"Damn, it's cold!"
Even though his psychic power could keep him warm, Caelan still shuddered violently.
He had just left the glaciers of Fenris, and now, without any warning, he'd been dropped into another freezing wasteland.
If it weren't for the prank that Russ and Sylvia had pulled on him, he might've thought he'd been teleported again.
"Last time it was Fenris… this time, it had to be Inwit, right?"
"Rogal Dorn, where are you?" Caelan muttered. He had no idea where he was, but he believed he would find Dorn.
It had happened before; every time he crossed paths with a Primarch, there was something like a bond, some invisible force that drew them together.
He trudged through the snowy mountains, searching his memory for information about Inwit, but found almost nothing.
Inwit was best known for the Phalanx, and that was about it.
Even the Imperial Fists were different from other Legions; most Legions recruited from their Primarch's homeworld, but the Fists mainly recruited from Terra.
No famous battles, no legendary warriors, except perhaps Alexis Polux, the famed founder of the Crimson Fists.
Caelan knew almost nothing about Dorn's childhood, only that he'd been raised by an ice-tribe.
Unlike Fenris, which was both fiery and frozen, Inwit was simply cold, all year round.
Though the people of Inwit lived a nomadic life, their technology was quite advanced. They could build small fleets for interstellar expansion, and during the Age of Strife, they'd even formed a small star empire.
So Inwit's orbit must've had a complete shipyard, perhaps even the Phalanx itself.
Caelan climbed to the jagged peak and stood in the cutting wind, gazing over the endless mountains, hoping to spot signs of human life.
Then he froze.
At the foot of the mountain, he saw something utterly out of place, vivid green.
A lush, broad-leaved forest. But how could such a thing exist in a world buried in ice?
"Unless… this isn't Inwit at all," Caelan murmured. The truth, it seemed, was that simple.
But if this wasn't Inwit, then where was he?
And where was the Primarch he was supposed to find?
If this was a normal world with seasons and snowy mountains, that narrowed things down very little.
The first name that came to mind was Guilliman. The landscape did look a lot like Macragge.
Caelan was about to descend the mountain in search of his target when, in the endless white, he spotted several small black dots moving fast, tiny but distinct, like the famous cold spot on the cosmic background map.
…...
"Run! Run!"
A boy, no more than two or three, was sprinting through the snow. He couldn't even speak yet, but instinct screamed at him to keep running.
Sharp ice tore his legs open, leaving streaks of red blooming across the snow.
He couldn't stop. The pursuers behind him left no room for rest; pain and cold fused into one relentless torment.
The freezing wind poured into his lungs like molten lead, turning each breath into agony.
But the monsters flew; they always caught up.
Bang!
A lithe figure dropped from the sky and tackled him. The boy fought furiously beneath its weight.
A dagger flashed toward his throat, but he twisted just in time.
His hand groped through the snow, found a stone, and with a hoarse scream, he swung it forward.
A shrill cry, hot breath splattered across his face, and then silence.
The weight lifted. The boy was now on top.
"Ahhh!"
He roared, smashing the stone into the creature's skull over and over until it stopped moving.
"Ahhh!"
He brandished the bloodied rock toward the others approaching him, an act of desperate defiance. Like a cornered beast, hopeless but unbroken, baring its fangs one last time.
Panting, he rose from the corpse, blood dripping down his small hands.
His crimson-streaked face met the monsters' gazes. From their shrinking pupils, he saw fear. Their hearts thundered like war drums in the frozen air.
They had come to hunt him, and now they were afraid.
The boy wanted to laugh, but he couldn't. He was exhausted.
"What a shame… I thought it was the Stone. Turns out, it's a stone."
The voice came from behind him, speaking words he couldn't understand.
"Ahhh!"
He hurled the rock, but it struck something unyielding, like amber.
A large, warm hand suddenly closed over his blood-caked fingers. The warmth seeped through the crusted gore.
It felt like fire in the night, soft, safe, impossible to resist. The boy's tense muscles loosened.
