Father of the Second A 30k Celestial Forge Story

by CallMeKingNobody

The premise of the story is thus: a guy from the modern world wakes up in the Warhammer 30k universe. Pretty basic, right? Here's the twist: he has no knowledge of Warhammer and is in possession of a heavily modified version of the Celestial Forge. Will he set the Galaxy ablaze? Will he laze around? Read to find out! Rating is because Warhammer is pretty dark.

16. Chapter 16

Chapter 16: Kha, Kov, Horus

A/N: It's been a while. As mentioned in the previous chapter, different people see the Emperor differently the same as in canon. Also, to clear up any confusion, Kha's POV in this chapter happens parallel to Esau's POV at the end of the last chapter. The other POVs then follow normally.

Shout out to Wrathkal on SpaceBattles for proofreading and providing corrections to this chapter.

Kha Suryasta:

820. M30.

Violence was a familiar companion to Kha.

For the first two decades of her life, it had been a constant one. She had fought gangers in and around the crumbling buildings that made up Tectum's urban infrastructure. She had fought her sister-wytches, when they dove too deep into the seas of the Great Ocean. She had fought the Drukhari, when they attacked her home, and she had fought Isaac and Esau when they came upon her prison on the slave ship she had been stuck in.

Her plan had been the one that had ultimately led to Og'driada's death, even though it had not accounted for the golden being's immense power. She had experience as the head of dozens of incursions into the Webway. If anything, few in the Immortal Sun Empire had seen as much combat as her.

Kha did not enjoy violence, but she understood it. She understood it all too well. She knew how battles ebbed and flowed, how quickly fortunes could change and how easily defeat could often be stolen from the jaws of victory.

So, when Kov reported that he had successfully restrained the aggressor who had started this entire battle, Kha had thought the battle won. Hard won experience had told her so. With Leman Russ captured, the Imperium of Man could do nothing but capitulate.

After all, each of the Primarchs were a unique mastercraft the likes of which Kha would have never imagined until she met Esau. During the course of his research, Isaac had even postulated that the creator of the Primarchs himself could not make another one if the need arose. As far as Kha and her wytchsight could tell, he was right. Whatever the arcane method used to create their souls, it was clear to Kha that the cost was great. It was likely that the self proclaimed 'Emperor of Mankind' would be incapable of creating another Primarch ever again so long as he lived.

Yet, the 'Emperor of Mankind' refused to step down and surrender, when it became evident that Leman Russ had been captured. If anything, he instead fought harder.

His tactics changed. Where before, he had simply responded physically to Kha and Isaac's combined attacks, using his sword to parry Kha's attacks while directly engaging in close combat with Isaac. Now he fought at range, bombarding the battlefield with fire and lightning.

Kha frowned as she danced out of the way of an errant golden lightning strike as the so-called 'Emperor of Mankind' conjured another volley of the stuff down onto the battlefield. In response, Isaac made a fist and conjured a torrent of green lightning down onto the 'Emperor' in an effort to keep his attention away from Kha as he seemed to have determined her to be lacking the myriad combat options that Isaac had access to.

An annoying prospect to consider, given that the presumption was, in fact, correct. Despite her more advanced knowledge of wytchcraft and the intricacies of how fūinjutsu interacted with the Great Ocean, Isaac had more immediately relevant combat capabilities.

Kha briefly reviewed the tools available to her.

Her powered armour had phasing capabilities, could produce lightning, fly and had a battery of offensive options, none of which were a useful defence against the more deleterious effects of wytch-lightning.

She could use her Soul-AMP in combination with her wytch-sight to dominate and take control over most anything touched by a human soul, including the electricity that her armour could produce. However, there was nothing that she could take control over that could feasibly harm the 'Emperor' in the long term. As it currently stood, fūinjutsu was the only viable option, both offensively and defensively.

Despite her worst fears, Kha's soul was intact. Her soul had been strengthened a great deal in the last two decades, but without the Soul-AMP and the seals in place protecting her mind, Kha was fully confident that she would be dead. Such was the psychic might of the 'Emperor of Man'. In that way, Kha supposed, Esau's creator was not dissimilar to a Greater Daemon.

Kha reactivated the Living Ink marking her body, using her Soul-AMP to change its shape to the seals of her choice. She brought her hands together, as if in prayer, activating it for the umpteenth time today to adjust itself to the dangers she currently faced.

Any and all lightning that hit her would now be absorbed by the seal that formed on her back.

In the scant instants it took to design and activate the seal, the corona of power that represented the 'Emperor of Mankind' disappeared, before reappearing behind Isaac, his clawed arm raised. Kha sent Isaac a warning through her cybernetic implants as the lightning Isaac conjured missed his opponent and hit the ground, the energy dancing wildly across the battlefield, agitating everything it struck. Plant life would writhe before rapidly growing and attacking the nearest moving object.

Isaac teleported just as the 'Emperor' swung, causing the clawed hand to cut through air, before reappearing just as the swing reached its apex, this time facing his opponent, his spear shooting from his hands and at his opponent's head. The 'Emperor' teleported away again, his face still impassive as he appeared in the distance between Kha and Isaac.

A sweeping hand gesture from Isaac cancelled the effect of his conjured lightning, and the plants returned to normal. Isaac rolled his arms before silently moving clockwise around the 'Emperor' as Kha mirrored his movements. The ink on her powered armour and body coiled and shifted in preparation around her.

Lightning continued to strike the battlefield in continued bursts, like sparks off of a furnace.

Suddenly, the Emperor teleported himself just in front of Isaac, placing him in range of his spear. The Emperor didn't seem to find this a problem as he deftly dodged attack after attack before turning one final dodge into a sudden attack. He swung his sword and cut Isaac in half horizontally before he turned his attention to Kha. The speed of the move was hard to follow, as if time had bent to allow it.

Given the depths of what wytchcraft could do, maybe it had. A sobering thought, and an interesting development. Why had he not done that before?

Kha readied the dynamos in her armour and showered the 'Emperor' in volleys of electricity.

Just as before the hit landed, she found herself having to dodge his retaliatory strikes by using her wytch-sight to predict where he would hit. A strike that would have similarly rid Kha of the bottom half of her body found itself stopped by an ethereal green hand the size of a small tank, which grabbed onto the 'Emperor' and threw him into the air. Isaac had already recovered from being bisected, and his armour had been repaired.

As the 'Emperor' turned in mid-air, he set his sword on fire, and Kha felt a pull on her body. It seemed gravity manipulation was within this man's abilities. Irritating.

In sync, Kha and Isaac activated their biotics, briefly increasing their mass by a hundred times, before suddenly decreasing it to near zero. The sudden change in weight pulled them both towards the Emperor at high speed. On contact, both would increase their weight again. Kha her weight by only twenty times, while Isaac increased his by thirty times as he lunged with his spear.

Isaac's hit arrived first.

From her position, Kha could see the Emperor's arms shake as he parried the lunge. The sudden increase in weight had been unexpected. His arms were wide, and torso was wide open for an attack. He tried to hide it, his face staying impassive but to Kha's eyes, his mouth might as well have been wide in shock.

He was surprised.

In the years since the successful creation of an artificial biotic, the constant work of the way Element Zero synched up with the human body meant that the telltale release of light after the activation of biotic implants ceased to exist. With no obvious tells, it looked like the 'Emperor's' opponent's precognition couldn't pick up on it.

From what Kha could tell, it seemed that the 'Emperor's' brand of precognition was the type that showed him an end result, without showing him how one got to said end result.

Kha could have been wrong. A pattern couldn't be plotted off of a single point of data, but it was a start. Minor as it was, it was gratifying.

Kha aborted her flight by increasing her weight once again as Isaac took advantage of the 'Emperor's' momentary confusion to grapple him, and drive him to the ground from their position in the air. A 'spinebuster'. The force of the move would have broken the spine of even somebody of Esau's genhanced nature, armour or no, but the 'Emperor' was already throwing elbows at Isaac's helmeted head.

In response, Kha summoned and threw a series of soul traps down on the ground between the 'Emperor' and Isaac, before she began to prepare a psychic suppression seal.

The soul traps were of Drukhari make, originally made to flay a target's soul before trapping and torturing it. It took more effort than Kha would care to admit, but she and Isaac managed to alter them to paralyse wytches and keep them from teleporting on the battlefield. The process by which they did this was admittedly torturous - as ethereal chains flew out of the traps and bit into the target's soul, keeping them in place.

The Emperor's face contorted in pain, before his eyes glowed, blinding Kha momentarily. She imagined that she would ordinarily be hit by some form of illusion or mind control spell that would disorientate her. Instead, the protections placed on her soul through a mix of ritual craft and sealing techniques made mind control in its current form impossible.

Unfortunately, she felt her armour heating up as Isaac weathered more elbows.

The Emperor was cooking Kha alive. A quick mental calculation told her that if she had judged her opponents' control and ability correctly, she would be dead in seconds.

So, she worked her Living Ink into another seal ignoring the searing pain of being cooked alive inside of her own armour, and summoned a single explosive tag - a strip of paper with a complex set of mathematical formulae surrounding a symbol that meant 'explosive material' - which floated momentarily between Kha, Isaac, and the Emperor.

Explosive tags were one of the most basic of things one could create with sealing. Their function was simple. When activated, each produced an explosion roughly equivalent to the average hand grenade. Ever since Isaac was first granted sealing by the Forge, both Kha and Isaac's understanding of the possibilities of sealing had increased massively. Nowadays, a single explosive tag could both multiply itself exponentially and ignore everything besides their target.

Isaac called it the 'Massively Multiplying Selective Destruction Technique.' Kha thought the name to be dreadful, but it was an accurate description of what the technique did. Unless stopped, the incineration of a target was guaranteed. Even as she readied it, however, Kha doubted that it would serve as anything more than a distraction given what the Emperor had chosen to show off.

The seal activated and it stuck itself to the 'Emperor's' chest, before detonating. The 'Emperor' was engulfed with an endless barrage of explosions that hid him from view.

Briefly, Kha noted that he had stopped cooking her alive in her armour and was now well and truly distracted, giving her the precious seconds she needed to heal and repair her armour with the build gun.

"What do you think?" Isaac asked, as he scrambled away from the explosions, even though they wouldn't hurt him.

An instinctual reaction. No one wanted to be in the middle of an ongoing set of explosions except your average greenskin and Kha had rid Isaac of their instincts decades ago. The Weirdboy Mask he wore warped his voice even through his cybernetics. He sounded strained, despite his vital signs showing the opposite.

It was a side effect of the Masks. Each was a mastercrafted object constructed using a mix of a vast array of sealing techniques and extensive research on the soul, to allow the wearer to access the abilities of the creatures that the Mask represented.

