Bang!
Azrael kicked open the doors of the Warrant Hall.
“Not here?”
His eyes, hidden beneath the shadow of his hood, swept across the chamber filled with gilded decorations and burning consecrated candles.
The Warrant of Trade bearing Horus’s signature was right in front of him, yet Azrael barely spared it a glance.
The only thing that mattered was the open, empty golden box.
The man the Primarch had ordered them to find was gone.
Azrael felt a flicker of irritation.
He could still detect signs that someone had been here not long ago—most likely the very oathbreaker Lion El’Jonson had spoken of.
And yet the man had seemingly vanished into thin air.
The trail had gone cold.
“Huff…
huff…
My Lord, what exactly is going on here—”
Albert, the elderly steward who had hurried up the stairs after him, leaned against the wall to catch his breath.
His aged golden eyes looked helplessly at the Dark Angel who had barged into the hall without explanation.
“What exactly do you want with our heir?”
“Hmm…”
Azrael turned slightly toward him.
“I simply…
wished to meet him as soon as possible.”
“Where is he now?”
He couldn’t reveal too much.
Merlin’s capture had to remain secret.
The Primarch’s orders had explicitly forbidden him from revealing the matter to anyone—not even to the other Dark Angels.
The Primarch’s secret had to be protected.
“I don’t know, my Lord.”
Albert looked as though he were on the verge of tears.
“Several days ago, Lord Merlin entered the Warrant Hall to examine our family’s relic.
He never came back out…
We have no idea where he went.”
Missing?
Azrael frowned.
Just as he was about to continue questioning the steward, a coded transmission sounded through his comm-bead.
“Supreme Grand Master, we’ve detected a priority Inner Circle signal.”
Azrael’s pupils contracted.
Within the Inner Circle, that particular signal could refer to only one person.
[Cypher]
One of the Fallen whom the Dark Angels had hunted for ten thousand years.
“Where?”
“In the neighboring system.
His trail appeared there recently.
We can reach it without another Warp translation.”
“Do we proceed immediately?”
Azrael fell silent for a moment.
“Stand by.
I’ll finish here and return shortly.”
“My Lord, that is Cypher’s signal.
He is the target of our current mission.”
“I know.”
Azrael swept his gaze across the room once more, rapidly considering his options.
Time was not on his side.
Cypher’s appearance had come at exactly the wrong moment.
In fact, Azrael almost suspected that the bastard had deliberately chosen this moment just to cause trouble for him.
And the man Lion El’Jonson wanted had disappeared.
Worse still, that search was a secret that could not be revealed to outsiders.
Officially, the Inner Circle had come here in pursuit of the Fallen.
Now that their target had actually appeared, ignoring Cypher and remaining on Granria to search for Merlin would inevitably make the other members suspicious.
Merlin’s capture had to remain secret.
Therefore, Cypher came first.
“Recall everyone.”
Azrael switched to the Inner Circle’s secure frequency.
“Cypher has appeared in the neighboring system.”
“Interrogator-Chaplain Asmodai, you will remain behind with one squad and continue investigating signs of possible corruption.
Everyone else will return to the ship.”
“NO!!!”
As soon as the order was issued, Asmodai’s anguished roar exploded over the vox.
“Let me join the hunt for the Fallen!”
“I will make him repent!”
“REPENT!”
“REPENT!!!”
Why?!
Pure bullying!
Why wouldn’t they let him go after the Fallen?!
He was sick of being pushed around by the Inner Circle’s little clique!
“…”
Azrael felt a headache coming on.
Leaving the mentally unstable Interrogator-Chaplain behind on Granria was not exactly an ideal choice.
Unfortunately, the Deathwing’s senior commanders were currently deployed elsewhere.
Which meant that, among the people available to Azrael right now, Interrogator-Chaplain Asmodai was somehow the calmest, least deranged, and least obsessively hostile toward the Fallen.
The thought alone was depressing.
“Interrogator-Chaplain Asmodai.”
Azrael ignored the mortal steward beside him and walked out of the Warrant Hall, opening a private Inner Circle channel.
“Our suspicions have been confirmed.”
“What?”
“The heir to the Rogue Trader dynasty, Merlin F.
Priestley…”
Azrael paused.
“…is one of the Fallen.”
“THE FALLEN!!!”
Asmodai’s voice instantly rose several levels.
A cunning Fallen, disguising himself as a mere mortal!
He had to repent!
REPENT!!!
“However, there is a direct order from the Primarch.”
