First Impressions
Part II
By author Redcoat777
XI—Bretonnia
There is only the unknown. Of this meeting, only uncertainty is certain.
There is a fear to this meeting. That he will not make it in time. That he will not make it all.
"My lord, the Scion will break apart if we keep flying her this fast—"
"Then fly her apart then! I will not stop even to spare the horses!"
He roars the words with finality. His gaze brooks no dissent upon the bridge. His clenched fist slams into the wall, crumpling it beneath his rage at the incessant pleas to slow. The Navigators bow their heads in fear. The deckhands pale and make on with their work with feverish pace. The klaxons ring throughout the corridors of the Scion of Sol, shuddering and groaning as her Void Shields and thrusters are pushed to their maximum. They are approaching a world burning amidst a Warp Storm fiercer than anyone on board, even the Lord Solar himself, have been known to have sailed through before. The bow of the Scion is crashing through the aetherial waves alone, each lashing of the hull sending tremors throughout the bulkheads and leave the mortals aboard quaking in fear at the hellish tempest the firstborn is demanding they pierce through. They are racing across the stars because of a nightmare that torments the Firstborn before his very eyes every waking second.
They cannot see what he sees. All that the Navigators can see is the Warp Storm that occludes this system from view. Indeed, it had been his original plan simply to conquer the star-systems around this one and set up a few watch-stations to stand sentinel until the storm chose to dissipate, or else threatened to expand. No doubt they think him mad, fevered, perhaps finally broken under the strain of unceasing campaigning. No, he sees a Primarch. He sees fire wrapping around them, closing in on them. He sees them alone, bruised, bleeding and near broken before a laughing pillar of flame. He will not fail. No, he will reach them, or else die trying.
Suddenly the Scion of Sol judders and jerks violently, throwing scores to the floor or else crashing into furniture or other fixtures throughout the ship. The Lord Solar remains standing, unmoving, unyielding, staring ahead, forwards, gazing through the storm and realises that they are past it. They are in its eye; they are becalmed. Turning, he strides past fallen sailors, a single command ringing from his lips.
"Ready the teleport!"
He races across the stars, through the aetherial sea. Burning bright, his very well focused on a single point. His sword is drawn, he is flying, sparks trace his wake, electricity crackles around his body, the point of his blade Lightning piercing the way until—
—it crashes into reality, Lightning skewering a shifting Warp spawn upon it as it does so. The great scaled abomination upon his blade bellows in agony as it is driven back across the room and staked into the wall as Ozymandias pushes his way out of the Immaterium, makes material his desire to slay this beast. Manifests his will to dominate and destroy upon this flaming beast. His mind moves against it, tearing great chunks from its hideous form on a higher plane. Within both planes he raises a hand from the hilt of Lightning, the other holding the blade in place. The beast writhes upon the sword, scrabbles to try and free itself from the implement it is impaled upon. Reaching forwards he grabs the spawn by the throat and then pushes his hand into it. Thick unnatural black blood pours across his gauntlet as, in all dimensions, he reaches though its neck. He drives deep until at last, bloodily, he finds what he is looking for with a harsh grating sadistic snarl. The Lord Solar curls his fingers around the Warp spawn's spine, tightens a vicelike grip upon its bones and pulls.
The beast does not die well. It dies choking on its own scream as its unnatural life drains from reality and disintegrates back into the Warp. Ozymandias gives a final wrench, tears its head from its serpent-like neck, and tosses its dissolving scaly skull from its body and onto the pyre it has created. The Lord Solar turns, twisting his sword from the stone it is embedded in. Behind the visor of his helm, Ozymandias breaths heavy as his senses and auspices scour both the material and immaterial planes. His gaze drags itself onto the sight of a girl clutching the collapsed form of an oversized woman: a Primarch. There is a conflagration all around them as he stalks over to them. The stone walls shudder red-hot and the mortar between them splinters. This place will fall upon them, trapping them in a furnace. He stares down at the pale girl and comatose Primarch. He sheathes his blade. His metal hand slips under the back of the fallen Primarch, hoists her up and uneasily over his shoulder. The other hand grabs the shaking girl, slipping an arm under her shoulder, pulling her head down against his armour, his shoulder shifting his cloak over her. The girl at least has the instinct to throw her arms around his neck and hold fast.
Their weight is a burden he bears easily. His feet pound against the trembling earth, tearing across the ashen and burning corpses of the dead, crushing melting bone and flesh underfoot and vaulting leaping tongues of fire. He comes to a halt, barely, before a single slab of wall and gives it a single high kick that explodes it outwards, into another corridor. The gap is large enough for them, though he has to stoop and struggle over smoking rubble, the girl in his arm weeping and shaking in fright throughout the entire ordeal. Her hands are white around his neck as she clutches on for her life. There is fire here as well, but much less of it, and his auspex at last overcomes the effects of the irradiation of the Warp-fires to blare out a homing signal and scan their surroundings. Immediately Ozymandias begins moving, kicking through walls and doors and any other resistance of this charnel house of broken and burning corpses until at last he bulldozes his way out into the night air.
