Chronicle, entry number thirty-three.
The Primarch Leman Russ received me on his bridge with a hug that dislocated my shoulder.
Then he asked me whether I had brought any food.
I told him yes, a ration pack.
He opened it, sniffed it and handed it back to me with a look of profound sadness.
“Remembrancer,” he told me, “we’re going to find you something better.” That sentence, I know now, was the true beginning of the conquest of a world.
I.
Sabaody
The Mechanicus reports spoke of a planet that was almost entirely ocean, with scattered islands, primitive technology, pirates everywhere, a corrupt world government and a military organization called the Marines that did not always know which side it was on.
Leman Russ, Wolf King of Fenris, Primarch of the Space Wolves, listened from his throne with a faraway look.
Everyone on the bridge believed he was processing the strategic information.
In reality he was thinking one single thing.
I’m hungry.
“My lord,” said a Rune Priest, an old wolf covered in scars.
“What are your orders?”
Russ rose and stretched like a beast waking up.
“We go down.” He paused.
“And I hope there’s something good to eat on this planet.”
The crew laughed.
The crew always laughed.
The crew did not know it wasn’t a joke.
* * *
The Sabaody Archipelago was built on giant mangrove roots, and bubbles rose from the ground and floated through the air as if the world were made of soap.
When the Thunderhawks came down over it, the merchants dropped their wares, the bounty hunters reached for their weapons and the pirates made for the nearest ship.
Russ walked down the ramp, sniffed the air and smiled.
“This place smells good.”
Tobías Garza came down behind him, green in the face, his hand on his dislocated shoulder.
“My lord, technically we ought to establish contact with the local authorities…”
“Technically,” said Russ, “we ought to establish contact with a restaurant.”
Njor, one of his warriors, caught a bubble in his hands and squeezed.
It didn’t pop.
“By my fangs, chief. These things are tough.”
“Or you’re losing your strength, Njor,” Gunnar mocked.
Ma’jor, the youngest of the pack, sniffed the air like a bloodhound and suddenly his face lit up.
“Chief! I found it!”
* * *
The restaurant was modest, with smoke pouring off the grill and a cook in an apron with a cigar.
When five giants in blue-gray armor came through the door, ducking so as not to break the frame, every customer froze with their fork in midair.
“C-can I help you?” stammered a waitress.
“You have food?” asked Russ.
“Y-yes…”
“Then I want your best table and your best dishes.” He smiled with every one of his fangs.
“We’re starving.”
The chairs creaked under their weight.
Tobías sat on a normal chair and ended up at the height of Gunnar’s elbow.
“Bring the best you’ve got,” said Russ.
“Meat. Beer. Whatever. But quickly, or I’ll have to go hunt something myself.”
Nobody knew whether it was a joke.
The cooks ran.
The first platter arrived four minutes later.
It was roast meat, juicy, with spices none of them had ever smelled before.
Russ took a piece, bit into it… and went still.
The Wolves stared at him.
Tobías stared at him.
The waitress stared at him in fear.
“By the Throne,” Russ whispered.
“This is… this is the best thing I have ever eaten in my life.”
And then the feast began.
The Wolves devoured everything as if they hadn’t eaten in weeks, tearing off chunks with their hands, downing jugs of sake and beer in a single gulp.
The plates piled up.
In the kitchen, the panic was total.
“Where the hell did these monsters come from?!” shouted a cook.
“They’re going through a whole week’s stock!”
“Bring out more Sea King meat!”
Russ pounded the table.
“What meat is this?! Tell me what creature it is!”
“I-it’s Sea King meat, sir,” said the waitress.
“Monsters from the seas of the New World…”
The Wolves looked at one another.
“So this world has beasts worthy of a hunt,” said Njor, his eyes gleaming.
“Chief,” said Gunnar, “this means there’s big prey out there waiting.”
Russ grinned, his fangs slick with grease.
“I’ve found something I like about this world.”
Tobías, who had managed three bites before Ma’jor stole his plate, wrote in his notebook: The conquest of this planet began in a restaurant.
Nobody is going to believe me.
When they were done, Russ left a bag full of Fenrisian gold and jewels on the table.
The owner opened it and nearly fainted.
“Is this for real?”
“That was the best meal I’ve had in years,” said Russ.
“You’ve earned it. We’ll be back.”
* * *
Outside, the mood in the square changed all at once.
A group of men in elegant suits was clearing a path through the crowd.
