"Based on what we know, the odds of Lorgar beating Corax are extremely low."
Eden stated his conclusion.
In terms of raw combat power, Lorgar sat firmly in the lower bracket among the Primarchs.
Even ascended to daemonhood, how was he supposed to casually defeat a Raven King who had awakened his Warp-essence?
At its core, awakening Warp-essence was a more potent evolution than mere daemon ascension.
Daemonhood meant offering up one's own essence to the Chaos Gods as tribute—having it chewed up and spat back as corrupt power.
The result was authority heavily skimmed by the "middleman," saturated with Chaos influence.
Whether a daemon Primarch actually became stronger depended almost entirely on how much their patron god felt like handing out.
Those who served Chaos Undivided had it even worse—like stepchildren no one wanted. You paid in, and there was no after-sales service. It was pure "live or die on your own."
They all became slaves of Chaos, forfeiting most of their original authority and any hope of reaching a higher tier of existence.
Awakening Warp-essence, by contrast, meant accepting one's inherent power—gaining greater freedom within the Warp, and far more ability to command its energies.
Corax, the first to awaken, could become an endless storm of ravens and achieve genuine, absolute stealth.
That was a manifestation of authority—a level daemon Primarchs simply did not have.
Put simply, daemon Primarchs were the fiercest guard dogs of the Dark Gods, with no means of production of their own. Awakening Warp-essence was like starting your own business and owning your own assets.
More bluntly: a daemon Primarch was, at best, the Dark Gods' meanest mutt. A Warp-awakened Primarch was a baby god in his own right.
With his growing understanding of the Warp, Eden knew full well that the reason he'd been able to grow so fast and become so powerful was that he had awakened Warp-essence from the beginning.
Under the protection of the Holy Sun, he could arbitrage ruthlessly between the galaxy and the Warp.
Shuttling back and forth between both realms for profit.
That was something no ordinary lesser Warp deity could manage.
The Primarchs, in principle, could have arbitraged between realspace and the Warp too.
They just had no interest in it, or no idea it was even possible—or simply could not be bothered.
Take Corax, the first to awaken. He hardly operated in the material galaxy at all, and ended up serving as Lorgar's glorified "door guard" for ten thousand years.
As for the daemon Primarchs, they had taken a catastrophic bargain—picking up sesame seeds and dropping watermelons.
Especially Lorgar, who had ascended without a patron god backing him—a textbook chump, paying premium prices for peasant cabbage and getting nothing in return.
He had also thrown away any chance of becoming a true Warp deity.
Eden could not help but wonder whether that single-minded seeker of "true divinity" would sob in a lavatory cubicle if he ever learned the truth.
Not that becoming a Warp god was necessarily a good thing either. In the end, everyone who climbed that ladder became bound by the Warp and lost their freedom.
It was a road straight to the abyss—and Eden himself was currently flooring the accelerator down that road.
One foot welded to the gas, the other desperately searching for a brake.
From this analysis alone, there was almost no chance Lorgar had beaten Corax.
Which left only one possibility.
Eden turned to his Primarch brothers.
"I'm more inclined to believe that some other entity blocked or defeated Corax.
That may well be the unknown enemy we've been wary of all this time.
What's worse is that we have almost no intel on them—not even Warp-prophecy can easily get a fix on that presence."
The Chaos Gods had unleashed their fiercest, deadliest hound, and yet he had no idea what the hound was, or when it would strike.
That was the truly maddening part. The unknown was always the most terrifying, especially when that unknown had the power to obliterate planets and fleets.
He and the Lion had seen only the shadow of that being—never a direct encounter.
If that thing chose to intervene in the battle for Calisde, it would completely overturn the board.
"I hope it's Horus returning to the galaxy. Then we can finally settle accounts with that faithless coward."
The Lion's gaze was that of a predator fixing on prey, and rage radiated from him, impossible to suppress.
He was probably the most dissatisfied with Horus out of all the Primarchs.
Horus had enjoyed their father's boundless trust and had been made Warmaster of the Imperium.
What an honor that had been.
Yet the fool had squandered it all—falling so easily to the corruption of the Dark Gods.
To a knight of Caliban, that was cowardice of the lowest order.
"If Father had made me Warmaster instead, perhaps the tragedy would never have happened."
The Lion let out a sigh.
As a knight of Caliban, he had absolute faith in his own will. He believed he would never have bowed to the ruinous powers.