“A direct order?”
“He must be captured alive.”
“He is to be interrogated personally by the Primarch.
You are not permitted to harm him.
Understood?”
“What!?”
Azrael knew.
For Asmodai, this was cruel.
But orders were orders.
“…”
A long silence followed over the private channel.
A Fallen was right in front of him…
And he wasn’t allowed to hurt him?
What kind of punishment was this?!
“…Yes, Supreme Grand Master.”
Asmodai’s voice sounded strained.
“I will…
obey.”
Phew…
With everything arranged, Azrael finally breathed a sigh of relief.
Hopefully, Asmodai wouldn’t go too far.
The oathbreaker was one of the Dark Angels’ deepest secrets.
No outsider could ever be allowed to discover the truth.
Once Cypher had been dealt with, Azrael could return and capture Merlin.
They already knew who he was.
No one escaped the Dark Angels forever.
He would not escape.
Azrael silently made up his mind.
Soon…
Lion El’Jonson’s oathbreaker would be brought before her to face judgment by her own hand.
…
…
…
Caliban.
This was far too embarrassing!
Remembering what Merlin had just said, Lion El’Jonson felt her cheeks begin to heat up again.
Warmaster…
How could a title like that make her—the cold, ruthless, perfectly rational Lion of Caliban—feel this embarrassed?
“What’s wrong, Warmaster?
Don’t you like the title?”
“It’s not that I don’t like it…
it’s just—it’s embarrassing!
Stop saying it!”
“Saying what?
Warmaster?
Warmaster Lion El’Jonson?
I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
Seeing the mixture of embarrassment and obvious satisfaction on her face, Merlin couldn’t resist teasing her further.
This was too much fun.
“You…
you, you!
Stop saying it!!!”
A fist shot toward him.
Overcome by embarrassment and anger, Lion El’Jonson twisted to the side and threw a vicious straight punch directly at Merlin’s forehead.
There was no chance of dodging.
At that speed, Merlin didn’t even have time to react before her fist was already in front of his face.
“!?”
Fortunately, it stopped barely a hair’s breadth from his forehead.
Cold sweat broke out across Merlin’s back.
He instinctively reached up and touched his head.
Thank goodness.
Still attached.
It hadn’t gone flying.
“Phew…
Could you not scare me like that?
I seriously thought you were about to punch my head off.”
The Lion’s patented head-removal punch was no joke.
Even though this was only a simulation created by the Ring of Sagittarius, Merlin could still feel the chill of having come within an instant of death.
“Ugh…
That’s your own fault!”
Lion El’Jonson’s face was still red, and even her words were beginning to stumble over one another.
“No!
No, no!
You’re not allowed to say it anymore!
Anyway, you just can’t keep saying it whenever you feel like it!”
Right now, she desperately wanted to dig through the enormous stores of technical knowledge buried in her mind and find some machine capable of erasing other people’s memories.
She had a feeling such a device would be extremely useful in the future.
Unfortunately, after thinking about it for a moment, she gave up.
Lion El’Jonson was not an engineer.
This really wasn’t her field.
“So I shouldn’t call you that anymore?”
Merlin looked confused.
She was the one who wanted to become Warmaster, so why was she suddenly forbidding him from saying it?
“No!”
“I…
I didn’t mean that either…”
Lion El’Jonson became even more conflicted.
The truth was, she really liked being called Warmaster.
It was just…
Embarrassing.
Other people had titles like Grand Master, Chapter Master, Lord, Sir…
And her?
Warmaster.
It sounded so absurdly grand that hearing Merlin say it out loud made her want to crawl into a hole.
“You can’t say it in front of other people.
Only when we’re alone—”
She froze.
They were alone right now.
“Then…
you’re not allowed to use it to tease me!”
Wait.
He hadn’t been teasing her with it before today either.
“Then…
then…”
Argh!!!
Lion El’Jonson grabbed at her golden hair in frustration.
What kind of evil sorcery was this?!
How could something reduce the normally cold and composed Lion of Caliban to this?
Why were the words she actually wanted to say refusing to come out?
“Anyway!
Just…
just—”
Then something caught the edge of her vision.
In the distance, toward New Spring Town, several columns of thick smoke were rising into the sky.
“The warning beacons.”
In an instant, every trace of embarrassment disappeared from her face.
The cold, commanding expression she rarely showed around Merlin returned immediately.
“Quickly.”
Lion El’Jonson rose to her feet.
“We’re going back.”
It really helps the fic grow!