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They left the noisy, reeking tavern behind and ducked into a side passage, dim light, sewage pooling along the gutters, the kind of alley that slled like sothing had died there and nobody had bothered to check.
They were heading back to the shelter. Simple enough.
They hadn't taken two steps before Kaelen's System Panel blazed red.
He turned. In the stuttering half-light, he made out the graffiti on the wall, old graffiti, the kind the gri had been eating for decades. Beneath the filth, the symbol was still clear.
Crossed swords. A broken wing.
[Beep! Hidden Quest triggered!]
[Seek the Fallen First Legion: Make contact with a Fallen Angel!]
Kaelen's feet stopped moving. He sucked in a sharp breath.
"What is it, my friend?" Horus paused beside him, voice low, the Caleoline Cloak still wrapped tight around his massive fra.
"One of your brother's unlucky sons," Kaelen muttered.
He kept his voice down and gave Horus the short version: the First Legion's civil war on Caliban, the Dark Angels tearing themselves apart, and the Fallen Angels who'd been drifting through the void ever since, hunted by their own brothers like rabid dogs for 10,000 years.
The Wolf Shepherd went quiet when he finished.
He didn't speak. He just turned and looked down the dark corridor ahead.
Lion El'Jonson. The brother he had feared most. The brother he had been most proud of. His First Legion. Ended in fratricide and ten millennia of exile.
A breath. Barely a sound. It dissolved into the stench.
"Let's go," Horus said. "If there are traces of my brother's sons here, I want to see."
There was a weight in his voice he couldn't quite hide.
They pulled their cloaks tight and followed the system's faint signal deeper into the underhive black market, into the part of the ruins where there were no rules at all. The sll shifted as they moved, machine oil and the sour reek of mutant fungi giving way to sothing thicker, sharper.
Blood. A lot of it.
Kaelen recognized where they were. The Black Hand Gang's turf. The most vicious outfit in this corner of the hive.
Ahead sat an abandoned heavy machinery workshop. Inside, it was anything but abandoned.
Plasma coils scread as they charged. Bolters clacked and cycled. The firepower filling that workshop was dense enough to call it a wall. Dozens of ard thugs had a single figure pinned behind a wrecked forge, a massive shape in a tattered hooded robe, barely moving, just taking hits.
The gang leader up front was loving every second of it. He swung his chainsword in wide, theatrical arcs, laughter bouncing off the tal walls.
"I don't care what kind of mutant freak you are! Today I peel that iron shell right off you and sell it to the highest bidder!"
Kaelen crept to the edge of the shadows and peered in.
He stiffened.
"An Astartes?!" he breathed. "A Space Marine. Pinned down by mortal thugs."
He squinted. "Wait — is he out of ammo?"
The figure behind the forge wasn't shooting back. Just hunkering down, letting the Ceramite Armor absorb the stray rounds. The lackeys could see it too, and it made them bold. Whistles. Catcalls. A torrent of obscenities they seed to be enjoying.
Beside Kaelen, Horus's eyes narrowed.
Primarch vision cut straight through the tattered robe. It found what it was looking for, black Ceramite, the unmistakable silhouette of First Legion Power Armor.
"That is a Dark Angels Astartes. First Legion."
A pause.
"That should be the Fallen Angel we're looking for."
He glanced at Kaelen. The question was in his eyes.
Save him, or not?
Kaelen didn't waste breath on it. One sharp nod. "Help him."
Obviously. No rescue, no reward. Simple math.
The words were barely out of his mouth.
The giant who had spent the last hour pretending to be an Ogryn stepped out of the shadows.
He didn't creep. He didn't hesitate. He walked straight into the fire like an ancient predator that had never learned what fear felt like.
Fast.
Too fast.
Horus moved at a speed that mortal eyes simply couldn't track. The 8 thugs covering the flank never saw it coming. One mont they were standing. The next, sothing hit them like a runaway freight hauler.
CRASH. The impact erupted without warning.
Eight n — guns and all — went airborne. They hit the tal walls hard enough to leave marks. Not bruises. Marks. The kind that didn't get up.
The gang's laughter died. Instantly. Like a hand around a throat.
Every head in the workshop snapped toward the three-and-a-half-ter shape that had appeared from nowhere.
Even the Astartes behind the forge lifted his head.
"O-open fire! Kill him!" The gang leader's voice cracked on the order, fear stripping it raw.
The guns swung around. The rounds ca pouring in.
It didn't matter.
This was a Primarch. No Power Armor, no weapons, it didn't matter. These lackeys couldn't touch him.
Horus didn't bother dodging. He reached back and grabbed the nearest scrapped lathe, several tons of solid iron, and tore it free. tal scread. Bolts sheared. He swung the whole mass one-handed, casual as throwing a stone, and brought it down on the heavy firepower position.
BOOM!
The workshop shook. Dust rained from the ceiling.
Flesh. tal. Shrapnel. All of it filled the air at once.
10 seconds. Start to finish.
The Black Hand Gang's finest were now decorating the rubble in red and white.
Silence swallowed the workshop.
The cloaked warrior behind the forge rose slowly. His grip reversed on his combat knife, the blade dull, the edge still sharp. He was a veteran. He'd seen slaughter before. But the mont he'd watched that display, sothing old and buried had stirred in him, sothing written into his genes long before he'd ever held a weapon.
The absolute suppression of a demigod Primarch.
His hand was shaking. He couldn't stop it.
Horus flicked the blood from his knuckles. His gaze was calm, unhurried, fixed on the knife-wielding Astartes.
Kaelen stepped out of the shadows.
High above, an exhaust fan shrieked.
The draft caught the Astartes's hood and stripped it back.
Black Power Armor. Scarred beyond counting, the surface a map of old wounds and older repairs. He stared up at the giant in front of him, half a head taller than himself, still wearing the Ogryn disguise.
The breathing behind his helt went ragged.
"Who are you." His voice shook. Not a question, a demand, cracking under the weight of sothing he couldn't na. "That presence. The way you fight. It's exactly like a Primarch's."
Kaelen glanced at Horus and nodded.
Together, without hesitation, they pulled back their hoods.
The Astartes didn't know the mortal. But he knew the face beside him.
The angular jaw. The quiet, contained power in every line of it. The face that had launched a galaxy-spanning war.
The Fallen Angel's pupils shrank to pinpoints. His mind went blank.
Then he moved.
He ca off the forge like sothing had snapped inside him, a cornered animal, past reason, past calculation. He knew he couldn't win. He swung anyway, driving the knife straight at Horus's throat.
"Traitor. Die."
SMACK!
One hand. Horus extended one hand and caught the Astartes's wrist, stopping the blade cold in the air between them.
"Easy, warrior."
The Wolf Shepherd looked down at him. His voice was low. Steady. Immovable.
➤ Next: Fallen Angel, Cullen
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