"My brother, please… don't be too late…"
Guilliman fought to resist the corrupting Slaaneshi influence, forcing the thought through clenched resolve.
He could not hold on much longer.
Now he finally understood what it felt like to be targeted by a Chaos God. It was almost impossible to withstand.
And now he understood why Horus had fallen under the Ruinous Powers' temptations. If Guilliman had been in Horus' position, he doubted he would have lasted long either.
No primarch could endure sustained, high-intensity corruption for long, unless he had never stepped into a Chaos God's trap in the first place.
"How is Eden able to endure prolonged corruption within a Slaaneshi illusion?" Guilliman thought, awe rising even through the haze. "What kind of will is that?!"
The Lord of Ultramar, the Avenging Son, the Emperor's loyal son, found himself admiring his brother more and more.
This was not merely bodily temptation. It was a hook sunk into the soul.
Even if one removed the relevant organs and hormones, it would not stop the mind from generating those strange, invasive impulses.
And controlling one's thoughts was even harder.
"Eden has endured Slaanesh's corrosion in his sleep for so long and still persisted. That alone proves a will of iron."
"And it proves the unyielding spirit of humanity!"
Guilliman shoved Yvraine away with visible effort, his expression hardening as he resisted the rot creeping through his thoughts.
The Savior had once spoken to him about his own situation, and about the long legend of resisting Slaanesh. He had admitted how difficult it was to defy the gods.
That same unbreakable will now steadied Guilliman.
Teeth clenched, he rejected the surging seduction and corruption.
"As the Lord of Ultramar, as the Emperor's loyal son, I cannot fall behind my brother by so much. I cannot become a disgrace among primarchs!"
Worse still, this illusion contained far more than Yvraine.
There were Ecclesiarchy "saints," T'au Ethereals, Necrons, Greenskins, Tyranids.
There were also countless Daemonettes, and a menagerie of obscene, malformed beasts.
A grotesque carnival of the galaxy and the warp all at once.
Guilliman stared at the mixture of beauty, monstrosity, and stench, then drew a slow breath.
If he fell the way Fulgrim had, if he "did something" with any of these things…
He would lose all authority, all glory.
Only shame would remain.
"What a miserable end…"
No wonder those who had fallen into a Greater Daemon's pleasure-illusion and still escaped either refused to speak of it, or only spoke in vague fragments.
Official records were the same. They offered only warnings: maintain willpower, and if necessary, destroy one's endocrine organs to stay lucid.
They declared Slaaneshi illusions the most dangerous and hardest-to-resist corruption. They demanded a ruthless purification of Imperial morals to reduce contamination.
How could any warrior speak openly of such an experience?
It was humiliation beyond endurance.
A man would be mocked for a lifetime by his comrades.
And then the Inquisition would come.
Now Guilliman faced the Prince of Excess's illusion itself. If he ever escaped, he would bury this memory forever.
"I must learn from Eden. I must reject every temptation!"
Guilliman swore it in his heart, gathering what remained of his will.
Then a colder thought struck him.
Fulgrim.
That traitor would be recording this, wouldn't he?
"He absolutely would."
Guilliman shuddered, dread sharpening his focus.
"That traitor was shamed by Eden's recording. He will take revenge."
"And he will use the same method on me. If I fail to hold on, I will suffer humiliation I cannot endure!"
The mere image of that final, world-ending social death made him feel sick.
"If I become that… perhaps death would be the best outcome…"
It was a shame even Fulgrim might not be able to bear, let alone an Imperial legend like Guilliman.
"My brother," Fulgrim's voice slid into the illusion, warm as poison. "Accept it. If you do, perhaps we can become battle-brothers again."
"Once you embrace the Prince of Excess's gift, you will understand how… exquisite it all is."
Somehow, Fulgrim had blended into the illusion's throng, speaking with an almost encouraging gentleness.
He was also shaping the atmosphere, turning it into something that raised chills along Guilliman's skin.
"Traitor," Guilliman demanded, throat dry, inching closer to the throne as if distance itself might be a shield. "What are you trying to do?!"
In reality, Guilliman was bound.
In the illusion, he had no weapon, no armour, no battle to fight.
Only will.
He had never felt panic like this before.
And something in him tightened with cold alarm.
Since his return, Guilliman had heard rumours of what Fulgrim and the Emperor's Children had done after their fall.
Gatherings. Ritual "celebrations." Things nobody wanted to imagine too clearly.
Who could say what Fulgrim might attempt here?
"Eden, Khan, Lion, when are you coming?" Guilliman pleaded silently, the thought ragged with urgency. "Brother… I can't hold much longer!"
He had never wanted rescue so badly.
He missed his brothers.
Outside the illusion, Fulgrim's expression turned playful as he watched the Lord of Ultramar like a predator.
He was close.
So close to the profane footage he wanted.
At the same time, countless gemstones rose into the sky above the duelling arena, a full million of them.
They arranged themselves into an array, all linked to the central stone of black-and-gold turbulence, glowing with strange light.
The Maugetar Stone's siphoning formation.
"Hypocrite," Fulgrim murmured, staring at the forming array with hungry delight. "This was prepared for you."