Currently, Isaac was wearing the 'Weirdboy' Mask. When used by a wytch, it allowed them to draw from the Great Green without drawing the attention of Gork and Mork, at the cost of fractions of their lifespan. When used by Isaac, it allowed the user to convert lifespan directly into psychic power that he could then control. Since Isaac could freely replenish his lifespan by absorbing greenskin essence, the amount of psychic power he could manifest was immense, if ultimately as finite as the greenskin essence was.

For purposes of direct combat, the Warboss Mask was better, but Isaac had judged that the ability to interact with and disrupt witchcraft was more necessary than pure physical strength. The judgement had proven to be wise. The Emperor had so far demonstrated a limit to his physical ability through prolonged battle, but he had shown no such limit to his psychic might.

"I think that this man presents an existential threat to the Immortal Sun." Kha replied, honestly.

"Not his empire?"

"In the abstract, perhaps. No, right now we need to worry about him."

The 'Imperium of Man' as it stood in the Naufrag system presented no real threat to the Immortal Sun. From what Kha could tell, the Immortal Sun would lose in any real long term war through sheer attrition - given the Silver Mind's reports on the Imperium's supposed sheer size - but an intelligent usage of resources available to the Immortal Sun, such as the sealing corps would invalidate the need for one.

The single ship in the Naufrag system had no support. The Mandeville point in the system was isolated, and the Immortal Sun had access to faster-than-light weaponry that could make their presence a moot point even if they travelled past it.

"I concur." The Silver Mind stated, for the first time since being sent to infiltrate the Imperium's systems. "My analysis indicates that the 'Emperor of Mankind' has the potential to annihilate the Immortal Sun to the last man, given time, regardless of distance."

"I agree." Isaac replied. "Whatever the limit is to what I can draw out with my Mask, this guy can draw on more. Not that I want him to, but-"

"-why doesn't he?" Kha finished. "We have one of his sons hostage. He is being besieged by explosives from all sides. From what he has demonstrated, he should be able to get out of the seal easily enough. He should be doing his best, yet he is not. If his demonstrated abilities were his limit, we would be seeing the effects on his body. For most of this battle, he looked unbothered."

That was, he looked unbothered even under a facade created by a constantly active psychic effect. The fact that the effect was constantly active in the first place had indicated an aspect of his character that Isaac had hoped to take advantage of in the capturing of Leman Russ - a ruthless pragmatism.

"He's stalling, by making it look like he's being challenged." The Silver Mind said. "Given the facts available, that is the most likely answer."

"Sure, but for what?" Isaac asked. "From what I can tell, the King's Shield and the Ur-Orks are jamming up the Custodes pretty well. Death in battle is far from permanent for our forces, while sealing is, at least as far as he can tell. The rest of his forces will take days to disable the gravity mines in their way. The Silver Mind has stalled the cyborgs in the docking bay. We're winning. He can teleport his forces in, sure but - oh. He's trying to figure out how fūinjutsu works."

Kha blinked, or did the equivalent with her implants.

"That would make a lot of sense." She began. "When meeting with us in Esau's pavilion, his behaviour indicated that he was perfectly fine with the possibility of our deaths. He didn't stop his son from attacking Kov, despite having the capability to do so. He only changed tactics when Kov teleported out of the way."

The information before her coalesced in Kha's mind.

"Ah."

Teleportation via the use of seals did not utilise the Immaterium. When every other viable form of teleportation relied on breaching one's way into the Great Ocean, what Kov did was very distinctive. Two decades of dealing with skirmishes against Drukhari who could teleport via Webway portals, and examining the Necrons, who had multiple ways to transverse interstellar distances had almost made her forget that those two species were the exception and not the rule.

By teleporting, Kov had inadvertently revealed that the Immortal Sun had access to at least one method of faster-than-light travel that did not rely on the Immaterium.

Briefly, Kha entertained the thought that this so-called 'Emperor' had planned for the Leman Russ' attack in the first place for this very reason. She dismissed the thought almost as he thought it.

The Silver Mind's favoured 'Occam's Razor' spoke to a much simpler, much likelier truth: The Emperor had attempted a small scale probe of the minds of the Immortal Sun's royalty and even as he managed enough subtlety to fool even Kha's wytch-sight, came upon the fact that he could not get past the Soul-AMP, which alerted the Silver Mind to the attempted intrusion. Leman Russ then attacked just before the Immortal Sun could rally, outside of the Emperor's own wishes, if the other one, Horus' face represented anything approaching what he had truly thought.

Everything else had followed from there.

Regardless, this had certainly changed the rules of this fight.

"Stalling indicates that he has likely already enacted a plan to get the information that he wants." Kha began, as she stared at the Emperor, who he managed to stand up, despite the constant explosions. Was he shunting the damage into the Immaterium?

"His attention is on us. The animal has been captured and Esau is keeping the bald one distracted, so that leaves the Custodians who are currently engaged in combat."

"I agree." Isaac replied. "Silver, please check on where the lightning is striking. Look for patterns of any kind. I have a feeling it's not as random as it seems."

"You are correct." The Silver Mind replied immediately, despite its duties in overseeing its much dumber clones across the Immortal Sun empire, infiltrating the enemy's systems, coordinating the Ur-Orks and supervising the repair of the damages done to Sol-Ark 3.

"Despite its generally random spread, it is focussed such that it hinders the Ur-Orks from assisting Esau. It also is spread such that it provides openings for the Adeptus Custodes by destroying crucial pieces of technology that would swing the fight in the King's Shield's favour while avoiding Kov and Leman Russ entirely."

Irritating. Kha had barely paid attention to the battle reports, besides to confirm the King's Shield's ability to keep the Custodes from interfering with her and Isaac's fight against the Emperor. It was clear that despite their victory in capturing Leman Russ, the 'Emperor' was doing his best to outmanoeuvre them. He had almost succeeded too.

"Are the strikes generally hitting the equipment equally, or are they localised around a given member of the Custodes?"

"They are localised around what seems to be the leader of the Custodes, a man named Constantin Valdor. He has been engaged in a continuous battle with Nimis Kingstone."

Nimis was the first true vassal of the Immortal Sun, and the most loyal of them all. He would need to be honoured after this battle.

The battle reports had continuously put the Custodes on a level that necessitated up to five members of the King's Shield. That Nimis was keeping up with their leader, asymmetric tactics aside, spoke volumes to his skill compared to the average member of their order.

"The Soul-AMPs of the King's Shield have yet to report a psychic intrusion." Kha replied. "Is this Constantin's equipment different from the average Custodes?"

"It is, he has a spear which has a design that while matching the design aspects of the weapons possessed by other Custodes, has specifications that far surpass them." It replied. "Upon review of the footage captured by the Ur-Orks, he has used the spear as a stabbing or cutting weapon far above what seems normal for a Custodes. Others change weapons when appropriate or use the bolter functions of their spears, he does not."

"The spear likely has an effect similar to Esau's psychometry, then." Isaac said, sounding every bit as irritated as Kha felt, even as the Mask warped his voice. "Has Nimis been cut by the spear?"

"He has, once, early on into the battle."

If the spear worked anything like Esau's uncanny ability with machinery or her wytch-sight, one cut was far from enough to get a full view of how sealing worked. Given Nimis' ineptness at the art, the knowledge obtained should be minimal. If the spear worked the way Kha thought it did, the more likely result was that Valdor, and thus the Emperor had instead gotten information on the royal family, Nimis' family, and the structure of the Immortal Sun. In that order, with only some information on the seals Nimis was adorned with.

"Then we have to assume that our enemy knows everything about the family at the very least." Kha replied.

"Which explains the 'Emperor of Mankind's' response to my hostage threat." Isaac said slowly. If he sounded irritated before, he sounded offended now. "He figured I wouldn't actually follow through on my threats."

The holes of his Mask started to glow green again, before the ink black of the Mask morphed from a featureless black. White bone appeared where a mouth would be and jutted out like tusks on each side of the 'mouth'. The black and white panels of the rest of his helmet shifted to interlock better with this Mask. The Warboss Mask was the strongest Mask Isaac had access to. While wearing it, he had preternatural combat skill, was stronger, faster and more aggressive. It also was hideously painful for him to wear, despite his affinity for the Great Green.

"My conscience strikes again." He said, trying to sound casual but instead sounding pained. "I'm sorry. I should have taken more precautions when meeting with these people. I should have kept the barriers up. I should have sent an envoy. Instead, I put our lives and reputations with our people on the line. I messed up."

What went unsaid was the naked truth of the matter. Isaac had been desperate. He had been desperate to meet with another human empire because any human empire represented a way to leave the Naufrag system and meet with the galaxy at large. It meant another way to get to Tectum. It meant another way to get to Earth.

The truth was, Isaac was not the only desperate one. Kha had been equally desperate too. The Webway had proven itself to be a fruitless way to get back to Tectum, when the arterial passages leading to Tectum were infested by cohorts of daemons - a final gift from her sister-wytches to the Drukhari. A part of her held a desperate hope that she would one day find her way back home but another part of her had doubts. If there were daemons in the portions of the Webway leading to Tectum, there were likely daemons infesting Tectum itself. Even if there weren't, it was likely that Tectum would be unrecognisable.

After all, twenty years was a long time.

"For what it's worth, I'm sorry as well." Kha replied, as she ran a diagnostic on her armour. Everything had been repaired properly. "Do you want me to make the seal?"

"No." Isaac said, so quiet that Kha almost didn't hear it. "I'll do it. I messed up. Let me fix it alright?"

It was all too easy to point at Isaac and claim him the source of their current predicament, but honestly that was not true. She had chosen not to fight his decisions regarding their first meeting with the Imperium. She could have pushed back against him or Esau but she didn't.

"I guess we'll do it together then." She said, before turning her attention fully to the 'Emperor'. "So, if we do this and he refuses to listen to reason, do we kill him?"

"Esau would never forgive us. Besides, I don't think we can."

It was frustrating to see how casually the 'Emperor of Mankind' displayed abilities from differing, sometimes opposing branches of the psychic disciplines. He had so far shown access to divination, teleportation, biokinesis, electrokinesis, thought control and telekinesis. There was no doubt in Kha's mind that with a combination of the abilities he had thus shown, he was functionally immortal, so there was no real point in trying to kill him.

"Esau would understand." Kha said. Isaac turned to face her.

"Would he?"

Kha barely had to think about the response. Esau was a good child. Dutiful to a fault and forever striving to better himself. He was appreciative of any effort to relate to him or engage with his interests. He had also grown to be more humble than Kha could have ever predicted. Sometimes, Kha would find herself blanching over the fact that she used to call him 'Great One', so enamoured by his aura as she was.

