Damn that hurts!"
"It feels like something in my brain is gone — the Butcher's Nails have disappeared!"
A dazed Angron rubbed the back of his skull, and when he did, he found that the Butcher's Nails that had been driven into the back of his head were simply gone.
For the current Angron, this was nothing short of a miracle.
By all accounts, not even the Emperor himself had been able to remove the thing.
"Primarch!"
The moment Angron stood up, a full Chapter's worth of warriors dropped to their knees before him in unison!
They knelt on one knee, clutching various close-combat weapons.
Fighting against the buzzing interference of the false Butcher's Nails, they did their best to maintain their reason and observe proper decorum in the presence of their Primarch.
"What happened to me? Where exactly is this? Why does that arena look so familiar?"
"Can someone tell me why I've shrunk and turned into a mortal girl?"
"Wait — could this be my home planet?"
The assembled Eaters of Worlds were taken aback.
Wow, our Primarch can speak in full sentences now!
And without flying into a rage — this was nothing short of a miracle!
Even so, Angron's small face was still twisted into a scowl, his little features scrunched up as he glared hatefully at the enormous colosseum in the distance.
If one had to put Angron's hatred of that place into words —
It was like a wronged protagonist finally laying eyes on the place of her greatest humiliation —
If it weren't for those damned people, he never would have had the Butcher's Nails driven into him, and his foster father would never have died!
And if it weren't for the Butcher's Nails, he would never have been turned into a raving madman!
Caleb also probed Angron's inner mind with a brief psychic reading.
He had expected to find a raging berserker — but what he discovered instead was that Angron's true self was just a foolish kid who didn't particularly enjoy fighting and only ever wanted to sit and talk with his warriors.
What a cruel twist of fate.
A support-role character who had only a modest capacity for combat had been forcibly rewritten into a berserker by Khorne.
No wonder that bastard Khorne was always itching to pull Saint Sanguinius— a player who loved berserker types would naturally be furious at being handed a support character instead!
[Angron: This can't be right — it must be an illusion!]
[Why does this place look so much like the arena where I was enslaved? How is that possible?]
[Damn them, those wretched battle-psykers are going to nail the Butcher's Nails into me and humiliate me beyond endurance!]
[No — I'll cut those animals down!]
[Without those accursed nails, why would I ever make my sons wear them?!]
The surrounding Eaters of Worlds raised their heads slightly, staring in disbelief at their Primarch — now in the form of a young girl — thinking exactly that.
They had always assumed the Butcher's Nails were a tradition, a tool that bound them to their Primarch.
It turned out their Primarch had never wanted the damned things to begin with!
A veteran World Eater stepped forward and offered a suggestion: "My lord Primarch, shall we move ahead and take a look?"
"We don't know why we've come to this place, but I can feel an overwhelming lust for slaughter emanating from up ahead!"
"I believe there's plenty of fighting waiting for us!"
Angron glanced back, and sure enough, a small number of his sons had already picked up their axes and were raring to go.
Several of those without helmets had eyes that had gone blood-red, ready to charge in and start hacking!
Clearly, even a false set of Butcher's Nails was enough to have a profound effect on these warriors.
"Hold on!"
Angron set down his battle-axe, put one hand on his hip, and fixed a sharp gaze on the warriors who bore the Butcher's Nails, then gave his order.
"First, let me pull those Nails out of you!"
"I'll perform a little cranial surgery. Don't worry — I've got experience. It'll be quick!"
[Eaters of Worlds: Wait — is this right? Opening our skulls straight away? This doesn't feel right…]
[Angron: No matter what, those things have to come out. If they don't — you'll have no future!]
[Mission Start: Help Angron rescue his foster father!]
[The timeframe is the 30K era. You must complete this mission before the Emperor's Great Crusade fleet arrives!]
"Oh? We've gone back to the future?" Caleb smirked.
Caleb looked at the objectives on the board and felt his interest pique.
This was no standard Warhammer campaign — it was an entirely new scenario!
And the deployment point cap was extremely low: just 2,000 points in total.
