[World Eaters Gloriana-class battleship, Conqueror] [Command chamber] “What has our Primarch done this time?” Mago, Centurion of the World Eaters’ 18th Company, asked as soon as he stepped into the command chamber.
His face was haggard, newly scarred from the battle just ended, fresh cuts crisscrossing his features.
The remaining senior World Eaters in the chamber turned their heads to look at Mago.
Like Mago, most of them showed signs of exhaustion.
Some had not even had time to clean the blood from their power armor before being summoned to the command chamber by Khârn’s urgent order.
Mago let out a long sigh.
The faces of the battle-brothers who had fallen in the recent fight were still fresh in his mind, brothers who should have survived.
Because their Primarch, Angron, had demanded that the World Eaters conquer a world within a single standard Nuceria-day, while forbidding the use of heavy weaponry, many World Eater battle-brothers had been forced to advance under heavy enemy fire, dying simply to take the world fast enough.
If they failed to secure the world within one standard Nuceria-day, equivalent to thirty-one standard Terra-hours, then Angron would deem the campaign a failure.
As punishment for failure, Angron would order the World Eaters decimated.
For every ten World Eaters who survived the brutal war, one would be condemned to die for no fault of his own, while the remaining nine would be forced to kill their own battle-brother as “atonement” before the Primarch.
No World Eater wanted to face decimation.
It meant not only death, but being made to butcher one’s own battle-brother.
So they would rather hurl themselves even more recklessly into battle than incur the Primarch’s punishment for exceeding the time limit.
Before Angron’s return, the XII Legion had been the proud, disciplined War Hounds.
After their Primarch returned, everything changed.
“Is our Primarch running away from the Legion again?” Mago sat down and realized that all the senior World Eaters were present, even Chief Librarian Vorias.
Angron had once fled the Legion before; the Primarch had stolen a ship and exiled himself to a primitive world.
It was Khârn who ultimately found the runaway Angron.
Khârn, captain of the 8th Company, the World Eater closest to Angron, the one who had survived the Primarch’s axe during that massacre.
Khârn had guessed that the Primarch would one day try to escape, so he had secretly installed a tracking device in the Primarch’s armor.
Using the device, the World Eaters located the fleeing Angron and finally managed to persuade him to return to the Legion.
Mago remembered that time.
He had entered the command chamber just as hastily back then, only for Khârn to announce the grim news that the Primarch had fled.
But Mago also remembered that when he heard it, deep down, he had felt a sudden relief.
The Primarch and the Legion were tormenting each other, so Angron’s departure might not have been such a bad thing for them.
Yet his heart had also seized up instantly.
The Legion had lost its Primarch.
What a shameful thing.
The Master of Mankind had entrusted Angron to the Legion, not for the Legion to lose him.
They had failed the Master of Mankind.
So, despite the unease in his heart, Mago had argued at the time for retrieving the Primarch.
Had Angron run away again this time?
Mago thought that would be fine too.
Perhaps they could keep Angron so busy with escape attempts that he would never have the chance to torment the Legion, or inflict his terrible punishments upon them.
As long as they did not actually lose Angron.
“No.” Standing at the head of the command table, Khârn slowly shook his head.
Mago rarely saw any emotion besides pain and anger in Khârn’s eyes, but there it was.
He was…
confused?
“What happened?
Stop being cryptic, Khârn.
Don’t tell me our Primarch has finally decided to forgive us?” Apothecary Kargos attempted a grim joke, but no one paid him any mind.
He could only force out a couple of awkward chuckles.
“…It’s news from the Imperium.” Khârn spoke slowly.
To be honest, when Captain Lotara Sarrin had first come to him and said the astropaths had received a message from the Imperium, Khârn’s first thought was that the Adeptus Astra Telepathica had made a mistake, that they had confused the message’s intended Legion.
Perhaps this message was meant for the XIII Legion, the Ultramarines, or the Sixteenth Legion, the Luna Wolves.
But the psychic signature identifying the recipient Legion was unmistakable.
A wide, blood-filled maw.
The sign pointed to the XII Legion.
