Chapter 156: Perturabo, What the Fuck Are You Doing—!
On the Iron Blood, heavy, clanging footsteps echoed rapidly.
Poison gas spread unchecked through the corridor, and the once metallic grey-white hallway was now shrouded in a faint yellow-green haze.
The Lord of Death strode forward, his tattered, dim cloak flapping sharply behind him, brushing past the Iron Warriors standing stiffly at the edges of the corridor.
A raspy wheeze escaped from behind his mask, like the dying breath of a man on his last legs. Beneath the cloak, a sinister white haze clouded the pale king's eyes.
The entire corridor was steeped in deathly oppression. The Lord of Death's fury gripped everyone's throat like a vice. They all held their breath as best they could, fearing that the slightest sound might bring disaster.
Mortarion walked like a terminal patient, his gait bizarre and uneven, as if a corpse were dragging itself forward.
At the end of the corridor, the door was tightly shut. Hardened steel denied him entry, silently proclaiming its rejection of Mortarion.
The Lord of Iron hadn't extended any invitation to his "brother."
In fact, Mortarion had forced his ship to "dock" at the Iron Blood's hangar—
Now, that hangar had a cruiser-sized crater in it.
The yellow and black hazard stripes on the door stood tall, as if mocking Mortarion's impotence.
"Apologies, my lord. The Warsmith has ordered that he is not to be disturbed."
On either side of the door, two Iron Warriors crossed their halberds in front of Mortarion.
The Primarch tilted his head slightly, like a skull slipping off a skeleton.
Within the hood's shadow, his eyes betrayed no emotion as he stared at the two poor souls.
Mortarion reached for his scythe, Silence. With ease, the weapon swept aside their halberds. Clang! The useless weapons clattered to the floor.
Then Mortarion, one hand on his scythe, casually picked up one of his incense burners with the other.
He violently tore it free from the copper chains it hung on. With the same hand, he reached to the jars and vials strapped to his armor and selected a glass bottle.
A mysterious black solid filled the bottle. With a squeeze, Mortarion crushed it, shards of glass and black matter pouring into the incense burner's vents.
Few knew Mortarion was a master of alchemy.
His gaze locked once more onto the door ahead.
His lips moved slightly beneath the respirator.
Then, without warning, the Primarch hurled the burner with full force!
It tore through the air with a booming crack, shattering the seemingly indestructible door!
Mortarion gripped his scythe tightly, staring dead-on through the gaping hole he'd made.
Through the breach, pale blue-white flames laced with phosphorus burned fiercely. Toxic gas hissed and spewed out.
BANG!
The door slammed open.
Perturabo stormed out, his face twisted in rage. The toxin pouring out from his chamber was hundreds of times more potent than anything Mortarion's burner had released.
"What the Fuck are you doing?!"
The Lord of Iron's furious roar detonated across the entire corridor.
Mortarion, across from him, gave a smile uglier than a grimace—but with his respirator on, all Perturabo could see was him squinting his eyes.
"Then what the hell are you doing, Perturabo?"
Mortarion hissed, the voice of Death demanding answers.
"That was a calculated and rational decision! Why are you so fixated on a necessary casualty?"
Perturabo shouted back.
They had already argued multiple times over comms before this—Mortarion, who had been uncharacteristically silent and aloof, had erupted in fury the moment he received the casualty report from the Graia-106 ground assault unit.
"So your idea of calculation is indiscriminate bombardment on a zone where Death Guard were present?"
Mortarion lowered his head, staring at Perturabo with unblinking intensity.
"According to the data, there was only one Death Guard there! And his biometrics showed he was already dead!"
Perhaps that Death Guard—Hades, was it?—had once left some sort of lasting or unique impression on Perturabo. But what did that matter to him?
He was metal. He was iron.
And now, standing face-to-face with his "brother," Perturabo spat the words:
"That was a corpse!"
"Don't tell me you still care about that! Mortarion, that was a corpse!"
Perturabo stared daggers at Mortarion, refusing to back down. Look at him, he thought. Such a fragile Primarch, enraged over the loss of a single son.
Then Perturabo smirked mockingly. He remembered Mortarion's past jabs at him—and now, he had found the perfect wound to press on.