The problem was that the boy had identity issues. He constantly second guessed his capabilities. It was not so bad that he sought an impossible standard to reach. Sometimes, Kha thought she would prefer that. Instead, it was as if he wanted to prove to himself that he was worthy of the abilities he had been born with - or created with, as was the case. It was one part a matter of pride, and another part something else entirely.

He seemed to have grown past it, as he matured. Being in charge of the millions on Naufrag Noctis had the clearly unequivocal effect of calming him down. He was more thoughtful, yet less likely to get stuck in his thoughts. Still, despite this, his old personal daemons had returned it seemed, with the arrival of the Imperium.

The arrival of his creator seemed to have put Esau at a crossroads. He felt he had to prove himself now, or never at all. If the Emperor died before Esau got the closure he sought, Esau would never truly recover.

"He would understand." Kha asserted. "But I doubt he would forgive us."

Isaac hummed before nodding.

"So we seal him. What kind of seal would work best here?"

Kha thought about it.

The absolute best seal the Immortal Sun had access to was the Reaper Death Seal, even after decades of research. Upon casting, the Reaper Death Seal killed and sealed both the caster and whoever it was casted on, almost without fail by consuming both their souls. It did this by first sacrificing a portion of the caster's soul to summon an ethereal being referred to as the 'Reaper', who would facilitate the transfer of souls.

The problem was, all souls were linked to the Immaterium, and the Emperor had already showcased the ability to teleport.

Would the Emperor be able to escape the Reaper's stomach? If so, they would have sacrificed a life for nothing. This was without considering the Reaper Death Seal's slow cast time. Successfully casting it may potentially result in losing more than what casting it would gain.

That was unacceptable.

No, the Immortal Trap Seal was much better for this scenario.

The Immortal Death Seal was a modified version of the Reaper Death Seal. It had at first been modified due to ambiguity concerning whether or not the 'Reaper' was a daemon, given souls and their eternal connection to the Immaterium, along with the inherent dangers of the seal. Now, it summoned the 'Reaper' to a pocket dimension instead of real space and forced whoever it was cast on to fight it, within the seal for all eternity. All of this, at the cost of draining the caster of their life force, for the rest of their life.

In short, all the benefits of the Reaper Death Seal, with only a few of its shortcomings. For example, the Emperor could potentially escape this seal as well, but would have to fight his way through the Reaper to do so.

"The Immortal Trap Seal." Kha answered, finally.

"That would probably be the best choice." Isaac said, nodding. "You ready? This can go all sorts of wrong."

Kha shrugged, an uncommon action for her.

"As ready as I'll ever be."

"Fair enough." He responded, putting his hand out.

Their hands met and both of them activated the seal Kov had placed on Leman Russ.

Both Kha and Isaac felt the seal change, as it's way onto Leman Russ' very soul. In moments, the Kārma Seal would be active.

.

The moment the seal touched Leman Russ' soul, both Kha and Isaac felt a pressure push down on them, as if heaven itself had looked upon them, judged them and found them wanting.

Kha felt space twist around the Emperor as he attempted to teleport to Leman Russ. An oval golden window to the Immaterium opened up before the Emperor jumped through, with an abandon that she couldn't help but feel unbecoming.

Kha shrugged off the psychic attack before she and Isaac teleported just next to Kov and Leman Russ, who looked up at them in shock and confusion.

Kha had a fraction of a second to before she had to duck under the swing of the 'Emperor's' lightning claw amongst the dozens of Ork corpses surrounding Kov and Leman Russ. As if in response to the 'Emperor's' presence, the Orks detonated, before turning to ash. Kha activated her biotics and floated out of the way of a second swing as Isaac closed in.

Leman Russ barked out a startled laugh while Kov stood up and readied himself.

Isaac threw his spear at the Emperor, with a suddenness Kha almost hadn't seen coming. The spear bounced from an invisible shield surrounding the Emperor. Isaac waded into the force field, the Warboss Mask facilitating hand to hand combat, and grabbed the Emperor. He attempted to interlock his armoured fingers around the Emperor's waist for a 'belly to belly' suplex attempt.

He received a vicious headbutt in response, cracking the Mask. Kha intervened by using her Soul-AMP and her biotics to sharpen the gauntlet of her hand before layering a thin coat of ink on it and then striking through Isaac's back, at the Emperor's chest with a simple psychic suppression seal.

The seal burnt itself out just as it activated and Kha readied herself to perform a psychic suppression seal.

Fortunately, the Kārma took this very moment to activate. No matter what happened from here on out, the Immortal Sun had followed through on their threat, and Leman Russ' very soul was on the line. The Imperium was on the back foot now.

The Emperor blinked out of existence and reappeared just behind Leman Russ and just across Kov, with one hand on Leman's shoulder. His face appeared the very picture of tranquillity.

"Very well." He said, his first words since the battle began. "You wished to talk. Let us talk."

Action: Survive battle with the Emperor of Mankind

Reward: Enchantment (Silmarillion)

Kov Zulu

820. M30.

Today just didn't seem to be his day.

It had started off well enough. Kov had gotten in a good hearty breakfast and had a meeting with the Consuls of Naufrag Noctis, which wasn't bad. Meetings on Noctis were always better than those on Primus, less attempted backstabbing and power plays for one thing. He had even got through the meeting with enough time to take a morning flight in his flight suit from Castle Bela to Castle Karloff, instead of teleporting like he usually did. While teleportation had made things a lot more convenient, it made schedules that much tighter - the cost of progress, Kov supposed.

Then the day went downhill. He had to arbitrate disputes among the residents of Castle Karloff - whose ancestors had been changed by the Night Virus such that they needed regular surgery to survive - and the Gill men - whose ancestors had been changed into fish like men. A Karloffman named Boris had apparently eloped with a Gill noblewoman and somehow, that was Kov's problem. As it turned out, both of the lovers were the relatives of two of Noctis' current Consuls.

Despite being rid of most of the mutations that had ailed them, tensions still ran deep enough that they needed an outside arbitrator. Apparently. Kov couldn't even call on Esau to deal with it because he was dealing with a territorial dispute at Wood Manor - which despite its name was another castle in itself.

Then, Kov and Esau had heard word of a ship entering the Naufrag system and his day had somehow gone from bad, to absolutely garbage.

Getting ready for the meeting with the Imperium had been fun, but nerve wracking. This was to be the first human empire that the Immortal Sun would meet since its founding after all. Fragments of other human cultures had been found on Drukhari raid ships and absorbed into the Immortal Sun, of course. By and large, though, those came from feral cultures, as they seemed to be easy prey for the Drukhari.

Esau designed the pavilion they had met on, while Isaac and Kha organised their clothing and jewellery. Everything had to have some sort of meaning, each planned action representing the entire empire. It was tiring, to be sure but preparations were completed painlessly.

Esau was especially anxious, though he hid it. Badly. Kov had managed to get a good few laughs ribbing him about it before the Imperium made it to Sol-Ark 3.

Then the Imperium had arrived, and Kov found himself facing what he now understood to be a Primarch, Esau's brother - in single combat without his armour. He had done well enough, given the circumstances, but had almost died a gruesome death all the same. Like all members of the royal family, Kov had a body that had been built for his soul to inhabit marked with his Kārma, but that didn't mean that the prospect of death was any less scary.

If anything, there was something slightly horrifying about having to face something that you know for a fact managed to kill you once before. Esau disagreed with that sentiment but that was to be expected, Esau found a lot of insane things fun.

Kov had survived of course, and managed to trap Leman Russ with a series of seals before sitting down and facing his attacker.

Leman Russ was interesting, if crass. He reminded Kov of some of the smarter gang leaders back Home. Like them, he was possessed of an almost supernatural confidence and like them, he postured, constantly. Even in defeat, he had to make himself seem bigger and stronger than he actually was. As if the defeat he had suffered was a minor setback, instead of the near death experience it truly was.

Kov hated to admit it, but that reminded him of Esau a little bit. At least, back when they were both just children. Esau was more subdued about it, even then, but it was definitely a similarity both Leman and Esau shared. That got Kov thinking about whether at least some of the bravado was a facade, like Esau's was.

Regardless, Leman was much smarter than he seemed. Despite his crass demeanour, most of his actions had some secondary aim. He spat in Kov's face to taunt and anger him, yes, but also to test Kov's boundaries. Would Kov return the favour, escalate or ignore him? All of his actions served to gather information.

When Kov decided to ignore him and instead look through the newly Forge-granted Apollo database on his omni-tool, Leman had changed tactics. He turned from insults and speculation on who was winning the battle, to questions regarding the Immortal Sun. Even without answering a single question, Kov was sure that Leman had been capable of gleaning some insight into the Immortal Sun.

Then without warning, he felt his Kārma mark - the same Kārma mark meant to facilitate his revival in case of death - be copied onto Leman Russ' very soul. He had barely moments to digest this, when Leman Russ' father appeared before him, looking about ready to tear his head from his body if he so much as twitched.

"Very well." He said, with a calmness that belied a malicious disregard that Kov could almost feel. "You wished to talk. Let us talk."

"Indeed." Kha replied, voice equally calm. She raised the index finger of her right hand, as if an idea just came to her. "However, we cannot speak in these conditions. Please call off your forces, and we will call off ours."

Though Kha phrased it as a request, everyone present knew that it wasn't one.

"Your suggestion has merit." The 'Emperor of Man' replied, his swordhand sweeping outwards.

Golden portals appeared behind him, through which his auramite clad soldiers entered looking no worse for wear, generally speaking. Some had gaping chest or stomach wounds that had been readily ignored, allowing them to keep step with their brethren.

Soon, the clearing had been filled with a thousand members of the Legio Custodes. The portals closed, and the Legio Custodes stood behind their Lord.

In response, Isaac brought his palm down to the ground. Ink spread from his hand, before pooling behind him. Suddenly, the ink disappeared, replaced by white smoke, through which Kov could see the gleaming silver and black of the King's Shield.

Almost all one thousand of them had obviously seen battle. Some even had missing limbs, though no blood flowed from their wounds, having been staunched by the modified Extremis serum. They would regrow soon enough.

"Nimis!" Isaac suddenly called as he stood back up, his voice warped by the Warboss Mask.

"My lord?" He replied, coming up to Isaac's right hand side, the side opposite where Kha stood. His armour looked untouched besides one very large diagonal cut going from his left leg to his right arm.

"Could you point the one known as Constantin Valdor out to me?"

"Well, he didn't reveal his name to me in our battle." Nimis replied coolly, the nervous excitement of battle gone. "Still, I can point him out easily enough. He is the man standing to the immediate right of his lord."

