When faced with a demon that was casually claiming to be his relative, Sanguinius chose to answer with overwhelming force.
He raised his spear high and hurled it forward, intending to kill this bizarre demon on the spot.
But what happened next left every Blood Angel standing there stunned.
The extreme heretic—the one who had just been calling him "auntie"—reached into nowhere and produced an enormous bell.
He gave it one simple shake.
That was all it took.
Every soul on the field shuddered to their core. The ringing seemed to tear at the spirit of every living thing within range. Every creature on the entire planet became agitated and volatile. Even some mechanical bodies began sprouting strange plants, putting out inexplicable growth from their chassis and joints.
"Omnissiah preserve us—Chaos corruption! This is bad!"
The local Tech-Priests rushed to calm the machine spirits housed in their equipment. The moment they jacked their neural interfaces in, however, they heard something that stopped them cold.
The machine spirits inside were repeating, over and over:
"I am a person. I am a person."
"I am not a machine. I am a person. I want my mother."
Every priest and sage in the vicinity froze. They had prepared to soothe the machine spirits according to the sacred rites—the ancient hymns composed by generations of Forge-fathers for exactly this purpose. None of it worked. The agitated machine spirits would not be calmed.
At the same moment, a cascade of disastrous battlefield reports flooded directly into Sanguinius's mind through some unseen channel. Even the suppressed Chaos gate nearby chose this moment to disgorge a fresh wave of daemons.
"Damn you—what have you done?"
Sanguinius rounded on the enormous mound of flesh in front of him, furious. This blue mountain of meat had just caused him staggering losses in the span of a few seconds. He had not seen this coming at all.
"Heh heh heh~" Cuvexus let out a deeply unsettling laugh—but rather than mocking the Primarch, he seemed to genuinely want to discuss something with his so-called "auntie."
"As a son of Guilliman," he said, "I have some questions for you, auntie."
"What makes someone a person? What does it truly mean to be human?"
"I have always considered myself a loyal Space Marine. I fought alongside your brother Lion. I have developed countless medicinal compounds to preserve human lives. I do not understand why you looked at my appearance for one second and declared me a daemon. I have always believed I am human."
Cuvexus was visibly agitated. His tone was surface-level composed, but the anger underneath it was unmistakable. The only thing keeping him from completely losing it was his persistent, stubborn self-identification as a Space Marine—that identity was a thread of reason he was still holding onto. It was a thin thread, though. It would not last forever.
And as Sanguinius moved against him, Cuvexus's patience snapped entirely.
While the bell's reverberations were still clouding everyone's minds, and while every onlooker stared in absolute disbelief, Cuvexus leaped forward.
His long tongue darted out and licked the bottom of Sanguinius's bare foot. Thick, viscous saliva dripped from the Primarch's smooth sole.
Every Blood Angel present erupted.
The urge to push through to the front and cut this filthy daemon apart where it stood was overwhelming—but the enormous trees, each one taller than a Titan, blocked their path completely. All they could do was stand there, helpless as children, and watch their mother be subjected to this outrage.
"You absolute BASTARD! Sanguinary Guard, CHARGE!"
"Find that wretched thing that defiled Sanguinius and END IT!"
"If we let this stand, how do we face the Primarch? How do we face his trust in us?"
Dante's hoarse voice cut across the entire battlefield. The bell's reverberations had already shredded everyone's nerves, and his fury on top of it sent the cry echoing through every Blood Angel's bones.
Every single one of them wanted this daemon obliterated. Reduced to nothing. Wiped from existence.
"What is a person?"
Sanguinius stared down at the enormous creature before him, and for the first time in memory, Cuvexus's question actually gave him pause.
The Emperor's method of drawing that distinction—his usual approach to such debates—had never sat entirely right with Sanguinius. He had a better framework now. He could reason this through properly.
"Primarch!"
Reinforcements had arrived. The Cursed Legion and the Blood Angels had linked up. The loyal forces on the field now numbered over ten thousand—which meant they were using Astartes as frontline infantry, something that almost never happened.
By official doctrine, when Astartes are deployed as front-line troops, their exchange ratio against mortal enemies typically runs somewhere between one-to-three-hundred and one-to-five-hundred. Sending them in as standard infantry was deeply inefficient under any normal calculus.
But this was not a normal situation.
Their mother had just had her foot licked by a daemon.
This was not a question of tactical efficiency. This was a question of honor.
"Children, do not worry—your mother is fine."
"What I want to know," Sanguinius said, his gaze returning to the creature before him, "is why this thing is saying all of this to me."
He studied the being that called itself a Space Marine.
It was the most baffling daemon he had ever encountered. Stranger than anything he had seen in the Warp. More incoherent than the most deranged entities the Immaterium had ever produced.
"You claim to be Guilliman's progeny," Sanguinius said slowly.
"Then tell me—how did you end up like this?"
"If Guilliman saw you right now, it would kill him."
"Do you honestly believe you could stand before him looking like this?"
"Do you genuinely believe your soul is still human?"
The enormous mass of flesh laughed—a rolling, rumbling sound—and began moving toward Sanguinius on its two stubby legs, each step slow and deliberate.