That meant deploying one Chapter's worth of warriors plus the Gene-Primarch herself had already used the entire budget — nothing left to bring in anything else.
"Is this the method to reshape Angron's soul?"
"That makes sense — the warp can invert cause and effect after all. If all it takes is saving someone who would have been killed by Angron anyway, it shouldn't be too difficult."
Caleb murmured to himself, then noticed the mission title: Prologue.
Fair enough — the original storyline really was a mess.
Without some special method of reshaping Angron's inner self, a completely uncontrollable lunatic wasn't worth fielding at all.
The slave-fighting pit roared with the sounds of slaughter.
Merciless slavemasters were driving their carefully selected slaves into the pit for bloody combat!
Vast sums of money piled up on the betting tables, wagered on gore and death.
These men possessed advanced weapons, yet used them only to enforce the most primitive of brutality.
Materials that should have belonged to the Age of Technology had been reduced to ordinary blades and clubs — an utter waste.
Battle-psykers encircled the arena.
The octagonal fighting pit bore the unmistakable hallmarks of Khorne's influence.
Skulls were piled around its edges, arranged in groups of eight — Khorne's sacred number.
Caleb had once wondered why Angron had been so helpless against the slavemasters. Could he really not escape?
Now it was plain to see: Angron had been dropped right into Khorne's domain from birth!
It would have been a miracle if he'd managed to unify even one planet under those conditions!
Why hadn't the Primarch been able to use his charisma? Why had his abilities been suppressed?
He had landed in the Dark God's own backyard — he was already Khorne's property the moment he arrived. How could he have ever escaped?
Organizing a slave uprising in a place like this was nothing but a pipe dream.
This poor wretch, Angron — from the very beginning, he was always fated to become the Red Angel.
And there, at the centre of the altar — a hulking figure drenched in blood was glaring upward at the slavemasters with eyes full of hatred!
His head was matted with gore, and the Butcher's Nails at the back of his neck had been driven deep into his brain — immovable, irremovable.
It was in this moment that Angron had ceased to be himself.
The moment those Nails were hammered in, the original Angron had already died.
[Angron: Have we come too late? It seems I still can't save myself…]
By the time the girl-Angron led her warriors to the outer ring of the fighting pit, the Butcher's Nails ritual was already complete — the Angron who had once been was gone.
In that moment, the girl-Angron suddenly felt a wave of disorientation, because she realized — the self she was now felt like her true self.
"Primarch!"
The sight struck the Eaters of Worlds like a blow to the head.
In the same arena, there were two Primarchs!
One was the Angron pinned down by some unseen force, and the other was the twin-tailed girl beside them, battle-axe in hand.
"Lock Angron in an iron cage!"
"Not until the duelist is dead!"
"By the War God, only victors are permitted to live in our arena!"
"Those who show mercy will be punished. Losers face only death!"
"You will fight and fight and fight, until you die!"
"This is the War God's gift to you!"
The slavemasters high above let out a single furious shout, and it was enough to crush those wretched slaves under its weight.
The lead figures — a handful of powerfully built battle-psykers — had already used their psychic might to leave the slaves gasping for breath.
Each of the eight psykers bore a different weapon, and together they formed the ritual core of the entire altar.
No wonder the Emperor had been unable to remove the Nails afterward. These eight battle-psykers had clearly anticipated the possibility and had deliberately worked a measure into their ritual to prevent it.
"Kill me, child. This was always written in fate."
"Only by killing me can you live. Live on — and become the liberator you once spoke of."
"No — Father — NO!" The last shred of reason in this era's Angron shattered.
The Angron controlled by the Butcher's Nails rose to his feet. He was about to kill his foster father, and with that act, take another irreversible step down the path of the Daemon Primarch.
[Caleb: Forget the rank-and-file, go save your foster father now!]
[There's no time to waste on foot soldiers. I know you hate those slavemasters — but save what matters first!]
The sudden voice cut through the girl-Angron's rage.
She bared her teeth, grinding her small, childlike canines, and cast a seething glare up at those damned slavemasters in the stands.
"Out of my way!"
"Don't you dare harm my father!"
The true Angron moved with enormous strides.