"Lord of Death... is your title a joke?"
"You care this much about one casualty—can you even command a war?"
Mortarion froze for a second at the insult, but an even greater fury surged from within, blazing through his frail and sickly frame.
"I promised death," Mortarion growled, grinding each word out.
"But not this kind of death."
"Not. This. Kind!"
With a furious snarl, Mortarion swung his scythe.
Anticipating the move, Perturabo raised his warhammer to block the heavy blow.
The clash of metal screamed in protest, sharp sparks flying from the impact point between two godlike beings.
"Watch yourself," Perturabo warned, half-smirking as he locked eyes with Mortarion.
"You know what it means to initiate combat outside the dueling cages."
Among the Legions, such attacks—especially with hostility—were heavily laced with political implications.
But Mortarion didn't care.
He pressed downward, driving his scythe hard, its edge glancing off Perturabo's shoulder and leaving a deep gash in the yellow-and-black armor.
Perturabo's expression darkened, but he refused to descend into a pointless brawl with this barbarian from an agrarian world.
He knew he was in the right. Even if their brothers came to judge the matter, he would be the one standing on firm ground.
A clean, total bombardment that annihilated the enemy's core force—without cost?
Don't talk to Perturabo about dishonoring corpses. In war, life was the cheapest statistic.
In every campaign, there had always been "suicide squads" and "bait teams."
This was nothing new.
Even if the entire strike team had been within the bombing zone, Perturabo would've simply warned them to dodge and still continued the bombardment.
He stared at Mortarion.
The Lord of Death now resembled a furious, caged beast pacing in circles, unable to break free.
"He wasn't dead."
Mortarion spoke in a low, threatening tone.
It was unclear whether he was arguing with Perturabo, or simply stating what he believed to be the truth.
But he had stopped attacking.
Still, Perturabo noticed that Mortarion's hand, clenched around his scythe, was trembling slightly, ready to strike again at any moment.
Perturabo blinked slowly, a look of contempt flickering in his eyes.
Look at him, he thought.
This "brother" of his, supposedly unhinged and consumed by madness—how fragile, how pathetic.
Perturabo, who prided himself on being steel, knew this much:
He would never waste so much emotion on the fates of foolish mortals.
He pulled up the data logs from the incident, projecting them into the air.
"See this?" he said coolly.
"Before I gave the order, this Death Guard's vital signs had already flatlined."
A single calm line stretched across the display—no pulse, no life signs.
He had seen that number with his own eyes.
And for a moment, Mortarion felt like he was standing once more on the deepest, darkest wastelands of Barbarus.
Alone.
Hades, Calas—they were gone.
Only he remained, abandoned in the cold of space.
Forced to call tyrants and kings "brother."
Forced to face war.
Forced to face the deaths of his sons.
Ever since he'd been made to wear the thorny cloak called "Primarch," no mortal had ever truly tried to understand him again.
Each Primarch was a lonely being.
Even before they were found, their transcendent nature set them apart, making it nearly impossible to find someone who could understand them—someone who could relate.
And when they were found, that so-called father had promised them "brothers."
Brothers.
It was supposed to mean kindred spirits.
Equals.
Family.
Sanguinius and Horus.
Magnus and the Khan.
Fulgrim and Ferrus.
Guilliman and Corax.
But clearly—not all Primarchs had found someone among these "brothers" to fill the hole inside them.
Maybe the lucky ones had already found human friends before they were taken.
Maybe for Roboute Guilliman, it was his adoptive parents.
Maybe for Lion El'Jonson, it was Luther.
Mortarion stared at the one before him, his supposed "brother," the one he had been promised, and now, the one who had destroyed Mortarion's friend.
He never should've expected anything from these "brothers."
Quite the opposite—he should have been guarding against them.
Dead.
Gone forever.
On some distant, cold, forgotten little world.
The anger inside him burst.
Only helplessness remained.
A great sorrow and despair welled up inside, suffocating him.
Mortarion stood there in hopeless silence, wondering whether to swing his scythe at Perturabo again.
But it was all meaningless now.
Everything had become dull and absurd.
