First Impressions
Part I
By author Redcoat777
XX—Terra
There is a certain element of destiny to it. To the air preceding it. The first Primarch to be found. A meeting of equals, of cogenitors, of brothers reunited.
Ozymandias is not blind, nor deaf or dumb to what is being drawn, whispered or insinuated amidst a swirling eddy of equerries, courtiers, Remembrancers and more, all of whom seem to be converging on the Imperial Palace for this single moment. He himself looks inwards and considers his thoughts and feeling for the moment and finds himself a little awry.
What is expected of him in this coming moment? What is expected by history for this meeting? By the Emperor above all others? The Emperor commanded him be watchful and wary of any of the cogenitors, of the Primarchs and the foul vagaries and betrayals that might have been sown into their minds and bodies by chance and circumstance. The currents of the Warp are wretched and poisonous. Their birthing-pods might have been akin to vaults, but all vaults can be cracked and secrets drawn out from within them. And beyond the sight of the Emperor, what secrets do the unfound hold that they might seek to hide from their progenitor?
So he finds himself guarded as well. His grey eyes turn to catch his reflection in a mirror. It is much the same as ever. A heavy scarlet cloak drapes smartly over Aegis, his bronze battle-scarred armour. His left hand rests upon the pommel of Lightning, his right holds his helmet underarm. See the conquering hero come, a Remembrancer once whispered to another as he passed by them on a parade once, unthinking that a Primarch's ears could catch murmurs over the cacophony that is a Legion at march. He always tries to follow the command of the Emperor. He is his sword. Armed and armoured he must be, whenever he can.
He finds himself curious too. The Emperor has learnt him well, of what the capabilities of a Primarch might be. He himself is at his maximum, and feels in the depths of his soul that this somewhat disappoints the Emperor. He is only what he has been made. The Emperor had such plans. He knows this; the Emperor has walked with him amongst the ghosts of the Genesis Chamber, paused at points where numbers lie inscribed on the floor, empty of form and wreathed in grief where instead should have been awoken figures crowed in joy to lead mankind into a new age. So what has chance made of his cogenitors? Has it made traitors one and all? Heroes and villains apiece? Or something else in between? He is curious to see the answer to these questions that lurk in the depths of his mind when his eyes and ears pass across news of the other Legions and the empty plinths that adorn the Crusader where their images ought to stand.
A great ornate door opens, a golden baroque-armoured Custodes beckons, and Ozymandias straightens his form and walks across the marbled floor past alabaster columns and under the watching eyes of a hundred or more watching silent sentinels, who cautiously step by step follow his shadow, stopping short of following him into the meeting chamber. Their heads raise and peer, follow a closing viewport as the Custodes close the door behind them, and then out of sight, Ozymandias himself turns, and espies the first-found of his cogenitors. He has seen Lord Derwyn in forwarded intelligence pict-casts, but never in the flesh. At least, not this close. He has observed the Twentieth Primarch from a shadowed alcove alongside Malcador before this meeting. But still, with nothing between them, no veil, and more than just pixels upon a screen, this moment feels tangible, real. A mane of ruby and emerald arises from a heighted form alike to his own. The Twentieth is a little shorter than him, though—just a little, but noticeable enough. Encased in midnight-black armour, his orange eyes are studying the map of the ever-expanding Imperium lain on the table before him.
"Lord Derwyn."
Ozymandias speaks first, words arising in the air betwixt them, a diplomatic baritone. Derwyn turns. Orange meets grey and the two draw themselves up before each other.
"Lord Solarian."
Ozymandias also steps forwards first, his treads are careful and measured, none too fast, none too slow—a tempered gait, a warrior's tattoo, a soldier's march—until at last the two are face to face, studying each other. There is much to see in each other, and also little to see. Each of them wears their highest calling openly: duty. Both their suits of armour proudly display the Raptor Imperialis prominently. Ozymandias allows himself a diplomatic smile, extends his bionic hand. Derwyn pauses a moment, before taking it by the forearm. A warrior's greeting. Ozymandias's smile becomes easier, still constrained within the remits of propriety though.
"Hail and well met. It is good to meet one of my wayward cogenitors. You once were lost, but now are found."
Derwyn blinks at the Firstborn's pre-prepared words, before nodding.
"Indeed."
