"Ah. Such a formidable body. Such a… tempting prize."
The Slaaneshi twin executioners circled the Lord of Ultramar with naked hunger in their eyes.
Roboute Guilliman's physique was stubbornly unbreakable. It had taken days of constant assault to finally drive him down. That resilience only made him more valuable as bait, and more dangerous as a trophy.
"It's a pity," one of them purred, forcing restraint into her voice. "The Phoenician requires this vessel, for a trap far more poisonous than our appetites."
This prey did not belong to them.
It belonged to Fulgrim, and to the duelling arena itself.
They tore away what remained of his wargear. The Armor of Fate had been battered into ruin in the prolonged frenzy. Guilliman was bound by thorned bone-spines and hung suspended above the ground, his battered form displayed as a spectacle for the laughing warp-things in the stands.
"Wretch," Fulgrim said, looking up at him with a curl of disdain. "Pray for my mercy."
The lash cracked.
Barbed venom bit into Guilliman's flesh, dragging agony across nerve and soul alike. Fulgrim's jealousy was as petty as it was vicious. He could not tolerate any reminder, in any form, that a loyal brother still possessed what he had abandoned.
Guilliman did not scream.
His face, carved like marble, twisted with pain that sank deeper than bone. Yet he clenched his teeth until they threatened to splinter. A cry would be weakness. Weakness would be a crack. A crack would become corruption.
"That wasn't an honour duel," Guilliman forced out, voice raw. "It was a coward's mob."
Fulgrim only laughed.
Honour had been burned out of him long ago. Shame had become a toy he broke for sport. And now, this arena, this trap-circle, this entire theatre, existed for one purpose.
To draw the Savior in.
"You're suffering," Fulgrim said softly, mockery dressed as sympathy. "Soul-venom is not so easily resisted. If you must cry out, do it. It will feel… better."
He leaned back on his throne like a performer enjoying applause.
"Look at you," he continued. "Fallen like a gutter-creature. A primarch made into a captive. A spectacle. The warp will witness a son of the Imperium… brought low."
As he spoke, the twin executioners produced instruments that were never meant for justice. They were crafted for breaking. For stripping dignity from a being one breath at a time, until only ruin remained.
Only a primarch's body and soul could endure even a fraction of it.
Fulgrim watched Guilliman's endurance with relish, drinking in the cruelty like perfume.
"Pain isn't all I prepared," he said, eyes bright with anticipation. "I have gifts beyond it. You should thank me. I will 'free' emotions you pretended you never had."
The arena roared.
A tide of intoxicating mist poured forth, saturated with the authority of the Prince of Excess. It coiled around Guilliman, seeped into his senses, and turned the air into a drugged lie.
If Eden had been here, he would have recognised it at once.
A Slaaneshi illusion.
A hallucination forged to drown thought in craving, to replace will with want. Primarchs could resist it, sometimes. They could not ignore it.
"You bastard," Guilliman snarled, straining against his bonds. "You will not unmake my will. I will never kneel."
His resolve held. The mirages of ambition and adoration, the honeyed praise, the seductive promises, the insistent whispers. They slid off him like rain off stone.
If that was all Fulgrim had, then Fulgrim had underestimated him.
Then a familiar voice cut through the fog.
"Roboute. Your will… does you credit."
The tone was regal, steady, and threaded with warmth that Guilliman had not allowed himself to imagine for a long, long time.
"Yvraine…"
Guilliman jerked his head up.
Before him stood a beautiful Aeldari warrior, one of their most potent figures, the Emissary of Ynnead herself. The Aeldari were perfection made flesh, and Yvraine embodied that artistry. Even wounded, even battered, she seemed unreal, like a masterpiece that had stepped out of a shrine.
And in this illusion, she looked at him with open emotion.
The mist thickened. Slaanesh's authority pressed harder. Corruption deepened.
Fulgrim had fallen this way once, drowning in the sweetness of a lie until it became a chain.
"What is happening to me?" Guilliman rasped.
His physiology betrayed him, the mist twisting instinct into something he despised. His control faltered. His heart thundered. Shame flooded him, sharp as a blade.
"No," he forced out. "This is deception. I… I have never… I have never wanted anything from an alien. Never."