His gaze looks up instinctively, notes the empty night sky above devoid of any moon. His footsteps trudge forwards through charred mud, and then stop as with a roaring thunderclap, his Aurelia teleport around him. Apothecaries surge forwards, crowding him. He releases his charges into their hands and looks around at the scene, and then back up at the sky as a comet burns across the night sky, scattering falling stars in its wake. Shuttlecraft, pilots pushing their craft to their limits as they race to assist their progenitor. Ozymandias turns away from that sight, and stalks over to the gathered Apothecaries. His hands reach up and unclasp his steaming helmet with a hiss, drops it to the floor, drinks in the natural air, pulls off the gauntlet surrounding his fleshed hand and then, kneeling in a space made for him, studies the face of the unconscious Primarch before him. Ebony-haired, ivory-skinned. His hand turns, the back of it rests for a moment on her ash and bloodstained brow. He closes his own eyes, opens his mind, and comes against something… Eldar.
His mind closes shut gently, receding as if he had never been beyond his mental walls before. Stormy eyes open slowly. His hand lifts. His gaze shifts, falls upon the human girl he rescued. She is looking at him. He sees into her eyes and sees that she knows. His eyes do not leave the girl's. Instead, he issues commands in rumbling baritone to his Astartes.
"Secure this world. Form an honour guard and bring them both aboard the Scion. I would have words with them both, the girl now and the Primarch when she awakens. Have the Scion signal to the fleet to come and thence to Terra with the news. I must make for Terra and the Emperor, beloved by all, with the Primarch. Have our fastest ship readied for this task upon her arrival in-system."
Lips red as blood, hair black as ebony, skin white as snow.
Is it horror or fantasy that he has discovered?
Princesses in towers, knights in shining armour, sorceresses on islands and fire-breathing monsters flying through its skies. This world is as if the pages from an ancient Terran children's tale had been sown within its soil and had grown from fiction into reality. It is beautiful and light, verdant forests, flowered meadows and soaring peaks. It is dark and twisted; cultists writhe like snakes in shadows beneath sleeping city streets and beastfolk howl at the full moon as they stalk manflesh through deep midnight covered trees. Where others might see the roses, he sees only the thorns.
All of those children's tales held darkness within them. Is the same true of her?
Ozymandias studies Yvaine's sleeping form. A slight tapering of the ears, an unearthly tautness to her features. There is something alien if one looks, but one could look and see nothing untoward, just angular bones and almond-shaped eyes. Mankind does not fit one shape or form entirely. They are not replicae. Or at least, most worlds are not given over to replicae or vitae wombs outside of the Mechanicum's servitor manufactora. Either way, mankind is manifold. This, at least, will be easy to explain away. She is a psyker. It is known that psykers are often given to some variations in appearance owing to their innate irradiation by the Warp, some more drastic than others. No, there will be no questions, for so long as no-one knows, then there are no questions to ask.
A fluttering of eyelids stirs Ozymandias from his thoughts as Yvaine stirs from the depths of her slumber. Green eyes, emerald eyes. A shadow of another Primarch passes behind Yvaine in his memory. Ozymandias dismisses it, focuses on the Primarch in front of him.
"Peace."
He says the word in the thick heaviness of the native Bretonnian tongue. Or at least, given this world's multitude of dialects, what the magos have identified as Bretonnian local dialect 1a. Up to seventy-two have currently been identified, multiple dialects and sub-dialects. Yvaine had been asleep for near enough three days. And in those three days the Lord Solar had been forced to greatly accelerate the usual contact protocols. Iterators have been deployed on triple rota shifts across the world, feeding information back to Mechanicum Cogitators to break down the many languages that would require to be translated fully, codified into a single document ready to assist in Imperialisation of the world.
The assistance, or rather acquiescence, given that she had been isolated aboard the Scion with little else to do, of Yvaine's adolescent companion Iseult had been a great help in this regard. Typically, Ozymandias would have left the translation work to the Iterators, but instead he had chosen to directly intervene given the circumstances. He had conversed with Iseult, with her permission even scried her mind, and quietly unbeknownst to the girl had ordered surviving neural matter from the dead castle occupants to be brought up for personal consumption and dissemination through his Omophagea. It had taken twenty-four hours, but he had successfully gained a thorough understanding of both the local dialect and the situation he faced.
He had ordered the dead of the castle buried firstly, allowed Iseult to be present for that, under close guard by Tullius. Meanwhile, he personally had undertaken a lone mission to uncover "Averlorn", walked amongst the Wraithbone castle, found the cairn of Yvaine's "Mother" Lileath. He had directed his First Marshal, Iskander, to undertake a particularly swift Compliance of the world. A full March of Thunder Warriors to conquer a pre-industrial world was perhaps the definition of overkill, but it was necessary. Mutant and beast-folk populations had been eradicated entirely, psykers rounded up and sorted, either for immediate liquidation or transportation on the Black Ships. The world had been mapped in its entirety and multiple Astropathic messages sent to Terra. A single brigade would be left until an XI Legion garrison could be installed, if it would ever be installed at all given what he had learned.
"Where's Iseult?!"
Ozymandias feels a small wave of psychic power emanate from Yvaine at her exclamation of panic, her aetherial senses reaching out and searching the room. Once again, he raises his hand, issues a plea of calm, both materially and immaterially.
"She's safe. I rescued her along with you and had her brought aboard. She's asleep currently, but I have already sent for her to join us. In the meantime, my lady, we must speak."
For the first time, Yvaine sees him. Emerald eyes focus, no longer desperate, instead analysing the situation she finds herself in, the figure opposite her.
"You're… like me?"