Ozymandias nods his head. They release their grip on the others forearm. He has been informed from an intelligence report that Derwyn was taciturn. He is perfectly at ease with this, prefers it in fact. There is no need for him to raise a faux curtain of friendship or pretend at familiarity.
"The Twentieth is a fine Legion. They are a credit to the Imperium. You are deploying forwards to meet them, I believe?"
"Yes."
The Lord Solar gives another small nod, glances aside at the map of the Imperium, his eyes straying to the galactic northwest, where he is to follow the Emperor in his drive towards the Abnormality, the Warp-torn graveyard of the Eldar Empire's former heartlands.
"I wish you good hunting, then, my lord. I shall not detain you here unnecessarily."
"And to you."
And then, with a final meeting of the eyes and another nod of comradeship, Ozymandias strides past his cogenitor, and makes his way deeper into the Imperial Palace. He has other, more pressing duties to attend to.
XIX—Terra
There is an element of silence to this meeting.
He holds a single still candle, the only light for this gathering in the Imperial Catacombs. Not even within the boundaries of that ossuary truth be told. Rather, they are meeting beneath the crypt, an undercrypt if such a term could exist. Ozymandias's eyes behold the stone and the runes upon the candlelight reveals in the dark depths. Reads the final words.
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
He is robed in darkness for today. A thick heavy black cloak draped over his armour, armoured but unarmed. His head is uncovered, bared in supplication, and for all intents, he must appear austere and akin to a falconer of ancient Terra. He stands with outstretched a single gauntlet and a candle alighted upon it. Wherefore will the bird of prey come from? He wonders. The Emperor has requested the meeting. There is no showmanship, as there was with Derwyn. Instead, the presence of Nyx is not even yet known to the world above them. The Emperor has found his executioner, and Ozymandias is commanded to lay down this solemn secret he has kept for his master, and to turn it over to the cogenitor for whom was wrought this grave honour.
There is a single shift in the candlelight. Ozymandias does not turn. Merely studies the flickered flame and recites an ancient ode of days old.
"It's sweet and fitting to die for one's country. Yet death chases after the soldier who runs, and it won't spare the cowardly back or the limbs, of peace-loving young men."
Grey eyes turn, meet inky black lenses. This is indeed the face of an assassin, he thinks, one who does not show their face at all. Ozymandias's cloak shifts, and from within its depths a clawed hand rises and proffers a single small black box.
"Lady Nyx. This duty is now entrusted to you. It is yours and yours alone now. Guard it well."
A single hand of midnight emerges from the dark, wrapped in shadows even as candlelight spills over void-black fingers to take the databox. And then, without even a nod, a blink or any other motion or inclination of greeting or acknowledgement, the shadow of the Emperor turns, and departs into darkness. And once she is gone, or perhaps, not gone. He does not care, his brow deepens, crest-fallen, to the poem on the stone that was between them. Speaks once more.
"No dirges at my insubstantial funeral, no elegies, and no unseemly grieving. Supress all the clamour, not for me the superfluous honour of a tomb."
And then he brings the candle to his lips, and snuffs out the light in the dark and makes his way through the midnight mass towards the surface. It is night still on Terra, and yet, across the stars, the cosmos turns and dawn beckons.
X—Terra
There is an element of change to this meeting.
The Lady of the Dawn returns to Terra hitched to the side of the Emperor. They come like Helios of barbarous Graecia, reins in hand on a burning chariot driven forth by fiery horses that illuminates the abyss around them. The sun rises over Terra. The stifling dark of Old Night is being banished by the warming light of the Imperium. And the Lord Solar is there to witness it. He stands there on the balcony of his apartment in the Imperial Palace when she is presented to the Imperium, hears the crowds across the world cheer her name, cheer the Emperor, cheer the rediscovery of a Primarch who at last they can truly adore. He knows he is respected, he knows he is held up as the exemplar of duty. He knows that the Imperium thinks him as their stalwart defender, but feels upon hearing these cheers that this child of the stars will surpass him in their hearts in a way he never could, because they have never cheered him like this before. Ever. It gladdens him, shames him as well, that another burden is lifted from his shoulder, and that he had not worn it more easily. He had done his duty, upheld his task to the full, but it was not something that had ever brought him joy or came freely to him. He watches the crowds from afar, gathered around viewscreens. They bask in the radiance of her presence, revel in the heartening and soaring words she speaks. Her golden hair is more akin to a halo than anything else, and the people of Terra seem to be stunned by the light of it.