"It is several times stronger than the formation that once siphoned Perturabo's authority."
"Once I take your power, I will become the Prince of Excess's most favoured. I will sit upon His throne, not forever beneath it…"
Fulgrim was nearly trembling with excitement.
He might not have been the strongest of the primarchs, but he had always been among the most dangerous.
And he had something else.
Cunning.
He could take victories through traps.
Now he had "defeated" Ferrus, Perturabo, and Guilliman.
And the Savior would fall here too.
"And when Kairos' data-corruption ritual is complete," Fulgrim whispered, "I will spread the last century's profane footage of you across the PsyNet."
"You will lose your dignity. The Imperium's people will spit on you."
Just imagining it made Fulgrim smile.
Guilliman already found this kind of shame unbearable. The hypocrite cared even more about his image. His suffering would be exquisite.
The Savior's accumulated prestige and terror would collapse in an instant.
Fulgrim could almost see it: the Savior discovering his humiliation circulating across the PsyNet, furious and humiliated.
And then the Savior's psychic network would become a pipeline for Slaaneshi contagion, rotting the Imperium from within.
The moment was drawing close.
Until then, Fulgrim intensified Guilliman's torment and temptation.
The suffering would continue until the Savior arrived.
"Damn you!" Guilliman snarled, suddenly shoving away a Greenskin who looked, disturbingly, almost presentable by Greenskin standards.
He was teetering on the edge of social death, his whole mind numb with panic.
If he lost his will and the footage emerged, and then those "little videos" with Greenskins spread…
It would be over.
What a vicious method.
After that, would he have any choice but to hide in the warp and pretend to be dead?
Guilliman remembered the bold words he had spoken before entering this duelling arena.
Now he regretted them.
It really was better to fight at Eden's side.
Had his brother believed those bold words and decided not to come?
Now there was nothing to do but endure.
Even under torture and corruption at once, he would not submit.
Calisde.
Bzzzz.
Without warning, the Chaos energy around the outer perimeter of the daemon-palace surged into violent turbulence, threaded with the roar of machinery.
A shimmering warp rift opened.
A colossal four-legged fortress-engine stepped through, as if a factory had grown limbs and learned to walk.
It was grotesque.
A manufactorum-world structure, infected and "living" under a mechanical plague. Even while moving, it continued producing Chaos machines without pause.
Then came more howling gears, more screaming engines.
A tide of corrupted war-machines arrived, packed so densely they seemed endless.
Some resembled twisted humans.
More resembled armoured beasts.
All carried lethal weapons.
Their assault was overwhelming. They smashed the Dark Angels' defensive line almost instantly, even suppressing the firepower of Imperial relic-machines.
Even massive Dreadnoughts were torn apart.
A Warlord Titan was dragged down and ripped open.
"We can't stop the mechanical tide!" Lazarus, Master of the Dark Angels' Fifth Company, stared at the oncoming storm, his entire body trembling. "Request immediate reinforcement!"
This pressure was worse than anything he had imagined.
It felt even more terrifying than the Lion's own forbidden battle-automata formations had been.
"Emperor…" the Dark Angels Techmarine whispered, eyes widening with horror. "That's Excindio technology."
"The Lord of Iron is using Men of Iron techniques from the Dark Age of Technology. He's mass-producing Chaos engines!"
As a member of the Inner Circle, the Techmarine could recognise the structure at a glance.
Perturabo had not recreated true Excindio in full.
But he had replicated key principles, then fused them with Chaos forge-tech until they became even more deranged.
The daemon primarch who mastered technology had been silent for ten thousand years, building a hoard of warped machinery.
Now he had finally unleashed it.
The Dark Angels' line shattered like paper.
This was the war he had dreamed of since his ascension.
An ocean of savage, terrifying war-engines, grinding everything in their path into dust.
"How long can we hold?" Lazarus forced himself to breathe, demanding an answer.
This force had been positioned on a flank. It was not supposed to bear the main burden.
But the Lord of Iron had struck from the side with a force beyond imagination.
They needed to hold until Eden's forces arrived.
"At this rate, at most one third of a Terran hour," the adjutant reported after scanning the battlefield.
"And the enemy numbers are still rising. Our holding time will shorten."
"And more importantly…"
"The Lord of Iron himself may arrive at any moment."
The moment he finished speaking, a shockwave of Chaos energy erupted.
The clarity of that psychic pressure, the suffocating presence behind it, snapped every Dark Angel's attention upward.
They looked.
A vast, heavy figure emerged from the rift, stepping onto the platform of the moving Chaos-factory.
He held a gigantic warhammer.
Power radiated from him like gravity.
Cables ran from the back of his skull into his thick armour, making him look like an iron beast.
Electric pulses crackled outward from his frame.
In an instant, almost every Chaos engine on the field roared, as if its machine-spirit had been whipped into frenzy.
It was more effective than any Mechanicus binharic hymn.
The moment that armoured giant appeared, the Dark Angels knew who he was.
Primarch of the Iron Warriors.
The Hammer of Olympia.
The Lord of Iron.
Perturabo.
With his arrival, the Iron Warriors' main force surged in behind him.
