Guilliman, What Are You Doing?!

The Thunderhawk gunship was descending at high speed. The planet Davin below them looked utterly lifeless, bearing the silent appearance of a civilization long extinguished.

Lox’s usually reliable premonition was crackling with unease. He would rather Davin had been crawling with Greenskin Orks, enough to fill mountains and seas, or even another plague planet or slaughter planet like the ones before.

At least then they would know who the enemy was, rather than, as now, having the primarch brothers already beginning to turn against one another before they had even seen their foe.

"I don’t know how Lion realized something was wrong with his state of mind, but it must have been a very dangerous moment."

Lox said, "We had always believed that, as the Emperor’s trump card, Lion had carried out countless dark missions, and that his mind and will could remain unbreakable forever."

"To us, Lion could issue Exterminatus orders again and again without hesitation or psychological burden. But apparently, that was not the case. Lion had his own mental pressures. He had merely buried everything inside and pretended to be cold and heartless."

As he spoke, he saw Guilliman before him suddenly look guilty, and he immediately grew wary.

"Roboute, when Lion intended to bomb us to death with Exterminatus, you weren’t hatching some scheme of your own too, were you?"

Lox had seen more than once how Lion and Guilliman, those ill-fated brothers, remained wary of each other while doing exactly the same things.

And Lox’s suspicion had clearly displeased Guilliman.

"My friend, you suspect me just as you suspect Lion?" Guilliman rose to his feet. Standing upright, his head nearly touched the top of the Thunderhawk.

"I would never, like Lion, harbor murderous intent toward a loyal brother. You know that. I am not that kind of person."

Guilliman was evading the important point and quietly changing the subject. That was not what Lox had asked at all.

"Don’t play dumb with me. Any concealment or suspicion will be magnified without limit on Davin. Roboute, you are not perfect. Lion can admit his mistakes—can’t you?"

Guilliman’s face stiffened. His lips twitched as he tried to argue further, but reason ultimately prevailed.

"Glorod, bring me that thing."

At his words, the leader of the Victrix Guard, who never left Guilliman’s side, took a rectangular box over a meter long from a sealed safe within the gunship.

Lox recognized that distinctive sheen and texture. It was a safe made of Blackstone.

What was Guilliman keeping inside a safe capable of suppressing Warp energy?

Roboute ordered Glorod to open the box. After three identity-verification procedures, a miniature stasis field was revealed within.

When the outside light shone into the safe, Lox saw a ritual dagger sized for a mortal. He had seen such a thing on Calth. Back then, Captain Ventanus had seized a ritual dagger from a Word Bearers enemy and used it to banish the Greater Daemon Samus.

"Why did you keep this thing, Guilliman? You never even told me."

Lox demanded sternly. He had assumed the object had been destroyed after the Battle of Calth.

The ritual dagger contained inscrutable Warp power. Even a Greater Daemon could be directly banished by its wounds.

Whether it faced life in the material universe or life within the Warp, the ritual dagger was equally terrifying.

"Is this the dagger Ventanus seized, or the one Kor Phaeron used to wound you?"

Guilliman shrugged. "The former. Ventanus once used it to banish a daemon. The latter is still preserved in my private armory. I want to use these sorcerous weapons to better achieve peace and order."

"You and I both know that the greatest enemy on this journey is very likely to be Chaos daemons. That means it is time for the ritual dagger’s power to serve its purpose."

Lox’s expression turned strange. Just as Curze had said, Guilliman was too naive, harboring unrealistic fantasies about everything.

Perhaps every primarch was extremely self-confident. Lion believed he was always right, and that everyone else was creating unnecessary complications.

What about Guilliman? He too believed he could master this unknown sorcerous power, even though the ritual dagger came from the Word Bearers Legion and was a vessel for some evil force.

The hermits who had defected to them had once revealed the ritual dagger’s origins. These foul things came from a famous weapon—the Anathame of the Interex Federation.

