Chapter 64: Borrow Some "Ferrus"
Dvir - The Steadfast
On Dvir, aboard the Steadfast, Typhon, Captain of the Death Guard's First Company, stood in the corner, utterly frustrated.
When he had retrieved Mortarion from the Eye of Terror, he had intended to use the opportunity to corrupt the Primarch. However, Horus's arrival had disrupted his carefully laid plans.
"Mortarion, how are you? Don't scare me," Horus said, grasping his brother's hand with uncharacteristic tenderness. "I don't have many people I can trust now. You can't fall!"
The already pale palm looked even more withered beneath the Warmaster's grip.
Mortarion lay in the medical bay, forcing a weak smile through his suffering. "Cough, cough... Warmaster, I'm not going to make it," he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
"Fulgrim has completely become a puppet of Chaos. You must be careful, he'll strike you from behind without hesitation."
Horus's fists clenched at his sides, knuckles cracking audibly. He hadn't expected Fulgrim to be so ruthless, to betray everything they were to prostrate himself before the Dark Gods.
"Don't worry, you'll recover. Have you forgotten?" Horus leaned closer, his voice dropping to an urgent whisper.
"We are all Primarchs, created by the power of the Warp itself! There must be a way to save you!"
At those words, something flickered in Mortarion's dulled eyes, a spark of desperate hope.
He had always resisted the power of the Warp, viewed it with contempt and fear.
But if it could preserve his life... he swore to himself that he would master it, bend it to his will rather than be consumed by it.
"As long as the Primarch is willing to serve Father Nurgle, Father Nurgle will surely save him," Typhon murmured from his shadowed corner, though privately he wondered whether the Plague God would even want the Primarch in such a deteriorated state.
Horus's gaze snapped toward him, cold, lethal, a look that could kill any living thing. Typhon wisely fell silent.
It was at this moment that Lorgar arrived with his Word Bearers in tow. When he saw the Warmaster still consumed by grief over his brother's condition, the last trace of guilt in his heart evaporated like morning dew.
Lorgar drew himself up, adopting the bearing of a prophet delivering divine revelation. "The All-Knowing Lord has revealed to me that there is still a way to save Mortarion."
Horus didn't respond. Instead, he rose abruptly and crossed the bay in three strides, his massive hand shooting out to seize Erebus by the face.
"What are you doing? No! Ah!" Erebus tried to resist, but it was utterly futile.
With brutal efficiency, Horus snapped Erebus's arm, then tightened his grip on the First Chaplain's face and pulled.
Skin tore away with a wet, hideous sound of rending flesh.
Horus hurled the bloody trophy to the deck with contemptuous disgust.
"Ah! My face! My face!" Erebus collapsed, clutching at his ruined visage, frantically scrabbling on the floor for the torn skin.
"Hmph. No need to say it, you failed," Horus stated coldly. "I warned you, Erebus. Do things properly, or suffer the consequences."
With a dismissive snort, Horus returned to his seat, pointedly ignoring Lorgar.
Lorgar's eyes narrowed dangerously. Lightning crackled between his fingers.
"What? You want to challenge me as well?" Horus asked without turning around.
"How could I possibly?" Lorgar replied, forcing a smile that didn't reach his eyes.
Horus continued, "What method do you have?"
"Speak plainly. If you're about to suggest submission to some god, then you can leave now."
"The gods do not demand servitude," Lorgar said carefully, choosing each word with precision. "They offer power, power that equals what the False Emperor stole for himself."
Horus rose suddenly, exhaustion momentarily banished as his eyes gleamed with renewed interest. "Speak."
"Continue. How do I obtain it?"
"On Molech!" Lorgar's excitement surged, the scriptures tattooed across his scalp seeming to writhe as he spoke.
"The Emperor deceived the gods themselves there, stealing their power! The gods are willing to grant you the same gift. They have chosen you. You will become the true king of humanity!"
He mastered himself, continuing in a more controlled tone, "And of course, with this power, healing Mortarion's injuries will be trivial."
Horus's tactical mind calculated the variables.
With his current strength, he couldn't even reach the Solar System, much less Terra itself. After weighing his options, the conclusion seemed inevitable.
"Very well. This time, we gather all our forces. Bring back Perturabo and Curze!" Horus declared. "As for Fulgrim, let your gods hand him over. Surely an omnipotent deity can manage such a simple task?"
The Primarchs' reunion was not something their warrior sons could overhear.
Soon, Erebus found himself unceremoniously expelled from the medical bay.
Even so, he was grinning beneath his ruined features. He pressed the flayed skin back onto his face, where it adhered with a texture like tree bark.
But he relished this sensation, manipulating beings far stronger than himself, watching them descend step by step into damnation. His heart overflowed with perverse joy, even surpassing his supposed devotion to Chaos itself.
However, Erebus' satisfaction was meant to be short-lived. A small battleship came hurtling directly toward him.
He dodged desperately, trying to escape, he ran screaming, "Enemy attack! Enemy attack! Someone help me!"
The surrounding Word Bearers merely laughed at his predicament.
"Is this another one of your schemes, Erebus? What game are you playing now?" one called mockingly.
"Hahahaha! We're not falling for it this time!" another added gleefully.
The Word Bearers laughed uproariously, several raising their cups in celebration of Erebus's misfortune.
Then came the deafening crash.
The battleship slammed into the ground, the impact hurling Erebus through the air like a broken doll.
"EREBUS! I'M GOING TO KILL YOU!" The battleship's hatch exploded open.
Khârn, Captain of the World Eaters' Eighth Company, emerged in a murderous rage, lunging forward to seize Erebus by the collar. "Where is Argel Tal?! Did you kill him?!"
