Horus gripped the daemon sword Drach'nyen tightly. The surging warp energy stored within the blade pulsed, sending a faint sting through his palm. He gazed down the dim corridors of this place—so familiar, yet utterly changed—his eyes filled with a complex swirl of emotions. The Vengeful Spirit, his flagship.
If Horus Lupercal was the father of the Luna Wolves, then this Gloriana-class battleship was the Legion's mother, the "war-wife" gifted to the Primarch by the Empire. Seeing the humiliations, corruptions, and grievous wounds the ship had endured over ten thousand years made Horus feel as though his own soul had suffered the same injuries.
Relocating the Vengeful Spirit had been something of an accident. After Abaddon's fall and the disappearance of the Black Legion, Huron Blackheart had not rushed to seize territory. Instead, he had stealthily snatched this Gloriana-class flagship from the hands of the Dark Mechanicum while it was undergoing repairs.
The Lord of the Maelstrom had attempted to mold his Red Corsairs into a true Legion, and a Legion required its Gloriana. However, before they could complete the vessel's conversion, Horus had reclaimed it, restoring it as his flagship.
"But there is little power left within it," the Angel of Extermination had told Horus. He had hoped Horus would take the xenos-forged Blackstone Fortress as his flagship instead. After ten millennia of trauma, the Vengeful Spirit was little more than a withered husk, its interior crawling with Nurgle's plagues—it could never rival a Blackstone Fortress. Yet Horus chose his old friend, and not merely for the sake of sentiment.
In truth, Horus felt a bit foolish for his own hope. Ten thousand years had passed; the ship had endured countless agonies. How could that thing still be there?
But the moment he stepped aboard, a strange sensation filled his heart. A sudden flash of intuition guided his steps through the Vengeful Spirit. He could almost feel the ship's lingering Machine Spirit guiding him, pointing the way.
He moved through ruined corridors, avoiding Nurgle's rot-walkers lurking in the shadows and bypassing the restless wraiths haunting the decks. Driven by an inner impulse, he followed the slight vibrations of the pipes and the low hum of the bolts toward a specific room.
He didn't doubt the feeling; he didn't believe the Vengeful Spirit would betray him. He trusted it was a gift from the Machine Spirit to its old master—a flowering of his own inner instinct.
Horus rounded a corner, and a flash of crimson power armor darted past his vision.
Instinctively, he raised Drach'nyen, but he quickly realized it was no living being. It was a phantom—a residual image. This was a quirk of the Vengeful Spirit: ten thousand years ago, when Horus became the Chosen of the Gods, his will had extended into the ship, making it both an extension of himself and a dark temple.
Even after his death, that touch had permanently reshaped the vessel. Here, the echoes of those who died or once trod these decks remained trapped, eternally pacing, replaying scenes of the past.
It was a squad of Blood Angels. Horus watched silently as they ran past him, noting the face of the man leading them: Raldoron, First Captain of Sanguinius. This shadow belonged to him.
Eventually, the phantom vanished around a bend in the corridor.
Horus shook his head slightly and continued following the guidance. His heart was pounding. The image of the item he sought was clear in his mind. Even after ten thousand years and the transition between life and death, he remembered every detail—the texture, the weight. Rubbing his fingers together, he could almost feel the sensation of wearing it.
"..."
Horus came to a halt, his gaze turning instantly cold. He saw two bald men clad in teal-scaled armor—the Alpha Primarchs, Beta and Gamma. One of them held a gold ring between his fingers, while the other leaned in, inspecting it with feigned interest. Both wore subtle, mocking smiles as they whispered to each other.
Horus's expression froze. The veins in his temples throbbed.
"Put it down," Horus said, his voice dripping with the deepest malice. The environment around him seemed to dim. The Vengeful Spirit sensed its master's fury; the lights flickered out, and darkness draped over Horus like a cloak, leaving only the baleful glow of the daemon sword Drach'nyen.
"Are you upset?" one Alpharius turned his head—perhaps Beta—with a visible sneer.
The other toyed with the gold ring for a moment.
"You want it?" the one who might be Gamma asked. "You know the rules. If you want it..."
+Kill him.+
Crazed, chaotic whispers erupted from the darkness surrounding Horus. He recoiled slightly, only to see a figure shrouded in shadow and crimson light standing behind him. Four ancient shadows floated behind the figure; lightning streaked through the void as the Gods whispered in madness.
The shadow flickered and vanished, as if it were merely another projection of the past.
That shadow had been appearing near Horus frequently lately. The Angel of Extermination said it was because the past had become unstable, causing things that shouldn't exist to float to the surface. He said it was normal and to ignore them.
But that damned Gamma flashed a mocking smile. His fingers twitched, closing into a fist, and the golden light vanished into his palm.
Lightning tore through the darkness. The blue daemon sword slashed through the air as a roar, more feral than any beast, erupted from Horus's throat. For a single instant, his past and present selves overlapped. The power of the Ancient Four seemed to flow through his body once more. He was the Storm, he was Chaos, he was the Spire, the Lightning, the Render, Darkness, King, Sovereign...
"You know the rules. If you want it..."
"...I'll give it back to you!"
Gamma reached out and slapped the gold ring onto Horus's chest. The darkness receded instantly, the shadows of the past vanished, and the sensation of a moment ago felt like a mere hallucination.
Gamma let go, and the gold ring slid down Horus's chest like a falling star.
Horus scrambled to catch it.
"A miracle, really. This thing was actually stuck in a floor crevice, preserved for ten thousand years," Gamma remarked.
Horus looked at the gold ring in his hand, staring at the centaur engraved upon it. A wave of indescribable emotion bloomed in his heart.