"Indeed. I am your cogenitor. Ozymandias Solarian. You are aboard my flagship, the Scion of Sol. Tell me, my lady, what do you understand, if anything, of your beginning upon this world?"
Yvaine did not quite relax, but her psychic powers receded at the least. He could accept wariness. A wary Primarch was better than a panicking Primarch, especially a high level psyker-Primarch.
"I… I remember falling. As a babe, awakening into my mother's arms. Before that, a distant memory of gold. A golden light, warm, soothing my mind."
Ozymandias does not allow the relief to show on his face that at least she remembers not being of this world. He hides also the perturbation upon hearing once more the reference to an Eldar as mother. Instead, he keeps his face placid, calm, welcoming, but unrevealing.
"That was our creator, the Emperor of Mankind. You may perceive him now, as the great light in the Immaterium."
"The Emperor?" Yvaine whispers, her eyes looking aside, towards the great light of the Astronomican.
Ozymandias steels himself, prepares to explain to Yvaine what His Imperial Majesty had always, as far as he knew, been the one to explain. This was a task he was sorely ill-equipped for. Would that it had been Lady Aurora in his place. Aurora might not be a psyker, but at least she was more empathetic than he. His lips part, only for a knock on the door to relieve him, if only momentarily.
"Come!" The Lord Solar barks the word, standing, taking a step back as the door opens.
"Eve!"
"Issy!"
Iseult bolts through the door the moment she has the space, Yvaine standing up from her reclined place on the bed, the two sweeping into each other's arms in a warm sisterly embrace. Ozymandias glances away for a moment, before clearing his throat, murmuring.
"I will give you both some privacy."
Ozymandias sweeps from the room, the scarlet cloak on his shoulders shifting as he walks. The door shuts behind him, though the privacy he spoke of was an illusion. The room is bugged, any word spoken between Yvaine and Iseult being fed directly to his vox and his alone. The Lord Solar leans against the hull of the Scion, rests his forehead on a vid-port and gazes at the creation pictured beyond the hull between pict-caster and viewer.
Bretonnia hangs low in the bottom of his vision. Stormy grey eyes trace its great wooded mass, a world wreathed in mists. The Warp Storm around the system has much cleared since the Scion pierced its veil. Something was, is, at work here. He does not know what. The Warp-beast and the storm had to be linked, as did the latent psychic wards he traced on the Wraithbone walls of Averlorn. A game was being played here, something that sought to hide itself from the sight of the Emperor, but now, it would seem, was to be played out among the stars.
Yvaine stands at the centre of a web that was woven many centuries ago. Tracing the threads between the stars, Ozymandias's eyes fall upon the world where the spool of silk spills from, where Yvaine's pod was ripped from unduly like a child prematurely cut out from a womb. He must make for with all due haste towards the cradle-world, must have words with his creator, and at last find some answers to the questions that have been rising night after night unanswered.
He must march for Terra.
Return home.
Grey eyes are crushed underneath heavy dark eyelids. Would that the Emperor stood here now with him. Instead of him. He above all would know what to do immediately. Now instead Ozymandias must cross the cosmos. He must try to keep the secrets he has found as just that—secrets—until the Emperor can at last behold his wayward progeny and decide upon her fate. There may yet be a tabula rasa. The Firstborn squares his jaw, reasserts his features into stoic calm. No, not now. To dwell on what-ifs is to delve into insanity. He has the certainty of his duty. From here to Terra, here and now is a Primarch in need of his guidance, away from the xenos and the otherworldly and back towards mankind.
It can wait until later.
A vision flashes past his eyes. Golden and emerald eyes warring and warming, sunlit hands clutching and concerned on his shoulder. A hand upon his face, a motherly embrace, and then a lantern flickering above her crypt. And Ozymandias stands, pushes himself standing away from the wall and it all. He turns to the door, at the sisterly scene of family playing itself out behind its transom. He steels himself. Duty first, above all else, above even himself.
It can all wait until later.
V—Veridia System
Sometimes, there is a second impression.
The first impression can be fleeting. Deceiving. He has met many of the Primarchs, known some for longer than others, some better than others. He has not met them all, though he has likely met the most out of all them. Some of the meetings had been long, others had been fleeting. His first meeting with Hernan de Leon had been the latter: a passing conversation orbiting the former Orkish spore-world of Kayvas. Ozymandias had been arriving, de Leon had been leaving, generals coming and going to receive and enact the orders of their sovereign. Ozymandias had spoken to Hernan of the Lions of Sol, as they had been then, with a warmth in his voice that had surprised him.
How could he not?
He and Legion Master Marcus Caedea had served together on many campaigns. Their first had been Helioret when Marcus had been newly acclaimed as Legion Master as was the tradition of the Lions of Sol and uneasy in his position then. The Lions of Sol and the Thunder Warriors had dragged the Craftworld of Magc'Sithraal into the gravity well of Helioret and smote its ruin upon the planet's surface. Bonds of battle-born brotherhood had been sworn between Astartes of their Legions that had fought together back-to-back through the insanity of bloody-handed and ash-stained Eldar. He and Caedea had also fought alongside each other that day. There had been a pict-cast taken of them, of the commanders stood conversing, laughing, joking, smiling as they stood atop a hill surrounded by Eldar corpses and the broken mountain-sized bones of a dead Craftworld, basking in the glory of their victory despite the uncovered horrors of the Eldar that had sickened them. Where had that pict-cast gone? Ozymandias recollects standing shoulder to shoulder with Marcus and the blue-armoured Legion Master—
No.
