unremembered empire depicted thus is enough to trigger a fresh wave of guilt.
That fades quickly enough – a few milliseconds, perhaps – when he sees what remains of his men. The five Ultramarines lie all about him in states of bloody death. Limbs hacked off, armor rent as though it were paper and not precious, irreplaceable Terminator plate.
The ones that did this slaughter stand all about him. Twelve of them, helmeted, hooded, and cloaked in red and black over charcoal Tacticus armor. They wield greatswords, disruption fields crackling blue about the blades.
“Who are you?” Roboute thunders, his armor boosting his demigod voice to ear-shattering levels. “Why have you slain my men?” He brandishes the Emperor’s Sword, its flames roaring about the blade.
None of them answer. Instead, another Space Marine appears from behind one of the enormous pillars lining the length of the chapel. Portraits of the other six loyal Primarchs line that length, and the snarling visage of Russ towers over and frames the newcomer as he says, “You were instructed to come alone.”
Roboute focuses on the speaker. He, too, is helmed and cloaked, but unlike his companions, everything about him announces who he is. He wears a winged helm and bears upon his back a great standard. On it is the icon of his Chapter, a faceless, cloaked watcher with spreading wings. Roboute has only met him once, and but briefly; even had he not, though, it is impossible to mistake Azrael, Chapter Master of the Dark Angels, for any other.
“Then the message is indeed genuine?” Roboute demands. “Why this slaughter?”
“The dead speak no secrets.”
Fury flames up searing hot in his breast. He opens his mouth to castigate this arrogant child.
He stops when he feels the change.
Candles which have not been lit in centuries flare up suddenly, then gutter in an unnatural breeze. It smells of trees, moldering leaves, rain, and blood, all of it somehow completely unfiltered by his armor’s air-scrubbers. A thick, inexplicable mist rolls over the red and white tiles of the floor and between the pews. And, most impossibly, he sees creeping vines begin to wend their way up the pillar which recently obscured Azrael.
Roboute turns back toward the triumvirate at the far end of the chapel. The entire chancel and the air around it ripple as if in a wave of heat, and in that weird flux he can glimpse a forest filled with enormous trees, many-boughed and looming.
Abruptly, the flux fades, and a towering figure in an enormous suit of master-crafted power armor appears. The armor is black as jet, embossed all about with gleaming silver. The helm, like Azrael’s, is winged, and in his right hand is a long, elegant power sword. In his left –
Roboute tears the helm from his head, an overriding imperative to look with his own eyes seizing him. It is, indeed, no cheat or trick. He knows that escutcheon.
Lion El’Jonson, Lord of the First, Primaris Angelus Mortis, has returned, and he carries their father’s shield.
Time slows and stretches. Roboute cannot tear his gaze from the glowing lenses of the Lion’s helm. He is here. My brother has returned. I am not alone.
His brother halts at the bottom of the chancel stairs, ten paces distant. That winged helm turns to look past Roboute toward Azrael. A single, curt hand gesture in what must be Dark Angels battle-sign sends the Chapter Master retreating, along with his robed escort, to the Chapel’s narthex. The door closes behind them with a loud boom.
The two of them are alone.
The Lion reaches up to his helm, deft despite the weight of the Emperor’s Shield on his arm, and doffs it with a hiss of breaking pressure seals. Roboute cannot but stare, open-mouthed.
There is no other way to describe it: the Lion is old. His features have always been stern, but a constellation of wrinkles now seams his face, making him look like an artist’s rendition of a warrior king of ancient Terra. His hair and beard, once resplendent fields of untrammeled blonde second only to Sanguinius, are now shot through with pale grey and white.
His eyes, though – despite everything else done to him by time, his eyes have not changed. They are still the green of his lost Caliban’s forests, and hard to meet, even for another Primarch.
Roboute does so anyway.
The Lion is also searching Roboute’s features. What does he see there, the Avenging Son wonders. He has been hardened by death, resurrection, and years upon years of war and struggle to keep the Imperium together, to say nothing of the livid scar from Fulgrim. It is visible even now, slashing up from beneath the lip of his neck softseals to mar a broad expanse of his throat before terminating in the cleft of his chin. It pulls at his lip when he smiles, which is rarely.
But despite that, he has not changed nearly as much as his brother.
Neither of them has said a word yet. For Roboute, at least, it is because he is paralyzed by choice. There are so many things to say, so much that was left unsaid at their last parting. He hardly knows where to begin.
