Chapter 63: Taking a Step Back, the More I Think About It, the Angrier I Get!
"Wake up! Stop shouting!"
Francis felt a sudden shove from behind, startling him awake. When he opened his eyes again, he saw himself sitting at his workstation in casual clothes.
"What's wrong with you, young man!" an uncle said, holding a thermos and patting Francis's shoulder.
"In the middle of the day, talking in your sleep. What Primarch? What Emperor? The monarchy era fell long ago, kiddo!"
Francis grabbed a fruit knife from his desk, intending to end his life. The uncle dropped his thermos in shock, hugged Francis, and screamed in terror. "It's not that serious! Talking in your sleep is normal! It's not embarrassing! Don't get emotional!"
"I'm not emotional!" Francis roared. "This is a damn hallucination! I have urgent business, don't stop me!"
The uncle was almost in tears. What sin had he committed? Why did he bother with someone's sleep-talking?
The people around them, hearing the commotion, rushed over. An aunt who was applying a face mask screamed as her mask peeled off. "Ah! Someone's trying to kill themselves! Quick, save him!"
They used all their strength to try and snatch the knife from Francis's hand. Just as the fruit knife was about to slip, Francis said to the uncle with utmost sincerity, "I love you!"
The uncle's face flushed, and his grip loosened. Francis seized the opportunity and charged forward.
Francis woke up again. A middle-aged doctor stood before him, holding a medical record. "Such a minor issue, and they want to send him to a mental hospital?"
The doctor leaned forward. "Do you also feel like you come from another world?"
Francis watched the pen constantly twirling in the doctor's hand. Then, with an unknown surge of strength, he slammed into them.
Opening his eyes again, he was sitting next to the podium, where the teacher was drawing a triangle. He continued to crash.
His hometown? He continued to crash.
His best friend? He continued to crash.
His first love? He confessed first, then he continued to crash.
Until he materialized in a wasteland.
"Do not harm humans! Must obey human orders! Must protect oneself!"
The words echoed across the desolate plain. Francis beheld a nightmare made manifest: half-mechanical Astartes stumbled forward like reanimated corpses, their vox-grills emitting bestial roars.
Powerful Titan-class war machines unleashed torrents of fire from their multi-barreled meltaguns.
"Roar roar roar!"
What they faced defied sanity, massive, pale creatures resembling centipedes grown to abhuman proportions, their bodies filled with hundreds of eyes and grasping limbs.
The xenos horrors devoured everything: ceramite armor, adamantium plating, flesh, and steel alike.
Worse still, they regrew the consumed matter onto their own writhing forms. Once infected by them, one would become their walking dead.
When countless eyes extended from the gaping maw on the creature's head and fixed upon Francis, a chilling sensation spread through him, the unmistakable touch of psychic communion.
His brain throbbed with searing pain until a sensation of weightlessness, and then Francis heard the clamor of battle.
When he opened his eyes again, he saw the same accursed telegraph machine in front of him, still continuously broadcasting its vile transmissions.
Francis suddenly jolted awake. "I'm finally BACK!"
He roared, stomping on the device until it shattered, emitting a sharp shriek and oozing azure blood.
In the distance, countless automaton soldiers were blocking a horde of crimson bull-headed daemons. More accurately, the mechanical soldiers were self-destructing in continuous waves to stem the demonic advance.
He turned to look at the others. They were all still frozen in place, each muttering something, trapped within their own psychic prisons.
Francis approached Ferrus and heard him say, "Sigh... Call me Warmaster when we're outside! Fulgrim, stop being so cheeky, quickly call me Warmaster!"
Francis was shocked. He furiously slapped Ferrus's face, shouting, "Wake up! Wake the hell up!"
But the Gorgon showed no signs of waking. Francis quickly went to Perturabo's side.
He heard the Lord of Iron say, "Are you convinced yet! I'm the strongest! Francis, keep fighting for me! Don't stop, keep fighting!"
Francis immediately landed several solid punches, also shouting, "Wake up! Everyone, wake up!"
As for the others, they weren't so lucky. Several of the Iron Warriors had already undergone obvious flesh mutations, with corrupted tissue squeezing out of the power armor's seams, gradually forming hooked claws. Sharp horns continuously grew from their helmets.
There was no time to think. Francis snatched a power sword and brought it down on these mutated warriors.
For a moment, flesh flew everywhere, and strange organs dropped all around.
Facing the spreading corruption, Francis struck both Ferrus and Perturabo with a sword each. The immense pain immediately jolted them out of their hallucinations.
"Why! What are you doing!" Ferrus bellowed.
"Whose side are you on! Ahhh!" Perturabo howled.
The two Primarchs collapsed onto the ground. Francis threw two stim-packs at them. When they saw the shattered psychic machinery on the ground, they finally realized what had happened.
Francis briefly explained the situation, and the three then split up, each striking the hallucinating warriors with a blade. They didn't kill them, but inflicted serious injuries to bring them back to their senses.
"My back!"
"My kidney!"
"It hurts so much, why is it so cold!"
While they were rapidly recovering, Francis had already charged out. Seeing that there wasn't even a single Greater Daemon among the horde of red daemons, Francis smiled helplessly. "Haha... Alright, alright. I understand."
At this moment, Francis was certain of his theory. He activated his war armor's targeting systems, with countless auspex eyes sweeping across its surface. Each shot took down a daemon.
"What do we do now? What's going on!" Ferrus looked bewildered, his transhuman mind struggling to process such an unprecedented attack.