A flood of artillery fire blanketed the Dark Angels' positions, hammering them so hard they could barely raise their heads.
During the Great Crusade, the Iron Warriors had been the Imperium's premier siege-breakers.
They were not merely "good at grinding." They were built for it.
And their firepower had always been brutal.
They loved saturation bombardment.
Now, having fallen to Chaos, freed from Imperial restraints, and able to build ever more horrific war-machines, their barrage became monstrous.
Shells and beams covered every strongpoint.
The defence line shook, close to collapse.
If not for the shielded defensive emplacements Eden had supplied, this position would already have fallen.
"The Imperium has decayed," Perturabo said, voice calm despite his beastlike silhouette.
"No."
"It is I who have become stronger. Stronger than I was during the Great Crusade."
"The false Emperor will learn what an error he made. He will regret his stupidity."
Perturabo did not rant.
He did not foam with madness.
He raised his hammer with the steadiness of a craftsman lifting a tool.
And with that simple motion, he signalled the beginning of slaughter.
A colossal beam lanced from the moving Chaos-factory's primary gun, striking a god-engine ahead.
The blast shattered the Titan's void shields, then punched into the chassis and detonated it from within.
The Titan died in a blooming cataclysm of metal and fire.
The destruction crushed morale across the Dark Angels' line, feeding fear like fuel.
One shot.
And the walking factory had produced firepower even more terrifying than "general cannons" on the battlefield.
There was no defending against it.
To Perturabo, it was nothing special.
Technology was as natural to him as breathing.
What the Mechanicus pursued with a lifetime of prayer and blood, he could grasp with a glance.
Even Eden's innovations, given enough data, could be learned, copied, and then twisted further with darker science.
"Only a little over a hundred years," Perturabo thought, "and the galaxy has already seen a technological revival."
"What a pity."
"Because soon, it will all become mine."
He was interested in the Savior's new technologies.
Not merely for advantage.
But to relieve the boredom of immortality, and to construct even more terrifying Chaos engines.
And the PsyNet.
If he could seize even one core node engine, he could build an equivalent network for Chaos tech-priests.
He could cultivate machine-life of his own, feeding it massive computational power.
Perhaps that would be the most perfect experiment of all.
The Savior would discover, too late, that his advantage could be surpassed.
"The Lion's sons are still just as disappointing," Perturabo said, watching the Dark Angels struggle.
"No improvement at all."
"Wasting the Dark Age relics the false Emperor left them."
Perturabo shook his head, contemptuous.
He, more than anyone, possessed knowledge.
He, more than anyone, mastered the craft of iron and war.
And yet the false Emperor had given those forbidden relics to Lion El'Jonson and his Legion instead.
Was that not fear?
Fear of Perturabo's talent.
A prohibition against deeper mechanical research.
The Iron Warriors reduced to consumable tools of war.
It was stupidity, and it was insult.
Crackle.
Perturabo's heavy armour, the Logos, flared with violent electrical pulses.
An internal command architecture linked into more units, more machines, more guns.
He began actively controlling the battlefield.
In that instant, he became a legion's data-core.
A living computation engine sustained by a primarch's mind.
Guilliman's command art was nothing compared to the Lord of Iron's control.
Not only could Perturabo coordinate artillery.
He could regulate the temperature of the guns themselves.
Under his direction, the Iron Warriors moved like a precision instrument.
With ruthless, exacting firepower, they shattered the Dark Angels' defence line in rapid sequence.
…
Boom, boom, boom!
Outside the Imperial Emperor, violent artillery thundered.
From even farther away, the roar of Chaos engines rolled like a storm.
Eden stood on the observation deck, but his eyes were on the data-slate in his hand.
He reviewed a high-priority report from the network purification department.
A forbidden virtual clip.
He clicked his tongue.
"Old Guilliman's got spring fever too, huh. Getting up to that kind of thing with the Emissary of Ynnead."
He was only teasing.
He knew Guilliman was trapped in a Slaaneshi illusion snare.
Honestly, Guilliman not stepping into a trap would have been the surprising outcome.
Eden frowned.
"Hope he can hold out until we pinpoint the arena's exact coordinates. And I have no idea whether there's a Maugetar Stone there…"
Resisting Slaanesh was notoriously difficult.
If Eden ran into that kind of illusion, he suspected he would have been unable to hold out long before charging forward without shame.
So what if it was a Tyranid 'bug-girl'?
Eden wasn't worried about corruption for himself.
He was worried Guilliman wouldn't last.
If it came to hauling Guilliman back from Slaanesh's grasp, that would be almost impossible.
"And Fulgrim and Perturabo seem to have some kind of grudge," Eden muttered. "Maybe I can use that."
He exhaled, killed the data-slate's display, and looked toward the distant Chaos battlefield.
The Imperial Emperor was moving at high speed toward the Dark Angels' war zone.
They had requested aid.
Eden needed to resolve Perturabo, that "helpful netizen," that prickly contrarian, as fast as possible.
If he could bring him back, it would be an enormous boon to humanity's technological future.
If not, then it would have to be physical destruction.
As an enemy, Perturabo might be more dangerous than any other fallen primarch.
(End of Chapter)
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