His brother, at last, relieves him of the burden of choice. Sheathing his blade and putting up the Emperor’s Shield upon the mag-locked casing of his armor’s power pack, he slowly extends a hand in greeting.
“Roboute,” he says, and his voice is so different now, gravelly and even a bit hoarse. “It is good to see you.”
The Emperor’s sword drops to the floor, the flames extinguishing the moment Roboute lets it fall from his hand. Roboute seizes his brother’s hand in his own – just above the wrist, in the old way between warriors of Terra from myriads ago – and he pulls the Lion into an embrace. The sound of their battle-plate crashing together echoes loud in the Chapel.
He holds his brother fast. A moment later, the Lion’s other arm comes up and clasps him about his shoulders, too.
Roboute realizes, with a shock, that there are tears in his eyes. He has not wept since he was a child.
“It is good to see you, too,” he rasps.
They hold the embrace for another moment, then release one another and step back. The Lion stays close, though, reaching up to place his hands upon Roboute’s pauldrons. A familiar gesture, one that might even have felt patronizing in another time and place. Right now, though, he can tell that all his brother wants to do is get a good look at him.
The Lion indicates Roboute’s neck. “I have heard tell of your duel with Fulgrim. If he is even half as terrible as Angron, well do I understand how he could best you.”
Roboute feels a wave of shame wash over him, but he can tell this was not a barb. His brother has never been good at niceties; even his attempts at rapport can come across as cold and distant. “Terrible indeed,” Roboute confirms. “You have seen Angron?”
Letting his hands fall away from Roboute’s shoulders, the Lion nods. “I fought him in single combat on the daemon planet Wyrmwood, fane of Vashtorr. I only triumphed by the virtues of our father’s shield.”
Roboute feels his eyes widen, just slightly. Clearly, if his apparent age has had any effect on the Lion, it cannot have much impaired his skill and deadliness. None of his own battles with their daemonic brothers can be said to have gone well, even if he had triumphed in the final account.
“I hardly know where to begin,” he says. “I have had reports of Vashtorr the Arkifane and his Arks of Omen, but my duties have not yet led to a direct confrontation. How did you come to be there? Where have you been? When –”
The Lion holds up a black-armored hand. “We have much to discuss, but perhaps you should first send word to whomever on your flagship knows where you are.” His expression darkens as he looks at the dead members of Roboute’s honor guard. “Enough blood has been spilled already on account of this meeting.”
Roboute’s anger returns, though much reduced. “That was needless.”
“It was,” the Lion agrees. “My sons of this age…” He grimaces. “They are wounded animals, driven to terrible extremes by ten thousand years’ of suffering that is not even truly theirs to bear. And as any hunter will tell you, wounded prey is the most dangerous and unpredictable.” He meets Roboute’s gaze directly. “Please, brother. The fault is mine, not theirs. Accept my apology for the loss of your sons.”
Somehow, this – the Lion, humbly asking for Roboute’s forgiveness – is the strangest event of this day for him.
They speak for hours after Roboute contacts the Macragge’s Honour and has his fallen sons teleported back aboard for gene-seed recovery and funerary honors. Roboute tells the Lion of his death and awakening, his long road to Terra, the Indomitus Crusade and the Unnumbered Sons, the Plague War and the crossing of the Cicatrix Maledictum, the salvation of Baal and his investiture of Commander Dante.
The Lion tells Roboute of the fall of Luther and Caliban, his long interment within the Rock, his experiences awakening amnesiac in a mysterious shadow realm, and the perils he endured there. Roboute listens in fascination as the Lion speaks of his clash with the Ten Thousand Eyes, his Protectorate, his reconciliation with so many of his fallen sons. How he met with Dante, journeyed with him to Wyrmwood, and about his duel with Angron and his reunion with his sons of this modern era.
The dawn is beginning to creep through the Chapel’s massive windows by the time the two Primarchs fall silent. They sit awkwardly, Roboute in one of the pews sized far too small for him, the Lion on the top of the stairs leading up to the chancel.
The Lion places his hands upon his knees in a posture of readiness. “So, Roboute,” he finally says. “What happens now?”
Roboute blinks. “You are asking me?”
“You are the Lord Regent of the Imperium,” his brother says. “I am a wayward knight. My Protectorate, such as it is, lies across the Cicatrix Maledictum, and is better off being governed by Dante in any event. You chose well with him, I deem.”