To the World Eaters.
Khârn opened his mouth, but still found it absurd.
He did not know what to say, so he turned a look of almost helpless appeal toward Lotara Sarrin beside him.
“Let Captain Sarrin explain.” Beside him, Lotara Sarrin forced a strained smile.
Every World Eater in the chamber focused on her.
The bloodthirsty butchers looked utterly lost.
They, too, realized this was a message of considerable importance.
Otherwise, Khârn would not have summoned everyone.
Previously, reports of the Imperium’s dissatisfaction with the Legion were something Khârn handled alone.
What had happened?
Had the Emperor finally recognized the Primarch’s suffering and chosen to intervene?
Was the Imperium willing to help the Legion?
Or worse, had they been deemed utterly inadequate?
Sarrin stared at these massive giants.
She, too, felt that what she was about to say would be insane.
“The message from the Imperium says…” She swallowed.
“The Emperor has just rediscovered the Eleventh Primarch, Zelo.
He has decided that Lord Angron will tutor this newly returned Primarch and help him integrate into the Imperium.” The already restless command chamber fell into a silence so complete it was almost violent.
The silence stretched on.
No one spoke.
No one even opened their mouths.
They only stared at one another.
Sarrin’s words were simple enough to understand, yet impossible to accept.
Precisely because they still had reason, they could not comprehend them.
Then the chamber erupted, like cold water struck by red-hot iron.
Some stood, leaning across the table to roar at Khârn and Sarrin.
Some turned in shock to the brothers beside them.
Some buried their heads in their hands, their thoughts unreadable.
Mago was also stunned, utterly unable to comprehend what was happening.
His first instinct was that Khârn was joking; his second, that the Imperium had sent the wrong message.
But Khârn was not that kind of man.
And the fact that he had already gathered all of his brothers proved that Khârn had verified the source of the information.
What did this mean?
The XII Legion?
Angron?
That Primarch who could do little but roar beneath the torment of the Butcher’s Nails was supposed to teach a newly recovered Primarch how to return to the Imperium?
Mago could not understand it.
No matter which way he thought about it, he could not understand.
Most of Angron’s meetings with the other Primarchs had ended in battle.
An uncontrollable Angron would roar and swing his axe at the other lord Primarchs, genuinely trying to kill his brothers.
Only a few Primarchs, such as Lorgar, could slightly calm Angron down.
But that was not the issue here.
What kind of being was the Number Eleven Primarch?
Why had the Emperor chosen the World Eaters to guide him back to the Imperium?
Them?
A Legion scorned by the others, a Legion forgotten by the Emperor?
Not the glorious Lord Horus, not the stern Lord Ferrus, not even Lord Guilliman.
But Angron.
Could it be…
A terrifying suspicion rose in Mago’s heart.
He tried to stop himself from following it, but the thought slipped loose all the same.
Mago raised his eyes and met Khârn’s gaze.
The two looked at each other, and instantly realized they were thinking the same thing.
The Eleventh Legion, the Dawn Walkers, had not distinguished themselves in the Great Crusade.
On the contrary, they suffered from severe genetic defects: insensitivity to pain and poor blood clotting.
That made them dangerously fragile and prone to death.
Combined with the Legion’s increasingly reviled culture, it had made them ill-suited to the Imperium’s wars.
The Dawn Walkers had therefore faced the threat of dissolution more than once, pushed deliberately to the margins by the Imperium.
By contrast, before their Primarch returned, the XII Legion had been the War Hounds: a glorious, solemn, vast Legion built on strict discipline.
But Angron was leading the Legion into a gradual decline.
Could it be…
could it really be…
Mago trembled.
Once he understood what this might mean, he could not stop himself from shaking.
The Emperor never acted without reason, not even when he had hurled the enraged Angron straight onto the XII Legion’s warship.
A Legion needed its Primarch to lead it.
Khârn held his gaze, and Mago could read the unsaid words in Khârn’s eyes.
“Quiet down!
I will not allow a new Primarch to interfere with the XII Legion’s normal operations!” Amid the uproar, Khârn suddenly opened his mouth and roared.