"You should thank me. Finding things isn't exactly your forte, Warmaster. If I weren't here, who knows how long you would have searched," Gamma chuckled.
Horus looked at him with a gaze of genuine gratitude.
"Oh, stop. You're making me blush."
Gamma laughed aloud. "I'm joking, brother. You don't actually have to thank me."
"I can understand your feelings regarding our Father."
"Most of our brothers conquered their own worlds. There were very few exceptions."
"And you were the first of those exceptions to return to the Empire, and yet among the most unaccomplished of them all."
"Even Angron can reminisce about his gladiator brothers and their mad rebellion."
"What did you have on Cthonia? Nothing. You were just a petty thug."
"All your glory came from those thirty years—from our dear Father. So, you beautify those thirty years over and over. You beautify our Father because you were cautious, terrified of making a mistake and losing his favor. And even more afraid that all the honor, praise, and love he gave you were nothing but an illusion. How humble, and how painful..."
Horus's face contorted suddenly. He gripped the ring so hard his knuckles whitened. "Didn't you also accomplish nothing on your own home world? You remained obscure, you didn't conquer..."
Horus cut himself off halfway through, realizing he had said something foolish.
Gamma was clearly amused, wearing a look that said 'Do you hear yourself?' "Why didn't I conquer my own home world?"
"My goodness, Lord Warmaster. I didn't realize I was so powerful in your eyes."
"If I could actually conquer my own home world, the Imperial succession would have been settled at the Lion's Gate, and it would have been the Great Emperor Alpha who came to find you."
"Along with Retired Emperor Neoth and Imperial Tutor Malcador."
"So, do you really think I could beat the Emperor of Mankind?"
"No one can defeat him," Horus lowered his eyes, opening his palm to stare at the golden ring.
At that moment, the Vengeful Spirit shuddered violently. Horus tightened his grip on the ring, fearing it might slip away.
"Another ship swallowed by the tides of the Warp," Beta said from the observation port, staring out at the Immaterium.
They were in the deepest reaches of the Warp—the Land of the Forgotten. Here, the tides did not surge with the madness of the Great Ocean; there were no whirlpools or floods. This was a region that rarely mirrored the real world. The currents flowed in an almost imperceptible manner, with only occasional ripples.
But that didn't mean it was safe. The Warp here still devoured ships. Vessels would vanish without warning or sound; people would even forget such a ship ever existed. Only the fluctuations caused by their disappearance signaled that a ship had been consumed.
"How many have we lost?" Horus asked, his expression grim.
Unlike the Red Corsairs, he could still vaguely remember some of the missing ships. He knew their losses were significant.
"On the records? Zero. We've lost nothing."
"According to the logs, those ships never entered the Warp with us. In fact, they were never even built."
"But if you want the truth? Roughly one-third... The closer a ship is to the Blackstone Fortress, the lower the probability of it disappearing."
The Blackstone Fortress possessed a unique power. Horus didn't fully grasp the technical or warp-science aspects, but he could sense that the vessel contained powers that both amplified and stabilized the Warp.
"Is that why He wanted the Blackstone Fortress?" Horus nodded slightly. "If that's the case, this layer of the Warp might help us fend off pursuers..."
"I think that might be difficult. After all, the technology for these Blackstone Fortresses was plagiarized by Vaul from the Void Dragon. Currently, the 'copyright' for this tech probably belongs to Saint Doraemon," Gamma said, shaking his head.
Horus frowned.
He hated this feeling. These two Alpha Primarchs seemed to know everything, while he was left with half-truths or total ignorance—including their destination. Horus only knew it was a place where forgotten things settled, a Kingdom of the Forgotten. But as to what was actually there, he knew next to nothing.
Horus peered out the window at the indescribable, grey-curtain-like Warp. It gave him an unsettling feeling. If he breathed in, he could almost smell something "old"—like a piece of forgotten history gathering dust on the top of a bookshelf, growing blurrier by the day.
Suddenly, Horus caught an image in the grey tides. His eyes widened. He saw a giant wolf—its upper jaw touching the sky, its lower jaw touching the earth. The sun and moon hung within its maw. A severed arm dangled between its teeth.
Magic chains bound it—chains made from the sound of a cat's footfall, the beard of a woman, the roots of a mountain, the breath of a fish, the sinews of a bear, and the spittle of a bird. They were soft as silk ribbons, yet impossibly strong. But the chains had been snapped.
Then, a moment later, the wolf vanished, swept away like dust.
"What was that?" Horus's voice rose an octave. "Was that Russ?"
"No." Beta looked at Horus from the window. "That wasn't Russ. That was something else—a giant wolf from ancient Terra's myths. The people of the ice seas watched solar and lunar eclipses and imagined two wolves devouring the sun and moon. This wolf was the father of those two. Its story was once sung by many bards, and it had a significant impact on human civilization, gaining a presence in the Warp."
"This wolf and its myth devoured many other entities in the Warp. Even in an age of faithlessness, it saw a cultural revival and grew strong. But as humanity stepped into the stars, the story was gradually forgotten."
"But we still remember its name... Fenrir. The Great Wolf Fenrir. He and his myth were excavated during the Golden Age and forged into Fenris—a reconstruction of the myth of ice and fire."
"In a sense, it is Russ. Russ is their representative, the incarnation of forgotten things, the recurrence of the Age of Myth."
"After all, the dust piled upon forgotten things doesn't look much different from the snow covering a planet when viewed from afar."
Fenrir. Horus turned the name over in his mind.
Just then, objects began to emerge in the Warp before him. They had evidently passed through the heap of "Forgotten Ash" and entered the Kingdom of the Forgotten. Horus saw a planet, and his body shivered. He recognized it.
On that planet, he had once lost a son.