“Thank you,” Roboute says, mind still racing. “But, brother –”
“I will not lead,” the Lion says firmly. “You are the better of us by far to play that role. And based upon what you have told me of your clashes with the Ministorum and Ecclesiarchy, do you think the Imperium’s governors and high lords will find my return any less objectionable than your own?”
“Not necessarily. However…” Roboute pauses, searching for the right words.
“It is more than just that,” the Lion continues, his aged voice oddly gentle. “I have reflected much on my life, Roboute. I have enjoyed triumphs, to be sure, but on the whole, I am a failure. My Legion was not at Terra because I spent too long stubbornly prosecuting a war of annihilation against the traitors’ homeworlds, even after it became clear the enemy cared naught for them. Caliban defected, fell, and died because I could not see the cancer in Luther’s heart until it was too late.
“And when I did, rather than try to remonstrate, what did I do? I exiled him from my sight in a fit of pique, and in so doing sowed the seeds of my own destruction. My sons of this modern era suffer ten thousand years of pain and guilt because of my shortcomings.” His brother’s features, Roboute realizes, are drawn tight in grief, a grief so terrible it seems to physically weigh upon him.
Abruptly, the Lion straightens. He does not precisely retreat, or mask his pain, but Roboute feels him regain a measure of remove as he masters himself. “I must make it up to them if I can, brother. I must try to help correct them. They deserve to have what we never had.”
Roboute blinks. “What is that?”
“A father who cares for them, of course.”
Before he knows what is happening, Roboute is on his feet, his entire body surging with the fury of sudden revelation. “How did you know?” Roboute demands. “Did you also speak with him?”
The Lion also comes to his feet, doubtless alarmed by Roboute’s sudden intensity. “What?” he asks. “No, I have not spoken with him since before Horus’s betrayal.”
“Then how could you know that?” Roboute asks. “How could you know that the Emperor cared nothing for us?”
He can see the confusion in his brother’s face, and he can feel the dynamics of this situation, this reunion, suddenly shifting, going askew. Doubt bubbles up into his mind. Could even ten thousand years truly change the Lord of the First, keeper of the Emperor’s most terrible secrets, this much?
The Lion looks him in the eye, but it is not an expression of challenge he wears. It is one of sorrow.
“Roboute,” he says softly. “How could you not?”
Afterward, Roboute cannot say how it was that the Emperor’s Sword came to be in his hand. He does not remember drawing it. He can replay every instant of that conversation in his perfect, eidetic memory, and yet there is a metaphorical gap in the pict-feed. One moment he stands before his brother, fists clenched in anger, and in the next the hilt is in his grip and its flames are exploding to life about the blade.
The Lion is armed an instant later. This Roboute can recall, since while it was only an instant to mortals, the Lion’s unsheathing of his blade and retrieval of the Emperor’s Shield was entirely by mundane means, simply accelerated to a speed no lesser being could ever match.
“‘How could I not?’ What then, have you always known this?” Roboute snarls. “Have you always known that our so-called father saw us only as tools, weapons he could point at the galaxy and release?”
The Lion does not move, though he stands ready to defend himself with blade and shield. His face is unreadable.
“Yes,” he says.
“And you never once shared this with us?” Roboute asks. “Never did it occur to you that your brothers who also fought and shed blood for our father did so for their love of him, and that knowing the truth might make them reconsider?”
Even as he speaks the words, his Primarch mind is following the threads to their natural conclusions. Of course the Lion knew he could have, perhaps even should have, told them the truth.
But he never would, because he knew it would go against the Emperor’s wishes. No matter the personal price of that loyalty, he was willing to pay it.
The Lion says nothing. His brother knows Roboute has answered his own question.
“Throne damn you, Lion!” Roboute shouts. “You have never been any better than that bastard Constantin Valdor! A creature of the Emperor, through and through!”
Now the Lion smirks in disdain. “Much worse, brother. Valdor had obedience written into his very genes. He was more a servitor than a man. I spent my entire life after meeting our father enforcing his will, and I did so by my own volition.”
“You never craved his love?” Roboute asks. “From the very beginning you knew that he saw you as a useful weapon he had made and was glad to possess once more, and that was satisfaction enough for you?”
“Does the sword desire the love of its wielder? No. The sword desires nothing, knows nothing, makes nothing but what it is forged to make – death.” The Lion flourishes with his blade, the disruption field crackling to life. “I have always aspired to the purity of the sword, brother.”
