Datch ignored Khayon's question and went on gently stroking the air.
Khayon's information panel appeared at once. Sentences and photographs recording every detail of the soldier filled the display.
Khayon's full name was Iskandar Khayon. He belonged to the Thousand Sons and was a son of the Daemon Primarch Magnus. He had been born on Prospero.
After Prospero burned, Magnus joined the Chaos faction.
Khayon and the other Thousand Sons followed their father and set foot on the path of corruption as well.
After the Horus Heresy ended, many rebels pursued by the Emperor fled into the Eye of Terror.
Khayon soon formed his own warband and later joined Abaddon's founding cadre as the Lord of Vigilance, becoming a core member of the Black Legion and one of Abaddon's early adherents.
When Abaddon first began the enterprise, the Black Legion had been merely a loose alliance cobbled together from remnants of traitor Legions and wandering warbands.
No one believed Abaddon; they mocked the title "Warmaster of Chaos" he claimed for himself.
Khayon, however, did not oppose him. He led his own warband into the Black Legion.
He sealed his sister into the Vengeful Spirit and made her a shipgirl sworn to Abaddon.
Even his own flagship, the Tlaloc, had crashed trying to help Abaddon.
In the midst of the Thirteenth Black Crusade, however, Khayon took an action that even Inquisition interrogators found bewildering.
He infiltrated Terra alone and was finally captured.
According to his confession after capture, the reason he had come was only to tell the Emperor directly that "Abaddon will win."
When the judges heard that explanation, they first thought the man suffered from severe mental illness.
"Do you perhaps like Abaddon?" After reading Khayon's information panel, Datch's pupils widened sharply.
He had gone through numerous NPC information panels — from Great Crusade heroes to Horus Heresy traitors, from Chaos-stained fallen Primarchs to opportunists who had gone back and forth among historical factions many times.
He had never, however, seen a person like Khayon.
Datch had once suspected he was not playing a battlefield game but a romance game aimed at women.
Following the logic of romance novels, Khayon was without doubt a typical perfect second male lead.
He was strong and had a firm backer. For the heroine, he was prepared to plunge through fire and water, and would even sacrifice his own sister and entire fortune. In the end, he rushed alone into the enemy stronghold in order to shout for the heroine, "She will surely win!"
Khayon had a sister; she was the first shipgirl in the Warhammer world.
Before the Phalanx absorbed a Mind Cube and obtained self-awareness…
Khayon's sister had been the smartest, most powerful shipgirl in the galaxy.
After the Phalanx took form, she ranked second.
Once that gigantic Phalanx form was established, she slipped further still.
Every time a new Imperial shipgirl was born, his sister's ranking dropped by one.
Because every other shipgirl could transform, yet Khayon's sister could not.
Khayon had a female lover, a Dark Eldar Scourge named Nefertari.
When the great daemon of Slaanesh tried to devour Nefertari's soul and drag her into the eternal hell-paradise,
Khayon descended from the sky, defeated the gigantic monster with a single blow, and showed a typical example of a hero saving a maiden in distress.
They had even used a soul-binding to force the other party to keep living.
Furthermore, Khayon once claimed he had made his own Primarch father, Magnus, kneel before Abaddon.
These acts all demonstrated his strength and power.
Yet this existence of unmatched power maintained absolute loyalty to Abaddon.
"Does Abaddon hold some dirty secret that is your weakness?" Datch muttered.
Khayon might become the same kind of existence as coerced married women and young girls who were threatened by Abaddon with some shady secret and finally yielded completely and became exactly like him.
Besides that explanation, he could not think of another way to understand why Khayon swore such loyalty to Abaddon — especially why he resolutely staked everything on Abaddon when the other party had nothing to lose.
They had been foolish enough to come to Terra, a land of death, before the Thirteenth Black Crusade began.
After falling into the court's hands, Khayon had been imprisoned in the deepest part of the dungeon, interrogated again and again, and tormented by endless torture.
Khayon's psychic power had been destroyed by the inquisitors with psychic-seal manacles. Enraged interrogators had gouged out his eyes, severed his limbs, and made him a crippled body.
Yet this man kept muttering things such as "Abaddon will win."
"Is he just a fool trying to expose truth and secrets?"
Khayon smiled. His sockets had long since been gouged out; with empty eyes he stared toward Datch.
"Then I shall tell you. The Warmaster of Chaos will surely win. This is already a story ordained by fate."
Seeing Khayon's figure, Datch lost his words — yet suddenly an evil thought floated into his head.
Imagining what he was about to do, and how the other party would react, Datch involuntarily laughed.
To kill a person, you must first destroy that person's spirit.
If the Warmaster of Chaos's inevitable victory is your obsession, then let me cut that obsession!
Datch took out the Golden Hammer of Faithful Ash and struck Khayon again and again.