He could not think of them. Not here, not ever. It was forbidden.
His thoughts turn instead to after Helioret, when the I and V Legions had served together in conquering the Scutum-Centaurus Arm. He and Caedea personally had fought alongside each other more times than he had fought alongside any other Primarch save for Aurora and Yvaine. They had forged such a comradeship in the crucible of conflict that he had heard whispers from some that he considered Marcus his brother where he did not consider any of his cogenitors as such. Utter folly. Marcus had been a colleague and friend, perhaps even a close friend at the end of it all, but any notion of kinship was going too far.
Nonetheless, he remembered. The last time the Lions of Sol and the Thunder Warriors had served together, word had come across the cosmos that the last Primarch had been found. Marcus had been eager at last to meet the progenitor of his Legion, and also full of uneasy trepidation. Ozymandias had laid his hand on Marcus' shoulder and reassured the Legion Master. He had said that the V Legion was a mighty and noble one, one that could only be thought of with respect by those without, with great pride by those within. Surely its gene-sire, the progenitor of such men, would be reflective of its virtues.
They had known only a little about Hernan then, but what was spoken of seemed promising: the leader of a mighty empire scores of star-systems across and also a great engineer and scientist. Hernan had travelled across the galaxy to meet them whilst their Legions were embroiled in a campaign against the Orkish Empire of Kayvas. The Fifth Primarch arrived as their respective Legions had finished a shared victory parade, a staged affair purely to be used in propos. Ozymandias had been ready to depart, but had delayed his departure a few hours to meet the V Legion's progenitor. They had met away from prying Remembrancers' eyes aboard the Crusader. The Scion had already departed for the nearest dockyard for repairs due to wounds received in a particularly fierce gunnery battle with an infested Space Hulk.
Charming, convivial, all smiles and laughs. That had been the first meeting.
The first impression.
And yet, sometimes there comes a moment when one looks back, considers the person they have met, what they thought of them then, and then looks and considers what they think of them now. A picture that is repainted, a book that is rewritten as hidden details emerge from the dark into the light.
So now Ozymandias Solarian looks upon the work of Hernan de Leon, and is disgusted.
Calth burns.
A world on fire around him. The dead are piled high, their corpses stinking and rotting in the burning sun as they are counted and catalogued before being slung onto a growing conflagration borne from a sickness that is infecting its way across the eastern expanses of the Imperium. Would that the flames would burn out the infection. Or the burning sun hovering at high noon above his head scour the world clean below with its cleansing light. Alas, it will not, and instead the rising smoke swirls up and up and occludes the star from view beyond nothing more than a glowering smudge in a pastel sky.
He is walking through that smoke that swirls and eddies filled with grief and despair and the taste of salt-strewn tears within it. His feet stride over fallen ash that simmers and shifts grey and ghostlike. His footprints he leaves behind him like tracks through snow on a cold frost-bitten morn on an ice world. Around him circle his Aurelia, helmets affixed and bolters and swords bared and sweeping for any foe that might lurk unfound in the charring blizzard they find themselves within. It is unnecessary in his own view. This world's rebellion has been crushed entirely. But such is the task of the Aurelia and he will not begrudge them their duty.
He passes under the shadow of a mural of de Leon. It stretches across the face of an entire hab-block. Once, before the rebellion, this mural had been pristine and untouched, no windows or ventilation shafts had even been allowed to pimple the face of de Leon to relieve the sweltering suffering of those within beneath the blue sun of Calth. After the rebellion, numerous holes and windows had been bored into the smooth plascrete wall, graffiti had been scrawled across it and some enterprising souls seemed to have taken the chance to make it a caricature, adding a monobrow and painting bug eyes onto the cameo of de Leon. Now heaped at the bottom are the corpses of the inhabitants, those that could be found, of those who had dwelled within and dared to vandalise the vainglory of the Fifth Primarch.
His way eventually brings him to a heap of rubble, and climbing atop it, the Lord Solar looks out upon the scene. As many surviving rebel civilians as possible for this city have been packed into a single square, facing a single point. There is a sudden snap, a sharp drop and sudden stop and the last of the rebel ringleaders find themselves at the end of their ropes. A market square turned into an execution ground. Rag-clothed men, women and children shudder in fear in the ember-warmed and ash-filled air. A dozen corpses sway in the breeze and behind that the banners of Naranjomundo fill themselves in the windstorm that is brewing.
There are no Aquilas here. The insignia of the V Legion stands alone: a roaring lion rampant. Once that would have made Ozymandias feel at peace, at ease. Now he felt turmoil, and as such could only stand by and watch, half-disbelieving of what he had seen and what was still unfolding before his eyes. The Brother-Commander of the Conquerors had, at the end of the re-Compliance, offered him the 'honour' of addressing the subjugated populace. Ozymandias had raised his hand and declined delicately.
"This was a world of the Fifth Legion. It is again. The duty of re-Compliance, of ensuring it does not rebel again, of ensuring wrongs are righted and past mistakes learned from. This duty falls upon your shoulders now, Brother-Commander."
That had been Ozymandias's carefully-worded reply and now he was witnessing the result of this washing of the hands. Would that the grime did not feel like it had instead simply seeped under his skin rather than being cleansed off.
How had it come to this?
