Primarchs at War

The sky darkened. Rolling black clouds pressed low overhead, promising a rare downpour. Two immense, indistinct figures fought beneath them, the sounds of their struggle betraying its deadly ferocity. Thunder boomed. A blood-red flash lit the sky. Minerals suspended in the air and the world's heavy Warp contamination stained the lightning red. In that brief, bloody light, the combatants stood revealed: two Primarchs, armor gleaming and claws raised.

Darkness did nothing to hinder their black eyes. Their claws struck sparks with a shriek, every blow aimed at a vital point. They had fought for half a day without either gaining the upper hand. Their creator had given them much the same strength. Ten thousand years had honed them both, but neither had opened a decisive gap. They had been made to kill, each gifted with a terrifying instinct for battle.

They moved too quickly for mortal sight. A human would have seen only blurred figures meeting and separating, with the occasional burst of sparks between them. Both pushed their bodies to the limit. Corax narrowly avoided Curze's attack and drove his claws toward his brother's throat. Neither held back. They fought like enemies who could never share the same world.

“Still working for that liar? Still afraid to open your eyes?” Curze taunted as he slipped the killing blow.

“I work for no one. I serve the great ideal you helped destroy.”

Corax caught Curze by the foot and hurled him aside. His brother lost his balance, then twisted in the air with consummate skill and landed securely.

“It was a lie. A fraud built by a false man to deceive all humanity.” Curze rushed him again, claws driving toward his vital organs.

“Do you know, Corax? When I thought I was dead, my consciousness was still moving through the Warp. Time stops inside a stasis field. Atomic motion ceases. Mortals feel nothing. Even our sons have their minds frozen.

“But we do not. Our thoughts defy the universe's laws of stasis. We are not truly products of genetic science. Our birth, our very existence, came from a disgusting, filthy bargain.

“Horus wasn't the first to sell himself to false gods. Our father bargained with them. Then came us.” Curze attacked harder, his anger rising with his voice. Corax blocked every blow.

Their claws hammered together, the sparks providing the only light in the dark.

“To end war and achieve peace, first you must wage war. Everything can be a tool. Why shouldn't an enemy become a means to your final goal? Use darkness to defeat darkness. Horus's mistake was believing he could control the Four.

“And I no longer serve our father. I serve the great ideal we lost. Your betrayal destroyed it. All I want is to rebuild.”

Corax parried and struck back, sweeping his claws upward to split Curze in two. But Curze would not have deserved the name Primarch if he could be killed so easily. He reacted and evaded the blow.

“You're naive. Nothing can save this world now. They already own it. Only by spreading fear can humanity learn to survive in the dark.” Curze rolled away from Corax's lethal reach.

“Spare me that idiocy. If Guilliman hadn't told me not to kill you, I'd cut off your head and kick it around. You ruined everything, and now you lecture me.

“Everything we worked to build is rubble because of you. Cowards, begging fate and false gods for mercy. Giving you such power was our father's greatest mistake. You're not worth an ordinary Astartes, Curze.”

Corax advanced, determined to overwhelm him.

“If you were buried beneath endless visions, you'd have broken worse than I did!” Curze roared.

“You inherited that gift from our father,” Corax sneered. “He could see the future too. Do you think he knew nothing of what would happen? That he never heard fate whispering?

“He acted anyway. The future is uncertain. Everything can change. What you saw was a lie, and you surrendered to it. You made fulfilling prophecy your highest duty without seeing what a pitiful toy you'd become. Mortals fight because they mean to fight. You fight to obey a prophecy. Pathetic.

“You cling to your precious fate like a frightened puppet.”

“You understand nothing!” Curze's fury blazed.

“Do I need to know how a weapon was forged to use it? Admit it, Curze. You're a coward. You've known for a long time that prophecy isn't always right. You just refuse to acknowledge it.

“Because if the future can change, if those things weren't inevitable, then everything you did was wrong. So you grow more afraid. You won't admit it, and you won't fight it.”

The words shook Curze, weakening his next attack. Corax seized the opening. His claws tore across his brother's face, and a kick to the chest sent Curze flying. Blood covered his face. A Primarch's formidable healing should have closed wounds like these quickly.

But Corax carried Argent weapons, designed for daemons and traitor Primarchs. They suppressed that regenerative power. Curze's blood would not stop flowing.

“Your weapons...” Curze touched his bloody face and frowned, his eyes entirely black.

“Surprised your healing no longer works? We made these for you, traitor. Be grateful Guilliman only sent me to find you. If he'd ordered me to kill you, that last blow would have cut you apart, you spineless waste.”