“No ambition to be more than what he made you to be?” He levels the Hand of Dominion at his brother, primary phalange extended, activating its own disruption field. “So confident in your loyalty that you could not but believe that you knew better than the rest of us?”
The Lion reaches back and places his helm upon his head. Roboute does likewise. “As I said, Roboute,” his voice buzzes through his vox-grille. “I am as he made me to be. I am the First.
“And he never made another quite like me.”
Roboute bellows a wordless challenge and leaps at the Lion, the Hand of Dominion swinging about in a wild haymaker. The Lion snaps up the Emperor’s Shield. When the massive power fist impacts the defensive field of their father’s relic, there is a titanic explosion of reflected energies, blasting the two Primarchs apart. The Lion flies straight back, crashing against the altar and pounding it to rubble. Roboute goes flying back into the nave, smashing through half a dozen pews before grinding to a halt in a mess of shattered tile.
Roboute is on his feet again in an instant, but the Lion steps out of the air in front of him, his sword – Fealty, Roboute recalls him mentioning the name – angling in at Roboute’s shoulder. A strike meant to wound and disarm. He slaps it aside with the Emperor’s Sword, but the Lion follows the momentum of the parry into a whirling dodge around Roboute to avoid the Hand of Dominion. A distant part of Roboute’s mind notes this spiral-stepping is typical of Calibanite combat traditions dating back to the Order of Aldurukh. The rest of him is hurling himself out of the way of a swipe that would have laid his arm open to the bone, armor be damned.
They come together again in a flurry of blows, Fealty ringing against the Emperor’s Sword again and again. Roboute is faster, and he suspects that in a contest of brute force he would now prove stronger. The Lion’s age has definitely affected his physical abilities.
Unfortunately, as he had surmised, it has not affected his brother’s skill. Roboute, himself, is skilled as only a demigod of war can be, a force of nature in a league far above that of the overwhelming majority of even the otherwise most powerful threats in those hundred billion stars.
The Lion is, Roboute realizes, truly and in the most literal sense, in a league of his own.
So Roboute stops trying to duel him nicely. He kicks one of the pews at the Lion. His armor enhances his already impressive strength enough to send a hundred and twenty kilos of Macraggian wood flying at his brother as though it were no more than pasteboard. The Lion slams it out of the air with the Emperor’s Shield, but the bulk of the pew blinds him for a critical millisecond. Roboute, following his projectile, swings the Hand of Dominion into his brother’s chest. The weapon discharges its energies in a blinding flare. The Lion is sent through the nearest wall of the Chapel, shattered masonry collapsing and kicking up clouds of dust in his wake.
Before Roboute can give pursuit, his vision explodes into dazzling flares and his skull rings with horrible pain. The Lion has stepped out of the air behind him this time, and slammed the pommel of his sword hard into the back of Roboute’s helmeted head. He can feel where the ceramite dented and cut into his skull; it is still scraping as he whirls to confront his brother for the treacherous blow. “Bastard!” he snarls, bringing the Emperor’s Sword around.
It meets the Emperor’s Shield.
When Roboute is conscious again – what? he had lost consciousness? he had blacked out? – the Emperor’s Sword is not in his hand. He still has the Hand of Dominion, seeing as it is attached to his armor on the left side. He is also on his back, in what is left of several transepts’ worth of pews and wrought-iron votive stands, fetched up against one wall of the Chapel, which is buckled out, half-collapsed. He determines all of this by feel, since his helmet has fully shut off its visual displays in an attempt to save his eyesight. He rips his helm off with his free hand.
The Lion’s mailed fist cracks into Roboute’s jaw. His brother stands directly above him, feet planted to either side. The blow conjures stars in Roboute’s vision again, but only really makes him angrier. He snaps a leg up behind the Lion in a vicious kick to his kidney. It rings off of the Lion’s plate but it makes him stumble. A moment later they are on the ground, grappling, punching, kicking, struggling for purchase. Roboute gets a hand on one of the wings of the Lion’s helm and tears it away, baring his brother’s face again. He takes a punch to the throat for his trouble, and the pain of it doubles him over, the scar from Fulgrim flaring angrily.
“ENOUGH!” he screams, coming up in a low wrestler’s crouch. As the Lion slides in to strike him again, clearly expecting Roboute to have stood fully, he grabs his brother about the waist. In one smooth motion he lifts him bodily off the ground, seizes him by his gorget and belt, and hurls him, seven hundred kilograms of armored Primarch, into the chancel.
