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Chapter 40: The Red Sands of Brotherhood
The dying light of Nuceria's sun cast crimson shadows across the burning husk of Daishia. What should have been the gentle embrace of dusk was instead a hellish tableau painted in flame and blood.
The city that had once stood as a testament to the Tarka dynasty's cruelty now served as a monument to their destruction.
The screams of the dying echoed through smoke-choked streets where justice wore the face of vengeance.
Angron moved through the carnage like a force of nature given terrible purpose. His fury burned pure and righteous, unencumbered by the torturous devices that had claimed so many of his brothers and sisters. Every blow struck down an oppressor.
Every life taken balanced the scales of suffering that had weighed upon his people for too long.
Behind him came the gladiators, his brothers and sisters in bondage, now free to write their names in the blood of their tormentors.
They wielded stolen weapons with skills honed in the killing pits, turning the very arts forced upon them against their former masters.
"Blood for blood," snarled Yochuka, his blade still dripping from a guard's opened throat. At sixteen, he should have known the innocence of youth.
Instead, the Tarka had fed him to their arena, transforming a child into an instrument of death for their amusement.
Khyster, the huntress whose face bore the scars of seven years in the fighting pits, lifted a speared guard high above her head.
Blood cascaded down the weapon's haft, baptizing her ruined features. She had been robbed of beauty, of softness, of everything that might have defined her womanhoodâall sacrificed to satisfy the bloodlust of decadent nobles.
Among the vengeful gladiators moved Oenomaus, the old trainer who had been father to them all. His weathered hands, which had once guided young fighters in forms and stances, now guided them in the art of retribution.
This day had lived in his dreams for decades, the day when chains would break and accounts would be settled.
Even death held no terror for him now. They would die as free men, or live as free men. Either fate was victory.
The slaves fought with fury refined in the crucible of the arena, their skills turned against the high-born who had cheered their suffering. Knights and nobles died like rabid dogs in the streets they had once ruled.
"Angron, pleaseâI was mistaken, I know that nowâ"
A young knight, perhaps Yochuka's age, fell to his knees before the advancing Primarch. Silver-white tendrils of his augmetic implants writhed desperately, forming barriers of living metal.
These "Silver Vine" enhancements marked him as nobility, granting him strength and protection that had made him untouchable among lesser mortals.
Angron had felt the bite of such technology before, when he fought alone and weaponless. But those days were ended. The power-axe gifted by the Custodians hummed with barely-contained energy, its disruption field eager to taste noble blood.
"You do not know you were wrong," Angron growled, his massive fist connecting with the youth's skull. He seized the knight's head and drove it into the rockcrete with bone-crushing force. "You merely know you are about to die."
The Silver Vine barriers collapsed under the Primarch's assault like paper before flame.
"Is this not what you desired? Slaughter, cruel and absolute, was this not the spectacle that pleased you?" Angron's voice carried the weight of a thousand deaths witnessed, a thousand humiliations endured. "Now the entertainment is ours, and you find it lacking? How terribly selfish."
The knight's pleas dissolved into gurgling as Angron's fingers closed around his throat. With a sound like breaking timber, the Primarch twisted, ending the noble's protests forever.
"I will kill every last one of you," Angron whispered to the corpse. "Your children. Your bloodline. All of it."
The Tarka stronghold, for all its defensive measures, could not stand against the fury of the enslaved. When the gates fell, no quarter was given. The pain inflicted upon the gladiators over long years demanded payment in kind.
A child's cry pierced the din of battle.
"Father!" The boy could not have seen more than four summers.
The Tarka patriarch, fleeing with his personal guard, turned to see a slave hoist his youngest son high before dashing the child against the stones. Small limbs twitched once, then stilled.
"You damned butchers!" The lord's voice cracked with grief and outrage. "He was innocent! Four years old!"
The slaves showed no mercy. If anything, the lord's anguish seemed to fuel their cruelty. They impaled the small corpse upon a spear and paraded it through the burning halls, their laughter echoing off smoke-stained walls.
Even the mighty could bleed. Even the noble could weep. The revelation intoxicated the former slaves with its justice.
Angron did not intervene. Blood for bloodâit was humanity's oldest covenant, inscribed in the very marrow of the species. The Tarka had authored this tragedy with every lash, every forced battle, every life spent for their entertainment.
None of the high-born survived. Acid baths. Impalement. The beasts they had kept for sportâall became instruments of execution.
The patriarch himself was dismembered while still drawing breath, his screams joining the symphony of justice that echoed through Daishia's ruins.
The war raged from dusk to dusk, twenty-four hours of reckoning that painted the broken city crimson.
Black smoke shrouded the sky like a funeral shroud, and in its shadows, history itself was being rewritten.
