Solomon Demeter was aghast.
There were simply no words describing the Primarch's cruelty now. To have raised Vairosean so high, only to dash him against the rocks….
"What has Fulgrim done?" he asked Julius Kaesoron.
The First Captain remained silent.
"This was madness. What did Vairosean do to - "
"Open your mind, Demeter," Kaesoron answered. "Reply to your own question. What has Fulgrim just done?"
There was a strong exasperation evident in Kaesoron's voice. Demeter watched him closely, but as always, no expression could be read in the First Captain's blank helmet, bobbing through the vastness of the Triumphal Way as the Captains walked from the Heliopolis.
What had Fulgrim done, indeed? The Phoenician had turned the Legion to a new tactical paradigm, drastically changing the Legion's combat doctrine for no apparent reason. He had officially endorsed the worship of Slaanesh. When Vairosean had left, the Primarch had casually mentioned rebellion - a nonsensical thought if there was one; Vairosean would never betray the Legion and the Emperor, not even if it was right.
Not even, in all probability, if Demeter did. It had been shocking to hear the Third Captain's tepid reply to Demeter's clumsy intimation before the assembly; Demeter had expected him to simply turn away. It had been a necessary risk, and the words had sounded much better in his mind….
But they were unrelated to Fulgrim's speech. That laid out what Demeter now recognized as a massive course correction to the Legion, one deeper than but not unlike the one that had happened after Laeran, or when the crack down on immorality had began. The definition of perfection was being altered constantly now; the Legion was ever-changing, and even its foundations were in flux.
"He changed everything," Demeter said, recognizing Kaesoron was still awaiting a reply. "He flipped the Legion on its head."
"By the Emperor - he justified you, Solomon! He endorsed your ways!"
"I fight best in darkness, not joy."
"Slaanesh is a deity of both pleasure and pain!" Kaesoron was agitated - not only excited, but also deeply bothered by something. "And your campaigns are precisely the perfection that Fulgrim spoke of. I will change my ways; other Captains will retain them; but you, you were ahead of your time. The Phoenician has redeemed you, Demeter!"
And, came the unspoken conclusion, this is how you respond?
It was a potent argument, and a true one. Demeter's Primarch had done everything the Second Captain had asked of him. He had reformed the worst aspects of the Legion and the remembrancers; he had near-pardoned Demeter's threatening Eidolon; he had given Demeter's best friend a triumph of unique scale; he had, now, actually reformed the Legion's military doctrine to match Demeter's. The Second Captain of the Emperor's Children was distant from his Primarch, that much was true. So Fulgrim had done everything in his power to bring Demeter back.
And this was how he repaid his gene-father?
"I- I'm sorry," Demeter said.
"You are," Kaesoron said, "but you need not be. Besides, there's no use in apologizing to me. You have been in the darkness, and Fulgrim alone has devoted everything to enlightening you, to joining you into our brilliant path. It has blinded us all with its radiance; but you, though not alone, lacked the faith to walk forward unseeing."
"You speak like a Word Bearer," Demeter noted.
"That is the way of the galaxy now. Fulgrim was forced to endorse Slaanesh, simply because the Legion grew to worship him. We are a religious species, Demeter." Kaesoron shook his head. "But forgive me. You can apologize to Fulgrim if you wish. I have a feeling he is more concerned with Vairosean now - though I will accept that, if my operation had been so disrespected, I would have been offended."
Demeter nodded, even as Kaesoron walked off the Way. He remained on it, wondering at how he had not seen this. The truth had been staring him in the face! He, filled with inertia, had been unwilling to improvise, not even recognizing that he was hurting the Primarch in doing so.
"Emperor…"
Perhaps he simply had not been capable of considering the Primarch as being incompletely successful. He had seen Fulgrim as... an enemy, even. And so he managed to do the nigh-impossible, and overestimated the Phoenician.
Demeter laughed. For the first time in months, he laughed with true joy. There was rot, but there had always been rot. There were obstacles, but the Astartes had been created to destroy obstacles.