Then, a small message blinked on the projected display in front of Perturabo:
[My lord, strike team member Dantioch has regained consciousness. Vital signs stable. The others remain asleep, but are not in danger.]
Mortarion blinked.
Aboard the Death Guard's vessel, the strike team's warriors were still unconscious, but the Apothecaries had assured him—they would live.
"Bring him here."
Mortarion said. It wasn't a request.
It was a command.
Perturabo stared coldly at Mortarion, but still gave the order to summon Dantioch.
Not out of kindness—far from it.
He wanted to prove his command had been flawless, irrefutable.
He would have Dantioch stand before Mortarion and clearly state the objective truth: Hades was dead.
And Perturabo himself?
He would personally block the scythe Mortarion might swing in response, a gesture of reward for Dantioch, bearer of confirmation.
But then…
Dantioch's answer surprised everyone.
He stood straight and firm before the two Primarchs, wearing only the simplest of combat fatigues—fresh from the Medical Room.
Dantioch kept his face carefully expressionless, but the sight before him—a pale, white flame burning between the two giants, toxic gas wafting out in slow coils— was something no mortal could fully ignore.
The two Primarchs seemed not to notice.
They simply stared at him, hard and unblinking.
As if one wrong word would see him crushed to powder.
At this moment, Dantioch couldn't help but feel…confused.
His Genefather, Perturabo, broke the silence, voice low and deliberate.
"Did you take note of a Death Guard by the name of Hades during the operation?"
A jolt ran through Dantioch's chest.
Hades' words still echoed faintly in his mind, like a ghost at his shoulder.
"Yes, my lord. I did notice him."
Immediately, the tension between the two Primarchs thickened, as if his single sentence had fed the fire between them.
"Then give me a full report," Perturabo ordered.
"Tell me the entire sequence of the operation."
"And what exactly that Death Guard did."
Dantioch swallowed hard.
He tried to gather his thoughts—but something was off.
The latter parts of the battle…
They felt blurry, disjointed in his mind.
But he knew Perturabo was not a Primarch who waited patiently, nor one who tolerated hesitation, so he began to speak calmly, methodically, stripping all emotion from his tone as it echoed down the corridor.
Mortarion, Dantioch sensed, was growing increasingly agitated.
But he remained silent, letting Dantioch continue.
"After analysis and comparison of the field data… Hades chose to initiate the assault. He consulted with me—"
He didn't finish the sentence.
Mortarion let out a huge, rattling breath, like a dying man with consumption gasping desperately for air.
Perturabo flicked a glance at him, still the picture of steel and unbending will.
"Continue," he said.
Dantioch swallowed again and pressed on.
And now, for the first time, Perturabo felt a faint pang of regret for the death of that Death Guard.
Such a sharp mind.
A warrior who could even grasp his strategies.
Such men were rare now.
He savored the sound of Mortarion's labored breathing, as though the Lord of Death himself were at death's door.
And in a twisted way, Perturabo found himself hoping Mortarion truly was as close to the end as he looked.
"And then…"
Dantioch, for once, paused. A rare expression of confusion flickered across his face.
Perturabo's irritated voice broke in—Dantioch had been this close to reaching the part Perturabo cared about most, the part that would determine whether he had won.
"Continue."
Dantioch hesitated.
His memories were distorted, smeared with white and black like corrupted data.
Swirling, roaring fragments of pure, inky blackness, chaotic and unreadable.
"…I—I forgot?"
Dantioch muttered, quietly and in disbelief.
But he quickly straightened up and gave his formal report, precise and professional.
"My memory has sustained damage, my lord."
"Beyond a few scenes of overwhelming darkness—blacker than black—there's nothing. That's where it ends."
The two Primarchs facing him both froze for a moment.
"What do you mean?"
Perturabo roared.
And Mortarion, who had moments before been consumed by despair, suddenly widened his eyes.
That…
That was a sign of prolonged exposure to Hades' Black Domain.
But… why would Hades use the Black Domain on allies?
And more importantly—where was he now?
Still, it gave Mortarion a sliver of hope.
A ridiculous, fragile possibility.
Could the Black Domain have shielded Hades from the Iron Warriors' bombardment?
But if so…
Why had they only found what seemed like his helmet in the search, and nothing else?
<+>
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