They are enraptured by her. If ever there were an Imperial ideal to strive towards, she seems the very image of that. Her words and her charisma as she makes her speech are perhaps proof of that—what is being spoken and how it is being spoken. Before her the Primarchs have been viewed as a triumvirate of stoic warlords. Now, mayhap they have something more. Life is being breathed into the Imperium before the eyes of the mortals who live within its boundaries. It is no wonder that the Emperor has shown her so to the Imperium. Ozymandias could feel the joy brimming in his creator's words from the missive he received ahead of their arrival on Terra. All three of them are both gathered here now for a rearrangement, a change in missions. Their respective Legions are to be the centrepieces of the two greatest offensives the Imperium has yet launched. The X Legion will form the centrepiece to drive against the Perseus Arm with Aurora at their head. His own Legion is currently arrayed in orbit. Other Legions are being set around it or else drawing themselves up at rendezvous points. And when he issues forth from the Throneworld, they will drive into the Scutum-Centaurus Arm and conquer tens of thousands of worlds for the Imperium.
The X Legion, meanwhile, is currently arrayed on the parade grounds of the Imperial Palace. This speech being broadcast across Terra is directed first and foremost at her Legion. And as it finishes, a resounding work of oratory is met by a thunderous wave of cheers that, even high up on the balcony afar, makes Ozymandias force himself to lean forwards on the balcony or else step back by the wave of enthusiasm crashing against him. He lightly taps his hand on the balustrade, applauding the words himself with perhaps as much enthusiasm as he ever dares show.
"What do you think of her, Hesca?"
Ozymandias calls the words out to his erstwhile chamberlain, turning and pausing mid-gesture towards the scene. The wizened manservant has not heard him. Ozymandias sighs a weary sigh. Hesca has turned his hearing implants off to focus better on the task of trying to set the table for dinner. It is to be a gathering of the Old Hundred, those that still remain alive. Some still serve with the Thunder Warriors, others have retired back to Terra or other worlds of Sol, whilst most are simply dead either from battle, old age or some other malady.
"I'll be aggrieved the day you die, Hesca, but if you keep turning those hearing implants off I'll strangle you myself."
"I heard that!"
The Lord Solar rolls his eyes as Hesca's eyes snap up to his own.
"I saw that too! Don't think I won't try and smack you round the head with a trench shovel! Sir."
Hesca adds the final word with a lazy drawl, turning it more into an insult than a form of address.
"At least you've a modicum of decency still," Ozymandias mutters, before raising his voice as he makes his way over to the fireplace and pours himself another glass of sherry. "I've no doubt you could clip me with a trench shovel, Hesca. You've always been a wily bastard. Alas, a teaspoon does not a trench shovel make, Hesca. One cannot dig a trench with that."
"A poor workman blames his tools. Why, back when I was a raw recruit—"
Ozymandias waves a hand, dismissing Hesca's ravings. Takes a stand at the opposite side of the table to Hesca, does not dare disturb any of the furnishing or gleaming tableware that Hesca has been painstakingly setting out for the gathering tonight.
"Yes, yes, you were issued a blunt teaspoon, but it was one shared between the whole regiment. Normally, I'd humour you, Hesca, but I'd like your opinion on Lady Aurora now."
Hesca narrows his eyes, peering up through half-mooned spectacles balanced precariously on the edge of a wrinkled bulbous ruddy nose.
"You've never asked me this before, Sir. At least not before meeting them."
"Well, I'm asking you now, Hesca. This is different. A speech and a parade? It is practically a triumph. What say you?"
The chamberlain huffs, a paternalistic huff of disbelief with no malevolence in it. He gently puts the teaspoon between his white cloth-gloved fingers, sets it down perfectly, admires his workmanship, before resting his hands on the table, chews the inside of his cheek for a moment, glances at the open balcony before replying.
"They're still cheering her? She must be something special then. I was trying to listen to the speech whilst working as well, but found it too distracting. Made me want to stop and listen to it rather than set this blasted table. Every word of it made my heart beat just that little bit prouder with each syllable though. You want my counsel, sir? Go and meet her, as scheduled, and see her for yourself. But as for me, she seems perfect to me."
