The Savior's words made Guilliman and the other three Primarchs' faces change sharply, then twist into even deeper fury.
"Good," Lion snorted, his expression growing colder and more severe.
"Since those traitors dare to come, it's time we settled accounts with them once and for all."
Ten thousand years ago, the Fallen traitors had raised the banner of rebellion, dragging the Imperium down from its golden height and costing the lives of many Primarch brothers.
Even their father, the Emperor, had been chained to the Golden Throne as a result, forced to endure endless torment.
That kind of hatred was not something time could erase.
Especially because they had butchered Sanguinius—the purest and kindest of their brothers.
The Lion had always been on good terms with Sanguinius. He had never said as much aloud, but in his heart he approved of him.
Otherwise, a Primarch so fixated on becoming Warmaster would never have backed down and joined Guilliman in nominating Sanguinius as Regent of the Second Imperium.
Sanguinius's death had remained a barb in the Lion's heart.
He deeply regretted not being there in the final hour to stand beside Sanguinius against Horus.
Perhaps, had he been there, that brother would never have fallen.
The Khan, usually so casual, had battle-light burning in his eyes as well.
"I'd very much like to see how much progress they've made in ten thousand years—and whether they can stop my Legion."
During the Horus Heresy, it had been the White Scars, under the Khan, who were the only Legion at full strength to clash with every single traitor force.
With endless guerrilla raids, surprise strikes, and boarding-decapsitation tactics, he had forced the traitor offensive against Holy Terra to drag on for years.
"Brother, did you foresee the changes to come?"
Guilliman turned to the Savior with the question.
"Which traitors are coming—and when will they arrive?"
He had complete faith in the Savior's judgment. That brother was all but omniscient and omnipotent, able to predict shifts in the wider situation…
And even to foresee certain events outright.
There was probably no more learned prophet in the entire galaxy than this brother of his.
"Give me a moment. Let me look over the latest predictions."
Eden maintained his air of a master of strategy, while secretly skimming through the latest reports from his prophecy division.
To maintain his image of omniscience and omnipotence, he had deliberately formed a luxurious, secret prophetic cadre composed of vast numbers of think-tank analysts and high-level psykers.
Nearly a thousand in total.
It might well be the most extravagant psychic team in the Imperium's history, every one handpicked from among the finest scholars and high-tier psykers as a dedicated corps of seers.
The Psykana Academy he had founded had quietly absorbed almost all of the Imperium's best psykers; only whatever was left over would be sent to the Astronomican Court and the Astropathic Court.
Just enough to keep the Imperium's basic systems running.
In fact, both of those once-critical institutions had already begun to shrink.
Once the psyker-net and the webway were fully established, the bulk of the personnel in the Astronomican Court and the Astropathic Court would find themselves obsolete on the spot.
Most of them would then be reassigned to other departments, continuing to shine for the Imperium there.
The Astronomican Court and Astropathic Court would become retirement halls, slowly fading from the stage of history.
Even now, many high-tier psykers were already choosing to join the Psykana Academy or the Savior's newly established Prophecy Division.
That secret prophecy division was a critical component of the Savior's intelligence network.
It functioned under scientific management, collecting and studying energy fluctuations and anomalies in the Warp and across the galaxy from multiple angles and directions.
From those signals, it extracted actionable information, then compiled it into useful intel packets.
Eden personally oversaw the division's work, treating it as his personal Imperial "Celestial Bureau"—only far more practical and effective.
They cross-checked their results against intel from Imperial recon units, daemonic schemers, the Terror Legion, the greenskins, the Tyranids, the Drukhari, and more.
By comparing against all these channels, they could arrive at far more accurate intelligence assessments.
And the importance of good intelligence needed no explanation.
He could even use his own memories of certain events' trajectories to preselect observation targets for the prophecy division, enabling them to track far more of the threads at play.
Which further strengthened his image as an omniscient, omnipotent Emperor and added to his deterrent power.
A prophetic effort of this scale and from so many angles far outstripped anything a lone, high-tier seer could achieve.
It could even push back on events, subtly influencing how certain outcomes would unfold.
Thus, Eden could fairly and openly claim the role of an all-knowing seer Emperor.
Such were the fruits of organization.
Stack enough resources, and the capacity produced was terrifying—especially when "being rich" was one of the Savior's greatest strengths.
Hummm.
Eden finished skimming the compiled reports from the prophecy and intel divisions, then projected them into midair by psychic means.
They were holo-images of four Fallen Primarchs.
He looked to the others. "Brothers, these are the powerful foes we'll be facing. I'm sure you're all very familiar with them."
The Lion stared at the twisted forms of his Fallen brothers, teeth grinding.
"Of course. How could I possibly forget those disgusting faces—at least not before I send them to hell?"
The spectral images before them were all too familiar. No matter how the corruption had warped them, it was instantly clear who they had once been.
The most recognizable was the Third Legion Primarch, the Fallen Phoenix Fulgrim, who had just been humiliated and fled.