Corax advanced a step at a time. “Look at it. Look at what you've done to this world. You turned humanity into toys and locked it in a cage. Now you can pay for it.”

“It was fate's choice. Neither of us can escape.”

Curze sprang up and lunged at Corax with his claws. A surge of terrible psychic power drove him several steps back. Corax's black hair turned white, and the presence of the Warp poured from him. Wings of dark shadow spread behind his back.

“Are you really human, Corax?” Curze mocked. “Humans don't have wings. They don't reek of evil like that.”

“My creator is the Master of Mankind. My foster father was the security chief Kaius. The Imperium's people honor me as a savior walking among the stars. I can father children with human women, children with human bodies and souls. If I'm not human, what am I?”

Corax was untroubled. His journeys through the Warp had taught him his own nature. He was neither simply human nor merely a fabricated Warp monster. What mattered was his choice. If he believed himself human and fought for humanity's victory, then he was human. If he wished, he could found a family carrying his blood.

If he gave himself to the Warp and became an enforcer for Chaos, he would be a creature of the Warp. And even then, what did that matter? He would decide what he became. Fate would not decide for him.

“You're a monster now, just as you used to call me. A monster through and through. Just like me.” Curze laughed coldly.

“Enough. You can tell the Regent, traitor.”

Corax flicked out an arc shackle, high-voltage current dancing across it. Once it closed around him...

But black mist enveloped Curze. He reappeared farther away, darkness gathering over the wounds on his face.

“You're not the only one who's improved, Corax. I'll prove that prophecy cannot be broken. Guilliman's awakening must have persuaded you to pick up that grand ideal again.

“He cannot save anything. In the future I saw, he falls on the road to his own dream, just as the Emperor did. No one can succeed, Corax.” Curze looked at his claws as he spoke.

“I told you. You're a puppet led around by prophecy. You know nothing of this universe, Curze. You'll never understand the splendor of the stars or humanity's strength. Even if fate cannot change, you can still follow your convictions. Not everything has to be done for a result.

“Only someone without courage spends his life cowering before fate.”

Corax was tired of the argument. He wanted to capture Curze and drop him in front of Guilliman. His brother was a fool. Sometimes Corax preferred mortals. At least they could be foolish enough to believe that one more attempt might change everything. They usually failed, but they tried anyway. Once in a while they succeeded, and saved their whole species. Curze, a being revered as a demigod, lived forever in terror of his visions.

He had wanted order, and once he had achieved it. Fear had made Nostramo stable and prosperous, creating a society more efficient and equal than anything it had known. People lived comfortably and obeyed his rules. Then he went to war among the stars and descended, step by step, into the abyss.

Curze longed for justice and order. He hoped that killing a few would make the rest obey. His methods alienated his brothers. Fulgrim became the only one he could confide in, and after the Warp corrupted Fulgrim, he betrayed Curze as well. Later, Sanguinius briefly reached him. Curze had hoped his brother would end his life.

His fall came partly from his failed struggle against fate, partly from the gulf between him and his brothers, and partly from his hunger for justice. In the end, he drove himself mad. Corax pitied him, but held him in contempt as well. He pitied a being born with such power, able to manipulate human hearts, yet never taught how to use his gifts. He despised a man who feared every choice and let his own talent torture him into madness.

Every Primarch possessed extraordinary strength and intelligence. The fortunate ones found mortals who taught them to master those gifts. The unlucky stumbled down the wrong path alone, or were twisted by the human cruelty they witnessed. The Emperor had created them and granted them incomparable abilities without teaching them how to use them. Instead, he deceived them and made them instruments of galactic conquest.

But Primarchs had feelings. They could feel all the emotions humans did. Fear could torment them, slander could wound them, and contempt could enrage them. Mortarion had never saved his own world. He considered himself lesser than his brothers because of it, and the thought continued to torture him.

The Emperor had rescued Angron while leaving his fellow slave-gladiators to be slaughtered. On his homeworld, Angron became a cautionary tale. It drove him completely mad. Curze's case scarcely needed explaining.

He had spoken of his visions, and Fulgrim had told Dorn. The resulting fight left Dorn grievously wounded. Curze became still more desperate, unable to trust his brothers and guilty over what he had done to Dorn. The Emperor ignored all of it. He simply urged the Primarchs to continue the Great Crusade.

Perhaps having the Emperor stuck on that throne wasn't such a bad thing, Corax thought.

[Custodes: The Emperor's Golden Throne has been using a lot of power lately.]

[Corax: Unplug it.]

[Sanguinius: Agreed.]

[Khan: Agreed.]

[Guilliman: What a bunch of ungrateful sons. Learn from me. I'll show you how a devoted son behaves.]