The twin battle-axes she carried were completely out of proportion with her small frame — each blade was bigger than her head.
"Yes, fight! Fight!"
"This is what the War God wants to see!"
"Blood! Battle! Blood! Battle!"
"Skulls for the Skull Throne! Blood for the Blood God!"
Caleb could see it clearly now — there were no ordinary people here. Every single one of them was a devotee of Khorne.
Cut down everyone in the stands and you wouldn't find a single innocent — well, perhaps the slaves were a different matter. The reason they were slaves in the first place was precisely because they had little natural sensitivity to the warp.
Crash!
The small body shot forward like a meteor.
To the stunned disbelief of all who watched, the girl-Angron slammed directly into her own body — her original shell — and sent it flying!
There was, of course, a significant gap in raw power between the shell and the true self.
Even with the Butcher's Nails now driving it into full frenzy, it was nowhere near enough to stand against a rational, compassionate Angron who was fighting with purpose.
"A brute lost in mindless slaughter!"
"As long as I stand here, you cannot touch him!"
"I said — I refuse to fight. I, Angron, have the right to choose who I fight!"
Angron turned the full force of her fury upon those eight silhouettes.
With her reason restored, Angron understood: these were the root of everything. If she could cut these eight down with her own hands, the wound that had festered in her soul might finally be cleansed.
"Angron?"
The girl-Angron watched helplessly as her foster father slowly approached the figure she had just kicked off the dais — the vessel that had borne the Butcher's Nails.
For reasons she couldn't fully explain, Angron felt a sharp pain in her chest.
She desperately wanted some other way — some different means by which she and her foster father might recognize each other.
"Take him away first."
With whatever reason remained to her, Angron finally gave the order for her warriors to take her old father away from the immediate danger.
It was the Primarch's command, and the other Eaters of Worlds were in no position to question it.
Once that matter was settled, Angron turned her full attention to the eight figures in the stands.
Those eight were themselves bewildered — because from where they stood, there were two Gene-Primarchs in this arena.
"This isn't what the War God's prophecy foretold. There cannot be two candidates for the War God's mantle!"
"Agreed — Angron is the chosen candidate. He must complete this final trial before his ascension can be fulfilled!"
The muscle-bound battle-psykers were already arguing among themselves about what to do next.
None of them had anticipated another Angron simply appearing out of nowhere.
Even so, they didn't take the girl-Angron's combat capability seriously. After all, Angron was something they'd once snatched up without much difficulty.
By now, their physical power had grown into something truly monstrous.
Eight warriors, eight weapons — they moved to kill Angron.
What they hadn't anticipated was that merely approaching the Primarch was enough: two of them were blown apart on the spot by the throwing axes she flung at them!
The rest were subdued in short order — Angron bound them with chains as thick as her own arm and kicked them aside like bundles of rubbish.
"For Angron! For the Gene-Father!"
Their own Primarch had already led the charge.
The rabbit-eared Eaters of Worlds surged forward!
Many of these warriors were from the 30K era, still armoured in Mark III — some even in Mark II — Power Armour.
But none of that hindered their twin-axe massacre of those wretched slavemasters.
Yet in the midst of all that bloodshed, a handful of warriors did lose their reason.
The connection to the warp here was inherently weak, and that very weakness left some of them vulnerable to its influence.
"Damn it all!"
[Angron: If those bastards dare lay a hand on these slaves, I'll make them regret it!]
[What kind of achievement is it to bully the helpless? If you want a real fight, come at me!]
One World Eater who had been advancing under the Butcher's Nails' influence suddenly stopped in his tracks.
He looked toward his Primarch, tilted his head slightly, and made his vow before her.
"My lord Primarch, it will not happen again!"
"As you will it, from this day my blade falls only upon those damned slavemaster oppressors!"
"If innocent blood ever again stains my chainblade, let my very soul be ground to nothing!"
Hum.
With those words spoken, the World Eater felt something press its mark into his heart.
That mark outweighed even the influence of the Butcher's Nails. The rage that had roiled in his mind went utterly still.