His voice died down, somewhat awkwardly, but Demeter continued down the Triumphal Way with a smile. He did not look at the skulls; what did he care about Eidolon? The Primarch, he knew, cared for him, and indeed for all of the Captains, as well as for the mad Lord Commander. Approaching his studio, he considered cancelling the tragic statue he'd asked Delafour for, but thought better of it. The galaxy was still in a horrible war, and the Crusade was still collapsing in flames. All that had changed was that Demeter was now certain of his place in both.
He looked at his painting of the clash between Legions, now almost complete. Almost absentmindedly, he sketched in the faintest glimmer of dawn behind the Emperor's Children. The light fit in surprisingly well; it was night, and yet through the skyfall justice inevitably arose.
Demeter continued work, painting in the scene's details as the Pride of the Emperor disengaged from the orbit of Slodi. He felt the acceleration as it hurtled towards the Warp jump, as the Third and other Companies fell away into their own vessels, to pursue their own quests through the rebellious worlds of the Unbroken Stars. Fulgrim, and under his command the Second Company, would head for the sector's effective capital, a Forge World named Kaosen that had broken away from Mars when Ferrus had subdued the Mechanicum's heart. Along the way, they would suppress any and all rebels they found.
He didn't leave the studio until the image was all but complete, and then only because he felt the need to ask forgiveness from his Primarch as soon as possible. He knew Fulgrim would be difficult to find, but whenever the Pride of the Emperor entered Warp Fulgrim would stand on the observation deck and gaze out the viewports. The Phoenician was often alone there, or accompanied by only Lord Commander Fabius; what, exactly, he saw out the vast windows was a matter of much conjecture. Tarvitz had once suggested an idea he had heard from Lucius, the concept that Fulgrim was communing with Slaanesh; but Demeter doubted the Primach was so closely linked to the god.
In any case, Fulgrim would be on the observation deck by now, so it was there Demeter headed. The closest path was through the remembrancers' halls, but the Second Captain eschewed those paths now, even with a helmet. More and more of the remembrancers were leaving the fleet. Delafour had suggested they feared executions, which seemed logical; art could not flourish in a threatened atmosphere. It was regrettable indeed that it had to be so, but the Primarch's hand had been forced in punishment.
It was unfortunate, but there were many unfortunate matters in the galaxy now; he would remember them, but they would not cloud his clarity of purpose, Demeter resolved.
He walked into Captain Korander of the 37th shortly after that resolution. Korander was hurrying to the drop-pods, late for departure for one reason or another.
"Demeter!" the other Captain yelped.
"Brother-Captain Korander."
"Listen, Demeter," Korander mumbled, "where are we?"
Demeter took a moment to consider the question, then gave the coordinates. "Hallway 3-Beta, in other words."
Korander took a look around, as if seeing the path for the first time. "I didn't recognize it, what with all the… flesh. Haven't been outside the Apothecarion for a while."
Korander's chosen implantation - improved legs, based on Demeter's own modifications but much more advanced- had taken a particularly long time for Lord Commander Fabius, and almost killed the 37th Captain.
"Good luck," Demeter said. "May the gods of battle watch over you."
"I'd prefer to fight without any gods," Korander said. "But that's impossible now."
The 37th Captain ran on, leaving Demeter to continue on towards the observation deck. It was a long walk, one that spurred Demeter's wonder at the changes going on. Korander had been the second-to-last; now, among the Captains, only Marius Vairosean had not received Fabius Bile's modifications. Many of the Sergeants had, too, and even some ordinary Battle-Brothers. Rylanor hated it.
But Demeter knew the truth was always more complex. Fabius desired the best for the Legion, of that he had no doubt. Fulgrim would never have become so closely involved with the Apothecary's work otherwise. The Lord Commander was, however, overeager and somewhat overconfident; this did not exactly breed trust in many of the Legion's soldiers.