The Lord Solar swirls the sherry in his crystal glass for a moment, considering his chamberlain's words. Looks askance at the window and the rays of sunlight streaming in from beyond mixed with the celebrations of a Legion reunited with their Primarch, before lightly tapping the frame of a chair, tips the glass back and downs the contents in one. Hesca is already moving around the table at a clipped pace whilst the Lord Solar sets the empty goblet back down on the mantlepiece and turns and makes over to the door where Hesca is already waiting atop a small set of steps. Ozymandias takes a scarlet cloak off of one of the pegs next to the door and affixes it, before allowing Hesca to quickly brush and dust him down. Once his venerable chamberlain is finished, Ozymandias rolls his shoulders to make the cloak settle, before opening the doors and making his way out of the apartment and beginning the long walk through the many winding ways of the Imperial Palace. Tullius has been waiting outside the doorway and falls in step in the shadow of his progenitor.
Ozymandias knows walking will take far longer than a simple shuttlecraft journey, up to an hour longer. A walk will do him good though. He has spent far too much time lately sat ensconced in tedious meetings. His day has been consumed first within Ararat overseeing a review of the state of the Sol system's defences, and then later lunching in the grounds of the Imperial Palace reclining on divans whilst politicking with noble houses, corporate interests and Imperial officers. He is eager to be off, he just has a few items of business to attend to after this meeting and the dinner, and then when the Crusader has finished her shakedown trials from her overhaul, he will be among the stars once more, back upon the frontlines driving forwards the boundaries of the Imperium, banishing the ignorance of Old Night.
And besides, the sojourn gives him time to plan in his head for any number of conceivable topics of conversation. He stages them in his head, prepares his lines, recites and rehearses, and finds himself quietly confident, as ever, for this meeting ahead. In truth, it is not really a meeting. It is an improvisation upon his part, a few spare minutes where he will arrive early before a joint briefing with himself, Aurora and the Emperor before the commencement of the next phase in the Great Crusade. If Aurora should choose to be there early as well, then he will converse with her, gain some measure of her, and be able to plan future interactions accordingly. If she should instead choose simply to arrive directly on time for the briefing, or late, then he will simply have to observe her during the briefing. Either way, he will gain some measure of the woman.
The meandering corridors of the Imperial Palace eventually bring his pondering footfalls to an empty chamber. Ozymandias pauses for a moment, reflects. It is where he met Derwyn for the first time. Though the two have barely seen each other since that instance, for both Derwyn and Nyx are often deployed on secret missions for the Emperor. Rare is the instance, and typically with Ozymandias acting as the public face to Imperial forces, when he and either of his thus far found cogenitors fight alongside each other.
The map upon the table is much changed since that last meeting. The Imperium has swelled from a disparate knot amidst the Orion Spur into an ever-growing entity. And yet the galaxy is vast, and against the whole of it, they are but a dot upon the canvas of creation. Grey eyes trace filled in features on the map. The Abnormality, the former heart of the Eldar Empire, has been painstakingly marked in, its boundaries now definitively know, as is the existence of other Warp Storms or other oversized polities that the Imperium is in the process of bringing to heel. His gauntleted hand comes to rest on the rim of the map, curls into a fist which he rests his weight upon. He stares towards the east, towards where he will soon be leading his forces. Towards the unknown, towards where—
"—there are dangers in the dark, Primus."
He stands battered and bruised. Sporting a rapidly healing series of breaks, cuts and bruises from his sparring bouts with Constanin. He stands shaking, silent and to attention before his golden creator, his maker, his progenitor. His Emperor.
There are many lessons he has to learn to better serve him. And the Emperor is learning him now. He has watched his creation, his Primarch, fall over and over again into the dust, yet to win a single bout against Constantin, against any of the Custodes. It has been a week since he has emerged from his hatchery. It has been a week of incomprehensible lectures. It has been a week of unwinnable duels. It has been a week of unending failure. And the Emperor burns with anger. Stands towering above him, filled with rage and dripping in blood and gore from a battle he has just fought. A war he has won. And he returns home, and sees loss.
"I weep for the unending slaughter that the misdeeds of the Eldar have inflicted upon mankind. Hrud migrations, Slaugth murder-minds, and Ork WAAAAGH!s. The Eldar kept reserves of each of them across the Galaxy. Mindless beasts to be hunted for sport and leisure. Sometimes, they would escape and maraud across our worlds. Billions died, and the Eldar simply viewed it as nothing more than a loosed pet simply nipping the hand of a passerby. We could not wage war against them. They made examples of any species foolish enough to do so. The Ghuxa were devolved by a nano-plague in the course of a single silent night back into cellular organisms, their empty coral reef-halls all that remain of them. The Fulono were chained to the peaks of their mountain worlds and dragged one by one into the stars they orbited. Other species they simply enslaved entirely and shipped on their Craftworlds back to the heart of their empire, to fuel their demand for ever darker perversions, never to return."