He looked up and saw a plain face.
The man's thumb gently brushed the open wound on the boy's hand, tenderly, as though afraid to break something fragile.
"Does it hurt?" the man asked.
The boy didn't understand, but tears spilled anyway, before reason could stop them.
"Baba… hurts."
"You're even filthier than Lorgar," Caelan murmured, wiping away the boy's tears. "Don't cry. Let's finish killing them first, alright? Before the bodies get cold."
"Okay." His voice was raw and cracked, his throat bearing a bloody gash.
He stumbled forward, leaving tiny bloody prints behind him.
The monsters stood frozen, not from will, but from something else.
They couldn't move.
They knew that power. It was the same force that flowed in their bloodline.
"Behold his essence," one monster rasped. "The hunger that devours the threads of fate itself… our twilight, your dawn, and the Empire's false eternal day, all will shatter beneath His fangs. And still, you pretend not to hear the stars screaming?"
The wind silenced him. The boy screamed and leapt, beating the monster's skull into pulp.
Blood and brains splattered across his body, clinging to his bare skin.
The dull rhythm of stone against bone echoed across the snow, each strike painting the white in chaotic crimson.
At first, the corpses twitched. Then they grew still. Only the wind's mournful whistle remained.
The boy staggered to his feet, having smashed each skull to fragments.
Then, two strong hands lifted him easily, as if he weighed nothing.
A warm coat wrapped around his trembling body. Psychic warmth flowed over his wounds like water, soothing, comforting.
The man held him close. The boy went still, tears still streaming, but quiet now, like an ice statue carved by the storm, weeping silently.
His tiny hand clutched the man's tunic, then loosened, afraid to shatter this fleeting warmth.
"You can't kill people like that," Caelan said, prying a glowing gem from a corpse's chest.
"This is a spirit stone. When an Aeldar dies, their soul gets trapped inside. If their kin recover the stone, they'll never truly die. So, to kill an Aeldar, you have to destroy the spirit stone. Got it?"
The boy nodded, lips pressed tight, tears still trembling in his eyes.
Caelan collected the stones one by one, teaching patiently.
"You could destroy their souls outright, but that'd be too kind. Better to break the stone, let Isha's mercy show them what cruelty really means."
"Though… it'd be a waste. You could use these. Embed them in shields, or let psykers use them; they help bear the cost of peering into the Warp."
Caelan rambled on, then suddenly said, "Want me to give you a name?"
The boy nodded again, hard.
"Angron," Caelan said. "Technically, that's the name your slavers will give you later. I wanted to rename you, but I hate the idea of running from the past. And this… hasn't even happened yet."
"In your people's tongue, it means Son of the Mountain. But in High Gothic, it also means rage."
"Since I'm here, I won't let you become a slave to rage. But remember today's anger, remember how these Aeldar hunted you without cause, and one day, use that anger to drive humanity's enemies to extinction."
"The second meaning is this: rage itself isn't evil. Every human emotion exists for a reason. What matters is learning to control it."
"So, stay angry, but master it."
"You're still young. You won't understand yet. That's fine. I've got all the time in the galaxy to teach you. If the Emperor won't give you a second more of life, then I'll make it up to you. Consider it his debt repaid."
"An… gron…" The boy's throat trembled as he forced out the sound.
"Angron…"
Rough, cracked, halting. His tongue stumbled over the syllables, but he persisted.
"Angron." This time, it flowed more easily, a faint hopeful lilt at the end.
"You're Angron. I'm Caelan." Caelan pointed at him, then at himself.
"Caelan," the boy echoed.
"Mm."
"Caelan!"
"I'm here."
"Caelan!"
"Stop calling me, will you?"
The boy flinched, shrinking instinctively.
"I'm not mad," Caelan sighed. "Alright, fine. Call me if you want. Just don't expect me to answer every time."
Among the Primarchs, arguments over who was the strongest never ended. But if you asked who was the saddest, everyone agreed, it was Angron.