He still could not let go of that Warmaster's mantle.
"Let's focus on how we're going to handle Lorgar—and that unknown enemy."
Eeden did not answer the Lion's lament, choosing instead to change the subject.
He had no desire to crush this man who had never forgotten his original aspirations.
Given what had happened back then, any Primarch placed in the Warmaster's role might have been pumped full of Chaos like a cream puff.
Perhaps only the Emperor himself—or Eden, the "explosive" Savior—could withstand the full corruption of the Dark Gods.
Even then, he would not bet on a perfect record. If the Chaos Gods ever caught him together in the Warp, the situation would be dangerous.
He gave that point only a brief mention, then continued:
"If that unknown enemy shows up, leave them to me. I already have a response plan."
After that, he turned to the Khan and began assigning targets.
"As for that preacher, I'm giving him to you. Your fighting style is perfectly suited to dealing with him."
Lorgar liked to use every manner of ideology and doctrine to twist people's minds or guide their actions.
The Khan's direct, decisive approach and high-speed strike capability were a perfect counter to that.
The only cure for a zealot was a blunt instrument.
More importantly, among the four of them, the Khan was probably third in overall power. He was the most suitable matchup for Lorgar.
Sending himself or the Warp-awakened Lion would have been a waste.
Not that Eden meant to just throw the Khan into the fray without a plan. He had his own tactics prepared.
"Once that preacher's head clears a little, show him this—and then send him to me."
Eden handed the Khan a parchment-bound scripture very similar to the Lectitio Divinitatus. It was his secret weapon against Lorgar.
A guaranteed critical hit.
As for how to make Lorgar "clear-headed," the answer was simple: beat him senseless.
"Understood. I'll make sure that garbage preacher sobers up properly."
The Khan flexed a fist, eager to get his treasured artifact-bikes into action.
He accepted the leatherbound book, curiosity getting the better of him as he opened it.
"Brother, what exactly is this?"
"Don't read it. It's not something good. If you do, it might affect this battle."
Eden pressed down on the White Scar Primarch's hand, sounding uncharacteristically serious.
That was, of course, only an excuse.
Whether the Khan read it or not would change very little—but Eden did not want this thing shattering his good brother's worldview.
The contents of that parchment were enough to collapse the worldview of just about anyone—and for Lorgar the preacher, it would be a direct hit to the soul.
"I won't read it."
The Khan nodded, grasping the gravity of the matter and losing any desire to peek further.
He sealed the book inside a field-protected container to carry on his person, then turned to studying Lorgar's dossier and devising tactics with his sons.
Now Guilliman and the Khan each had their designated opponents.
"Perturabo's crawled out as well… the Dark Gods must have paid dearly for this one."
Eden flicked his wrist, enlarging the projection of the 4th Legion's traitor Primarch—the Lord of Iron.
The figure in the holo wore massive plates of iron armor, his expression ice-cold, his skull threaded with countless cables.
But Perturabo had not always been this way.
On his home world of Olympia, he had been a cultivated scholar and a gentle pacifist.
He loved all things mechanical and architectural, and his only dream had been to use knowledge to build a great civilization.
His heart had been full of ideals of peace, freedom, and enlightenment. He had designed theatres, museums, bridges—a host of works of art and engineering for his world.
And he had preferred to use diplomacy to solve problems.
Unfortunately, his adoptive father had been a brute tyrant who wanted nothing more than to harness his talents to create more terrifying weapons and instruments of slaughter.
The clash between his ideals and that reality had driven the Primarch into depression and isolation.
He could find no path forward.
So when the Emperor arrived, Perturabo had immediately rushed to meet his "true father."
He had thought he was finally going home, finally getting a chance to realize his dreams.
But in the end, he discovered that the Imperium was simply a hyper-violent Olympia, and the Emperor had even less use for his architecture and art than his adoptive father—needing only another general willing to handle dirty work.
And the "pie" the Emperor drew in front of him was dry and tasteless, perpetually out of reach.
It was always the same line: "Once the wars are over, you can turn your talents to building the beautiful Imperium."
And when the wars were more or less over, the Emperor simply flipped the board and launched a "let humans rule humans" model.
As for building, that was not something the Primarchs were invited to do.
Within the Imperial order, Primarchs were nothing more than high-end, disposable enforcers.
