~ Every 100 Power Stones = Bonus Chapter! Your votes keep this climbing. Thanks!
"Kill Guilliman! Kill Lupercal!"
"Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!"
Kael was still trying to figure out how to prove to Guilliman that Horus was on their side when the problem solved itself.
A Black Legion warrior broke from the pack. He was screaming the Blood God's na, and his comrades watched in stunned silence as the lone veteran launched himself into the air, straight at the primarch.
Guilliman moved.
Only Yvraine, the Visarch, and Horus could track what happened next.
The Sword of the Emperor left a ghost-image in the air.
The Black Legion warrior ca apart at the waist. Both halves tumbled away in opposite directions, flung by the force of the blow, and hit the ground a dozen ters apart.
Guilliman had his answer. He knew who was the enemy and who was the ally.
That single strike was a signal. A hatred-filled roar shook the sanctuary, and the Black Legion split into two waves — one surging toward Horus, the other toward Guilliman.
Guilliman's resurrection had lit sothing in Horus. Boundless power surged through the Wolf of Fenris's fra.
Kullen grabbed a power axe from the body of a fallen Honour Guard and tossed it across to Horus without a word.
The two demigods stepped forward together, walking straight into the enemy.
The slaughter began.
Three Black Legion Raptors hit from the flank, chainswords screaming. Guilliman's right foot crushed the floor. The recoil launched him sideways in a move that had no business obeying physics, and he opened the distance in an instant.
The Sword of the Emperor swept out in a horizontal arc.
Golden flas burned through Warp-blessed ceramite like it wasn't there.
Three warriors, armour and weapons and all, were sliced into six clean pieces. Not a drop of blood escaped the cuts. The sacred fire vaporized it before it could fall.
Guilliman didn't pause. He twisted his wrist mid-motion, shifting from a sweep to a thrust, and drove the blade straight through the cockpit of a Chaos Hellbrute directly ahead. The tornted pilot inside didn't even have ti to scream. He was ash.
"Fall back! Heavy fire support!"
A Black Legion Terminator officer scread into the comm channel, voice cracking.
They had finally understood what they were dealing with.
Plasma cannons began cycling up to overload, dazzling blue light flooding the sanctuary do.
They never got to pull the triggers.
From the left flank ca a series of sounds: tal tearing, ceramite splitting, a noise that set teeth on edge.
Horus had punched through the line.
The bolter rounds hamring his Terminator Armour ant nothing to him. He drove into the press of bodies like a wolf into a flock, left hand closing around a plasma gunner's throat. He lifted the man off the ground, weapon and all, in one motion.
"Give Ezekyle my regards!"
He swung the Chaos Space Marine in a full arc, several hundred kilograms of armoured flesh, and hurled him like a cannonball into the cluster of cultists crouched behind a drop pod, mid-ritual.
Bones shattered. Flesh gave way.
The cultists who had been carving the Eight-Pointed Star into the floor were reduced to pulp.
Horus brought the power axe around one-handed and split a Terminator from crown to pelvis as the warrior lunged in from behind. The high-frequency power field tore through the heavy pauldron and kept going, cleaving the chest cavity open, shredding the Warp-corrupted heart into ruin.
He wrenched the axe free and looked across the battlefield toward Guilliman.
The Master of Ultramar had just finished cutting two Black Legion Terminators apart.
Their eyes t through the hanging curtain of blood mist. One instant, across 10,000 years.
The gap collapsed. In the age of the Great Crusade, they had done this a hundred tis, torn through xenos lines shoulder to shoulder, no words needed, no signals exchanged. Nothing had changed.
Guilliman pressed left, using the broad blade of the Sword of the Emperor to batter back a boarding wave. Horus read it instantly and swung wide on the right, cutting off the Black Legion's escape route toward the sanctuary's edge.
One drove forward. The other sealed the door.
The Imperial warriors around them felt it, the sight of two primarchs moving in concert, the fury of vengeance in the air. They shook off their exhaustion and threw themselves at the enemy.
"Praise the Emperor!"
Celestine's voice rang out, tears streaming down her face.
"Thank you, my Lord! What have we done to deserve both of them?"
The fire of faith erupted from the Living Saint in a wave, and heretics burned in swathes where it touched them.
Nearby, Grand Inquisitor Greyfax had lost her composure entirely.
"I was wrong!" she shouted. "I will repent! Every word of it is true! Saint — you are the Emperor's will made flesh!"
