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At the center of the arena.
Abaddon's face convulsed. The muscles beneath his skin spasd violently, beyond his control.
The mont he confird that the face before him belonged to the completely uncorrupted Warmaster, the real one, the pure one, the Great Despoiler's mind went blank for a full second.
An instinct carved into his deepest self brought him a fleeting mont of relief.
It was the absolute dependence a forr First Captain of the Luna Wolves had once held for his gene-father. That accursed emotion had sohow survived 10,000 years intact.
The prophecy was true. Father still lived.
But the relief lasted barely a heartbeat before razor-edged panic and alarm ground it to nothing.
If what stood before him were one of Fabius's cloned defectives, Abaddon could have torn it apart with his bare hands and felt nothing. He had done exactly that, more than once, over the past 10,000 years.
But this was no defective product.
The man standing there, his bearing, his presence, that innate and effortless authority, every inch of him declared that he was a complete Primarch, untouched by the filth of the Warp.
That purity was the greatest condemnation Abaddon had ever faced.
It mocked him. Silently, bluntly, it mocked 10,000 years of choices, 10,000 years of crusades, all twelve of them.
He forced down the slight trembling in his body through sheer will. He stepped forward half a pace. A dry, ugly laugh scraped out of his throat.
It grew louder. Then louder still. It beca a howl, unbridled, manic, twisting the coarse flesh of his face.
"What the hell is this."
Abaddon stared dead ahead. His pitch spiked. Every word dripped venom.
"You'd be better off dead."
He bit the words out through clenched teeth.
Beside him, Devram and several Black Legion Terminator veterans tightened their grips on their heavy bolters without thinking.
Not one of them raised the barrel toward the white-armored giant.
They were afraid. Even after 10,000 years, the reverence for their old lord was still carved into their bones. Their fingers simply would not pull the trigger.
Horus was calm.
He held his bolter loosely in one hand, making no move to defend or attack. He studied the towering figure before him, the topknot, the body draped in blasphemous trinkets and human skulls, the sheer mass of the man.
There was no fury on that resolute face. No manic rage at being cursed by his own son.
Only a faint, quiet sorrow.
Horus sighed.
A heavy sigh, laden with regret.
"Ezekyle." He spoke the long-buried na slowly, each syllable deliberate. "My firstborn. My First Captain."
"Look at what you have beco. Rank with corruption, all bluster and posturing. The stench on you sickens ."
He paused 2 seconds. Then, in the most even tone he possessed, he delivered his final judgnt.
"You were far better when you were in the Legion."
That sentence found every nerve.
"Firstborn? First Captain?"
Abaddon roared. Spittle flew before his faceplate. He raised Drach'nyen, the daemon sword wreathed in black-purple fla, and leveled it at Horus's face.
"Don't sicken with those obsolete titles! You think you're still that arrogant Warmaster of old?! You think you can still command ?! No — I am the Chaos Warmaster now! Not your First Captain!"
Warp lightning tore across the ceiling of the corridor, wild and uncontrolled, driven by its master's fury. The red alarm lights spun overhead. Crimson washed over the massive silhouettes of father and son in alternating pulses.
"You are a complete and utter failure!" Abaddon bellowed. The lofty, unhurried arrogance he had shown the defenders of Cadia was gone entirely.
"You started the rebellion, then fell to the Corpse-Emperor's blade on Terra! You led the Legion into the abyss, died clean, and left us a helpless wreck to deal with!"
He swung his right arm and slamd the Talon of Horus against his own breastplate. The impact rang through the corridor like a thunderclap.
"It was ! Ezekyle Abaddon! I rallied the discarded remnants in the Eye of Terror! I spent 10,000 years, piece by piece, rebuilding the glory of the Black Legion!"
Every roar drove him one heavy step forward.
"I launched thirteen Black Crusades! I shattered the Cadian Sector's defenses! I made the entire galaxy tremble at my na!"
His vocal cords sounded ready to tear.
"I am the Warmaster now! I surpassed you long ago, you obsolete ghost of a dead age!"
"I am far stronger than you ever were, Father!"
The corridor rang with his voice.
"You are history, Father! So why — why are you still standing in front of ?!"
"To stop your atrocities."
Horus spoke. The words cut clean through Abaddon's tirade.
He took one solid step forward. His heavy Terminator boots ground against the rubble with a sharp, clear crack.
"You keep insisting you have surpassed , Ezekyle." His voice was unnervingly steady. "You keep saying you rebuilt the Legion's glory. That you are the true Warmaster."
He swept his gaze across the silent Black Legion Terminators standing to the side, then brought it back to Abaddon's eyes.
"If you are so confident — then tell . Why is your voice trembling? What are you afraid of, Ezekyle?"
The Primarch's volu rose. The old pack leader's edge was in it: sharp, demanding, rciless.
Abaddon's eyelids twitched.
All that furious emphasis on his own achievents. All that desperate cataloguing of victories. Behind it lay sothing he could not bury: a bone-deep inferiority, and a fear of his gene-father that 10,000 years had not touched.
Horus hadn't raised a weapon. He hadn't needed to. One sentence, and the shell Abaddon had spent millennia building cracked open, exposing everything underneath.
"I am not afraid!"
Abaddon roared.
"I am incomparably powerful! I am nothing like you were, reduced to a puppet of the Gods! I use their power to strengthen myself! I am far stronger than you ever were, Father!"
"You say you'll stop my atrocities? Then co!"
He raised the Talon of Horus and Drach'nyen together. The blessings of the Four Gods erupted from his body in a violent wave, sweeping through the corridor. A cold that had nothing to do with temperature moved through everyone present, a chill felt in the soul.
Even Abaddon's personal veteran bodyguards took two steps back without thinking.
The golden pupils in his eyes had grown dim.
"I will kill you, Father."
"This will be the most glorious stroke of my great Thirteenth Black Crusade."
Horus looked at his firstborn son. Anger lived in his eyes. So did grief.
He saw a grown man desperate to prove himself to his father. Desperate in the way only a son could be.
The sa way his own fallen self had been desperate, at the end of the Heresy, charging at the Emperor like a child demanding to be seen.
"Lend this."
He turned to Celestine.
Without hesitation, she placed her blazing sword into his hand.
The golden holy fire drove back the dark. It lit the hard line of Horus's jaw. And in that mont, every Imperial defender, every Chaos traitor, Kael and Cullen alike, all of them saw it at the sa ti. A piercing golden radiance, pouring from this arch-traitor Primarch, as though sothing ancient and undeniable had never left him.
"If you want my life to prove yourself, then co."
Horus raised the blade slowly.
"But rember this. I will not forgive you."
"I don't need your damn forgiveness!"
Abaddon's howl tore through the corridor. His massive form beca a black-purple blur, shredding the air, roaring as it crashed toward that figure burning with intertwined gold and white.
➤ Next: Son, I'm Getting a Little Angry
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