"Ah." Isaac said as if surprised. Kov knew that he was not. He was trying to establish a dynamic between him and Kha in the Imperium's eyes. As if he was the brute and Kha the thinker, when the truth was that both were equally capable thinkers and brutes. That was the reason his Mask was still on his face in an otherwise ostensibly peaceful meeting.

"I see him, you may stand at ease." Nimis nodded before stepping back, still facing forward.

"Would you be willing to allow me to see that spear?" Isaac continued, addressing seemingly no one in particular.

"No. I would not." The 'Emperor of Man' said.

"I apologise then." Isaac replied.

Kov recognised the whole conversation for what it was. Isaac was playing at finding the Imperium's boundaries. With the Kārma on him, Leman Russ was ostensibly a hostage, but both sides were keeping a polite fiction that he was not.

Hard boundaries had to be established before the talk continued. The 'Emperor' could have allowed Isaac to see the spear but would have looked weak for doing so. Isaac could have similarly pressed on the subject - again, Leman Russ was his hostage - but he let it go. It made the Immortal Sun seem magnanimous.

Kov resisted the urge to shake his head. He hated politics.

"We're still missing a few people." Kha interjected.

"Esau and…Horus are still engaged in battle are they not?" Isaac replied.

Were they? Kov briefly checked his omni-tool. Based on Esau's speed and general direction, he was running and would be here in literal minutes. Kov frowned. Esau could teleport by reverse summoning himself to almost anywhere in the Naufrag system. Why was he running?

"They will be here soon." The 'Emperor' said in a vaguely annoyed tone.

He gestured again with his swordhand, and again a golden portal appeared, with Horus running through, sword in hand. The portal then closed, just as Esau summoned himself right next to Isaac, sword raised and ready for battle.

Both Esau and Horus surveyed the clearing and sheathed their swords at their sides. Horus took his place at his father's right, as Leman was to his left and Esau took his place at his right. Kov suppressed the urge to scream. Esau was wearing a suit of Mark II concussive armour - outdated even a decade and a half ago - while Horus had obvious necroderm-steel grafts to his. Not only had Esau stopped himself from using suits of armour ten times better than the one he wore, he had also repaired Horus' own armour.

For what, a challenge?

Kov shook his head. Esau had been erratic as the Imperium arrived, that was true enough, and he had his selfish moments - everyone did - but this was not the time for one of them. He was about to walk over to him and ask him why he did what he did, when the Silver Mind interjected.

"Warning: Two Gloriana class battleships have been spotted leaving the Immaterium at the Mandeville point nearest to Sol-Ark 3." It announced, through speakers hidden throughout the Ark. "Both ships bear symbols identifying them as belonging to the Imperium of Man."

"Interesting." Kha said aloud as the Silver Mind projected an image showing the ships, their size and placement in the Naufrag system to Isaac, Kha, Kov and Esau and their cybernetics. The Silver Mind currently had Sol-Arks 1 and 2 positioned for a faster-than-light ramming procedure in the case of any further issues with the Imperium of Man. Each pathway was calculated such that the ships would avoid even the smallest of space debris, and minimise the effect of the collision on Sol-Ark 3.

Kov briefly checked their time of entry into the Silver Mind's databanks. Twelve hours ago. That was around the time of Leman Russ' attack on Kov. Ignoring the brief flush of embarrassment, Kov sent the Silver Mind a question.

Why hadn't Silver Mind attacked?

Kov didn't necessarily want the Silver Mind to attack, but the Silver Mind was not a being of pure logic, despite its attestations otherwise. In system FTL translation required approval of at least one member of the royal family given its inherent danger, but the Sol-Arks had enough machinery dedicated to fabrication that that was barely a challenge.

The Silver Mind could have bombarded the first Imperial ship with vortex grenades, for example or made probing a retaliatory strike with a drone. Why hadn't it?

The answer Kov got back put things back into perspective.

The Imperium of Man had Earth and its Solar System under its control. Isaac was from Earth, and had made it one of his explicit goals to make it there. The Silver Mind had also made Isaac promise to bury its original crew members underneath Earth soil. In twenty years, since the Immortal Sun's founding, the Imperium represented the only chance of getting there. The 'Emperor of Man' was Esau's creator and the Imperium presented the best chance of getting to Tectum via regular space travel, due to its status as a continuously expanding empire.

The Silver Mind didn't attack, because it couldn't.

Kov was sure that Isaac would never go for joining the Imperium, based purely on the fact that Leman Russ attacked him. Kov was also sure that Esau wouldn't join the Imperium for the same reason. Esau was a pain in the ass sometimes, but as Isaac would say; all brothers were, and Kov knew that Esau considered him one. Attacking him was a betrayal Esau would never forget.

Kha, Kov was iffy on. If the benefits outweighed the disadvantages, she would definitely lobby to join. Kov barely had to consider the thought before he knew the answer. The Silver Mind would go where Kov did, and Kov wasn't feeling very conciliatory.

"I don't think this changes our current situation much." Kha stated, nodding at the Emperor. "Does it?"

"It does not." The Emperor replied.

Kov took a moment to use his cybernetics to absorb as much of the information had been able to collect on the Imperium as possible. Even with his mind enhanced by the Polymath Gland and his cybernetic implants, the effort was herculean. The Silver Mind had infiltrated the Noosphere of the Mechanicum - their wireless communications, and had managed to use the Eccentric drones to absorb the memories of the members in the docking bay. Even just limiting himself to the relevant data meant that he had to process several lifetimes worth.

The powered armour he was wearing had to lock its plates to keep him from keeling over. Medichines injected themselves into his system, turning a splitting headache into a merely irritating one.

In all, barely five seconds had passed, and Kov had a greater appreciation for the complexity of the situation.

The Immortal Sun seemed to represent everything the Imperium stood against. The doctrine of the Imperium, the Imperial Truth, had two main tenets. Firstly , a member of the Imperium was to be completely secular, forswearing all religions and gods. In the years since it was conquered, Naufrag Primus had generally adopted a religion of ancestor worship and Naufrag Noctis had several holy books survive the Old Night. None were overtly religious on Naufrag Noctis, but there existed a small religious undercurrent. The only exception, it seemed, to this rule was the Cult Mechanicum.

Secondly, a member of the Imperium was not allowed to consort with aliens in any capacity, for any reason. The use of Orks and Ur-Orks was pervasive throughout the Immortal Sun. Even without getting into the taboo the Cult Mechanicum had on Artificial Intelligences such as the Silver Mind, the Imperium of Man had destroyed hundreds of societies for less.

The Imperium would have tried to burn this system to the ground had some circumstances been different.

But they weren't.

Things were how things were, and both sides had to deal with it, no matter their personal feelings.

"What do you suggest?" Horus, the man Esau had been fighting less than an hour ago, said.

Kov realised that as the royal family had been sharing family through their cybernetics, the Imperium had been doing the same using the Emperor's psychic powers. Horus had likely been chosen to ask the question because of his status as a consummate diplomat. He had good political acumen, and thus presented a good chance of this negotiation going well.

At the same time, if Horus made a misstep or made a promise that the Imperium could not or would not keep, the Emperor could step in and change the course of the negotiation. Horus was essentially, both a saviour and a sacrificial lamb.

"I guess a full surrender is off the table." Isaac began, and Horus laughed while Leman guffawed. They both had big hearty laughs, as if what Isaac said was the funniest thing they ever heard. Kov thought about it.

It probably was.

"You would be correct." Horus replied, as he recovered from his short bout of laughter.

"Very well then." Isaac replied. "The Immortal Sun will stay independent of the Imperium of Man."

Horus made a show of rubbing his chin.

"Go on."

"We want a pathway into the Sol system where members of the Immortal Sun may arrive and leave freely unmolested, a plot of land on Terra befitting our status and a position on its ruling council, the High Lords of Terra. "

"You ask too much, and give us nothing in return."

"Is the life of your brother-Primarch not enough?" Isaac retorted.

"Even if you had all of us in your grip, we could not give you Terra." Horus asserted, ignoring the bait for what it was.

"We do not ask for Terra in its entirety-"

"No, you merely ask for the authority to make decisions that would steer the direction of Imperium."

Horus had a point here. Isaac was essentially asking for a position equal to the Fabricator-General of the Mechanicum, while at the same time asking to be held separate to the Imperium's laws. It was a ridiculous proposal, but that was the point. Negotiations were about finding your opponents weaknesses without revealing your own. By asking for so much, everything else sounds less ludicrous by comparison.

"What would you suggest?" Kha replied.

Again, Kha did her best to look like the more reasonable of the two, even though she was the more shrewd negotiator.

Horus crossed his arms, before he uncrossed them.

"We will leave the Immortal Sun to its own devices, provided that my brother, Esau, swears unconditional fealty to the Imperium of Man and joins our Great Crusade." He said, before adding a final condition as an afterthought. "You will also have to provide us with copies of your STCs and a cohort of seal masters."

Given the Imperium's extremely dogmatic adherence to the Imperial Truth, that was a surprisingly good offer. Kov knew that the Immortal Sun wouldn't go for it as soon as he heard it, however. In the short term, the terms of the agreement were good, but were built to benefit the Imperium in the long term. They would almost unilaterally benefit while all the Immortal Sun got was dismissal while they had all political advantage. Only an idiot would take this agreement at face value.

"What do you think, Esau?" Isaac asked. "Would you be willing to swear fealty to the Imperium?"

"No." Esau said, without hesitation as he faced the Emperor. "Since I was a boy, I have wanted but one thing. An understanding of my place in the universe. I freely admit that it is something that irked me for some time."

Silence filled the clearing as the plates of his helmet shifted, and disappeared into his armour. He brought his right hand up, staring at his hand as if seeing it for the first time.

"I was so obviously artificially made. A man cannot be so naturally gifted with so much talent at so many things. I was a machine, a tool but what is a tool, without a purpose? For some time, after my Father found me in the arid sands of Naufrag Primus, I sought an equal, for I thought that only an equal could show me my purpose. I am not ashamed to admit that I was a fool. In my Father, I found an equal in strength and mind. In my brother Kov, I found an equal in mind and spirit. In Lady Kha, I found an equal in spirit and soul. Yet, none of them could show me my purpose. It seemed that only I could decide that."

He brought his hand down and stared unflinchingly at the glowing gold of his creator's eyes.

"So I challenged myself in any way I could. I tested my mind, my spirit, my soul." Here, he nodded at Horus. "And my strength. As I stand here before you all, I know what my purpose is. I know why I was made. I was made as a balance. An arbitrator, and a judge of merit in myself and in others."

He brushed his hair back with his left hand.

"As it stands I cannot join the Imperium of Man. It would not be fair to my Father who has sacrificed much of himself so that he could raise me. It would not be fair to Lady Kha who has sacrificed much to give me her knowledge. It would not be fair to Kov who struggled alongside me in the everdark muck of Naufrag Noctis to join sides with someone who attacked him."