"Roboute," Yvraine murmured, still poised, still graceful. "Hope's flame, for humans and Aeldari alike. I understand what you fear."
She stepped closer, each movement engineered to invite surrender.
"Do not strangle your heart and call it virtue. Your kind was built into tools, robbed of what makes you whole. If you will not release it yourself… then let me help you."
"No."
Guilliman tried to refuse.
The world lurched.
He was no longer hanging in the arena. He was seated upon the throne of Ultramar, wearing only a simple blue robe, as if the past had been rewritten in a single breath. Yvraine leaned in, and the illusion forced intimacy upon him like a verdict.
The stands erupted in delirium.
"What a glorious scene," Fulgrim breathed, eyes wide, fingers gripping his throne's armrests. "Record it. No… I need more. I need something truly profane."
His earlier bitterness evaporated into satisfaction.
He had already taken prizes beyond expectation. The holy blade of the Corpse-Emperor, the Emperor's Sword, was in his grasp. Its loss would wound the Imperium's might, especially its highest champions.
And he had also secured a weapon the Aeldari feared to see in enemy hands.
Asu-var, the Sword of Silent Screams, an Aeldari crone-artifact said to be a dire threat even to the Prince of Excess.
On top of that, he had Guilliman.
A loyal primarch caught mid-corruption.
"I hold what the hypocrite cannot abandon," Fulgrim said, lips curling into a confident smile. "He will come."
The Savior would walk into this arena.
Into traps layered upon traps.
"But before that," Fulgrim continued, voice bright with malice, "Roboute will suffer longer. He will be dragged through disgrace until the Imperium forgets his name, or spits it like poison."
Then Fulgrim's eyes gleamed with a new idea.
Eden had once recorded Fulgrim's humiliation and used it as a leash.
Fulgrim had learned the lesson.
He would do the same.
He would capture Guilliman's forced disgrace, and spread it through the Imperium like a plague of shame. The Lord Commander of the Imperium, the Lord of Ultramar, "defiled" in the arms of an alien leader.
How deliciously corrosive it would be.
Humanity still hated xenos by instinct and doctrine. Even when alliances existed, they were knives held behind smiles. If the Imperium saw Guilliman in such a scene, the outrage would be volcanic. Faith would fracture. Morale would rot.
The hypocrisy would scream louder than any daemon.
Fulgrim savoured the thought until it became almost intoxicating.
"Savior," he whispered, "you built humanity a psychic network. And you also built them a perfect channel for infection."
Above the arena, Fulgrim tore open a small breach. He produced an Imperial data-slate and logged into a freshly stolen burner account. With manic speed, he tried to upload tens of thousands of frames from the illusion, flooding forum after forum across the PsyNet.
He wanted the Imperium to see it immediately.
"So it begins."
Then the slate flashed red.
A triangle sigil. A hard lock.
Text scrolled in harsh warning:
"In the Savior's name, we defend Imperial decency. Your actions violate PsyNet Ordinances. Surrender at once and await adjudication."
The slate froze. Dead. Unresponsive.
"Lord Fulgrim," an Emperor's Children captain said, sounding far too experienced for comfort. "The material you tried to upload triggered PsyNet enforcement. The account, and likely this device, have been flagged and sealed."
He swallowed, then spoke faster.
"Destroy it. Re-shroud the arena. If we delay, the node can be traced."
To the PsyNet, every data-slate was a node. Nodes could be located. And a careless node could become a noose.
"What a waste," the captain muttered under his breath. "A perfectly good burner."
He knew the modern PsyNet better than his primarch did. Many Slaaneshi entities had been quietly spreading filth and corruption for a long time, using stolen accounts, coded channels, and paid services. The PsyNet fought back hard. They adapted anyway.
Some of the most infamous contraband images circulating among Mechanicus-aligned hoarders, the "machine-maiden" blasphemies and half-ironic cult art, came from those very hands.
Even "Savior portraits," carefully moderated to stay beneath the most severe thresholds, existed because Eden had deliberately allowed them.
Total suppression cost too much. Better to quarantine, vent, and monitor. Eden's institutes had proven that mild indulgence did not automatically corrode the human mind. In many cases it reduced psychological pressure.