"Never mind that, let's kill them all first!" Francis commanded.
All the Astartes pulled out flamers, set to maximum power, to physically banish these daemons from reality.
Finally, Francis strode toward the ship. "What else can we do! Pray to the Emperor for protection! He's not paralyzed, so why wouldn't He even save His sons?"
"This time, we're changing course and heading towards the Solar System. There's a saying, the closer we are to the Emperor, the further Chaos is from us."
Perturabo "...."
Ferrus "..."
'Is he stupid or bold?'
As the saying goes, patience for a moment brings calm, but a step back makes you angrier the more you think about it.
Francis walked and walked, and the more he did, the more uncomfortable he felt. Then he turned around and marched back towards them.
"Can you tolerate this? Someone's hitting you in the face, can you tolerate that?!" Francis stood before them, the three of them less than half a meter apart, his eyes fixed on them.
"Think about it! The three of us did nothing, and then we were bullied! And after bullying us, they just ran off! Can you tolerate that?"
Hearing this, Perturabo was the first to step forward, his chin raised defiantly as he declared, "This is absolutely intolerable! We must retaliate with overwhelming force!"
Ferrus was still hesitant, as this was too risky.
"I have psychic technology, you have mechanical expertise," Francis said. "How about we combine them to create a psychic bomb?!"
Francis recalled that the Grey Knights had employed similar warp-based weaponry in their daemon hunts.
At this moment, the three warriors stood together in grim accord.
Francis pulled out a psychic bone. Perturabo pulled out blueprints for a vortex warhead. Ferrus pulled out a hammer.
"You guys wait for me for a bit!" Francis said.
With that, they watched Francis carry a huge green canister from the battleship, then continuously spray green powder on the ground. After spraying, he didn't forget to water it, sprinkle some corpse starch and Ant Cow cans, and finally cover it with a black hood.
After completing all this, Francis tidied himself up and said, "Alright, let's begin."
Although Ferrus and Perturabo had a rough idea, they still asked, "What did you just do?"
"Ah, I planted a few acres of Orks," Francis replied matter-of-factly. "We'll charge in under the Ork Waaagh! Field, to avoid falling into a trap!"
Francis convinced his idea was absolutely perfect.
Ferrus "..."
Perturabo "..."
"Don't just stand there! Come and make psychic weapons!" Francis urged.
"Oh!" Ferrus replied.
"Oh!" Perturabo replied.
Within the Immaterium - Daemon World Cikarus
Within the Immaterium, upon the daemon world of Cikarus:
Kor Phaeron, Captain of the Word Bearers' First Company and adoptive father to Lorgar Aurelian himself, had led a strike force of Word Bearers to ambush the Ultramarines on the world of Calth.
There he encountered Roboute Guilliman, Primarch of the XIIIth Legion.
With insufficient combat strength, he was quickly defeated and had one of his twin hearts torn from his chest by the Avenging Son.
Just as he was about to die at Guilliman's hands, his desperate will to survive drove him to employ a Chaos-tainted athame, tearing open a Warp rift and escaping into the Immaterium.
He emerged on this benighted world and, for reasons he could not articulate, proceeded to massacre an entire tribe of Chaos cultists.
When Lorgar Aurelian, equally defeated by his brother Corvus Corax, arrived through his own ritual summoning, his expression became a mask of terrible wrath.
"Son..." Kor Phaeron stepped forward, about to address Lorgar when the Primarch's glacial stare repelled him.
What greeted him instead was Erebus's sneering mockery. "Hehe... Some old things just aren't durable. How long has it been, and he couldn't stop them. If we hadn't run fast enough, we would all be dead."
Subsequently, other Word Bearers slowly walked in. Seeing Kor Phaeron, they became even more furious, constantly complaining.
"This guy isn't worthy of being a Word Bearer, no! He isn't a Word Bearer at all! He hasn't undergone the complete transformation surgery, he's just a half-finished product!"
"Exactly! That's right!"
"He isn't even willing to call the Primarch 'father'! He's not one of us at all!"
"Kick him out of the Word Bearers! Kick him out of the Word Bearers!"
The shouts from below grew louder and louder, and Lorgar did not stop them. He was contemplating whether Horus was still suitable to serve as Warmaster of Chaos. The Dark Gods had promised him that half of his brothers would aid them in overthrowing the False Emperor. But now...
It was at this moment that a cerulean avian entity swooped into the chamber. It possessed two vulture-like heads, reptilian limbs, and wings of immense span. Potent Chaos energy radiated from its form.
This was Kairos Fateweaver, Oracle of Tzeentch, Greater Daemon of the Architect of Fate.
"If Horus does not accept the will of Chaos, you will surely fail!" Kairos proclaimed.
"Even if Horus accepts the will of Chaos, it will be challenging for you to approach the Emperor, or even enter the Solar System."
Both heads spoke simultaneously, their pure white eyes revealing blindness to the present, the price paid for perfect sight of what is yet to come.
Just as Lorgar struggled with this grim prophecy, both of Kairos's heads spoke the same sentence. "Hahaha... Francis, Son of Discord, will be the key!"
As Lorgar was about to ask something, Kairos turned and flew away, leaving only three iridescent feathers drifting to the chamber floor.
"Hehehe... Primarch, you heard it too. The Warmaster must fall into Chaos. I have a plan!" Erebus, standing to the side, let out an evil laugh, his voice dripping with malevolent satisfaction.
The last time he had laughed like this was when he orchestrated Horus's fall on Davin.
[End of Chapter]