He and his debased Emperor's Children were arguably among the most degenerate warriors in the galaxy.
The second holo-image was the Seventeenth Legion Primarch, the mad prophet Lorgar Aurelian.
He had been the first Primarch to betray the Imperium and turn to Chaos. Both he and his Word Bearers were fanatics of the highest order.
The third projection showed the Fourth Legion Primarch, the Lord of Iron—Perturabo.
He was the most technically gifted of the Primarchs, and his Iron Warriors excelled at siege warfare, always at the very front of the fighting.
The fourth image was the Twelfth Legion Primarch, the Broken One, the Butcher—Angron.
With the Butcher's Nails embedded in his brain, he was the angriest, fiercest, and most brutal warrior in the galaxy, and his World Eaters were no less savage.
All of them had betrayed the Imperium. Under the reshaping touch of Chaos corruption, they had become even more terrifying.
Their power had grown dramatically.
Eden projected more hideous images into the air—
Slaanesh-worshippers with stitched flesh and writhing tentacles, and bloated mounds of rotten meat bearing vast nests of flies upon their backs, and the like.
He gave them just a brief note:
"Besides the Fallen Primarchs, there are a few others worth noting—Lucius the Eternal, Typhus of the flies, and so on.
That said, we only need to be aware of them. Under normal circumstances, our opponents will be those four traitor Primarchs.
The rest will naturally be handled by other warriors."
He and Guilliman and the others were Primarchs. They had little reason to concern themselves with Fallen lesser than that—
Unless one of them received an abnormally high degree of favor from the Dark Gods, in which case there might be genuine danger.
Still, he mentioned them for completeness' sake—better to be aware than not.
"Fulgrim, Perturabo… those two in particular never got along. Getting them to fight on the same side at all is… impressive, in its way."
Eden gestured at the four traitor holo-images with some feeling.
The Fallen were far from united. Some of the traitor Primarchs bore grudges against one another that could never be resolved.
Fulgrim, for instance, that conniving snake, had once set Perturabo up.
During the Heresy, in the days of Horus's rebellion, he had used an ancient war engine known as the 'Angel Exterminatus' as bait to draw the equally treacherous tech-obsessed Perturabo into the Eye of Terror.
Only once they arrived did Fulgrim admit that the Angel Exterminatus did not exist—
That he himself was the most terrifying weapon of all.
Then he sprung his trap. Using the Morgath Stone, he siphoned off Perturabo's Primarch essence—his very nature within the Warp.
With that stolen shard of another Primarch's Warp-essence, Fulgrim succeeded in ascending to daemon princely status, leaving Perturabo with his heart shattered.
It had been a truly vicious move.
Eden had been deeply shocked when he dug up that memory, and more than a little wary.
Not of the Fallen Phoenix himself—but of the galaxy's bizarre relics and artifacts.
The Morgath Stone could siphon Primarch Warp-essence?
That was basically a cosmic-level energy-draining technique.
Didn't that mean that if he were caught in some sorcerous trap, the Morgath Stone might strip away his own Warp-essence—rip his very authority away from him by force?
How terrifying would that be?
He could not guarantee there were no similar or still more powerful artifacts in the Warp or the galaxy at large.
All he could do was be doubly cautious.
"Maybe I should find a way to pry that thing out of the Fallen Phoenix's claws and see what I can learn from it…"
Eden mused silently.
The Morgath Stone could, under the right conditions, drain the Warp-essence of a Primarch.
That was power second only to the Dark Gods themselves.
Follow the line of thought a little further—could the Morgath Stone, under some set of conditions and in some particular configuration, siphon the essence of the Dark Gods themselves?
What a terrifying and delicious technological seed that would be.
Even if it could not, it still had to contain knowledge relevant to influencing the Warp. If he could unlock its secrets, he might be able to build an upscaled version.
And then perhaps it would be able to drain the power of the Dark Gods.
Eden believed technology could change the world—including the Warp. The Old Ones had once reshaped it profoundly.
If he could master the Morgath Stone's underlying tech, he just might gain a method to weaken the Dark Gods' hold.
Not to mention there was still the Emperor's own power to draw on.
The old man would probably be quite happy to donate some strength.
With a Warp-energy extraction rig plus the Morgath Stone, it would become the Emperor's own dedicated "health maintenance apparatus."
A thorough pressure release.
What he really looked forward to, though, was using an enhanced Morgath Stone to strip the Dark Gods' power.
Wouldn't that be magnificent? To crazily siphon the Prince of Pleasure dry?
Of course, this was still only a technical concept. But there was no reason it had to remain so—only time would tell.
Step one was to get the Morgath Stone and everything connected to it out of Fulgrim's hands.
Perhaps he could even capture that snake as a test subject and let him savor what it felt like to have his Warp-essence torn away.
"Brother, what's wrong?"
Guilliman was watching the Savior with clear concern.
"What do you mean, what's wrong?"
Eden came back to himself, momentarily at a loss.
"You just now… were a little strange."