And then — the Butcher's Nails at the back of his skull slowly, quietly slipped free and fell away.
"Primarch!"
The others were still trying to make sense of what they'd witnessed when Angron simply stood in silence, looking at those she had once called comrades and kin.
All of these people — friends, family — would originally have died at her side. Some had died right before her eyes when the Emperor came to take her away.
Even now, she still could not understand why the Emperor had done what he did.
He had shown such warmth and care toward all her other brothers. Yet toward her, he had treated her as nothing more than a piece to be discarded.
[Caleb: Are you satisfied?]
The voice came without warning, resonating through Angron's inner mind.
By all rights, she should have been on guard against any strange voice.
But for reasons she couldn't explain, Angron found she trusted this voice instinctively.
She had been abandoned for so long — and now, suddenly, there was a presence that genuinely cared. It was hard not to pay attention.
[Angron: ... yes.]
Angron said little more. But whenever she focused her awareness on a person, she could hear their innermost thoughts.
[Old Gladiator: I hope Angron makes it out of this alive.]
[I really do hope he can truly become a liberator someday.]
"Mm." Angron's lips curved ever so slightly upward. In all this boundless confusion, only her foster father could still anchor her sense of self.
Though Angron suspected all of this was nothing but some kind of illusion, if it could lay an old regret to rest — that really wasn't so bad at all.
"Old warrior — would you be willing to join the Twelfth Legion?"
"I intend to establish a new Great Company. I'll call it — the Liberators."
[Caleb: Interesting!]
Watching Angron make this move, Caleb found himself growing genuinely fascinated with the Angron before him.
Without the Butcher's Nails, the shift in Angron's character was extraordinary.
She had developed a distinct revulsion toward the blood pooling on the ground and the mountains of skulls heaped around her.
She rejected them viscerally — because, in truth, her nature had always rejected them.
"Is that so?"
Angron watched her foster father gaze off into the distance.
Then the old man pointed at the figure that would one day bear the Butcher's Nails and said: "Then I thank you — but I think that boy may be better suited to the role of liberator than I am."
"Even in this crushing place, he managed to save quite a few people."
"If you can bring him in, he might be of far greater help to you, General."
"Perhaps." Angron watched as her Eaters of Worlds killed off the slavemasters one by one, and felt something loosen in her chest.
In that moment she even had the spirit to tease her foster father: "Maybe your future adopted son will become infamous across the galaxy — who knows?"
"The Red Angel — what a terrifying name that is."
The old gladiator couldn't make sense of what Angron was saying — but in truth, Angron was mocking herself.
The Angron of this moment was no war-hound. No blood-crazed berserker.
She was simply a Gene-Primarch — an ordinary one — a Gene-Mother with the capacity to heal the wounds of the soul.
Every time she watched one of her children cut down a slavemaster, Angron would silently praise that warrior in her heart.
And somehow — impossibly — the other Eaters of Worlds could hear their mother's voice.
[Angron: Well done, good child!]
[Those damned slavemasters deserve exactly this.]
[Looks like I'll need to provide some psychological counseling to these children. The more they kill, the more they'll need someone to guide them through it!]
[Eaters of Worlds: Wait — there are perks like this?!]
The Eaters of Worlds, already moving at extraordinary speed, immediately threw themselves into a complete and total killing frenzy.
In a bid to rack up the highest body count, a few of the more sharp-minded Eaters of Worlds even started quietly urging their brothers to slow down.
[World Eater A: Brother, pace yourself — going full throttle isn't healthy. Mama will worry!]
[World Eater B: Get lost. I know exactly what you're thinking!]
[Sure, I don't understand why we can hear our Primarch's inner thoughts —]
[— but these people deserve to die, and that's what our Primarch thinks, so that's what we'll do!]
[Are you trying to steal my spot on the psychological counseling list?!]
[You can get lost! Our dear Mama Primarch is mine — go die in a ditch somewhere!]
"Ugh…!"
Angron had finally noticed something was wrong.
Wait — her sons could hear her inner thoughts?
Well, that was just great. From now on, she and her children would be completely bare to one another.
And every single one of her sons had a mother complex.