The Librarians did not disappoint Khârn.
They emergency-teleported from the landing deck to just outside Angron’s quarters.
During the brief window created by Zelo’s misjump, Khârn struck a deal with the Librarians: they would lure Zelo to a point five corridors away from Angron’s quarters.
“Can’t you get him any farther?” Khârn roared irritably at the Librarians, but the acting Chief Librarian, Ascetir, simply shook his head.
“He is correcting his own coordinates each time.
It will take him at most three teleports to cross-reference them and find the correct ones.
We can use psychic interference to jam him and keep him from pinpointing the exact range.
But the technique requires us to remain close to his destination, or he will detect it.” It was Ascetir who had first noticed that Zelo had teleported to the wrong place earlier.
Ascetir found Zelo’s psychic power strange, unlike any school of psychic practice he had ever seen.
The Primarch possessed an immense psychic reservoir and a keen awareness of the Warp, but his control and calculations were catastrophically crude, so inept it was terrifying.
Ascetir perceived that the Primarch’s use of psychic power was like brute force smashing through a brick wall.
There was no finesse to it.
His psychic teleportation was an incredibly wasteful use of energy.
Any ordinary person releasing that much psychic power at once would immediately collapse and die from exhaustion.
Therefore, even facing a Primarch, Ascetir still believed that he and his brothers could fool Zelo.
Though the World Eaters Legion had forgotten them, the World Eaters Librarians had not grown idle because of it.
They had even secretly developed a psychic technique designed for use against a Primarch.
It had originally been intended to subdue a rampaging Angron.
The Librarians were confident they could use this technique to knock Angron unconscious.
Thus, when Ascetir faced the Primarch, who tilted his head, stared at him, and asked in confusion, “How did you do it?” Ascetir calmly withstood Zelo’s psychic pressure.
The Librarian’s own psychic power blazed along his force staff, temporarily raising a shield against the Primarch’s pressure for his brothers.
“My lord, your command of psychic power is not refined.” He had intended to anger the Primarch.
When Psykers fell into excessive emotion, their control over their abilities often weakened.
It became easier for other Psykers to disrupt and scatter their power, robbing it of its strength.
But contrary to the Librarian’s expectations, the Primarch merely nodded in profound agreement.
“I think you’re right.
Could you teach me to master psychic power?” +Me?
Us?+ +Is…
is this really the time for something so strange?+ Ascetir had meant to unsettle the Primarch’s mind, but instead found himself caught in confusion.
“Do not mock the World Eaters Legion, my lord.” A low growl rumbled from Khârn’s throat.
The chainaxe in his hand hummed.
Khârn, Captain of the Eighth Company, was infamous throughout the Imperium.
Yet to Zelo, this fierce warrior was nothing more than a minor ripple.
“I have never slighted you.” Zelo spoke, but he did not look at the World Eaters.
He turned his head and stared at the corridor blocked by the World Eaters’ makeshift barricades.
“On the contrary, I respect you.” As he said this, Zelo did not look at Khârn or the others.
The Eighth Company captain let out a deafening roar, followed by the whistle of a blade splitting the air.
Khârn and the World Eaters surrounding Zelo all lunged at the Primarch, forming an encirclement in midair that almost entirely blocked the Primarch’s line of sight to the outside.
“There is no need for you to get hurt.” In an instant, a massive psychic shockwave erupted from within the World Eaters’ encirclement.
Boom!
Like a piercing sonic boom, the elite among the World Eaters were blasted away without even touching the Primarch.
Thud, thud, thud, thud!
Power armor crashed heavily across the corridor.
The World Eaters tried to stand again, only to find their limbs utterly powerless.
The Primarch’s psychic power had numbed their muscles directly.
Their limbs felt smothered and numb.
“Alright, no more wasting time.” Zelo spoke, stepping back a few paces.
The giant’s footsteps thudded dully on the deck.
Then he delivered a flying kick straight at the barricades blocking his path.
Crack!
Crash!
The apparently impregnable Adamantine blast-proof fortifications were easily smashed open by the Primarch.
A long corridor flickering with crimson light stretched before Zelo, and at its far end he felt a presence steeped in pain.
His brother Angron was there.
“My brother, are you all right?” Zelo shouted down the corridor.
His voice echoed ethereally through the long passageway.
He was about to sprint toward the end when a voice suddenly came from behind him.
It came from Xynis of the Adeptus Custodes.
Amid the World Eaters sprawled on the floor, the Custodian’s golden armor stood out sharply.
“My lord, I need to know what you intend to do to Lord Angron.” Zelo’s lifted foot hung suspended in the air.
“Is this a request from my Father?” “Yes.” Zelo’s faint smile faded.
He blinked.
“I want to help my brother Angron.” “In the name of the Master of Mankind, no force within the Imperium may harm a Primarch without cause.
That is a grave crime.” “This is not harm.