"What are you saying? I don't understand," Erebus managed weakly.
Meeting Khârn's feral gaze, he added with false bewilderment, "Argel Tal? The Ultramarines killed him! Go challenge Guilliman if you want revenge. Why come after me? I never touched him!"
The enraged Khârn twisted off one of Erebus's hands and roared again, "You pushed him! Why did you do it? WHY!"
"Ah!" Erebus screamed in agony.
Other Word Bearers moved to intervene, but the World Eaters had already encircled them, chainaxes growling hungrily.
Seeing no rescue would come, Erebus could only whisper desperately, "You can't blame me! He was just so..."
"So what?" Khârn leaned closer, straining to hear.
Erebus suddenly seized a handful of dirt and flung it into Khârn's eyes, shouting triumphantly, "He was too good! Too pure! I love destroying beautiful things! Hahaha!"
"Ah! Erebus, DIE!" Khârn lunged at him.
Erebus thought he'd escaped, but he'd gravely miscalculated; he'd triggered Khârn's berserker rage.
A devastating punch connected, sending Erebus tumbling head over heels.
When he pulled his head from the ground, Khârn was already upon him. He tried desperately to reason, "This was all the gods' design, it wasn't my fault, I—"
Khârn tore off his other arm mid-sentence, then straddled him, raining down savage blows. The Butcher's Nails implanted in his skull sang with violent pleasure.
"Let you enjoy it! Don't you love perfection?" Khârn bellowed. "I'll cripple you! I want you to remember this moment for eternity!"
"Ah!" Erebus's screams echoed across the landing field.
"That was my dearest friend! MY DEAREST FRIEND!" Khârn's eyes were completely bloodshot, his fists relentlessly pounding Erebus's body.
Even the power armor began to fracture under repeated impacts.
Blood gushed from Erebus's shattered chest, broken organs and splintered bones mixing in a grotesque slurry. The skin on his face hung in tattered ribbons.
Khârn vented his fury without mercy until his rage overwhelmed every fragment of reason. The Warp itself turned its gaze upon him, and he felt it, elation, terrible joy.
For a moment, Khârn was stunned.
He saw the Brass Throne again, but this time the hand that had rested on his shoulder was gone.
Instead, his dearest friend stood beneath the throne, arms open, welcoming him home.
Erebus, a broken and bloody wreck on the ground, barely clung to consciousness.
Using the last of his strength, he fumbled out a strange Chaos artifact, muttered something with his half-severed tongue, and vanished in a flash of unnatural light.
...
Meanwhile, on an unnamed planet far from the Warmaster's gathering storm, Francis took advantage of Ferrus's absorption in his forge work to "borrow" some cells from the Gorgon's iron arm.
He obtained a small sample, but found he couldn't chew it properly. When it reached his mouth, it produced a tingling, spicy sensation. He forced it down regardless.
The analysis took considerably longer than usual.
"Asphernos, the Silver Giant Worm," he read from his internal genetic scanner. "Metallivore. Incredibly durable, flexible..."
The data contained only information about the creature itself. So the legends were true, Ferrus's arm had genuinely fused with the giant worm's living metal.
Francis noticed his middle finger had turned silver. He bit down experimentally. Sparks flew, it was solid metal through and through.
"Now this is useful!" Francis muttered, forcing his thoughts back to the task at hand. He was a man with a glorious mission, after all.
He cultivated cells from Ferrus's arm, subjecting them to a process of controlled de-evolution that restored them to their initial stem state, purified them, and then created new embryonic samples.
After some time, Francis had established a stable supply of Asphernos genetic material. When he consumed more of the distilled essence, his vision suddenly shifted to a full 360-degree panorama with no blind spots.
Compound eyes proliferated across his body; his skin transformed into gleaming silver, and armor-like metallic plating began to grow across his surface.
Francis examined himself in a mirror, took a deep breath, and murmured appreciatively, "Hiss... That's actually pretty cool."
Then he swaggered out of the laboratory in his new form.
When the door opened, Sarpedon's jaw dropped, staring in complete disbelief. He'd thought the Primarchs represented the pinnacle of possibility, but clearly that was only the limit of conventional material existence.
Francis greeted everyone enthusiastically along his way, leaving a trail of confused expressions in his wake.
The Iron Hands warriors, however, gazed at Francis with profound reverence. "Magnificent! What a perfect fusion of flesh and metal!" one breathed.
They had always yearned to possess iron arms like their Primarch, it made them obsessively devoted to the concept of mechanical augmentation.
Elsewhere in the facility, Ferrus and Perturabo were deep in technical discussion, their brilliant minds working in harmony.
"The spirit bone provided by Francis can significantly preserve and stabilize psychic energy," Perturabo mused, sketching rapid calculations on a dataslate.
"Could we have Librarians pre-charge psychic power, then seal it in munitions with spirit bone casings?"
"That's brilliant," Ferrus agreed enthusiastically. "The Librarians could release lightning in advance and contain it. When we need it in combat, we simply activate the seal! No need for real-time psychic channeling, which would drastically reduce Librarian casualties!"
"Precisely!" Perturabo exclaimed. "Ferrus, you truly are a genius!"
"You as well, Perturabo! The initial concept was yours, I am greatly inspired!" Ferrus replied warmly.
The two Primarchs embraced, recognizing in each other the rare joy of finding an intellectual equal.
"Two men hugging in public! I didn't realize you two were so close. Tsk, tsk, tsk..." Francis called out teasingly as he approached in his transformed state.
Hearing Francis's voice, both Primarchs turned to deliver a retort, but the words died on their lips as they beheld his bizarre new appearance.
[End of Chapter]