Sanguinius held his ground but kept his spear raised, unwilling to close the distance. He had good reason. Whatever that bell had done a moment ago had nearly disturbed his personal Warp-sea—the calm interior domain he maintained through constant discipline. If that stillness was thrown into chaos, the entire carefully maintained equilibrium he used to hold his psychic presence together would be meaningless. He was not being cautious out of fear. He was being cautious because the Emperor had placed certain expectations on him, and he did not intend to disappoint.
"You are being shallow," Cuvexus said, apparently unbothered by any of this.
"I believe that with the Master of Mankind's endorsement and a few well-chosen words on my behalf, even my Gene-Mother would accept me."
"My genome may be in disarray, but at my core I am still a warrior. I am still the warrior who defended Ultramar."
"I fought alongside Lion. He looked at me strangely—but he still accepted me."
"I am confident my Gene-Mother is not harder to win over than Lion El'Jonson."
"And everything I have done has been in service of saving human souls."
Sanguinius stared.
Could something like this honestly still be called human? Setting aside the fact that they both technically had a nose and eyes—what connection did this thing have to humanity in any meaningful sense? If this creature qualified as human, then the classification of life itself would need an entirely new category inserted into it somewhere, labeled something like "the Cuvexus division."
This daemon was simply insane. A lunatic who had convinced itself it was a Space Marine.
"Your corruption runs deep," Sanguinius said. "Your mind is clearly not your own anymore."
"You should find a mirror. Look at what you have become."
"I see," said Cuvexus.
The enormous flesh-mound laughed again—lighter this time, almost private. He reached for a piece of parchment and wrote something down.
[Sanguinius is an aesthete.][If you don't look good enough, Sanguinius will reject you.]
[Caleb: ————][The Emperor: ————][The Four Merchants: ————]
For one moment, it seemed as though even the Warp itself went quiet. Every entity paying attention to this situation began to genuinely question what was going on inside this Chaos Greater Daemon's head.
[Nurgle: Fine, fine. They're all my children in the end.][I'll have to take a look at his brain. Maybe he took too many hits to the head in a previous battle.]
The Grandfather was, as always, broadly accepting. His philosophy of life encompassed almost everything. If one of his children wanted to point at a tree and insist it was a person, he would nod and say they had a point. A merciful father could not get into arguments with his children over something so trivial.
Sanguinius's mind, meanwhile, had gone briefly offline—and then rebooted with a dawning, horrible understanding of what this creature was actually saying.
His face twitched violently.
[Caleb: Sanguinius, just tell him he's human!][If you do that, he'll genuinely believe it, and he'll become your follower—part of your domain!][Sanguinius: Father, absolutely not. I refuse.][He is hideous. I feel physically ill.][Do NOT let this thing leave its waste products on Baal. My home would become a cesspit. I cannot accept this.][The Emperor: Sigh.]
The Emperor knew a great deal about how this was likely to unfold, and had already guessed what a certain will was trying to accomplish here. But some things were difficult to say out loud. If the full truth were ever made public, every human immortal in existence would be furious beyond words.
The essential nature of all twenty-one Primarchs was this: the Emperor had ventured into the Warp, pointed at certain entities, declared them to be human, and then dragged those Warp-essences back into reality and installed them inside twenty-one sons.
This was exactly why beings like Erda and Malcador had always harbored such deep hostility toward the Primarchs—they could perceive what those sons truly were at their core. They could not look at those Warp-essences and call them human. Not with a straight face. Malcador merely disliked it. Erda rejected it entirely.
[The Emperor: Son, don't refuse it. Perhaps it's time I let you see your own true nature.]
Sanguinius's expression went distant. His eyes glazed over, unfocused—like a falling angel losing its wings—and his body began to pitch toward the ground.
"NO—Lord Sanguinius, everyone, SAVE THE GENE-MOTHER!"
Every Blood Angel present abandoned all caution. They tore through the surrounding vegetation without hesitation, cutting everything down to clear a path, throwing themselves into a frantic effort to catch the Primarch before he hit the ground.
Cuvexus, meanwhile, turned and walked calmly toward the garden gate. His business here was concluded. He needed to take Aunt Isha home.
But in the moment before both parties stepped back into the Warp—
Two impressions, one blue and one violet, entered both their minds simultaneously.
Tzeentch and Slaanesh allowed themselves small, satisfied smiles.
Khorne merely glanced at the two of them with contempt. He didn't care about any of this. He just hoped something worth fighting was coming next.
The Blood Angels, still hacking at the surrounding trees, realized after a while that the vegetation had simply gone back to being normal trees—nothing more.
By then, it didn't matter. They had no interest in continuing the fight. Their Primarch had just lost consciousness. That was the only thing that mattered.
"Gene-Mother—you promised me a good-morning kiss every single day! You can't go back on that now!"
"You have to pull through—you HAVE to. If you're really gone, I'm not going on either." (off the clock)
No one outside knew what Sanguinius had seen in that moment.
What Sanguinius had seen was his own Warp-essence.