He paused again, before continuing.

"This is perhaps selfish of me, but it is not fair to me that you wish for my fealty without earning it, Creator."

Damn.

Whatever Horus wanted to say in response was cut off as Leman Russ guffawed.

"You're no runt, at the very least." He said, with a smile that showed off pronounced canines.

"If that is the case,-" The Emperor spoke, as the noise filling the clearing petered out. "I will endeavour to earn your trust and fealty."

If there was any doubt as to the intelligence of the Emperor, it erased itself in Kov's mind. He had Esau's entire character figured out. If he pressed on his right to Esau's fealty as his creator, he would alienate him, and if he denied any wrongdoing, Esau would see him as deceitful.

Even now though, Kov could see that the Emperor was walking a thin line.

"I see that you have raised my son into a leal man. Good." The Emperor said, nodding. "Very well. The negotiations have gone nowhere, so I propose a competition of Esau's choosing. The winner will decide the course of negotiations and the fate of the other. What do you say?"

It was an obvious attempt to get out of a negative situation and get ahead, but again, the Emperor was shrewd. The prize was too great to ignore and by placing the onus of deciding the rules on Esau, he appealed to his nature.

"If a competition is to be agreed on. That is 'if' my Emperor and Empress agree to one happening.." Esau began. "Then it cannot be I, who decides the rules. After all, I am not the wronged party."

He turned to Kov. Damn.

"He is."

"You speak the truth. If-" The Emperor allowed, though his tone suggested that he fully believed the Immortal Sun would agree to a competition.. "If a competition is to be agreed upon, then it should be him who decides it."

The full focus of both empires focussed on Kov. Shit.

Now he absolutely had to be involved, when he had hoped to withdraw coolly after observing negotiations and go flying.

"Do you want to take the chance on a competition or would you rather continue negotiations?" Kov asked the rulers of the Immortal Sun.

Almost as one, they nodded. The prize for winning was too great to ignore.

"Alright."

The futures of both the Imperium and the Immortal Sun were potentially on the line, here. No pressure. Kov thought about it. The competition should be weighted slightly to the Immortal Sun's favour, but not obviously so. So no competitions that relied on strength or psychic power, because Kov was sure that they would lose.

That left only one thing.

"I propose a competition of skill versus skill." Kov stated loudly, while he held his thumb, index and middle fingers up.

"Over the course of the next three days, the Emperors of the Imperium and the Immortal Sun are to forge a single item. It should be something a single man can carry and be built within the stated time frame. At the end of the third day, both participants will present their item to the other and they will be compared against the other. After this, two thousand members from both sides of this conflict will vote on this result."

He checked to make sure everyone was paying attention.

"To make things fair, both parties will be given access to the same set of tools which will be provided in equal amounts by the Immortal Sun and the Imperium of Man. Both competitors will be able to ask for any one item as material, from the other party before the competition begins."

Everyone was still paying rapt attention. Good. He didn't know if his heart could take repeating that again.

"Do these terms sound fair?" He asked, finally.

"They do." Isaac and the Emperor replied simultaneously as they stared each other down.

"Then may both competitors shake hands, and let the competition begin."

Both the Emperor and Isaac's enormous armoured hands met, in the middle of the clearing, and the competition began.

Horus Lupercal:

820. M30.

Horus watched as the Emperor shook hands with the Emperor of the Immortal Sun. The Emperor of the Immortal Sun was smaller than the Emperor, but not by much, the glowing green of his eyes meeting the resplendent gold of the Master of Mankind. The Master of Mankind did not smile, but Horus could tell He was amused, the same way a man watching a child challenging him would be.

"Have you both decided on the item you will request as material?" Kov Zulu, Prince of the Naufrag System interjected, breaking the deadlock.

Horus kept himself from frowning.

Mere hours ago, Horus had thought of Kov as unimportant in the grand scheme of the Imperiums plans' to recover his brother. Now he was, perhaps, the lynchpin for the Imperium's control over the solar system.

From what Horus could tell, he had once been an ordinary human and been elevated by science that seemed a dark mirror to the Imperium's own. His body had been transformed in a manner not unlike an Astartes and his stature had grown such that Horus was sure that the uninitiated would think him a Primarch. Any Primarch or Astartes would easily discern the truth of the matter, however. Kov simply lacked a certain…presence that Horus and his brothers shared.

Horus didn't quite know what to make of him.

He did, however, understand why the Emperor was distasteful of the man, or rather what he represented. Esau had apparently both been named after figures in an ancient 'holy' text from Terra known as the 'Book of Genesis'. As the Emperor explained it, it contained a story of two brothers 'Jacob and Esau'. In the parable, Jacob, the younger brother, is raised above his older brother at the orders of their shared god.

'Kov' was likely rooted from the name 'Jacob'. The context of the parable thus implied that Kov had been named so that he would eventually rise above Esau, due to an edict from a 'god' of some kind. That would never happen, of course, but superstition still had a hold of the minds of countless men and women throughout the galaxy.

Horus had followed in the Emperor's grand example, wholeheartedly believing in logic and reasoning, but the galaxy at large was hardly so illuminated.

Followers of this 'Book of Genesis' might thus seek to raise Kov above Esau in their eyes, which could potentially be dangerous. Horus made a mental note to get that taken care of as soon as the Emperor won and the Naufrag System was well and truly in the Imperium's hands.

Kov was hardly charismatic but Horus had seen cults form around less charismatic individuals for less reason.

"I have." Isaac replied, turning back to the Emperor. "I would like to have your lightning claw as material, if you don't mind."

Horus nearly snorted. He said it as if the Emperor had a choice. If He did not give Isaac the claw, He would look weak. The Emperor could never look weak, so He gave Isaac the claw without a single complaint. The gleaming auramite that His armour was composed of morphed around His bare hand, forming a new gauntlet.

The Emperor's lightning claw was a work of art, but it was hardly irreplaceable. He could always forge another one. It was obvious that Isaac wanted it for the auramite that composed it; he had mentioned being unable to produce it in his own experiments after all.

The question was what the Emperor would ask for in return. Would He ask for an item clearly visible such as the 'build gun' Esau possessed or would He ask for something else entirely? Perhaps the 'build gun' would be one of the tools made available to the Imperium?

"I would ask for the mask adorning your face, in return." The Emperor said.

If the Immortal Sun was shaken, they did not show it. If anything, they seemed to have expected the Emperor's request.

"Very well." Isaac answered, simply as he reached up to pull the mask off of his face.

He grabbed it from the edge nearest his chin, and pulled up. As he removed it, Isaac made a sound Horus could only describe as a war cry. He didn't scream or shout, but the sound was nonetheless loud. It reminded Horus heavily of the drivel that regularly left the mouths of the Orks in battle. Yet, it somehow sounded distinct.

The effort of removing it was obviously arduous, as Isaac looked visibly tired. Green energy still flowed out of his eyes but it was lesser now; the difference between a floodlight and sunlight flowing through a closed shade. The plate comprising the rest of his helmet shifted and returned to his armour.

He handed the mask to the Emperor without ceremony and stepped back, lightning claw in hand.

Horus blinked. He and his armour was also becoming visibly smaller as a few dozen kilograms of weight seemed to disappear from his body. He went from almost the Emperor's equal in height to just above Horus' own height. Interesting.

"Now that the exchange of items has been completed-" Kov said, as he stepped in-between the Emperor and Isaac. "Let's get through particulars of how the next three days are going to work."

He brought his right hand up and an item rapidly assembled itself in the middle of his palm. A holographic projector. He activated it and a two-dimensional image of the level of the space station they were on projected itself into the air. A line cut the circular image right in two.

"This side will be where the Immortal Sun will set themselves up." He said pointing to one side. "And this will be where the Imperium will be set up. Are both of you amenable to this?"

"We are." Both the Master of Mankind, and the Emperor of the Immortal Sun replied almost simultaneously.

"Alright. For the purposes of assembling materials, and voting. The capital flagship the-"

"-Bucephelus." The mysterious voice that greeted the Imperium as they reached the docking bay of the space station supplied.

Horus' eyes narrowed. That could be some hidden servant but Horus' instinct told Horus that it was more than likely to be an Abominable Intelligence. Given the various other ways in which the Immortal Sun transgressed the Imperial Truth, Horus was confident in that guess.

"The Bucephelus." Kov continued. "Will be allowed to come up and attach to Sol-Ark 3, but the other two ships will not be allowed to leave the Naufrag Mandeville point. Small parties of individuals from each ship will be allowed to board on small corvettes unmolested. Is that amenable as well?"

"It is." The Emperor replied.

"Alright. We will meet in the middle of the level here-" Kov said, indicating the pavilion where the Imperium had first met with the Immortal Sun. "-in three days. The competition will begin twelve hours from now but both parties will be allowed to set up amenities in the meantime. Do you have any questions?"

"No." "I do not." The Emperor and Isaac replied and with that, both the Imperium and the Immortal Sun turned to travel to their respectively allocated areas.

.

"I sense that you have questions." The Emperor said, suddenly, as they walked. "The both of you."

"I do, Allfather." Leman replied. The master wrought form of his armour was battered on all sides.

"Horus?" The Emperor pressed, when Horus stayed silent.

"I do." Horus replied, after taking a moment to think. "Though I think mine will be different from Leman's own."

"I would imagine that they would be." The Emperor replied. "Ask. The both of you. Before we are taken by making preparations and meeting with our contingent."

"Was I mistaken in attacking the boy?" Leman asked. His tone of voice was unusually flat.

"No." The Emperor replied.

Horus recognized it for the lie it was. Leman's sudden attack at the pavilion was antithetical to the Emperor's own approach. After all, attack or no, Horus didn't engage in Leman's attack. He understood the Emperor's way, in a way Leman clearly did not.

The Emperor preferred gaining information through subterfuge over a short period of time before deciding on a plan of attack. Only then would he engage in an attack of overwhelming force.

"You believed yourself to be intercepting an attack on myself." The Emperor replied. "I cannot fault you for that. Later information indicated that no attack was being placed on my person. However, your attack revealed several pieces of vital information that may change the course of the Imperium forever."

The Emperor stopped walking, the contingent of Custodes stopping with him, before He turned to face Leman.

"The Immortal Sun has access to methods of faster-than-light travel that do not rely on the Warp." He said.

His tone belied the gravity off the statement. The Imperium at large relied on the Warp for both faster-than-light communication and travel. Despite the Imperium's best efforts, it was a form of travel that was neither consistent or always safe. The currents of the Immaterium, it seemed, could only be reliably recalcitrant. Astropaths were difficult to train, and the Navis Nobilite - the Navigator Houses of Terra - were miserly with their secrets.