The first blow struck Khayon's socket; a dull metallic sound rang.
Khayon felt a warm, tingling sensation he had never experienced welling up deep in his eyes.
The severed optic-nerve ends naturally reconnected in the golden light.
The torn cornea and lens regenerated from beneath scar tissue.
In a mere instant, amber pupils slowly opened with an expression of disbelief.
Not only Khayon's eyes; astonishing change also occurred in his body.
Tendons regenerated and joined again; bone completely healed; sturdy limbs recovered their former strength and agility under the prisoner's clothes.
Vision recovered; health recovered; Khayon stood frozen on the spot with an expression of disbelief.
Khayon slowly raised his right hand, clenched it before his eyes, and could not believe what he was feeling.
He raised his face, stared at Datch, and asked in a hoarse voice, "Who on earth are you?"
Datch said nothing and put the golden hammer into the in-game inventory.
At that instant, the Time Stone mounted on the Infinity Gauntlet released vivid green light and formed a translucent curtain of light in the air between them.
The screen flickered; various historical images of Abaddon began to play frame by frame.
The Black Legion suffered defeat again and again under Guilliman's merciless crusade.
While at Vigilus, they were split and surrounded by the Imperial fleet and suffered tremendous damage.
The great crack opened with such hardship was closed with only a snap of the fingers.
Furthermore, the four Chaos Gods, Abaddon's greatest supporters, were not in a very good situation either. They had been badly beaten by Datch, come to doubt the meaning of their own existence, and become withdrawn.
Khayon stared at every image on the screen and could not believe it was all reality.
"It's all fake, fake. I won't be deceived by you."
Hearing this, Datch waved his hand and used the Infinity Gauntlet to swap their positions.
Khayon felt the surrounding space-time warp; when everything returned to normal, he realised he was in Terra's Throne Room.
The Golden Throne stood before him; the Emperor himself sat upon it. The Emperor released pure, bright, dazzling golden light like a sun.
"Traitor!" the Emperor sitting upon the Golden Throne shouted in Khayon's mind.
At that terrible sound, the sorcerer who had lived a thousand years trembled violently.
His legs bent beyond control; he knelt on the Throne Room's cold stone slabs, pressed his brow to the ground, and even feared to raise his head.
Do not be deceived just because Khayon always called the Emperor a false emperor or a corpse-king.
When he had nothing else to do, he would loudly declare to newly joined warband leaders that "the Emperor died long ago; on the Golden Throne there is only a rotting corpse."
The instant he faced the Emperor, he completely lost his usual arrogance. His legs trembled from too much terror; he even lost the courage to look the Emperor in the eye.
After laughing for a while, Datch opened a spatial portal and took Khayon to the Macragge Executive Council to meet Malcador.
At this time, Malcador was in the Executive Council study. Lumen-lamps embedded in the dome released bright yet soft light as always and cast constantly flickering shadows on stacked documents.
Behind the desk at the centre of the study, Malcador was earnestly engaged in Imperial government affairs.
Khayon saw Malcador; his eyes widened; a colour of panic floated on his face.
"No. That's wrong. Malcador is dead. He cannot be Malcador!"
"How unfortunate. The great Nameless One raised me from the brink of death."
Hearing the noise, Malcador raised his face and saw the nameless man and Khayon.
He saw at a glance that Khayon was a traitor, stood, leaned on the aquila sceptre, approached Khayon, and scrutinised him.
"Traitors of the Fifteenth Legion, pitiful fools," Malcador said. "You had a chance to change this galaxy. His Majesty the Emperor himself entrusted you with the lamp of knowledge, yet you yielded to darkness and fell into vile monsters."
"Even if you will never be forgiven, repent of your deeds."
"Absolutely not!" Khayon shouted as if he had gone mad. "The Black Crusade will surely win. The Sons of Horus will achieve final victory. This is unchangeable fate."
"If my memory is correct, I should also be a descendant of Horus." From behind Khayon, a calm, settled voice was heard.
The instant Khayon turned his head, his pupils widened at once, and he shouted again, "This cannot be!"
The one who appeared was Garviel Loken.
Captain of the Luna Wolves Tenth Company, a member of the Mournival, a person Abaddon had mentioned again and again.
Was this man not killed by Erebus?
The daemon Samus had also been born by Loken's death.
Due to the Warp's nature, it was common for a daemon to die before it was born.
The daemon Samus had been killed by Loken during the final battle on the Vengeful Spirit.
After the last battle between the Emperor and Horus, Loken had remained on the spot to protect Horus's remains.
He had been asked to speak with Abaddon, who had returned to the Vengeful Spirit, and persuade him to surrender and end everything.
Erebus ambushed him from behind and killed him instantly. Then Samus was born.
Why, why is he still alive?
....
…
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