I’m Fighting a Primarch 4: Chapter 4 – Huh?
I’m Fighting a Primarch After dealing with Erebus and the remnants of his faction, Lorgar turned to the work of building a force of his own.
The Emperor would arrive in roughly half a year.
That window needed to be used, a loyal cadre had to be in place before then.
Lorgar was also using the time to explore this body and get familiar with the power sleeping inside it.
The results came quickly.
During training, Lorgar mastered one of the psychic abilities: the power to peer into a person’s soul and determine whether that soul had been corrupted.
And in the same period, Lorgar found the ideal candidate for First Captain.
A sixteen-year-old in the Honor Guard.
Outstanding in combat, known for generosity.
Lorgar had people follow the boy, and what they reported settled the matter, the kid was singlehandedly keeping several younger brothers and sisters alive.
That was enough.
After passing the scrutiny of the soul, this young one would slowly become one of Lorgar’s most trusted, replacing that worthless Kor Phaeron as First Captain of the Word Bearers Legion.
Lorgar turned the future over in mind.
The Emperor would find Lorgar around the year 857 of the 30th Millennium.
Horus’s rebellion would come around the year 4 of the 31st.
The Great Crusade had started in 798 of the 30th, and at present only a quarter of it had elapsed.
There was time.
Plenty of it.
Enough to build and prepare for whatever Horus would eventually set in motion.
But certain events couldn’t be left alone.
The most critical was Angron.
Given the Emperor’s particular brand of stubbornness, it would be no surprise at all if Angron got pushed into rebellion.
As someone who knew exactly how that story ended, Lorgar had to reach out a hand somewhere along the way.
The nearest crisis on the timeline was the Rangdan Xenocides in 890, Space Marines cut down by the thousands, an entire Legion supposedly ground to nothing.
Lorgar had no intention of touching that disaster.
Let them handle it themselves.
The Word Bearers had one job: raise soldiers, and keep raising them.
Deliberations done.
A thin boy stood before Lorgar now, slight in frame, but with eyes that didn’t waver.
“Are you Heracles?” Lorgar bent down and asked with a smile.
“My lord Bishop…” Heracles lowered his head, not daring to meet Lorgar’s gaze.
“I hear you’ve been supporting your brothers and sisters on your own.” Lorgar let the words settle.
“Would you be interested in working for me?
In exchange, your family will be taken care of — properly.” No dancing around it.
No ceremony.
Lorgar was the master of this entire planet; there was no reason to be indirect.
Besides, Lorgar had already looked into Heracles.
The boy needed this.
“I will!
My lord!
I am willing to give my life for you!” The words came out before Lorgar had even finished speaking.
Of course they did.
Heracles had joined the Honor Guard at sixteen through sheer fearlessness and a refusal to quit, and the reason the boy didn’t fear death was standing behind at home.
Bind the interests together, and the loyalty follows.
Once the transformation into a Space Marine came later, such calculations would sort themselves out.
But for now, the foundation was set.
What came next was the order to unleash the Honor Guard and settle accounts with the Covenant Faith once and for all.
Night of Blood.
Initiate.
If Lorgar had been operating without power, the approach might have been slower, quiet accumulation, careful maneuvering, a gradual cleanup.
But Lorgar had both overwhelming strength and the mind to use it.
The answer the situation called for was simple.
Whatever’s in the way, hit it first and sort the rest out afterward.
BANG!
Lorgar led the soldiers crashing through the doors of the Covenant’s main cathedral, Scepter swinging at the front of the column, and every believer who stood in the path was reduced to a spray of blood and mist.
No weapon even needed, the charge alone wiped out an army of over a thousand.
…
Hundreds of thousands of believers fled to the planet’s southern end and seized a city.
They declared Lorgar a heretic, claimed Lorgar had murdered Chaplain Erebus and Chaplain Kor Phaeron, branded Lorgar a sinner of the Covenant Faith, and announced that any true believer was duty-bound to bring Lorgar down.
Nobody on Colchis particularly cared.
The major cities were already under Lorgar’s control.
The remote regions were too poor and too isolated for outside news to reach them at all.
The declaration echoed in an empty room.
Lorgar’s response came several days later.
“These traitors dare to rebel now, of all times.
They are no longer ordinary traitors.
Hit them hard.” Simple orders.
Then Lorgar set out with several thousand troops and marched to the city.
The city the traitors had seized was called Chisla, a fortress city, walls dozens of meters high and dozens thick, a wide moat encircling the perimeter, over a hundred thousand troops garrisoned within, well-armed and dug in.
Any ordinary commander looking at those walls would have had a headache.
But that assumed the attacker was not a Primarch.
The soldiers who had marched with Lorgar had come ready to die.
As it turned out, Lorgar didn’t need them on the field at all.
They only needed to stand back and watch.
This was practice.
The Covenant believers packed the top of the walls, weapons in hand.
Lorgar launched into a charge like a burning meteor.
The instant Lorgar began to run, a sonic boom split the air.
Dense arrow-fire fell like rain.
It didn’t matter.
The arrows struck Lorgar’s body with a sharp, ringing clatter and deflected away, unable to leave so much as a white scratch on skin like iron plate.
In what felt like nanoseconds, Lorgar reached the base of the wall.
Every stride had left a deep imprint in the ground.
Lorgar raised the Scepter high.
Sunlight caught it and it blazed with a strange radiance.
Then Lorgar brought it down.
The instant the Scepter made contact, time seemed to stop.
Then came the sound — a crack that shook the heavens — and the wall ceased to exist.
Dozens of meters high.
Dozens of meters thick.
A hundred meters of fortification.
Shattered in an instant, as though someone had detonated the stone from within.
Debris and dust erupted in every direction and swallowed the sky.
No psychic power.
Not a drop of it.
Pure, matchless physical strength, nothing else, and it had been enough to pulverize the entire section of wall.
As the stone came down, countless Covenant believers screamed and fell with it.
Lorgar didn’t slow.
Lorgar kept charging, kept pushing forward, until the last corner of Chisla was in Lorgar’s hands.
➤ Next: The Yellow-Skinned Old Man Has Arrived