This is help.” “That requires verification by the Master of Mankind.” Zelo had to stop.
He lowered his suspended foot and looked back.
“But didn’t Curze attack Dorn?” Zelo asked.
“And I’ve heard this brother of mine is also quite combative.
Has he not sparred with several of our brothers?” “…” “Please understand.
Every Primarch is an important general of the Imperium.” Zelo tilted his head slightly.
The Custodian had not directly forbidden him.
He had merely emphasized the importance of the Primarchs.
Zelo understood: Xynis was worried he might do something excessively extreme or outrageous to Angron.
“Then…” Zelo blinked.
His pale blue eyes sparkled brilliantly in the dim corridor glowing with crimson light.
“Let the Master of Mankind judge afterward!
I believe the Master of Mankind will understand me!” Xynis of the Adeptus Custodes had nothing more to say.
In truth, from the very beginning of the commotion, he had already reported to the Master of Mankind, but that would take time.
Taking Xynis’s silence as permission, Zelo continued forward.
A faint psychic aura began to emanate from him as he gathered power, preparing for the confrontation with Angron to come.
“My brother?
Are you there?” Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
At the far end of the corridor, behind a door the World Eaters had reinforced and locked again and again, came a terrifying roar.
Something huge was battering at it, shaking the entire passage.
Angron was awake.
He was enraged.
Zelo heard Angron’s roar, mingled with pain, filter through the thick door into a strange, engine-like rumble.
He had come to help Angron.
Thinking this, Zelo hurried forward impatiently.
But halfway there, as if sensing something, he abruptly turned his head.
At the other end of the dim corridor, at the spot he had just passed, Khârn stood in the middle of the hallway, growling under his breath.
Ignoring the muscles numbed by Zelo’s psychic force, Khârn forced himself to stand through sheer will.
It made him look like a puppet propped crookedly on the ground, standing in an unnatural posture.
Because he was forcibly activating his muscle groups, Khârn’s blood vessels were engorged, and blood ran from his skin, eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth.
“Get…
away…
from…
Lord Angron…!” Khârn forced the words out through gritted teeth.
For the first time, Zelo was surprised.
“Why?” He spoke, walking over quickly, even neglecting Angron for the moment.
Khârn’s pain seemed to condense into visible threads, coiling around the World Eater.
Behind Khârn, the other World Eaters were trying to rise as well.
Zelo was astonished to see blood seeping from their skin, though Khârn was the one with the strongest will.
Zelo did not understand why Khârn was acting this way, why these people made such choices.
In his mind, suffering was worth embracing only when it ended something worse.
“Let me help you.
This time you will not feel pain.” Zelo spoke seriously, gripping Khârn’s shoulder guard with both hands.
He lowered his head to gaze at the warrior, his eyes like a lake perpetually shrouded in thin mist.
Khârn stared into Zelo’s eyes, feeling himself falling into a bottomless void.
“No!” Before he was completely enveloped in painlessness, Khârn let out an enraged roar.
He would rather die than submit.
He tried to shut his eyes tightly but found himself unable to move.
His soul was trapped within his numbed shell, screaming and struggling madly.
Behind Khârn, the World Eaters sprawled on the deck watched in despair.
They saw this monster of a Primarch about to seize Khârn’s soul.
“Don’t struggle.
This will be quick.” Zelo spoke soothingly.
But just as Zelo was about to touch Khârn’s soul: Boom!
A deafening thunderclap erupted behind Zelo.
The muscular gladiator burst through his cage door.
The Primarch’s massive body smashed through the repeatedly reinforced blast door like a battle tank.
“Leave him alone!” Dust billowed, and blood-red lights flickered between them.
Chunks of rockcrete, steel, and Adamantine, torn apart by the blast, clattered onto the ground in ruined pieces.
Zelo had to stop pacifying Khârn.
He stood up, holding Khârn with one hand to keep him from falling while turning sideways to peer into the smoke.
Through the rolling dust, Zelo saw his brother.
Angron.
“What are you doing to them?
Kill!
I will kill you!” The Butcher’s Nails in his skull buzzed.
Blood ran from the Red Sands Primarch’s nostrils.
Angron’s eyes bulged, every muscle in his body taut and trembling.
He roared madly, spittle flying.
But Zelo only glanced at him.
Pointing at Angron, he turned to look at Xynis and asked sincerely, “Why didn’t you warn him?
Or is it because the Master of Mankind treats him specially?
Why am I the one being reprimanded?” Xynis slowly raised his head, only to find that Angron, who had been about to charge and cut down Zelo, was now also staring at him.
The Primarch’s facial muscles twitched, his eyes rolling back, as if he had already entered a berserk, mindless state.
Angron’s previous atrocities flashed through Xynis’s mind.
Danger.
Before the enraged Angron could charge, Xynis turned and fled without a moment’s hesitation.
(Translated by yourtl.app)