Nolan opened his eyes.
The ancient hall was exactly as he had left it: dim, cold, the metal throne pressing against his vibranium armor at every point of contact. The only light came from the soft purple glow of the Ten Rings, hovering above his pack in their resting formation and casting long shadows across the worn stone floor.
He exhaled slowly. The tension in his frame released by degrees, muscle by muscle, until he was simply sitting in a throne in a quiet corridor aboard the Nicor, a very long way from Solemnace.
He pulled up the simulator interface and reviewed the full run: every loop, every encounter, every reward note. He went through it methodically.
"Trazyn really does keep exceptional things in that museum of his." He said it to the empty hall. "The pity is that I cannot go there in person. The things I could bring back from a direct visit..." He let the thought trail off. "Of course, if my real body went and could not come back, becoming one more item in his collection, that would be a considerably larger problem."
He turned his attention to the reward screen.
"And what exactly does a simulation's promise to Trazyn obligate me to? Nothing, strictly speaking." He tapped the armrest once. "Although. If Fulgrim's clone could be brought back to this world, that would be worth genuine effort. Better that than leaving him to be recorrupted by Chaos at some point, or executed on sight the moment someone identifies his genome. He would be more useful at my side."
He would need to plan that extraction carefully. A substitute Overlord or a detachment of Necron Warriors were one category of risk. Imotekh the Stormlord or the Silent King, who cared about their species' survival as a strategic priority and would view any new universe as a resource to be exploited rather than an individual arrangement to be respected, were a different category entirely. The native world had enough complexity without adding Necrons to the equation. Although, if something beyond all other options ever appeared, having a potential Necron contact in reserve was not the worst position to hold.
And the Emperor would need to be considerably occupied with other matters before any of this became a realistic plan.
He shook his head and focused on the rewards.
The Empathic Obliterator was exceptional, and he wanted it. But the organ had no equivalent. Something built from Fulgrim's cells, apparently blessed by the Emperor, capable of extending his environmental endurance beyond current biological limits: in terms of continued improvement to his combat capability, there was no comparison.
He chose Fulgrim's Pride without further deliberation.
The sensation was immediate: a sharp, focused pain deep in his abdomen, tissue knitting itself into existing structure with the efficiency of a process that knew exactly where it was going. Thirty seconds, perhaps forty. Then it was gone entirely.
Nolan raised a vibranium palm and ran it across his cheek and neck. Nothing unusual. No sign of activation.
"Extreme environments, then." He noted it and filed it away. He would find out in due course.
He stood, the vibranium armor adjusting with a low hum, and walked out of the ancient hall toward where he expected to find Tyberos.
In the time since the Lamenters had come aboard, the Nicor's mortal complement had experienced something that, measured against the conditions documented in Nolan's earlier assessment, qualified as a marked improvement.
Water rations were adequate. Corpse starch arrived on schedule. Occasionally, actual protein appeared as a daily allocation: small, but present. The Carcharodons Void Brothers had not killed any mortal crew members over anything trivial in the weeks since the hall incident. The fear was still there in how the mortal servants moved through the corridors, the slight rerouting when an Astartes rounded a corner ahead of them, but it had changed quality. More managed. Less acute.
The Lamenters, however, were a separate matter.
The relationship between the two Chapters had reached a temperature that could not be described as cold without understating it. The Lamenters, billeted on the Nicor as Nolan's guard, and the Carcharodons Void Brothers maintained their separate corridors with the particular controlled awareness of two forces that had decided, for now, not to begin something. The decision held. It was not comfortable.
The root of it traced back to a decision Nolan had made without fully calculating the downstream effects.
When the Minotaurs warband had last come through, Nolan had directed the Lamenters' battle barge Storm Maiden toward the Carcharodons, via mortal captain, as a gift to the Chapter. At the time it had been straightforward: the Carcharodons needed the vessel, the Storm Maiden was available, the decision solved a logistical problem cleanly.
From the Carcharodons' perspective, it read as unambiguous: a Primarch's favor extended to the whole Chapter. They received it without ceremony and without any particular intention of explaining its provenance to anyone who asked.
From the Lamenters' perspective, the arrival of their Chapter's battle barge in Carcharodon hands carried only one coherent interpretation. The Sharks had taken it. Given the long and uncordial history between the two Chapters reaching back through the Badab War, the assumption that the exchange had involved violence was not a leap. It was the obvious conclusion.
The Carcharodons, when the Lamenters' Terminators had expressed their feelings through the indirect medium of the hall corridor fight, had declined to offer any explanation. It was not their nature to justify themselves to anyone outside their own command structure, and the Lamenters fell outside it. If the Wailing Chapter wanted to draw conclusions, the Sharks had no particular objection to the conclusions they drew.
Nolan could not explain it to either side in terms that did not require him to unpack a decision chain that reflected poorly on his own planning. He had tried once and found the gap too wide.
Tyberos had the situation controlled in the sense that no one had died. The Twenty-Five Terminator-armored Lamenters and the Carcharodons Void Brothers maintained their separate corridors, their separate rotations, their separate silences. It functioned. It was not sustainable.
They had met, reviewed the situation from both angles, and reached the same conclusion independently: a controlled outlet was required.
The solution had precedent across several Chapters that had encountered similar internal pressure problems. The Space Wolves had their structured combat traditions within the Fang. The Dark Angels had their own equivalent. The Imperial Fists had built entire doctrines around channeling inter-Astartes aggression productively.
They would hold a Void Feast.
Thirteen individual contests. At the end of them, a double champion, acknowledged by both Chapters and recognized by the authority of Chapter Master Tyberos and the Primarch. Serious injury was permitted between participants. Severed limbs were permitted. Death was not permitted, under any circumstances, from either side. Any Astartes who killed their opponent in the arena would be executed on the spot by Tyberos or by Nolan personally. Both of them had made clear they regarded this rule as the non-negotiable foundation of the event rather than a guideline to be interpreted.
When the announcement went through the Nicor's vox system, the ship changed.
The mortal crew, who had not had entertainment of any kind since before the Tyranid siege, received the news that they were invited to attend as spectators with a response that bore no resemblance to the behavior of people under perpetual shortage conditions. The corridors had a different quality of noise. The Devourers moved differently. Even the most senior Astartes on both sides found their briefing rotations slightly abbreviated, their brothers' attention distributed in ways that suggested agendas beyond immediate tactical assessment.
Tyberos had not objected to the supply cost. The panacea stockpile and food allocation required to support thirteen serious combat events with proper recovery protocols were not trivial numbers. He had examined them, set his jaw, and said nothing against them.
What he had objected to, in the private meeting with Nolan where the final event rules were drafted, was the clause disqualifying both Primarch-level combatants and Chapter Masters from the competition roster.
Nolan had the same objection.
They had agreed, with visible reluctance on both sides of the table, that they would serve as judges.
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