Some were found and loved right away. Others had to survive the wild for a few years.
Angron? He got jumped by Aeldar the moment he landed, beaten half to death by a bunch of space elves. And the worst part? They still lost!
But the tragedy didn't stop there. No sooner had he driven the Aeldar off than slavers arrived.
And these weren't ordinary slavers; they had tech so advanced, even a Primarch couldn't resist their drugs.
"You actually came?"
Caelan hadn't even descended the mountain when he saw dark shapes approaching fast. Slavers.
Who the hell raids a frozen mountain for slaves?
They clearly had a reason. Either they were hunting the Aeldar, or they were after Angron himself. A falling Primarch pod wasn't exactly subtle.
Their original goal probably wasn't slavery, but they took him anyway.
Then- boom!
Before they could reach Caelan, the mountain roared like a waking dragon.
A white avalanche, vast as death itself, crashed down with supernatural precision, burying the slavers completely.
Caelan plucked a green leaf from a nearby branch; it looked just like those from ancient Terra, though he couldn't name the species.
The boy was exhausted, but kept his eyes fixed on Caelan, as if afraid he'd vanish if he blinked.
"Can't sleep?" Caelan gently rubbed his back. "Then I'll tell you a story. I told your brothers this one, too."
He began.
"When Laius was young, he lost his father and went to serve King Pelops. He became tutor to Pelops' son, Chrysippus. But Laius was a pederast; he kidnapped Chrysippus, causing his death."
"Pelops cursed him, that his own son would kill him."
"Later, Laius became king of Thebes. One drunken night, he lay with his wife, Jocasta, and Oedipus was born."
"Afraid of the curse, Laius abandoned Oedipus in the mountains. But shepherds found him, and he was raised by the childless King Polybus and Queen Merope of Corinth."
"When Oedipus grew up, an oracle told him he'd kill his father and marry his mother. Horrified, he fled Corinth, swearing never to return."
"One day, he met Laius on the road. They didn't recognize each other. Laius arrogantly demanded that Oedipus step aside. They fought. Oedipus killed him."
"Later, Oedipus became king of Thebes and married Jocasta."
"Oedipus killed his father," the boy said slowly.
"Why do you all focus on that part?" Caelan groaned. "The point is the prophecy, not the patricide!"
The boy looked puzzled.
Caelan explained, "Oedipus had many ways to avoid the prophecy. He could've killed himself. He could've stayed celibate. But he thought leaving Corinth would change fate. He didn't realize Laius was his real father. That's why he fell into the trap. The tragedy of Oedipus isn't murder, it's blindness."
"The Craftworld Aeldar are the same; they feared a prophecy that Angron would destroy them, so they tried to kill him first."
"But if you're going to do that, why send only a handful of warriors? If it were me, I'd bring half the Craftworld's army."
"Of course, I wouldn't handle it that way. I know what's coming, and I've been trying to prevent it."
"But I won't kill the nine traitor Primarchs. I'll try to teach them. Reach them."
"If the Aeldar had taken Angron in, raised him, taught him, cared for him, then even with the Emperor's conditioning, he wouldn't have been able to destroy them."
"Because Angron is the most emotional of all Primarchs. More human than even Vulkan."
"If they'd just been kind, he might've protected them."
"But alas… Aeldar will be Aeldar."
"They were given a chance, and squandered it. They still think themselves the galaxy's rulers, even as beggars."
"At least the Dark Aeldar are honest; they know the end's coming, so they live for pleasure. They accept it."
"The Exodites saw the truth early; they knew their empire was doomed, so they withdrew, avoiding contact altogether."
"But the Craftworlders? Blind and proud. Neither wise nor humble."
"Sleep now. Sleep."
Caelan hummed a soft lullaby.
The boy's head slowly drooped, resting against Caelan's shoulder.
And at last, Angron slept, safe for the first time in his life.
.....
If you enjoy the story, my p@treon is 30 chapters ahead.
[email protected]/DaoistJinzu