It was that Anathame that had wounded Warmaster Horus, indirectly leading to Horus being sent into the Temple of Davin and corrupted by the Warp within.

The ritual daggers had been forged from fragments of the Anathame. That was why they had such crude, ugly forms, with even their edges chipped and incomplete.

"Guilliman, when you believed that filthy ritual dagger could become your aid and help you defeat the enemy on Davin, did you realize that doubt had already arisen in your heart?"

"You believed your own strength might not be enough to defeat the enemy, so you sought help from an external source—even a cursed weapon of the Word Bearers."

"The Warp is always like this. When you think you can control it, it gives you a few sweet rewards. But once you become increasingly addicted, the Warp comes to collect its price."

"Countless gamblers have tried to wring benefits from the Warp, but has anyone ever succeeded? The Warp never loses."

Glorod, leader of the Victrix Guard, wanted to defend his father, but Lox cut him off directly.

"This is between me and your father."

Lox displayed neither majesty nor force of presence, yet the Victrix Guard who had just been about to speak sensibly shut his mouth.

On Macragge, it was better to offend Guilliman than Lox. At least the former was broad-minded, and Guilliman, busy with endless documents, had time more precious than adamantium. Not just anyone was worthy of being remembered and avenged by him.

As for the latter, Glorod remembered when Lox had still been Guilliman’s mortal adviser. Some Legion brothers had treated him with contempt, even speaking to him with the same disrespect they used toward other mortals.

They believed their father trusted a mortal more than the Ultramarines, and they were dissatisfied with that.

Later, as far as Glorod knew, those Ultramarines had all been sent to the frontier.

Though Astartes did not care where they served—they had been created as weapons of war—going from frequently seeing their primarch in person to perhaps never seeing Guilliman again in their lives was a heavy blow for many Astartes.

A primarch’s importance to an Astartes Legion was beyond comparison. Often, even if the primarch was merely a mascot, or even dead weight, as long as he remained with the Legion, it could settle down.

Well, Glorod absolutely did not mean to mock the former World Eaters Legion.

In truth, guarding the frontier for one’s primarch was not so bad. But staying by Father’s side gave one a much broader horizon.

"Listen to me, Guilliman. A ritual dagger is poison. It may quench your thirst for the moment, but it is also eroding and corrupting you, and you will not notice it."

Lox rarely tried to reason with Guilliman, because Guilliman could instantly refute the flaws in his words from a dozen different angles. Perhaps only the Khan of Chogoris could match Guilliman in verbal sparring.

"You are right, Lox."

Guilliman accepted the advice. He thought of Lion. Just moments ago, Lion had believed he was doing something absolutely right, that he was saving the Imperium and the Emperor. Yet in the end, Lion had hesitated and awakened.

When you accused others, you had best consider yourself first.

Roboute suddenly realized that it was not that they had yet to encounter the enemy. Rather, the enemy had long since attacked them on both the macro and micro levels.

The enemy was invisible and untouchable. It magnified the flaws in the primarchs’ personalities, bred suspicion, and drove brothers against one another.

Sanguinius, had you already sensed it? Was that why you rushed so urgently toward Davin’s surface? Had you already made your choice?

Guilliman placed the ritual dagger on the Thunderhawk’s deck. The Hand of Dominion came crashing down, and with a deafening boom, the Thunderhawk itself seemed to shudder beneath the blow.

The powered gauntlet’s activated disintegration field smashed the sorcerous weapon into dozens of fragments. Its metal hilt twisted out of shape as Guilliman crushed it beneath blow after blow, until even the remains became ash and vanished into the atmosphere.

Roboute felt waves of numbness. He had personally destroyed a weapon that might have secured victory, yet the burden in his heart had lightened considerably. He even felt a peace he had not known in a long time.

"You won. In Davin’s first unseen battle, all three of you brothers have won." Lox smiled.