To make matters worse, Perturabo was twisted in all the wrong ways.
He did not want to go to war, but he also could not disobey the Emperor's orders. He was dutiful to a fault.
He was perhaps the most obedient of all the Primarchs, even showing a kind of self-destructive, sacrificial streak.
The 4th Legion Iron Warriors, under his command, were iron-willed and unyielding, with hardly a single recorded retreat.
They always took the hardest assignments—the grinding sieges, the bloodiest assaults—doing the most exhausting work while taking the heaviest blows on the thinnest rations.
They were, in short, the Emperor's nuclear-powered pack mules.
But Perturabo's habit of silently executing orders without reporting back turned him into a nobody in the Emperor's eyes—a background piece, rarely noticed.
He simply held the most dangerous fronts in silence.
He broke enemy strongholds with massive frontal attacks and blanket fire.
This gentle scholar, scientist, and architect—the most learned of the Primarchs—had been pressed into the role of a burnt-out wage slave, becoming increasingly depressed as he was ground down by war.
To crown it all, the Emperor had not even entrusted him with building the palace, giving that honor to the 7th Primarch, the Praetorian Rogal Dorn and his Imperial Fists.
Dorn, not Perturabo, had been the one told to build the Imperial Palace.
For Perturabo, that had been a killing blow, the final crack that broke him. His later rebellion had carried a strong flavor of revenge.
He wanted, more than anything, a chance to tear down Dorn's "unbreakable" palace fortifications.
And in the end, he had done exactly that—opening a path through layer upon layer of fortifications and breaching the Imperial Palace.
He had, in that sense, been the Imperium's greatest bulldozer.
Later, he would fortify the Eternal Fortress with endless bastions, inflicting a brutal defeat on Dorn and the Imperial Fists, forcing them to cower and wait for the Ultramarines' rescue.
After that battle, Perturabo seemed to feel that he had fulfilled his wish. He never truly devoted himself to Horus or to the Chaos Gods.
He began to slack off, eventually grabbing the Iron Warriors and walking away.
He despised Chaos and had once even refused the offer to become a daemon prince.
As for why he had ultimately ascended as a daemon prince of Chaos Undivided?
Eden's guess was that after Fulgrim had stripped away a chunk of his essence, Perturabo's lifeforce had become increasingly fragile, leaving daemonhood as his only path to survival.
Choosing Chaos Undivided had probably been his attempt to preserve some shred of independence.
In the latter stages of the Heresy and on into the present age, he was, in every sense, a burned-out, checked-out worker.
Daemonized Perturabo had certainly become more chaotic in behavior, launching raids on Imperial fortresses from time to time.
But the records suggested that even then, he acted more like a lab rat testing his own nightmarish daemon engines and killing machines.
Under Chaos influence, he had simply forgotten his original dreams.
"Ugh, Father really dropped the ball. With talent like his, why not put him on construction duty?
It's not like you were short one more general out of twenty Primarchs—dragging him to the front wasted him completely."
As a ruler with a deep love of building things, Eden could not stand such waste of talent.
Farming was king.
With a Perturabo on hand, why send him to die in the front lines? Better to have him in the rear, pioneering new tech, developing infrastructure, and boosting productivity.
Then the conquered territories would generate more tithe and support the wars far more effectively.
Eden could not help but suspect that back then, the Emperor might have been under Tzeentch's influence.
Too many of his decisions made no sense.
The Primarchs had all started with small quirks in their personalities, and the Emperor had not only failed to mend them—he had poured fuel on every fire.
One by one, perfectly good sons had been driven into depression and madness. In the end, the knife coming back to him had been inevitable.
The Chaos Gods had, at most, been an accelerant.
"That one isn't all that strong. Any of us could beat him."
The Lion crossed his arms, not particularly worried about their gloomy, fallen brother.
Perturabo's combat power was unimpressive—about on par with Lorgar, maybe worse.
Most of his Warp-essence had been scammed away by Fulgrim, after all.
"That's true."
Eden nodded, but added a reminder.
"What we really need to watch is the Iron Warriors Legion. Their destructive power surpasses that of any other traitor legion."
After the Heresy, Perturabo and his Legion had spent their time manufacturing daemon engines and Chaos war machines, following a path very similar to Eden's own firepower-heavy doctrine.
Through the cables in his skull, Perturabo could jack into any comm network and receive and process all battlefield data—coordinating his mechanized forces for devastating combined fire.