Ozymandias asks himself the question as he looks out over the sea of fearing faces that huddle and clutch each other as the Conquerors' Brother-Commander takes to the platform, brushes past hanging bodies as if emerging like an actor onto a stage from behind a curtain. And Ozymandias's eyes fall beneath armoured boots, under a plasteel gallows to the remains of plinth beneath it. The yellow-clad Astartes has built the gallows on the exact spot where the rebellion began, where a statue of de Leon was pulled down by an angry mob of serfs, a noose fastened around its neck and affixed to a land-crawler. Ozymandias in some deep part of him found the symmetry of the beginning and ending of the revolt darkly elegant. A twisted juxtaposition. Almost poetic in a way.
Certainly, that had been where the kindling had been set alight, but what had built that kindling? What had caused it to be lit?
Grey eyes sweep across the arrayed uniforms facing the crowd of downtrodden, gazes lowered to the earth. And then Ozymandias looks up, up at the tall dark-haired figure in red-and-yellow Power Armour emblazoned with lions, glaring down at the wretched peasants under his feet, his handsome face cast in a sneer of imperious arrogance.
Word had come of rebellion on Calth, a world within the Veridia system, found within the Hermosa Sector. A relatively new sector, Ozymandias learnt it had been a conquest of the V Legion. Eager to assist his erstwhile allies, he had rallied his flagged forces. For at the time the I Legion had been taking an operational pause. Not long before, near enough the whole I Legion had been involved in xenociding the Hrud Warrens of the Sak'Trada Deeps.
Lasting for just over a decade, the long campaign had been perhaps the most gruelling his Legion had undergone. That had been the mission he had received from the Emperor after meeting de Leon for the first time. The Deeps themselves were hardly worth anything as a prize. Situated below the galactic midplane, underneath the galactic core to be specific, they were a labyrinth of wormholes, ancient suns, dead worlds and Warp-nebulae. And also home to the single largest concentration of Hrud known to them in the galaxy. The Deeps had been a breeding ground constructed by the Eldar for some nefarious region of harvesting Hrud, and without the wardens at the walls, now they threatened to overflow from the Deeps and into the Imperium.
The warning had been raised by an expeditionary force of the XIX Legion, but Nyx was too far away on another task, as was Derwyn, for the Black Legions to gather and plunge into the abyss to do battle with the monsters in the shadows. So the burden fell upon the scarlet-cloaked shoulders of the Thunder Warriors. The task would be thankless. It would not be written into songs for its remembrances would be sealed and censured. For were the chronomantic abilities of the Hrud, already feared by the Imperial citizenry at large, to become widely known the revelation might spark panic across the wider Imperium. The Ordo Sinister and entire Mechanicum hosts were confidentially seconded to his command. It would be a shadow war. Hosts would march on paper to false fronts and in truth would be charging forth into darkness. All that was said of the Lord Solar and the I Legion was that they were engaged in securing the galactic core and little else beyond that cover story.
What little else was told was either outright falsified propos, or carefully staged and scrubbed recordings that framed the war as a simple Hrud excoriation. Indeed, a few xenos subject-species of the Hrud were made out to be the main enemy in the abyssal campaign in some vid-casts. And for the most part, the I Legion simply receded into the background. For after all, there were twenty-four other Legions whose remembrances could be told.
So for eleven years, with barely any contact with the rest of the Imperium, the Lord Solar had been composing a brutal and bloody symphony in death and destruction. Eleven years to any outside of the Deeps. But inside, the fracturing of spacetime had unravelled reality in places. Skirmishes had been fought on the transoms of event horizons, mere days for those inside, months for those outside and within the Hrud warrens, the reverse could be true. Time did not run straight amongst the shadowed spires, it curved, twisted, bent and broke.
How long had it truly been for Ozymandias? He could not honestly say. But when the I Legion had emerged, they had been battered, bruised and bloodied, but unbroken and victorious. To find oneself standing blinking in the light once more after an ordeal by darkness, it brought elation to the soul. So for a month, he had rested his Legion. He had drilled them and replenished their ranks with fresh recruits from across the Orion Spur. New orders had been received, relayed to the relevant formations and units marshalled. They were to make for the galactic north and push towards the intergalactic void. And then suddenly above them, an urgent cry for an immediate response.
Rebellion.
What worse enemy could mankind face than dissent against unity?
So the First March had rallied and plunged into the Warp. Ozymandias had torn across the aetherial sea and erupted from the Immaterium unto the edge of the Veridia system awash with unreality pooling at his feet. He had sent a single message across the system in accordance with Imperial practice. A single warning was given: that he, the Lord Solar, was just and merciful. Surrender now, lay down your armaments, and plead your case before him. It might be that a revolt had some easily rectified reason for arising. Though nonetheless the ringleaders would be executed for taking up arms against lawful authority, even if abusive. For the Emperor was fair, but firm in the application of the Lex Imperialis, and the resources of the Great Crusade were better spent shedding the blood of xenos, not the precious blood of mankind. The reply had been swift. And all that had passed in the eleven years past since his delving into the darkness was revealed to him.
The Lions of Sol were no more.
A wind of change had coursed through the V Legion and had shaken out what was good and decent and replaced it with something… else.
