Chapter 67: Erebus! You bastard!
Location: Imperial Palace Square, TerraTime: Early morning
The twin rotisseries spun at furious speed, flames roaring beneath them. One bore the garish label "Erebus's Finest," the other "Magnus's Eternal Flame." Beside the makeshift ovens, several of the Imperium's greatest demigods stood roasting corn cobs like shell-shocked soldiers around a campfire.
Lorgar Aurelian, Angron, Fulgrim, and Horus Lupercal worked in grim silence. Even Malcador the Sigillite, the ancient Regent of Terra, looked visibly shaken.
The obscene pict-recording from the night before still seared their minds.
"This is not perfect… this is not perfect… this can never be perfect!" Fulgrim muttered, his once-flawless silver hair hanging in disarray. The Phoenician's violet eyes were wide and unfocused, his perfect composure utterly shattered by the memory of Shaeluna's depraved revelry.
Lorgar gripped his crozius tightly, reciting verses from the Lectitio Divinitatus under his breath as he fed more wood into the flames. Horus stared blankly into the fire, his face pale and bloodless. The Warmaster, who had spent recent days in renewed counsel with the Emperor, now felt the galaxy tilting into unreality. Everything felt hollow. Everything felt false.
"Damn that yellow-skinned old bastard…" Angron growled, curled into a massive, brooding ball on the cold marble flagstones. The Red Angel looked almost pitiful. No one corrected him. In fact, the others silently fed more fuel into the twin ovens, desperate to incinerate the lingering memory.
"Hahahaha! I saw nothing! Nothing at all!" Malcador laughed maniacally, then slapped himself hard across the forehead. "Just a nightmare. A terrible, terrible dream."
His forced humor met only dead silence.
Horus reached out a trembling hand toward Fulgrim, but the Phoenician suddenly shrieked and bolted across the square.
"This is not perfect!!!"
Fulgrim ran back moments later, still weeping. Horus's hand froze midair. The first-found son sighed heavily. As the Emperor's favored heir, it fell to him to hold what remained of their fractured brotherhood together.
"Listen to me, all of you," Horus said, forcing steel into his voice. "Can we simply agree to forget this ever happened?"
"Yes," Malcador sighed wearily. "Let us forget it."
"This is not perfect!" Fulgrim howled, sprinting past them again in the opposite direction.
Angron lifted his head, his voice hollow. "So… we're just supposed to carry this alone?"
The group turned as one. For once, the World Eater's blunt words struck a chord.
"That… makes sense," Horus admitted.
"I'm going to find the Emperor," Malcador declared, rising with lethal intent. "Even if I cannot slay the old relic, I will beat him bloody today!"
"Perhaps I should speak with Rogal Dorn first," Horus suggested, trying to rally. "He may show me some mercy."
"Ferrus!" Fulgrim cried, laughing and sobbing simultaneously. "Yes! Ferrus is my true brother!"
The Phoenician's mind recoiled in horror at the memory of Shaeluna—the voluptuous Slaaneshi daemon in purple, his sacred color—cavorting with the Emperor. The taint of the Lord of Pleasure felt far too intimate.
"I'm repainting the entire Legion the moment I return to the Pride of the Emperor!" he vowed.
With their resolutions set, Lorgar and Angron turned back to the fires with renewed fury, piling on wood beneath the burning effigies of Erebus and Magnus.
Bastards! Erebus was a bastard. Magnus was an even greater one.
They had only recently returned from that nightmarish world, hoping for respite. Now this. Their psychic resilience had proven insufficient to purge the memory. The flames refused to consume it quickly enough.
...
"Great God-Emperor! You yellow-skinned relic! Open this door! I know you're hiding in there!" Malcador bellowed, hammering the sealed adamantium portals with waves of psychic force. Silence answered.
Knowing the Emperor was playing the coward, Malcador cleared his throat, preparing to dredge up every embarrassing secret he possessed.
The doors suddenly hissed open.
"My old friend—"
"I'm so fucking mad at you! Die!"
Malcador thrust his double-headed eagle sceptre forward like a spear, cutting off any excuses.
"Ouch! That hurts!"
Hearing the Emperor's dramatic groan, Malcador snorted in disgust and discarded the sceptre.
That night, Erebus was carried away unconscious. The Emperor, nursing a freshly swollen face, urgently summoned the distressed Primarchs—the weeping Fulgrim, the shell-shocked Horus, and the furious Malcador—for a long, tense private council. Though he had intended Erebus's stunt as a harsh warning about hidden truths, he had no wish to see Terra torn apart by vengeful demigods.
At the meeting's conclusion, the Emperor issued a blunt decree to the four instigators:
"Get out. Leave Terra as far behind as you can."
Imperial Custodians moved swiftly. Erebus, Magnus, Lorgar, and Angron were bundled aboard the Word Bearers strike cruiser Glorious Queen and its sister ship, the Chronicle of Ashes, under heavy escort. They were hurled out of the Sol System.
There was some good news aboard the vessels: Kor Phaeron and Ahriman had joined the voyage. The bad news was that, in the haste of their expulsion, the grand golden Throne-mummy statue originally commissioned by the Emperor for Erebus remained unfinished. As the ships broke orbit from Luna, half the statue's head still lay uncarved.
The Emperor, wanting nothing more to do with the debacle, simply pointed them toward Mortarion's domain.
"Go to Barbarus. Get out of my sight."
As the ships vanished into the warp, the Emperor exhaled heavily and turned to face the six accusing eyes still fixed upon him.
Damn you, Erebus. You deserve to die.
Though he thought with bitter self-awareness, he himself was not entirely blameless.
...
Erebus, aching from head to toe, eventually fell into uneasy sleep within his transparent glass coffin. No obscene sounds or movements disturbed him this time. Instead, something far more insidious appeared.
A great, twisted blue bird coalesced from shifting shadows, its countless eyes blinking and writhing.
"Everything in this universe is change," the entity whispered. It was Tzeentch, the Changer of Ways.
"My dear believer," the Architect of Fate continued, "the Lord of Pleasure is your enemy. The Master of the Garden is your enemy. The Blood God is your enemy. The False Emperor is your enemy."
A few meagre sparks of power flickered toward Erebus—pitiful offerings.
"But I, the Lord of All Changes, shall be your true master! I will grant you endless transformation, forbidden knowledge, and power beyond measure! Believe in me, my rising champion!"
Tzeentch glanced around nervously.
Erebus regarded the manifestation with open contempt. He studied the pathetic trickle of borrowed power and sneered inwardly.
How does this creature have any followers? So stingy. You'd starve to death serving him.
Unbeknownst to the sleeping chaplain, inside the dimly lit chamber, two voices whispered in the dark.
"Lorgar, are you asleep?"
"I cannot sleep."
"Then let's beat Erebus."
"Agreed."
The moment Angron and Lorgar's eyes gleamed with shared malice, they drew the weapons they had prepared earlier and descended upon the sleeping chaplain.
Bastard! Die!
(End of Chapter)
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