In the middle, riding on the back of a chained slave, came a fat man with a glass bubble over his head and an expression of utter contempt for everything that breathed.
“Bow down, you trash! The noble Charlos-sama is passing through!”
The whole square knelt.
All of it except five giants and a short Remembrancer who didn’t know what to do and ended up half-crouched, in a position that was neither one thing nor the other.
“Why is everyone groveling before that weakling?” asked Gunnar, arms crossed.
“You!” squealed Charlos, pointing a stubby finger at Russ.
“You enormous beast! Kneel before me!”
Russ looked at him.
There was nothing human about that golden gaze.
“Or what?” he asked.
“You going to attack me with food, fatso?”
The Wolves roared with laughter.
The crowd stopped breathing.
Nobody spoke to a Celestial Dragon like that and lived to tell the tale.
“How dare you, you insect?! I am a Celestial Dragon! A descendant of the gods!”
“A god?” Russ tilted his head.
“And what does a god do, besides being a sack of lard on legs?”
Charlos pulled a pistol and aimed it at his head.
Russ caught his wrist before he could pull the trigger.
There was a crack.
Charlos tumbled off his slave onto the ground, squealing.
With his other hand, trembling, he fired.
The bullet bounced off Russ’s forehead like a marble and dropped to the ground with a tick.
Russ looked at him in disgust.
“You make me sick.”
He raised his boot.
“My father was right to ban religion,” he said.
“People will pray to any idiot.”
What followed was quick.
Tobías, who had shut his eyes, heard only the silence of the square.
When he opened them, Charlos’s guards were running like rats toward the port, dropping their weapons along the way.
“And these are the ones who protect the gods of this world?” Russ remarked, wiping his boot on a root.
“Pathetic.”
The slave who had carried Charlos was still on his knees, staring at him.
Russ crouched and snapped his chains with two fingers.
“Get up,” he told him.
“You don’t owe anyone anything anymore.”
II.
The Man of Light
The Marine alarms sounded across the whole archipelago.
Warships surrounded Sabaody.
Among the Marines coming ashore walked a tall man in sunglasses and a yellow suit, with the relaxed expression of someone who is late to a party and doesn’t care.
“Oooh… well, well… somebody made quite a mess,” said Admiral Kizaru.
“Admiral!” an officer reported.
“A Celestial Dragon has been killed! The Straw Hats are causing trouble at the auction house too! And there’s another unknown presence on the island!”
“Oh. More guests?” Kizaru stretched.
“Let Kuma handle those noisy Straw Hats. I’ll go say hello to the others.”
He turned into light and vanished.
* * *
Russ sniffed the air.
“Another insect is coming. Smells like arrogance.”
A beam of golden light came down in front of the Wolves and became the admiral.
“Oooh… what strange visitors. You’re not pirates… or from the World Government. What will you do now that you’ve killed a Celestial Dragon?”
“So you’ve come to defend that excuse for a noble,” said Russ.
“I pity you.”
“It’s not that I want to defend him, you know? But attacking a Celestial Dragon has consequences. I have to arrest you. Orders are orders.”
“Arrest us?” Russ smiled.
“I’d like to see you try, glow-bug.”
Kizaru raised a shining hand.
“Well, well… if you insist…”
He never finished the sentence.
Russ vanished from his sight and reappeared in front of him with his fist already on its way.
The blow sent the admiral through three buildings like a golden comet.
“That was an admiral?” said Russ.
“I expected more.”
A light flickered above his shoulder.
“Hey, hey… that hurt, you know?”
Kizaru’s kick, at the speed of light, went straight for Russ’s face.
Russ raised his arm and blocked it.
“You’re fast. But you lack strength.”
He grabbed the admiral’s leg and slammed him into the ground so hard that the archipelago shook.
It went on like that for a good while.
Kizaru turned into light, Russ caught him.
Kizaru fired lasers, Russ took them in the face and laughed.
“Honestly,” said the Primarch, “it hurt more when a pup bit me on Fenris.”
“Oooh… you’re going to make me work today, huh?”
“I’m tired of your little game, old man.”
Russ seized him by the neck before he could dematerialize, spun around like a hammer thrower and hurled him with all his strength.
Kizaru streaked across the sky like a shooting star… straight into the sea.
“Ugh… this isn’t good…”
He sank like a stone.
Devil Fruit users, the Mechanicus had explained in one of its reports, could not swim.