"Lord Solarian?"
The Emperor's voice falls from hateful thunder into a sorrowful murmur. His form seems to shrink a little, but his golden eyes remains fixed upon his grey ones, pinning the young Primarch in place with his mere presence. Even if he tried, he does not think he could move until that stare is removed from upon him.
"We could not fight them. We were young and weak. To fight the Empire of Ten-Million Suns would have been to be erased from existence. No. But we could at least protect ourselves from the marauding creatures they let run rampant across creation. We constructed machines and such designs to fight our wars for us, to save the spilling of human blood. We spread forth and multiplied amongst the stars to escape extermination. We worked wonders."
The Emperor's nostrils flare for a moment, his choler rising, his voice rising in tone and tempo.
"The iron ranks are gone; they turned on us and nearly destroyed us. We do not have the blessing of miracles anymore. Mankind is at stake in a game being played out not just across within these walls, but being played with the very fabric of reality itself. All or nothing at all. Everything to win. Everything to lose. And we cannot lose. We cannot fail. You cannot fail mankind. Too much has already been lost. Time has slipped through our fingers like water. Plans burned like paper upon fire. Lives and bloodlines ended entire. Do you understand me? Understand that this is life and death. Here. Now. History is being written. Only victors write history. Mankind cannot survive defeat, nor can I, nor can you. You. Must. Not. Fail."
"My lord?"
"Do you understand me—"
—His golden gauntlet moves. Eaglelike and descending with blood-red talons upon his shoulder—
—golden fingers fall in the corner of his eye falling down and down and—
—not quite reaching him until the last word is spoken. His name—
"—Ozymandias?"
Ozymandias spins, turns, his hand sweeps back from the table to his side, balls instinctively into a fest. Lord Solarian steps back for a moment of space and time from the golden-armoured lady standing aside him. Her hand has slipped from his shoulder owing to his reaction. Her green eyes blaze with concern. He clicks his heels, bows his head, his heartbeat thrumming in his ears at the embarrassment of being caught off guard so.
"Lady Aurora. Forgive me; my mind was elsewhere."
His head rises. His gaze meets hers, catching her smiling softly.
"Just Aurora. Please forgive me. I startled you. I did not mean to—"
"There is no need to apologise, my lady. The fault is mine entirely, I assure you. I should have been more attentive to my surroundings."
He is a little brusque in his apology. He winces internally, but manages to keep it buried there. Aurora is silent for a moment. She pauses before glancing instead towards the table, curiosity evident in her voice, concern still lurking in her eyes.
"What were you thinking of?"
Ozymandias glances aside at the map, turns back. Ignores the shadows of bloodied claws lifting themselves from his shoulder in the corner of his eye, aching pangs of the talons releasing their piercing grip from his skin and sinews.
"A memory."
"What of?"
The Golden Lady tilts her head, eyes curious, kind, gentle, and all Ozymandias can see is the towering revenant with golden eyes blazing out from its shaded form.
"It is—" He catches himself under the spectre's baleful stare, closes his eyes, corrects himself. "—was unimportant."
And when he reopens his eyes, they are alone again, no more memories or shadows. And she is not him. Her eyes are sparkling emerald, her hair flowing gold, her skin pale ivory. Where the Emperor is every inch the picture of a philosopher-king, capable at once of both great wisdom and violence, here before him stands the portraitist's idyll.
Ozymandias clears his throat and gestures towards Aurora's armoured figure, more specifically to the numeral of her Legion emblazoned on a piece of it. Deflects her concerned stare away from himself.
"How do you find your Legion, my lady? They have served the Imperium most ably. A credit to their progenitor."
Red roses seem to bloom in marbled cheeks. Aurora's head dips down, a blushing maiden. Ozymandias frowns, before casting it aside, allowing himself to relax a little, or, at least, his posture to relax. His mind remains on edge, guarded, defensive.
"Please, Ozymandias, Aurora will suffice. We are brother and sister after all. Father has told me much about you—"
Ah. There it is. Ozymandias pauses in his thoughts, his face immutable behind a diplomatic smile at the suggestion of kinship. A memory threatens to surface, he pushes it down, ignores the imagery of boiling blood in test tubes and cold eyes scientifically disseminating the facts of his creation to him that flash in the back of his eyes.