"Vigilance is no sin, Greyfax," Celestine answered, her blade cutting down the enemies in front of her one by one without breaking stride. "You serve our Lord faithfully. As do I."
"Well said." Greyfax gave a short nod. "Then let us serve him together, as warriors of faith."
The Inquisitor raised her power sword and charged into the enemy formation. The Living Saint moved at her side.
"For the Emperor!"
Kael and Kullen shouted it together, working through the stragglers: Kael with his rifle, Kullen with his blade, picking off isolated Black Legion warriors with thodical efficiency.
The Grey Knights, the Ultramarines, the Black Templars, Archmagos Cawl, all of them did the sa.
They joined the battle. They killed the heretics.
In less than 13 minutes, the two demigods and everyone with them had put down every Black Legion elite veteran in the sanctuary.
The battle was over.
The floor was carpeted in shattered ceramite and dark, tainted blood.
Guilliman pulled the Sword of the Emperor free from a Terminator's corpse.
He turned to face the right side of the room.
Every Imperial soul present, Calgar, Tigurius, Archmagos Cawl, all of them, followed his gaze and fixed their eyes on Horus.
Kael and Kullen stepped back into position, one on each side behind the Warmaster.
Kael swallowed. His palms were soaked.
He stared at the Sword of the Emperor burning in Guilliman's grip and felt a cold knot form in his gut. He genuinely wasn't sure the Master of Ultramar could hold himself back. One step forward, one swing, and Horus's head would be on the floor.
Horus stood still. He looked directly into those eyes, eyes he knew better than almost any others in the galaxy.
Sothing rose from the deepest part of his mory. Old pride. 10,000 years of absence. Guilt toward his father and his brothers, guilt he had carried since the mont he understood what he had done.
It all surfaced at once.
The Wolf of Fenris exhaled slowly.
Then, under the stunned, disbelieving stares of everyone in the room —
THUD!
A single, heavy sound. Deep and final.
The forr Imperial Warmaster. The most celebrated Lord of the Luna Wolves in the age of the Great Crusade. The arch-traitor who had nearly unmade all of humanity.
Horus Lupercal went down on one knee before his brother, Roboute Guilliman.
That proud head, the one that had never bowed, never yielded, not once in 10,000 years, dropped forward against his chest.
Silence.
Total, absolute silence.
This was complete surrender. This was submission without reservation.
Calgar's jaw hung open wide enough to swallow a lta bomb. Captain Agemman's bolter nearly slipped from his fingers.
One gene-primarch, kneeling before another, asking forgiveness.
Kael understood exactly what Horus was doing.
In private, with his pride, Horus might never have managed it. But here, now, in front of every Ultramarine in the room, he had to give Guilliman the full weight of the gesture. He had to make it undeniable. He was not here to take power. He was not here to challenge anyone's authority. He was here to atone.
The Warmaster's political instincts had never left him.
Guilliman turned his wrist. The golden flas of the Sword of the Emperor pulled back, the tip dropping toward the floor, but his grip on the hilt didn't loosen by a fraction. The blade stayed angled to the side, ready to sweep or thrust at a mont's notice. Not a single muscle relaxed.
"Horus Lupercal."
His voice was iron. The golden flas flickered in his palm. His eyes didn't move from the giant kneeling before him.
"Give one reason to believe that the one standing here is truly my brother — and not so vile imitation the Warp has conjured in his shape."
The last word carried a tremor. Barely there. Almost nothing.
Almost.
"Horus is dead," the Wolf of Fenris said. "The one alive now is Lupercal."
A beat of silence.
"Lupercal. Atoning for the cris of the Horus that once was."
Guilliman went quiet for 2 seconds.
In those 2 seconds, his gaze moved across the broken Black Legion dead on the floor, across the tight, unreadable faces of everyone watching, across Horus's head bowed against his chest. In his mind, he was already running the calculations: every upheaval, every opportunity, every thread of possibility that accepting this brother might open or destroy. The Imperium at the edge of annihilation. What it would cost. What it might save.
Then he reached out. He bent slightly forward, gripped Horus's vambrace, and spoke in a voice that carried to every corner of the room.
"Rise, my brother. The Imperium needs every warrior willing to fight for the Emperor and for humanity."
He pulled Horus to his feet.
➤ Next: A Primarch, But Also a Man
— .—— .—— .—— .—— .——
Enjoying the story?
Read 60 chapters ahead on Patreon.
Join the free community tier for early access to the latest updates:
patreon(.)com/DarkGolds
Reviews
All reviews (0)