“I suppose even light goes out when you drown it,” said Russ.
Some Marines fished him out of the water ten minutes later, alive and very wet.
He didn’t bother them again.
Russ raised his axe.
“Brothers! Bring down more Thunderhawks! Today the conquest of this world begins!”
III.
The End of an Era
What followed was very fast for those who lived it and very slow for those who told it.
Within a week, the Space Wolves and the Astra Militarum fell upon Mary Geoise, the holy city of the Celestial Dragons atop the Red Line.
The slaves were freed.
The World Government’s secret archives, with their experiments, their lies and their erased history, were broadcast to the entire planet.
The Celestial Dragons discovered that they were mortal, and that their bodyguards ran faster than they did.
Impel Down, the impregnable prison, turned out to be quite pregnable.
Warden Magellan tried to poison the Astartes and discovered that ceramite has no lungs.
In the depths of the prison, a young man with black hair and freckles named Portgas D.
Ace watched as giants broke his chains.
“Why are you saving me?” he asked, bewildered.
“You’re a warrior,” said an Astra Militarum captain.
“And you never should have been here. The false gods feared you.”
The war at Marineford never happened, because the execution that was going to provoke it never happened.
The Marines split in two.
Many rank-and-file Marines, once they saw the archives, threw away their uniforms.
Admiral Fujitora and Vice Admiral Smoker, who had spent years loathing what they protected, surrendered to the Imperium with their heads held high.
Island after island, the people drove out the Marines who remained.
Only Fleet Admiral Sakazuki, Akainu, refused.
He dug in at New Marineford with a handful of loyalists and swore to die for Absolute Justice.
Russ went to see him in person.
Akainu covered his body in magma and threw a punch capable of melting a mountain.
Russ stopped it with a single hand.
“Is that all?”
He struck him with the flat of his axe.
Hoisted him up by the neck.
And, with a mocking grin, dragged him through the ruins of the base to the flagpole of the Marines, where he left him hanging by the collar of his coat.
“There he is,” he said.
“The great Fleet Admiral. Hanging like the flag of an era that’s over.”
The last Marines surrendered.
Akainu, hanging there, smoke spitting from his mouth, cursed the entire world for a whole hour until he lost his voice.
IV.
Wano
Two years passed.
For Russ they were two years.
For his brothers, who crossed the Webway at other rhythms, they were barely weeks: the Webway had its own rules about time, and the magi of Mars were still arguing about why.
But on that world, on that ocean, two whole years went by, and in those two years Russ had dreams.
In his dreams a name appeared.
Monkey D.
Luffy.
“That boy has something special,” he told his wolves one night, by the fire.
“Something that could change the fate of this world.”
The dreams always took him to an island closed off from the world, full of samurai.
Wano.
There Kaido of the Beasts, the so-called Strongest Creature in the World, had dug in with everything that was left of the old pirate order: Big Mom, Doflamingo—who had escaped Impel Down by taking advantage of the chaos—and several Supernovas. Get faster updates on g.com.
And Luffy was there too, gathering an army of samurai to liberate the island.
“Let’s see how strong you’ve become, boy,” Russ murmured, as his ship, the Fang of Fenris, entered the atmosphere.
* * *
The battle of Onigashima was already under way when the Space Wolves fell upon it.
Zoro, covered in wounds after his fight with King, suddenly saw a group of armored giants surrounding him and shielding him from a hail of gunfire.
“And who are these guys?” he panted.
“Friends or enemies?” Sanji shouted to him from the far end of the rooftop, while kicking Queen in the face.
A voice thundered over the whole battlefield.
“We are the Imperium of Man! We have come to put an end to these abominations!”
Russ stood on a rock, his cloak billowing, his gaze fixed on an enormous blue dragon drinking sake from a gourd the size of a barrel.
Luffy, hanging from a pillar, burst out laughing.
“Hahahaha! That guy’s strong! I like him!”
“So you’re the bastards from space,” growled Kaido.
“And you’re the so-called Strongest Creature in the World,” said Russ.
“Let’s see you prove it.”
* * *
It was a fight Wano would remember in songs for centuries.
Luffy, in Gear Fifth, bounced around Kaido, stretching as if gravity were merely a suggestion.
Russ advanced like a hurricane, his energy claws tearing the air.
“Gomu Gomu no…!”
“FANG OF THE WOLF!”
The combined blow brought Kaido down and split Onigashima in two.