He could even directly pilot an entire warship.
During the Heresy, he had single-handedly carried the traitors' logistics and strategic planning.
Had he not checked out mentally, he would have been the Imperium's greatest strategist.
The combination of his Primarch mind with machine computation gave his forces terrifying synergy—especially in the control of mechanized armies.
Worse yet, Inquisitorial records spoke of a "machine plague" he had once unleashed on a Forge World.
That horror had given every manufactorum legs, turning factories into walking abominations.
The cables beneath the crust had become daemon engines, writhing up to tear the world apart.
In just a few days, the Forge World had been annihilated.
The Savior's realms now fielded overwhelmingly mechanized forces—and that kind of machine plague could do real damage to his combat strength.
In simple terms, Perturabo's forces had a profile very similar to the Savior's—and a natural edge against his mechanized formations.
That was a real problem.
The tech-nerd's tidal wave of Chaos engines and machines would massively boost the strength of the daemon hordes.
And with machine plagues and data warfare, he had the tools to infiltrate their comms and hardware.
Techies were terrifying when they turned.
If he had never gone to war and instead focused solely on science and construction, Perturabo would have been the Imperium's greatest Tech-Priest and master builder.
A Primarch's brain was no joke—especially one like Perturabo, who had put all his talent points into technology.
Too bad he had picked the wrong path.
The Chaos Gods had dragged Perturabo into this war precisely because they wanted him to blunt the Savior's armies.
They had indeed bent over backwards in preparation.
"Well then, we'll see whether the machine plague's infection is sharper—
Or the Machine-Goddess and my little darling's data offense and defense are stronger."
Eden mused to himself.
He was not without counters. It would just be… a bit messy.
"I'll take him." The Lion spoke up suddenly, clearly having seen the same danger Perturabo posed.
He met the Savior's eyes, voice firm.
"I'll lead the knights of Caliban and break through all the mechanical defenses—then cut off his head."
He intended to smash the enemy's defenses and use a boarding decapitation strike to kill his fallen brother.
It would entail some risk.
But it was the least costly plan in terms of overall losses.
The Lion was confident he could handle it and take that burden off Eden's shoulders.
"No. I'll be the one to deal with him.
Your opponent is that mad dog Angron. Only you can truly hold him."
Eden shook his head and refused.
The nail-headed berserker was too vicious. Better to leave him to the Lion.
In the original timeline, after all, it had been the Lion who had brought the Butcher to heel.
"Very well. I'll respect your arrangement." The Lion nodded, accepting the decision.
Truth be told, he preferred fighting Angron to assassinating Perturabo anyway.
That was where his talents shone brightest.
"Then it's settled."
Once Eden had assigned all the matchups, he distributed the relevant intel dossiers.
He added one more remark:
"Of course, I could handle Angron myself too. But I much prefer dealing with educated people.
And besides, we need Perturabo alive. He can still be of great use to the Imperium."
The Savior maintained his air of a gentleman-scholar, entirely unaware that, with his mid-tier diploma from the Academy of Loyal Sons, he was probably one of the least educated among the Primarchs.
He might only outrank Angron, the former gladiator slave.
With the assignments complete, Eden and the other Primarchs shifted to a mechanized fortress that had been hastily constructed in the rear.
It housed superior teleport systems, allowing them to reach the front at maximum speed.
Before their eyes, the Chaos rift darkened to a shade never before seen, and even the surrounding land twisted under its influence.
Inside the fortress—
Rumble, rumble—
The roars of shifting tectonic plates echoed through the structure as Chaos reshaped the planet, and the whole fortress trembled.
The ongoing bombardment only intensified the shaking.
Fortunately, the bastion was fully mechanized in structure, which kept it from collapsing outright.
"Brother, how exactly are you planning to deal with Perturabo?"
Guilliman walked over, curiosity plain on his face.
"That twisted fellow has been sneaking around on mechanical forums under alt accounts, and he actually thinks I don't know.
He's been exposed for ages now—in fact, I've been following him closely the whole time."
Eden pulled out a data-slate, opened a forum, and smiled with an expression that was anything but innocent.
"No tech-head can resist the lure of a mech forum.
Perturabo, that tech nerd, has no idea he was doxxed long ago.
And your good brother the Savior… happens to be his closest confidant on that forum."
(End of Chapter)
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