In their place was a Legion which enslaved entire worlds and reshaped them into nothing more than tributaries to feed the manufactora of Naranjomundo. Calth had been one of the first worlds conquered by the V after their Primarch's reunification with them, after their renaming and doctrinal reorganisation. Before the Conquerors had come, Calth had been an oasis amongst the bleeding cosmos. The government of the world consisted of a democratic assembly of fortified city-states with a single appointed leader from a rotating council, defended by a stalwart system of orbital defence grids and monitor ships. From all accounts, its Compliance should have been a negotiation.
The forceful Compliance therefore had been unnecessary. A diplomatic Compliance would have more than sufficed, would have wasted far less resources, would have—
It did not do to dwell on what ifs, but Ozymandias could only muse that all that had passed had been unnecessary, needlessly cruel, wasteful. Regardless, from what the Lord Solar had uncovered, there had not even been an attempt at proper diplomacy. No nuance, simply a demand for subjugation and total slavish subservience. Naturally, faced with such belligerent and tyrannical intransigence, the people of Calth had chosen resistance.
The Compliance had been swift and brutal. Entire Imperial Army regiments heaped wholesale into killing zones. Irrationally to count enemy guns and soak up their ammunition before the Conquerors would charge having wastefully identified weak points in the enemy's positions. The final campaign had been against the once-city Ozymandias now surveyed the remains of. Hernan de Leon had led the charge, and then afterwards erected a statue in his own honour and addressed the defeated peoples of the world.
In his address de Leon had lain a number of points out to the denizens of Calth, most prominently his belief in a feudalistic order and the implementation of that system upon Calth. An aristocracy had been installed with the system governor, or 'Viceroy', being a second son of a second son from some obscure Naranjomundan noble family. An entire generation of Calth's men had then "volunteered" for services as encomendados. In truth most of these so-called volunteers were captured members of the Calth's pre-existing military sentenced to "redemptory services". The rest were made of Calth's criminal population or the homeless of the world arrested on trumped up charges of "seditious behaviour" and given an option of "atonement" or summary execution.
That had been the first tithe made under the watchful guns of the Conquerors before they had departed. They had left Calth led by their King of Lions, the holds of their ships burgeoned with fresh manpower and looted treasures. And in their stead, they had emplaced their Viceroy and a garrison of offworld encomendados. Thenceforth the system of encomienda had been implemented in earnest. All were nominally volunteers, of course. Volunteering to escape being executed, or else cruelly punished. Volunteering to put food in the belly of oneself, or else upon the table of your starving family. Volunteering to find a way out of the dismal squalor of overcrowded hab-slums. Volunteering to leave the backbreaking labour of the unceasing resource-extraction focused industries Calth had been turned towards.
But it was not enough. Quotas of blood and iron needed to be met. To be exceeded, and just as new veins of iron could be struck. So the Viceroy had set forth to squeeze out the pips from the fruit of Calth and had levied a new array of taxes. More excise to drive yet more souls into deeper poverty, push more bodies into encomienda.
It had been too clever by half.
It had been the final straw.
The people of Calth had rose up and rioted, and when the governor had demanded that his encomendados fire upon the rioters, those levelled rifled barrels of oppression had revolved and become upturned fusillades of rebellion.
The encomendados were not natives of Calth. They had been shipped in from one of the Narajomundans' tributary planets. Perhaps they would have been happy to crush the revolt, had word not come the week before. Word that half their number would be leaving with the next tithe to serve again on the frontlines so that the Viceroy might exceed his tithe quotas for a seventh year running and be rewarded with enough new funds to buy a new stately barque from the starshipyards of Naranjomundo.
The Viceroy had been foolish enough to speak of the order in earshot of an encomendado, who had passed on the word to another and so on and so forth. So when the order came round the next day to fire upon the protesters and prepare for the next tithe-ships to arrive, instead the palace guard had thrown in their lot with the rioters. They had executed their own officers, lynched the Viceroy and opened their armouries to the rioters to help spread the rebellion across the world. The rest of the world's encomendados had followed the example of the Palace Guard. Throwing in with their fellows at a chance, any chance, to avoid being fed back into de Leon's meat-grinder.
All this Ozymandias had been told, had scarcely believed at first, until he had seen the propos and pict-casts, the thousands of accounts and stories too great and detailed and numerous to be falsified. And then, he had stood, bidden silence, sent for an Astropath to be summoned and then—
And then a single company of the Conquerors had arrived and immediately fired upon Calth. They had immediately opened a vox-channel with the 1st Fleet and invoked the right of retribution.
And by law, all that Ozymandias could do now was step aside and simply do his duty.
For though the I Legion had responded first, this system had been conquered by the V. And by the Lex Imperialis the right of retribution was theirs. The right to re-Comply a world that their Legion had conquered. It had been meant as a way for a Legion to redeem themselves, a single right to retribution, to regain any lost honour for failing in securing a total Compliance. And so Calth had cut down their flags of parley, raised their swords and shields and bloody battle had been met.
And what a battle it had been.
No. That was falsehood. It was slaughter, a massacre, and any lingering doubts he might have had were well and truly erased. Encomendados fed into killing zones, entire hab-blocks erased from orbit, and then the casual brutality of Conquerors against the surrendered peasants and their own auxilia. And now he stood, atop a pile of rubble, perhaps hoping in some final atom that what he knew was coming would not be, and knowing in his heart that it would not be what he hoped to witness.
So what was it that he was witnessing?
