V3 Chapter 19: Father... Father, You Have Woken
At Duvette's shout, the red-robed figure raised her hand in a single motion.
The outer casing of the slender mechanical staff split apart, and the Crone Sword hidden inside was drawn by Yvraine. The Martian red robes swept out behind her, the disguise mask was shattered by psychic force, and she drove herself toward the throne at the end of the hall.
"You dare deceive me!"
Calgar's roar detonated through the Primarch's shrine with enough force to rupture mortal eardrums. His gaze locked onto Yvraine, then moved to Duvette.
"Xenos!"
At almost the same instant, Duvette activated every skill available to him.
He drove himself forward, the power sword out of its scabbard. The blade's disruption field was not engaged, but the heavy sword body was still sufficient to serve as a physical barrier.
Sylandri dropped her disguise at the same moment.
The Martian red robes fell from her. A psychic barrier expanded between her hands and enclosed Cawl's retinue and the servitors working to deploy the apparatus. Bolt rounds from the Honour Guard immediately struck the barrier, erupting in waves of psychic ripple.
Tigurius stood where he was, the muscles in his face rigid.
His hand had already closed around the force staff, but he had not yet truly moved against anyone. Calgar was pushing toward the throne while shouting at him.
"Tigurius! What are you doing! Act!"
Duvette stepped into Calgar's path and shouted toward the Chief Librarian: "Tigurius! Your visions were not wrong! You have seen her power! Trust me! Trust us!"
Bolt rounds and mechanical sounds mixed together through the shrine.
Tigurius's expression became one of extreme conflict. His gaze moved from Yvraine to Guilliman, then from Guilliman to Duvette, and finally to Calgar's back.
The next moment, he let out a shout and drove his force staff into the floor.
Enormous psychic force poured from the base of the staff and merged with Sylandri's barrier. The Honour Guard members who had been pressing forward were forcibly held in position. Bolt rounds continued to hammer the psychic shields, but no one could advance.
"Tigurius! Have you lost your mind!" Calgar roared.
His power fist was already moving toward Duvette.
Duvette gritted his teeth and raised the power sword. The blade met the power fist, and the immense force ran all the way up his arm and into his shoulder. The stone flags beneath his feet gave a cracking sound, and he was driven down onto one knee.
"You dare use that blade to obstruct me!" Calgar's voice was full of fury. "Duvette! You have desecrated the honour of Ultramar!"
Duvette tried to speak, but the second blow was already coming.
He could only turn aside. The power fist grazed his flank and struck the floor, driving a crater into the stone. Fragments of broken rock struck his face and left several cuts.
"You conspired with xenos to deceive me!" Calgar came forward again. "You traitors—I swear it, I will kill you for this, and the Ultramarines will be your enemies until the end of time!"
"Calgar, hear me!" Duvette raised the sword to block again. "Just a moment more!"
"Silence!"
Calgar's attacks came again.
Duvette held on under his skills, and the footwork Yvraine had briefly drilled into him over the last few days was contributing now. He did not counterattack. He blocked and evaded continuously, doing everything possible to keep Calgar away from the path that led to the throne.
Every collision left his arm numb, but he was not yet in danger of dying from it. The pressure Calgar brought was nowhere near what the Monarch of the Hunt had been. Calgar's strength far exceeded what any mortal could survive, and a direct hit would almost certainly leave Duvette critically injured, but he had his skills, the indestructible power sword, and the combat technique Yvraine had given him over these past days.
It was enough to keep the Chapter Master occupied.
Behind him, a cold presence suddenly surged.
Yvraine had reached the throne.
The Crone Sword drove into the boundary of death that Cawl's apparatus had opened. The power of the death god flowed along the blade's edge into the structure the armour of fate had deployed.
Cawl's mechadendrites moved with extraordinary speed. Binary prayers came from within his frame.
The armour of fate's components began closing around the Primarch. The apparatus produced a continuous mechanical sound from within. Red indicator lights blinked in rapid sequence.
Duvette heard those sounds and understood: they were almost there.
But from the far doors of the shrine came the sound of heavier and heavier footsteps. More Ultramarines and Honour Guard were converging. Bolt rounds continued to hammer Cawl's shield field and Sylandri's psychic barrier.
Sylandri's face had become visibly strained.