It was a vast eye. Enormous. Its outer edge was ringed by circle upon circle of concentric halos, and every surface of every halo was covered in more eyes—a fractal of sight, stacked outward infinitely. It seemed capable of perceiving everything in existence. It also inspired a cold, instinctive dread that had nothing rational behind it.
The great eye moved as Sanguinius's own gaze moved.
Even Sanguinius himself—a being of refined aesthetic sensibility—felt a wave of visceral revulsion looking at it.
His instincts told him this was his true self. His soul refused to accept it.
[The Emperor: This is your true nature, son.][The reason Malcador never liked any of you was because this is what he saw.]
Sanguinius turned.
A vast golden silhouette stood behind him.
The Emperor simply pointed into the distance, his tone even, as though none of this particularly concerned him—as though he had come only to deliver a fact, and would leave the rest to his son.
"What in the—"
Caleb's observation board had gone strange.
The same enormous eye had appeared on it—staring up from the surface of the game board, deeply unsettling to look at, yet somehow entirely consistent with the oldest scriptural descriptions of angels from Terran religious tradition. Not the soft-winged figures of later iconography. The original ones. The ones that opened with "be not afraid" because they needed to.
[Caleb: This looks like a Throne Angel. Which would mean—Sanguinius's essential nature derives from the earliest strands of human faith. The pre-Imperial stuff.][Wait. Hold on. Does this mean there's one of these things in the real universe too? Oh no. Is this thing above my own head right now?]
Caleb dipped his consciousness briefly into the Warp to check.
He looked.
There was absolutely one there.
"Oh HELL—"
He pulled out immediately.
The only saving grace was that the thing appeared to be non-sentient. Because if it weren't, it would have been genuinely terrifying.
The current Sanguinius was only one-third of what he should be. The complete version was composed of three distinct Warp-entities of different types. It appeared the Emperor had taken the concept of angels—in their most primordial form—and embedded it directly into Sanguinius's being.
The legendary quality that made everyone who met Sanguinius adore him instinctively—the almost supernatural personal magnetism—was probably connected to this Warp-essence as well.
But Sanguinius, who had humanity in him now, could not accept what he was seeing. He was not a pure Warp-entity anymore. He was something more complicated than that.
[Sanguinius: No. This is completely unacceptable. How can I possibly be this?][Does this mean my brothers' true forms are just as... abstract?]
Sanguinius clearly could not come to terms with his own essential nature. The Emperor appeared to have anticipated this entirely.
He simply stood nearby and waited for his son to process it.
That processing time, unfortunately, was very hard on everyone else—the Blood Angels defending the perimeter, and the Cursed Legion still fighting outside.
Without Sanguinius's active presence suppressing them, daemons poured across Baal like a tide. The situation, which had been difficult but manageable, collapsed almost instantly. Tens of thousands of Blood Angels shifted from offense to defense in the same moment, pulling back to hold fortress strongpoints and hive-clusters, waiting for the Primarch to return.
"What the hell is happening?"
"What do you mean our mother is actually in trouble?"
"No—we just found him. We just got our Sanguinius back. This cannot be happening."
"Get us to Dante. Take us to the Primarch."
Chapter Masters from across the Legion were flooding the communication channels simultaneously, and several of them had opened the channel already furious, already blaming Dante before he'd said a single word.
"Dante, you piece of—what is going on? Why are we being denied access to the Primarch?"
"Tell us the truth right now. What did you do to him?"
"If I find out you've locked him up somewhere and are sitting on him, I swear on the Blood, the Flesh Tearers will tear you apart first."
Gabriel, Chapter Master of the Flesh Tearers, delivered this with impressive righteous indignation—though it was somewhat undercut by the large decorative Sanguinius body pillow visible behind him. Under other circumstances, people might have had complicated feelings about the moral authority of that speech.
"Gabriel, enough," Dante said.
"I haven't done anything to the Primarch—I don't have a death wish."
"Let me ask all of you something. If I ordered your battle-brothers to turn against Sanguinius—honestly, genuinely—do you think they'd follow me, or do you think they'd drag me outside and cut me down where I stood?"
The channel went quiet.
He was right. There was no version of reality in which Dante commanded more loyalty than the Primarch. Sanguinius's authority and presence had long since eclipsed anything any Chapter Master could claim. Any brother who openly spoke against the Primarch would be cut down by his own side before he finished the sentence.
Loyalty. The word had taken root at every level of the Legion, down to the newest battle-brothers. No one would betray Sanguinius. No one would even speak of it.
But the fact remained—something had happened to Sanguinius, and even if Dante hadn't caused it, he had clearly failed to prevent it.
And to brothers who had waited this long, in this condition, to see their Primarch again—that was an unforgivable failure, regardless of the explanation.
The War Council frequency was a wall of overlapping voices. Some Chapter Masters had joined the channel already shouting. Some were asking frantic questions. Some were simply demanding to be taken to where Sanguinius lay.
Dante pressed his fingers against his temple.
He had to hold the line, keep the information contained, and manage a Legion on the edge of fracture—all while sitting on the news that their Primarch had just collapsed unconscious for reasons no one could fully explain.
Just wake up, he thought. Please. Just wake up.