The Lion cracks face-first into the back wall of the chancel, having already reduced the altar to rubble. The portrait of him explodes into thousands of glass shards which rain down all about him.
Roboute is on him again faster than he thought possible, and yet this is not fast enough to take his brother unawares, even in this state. The Lion rolls, pivoting, and snaps a kick into Roboute’s midsection. He is hurled sideways into the wall as well, his head smashing fully through his own portrait. A huge shard of one of his own eyes falls and slices a neat furrow in his cheek before he can recover.
The shock of it, the clean, ringing pain of a laceration, cuts through his anger like a clarion call. What are they doing? They are not children. Their actions have consequences, terrible consequences. If they kill one another, what of the Imperium then?
He stares at the Lion. The Lion stares back at him, blood dripping from his clearly-broken nose.
As if on cue, both of them look up at the last remaining intact window in the wall of the chancel. Sanguinius’s visage is ablaze with the light of the rising sun.
Roboute groans as he straightens up. The Armor of Fate makes a number of alarming noises as he moves. “Look at us, brother,” he says. His mouth tastes of blood. “Our first family reunion in a myriad and we’re already brawling before anyone has even set the table.”
The Lion relaxes. Not much, not by more than a hair, but that hair encompasses worlds within its margins.
“I am sorry, Roboute,” he says. “Truly, I am. I have not said a single falsehood this eve. My duty to my sons, my refusal to lead, my failure, all of it is true. When I spoke, did I know things I yet concealed from you? Of course. I have forgotten more forbidden lore and secret knowledge than most ever come to know. But did I omit these things from a desire to deceive? No. I tell you now I spoke of what I truly felt was of import to the matters at hand, and no more.”
Roboute is no psyker. Those were not gifts with which his father saw fit to bestow him. But he knows, at the core of his being, that his brother is telling him the truth.
“I believe you,” he says. “And, for what it is worth, you could not have known what you touched upon with your words. The fault is mine for allowing my humors to become that unbalanced.”
The Lion slumps a little against the shattered remains of the wall. “I fear, Roboute,” he says, “that we two face a monumental task ahead of us.”
“What, the defeat of the Archenemy? The restoration of the Imperium? The future of mankind?”
“No, far worse. We are going to have to learn to get along.”
Their weapons retrieved, their immediate injuries already healing, the two of them stand in the center of what is left of the Chapel of the Nine Sainted Sons.
“I must confess something to you,” Roboute says.
“Yes?”
“After I heard the news of your return, the first thing I said to myself was, ‘why him?’”
The Lion’s grave features erupt into a paroxysm of mirth, a terrifying sight. He barks a long, hoarse laugh. Roboute has never seen him like this. Truth be told, it almost seems more like something Russ would do. He decides never to say that, or even think it, again.
“Did you?” the Lion asks. He seizes Roboute’s shoulders and pulls him into another embrace. As he does, he says, “You must know that I said almost the same thing when I learned about you being alive.”
Roboute allows himself a chuckle, too. He withdraws from the embrace. “I know you will not lead,” he says. “I know the Dark Angels have difficult and dangerous times ahead of them, as does the entire Imperium. But I cannot bear the thought of parting ways simply because our aims do not align perfectly."
“No,” the Lion agrees. “Nor can I. But our paths lead to the same destination, always. And we will not make the mistakes of the past. We will communicate. We will apprise one another – truthfully – of our plans. And if either of us makes an error of omission, the other will simply have to find it in his heart to forgive him.”
Roboute nods. “I am glad we are of one mind,” he says.
The spectral forest realm begins to creep in around the Lion. The wet smell of leaves and rotting wood returns on the breeze.
“I do not think we ever will be that,” the Lion tells him. “We are too different. Say instead that we are in accord, and complement each other, as opposites often do.”
“Opposites?”
“Our father made me to be a human weapon, Roboute,” the Lord of the First says as he steps away into the mist-wreathed shadow realm. “How apropos, then, that when he made you, he made a weapon human.”
And he is gone.
Roboute looks at the creeping vines left in his brother’s wake.
“Always had to have the last word,” he sighs, shaking his head. He will let him have his little victories, though. For the first time in his immortal life, Roboute Guilliman feels as though he actually understands his elder brother. Perhaps not much, but the practical is clear: they can reach an understanding. And that is no small thing.
The Emperor’s Sons are reunited.