The plasteel boards of the gallows creak and groan under the oppressive weight of the Conqueror's footsteps akin to a jackbooted heel upon prostrated neck. The Brother-Commander, Sergio de Tarquiro, is black of hair, tanned of skin and sculpted with a cruel nobility in features. Much the image of his progenitor, and as Sergio curls his cloak over one arm and raises his other with fingers clasped and thumb pointed, Ozymandias realises the Astartes is mirroring directly the fallen statue that once stood in place of the gallows. There are gasps and moans and stifled sobs and heads bow. A single word echoes across the ash-filled air.
"Kneel."
There is no innate psychic power laced within those words. Hernan de Leon is thousands of light-years away. And yet to the faces in the crowd, to the eyes of Ozymandias, amidst smoke and mirrors, Hernan de Leon stands before them atop the gallows.
The crowd crash to their knees and bow their heads. The Brother-Commander's voice is not the same timbre as de Leon's, his tone less beautiful and less imposing, his inflection less rounded, but it is enough. Enough like a trick of the light. Enough that though Ozymandias knows Hernan de Leon is not speaking, the words spoken through de Tarquiro are de Leon's. A singing puppet upon invisible strings dangling and dancing before them. Behind it swing the marionetted dead.
"Subjects. You are all subjects. Subject to the rule of those emplaced above you by right of blood. This is the natural order. And without order, without overlordship, there is anarchy. Across the stars, there is such anarchy. And here, there came to be such anarchy. You were at peace; you were in order. You are not to be blamed for the misdeeds that have led us to this moment. That virulent few that led you into disrepute have been eradicated. But what remains?
"Around us is strewn the ruin they have brought. Once, your homes stood there, your shops, your hopes and dreams. Through their lies now have your lives of peace and quiet been lain low. Fear not, people of Calth. Instead rejoice! For once again will you have peace. However. A price must be paid. A debt is owed. These traitors paid with their lives. Unequally they paid: foul blood for noble blood. Thus the stain of the debt they have levied upon you remains. By the sweat of your brow will you rebuild this shattered world to its former glory. For the natural rule of the virtuous nobility will be reinstated to its rightful place. A peaceful world, a quiet people, dutiful and humble in service to a whole greater than you could ever achieve alone. This is the rightful rule, lord over servant.
"Why is this so? It is so, for it is natural. Look what comes when you try to rule yourselves, ruin and death. You kneel here alive now. You are ruled by your betters, we of noble blood who see and know more than you. What you did not see is the war amongst the stars. The tithes you pay protect you from war, from death. From the whip-handed despotism of the alien, the mutant and the witch. Our rule is our burden to bear alone, to shepherd the meek from their death and destruction. Rejoice and be content in your service, your heads are unweighted from the worries of governance. All that remains for you is to serve and do as is bidden of you. Rebuild, rejoice and be ruled once more."
It is after the speech, as the Brother-Commander's words die away, that a herald of the V Legion takes his place and begins reading a proclamation. Ozymandias stands silent half-listening to it. Whilst a new Viceroy is appointed from Naranjomundo, a Brother-Captain of the V will rule temporarily. A company of Conquerors and several Battlegroups of encomendados will remain with that Brother-Captain until the new garrison arrives. Half-listening, the rest of his attention sweeps over the crowd, considers what has just been spoken, and what has been confirmed fully to him. The Lord Solar turns, begins descending the rubble hill, steels himself as he sees the Brother-Commander ascending to meet him.
"My lord Solarian."
The Brother-Commander is gracious. He nods his head and bows with a sweep of his arm. It is a traditional greeting between nobles of Naranjomundo, Ozymandias is given to understand. The Lord Solar bows slightly in return, reciprocating as best he can, unfamiliar as he is with performing the gesture. There is no need to be ungracious in these moments. Distasteful as he finds the figure before him, he must treat with others as he himself would expect others to treat his own Legion, or as he would expect his own Astartes to treat another Primarch: with dutiful respect.
Dutiful, but perhaps not warm. Once, he might have clasped the arm of a Lion of Sol and greeted him as warrior-to-warrior. He does not think he could do the same with the one before him.
"Brother-Commander de Tarquiro, hail and well met. Your words were well spoken. I have come to inform you in person, as honourable comrades should, that, as order has been restored, my Legion and I must depart, I am afraid. A campaign to finally conquer the galactic north requires my attention. Alas that the demands of the Great Crusade do not cease for anyone. Least of all a Primarch."
Ozymandias smiles beatifically, sadness tinging his tone, diplomatic in word and deed.
"Ah, I am sorry to hear that, my lord. Our Legions have ever been steadfast allies. I should hope, given these past eleven years have had your Legion ensconced in excoriation duties, that our Legions would be able to renew and re-strengthen the bonds between our brotherhoods."
"There will be time enough in plenty for that, Brother-Commander—"
Ozymandias's eyes flicker away as encomendados begin shouting and shoving at the crowd to disperse, before returning to de Tarquiro's features.
"—and hopefully in more pleasant circumstances. To be shedding the blood of mankind, even that of rebels and renegades… It is not what we were made for."
De Tarquiro nods vigorously, eyes fervent with agreement.
"Indeed. Indeed, my lord. I could not agree more, my lord. Would that this world had known its place better and accepted it. There is little glory here. I myself hope to be departing as well soon, truth be told. Our king is mustering for a campaign towards the Orkish ranges of the northeast."
Ozymandias's eyes look over the head of de Tarquiro, where the point of his previous words has thankfully flown above, towards his approaching shuttlecraft. He clicks his tongue.