The old Imperium's approach, banning everything and grinding humanity into silence, only fed the Prince of Excess. Repressed emotion did not vanish. It sought an outlet, and when it burst, it did so as extremity, obsession, and spiritual fracture.
It was the perfect recipe for mass indulgence, cult frenzy, and real blasphemy.
So Eden's domain purged the truly inhuman machines and rituals first, the institutionalised cruelty that produced suffering like a factory.
The flagellant devices that lashed believers into constant pain.
The penitents locked into walking coffins of agony.
Even the dreadnought-sarcophagi that some Astartes begged to be spared, praying for peace and being "misheard" into eternal war.
That kind of suffering fed Slaanesh far more efficiently than a hidden picture ever could.
In short, looking at something mildly risqué on the legal PsyNet was rarely the problem.
But primarch blasphemy was another category entirely.
Fulgrim crushed the frozen data-slate in one hand and resealed the arena's position with a fresh shroud.
"This counts as 'too forbidden'?" he snarled, fury rising. "That tame little scene?"
He seethed, remembering Eden and the loyalists watching his own humiliation.
He needed revenge.
And he needed it wider, louder, and more poisonous.
"No matter what it takes," Fulgrim hissed, "that footage will spread through the Imperium."
He reached out across the warp, contacting the weaver of fates, Kairos Fateweaver, requesting a method to corrupt the PsyNet's protections.
He did not need long.
He only needed milliseconds. A single moment to push the blasphemy into enough places that it could never be fully erased.
Kairos agreed with unsettling ease. The PsyNet was a perfect window into thought, and thought was the true battlefield.
He demanded a heavy price in warped faith, then summoned Chaos artificers to build a new ritual array, linking it to additional data-engines of corruption.
It would take ninety-nine hours to complete.
Fulgrim lowered his gaze back to Guilliman.
He wanted more.
Not just Guilliman's disgrace.
When the Savior arrived, Fulgrim intended the same for him.
"Audience," the Emperor's Children announcer said, voice trembling with excitement as he fanned the spectacle. "You are about to witness one of the most profane scenes in the galaxy. You will be stunned, or you will tremble. If you are timid, close your eyes."
The daemons cheered, desperate for escalation.
They had grown impatient watching an illusion circle the edge of intimacy without crossing the line. They wanted something truly shocking.
Then the arena's mood snapped.
A wave of horrified gasps rolled through the stands. Some warp-things shifted uneasily. Others recoiled, suddenly afraid of what they were being asked to witness.
In the illusion, Yvraine drew back, her voice softening.
"Roboute," she said gently, "perhaps… we should invite another."
She looked down from the throne.
Guilliman followed her gaze.
What he saw nearly shattered him.
At the foot of the throne stood the Emperor.
Clad in gold.
But rendered as a blasphemous, youthful maiden-shape, a grotesque caricature designed for maximum spiritual violation.
"Emperor…" Guilliman whispered, the word tearing out of him like a wound.
His mind locked up for a heartbeat.
This was the Prince of Excess at its most monstrous. Not seduction. Not temptation.
A psychic strike meant to traumatise, to scar the soul until it could no longer hold its shape.
Even some daemons looked away.
Who dares stare at such a curse?
Zzzzt.
Guilliman's will detonated like a solar flare.
In the instant that abomination appeared, he rejected it. He tore it out of the illusion and burned the memory down to ash, leaving no imprint behind.
He slumped back on the throne, as if he had spent every remaining shard of strength just to remain himself.
The moment the maiden-emperor image vanished, the stands exhaled in relief.
Even Fulgrim, the architect of the outrage, felt a cold thread of danger tighten around his spine.
For a heartbeat, he had sensed something.
A warning. An omen.
But when nothing happened, he forced himself to relax.
"The Corpse-Emperor cannot break free of the Golden Throne's chains," Fulgrim told himself. "Not into this region of Chaos."
He steadied his hand, strengthened the illusion's pressure again, and very carefully avoided "big moves" from that moment onward.
Then he produced a strange stone.
Across its surface, gold and black energies clashed like storm fronts, radiating the scent of raw authority.
The Maugetar Stone.
A high-tier relic capable of drinking in warp-essence itself.
And the key to stealing the Savior's power.
(End of Chapter)
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