Big Mom, furious, brought down her sword Napoleon, wreathed in flames.
“You damned mutt! I’m going to tear you apart!”
“An old woman screaming at me,” said Russ, dodging.
“Not the first time. Let’s see if you fight as well as you yell.”
Big Mom summoned Zeus and Prometheus.
Lightning and fire.
Russ plowed through both without stopping, leapt on her like a meteor and knocked her out cold with a single blow.
“Bedtime, granny.”
Kaido transformed into his full dragon form and rose into the sky for the final attack.
“Hey, Wolf!” shouted Luffy, giant now, his hair white and a grin splitting his face.
“Let’s finish this in style!”
“As it should be!”
Luffy leapt into the sky.
Russ fired up his armor’s thrusters and rose like a missile.
“GOMU GOMU NO… KING’S DESCENT!”
“CLAWS OF FENRIS!”
Both blows struck Kaido at the same time.
The dragon crashed down onto Wano, gouging out a crater the size of a town.
He didn’t get up.
V.
The Party
That night, all of Wano celebrated.
Thousands of lanterns floated in the sky.
The citizens brought out all the sake and food they had hidden away for twenty years, and Space Wolves, samurai and pirates sat down together to eat.
It was a wonderful disaster.
Luffy and Russ started a contest over who could eat fastest.
Luffy swallowed a whole fish.
Russ swallowed a whole boar.
Luffy swallowed two fish.
Russ swallowed Tobías’s plate.
Tobías resigned himself.
Zoro and the Wolves had a drinking contest.
Zoro won, which triggered a crisis of faith among the warriors of Fenris that lasted until dawn.
Sanji cooked nonstop, smoking, swearing he had never fed people so rude and so grateful at the same time.
Franky and the Techmarines compared mechanical arms and argued over who had the best cannon.
Usopp told war stories so exaggerated that the Wolves, who were experts at exaggeration, named him an honorary skald.
Then came the trials of strength.
An arm-wrestling match between Luffy and Russ that split the table down the middle.
“Gyaaah! Rematch!”
A sake-barrel-throwing contest that left two barrels in low orbit.
Brook took out his violin and played the song the pirates of that world sang when they raised a toast, an old tune about sailors who went far away.
The Wolves didn’t know the words, but they hummed along in voices like bears, pounding the table in time.
“Damn it all!” roared Russ, his tankard held high.
“I love this song!”
* * *
Very late, Russ and Luffy sat on a rock, far from the noise, with two mugs of sake.
“Listen, Straw Hat,” said Russ, more seriously.
“Even if you’re a good person, you’re still a pirate. And according to the rules of the Imperium… someday I ought to hunt you down.”
Luffy swallowed a chunk of meat and looked at him, confused.
“So what does that matter? I just want to be free.”
“That’s why you’re a special case.” Russ drank.
“You’re not like the ones who plunder and enslave. But you defy order.”
“I always will. I don’t care if I’m the enemy of the world, as long as it’s to protect my friends.”
Russ laughed and slapped him on the back so hard it nearly knocked him off the rock.
“Hahaha! I like you, boy! You’ve got guts!”
“Hey! That hurt!”
“For now, let’s drink.” Russ raised his mug.
“But the day we cross swords, I want you to give it everything you’ve got.”
“Then you’d better be ready, Wolf!”
“And stay alive until you reach your treasure island, Mugiwara. Fulfill your dream. And your friends’ dreams.”
Luffy looked at him in surprise for a second.
Then he grinned with his whole face.
“You bet I will!”
They clinked mugs.
The sake spilled.
Down below, the party went on until dawn.
* * *
Chronicle, entry number forty.
I spent two years on this world.
I went gray.
I learned to fish.
Ma’jor taught me to eat faster than him, which I managed exactly once.
When I returned to the main fleet, an Ultramarines officer asked me what I had done during “those three weeks.” I explained about the Webway and time.
He didn’t believe me.
I showed him the gray hairs.
He didn’t believe that either.
I showed him a mug of sake from Wano.
Then he believed me, and confiscated it.
So ends the first book of this chronicle.
The Emperor, they say, is satisfied.
The Primarch Russ is full.
I am tired.
And somewhere in the Webway, according to the technicians on watch, that three-second echo nobody can explain still turns up from time to time.
I’ll be releasing 2 chapters a day until we reach the final 10 chapters.
After that, I’ll switch to 1 chapter per day.
Thank you for reading and for your support!