Seeing Lorgar appear, Erebus turned to look, and felt a wave of visceral, physical revulsion.
“It seems you still don’t understand the gravity of the situation.” Lorgar lifted a book several decimeters thick and looked at Erebus with a smile.
“You actually dare to turn your back on me.
How bold.” Lorgar swept a hand.
Hundreds of spear-bearing guards charged into the church and surrounded dozens of cultists, along with Erebus and the others, in the middle of the hall.
“Lorgar Aurelian.
It seems you don’t know who you’re dealing with.” Erebus threw Senadis aside, then walked straight toward Lorgar with cultists clustering around in support.
“I am Erebus, the Dark Apostle—” “Apostle my ass!” Before Erebus even finished speaking, Lorgar hurled the heavy book straight at that ugly face.
BANG!
The cover landed square on Erebus’s face, and the force sent Erebus crashing to the ground.
“That’s the weight of knowledge for you.
Understand?” “AAAAAAAAAH!
LORGAR!” Erebus struggled back up.
The nose had been driven flat, and blood dripped down a twisted face.
“Lorgar!
I’ll kill you!
Kill you!” “How dare you humiliate me like this!
Humiliate me!
I’ll turn you into a vessel of Chaos—” Before Erebus could finish, Lorgar moved again.
One hand seized a cultist by the head and hurled the entire body at Erebus like a thrown weapon.
This time Erebus managed to react, raising a hand and cleaving the body clean in two with a psychic strike.
“Can’t you let me finish a single sentence!
Lorgar!” “No!” Lorgar shot back, then swept a hand to signal the honor guard to charge in.
The spear-bearers showed no fear whatsoever.
They crashed into Erebus’s cultists in an instant, and the hall dissolved into a brawl.
Some cultists attempted to rush Lorgar.
Before the power of a Primarch, they were nothing but fodder.
What a joke.
However weak Lorgar might seem, a Primarch was still a Primarch.
And Lorgar wasn’t weak, the problem was simply not knowing how to use that power yet.
People always laughed that Lorgar couldn’t beat Guilliman in a fight.
But if it ever came to a real one, Lorgar could put Guilliman on the ground unable to stand inside three moves.
Do not forget: Lorgar was a supremely gifted psyker, second only to Magnus in psychic mastery.
Of course, at this moment Lorgar still couldn’t use psychic power at all.
It was purely the superhuman brain doing the math: apply superhuman strength.
Fighting these cultists came down to a single slap.
Not one slap per person, one slap for several at a time.
With the lightest exertion, the cultists burst into red mist.
Even a gentle pat sent a dozen of them flying while simultaneously pulverizing them into scraps of meat.
Lorgar was already learning to calibrate that strength, like a master sculptor who knows exactly how much force the chisel needs.
Each strike landed with just enough precision to grind these ordinary cultists into paste.
Across the hall, Erebus saw how badly things were going and had already started thinking about running.
But a voice kept echoing inside, relentless and low.
Go on…
Do it…
Prove you are no weaker than him…
prove your greatness…
That low, rumbling presence reverberated through Erebus’s mind.
Erebus snarled, snatched up a sword that had fallen to the ground, and lunged.
“I am Erebus, Child of Chaos!” Psychic energy flooded the blade.
The thrust drove forward.
Three meters.
Two meters.
One meter.
Erebus watched Lorgar’s body drawing closer and closer, a quiet satisfaction rising, then everything went dark.
Lorgar lifted Erebus’s entire body clean off the ground and aimed the back of the skull at the wall.
“No!
No!
No!” SCRAAAPE!
Lorgar smeared Erebus’s head across the wall like spreading paint.
THUD!
Lorgar looked at what remained, now headless, and felt that even the hands had been dirtied.
The corpse got tossed aside.
The cultists were mostly cut down as well.
A few dozen of them had barely made a ripple against several hundred ferocious honor guards.
“Wasn’t that a little too easy.” Lorgar turned it over, but now wasn’t the time to rest.
The order went out: destroy the bodies, wreck the church, then burn every last piece of it to the ground.
…
Deep within the Warp.
A brief introduction: the Warp is an infinite dimension constructed entirely from psychic energy, also known as the Immaterium.
It is the dwelling place of the Chaos Gods, a strange and dark parallel to the material universe.
The laws of physics do not exist here.
Everything is formed from the emotional and psychic energy of sentient beings in the real world.
It is like a mirror of the physical universe.
But this mirror is saturated with terror and violence, and all of it is alive.
Genuine, breathing nightmares that ceaselessly hunger to break into the material universe and slaughter without end.
Because time as a concept does not exist in the Warp, it and the Chaos Gods who dwell within it existed long before intelligent life was ever born.
Deep within a labyrinth at the heart of the Warp, a creature with the head of a bird sat enthroned at the maze’s core.
This was Tzeentch, one of the four great Chaos Gods of the Warp.
Tzeentch holds dominion over change, curiosity, lies, cunning, ambition, opportunity, creativity, innovation, mutation, evolution, pure chaos, manipulation, and malicious destruction, among much else.
At this moment Tzeentch was idly weaving the timelines in hand, each one glowing with blue light.
In the very instant of Erebus’s death, what had been a single timeline split apart in a flash.
“Perfect.” A shriek emanated from within that fog-like body.
“Infinite, boundless change.” “I wonder — what kind of change will you bring me?” “Little thing…” Tzeentch had orchestrated Erebus’s willing march to death for no other reason than sheer curiosity: curiosity about what would happen next, about how the Cursed One would respond.
“The future!
An infinite, boundless future!” “Change!
Infinite, boundless change!” “This game grows more and more interesting.” Tzeentch calculated every possible event that might unfold, every new timeline each occurrence would spawn, and the ceaseless, churning flux of it all filled Tzeentch with pure delight.
Meanwhile, in the palace of Khorne, Khorne sat upon the Brass Throne in profound displeasure.
That performance in battle had been beneath contempt.
The Chaos power was withdrawn, and Lorgar was left free to carry out the kill.
“Cowards who fail have no right to my power.
And that includes you…
Child of Chaos.” A single snap of the fingers decided Erebus’s fate.
Khorne was already eager to find a new piece, a worthy champion to carry that power forward.
➤ Next: Huh?
I’m Fighting a Primarch