"—he says you are his greatest general, your sons a shining example of duty and honour. His sword among the stars, I believe he called you."
The Lord Solar allows his smile to twitch and grow a little beyond diplomatic at the words for a few moments, proud at least to know his service is considered worthy. His eyes filling a little with some genuine humour.
"The Emperor, beloved by all, gives my Astartes and myself too much credit, Lady Aurora. We are but dutiful servants amongst many pledged to his personage to enact his rightful vision for mankind. Too much credit indeed. We are all simply soldiers fighting for a better tomorrow. Nothing more."
The Golden Lady seems to analyse him for a moment, weighs his words behind sparkling emeralds. Her golden hair catches the gentle light cast by the light of an overwrought chandelier bedecked with crystals above them. Ozymandias in turn notes just how picturesque the Primarch before him is, especially in contrast to his cogenitors and himself. Ozymandias has seen behind Nyx's mask, only once at a joint briefing between them and the Emperor alone regarding a secret mission but it was enough. And whilst Derwyn is undoubtedly the more colourful in his complexion of the two, with his red and green hair and orange eyes, both Derwyn and Nyx are nonetheless dour-faced and clad in austere black. The very image of stern agents of the Imperium. And as for himself? His voice rumbles and thunders, his gaze crackles and seethes, his armour battle-scarred, his cloak worn tattered, his shoulders weighed down by the pressure of the missions heaped upon him and the lids of his eyes darkened with tiredness. Aurora is the very model of perfection, and Ozymandias has to wonder.
He wonders both at the marvel before him and the reasoning for it. The Emperor told him that each of them were designed and shaped towards a purpose. His purpose, as the Emperor freely admitted once across a game of regicide, had been simply to be a soldier. Nothing more, nothing less. Circumstances had forced deviations to that plan, the Emperor had muttered darkly, and so Ozymandias had been forced to try and become more than he had been designed for. And he was strained because of it.
But regardless, the question remained. All of the Primarchs were designed to be capable of general-ship, each of the others after him had also been designed with a greater ability which they would use to serve the Imperium with. The Emperor had said that He was able to master any skill, it had been no boast, it had been bluntly stated truth, and Ozymandias had seen evidence of this across a thousand subjects scores of times over. But the Emperor was but one, mankind was leviathan. He could not do everything alone, so to each task, a Primarch would be set, after it could be proven that a Primarch could be created. Through the Primarchs' abilities, mankind would have the tools to achieve supremacy above all other species in creation. Derwyn was the Emperor's executor, Nyx his executioner. What was Aurora then? What secrets lay beneath the surface of the golden gilded lady behind him? For that was all it was: gilding, hiding something else underneath. He was curious, nothing malicious in his musings, simply a desire to know. It was a facet of his upbringing. Knowledge was power. Know your allies and enemies both, and in turn plan accordingly.
"I have not yet met any of my other brothers and sisters," Aurora says, her lips moving at last. Ozymandias nods; they are otherwise engaged. Where exactly, he knows not. "Might I ask for your opinion of them?"
"Taciturn."
The world falls from his lips instantly, and Ozymandias clears his throat and casts his head down abashed at the immediacy and thoughtlessness. He sheepishly raises it to the blazingly curious eyes, though with a retreating hint of disappointment in them, not at him, but at the meaning of the word. Another mental wince passes through Ozymandias's neural pathways. Aurora had been surrounded by others in her upbringing true, but they were different, human, mortal. Aurora had been alone in a crowd. Each of the unfound ones were, perhaps, alone and astray from any others like them. What must it be, to be raised amongst mortals, and surpass them within weeks of your emergence—to appear a child to them, and already have the abilities of a veteran elder? Derwyn and Nyx certainly did not display any such acts of loneliness or familiarity. The three of them were utterly content in their duty, saw no need for anything beyond it with each other. They understood their role and purpose.