"Alas that I cannot serve alongside both you and my cogenitor, Brother-Commander. Lord de Leon and I have had but the one meeting thus far. It would be good also to renew my acquaintance with Legion Master Caedea…"
Solarian's words trail off as he notices de Tarquiro uneasily shifts his stance at the mention of Marcus. His eyes narrow, before he catches the inference. Disbelief wraps around the question that falls from the Primarch's lips.
"He fell?"
The Brother-Commander nods, spreading his hands apologetically.
"Yes, my lord. Leading the charge against a species we called the Megarachnids upon a world called Murder. Thus named for Master Caedea's last transmission from the surface. He said that the world was 'murder'. It stuck. I am sorry, my lord. It is known that the two of you were—"
"Nothing else needs to be said. I am sure he died honourably and doing his duty."
Ozymandias snaps the words, eyes turned away from the Conqueror before him, eyes searching the storm clouds upon the horizon. He falls silent, pensive, before casting one last look back at de Tarquiro.
"I wish you good hunting, Brother-Commander, in the battles to come. And please extend my regards and apologies to Lord de Leon. I look to the time when we can meet once more. I am sure there will be plenty more to say to each other then."
And then, with a bow, reciprocated by de Tarquiro, the Lord Solar turns and makes his way towards his shuttlecraft. Rapping his fingers on the pommel of Lightning, the Lord Solar casts a wary eye about before clambering inside the shuttlecraft. The Skylance-class gunship is a venerable design, practically a relic held over from the Unification Wars now superseded by the Stormbirds and more recently by the Thunderhawks. Ozymandias has kept two Skylances in working order, Mandjet and Mesektet, a rueful and obscure wink to the mythology of Ancient Terra following his naming as Lord Solar.
Taking a Cataegis-sized seat in the aerospacecraft, Ozymandias leans his head back against a worn padded headrest and watches as his Astartes sit themselves into chairs that are overly large for them. The craft only seems to feel full when Arik and the others are sat in its interior with him. Though he is only a head above most of his Astartes, the difference seems accentuated in spaces such as these. And thinking of differences…
"So what do we make of the Conquerors?"
There is a moment of silence, before cautious revelation fills the vacant space.
"Brother-Commander de Tarquiro's original name was—no, is—Tarquiras."
Eyes turn to the speaker, Obo Konda, a dusky-skinned native of the Mid-Atalantikan ranges. A heavily mined region of Terra in both the act and the weapon, fought over throughout the Age of Strife for its ever-depleting seams of rare metals. Ozymandias gestures for his sworn-sword to elucidate. Obo pauses, recalls the past, before divulging his thoughts.
"When he was a Lion of Sol, I thought him a solid Astartes. Seemed eager for promotion. Thought his skills were undervalued by his superiors. A little obsequious, not unremarked by his battle-brothers. The change from then is marked, sir, but on reflection, not unsurprising."
The Lord Solar nods, before leaning aside and thumping the bulkhead next to the head of his pilots. The landing ramp raises and after it seals, another of his Aurelia speaks.
"What are you going to do, my lord?"
Ozymandias's eyes flicker over the concerned face of his huscarl before shaking his head.
"Nothing. There is nothing to do. I do not think this is an isolated incident. Whatever has happened to the Fifth Legion, it hasn't been anything that has led to censure. Else the War Council would have seen fit to send a message to us even during our campaigns in the Deeps. No. Whatever this is, it is done with the acquiescence of the Emperor, beloved by all. And we are not to question that. Understood?"
His Aurelia chorused their assent to his words. Though in the solace of his own mind, Ozymandias makes a note to send a confidential query to Malcador. There is nothing he can do if this change, this system of encomienda, is known and approved of. All he can do for now, and from this day forth, is simply look to his own duties.
It is later, after he has scanned the lists of the dead, of the updated records of the V Legion, and noting many changes in names in emulation of de Leon that he finally sets the dataslates down. Bids servants, emissaries and bodyguards to depart and leave him for a while, and once he is alone and unseen, that his head collapses into his hands.
Why did it concern him so? Why could he not simply brush it aside as he had done for so much else before?
Other Legions had fought alongside him true enough, but each one had slowly peeled away as their Primarchs were rediscovered and their independence asserted from underneath the shadow of the Lord Solar. Each one changed.
Did he expect to simply find the V unchanged upon his re-emergence to the frontlines of the Great Crusade? That he would burst forth from the Deeps and everything would be as before? That he would fight alongside the V Legion as if it was still the eastern push? Raptors with thunderbolts in talons flying alongside roaring lions maned in fire?
Where were the Lions of Sol?
They were scattered and fallen like leaves in the autumnal breeze.
Oh, this had happened with other Legions true enough; yet it rankled Ozymandias in a way the others had not. He knew the truth of the reason, though. For all the regard he had held of the V Legion had originated from a constant comradeship between their Legions and their commanders.
Where was Marcus now?
Dead and buried on a world named Murder. Was that a wry remark? Doubly weighted? It is a mystery that he will have to bury, like his erstwhile comrade has been.
So he supposes that he is in some shade of mourning. No tears to fall, no grief-strewn scream to the stars, just a simple silent reflection amongst the burning embers of an atrocity. This is the cremation of the honour of the V Legion.
Where once there were Lions crowned in virtuous service, now there are Conquerors with tyrannous whips in hand.