His own Astropaths were of the highest quality, so accidents were few and far between, but Horus had heard stories of explorer ships disappearing, especially along the fringes of the Imperium. The Imperium utilised Warp travel not because they preferred it, but because they had no other choice.

Where despicable xeno races such as the Aeldari could utilise their prized Webway to travel the galaxy, humanity had no such liberty.

That an alternate method of faster-than-light travel existed here, in a backwater system like this, of all places was absurd. Yet, almost nothing else could explain the Emperor's change in strategy.

The Emperor wanted to put the system to the sword, but he couldn't, lest humanity lose a technology that would have otherwise raised the Crusade to heights beyond imagining. Then how-?

The teleportation. Horus had at first assumed the presence of a teleportarium on the space station, but Kov had no obvious piece of the necessary technologies on him when he teleported out of the way of Leman's initial swing.

"I see, Allfather." Leman replied. "Then it was written in our wyrd then."

He spat to the side, and Horus resisted insulting him. Leman gave the Imperium a boon, but he did so purely by accident. Horus liked Leman well enough, but moments like this reminded Horus of the more…obtuse aspects of Leman's personality.

"Tsk." He spat before he did something that surprised Horus completely. He apologised to the Emperor. "I will be better in the future. On my life, I promise it."

"As you say." The Emperor replied. His face had what seemed to be the beginnings of what may have been a smile before it turned into a frown. "You may very well have to test that promise soon."

Here, Horus was confused. He knew that the Immortal Sun had managed to trap and mark Leman with their technology, but the specifics escaped him.

"What do you mean, Father?" He interjected, the confusion clear on his face.

"On your brother's palm lies a black mark, placed on him, at the behest of the Emperor and Empress of the Immortal Sun." The Emperor said.

He waved his hand and an image of Leman Russ appeared before Horus and Leman. The images hand briefly glowed a white, before a black mark appeared on his arm, a small barb growing out of it. The black mark spread, like poison in his veins.

"At first, the mark is harmless as it records data on the being it marks. So far it is only recording biological data. In days, it will begin recording memories. Then -"

For the first time since his first years in the utter darkness of Cthonia, Horus felt terror. The image of Leman Russ morphed slowly, body part by body part into the form of the very man he had almost killed, Kov Zulu.

"-it will replace what it records." The Emperor finished.

"How long will this take?" Leman asked, his face morphed into a snarl.

"The Primarchs are my finest creation. I have made you resistant to all manner of maladies, physical and otherwise. It would take years to replace the data of an ordinary human being. For one wrought as you have been? Centuries."

"Then-"

"The danger is not to you, but your sons." The Emperor replied, even as Leman asked his question. "The geneseed inserted in an aspirant is drawn from your own. Each Astartes borrows a fraction of your potential, even from across the galaxy. Any change to you, will thus change them."

It was an old lecture that Horus knew well. It was why his sons so often reflected the best in him. He realised what the Emperor meant.

"As long as the mark is on Leman, any sons produced from his genestock have a chance of absorbing traits from Kov, instead of him."

"That is unacceptable." Leman nearly roared, the wrath apparent in his face. His hands shook with fury. "Can this mark be removed?"

"It can." The Emperor replied. "I can remove it easily enough, but the effort is as likely to kill you as not with the tools available to me here."

"I am willing to take the chance!" Leman begged. In the same situation, Horus would be similarly willing. Any Primarch worth the name would be the same.

"I am not." The Emperor replied as he turned, stunning Horus and Leman both.

"If in three days, when I present my creation to the Immortal Sun, it is still not removed, then I will let you undergo the procedure. Until then, I will hear no word of it. Do you understand?"

"I do, Allfather." Leman replied, though he was far from happy with the Emperor's decision.

"Good. Horus? You have a question as well." The Emperor said. His tone told Horus that he already knew what the question was.

Horus arranged his thoughts.

"When I was engaged in battle with my brother, we were both struck by golden lightning." He said.

"And you saw a vision."

"Yes. Of me, and Esau fighting. Of you engaged in battle. And of the arrival of the Hrafnkel and the Vengeful Spirit in the Naufrag System."

"But that was not all."

"No."

"What else did you see?" The Emperor pressed.

"On the Hrafnkel, I saw a Primarch."

"You saw one of our brothers. On my ship?" Leman asked as he turned to Horus, his incredulity bleeding through his confusion.

"I did." Horus confirmed staring Leman down. "He wore the armour of the VIth and hid himself near the engine rooms."

Whatever Leman was going to say was cut out by the Emperor's next words.

"His name is Alpharius, and he is Primarch of the XXth."

Leman reeled while Horus absorbed the information presented. The XXth were a secretive legion and had a specialty in subterfuge. Horus' own XVI had but a few missions undertaken alongside the XXth but all knew them to be secretive since their very creation. Given this…Alpharius' own actions, in choosing to hid himself upon Leman's flagship, a singular curiosity made itself known to Horus.

He considered his next question carefully, before he asked it.

"How long ago was he discovered?"

The Emperor turned back to him, His eyes meeting Horus' own.

"Less than a year after the scattering."

Horus' vision swam.

"Then why?" He asked, the betrayal of his Father's statement hitting him with full force.

Why did his father lie to him? Why did his Father present him as the first found to the Imperium? Why did his Father allow this lie to fester? Why had his Father forsaken him?

His legs shook and threatened to buckle below him.

"I give you three reasons." The Emperor replied, melancholy matching Horus' own clear on His face.

"The first, is that he asked me to keep his existence hidden from the Imperium, and in my grief at losing my sons, I obliged."

Horus' melancholy turned into choler as he heard the Emperor. What kind of reason was that?

"He asked you to lie to us and you obliged?" Horus asked, incredulous.

"Horus, watch yourself." Leman said, his hand on Horus' shoulder.

Horus blinked, and returned to reality. Constantin Valdor stood between him and the Emperor.

He felt a dull pain in his hand and realised what happened. In his anger he had struck the Emperor. Finally, the strength left Horus' legs and he fell to his knees.

He had stricken his Father.

"I'm sorry, my Lord." He said, the words escaping his mouth before he could control them.

Constantin Valdor stepped back, and the Emperor spoke.

"Rise, my son. I understand." Slowly, Horus' strength returned, and he stood, ready for punishment.

It never came. Instead, the Emperor spoke.

"He, like you, shares my blood, Horus." He said. "Do not fault me for doing for him what I would do for you."

Any response Horus would have had died on his tongue when he remembered the pain in his hand.

"What have you asked for that I have denied?" The Emperor asked, and Horus found that he had no answer.

Horus had asked the Emperor for very little, but the few concessions he asked for, he received readily.

"You said you had three reasons." Horus said, finally.

"I do." The Emperor replied. "The second is that Alpharius is damaged."

Horus' thoughts came to a halt.

"What do you mean, my Lord?" Leman asked before Horus could.

"Your brother was undergoing a crucial state of his development, when the scattering occurred." The Emperor said, pained. "You all were. Yet you are both intact, and so is Esau despite my worst fears. The scattering left Alpharius without a significant piece of himself. He is as gifted as the both of you. He is possessed of the same strength and intelligence, but he is lesser, regardless."

"How?" Horus asked.

"His body has been split in two, and his other half is still lost among the stars. In truth your brother's name is Alpharius Omegon. I have found Alpharius, but Omegon remains lost to us. This was another reason why I have chosen not to reveal him to the Imperium. He is incomplete."

Here, Horus understood. The Emperor had not told Horus of Alpharius because He pitied Alpharius. Every time he saw Alpharius, the pain of the scattering returned in full. The Emperor was nigh on perfect. The ideal to strive towards, but his gifts made failure sting so much more. Alpharius represented a singular failure, the results of which he still suffered, and the Emperor pitied him for it.

In the first few years following Horus' discovery, he had spent all his time with the Emperor, to better learn His craft. The Emperor was gifted in subterfuge, as he was gifted in all things, but it was not a specialty of his. It was, however, a specialty of another.

"You did not tutor Alpharius, as you have tutored us." Horus said. It was not a question. None in the Imperium knew the Emperor and his ways better than he.

"No." The Emperor replied. "I did not. The Sol system had yet to be fully liberated. My efforts were focused there."

"He was taught by the Sigillite, then." Malcador the Sigillite was the only other person in the galaxy the Emperor would trust to raise his son. There could be no other possibility.

"He was."

Horus nodded, his strength having fully returned to him.

"You said you had a third reason." Leman said.

"The third reason is that Alpharius knows that he is incomplete and he is actively trying to find his other half. He regularly takes unscheduled journeys throughout the galaxy for this very purpose. He thinks that I do not know, but I do." The Emperor said. "You have both met him, even if you do not realise it. When a Primarch is rediscovered, he always makes his way onto the first fleet of ships to meet them, because he has hope that the Primarch will turn out to be his other half."

"He chooses not to reveal himself, because he feels he cannot, until he is complete." Horus observed. "His pride will not allow him to. I can respect that. If that is the case, then I shall respect his wishes. I will not seek him out."

"Aye, neither shall I." Leman replied, shrugging.

"When it comes time to present himself, I shall welcome him with open arms." Horus stated, his temperament having once again returned to sanguine.

"I'll likely punch him." Leman replied, and Horus laughed. Leman probably would.

The Emperor smiled, content with the exchange.

"If it is his wish, I shall keep the secret of his existence to myself until such time that he wishes to reveal himself. Whenever that may be." Horus began. "I trust Leman to do the same."

"Do not speak for me, brother. I am no snivelling whelp." He said. "As the Allfather wishes, I will not mention this subject again."

Horus swallowed the insult on his lips and instead smiled amiably.

"Come now, brother. You know I mean no disrespect. Do brothers not trust in each other on Fenris?"

Leman stared at Horus for a short instant.

"They do."

"Then take my words in the spirit that they are meant." Horus said. "What I meant was that I trust you to do the same, but I can not be so sure of our newest brother, Esau. He saw the vision as well."

"Interesting." The Emperor interjected. "He saw the vision as well? You're sure."

Horus thought back to the fight and the look in Esau' eye as they both decided to abandon their battle..

"I am." He replied.

The Emperor seemed to consider Horus' words before answering.

"Do not worry about your brother. I will speak to him in three days. Until then, he is only likely to mention Alpharius' existence to his foster family." He said, before signalling for movement.

As they walked, another question struck Horus.

"My Lord?" He began.

"Horus." The Emperor answered.

"I understand why you were not willing to tell me earlier, but why show me the vision of my brother as you did? Why now?"

If the Emperor just wanted him to disengage from battle, he could have simply ordered him to. So why had he done as he did?