The Emperor had spoken of lost sons and daughters to the Imperium at large and privately to him for the first time when they had finally taken the first steps beyond Sol aboard the Crusader. But it was something Ozymandias had thought an empty appellation. He and Nyx called each other what the Emperor had undoubtedly taught them, as former and current executioner respectively: cogenitors. Because that was all they were, they shared the same genes. But they were no family, they had a progenitor, but no mother or father. And he had thought it was something that the truth of their creation, once revealed to each of them in turn, would dispel them of such notions, and only perhaps need to wear as a masquerade in public. Or else perhaps maintain as a notion of comradeship, but never consider it true kinship such as Derwyn seemed to. They had been cleaved from each other before it could take root, and certainly now for too long for such a thing to be forged between them. And yet, when the Emperor had written of Aurora, his calling her daughter had felt genuine, and Aurora seemed to reciprocate this. She searched for kinship with him now, perhaps the closest thing she can have to a brother in biology. But they were more akin to statues moulded from clay. Life had been breathed into them, but that did not change the circumstances of what they were at their core.
All this, in the span of a millisecond he considers, and speaks again to at least soothe his cogenitor's likely ruffled feelings.
"I should hasten to add, Lady Aurora, that I mean that Nyx and Derwyn are not great conversationalists by their upbringing from what I have gathered; and by their own nature as well. They have endured much in their lives and are used to being solitary. And we have hardly seen each other since their respective rediscoveries. Indeed, I do not know where either of them are at this moment, nor have done for over half a year now, truth be told. Our duties keep us occupied for the most part, I am afraid, my lady."
"Ah. I see…" Aurora glances away, her lips pursed for a moment. Ozymandias clears his throat, regains her attention, her face turns back towards him rather than as a statuesque philosopher. He has not yet finished speaking. His smile softens a moment, apologetic for his many failures and shortcomings before her undoubtedly derailed hopes set upon him. It is another burden he has failed to bear, or at least a burden he was unprepared for, and indeed never able to bear truly well in the first place. But, perhaps, he can at least soften the landing of the falling weight of expectations.
"I confess, Lady Aurora, you will find that I am more of a conversationalist than they, but a poor one nonetheless compared to others. These circumstances currently are not ideal. I can only apologise for my weaknesses here. I am a soldier by nature and by training. My life has been spent at war and on campaign. But perhaps, in time, we could at least grow to understand each other's nature and become comfortable with one another, warts and all. We are both Primarchs. It should not be beyond our abilities."
Aurora has listened to his words with rapt attention. She is silent at the end of them. Ozymandias waits a moment, before a realisation occurs to him, startling him, causing him to hurriedly look aside. He misses the parting of Aurora's lips, a move of her arms, a meaning to step forwards that does not come. Whatever was about to be said or done, words and deeds that might have changed centuries of interaction between them, are stillborn as the dutiful soldier re-emerges, sweeping away the kinder diplomat that was just there a moment before.
"Ah! We are running late! We should not delay His Majesty unduly, Lady Aurora. He has enough burdens to worry over without our being tardy. It does not do for his generals to be late to briefings."
Ozymandias steps back, steps to the side, extends his arm, gestures to Aurora to lead, bows his head as propriety demands. The very model of a noble general with his act and words.
"My lady."
Aurora for her part, does not even falter, does not even look like she had been about to say or do something approaching impropriety. Instead, she is a stately princess in that moment, straight-backed, hands clasped together upon her abdomen.
"Of course, my lord. We should not keep him waiting." Aurora inclines her head, a brief dip of her swanlike neck, an elegant gesture. She turns to leave. Mid-turn she hesitates, glances at him, peers past long golden locks. He raises his eyes up. They are face to face. His face craggy and scarred, with a long, sharp-beaked nose; hers so perfect she could have been carved from marble, a goddess of love brought to life by some ancient sculptor. Beautiful green eyes gaze at him, bright and indecipherable. He does not know what those luminous eyes see in his own. Then she steps forwards, brisk, purposeful, the tall golden figure taking long strides ahead.
It is hours later when he is sat alone in his apartment before a dying fire in a near dark room with only his thoughts that he considers that look. Alone after a long meeting with the Emperor that overruns as each of them showcase the full extent of their martial geniuses. A meeting in which Ozymandias comes to see a military mind he realises sees avenues and approaches he does not, sees perhaps a glimpse of what the Emperor had designed in Aurora. Perfection. And yet, the wheels in his mind turn, his eyes shut tight trying to silence the incessance of his neuroses and instead can only see emeralds and something he cannot quite also see within them.
If there was something sad in that last gazing moment—something lost, a hope broken, something bereft in those bright green eyes—Ozymandias chose not to comment on it. Nor to dwell on it.
It is better this way.