Her psychic barrier was contracting. Her hands had begun to tremble slightly. Tigurius's power was formidable, but the pressure on him was equally severe—he had to suppress the Honour Guard's advance without genuinely injuring any Ultramarine.
Duvette's position was also deteriorating.
Calgar had forced his way almost to the steps of the throne platform. Duvette, unwilling to harm him, could only keep blocking and evading.
Another heavy blow came down. Duvette turned aside, and the stone flags beneath him were driven apart.
Calgar used the opening created by that strike to move half a step past Duvette. He was now close enough to the throne that one more step would allow him to destroy the mechanical apparatus deployed around it.
"Stop!" Duvette's voice came out raw.
Calgar did not acknowledge him.
He raised his power fist, prepared to destroy the apparatus that had dared desecrate the sanctuary of their gene-sire.
At the instant the power fist was about to fall, a clear mechanical tone sounded.
The indicator lights shifted from red to green.
A large volume of white gas vented from the connection ports. The outer casing of the armour of fate began to open. All of Cawl's mechadendrites stopped simultaneously. Yvraine took half a step back with sudden force, the Crone Sword withdrawing from the boundary of death.
Every sound in the shrine appeared to be pressed into silence.
A gaze that was sharp as a blade swept across the entire space.
Every Ultramarine present stopped moving at the same instant. The feeling rose from somewhere deep in their blood—familiar, heavy, carrying a pull that could not be refused.
The Honour Guard members who had been pressing forward and firing stopped.
They stood with weapons in hand, motionless, uncertain whether to continue what they had been doing a moment ago or to fall to their knees immediately.
Tigurius let out a long breath.
An overwhelming and deeply complicated emotion rose through him. He had been right. He had not misjudged the man. He had not committed an unforgivable error at the final moment. They had actually done it.
Calgar stood frozen with his power fist raised.
He looked with complete disbelief at the tall figure that had risen before him. The figure was taller than any Ultramarine. The armour of fate was fitted to the body, and the blue-gold armour caught the light of the sacred flames with a weight and gravity that was difficult to name.
The residual fury had not left Calgar's face, but his lips moved of their own accord.
"Father..."
Duvette saw this and allowed himself to release the breath he had been holding. He put the power sword away and stepped back half a pace, meeting the returned Primarch's gaze and rendering a salute.
"Lord Roboute Guilliman. I am not your enemy."
The awakened Roboute Guilliman did not answer immediately.
His gaze swept the room—across the disordered shrine, across the two sides that had stopped fighting, across his sons on their knees, and across the mortal who stood before him without hostility, in the act of a salute. Then his gaze settled on a red-helmeted Ultramarine sergeant in the middle of the room.
Memory returned to him then, reaching back through the depths.
What he last remembered was Fulgrim's laughter. The burning agony at his throat. His sons rushing toward him.
They were calling his name.
They were kneeling at his side, trying to press closed a wound that would not close.
Before the darkness had taken him completely, he had seen one thing: a red helmet.
At last, Guilliman spoke.
His voice reached everyone present—authoritative, clear, but carrying the pause of a man returning from an old battlefield that was no longer where he had been.
"How long have I been unconscious?"
He looked at the red-helmeted sergeant, and through him at a memory that had already grown distant.
"Where is Aeonid Thiel?"
No one in the shrine answered.
Guilliman's brow came together slightly.
"What of Andros?"
His gaze moved across the Ultramarines kneeling on the floor.
"Are there survivors of the First and Second Companies? Where are they?"
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Check out the new warhammer fic im doing.
Warhammer: A Stellaris Player's Journey Through the End Times(战锤:群星玩家的终末之旅)
Synopsis
The 42nd Millennium. The galaxy has been split in half by the Great Rift. Andrallo, a Stellaris player with no knowledge of Warhammer 40,000 whatsoever, is unexpectedly thrown into this hopeless galaxy — and his own Stellaris empire comes with him. He wakes up already a Chaos Space Marine devoted to Slaanesh. Disgusted by the Marines around him, he leads a slave rebellion, and discovers he can permanently destroy daemons — actually saving humans rather than damning them. His journey through the Imperium shows him exactly how rotten it's become. Disillusioned, he leaves to find his own Stellaris-born people instead. The Imperium's problems are no longer his concern, he tells himself — but he finds he can't quite look away.
"So what are you going to do? Join the Imperium?"
"Chaos is poisoned shit. The Imperium is unpoisoned shit. Why do I have to pick between two piles of it?"