My Life as A Death Guard
Chapter 475: Truly Ineffective Communication
"My beloved Warmaster."
"He will come to find you."
You remained silent. The twins knelt respectfully before you, their blue armor giving off soft metallic knocks against the gleaming deck of the Vengeful Spirit.
You sat upon your throne in silence. By all rights, you should have risen and helped them to their feet, displaying the brotherly affection between you—for though you were the Warmaster, you were still their elder brother.
And yet, what truly left your throat dry was not that.
It was this—
Your youngest brother was actually twins?
The Alpha Legion was a ghost legion. Every one of them resembled your brother Alpharius, but you were certain you could distinguish a Primarch from an ordinary warrior. And when a Primarch stood beside a Space Marine, the difference should have been even more obvious.
A Space Marine and a Primarch were worlds apart.
But absurdly, at this very moment, you could confirm that the two similar-yet-increasingly-distinct figures kneeling before you were both Primarchs.
Your gaze slowly drifted toward your own hand. It felt as though you could see through layers of armor and glimpse the two rings you wore. One of them had already shattered, only to be crudely pieced back together by some black material.
Could it be… that I was still dreaming? You thought this in stunned disbelief. The entire matter was simply too absurd. Two Alphariuses. Two younger brothers.
It was like having two Sanguiniuses.
But there could only be one Sanguinius.
…Then again, perhaps two angels would not be so bad. You thought mischievously for a moment, only to immediately feel the wound in your back—pierced by Sanguinius—throb faintly with pain.
You could not survive betrayal from two Great Angels.
So you chose to steer your thoughts away from the Angel and return to reality.
Your brows furrowed slightly again as your gaze swept over the twins. You knew this scrutiny would not offend them.
Then, in a fleeting instant, you sensed something familiar from one of them.
You had met him before.
"I am Omegon." The one under your gaze spoke, offering you a sly smile.
You replied, "The one who met me under the name Alpharius back then… was you?"
"Yes." Omegon answered.
And yet somehow, you felt the answer was not entirely truthful.
The one calling himself Omegon knelt on your right, facing you directly. Crimson blood-like markings stained the side of his right cheek.
On the left knelt the other twin, who had not yet introduced himself. He looked at you with exactly the same face as Omegon, but the left side of his face was covered in sickly green scars.
That made it easy to tell them apart.
It was also proof that they had once stepped into the Immaterium. You pondered this with some regret.
You wished it had been you who entered the Warp instead. At the time, you had been trapped—by friendship, by brotherhood, by those vague and intangible bonds. You had been wounded deeply.
But you were still alive.
"You went to Molech?"
You knew where the twins had gone. Of course you did. You were the Warmaster, the most favored son of Him, and the Wolf of Fenris who had inherited the wisdom of the Dionysian Spear.
You had already understood everything.
Molech—the world where your great father had gone to steal fire. Long before the Great Crusade, upon that world, He had made a bargain with the ancient gods of the Warp.
Using the eternal prosperity of the Immaterium as collateral, the Master of Mankind had obtained the fire with which to create the Primarchs.
But now, the Warp was no longer stable.
You felt displeasure. Deeply, profoundly, you realized your father had been deceived—played for a fool. He had become intoxicated by the fleeting brilliance granted to him by those abandoned gods. Like a gambler, he had mortgaged humanity's future.
Your father needed to understand this:
He was wrong.
He was wrong.
No matter how many times you touched upon that thought, it sent a painful tremor through you.
That perfect father… had actually made mistakes.
But he had indeed been wrong. Wrong far too many times.
You thought:
Why had he made you Warmaster?
That was his first mistake.
He should never have chosen you. Even if you had fallen to your knees, weeping and begging him, he still should not have chosen you.
True, you loved him, and he loved you. But it still should not have been you.
A Warmaster required responsibility and capability. In your opinion, Sanguinius would have been perfect. Courageous, brilliant, and when necessary, far colder and more decisive than your hesitant self.
No matter how one looked at it, Sanguinius should have been the favored son—not you.
But then you remembered the shattered expression Sanguinius wore whenever the pressure became too great.
Perhaps… it should not have been Sanguinius after all.
You guessed your father must have thought the same. He could not bear to see something perfect broken.
Then perhaps the Lion would have been an excellent choice as well.
Even if his ability and prestige fell slightly short, the Lion King excelled under immense pressure. Lion himself had also been willing to serve as the leading Warmaster. After all, the clearest proof was that Lion had willingly become Sanguinius's second Warmaster.
At that thought, you suddenly laughed softly to yourself.
Then you could no longer stop laughing.
Your laughter boomed like thunder, the strongest possible proof of your health. Your sons worried too much about your condition, but you knew that right now, the least important thing was yourself.
You laughed so hard tears nearly formed in your eyes. Your thoughts finally escaped the labyrinth in which they had become hopelessly tangled. Yet you knew your magnanimous self had merely pushed these matters farther down the priority list.
"Teach the Lion a lesson."
That tiny line sat near the very bottom of your plans, right beside:
"Kill Mortarion."
Once you destroyed the god-abandoned being stirring chaos within the Warp, once your delighted father reignited the Astronomican after the monster's death, you would first return to Terra in the posture of a victor.
But first, you needed to be careful.
Careful to avoid the hounds of the Second Imperium.
The loyal first son had already arrived, but one must not alert those traitors too soon.
You felt tears threatening to rise again.
Now you finally understood why He had been right.
It could only have been you.
Only you would still think of rushing back to His side at a moment like this, rather than greedily tearing apart His Imperium.
He had been right.
The twins looked toward you. You halted your booming laughter and regarded them kindly, gesturing for them to recount their journey to Molech. You were very interested in it.
No—you were not interested at all, because you already knew everything.
Molech was a stable gateway from realspace into the Warp, but it was far from the only path into the Immaterium.
Omegon spoke. You could hear the awe in his tone when addressing you.
"Yes. Molech."
He smiled.
"We went there to discover for ourselves what the Master of Mankind truly intended—what He truly desired—and what humanity truly requires us to do."
"To serve beside a monarch is to serve beside a tiger. If we cannot discern what He truly wants, then the Hydra will never be able to continue moving forward."
You nearly laughed again.
The only one who truly understood His intentions was you—not your youngest brothers.
"And what did you see there?"
You asked with feigned curiosity, straightening your relaxed posture and leaning slightly forward.
Alpharius and Omegon raised their eyes to look at you simultaneously. They looked upon you joyfully, as though they had already discovered and embraced the ultimate truth of the universe.
"The true path for humanity's future." They spoke in unison, as though they had committed themselves utterly to this choice.
Forgive the thought, but your younger brothers looked exactly like the sort who would infiltrate enemy armies as spies.
"That is why we are here, beneath your command, great Warmaster."
You smiled.
"I know," you said.
"For all that is right will come to me."
And all that was wrong—everything that opposed you—you would personally judge and punish.
Above Cadia, the fleet concealed within the shadows turned its guns toward the forces led by Corax.
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It's from Horus POV by the way.
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