Guilliman chose his words carefully. "Did you perhaps think of some kind of plan?"
The perception of a Primarch was razor sharp. Even though the Savior's expression had barely shifted, Guilliman had still caught a brief flicker of something… sly.
"I'd say Brother Eden is cooking up some new, sinister, horrifying stratagem again."
The Lion thought to himself, very much in agreement with that assessment—and feeling a bit of sympathy for the traitors.
Those poor bastards were in for it.
Without realizing it, the Lion had already begun to see the Savior as a shadowy mastermind, a true planner behind the curtain.
And unconsciously slotted himself into the role of one who carried out the plans.
By now, he had come to respect competence above all—especially where someone's talents surpassed his own.
"It's nothing. I just thought of some plans for the future."
Eden coughed lightly and cleared his throat. "You'll find out when the time is right."
He couldn't exactly tell his brothers he'd been plotting how to one day go wild on siphoning the Prince of Pleasure.
He had indeed been careless, relaxing too much in front of his Primarch brothers and letting his mood show.
Controlling one's expressions was a mandatory course for any ruler.
Eden was usually quite disciplined about it—but around his brothers, he let his guard down.
Still, he did not see that as a flaw. If he had to keep his armor up even in front of his own brothers, wouldn't that leave him utterly alone?
It was like their father, the Emperor—always hiding everything, even from his own Primarch sons.
No one ever truly knew what he was thinking, what he was doing, or why.
In the end, that secrecy had helped spawn rebellion, a "loyalist crusade," and a catastrophic defeat.
Even a few quiet heart-to-heart talks between the Emperor and his sons, a little hint of what he meant and why, might have spared them the nightmare that followed. No grand "Birthday Siege of Terra," no disaster.
Eden had taken that lesson to heart. He revealed what he could, whenever he could.
He made a point of talking with people, too.
He regularly convened councils with the high command, explaining his plans and thought process to unify their understanding and strengthen their shared purpose.
And he hid even less from his Primarch brothers.
He looked to Guilliman and the others. "From my analysis, it's highly unlikely Fulgrim, Perturabo, and the rest can fight side by side.
All that would do is trigger infighting.
More likely, they'll split us up, or come at us from different theaters.
So we'd best pick our opposite numbers in advance and draw up tailored strategies. Only then will we be able to fight most effectively."
"Know yourself and know your enemy, and you need not fear a hundred battles."
Eden quoted the old High Terran proverb with elegant diction.
Then he added, "In other words, only when we understand both ourselves and the foe can we be sure of victory."
It made him sound that much more cultured and learned—which drew genuine respect from the other Primarchs, especially Guilliman, who knew a bit of ancient lore himself.
As the Savior liked to say: this Primarch brother of his had a real fondness for flexing elegantly.
"You speak truly. We'll follow your plan."
The Khan spoke first, and the other Primarchs nodded in turn, fully confirming the Savior's authority as commander.
Eden nodded back.
It was a necessary step—especially now that the Lion had joined them.
He had no intention of reliving the nightmare of ten thousand years ago, when so much of their effort had been spent wrestling with Primarch grudges and petty squabbles.
That kind of internal friction was almost as deadly as Chaos itself.
"Next, let's break down the intel we have on these traitors…"
Eden tapped his vambrace. The projector flashed, throwing up lines of text and images.
These were the files the intel teams had collated on each Fallen Primarch.
They included personality profiles, weaknesses, wargear lists, and estimated power ratings.
He set his gaze first on the Fallen Phoenix. "This bastard, I think we all know quite well.
Right now he's a severely deranged narcissist—insidious, vicious, and fond of using tactics and sadistic traps to torture his enemies.
A pervert among perverts. Normal logic doesn't apply to his thinking.
What's worth noting is that Fulgrim has received a certain gift from the Prince of Pleasure—a Chaos artifact.
He's even more powerful than we previously believed."
Eden pointed at a question mark icon hovering in the air.
"According to our intel, he also possesses an artifact capable of stripping Warp-essence, called the Morgath Stone. Extremely dangerous.
It was damaged once, but there's no guarantee it hasn't been repaired—or couldn't be. We have to be very careful with him.
Especially with his traps. That's where he's most dangerous."
He had investigated Fulgrim in detail and now laid those findings out for his brothers.
Best of all would be to take the Fallen Phoenix alive and pry more information out of him—especially the whereabouts of the Morgath Stone and anything tied to it.
Eden had already decided that he would handle this degenerate personally.
It was safer that way.
Guilliman nodded, heavily. On the subject of insidious traps, he had more experience than he cared to.
He drew a long breath, as if swearing a general's oath.
"Brother, leave Fulgrim to me.
In the name of the XIII Legion, I swear I'll bring that bastard down with my own hands—and make him repent for what he's done."
The Primarch of Ultramar had been waiting for this moment a very long time.
"Well, Gil, since you've put it that way…"
Eeden glanced over at his good brother, a hint of hesitation in his tone.
(End of Chapter)
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