Rylanor isolated himself. Fabius had also been isolated, in his own way, like Korander. Fulgrim was a Primarch, and thus always separate. Now the Legion was dividing across the Unbroken Stars.
Of the entire Emperor's Children, it seemed only Demeter and Kaesoron were connected to the Legion's many heartbeats. They had a truly gargantuan amount of influence.
And how Demeter had misused that power! He resolved his mistake would end soon, one way or another. Depending on what he learned here... he would make a decision, he knew as much, even if he could not say exactly how.
Because he knew that if his own deductions had been so flawed, Kaesoron's could be too - though that was a judgment for the future.
"Lord Primarch?" Demeter asked as he emerged onto the observation deck.
Fulgrim was watching the jump point. The ship waltzed ever closer to that portal into the impossible, and it seemed to Demeter that the mad colors of the Warp were already shining through into realspace.
Fabius was not there, nor was anyone else. Fulgrim's visage seemed mildly irritated for a moment, then turned into a smile. "Solomon! I'm glad to have you here!"
Demeter nodded. "Lord Father, I- I wanted to apologize."
"For what? Have you committed some horrific sin I know nothing about?"
Demeter sighed. "I doubted you, Father."
"In these days, there is no evil in that. Come - watch with me."
Demeter walked up to his lord, who dwarfed him, a wisp-boned titan. They stood together as the ship's Gellar fields engaged, as the very fabric of reality began to depart.
"I believed the Legion was sliding into ruin."
Fulgrim cracked a slight smile. "Why?"
"The acts of those like Ruen, Lucius and Abranxe."
"They are merely worshipping Slaanesh as they can, Solomon."
"If the god leads one to commit fratricide, why worship it?"
Rage flashed across Fulgrim's features for a moment, and Solomon winced; but the anger was fleeting. After an instant, the Phoenician was thoughtful, and after a few more he had an answer. "Slaanesh is more than torture, Solomon. It has various aspects. You might find a few to your liking, actually."
"What do you mean?"
"Try it. Try worshipping the god. And you will see that you will be rewarded."
Demeter nodded. Fulgrim's plans were law on the Pride of the Emperor, and even without considerations of loyalty this made sense. If only monsters like Dasara and Ruen could gain favor with Slaanesh, if only their devotion found itself within the so-called god, then Slaanesh was indeed fundamentally evil. But pleasure and pain were not in and of themselves grim.
Besides, he had talked of gods of battle before, in jest. Now that he knew such beings were real….
"How do I take the first step?"
"Simply watch with me. You would be the first of my sons to do so, you know. With the viewports' mutations, you need not worry about madness."
And Demeter watched. He watched as the Pride of the Emperor sunk deeply into the abyss of the Warp. He watched creatures that imprinted themselves onto his retinas without allowing his consciousness to piece the beasts together. He watched rings and helices spiral in ever-more-complex patterns on the view screen. He watched dimensions that he knew weren't supposed to be visible even to an Astarte eye.
He watched it all, his mind throbbing with the nonsensical input of information; he could not turn his head away. He saw civilizations rise and fall. He saw species come into existence and go extinct. He saw planets be forged in the heat of young stars, cool, become blue, become green, become grey, then become red and die in the baking heat of an ancient sun. He saw coagulations of man and xeno. He saw agglomerations of light, beings of pure energy, creatures that moved faster than light yet never shifted a single meter. He saw a titanic fortress, its ramparts spewing blood. There was an infinite maze of which Solomon saw every detail, yet understood nothing. A garden was shining, full of filth and decay yet pulsing with eternity. And there was a wondrous palace, its towers decorated with the most intricate architecture and art Demeter had ever seen…
Demeter awoke a day later, the Pride of the Emperor still in the Warp. He remembered little of his visions - only his thoughts, which described the unthinkable. He felt no desire to return to the observation deck, and accepted Fulgrim's sort-of-apology.
But his resolve to the Prince of Pain and Pleasure, to the god known as Slaanesh, became unmovable.