"We stand on a precipice, my sons. We will either cross safely, or fall into the abyss before us. In times such as these, I wished for you to know who your allies were." He replied, as he walked into the dark of the forest with the Legio Custodes. "For you may have lost your chance to know them."

Horus and Leman into the forest. No more words were spoken between them.

.

The hours that followed the arrival of the Imperials were filled with greetings, speeches and political manoeuvring that would tire even the most patient of mortals. Horus navigated the complex web of connections as he always did; masterfully.

Mortals bowed as he walked past and even the members of the Mechanicum could not help but be awed in his presence. He listened to gossip from some of the more talkative Imperial officers as Imperial facilities were being set up, and stored what was useful to him in his mind, while discarding what was not. Horus found that it was the usual series of relationships, allegiances and affairs alike.

The newest piece of gossip surrounded a minor Europan noble who would soon be trying for a marriage contract with a minor scion of a nameless house from Ind. Horus gave him about a thirty-percent chance of succeeding. If the family from Ind knew that he was soon to be excommunicated for thievery, then his chances would be zero.

Soon, Horus had found himself among the familiar faces of the Mournival, his most loyal and trusted sons. They were among forty Astartes from the Luna Wolves that had been allowed on the station. Leman had himself managed to get fifty Astartes through the cordon, though Leman had less support personnel so the numbers from both of their ships were equal on balance.

Ezekyle Abaddon, Janipur, Tarik Torgaddon and Litus reacted as he expected to the news of the competition and its implications. None doubted that the Emperor would win, but there were all sorts of speculation on what He would make.

Abaddon expected that the Emperor would make a weapon of some kind while Janipur amd Litus speculated that He would make armour. Torgaddon jested that he hoped the Emperor would build a bear, but knew it not to be so. His fellows eventually pressed him and he speculated that the Emperor would build a helmet, given Horus' description of what He had taken from Isaac.

Their presence lightened his mood greatly following his most recent talk with the Emperor. It was good to be amongst his sons once more, though Horus largely left them to their own devices while they were on the station.

His talk with the Emperor had made him restless.

The first day of the competition, as the Emperor began his work, Horus began his.

He spoke to some of the Immortal Sun's serfs and by utilising his charm, discerned its geography. The Immortal Sun's serfs were appropriately talkative when they realised who they spoke to, allowing him to gather information easily enough.

While the Naufrag System had ten planets, only two were inhabited, though at least one more supported human life. The core world that the Immortal Sun was built around, Naufrag Primus, had apparently once been turned into a verdant paradise.

As far as terraforming procedures went, two decades was extremely quick for what Horus heard so he assumed some embellishment present in the stories. The planet had a little more than a million people on it. The Emperor and Empress were its undisputed rulers, but it was run by Consuls its people voted in every five years.

The second inhabited planet, Naufrag Noctis, sounded to Horus like a combination of the climates of Cthonia and Fenris. Hive cities dotted the surface of the planet, some ruined by war and decay like Cthonia, and monsters roamed its surface, as they did on Fenris. A particularly enthusiastic attendant told Horus of an STC being found on the planet, from which the monsters had supposedly spawned.

Horrific, but unsurprising. Horus had seen worse from more unsuspecting worlds across the galaxy.

There were a little under ten million people on the planet. Esau and Kov were the planets undisputed rulers, with rulers selected from its hive cities every five years.

On the second day, Horus took time to discern the Immortal Sun's military structure. This information was appropriately significantly harder to get.

The King's Shield were the personal protectors of the Royal Family and were solely deployed at their discretion, somewhat like the Legio Custodes. Unlike the Custodes, the King's Shield had no say in any internal conflict and were exclusively deployed against external threats as elite troops.

He heard some mention of purely mechanical troops and cybernetically enhanced Orks like those that the Custodes fought, though questions aimed at how they were deployed were left largely unanswered. Questions on the 'Sealing Corps' received similar empty stares.

Horus did learn of the Solar Guard however, the Immortal Sun's equivalent of the Solar Auxillia and their actions in stopping what seemed to be an invasion of Dark Eldar almost single handedly. Impressive as that was, it didn't give Horus much new information.

On the third day, Horus considered visiting Esau but decided against it. Visiting him would only create chaos as he and Esau would no doubt get into an argument of some kind. The Primarch of the IInd was a worthy fighter of apparently great intelligence, yet he was also both humourless and overconfident. That he had the temerity to claim himself as Horus' better to his face raised Horus' choler even now.

He would talk to Esau after the Emperor won this farce of a contest.

Instead, Horus spent the third day looking over the logs of his legions journey through the Immaterium trying to parse the Emperor's final remark. He could have gotten the logs earlier but wished for the Navigators to recover so he could compare their accounts.

They were largely what Horus had expected, but there existed some irregularities.

Firstly, the journey was uncommonly easy. Astropaths and Navigators suffered no injuries throughout the whole journey and had reported calm warp currents. One Navigator implied that it had been the calmest journey through the Immaterium that she had experienced in decades. This was strange because the Master of Mankind Himself implied the opposite. The route to this system was supposed to be extremely rough. Even when travelling in the Bucephelus' wake, the Navigator's experience had been unusual.

Secondly, from the perspective of the crew, they had only travelled a day when the Bucephelus had taken upwards of a week. Were the Navigators on the Vengeful Spirit just that good? Perhaps, but unlikely. No Navigator could equal the Emperor, yet these Navigators had reported a feat surpassing Him. An impossibility only made plausible by the fact that they had travelled a path that the Bucephelus' had opened up for them.

Thirdly, the Vengeful Spirit had arrived at the exact same time as the Hrafnkel and had almost collided with each other in the cramped Mandeville point as a result. This was not an uncommon event, but it was an event incongruous with the other facts. One could not be so good a Navigator as to surf the currents of the Immaterium as his Navigators did on the Vengeful Spirit and yet, at the same time, be so incompetent that you almost crash headfirst into a ship that was entered the Immaterium behind you.

It made no sense given that, Fourthly; the ships arrived early. The Emperor had specified that it would take even the experienced crews of both the Vengeful Spirit and the Hrafnkel at least twenty-four hours to travel. Yet it took them only twelve hours.

It was almost as if the Immaterium itself wanted the Bucephlus to arrive after both the Vengeful Spirit and the Hrafnkel. Horus discarded that train of logic and instead spent the rest of his time investigating the odd currents of the roiling Warp storm surrounding this system. What he found roughly matched the Emperor's own musings on them; they tended to exaggerate time, which while not unique, was uniquely amplified in this solar system. Still, that didn't explain all the oddities of their arrival.

Was this what the Emperor had been referring to? Perhaps he was referring to something else entirely, such as Leman's own circumstances?

Horus made a mental note to investigate the incident further he left his desk to rest. He had been awake for over seventy-two hours, and the competition would be decided soon.

.

The Imperium journeyed to the middle of the level without much fanfare, at least by the standards of the Imperium. Flag bearers walked in perfect lock step to the Imperial contingents' front and sides. Horns blared, and drums were played as the Imperium walked towards what Horus understood to be Esau's pavilion.

In three days, it had been altered and expanded into a massive hall, large enough to hold significant portions of both Imperials and Immortal Sun citizens alike. The clearing surrounding it had been cleared of trees and been turned into a flat field about as wide as a small stadium.

The Legio Custodes walked behind the flag bearers and musicians, and just behind them walked the Emperor with Horus and Leman to his sides. Members of the Mechanicum carried the Emperors' artifact in a great golden chest and behind them walked the Adeptus Astartes, one hundred pairs of armoured boots making a sound that could be heard throughout the entire space station.

In contrast, the Immortal Sun was not nearly so ostentatious. Where the Imperium marched, the Immortal Sun arrived without fanfare through black portals that seemed to have been built into the pillars of the pavilion. Every single one of them was armed in some form, though Horus could discern no visible uniform. Some had daggers, others swords and others still carried spears. Despite their casual demeanour, their quality of their clothing, and the symbols at their breasts spoke of their status as nobles, or at least people of some importance.

They favoured dark greens, blues and blacks in contrast to the Imperium's gold, silver, reds, and whites. The loud blaring sounds of the Imperium were met with a low but consistent hum and drumbeat.

The Imperium was led into the pavilion by members of the King's Shield, some of which Horus recognized as having been maimed by the Legio Custodes. They were fully healed. The Imperium made their way through clearly marked aisles separating the pavilion into two, to the base of a stage where a way forward was made for the Emperor who waited at the stages' base.

The Immortal Sun's royal family had yet to arrive. Just when Horus was to take umbrage, a circular shadow appeared at the base of the stage opposite the Imperium and new music began playing, drowning out the horns of the Imperium.

As one, the members of the Immortal Sun present had turned to face the stage and placed their hands over their heart and at some unseen signal, they sang.

We from the pits made of bone;

We who bled, 'fore his throne; (whoa-oh!)

We who lost of our flesh;

We who lost our breath; (whoa-oh!)

Swear to serve!

Swear to love!

Swear to fight!

Swear to hope!

So our Immortal Sun lives on!

We who gave of our blood;

We from the fields of mud; (whoa-oh!)

We who turned from the night;

We who turned to the light; (whoa-oh!)

Swear to serve!

Swear to love!

Swear to fight!

Swear to hope!

So our Immortal Sun lives on!

As the song stopped, a chant of 'The Sun will never set!' began, and to the cheers of his people, the Emperor of the Immortal Sun appeared out of the shadow as if rising on a grav-lift. Accompanying him was a flag displaying a white and yellow sunburst over a blue, white and red background.

The shadow he had risen out of clung to him like ink, before flowing away, revealing an exquisite set of black and white armour. The smile on his face was so wide that it beggared belief that his face had yet to split in two.

He gestured with his hand, and the rest of the royal family rose from the shadows. If the citizens of the Immortal Sun had been delighted in the face of their Emperor, they were raucous in the face of the rest of the royal family. Men and women alike stamped their feet, clapped their hands, and whistled as they appeared.

Horus was almost taken aback. The celebrations reminded him of the gangs of Cthonia and their rough celebratory rituals.

All three members of the royal family looked as they did three days ago, but between Esau and Kov, they held a large silver box, with no ornamentation. Horus recognised the metal to have been the same metal that was used to repair his armour. Necroderm-steel was it? In comparison to Isaac, the rest of the royal family had smiles that were more reserved.

Isaac put his hand up, and in a wave, the Immortal Sun quieted.

"Welcome, one and all! It does my heart well to see that so many have been able to make the arduous journey here." he said, his voice carrying throughout the pavilion.

A polite smattering of laughter rose at that.

"The last time the Immortal Sun met with the Imperium of Man, the results of the meeting left much to be desired."