Ra, commander of the Custodian Guard squad, observed the carnage with tactical detachment. The Emperor's will was clear; no word of the Twelfth Primarch's enslavement could reach the wider Imperium.
Such knowledge would tarnish the Emperor's divine image, undermine the myth of the Primarchs as perfect gene-forged demigods.
The nobles of Nuceria would die. Their civilization would be cleansed in blood and flame. Only ash and carefully crafted lies would remain.
When the killing finally ended, the surviving aristocrats knelt in chains before their conquerors. Pride had been stripped away along with their finery, leaving only terror and the sharp scent of voided bowels.
"Their fate rests in your hands, Twelfth," Ra intoned, approaching Angron with the measured steps of a predator. "As the Emperor's son, judgment is your prerogative."
The kneeling nobles looked up with desperate hope, praying that mercy might yet save them from their slaves' fury.
Angron's smile was a terrible thing to behold.
"Send them to the arena," he commanded. "Let Nuceria witness one final gameâthe last gladiatorial contest this world will ever know. One may survive to bear witness to the end of the slave epoch."
Despair replaced hope on noble faces as the gladiators surged forward, dragging their former masters toward the killing pits. Every cruelty, every humiliation, every death would be repaid with interest.
"It is finished here, Twelfth," Ra declared. "The time has come to depart."
"To where?" Angron gazed across the burning city, reluctance flickering in his dark eyes.
"To the stars. To meet your gene-sire and your brothers." Ra's voice carried the weight of imperial decree.
"Go with them, my son." Oenomaus stepped forward, his scarred hands coming to rest on Angron's massive shoulders. "From the moment I first saw you, I knew your destiny lay beyond Nuceria's blood-soaked sands."
"Butâ" The Primarch's reluctance was plain. These gladiators were his family, forged in shared suffering and tempered in the fires of the arena.
"Nuceria will be rebuilt," Ra interjected smoothly. "The Imperium will ensure your people know freedom. You need not concern yourself with their welfare."
The promise, hollow though it was, swayed Angron's decision. He embraced Oenomaus, bid farewell to his gladiator brothers and sisters, and departed with the golden-armored Custodians.
An auxiliary force remained behin, not to liberate, but to ensure compliance with Imperial doctrine.
As his transport climbed toward the stars, Angron's mind churned with questions and fears. "What manner of men are my father and brothers?"
The Emperor's flagship, Bucephalus, thrummed with the barely-contained energies of the Great Crusade. In its training decks, warriors honed themselves into instruments of Imperial will, their augmented forms pushing the boundaries of human capability.
Cheers erupted as Horus, bare-chested and gleaming with sweat, threw an Astartes warrior whose gene-seed had not yet fully matured.
The Sixteenth Legion's chosen son had made these training sessions his daily ritual, and his prowess grew with each passing day.
"Your skills improve beyond measure," called one of the warriors, stepping forward with genuine admiration. "We eagerly await the day we fight at your side."
Warriors from other Legions watched with poorly-concealed envy. Their own Primarchs remained lost among the stars, their return dates unknown. The Sixteenth Legion's fortune seemed almost cruel in its abundance.
Horus basked in their praise, hoping word of his achievements would reach the Emperor's ears. Recognition from his gene-sire mattered above all else.
"I long for the day you take command of the Legion, Horus." A new recruit pushed through the crowd, his eyes bright with hero-worship.
The words pleased Horus greatly. "What is your name, brother?"
"Ezekyle Abaddon, my lord. Like yourself, I hail from Cthonia."
Horus would have continued the conversation, but the arrival of Custodian Guards cut short all discourse. They bore an imperial summonsâthe Emperor commanded his presence immediately.
Reluctantly abandoning his conversation with Abaddon, Horus followed the golden-armored figures through the ship's baroque corridors.
They led him to a magnificent audience hall, its vaulted ceiling lost in shadows that seemed to pulse with barely-contained power.
A figure stood at the chamber's centerâbroad-shouldered, scarred, radiating the barely-leashed violence of the arena.
The moment Horus laid eyes upon him, recognition flared. This was kin. This was brother. Another son of the Emperor.
The knowledge should have brought joy. Instead, it kindled something darkerâa territorial instinct that made Horus's jaw clench and his eyes narrow.
"Your hostility is plain to see," the gladiator observed, his voice carrying the rough edges of Nuceria's fighting pits. "Do you seek to challenge me to combat?"
The question hung in the air between them like a blade, waiting to fall. Two sons of the Emperor, meeting for the first time, already sizing each other for weakness.
In the shadows above, the very air seemed to hold its breath, waiting to see what manner of brotherhood would emerge from this first, fateful encounter
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