Chapter 35: The 360° Spinning Primarch
"Are you going to tell the truth or not, you wretched carrion-feathered fraud?!"
"Believe in the God-Emperor! Worship the God-Emperor! The God-Emperor is the only truth!"
"Speak! What is this 'elf'? What is it really?!"
Three voices overlapped: rage, fanatic devotion, and interrogation, forming a discordant symphony of madness.
Even Magnus the Red stood stunned.
Even the Emperor watching through the psychic imprint bound within the statue fell into rare silence.
Erebus had seized the great avian daemon, its form unmistakably that of a servant of Tzeentch, and already shattered both its legs. Now he forced its head down again and again, smashing it into the ground in crude prostration before the statue of the God-Emperor.
"Repent! Repent before Him!"
Nearby, Lorgar Aurelian knelt in fervent prayer, reciting scripture in rising intensity, while Kor Phaeron pressed the interrogation with cold precision.
"This… this is madness…"
Magnus could barely form words. He stared at the three of them, one preaching, one torturing, and one enforcing, and felt something break inside his sense of reality.
Even the Emperor himself might have denied these men as his own.
Behind Magnus, Ahzek Ahriman stood ready, tense and silent, awaiting only a command: flee… or purge.
Then something changed.
A faint, golden radiance flickered from the statue.
The Emperor stiffened.
That light… was not his.
His awareness sharpened instantly, tracing the origin, and then he understood.
It was the thing he had cast into Erebus.
The anomaly.
The "black coffin."
The Warp anomaly that devoured power.
For the first time in countless years…
The Emperor smiled.
Not a polite smile. Not a restrained one.
But something deeper dangerous.
A possibility.
Forget the Webway Project. Forget starving the Ruinous Powers. Forget every rigid path he had calculated.
A new path had appeared.
Erebus was not merely a variable.
He was a weapon.
A solution.
Perhaps… even an end.
The Emperor's expression settled once more, but the decision had already been made.
The Golden Throne…
might yet have a different master.
"Speak! Or I tear your essence apart!"
"Believe in the God-Emperor! Accept Him!"
"What is a 'Warp spirit'? Answer!"
Under this fourfold torment, physical, psychic, spiritual, and ideological, the daemon finally broke.
"ENOUGH!"
Its voice screeched like tearing metal.
"They are Warp entities! Constructs of the Immaterium! Lures traps set by the Architect of Fate!"
It would not name Tzeentch, but it didn't need to.
Erebus inhaled sharply and looked at Lorgar.
Lorgar hesitated… then nodded.
That was enough.
Erebus raised his one functioning arm.
"Then to hell with the Architect of Fate!"
"To hell with your illusions!"
"To hell with your 'beautiful lies'!"
His blade came down in a furious arc.
Blow after blow followed—fists, strikes, and raw brutality delivered with terrifying speed.
Magnus watched in silence.
He realized, with a chill, that Erebus had held back during their earlier duel.
"I beg you! Stop! They are daemons! It is deception!"
"I don't care what they are!" Erebus snarled. "Repeat after me!"
"The God-Emperor is the source of wisdom! The bearer of truth! The path of mankind!"
"God… Emperor."
The moment the daemon spoke the words
Golden light descended.
Absolute. Merciless.
The daemon disintegrated into ash.
Gone.
Silence fell.
All eyes turned upward.
The Emperor stood above them, hands clasped behind his back, expression unreadable.
His gaze shifted… and settled on Magnus.
"I am disappointed in you, Magnus."
Magnus dropped to his knees instantly. Ahriman followed.
"You seek knowledge without restraint. You peer into the abyss, yet fail to grasp its cost."
His gaze flicked briefly to Lorgar.
"And you… are no better."
The Emperor descended slowly, golden aura pressing down upon them like a collapsing star.
None dared speak.
Except one.
"You know how hard it is to catch a daemon these days? Do you have any idea how much effort that took?"
A single psychic blow.
Erebus vanished into the ground with a thunderous crack.
No one moved.
No one spoke.
The Emperor stepped forward as if nothing had happened.
"My son," he said to Magnus, "you have two choices."
"First: relinquish your Legion. I will grant you another path."
"Second: walk forward… with Erebus. Find your own truth."
Magnus hesitated.
For a long time.
Then
"I choose the second path… Father."
The Emperor placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Very well."
And then he turned away.
Magnus collapsed.
He understood.
It had been a test.
And he had failed.
Before he could rise
A massive psychic force struck him across the face.
Magnus spun through the air like a flung gyroscope
and embedded into the wall.
Lorgar watched this in stunned silence.
His resolve only deepened.
This cannot be divinity…
This must be transcended.
Outside.
Beneath the night sky of Colchis.
The Emperor stood alone.
And laughed.
A full, unrestrained laugh.
"My old friend," he murmured, thinking of Malcador the Sigillite.
"I have found something… extraordinary."
A Primarch? came the imagined reply.
"No."
"A solution."
Then, with deliberate intent, the Emperor cast a message into the Warp.
A lie.
A dangerous one.
The black vessel nears apotheosis. A fifth power stirs.Whoever feeds it most… shall command it.
At first, the Warp ignored it.
But then
The currents shifted.
The Four stirred.
Even the Great Powers of Chaos could not ignore such a possibility.
And when they saw the anomaly… already feeding…
They acted.
The Emperor smiled coldly.
"Good."
"Come."
"Feed it."
"Show me your desperation."
Far away
Erebus lay half-buried in stone, barely conscious.
And somewhere deep within him
Something vast…
listened.
(End of Chapter 35)
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