Though they stayed quiet, the moods of the citizens of the Immortal Sun rapidly darkened. What was Isaac doing?

A low rumble erupted. Was he trying to incite a riot?

"That was then. This is now. Then, we did not have their measure. We do now, and now, they have ours."

In a complete turnaround, the mood visibly brightened, and Horus felt insulted. Isaac had not-subtly tried to imply that the Immortal Sun had cowed the Imperium of Man when the truth was far more complicated.

"Now that we have each other's measure, we welcome the Imperium of Man as guests!"

He gestured forward, and Esau and Kov carried the chest up the stage. At the same time the Mechanicum carried the Emperor's own chest up to meet them.

"I'm sure you know by now why we're all here so I won't bore you all with a long winded speech."

A good number of the Immortal Sun's citizens seemed relieved, though a minority seemed put upon at this. He walked up the stairs of the stage, the Empress at his side and the Emperor of Man rose of meet him

They stood on the stage, with their gifts placed between them. The Emperor nodded, and the Tech-Priests opened His chest. Their reverence was clear even on the mechanical facsimiles they had for faces, as they carried a magnificent golden mask up into the Emperor's waiting hand. Simultaneously, Esau opened his foster father's chest and retrieved what seemed to be a large silver pocket watch from it before placing it in Isaac's hand.

With an agonising slowness to their steps, both Emperors walked to each other and handed the items to each other, from the Emperor's right hand into Isaac's left and from Isaac's right hand into the Emperor's left. They backed away from each other and examined the objects before them with a gimlet eye.

The 'pocket watch' that had been handed to the Emperor opened up, and showed itself to be a compass of some kind with glowing golden internals. The golden mask crafted by the Emperor changed colour as it reached Isaac's hands into a silver mask that seemed to flow as he held it.

In Isaac's hands, it morphed until it mimicked…the Empress's features, before solidifying. As it did, it began radiating an aura that drew one towards the mask. It was as if the Emperor Himself was looking down on you from on high, in approval. A tear rose in Horus' eye. It was beautiful.

Not to be outdone, the compass given to the Emperor began to glow with a dull green energy. Suddenly, Horus was filled with a hunger for exploration. It was the same hunger for the stars he felt as he spent countless nights at the Emperor's side, looking at the constellations. He blinked and looked around. Leman and Esau were similarly mesmerised when others were merely admiring its beauty. In the corner of his eye, a Space Wolves' Astartes was similarly mesmerised.

Ah.

Horus focused on the compass. What was it really, to have such an effect on him and his brother Primarchs?

The Emperor raised it above his head, as Isaac raised the mask above his and Horus knew that every detail of both artifacts had been ingrained in the minds of all who were present. It was as if, in a single moment, Horus had experienced years examining both artifacts with his own two hands.

The compass was an exquisite object with one singular purpose; it pointed to the Primarchs. It could be used anywhere, including the Immaterium. In the hands of even the most gifted Navigators however, it was useless, but in the hands of the Emperor, it was priceless. The Primarchs would be found sooner than expected.

Action: Create a Compass pointing to the scattered Primarchs

Reward: Lessons of the Laer (Horus Heresy)

The mask was an artifact that would allow the wearer to borrow from the Emperor's own psychic might, regardless of the wearer's ability, for ingrained in the mask was some small fraction of Emperor's own experiences utilising the boundless energies of the Imperium. All psychic disciplines would be open to the wielder to use without most of the perils present for any other psyker. In a very real way, the wearer on the mask would be learning directly from the Emperor.

Horus left his stupor as the Master of Mankind and the Emperor of the Immortal Sun shook hands and at once, abruptly turned to get off of the stage. A holoprojector hanging from the ceiling projected a white screen into the air upon which the Imperial Aquilla and the Starburst of the Immortal Sun appeared. Both had the number '0' written under them.

Here, attendants went to work, giving people dataslates and removing many from their own stupor. Each dataslate seemed keyed to the individual it was given to and had one program loaded up. The vote.

Horus almost decried the sheer wastefulness of the method chosen, before realising that that was precisely the point. The Immortal Sun was flaunting their wealth as many empires did when faced with the Imperium.

Horus cast his vote, and waited as the Emperor left with his Custodes to speak with the Emperor and Empress of the Immortal Sun away from prying eyes and ears. Regardless of the result, discussions had to be made regarding the way forward and those could not be held in front of greedy nobles and scheming lords alike.

Within an hour, the votes were tallied and the results were clear on the screen. It was a draw. The result was to be expected given the biases of the voters, but Horus thought the result wrong, even though he had voted for the Imperium as was expected. The mask was more beautiful to be sure, and was blessed with a function that was the envy of psykers everywhere, but the compass was much more useful.

Then, a realisation struck Horus. That was the point.

The Immortal Sun had engineered a scenario where the Imperium would owe them a debt by forcing an exchange of gifts, where the gifts were not equal. It was a gamble, given that roles could have been reversed.

The Emperor returned without fanfare, as did the Immortal Sun's own Emperor and Empress. They made their way to the stage, as murmurs rose amongst both the Imperium and the Immortal Sun.

Then as one, both Emperors grasped hands and raised them above their hands. Their smiles were wide, but Horus knew the Emperor well enough to know that he was far from enthused. Horus had seen him with less pained reactions when facing the prospect of fighting for his life.

If Esau's subdued reaction was accurate, then Isaac was similarly unenthused.

"We have spoken with each other." The Emperor began. His tone was calm, but long experience told Horus that he was battling with his anger. "We have chosen to become allies of trade."

"The Immortal Sun will remain an independent empire removed from the Imperium of Man. No attempts to subvert this will be made on both our ends." Isaac continued. His face was somewhere between a smile and gritted teeth. "Embassies will be constructed both on Terra and on Naufrag Primus. The Immortal Sun has been awarded land in the middle of the Afrik wastelands, and the Imperium has been granted land in the capital city of Potio."

"The Prince, Esau will swear fealty to the Imperium and take part in the Great Crusade. This will be independent of the Immortal Sun itself. In return, the II legion will be based on Naufrag Noctis and the methods of its recruitment and structure will be entirely placed in the hands of the Princes' Esau and Kov Zulu." The Emperor stated. "After such time that the Great Crusade is completed, Esau's voice will be seen as fulfilled and he will be allowed to retake his place as Prince of Naufrag Noctis."

So far, this seemed like a standard arrangement for a Primarch, sans the complete independence of the Immortal Sun. That would likely create issues after the completion of the Great Crusade.

"The dead world of Naufrag Tertius will be turned into a Mechanicum forge where I shall have the rank of Archmagos Prime." Isaac interjected, surprising Horus. "In return, Standard Template Constructs found in this system will be shared freely with the Imperium. Independent inventions however, shall stay the singular product of the Immortal Sun. The Immortal Sun shall train one thousand members of the Legio Custodes and Sisters of Silence each, in the art of sealing once every fifty years. They, in turn, will not be allowed to spread the art of sealing, on pain of death."

"One in every ten worlds conquered by the IInd legion will belong to the Immortal Sun and the Imperium will forfeit any and all claim to those planets. The Immortal Sun will also be given the first right of refusal, once for every planet the Imperium forfeits." The Emperor stated.

This was becoming absurd, and set a dangerous precedent for the future. The number of revolts the Imperium was going to have to put down would multiply tenfold, as the example of the Immortal Sun would embolden countless worlds who would have otherwise capitulated.

Esau swearing his fealty to the Emperor was good but he was not as tied to the Imperium of Man as Horus would have liked. This may well give some of the foster parents of his brothers - if they existed - ideas that they otherwise might have never had.

All told, the Emperor had managed to leverage much from the Immortal Sun, but had created a series of long term problems in doing so. He had also given the Immortal Sun considerable leverage which they could use to create custom made rebellions of their own.

"To our allies, let us toast and make merry my friends." Isaac said, his voice reverberating throughout the space station. Immortal Sun attendants made their presence known as they reappeared with drinks and food.

"Let us toast to the Imperium and the Immortal Sun!"

This began a new series of cheers and chants as both contingents celebrated. As Horus laughed and made merry with his sons, he thought over the interactions the Imperium had with the Immortal Sun.

Horus did not believe in superstitious drivel speaking of spirits and daemons, but Horus began to believe that the Imperium had made a deal with one.

Action: Stay independent from the Imperium of Man, and negotiate the beginnings of an alliance with them

Reward: Flesh and Steel (The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild - TG)

16.1. Perk(s) earned in this chapter:

Domain: Skills: Enchanting - Enchantment (Silmarillion) (400CP): The Elves are capable of great works of Enchantment, able to infuse their spirits into things they create and tie into the natural forces of Arda. Rings of power, magical orbs that can see far distance, runes of power crafted alongside the Dwarves. You are an expert on the path of enchantment. Non-weapon enchanted items are your expertise and with enough time and training you could potentially create a ring of power to rival even that of Sauron or craft something in the like of the mighty Silmarils.

Domain: Crafting: Biotech - Lessons of the Laer (Horus Heresy) (200): You were able to study the secretive gene-crafting and biological manipulations of the Laer, a mysterious xenos who had such mastery over genetics and flesh-crafting they could biologically engineer each member of their species to be optimised for one role in life from birth. Curiously, this knowledge meshes extremely well with the gene-seed implantation of the Astartes, and you could easily take this knowledge to craft new organs, broaden your potential initiate pool, or reduce rejection rates.

Domain: Crafting: Metallurgy - Flesh and Steel (The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild - TG) (600CP): Clothes can make the man, you've learned. It might be possible for someone to perform great feats of stealth in bulky plate, but even someone with that kind of skill would be much better served with the appropriate wear, right? And the tales of those with shining and enchanted armor allowing the hero to survive impossible odds are common - the hammer that could forge such a thing is now in your hands. With this skill, you can create armor and accessories(such as rings, jewelry, and armbands) that directly imbue the wearer with supernatural power, physical boosts, and prowess in certain skills. With this, you could create amber earrings that make one tougher, or a suit of armor that allows you to swim faster! In addition, if you have Hammer and Anvil, Gimmick and Trick and Fire and Ice - your weapon crafting skill is among the legendary smiths of old, able to create the kind of weapons only worthy of the 4 Champions of Hyrule itself, matching the mythic weapons of Hyrule such as the sword of Biggoron or the Six Sages!

A/N: The first, and probably only, time we have rolled three times in one chapter. I'm probably not going to roll any more perks for a chapter or two as I explore ramifications of decisions and perks going forward.

I had two more POVs planned (a Silver Mind and a Leman Russ POV) but had to scrap them. Plans changed multiple times, and this was the result.

Anyway I agonised a lot over this chapter. I hope you like the result.