[Faced with tens of thousands of alien creatures drawn from different races, different eras, and attack patterns that follow no single logic, you hold no illusions about the mathematics of the situation.]
[Even a fully armed Primarch might not achieve a clean victory here. You think briefly of Guilliman, the most methodical of your brothers in sustained engagement, and consider what even he would be looking at.]
[You are prepared to die alongside a significant number of the aliens. That has been the calculation since you pulled the molten bomb from your pack. You have died in simulation before. Being eaten alive after exhausting yourself, or left as a half-dead host for whatever biology these things carry inside them: those are worse outcomes than clean ash. The molten bomb is the better ending. You have already committed to it.]
[Your thumb presses the activation sequence.]
[Then you hear footsteps. Heavy. Fast. Coming from a metal passageway to your left.]
[Knock knock knock...]
[A figure drops from the passageway entrance and lands beside you with the ease of someone who finds this sort of arrival entirely unremarkable. He is tall, built in the proportions of a Primarch, clad in power armor worked in ornate purple and gold with a terracotta shell finish. His hair is long and pure white, and it moves in the disturbed air of the passage as he settles into his stance, one boot coming down across the body of an alien that had been closing on your flank.]
[He looks down at you. His purple eyes go immediately to the Blood Scythe in your grip.]
["Brother." A trace of something wry plays at the edge of his voice. "My first piece of advice: never treat an alien's weapons like treasures."]
["Fulgrim?" The word leaves your mouth before you have finished forming the thought. Your eyes have already gone wide.]
["My second piece of advice." He does not answer the question. His expression shifts, something cooling behind the perfect lines of his face. "When the enemy's numbers are overwhelming, perfect technique is the only lifeline worth having."]
[He moves.]
[The power armor carries him forward in a single clean motion, and a longsword comes free of his waist in the same instant. The blade is narrow, its edge refined to a line so sharp it seems to mark a boundary between solid and air. He drives directly into the alien mass without slowing.]
[The longsword moves in short, exact arcs. Each stroke finds a different target, a different anatomy, a different weak point suited to a different creature. None of the aliens that reach for him connect. Their limbs and claws and reaching appendages find only the space he occupied a half-second before. His white hair moves through it all and is not touched.]
[The Slothaians come next, pressing forward in a cluster, their bodies writhing in patterns that defeat simple attack rhythms. The longsword adapts without pause, each thrust placed with precision into the junctions between armored segments, into the soft tissue at the joins, into anything that ends a creature's advance in one stroke rather than three.]
[Then the Hive Tyrant finishes extracting itself from the bottleneck of the far passageway. Its bulk fills the corridor mouth. It locks onto the Primarch and begins moving toward him, deliberate and unhurried, carrying the patience of something that has never needed to rush.]
[You take a breath and push your vibranium armor into motion.]
[Hissing sounds...]
[The Blood Scythe comes around in a heavy arc against the Hive Tyrant's carapace. The blade catches, grinds, and drives through, leaving a wound across the thick chitin that does not close. Purple-black fluid streaks the metal floor. You drive the next stroke into the same gap before the creature can reorient fully toward you.]
[The Primarch arrives at your shoulder a moment later, the last Slothaians finished. He reads the exchange in a single glance and takes the angle you have been pressing toward, his longsword finding the joint your strikes have been weakening.]
[Something in his attack pattern changes the way you are fighting. You cannot fully account for when it begins. His technique is clean enough that matching his rhythm becomes instinctive, and the Blood Scythe's arcs start shifting on their own: tighter, more deliberate, finding damage faster than before. The wounds on the Hive Tyrant are deepening at a rate that would not have been possible five minutes ago.]
[Hissing sounds...]
[The Hive Tyrant's massive head drops first. Then one limb. Then another. The full body weight crashes against the metal floor in a series of heavy, final impacts. You stand in the silence that follows and breathe.]
["Your grasp of combat is genuinely astonishing." The Primarch studies you with his purple eyes, longsword held in a loose reverse grip, the blade trailing dark fluid. "Not far behind mine, if I am being honest. This Hive Tyrant was a fraction of what it once was, which does not diminish what you just did. That distinction belongs to you."]
["Glory." The word comes out flat. The focused state is dissolving and in its place is a clear accounting of the energy you have spent getting here. "What practical use is glory?"]
[You turn to face him squarely. "A problem a single thermobaric bomb could have resolved is instead costing me energy I cannot recover cheaply. Fulgrim. Tell me honestly: was it worth it?"]
[Something crosses his face. It might be recognition. It might be something older than that.]
["Your reasoning reminds me of another brother." A faint smile, not entirely happy. "Come. We break out first. Then we argue philosophy."]
[He does not confirm or deny his identity. He simply turns toward the deeper corridor and extends the invitation to move.]
[You look once at the alien mass, still pressing forward, their advance slowing as the smell of the dead reaches them and the instinct that warns against approaching something dangerous wars with the hunger behind their eyes. You shake your head slowly.]
["Then we kill our way out. If we don't make it, we die in battle. I have no objection to that."]
[You activate your vibranium armor and follow him into the metal tunnel, the Blood Scythe already rising.]
[The time that passes after that does not resolve into clear intervals. There is the tunnel, the press of bodies, the consistent arc of the Blood Scythe, and the longsword moving at your side. At some point the alien blood has dried into the joins of your armor in dark patterns. Your hair, which was gray when this started, has gone a dull reddish-brown.]
[Then there is a section of tunnel that is quiet. No movement. No sound beyond your own breathing.]
[You check the corners. You listen. Then you turn to the Primarch.]
["Those creatures had been imprisoned for too long. The static confinement stripped their higher functions completely. Without that, even at a fraction of their original capacity, we would not have..."]
[The words stop.]
[You are looking at him. At the lines of his face, the particular quality of his bearing, the way he carries himself within the armor. Something has been sitting at the edge of your awareness since he first landed beside you, and it has now assembled itself into something clear and certain.]
[A brief sound escapes you.]
["You are not the traitor who could no longer be considered human." Your voice is quiet and very level. "Or rather: you are the clone that Fabius Bile made. Aren't you?"]
[The Primarch's expression does not change in the way a caught man's expression changes. A trace of something playful remains at the corner of his mouth as he holds your gaze.]
["Am I the reflection in the mirror, or the moon in the water?" His tone does not shift. "Brother, does it truly matter, whether I am him or not?"]
["There is only one thing I want to do after we leave this place." The playfulness fades. What replaces it is low and forceful, the voice of something with real feeling running underneath the perfect exterior. "I want to ask him directly. How does a traitor who murdered his own brother and gave himself to the Ruinous Powers look at his father's grief? How does he stand to have desecrated everything the name Imperial Phoenix was supposed to mean?"]
[The clone of Fulgrim holds your gaze and does not look away.]
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