Chapter 62 We're Marching on Terra

A landing pad in the Fortress of Hera.

Amid the heavy roar of its engines, a Thunderhawk Gunship slowly touched down on the tarmac. With a hiss of hydraulics, the thick assault ramp lowered. After listening to First Captain Agemman’s report, Sanguinius and Guilliman had decided to personally meet this giant who was supposedly their brother.

Lion El’Jonson, his hair now greying, stepped out of the transport. It only took a single glance for Sanguinius and Guilliman to confirm his identity. This was undeniably their brother, the Emperor’s firstborn, the master of the First Legion, the Lord of Caliban—the Lion himself.

“Lion,” Sanguinius and Guilliman called out, hurrying over.

Seeing his brothers, the Lion couldn’t hide his own excitement and quickly closed the distance. “Sanguinius. Guilliman.”

The three Primarchs pulled each other into a fierce embrace, tears welling in their eyes. Their deeply genuine brotherhood, having weathered endless tragedies and a ten-thousand-year gap, had aged into something so profoundly potent that even demigods couldn’t hold back their emotions.

“I’m sorry,” the Lion said, his very first words aimed directly at Sanguinius the moment they finally broke apart. “I was too slow. If I had just reached Terra in time, Horus would never have gotten to you.”

Ten thousand years ago, by the time Lion El’Jonson finally arrived at Terra, the Horus Heresy was already over. Learning that the Emperor had been critically wounded and bound to the Golden Throne, and that Sanguinius had been slain, the Lion was driven to absolute despair. Like a madman, he swore bloody vengeance against Chaos. That boiling cocktail of guilt and rage ultimately served as the spark that ignited the destruction of Caliban.

He already hated Chaos to his core. So, when he returned to Caliban only to find out that Luther had gone traitor and pledged himself to the Dark Gods, the Lion instantly snapped. He ordered a full-scale orbital bombardment of his own homeworld, leading directly to the tragic shattering of Caliban.

Sanguinius smiled, his voice warm and gentle. “It was my choice, Lion. You have absolutely nothing to apologize for. Being able to reunite with you is more than enough to make me happy. Let’s leave the past where it belongs.”

Guilliman nodded in agreement. “Let the past die. Fate has brought the three of us together again, not so we can sit around and analyze our old failures, but so we can build the future.”

“Wrong!!” a voice suddenly yelled out, completely derailing the Primarchs’ heartfelt reunion.

Sanguinius and Guilliman winced, their mouths twitching in unison. The Lion, however, looked curious. He turned toward the sound and laid eyes on Vane—a handsome, black-haired, black-eyed guy rocking a sleek black robe.

“I assume this is the Forefather who woke you?” the Lion asked, thoroughly intrigued.

Vane nodded enthusiastically, then pumped his fist in the air. “Hurry up and tell the band to play! Let’s all welcome the grand return of the Warmaster of Imperium Secundus! Also, a friendly reminder that the First Legion never has any secrets!”

The Lion almost lost his composure on the spot, dark metaphorical lines dropping over his head.

“Now that the Big Three of Imperium Secundus are finally together, it’s time to restore its absolute glory!” Vane rambled on, getting more and more hyped as he spoke, gesturing wildly to sell his pitch. “As they say, why take the slow route to Terra when you can just blitzkrieg the place? I say we march our armies on Terra right now! We prop Sanguinius up as the new Emperor, make Guilliman the Imperial Regent, and crown the Lion as the Lord Protector!”

The Lion, Sanguinius, and Guilliman stood in absolute, stunned silence.

Forefather, I am literally begging you, please shut up, the brothers thought. It was a damn good thing they had the foresight to tell everyone else to wait far away. Otherwise, their reputations would have been completely nuked beyond repair.

“After we steamroll Terra, we hit the Eye of Terror and bulldoze our way straight through the Warp!” Vane declared, acting like a supreme armchair general mapping out the universe. “The four Chaos Gods are nothing but a bunch of chumps. We could wipe them out with a flick of the wrist. By the time we’re done unifying realspace and the Immaterium, the infinite glory of Imperium Secundus will be ours to command!”

The more the three Primarchs listened, the quieter they got. This guy was painting a picture so absurdly massive that they couldn’t even process it.

“Oh, right! Consider this a welcome gift to help us sack Terra and the Warp,” Vane casually added. He opened his inventory and pulled out the First Flame he had crafted earlier. “Just absorb this power, and you’ll de-age right back to your prime, ready to crusade into the Warp with your bros. Of course, you can always say no. But if you do, Imperium Secundus is going to have to headhunt a different Lord Protector.”

Sanguinius and Guilliman could feel the terrifying, raw power radiating off the First Flame. As long as the Lion absorbed it, he would become a fully immortal god just like them—and simultaneously put himself tens of billions of star systems in debt.

Staring at the First Flame in Vane’s hands, a sudden wave of clarity hit the Lion. He instantly realized a massive truth: the galaxy was impossibly vast, so it was far too convenient that he just magically woke up and stumbled his way right to Macragge. Looking at the flame, it all clicked.

The Emperor had guided him here from behind the scenes. His father wanted him to take this gift from the Forefather so he’d actually have the firepower to fight back against the Warp. As for Vane’s whole “marching on Terra” shtick, the Lion couldn’t care less. As the Emperor’s Dark Angel, he was privy to a ton of classified secrets his brothers didn’t know. His father didn’t give a rat’s ass about being the Emperor. He just needed a massive, galaxy-spanning empire to funnel resources for his actual goals. If the Webway Project had panned out, his father would have immediately bailed and handed the keys of the Imperium over to regular humans.

“I accept,” the Lion finally agreed, nodding after a brief moment of hesitation.

Vane handed over the First Flame, letting it seamlessly absorb right into the Primarch’s body. The second the Lion absorbed the flame, he felt his entire body radically shift. His greying hair rapidly turned into a vibrant, flowing blonde, and the heavy wrinkles across his face smoothed out in record time. In mere seconds, the Lion completely reverse-aged from an old man right back to his absolute prime. The only thing that didn’t change was the profound, ten-thousand-year weight lingering deeply in his eyes.

Bonding with the First Flame naturally caused a cataclysmic ripple through the Warp. The entire Immaterium—hell, the entire galaxy—resonated with a single, deafening frequency, broadcasting to every race that humanity had just minted yet another god.

Back in the Dark Souls universe, guys like Gwyn the Lord of Sunlight had claimed only a fraction of the First Flame, and that was enough to end the Age of Ancients and cement them as worshipped deities. Now, the Lion had absorbed the completely intact, one-hundred-percent First Flame. The sheer volume of his power eclipsed the pantheon of the Dark Souls universe by lightyears.

Standing far off in the distance, Eldrad, Yvraine, and the rest of the Aeldari watched the scene with incredibly complicated expressions. They were practically killing themselves trying to resurrect Ynnead, the God of the Dead, constantly getting targeted and slapped down by the Dark Gods at every turn. Yet this human Forefather was just out here casually churning out new gods. Decking Sanguinius and Guilliman out with divine authority was one thing, but instantly handing the Master of the First Legion enough juice to 1v1 a god the very second they met? Honestly, sucking up to this human Forefather felt way more viable—and had a way higher success rate of saving the Aeldari—than trying to wake up Ynnead.

Deep in the Warp, the four Chaos Gods sensed the massive shift in realspace and were completely, utterly numb. They genuinely could not fathom what the hell this outer-dimensional evil god’s deal was. Why did he have a seemingly endless supply of divine authorities just sitting in his pockets?!

Honestly, if this kept up, they were ready to just fold and take half the loss. Maybe they should just take the Anathema up on his old proposal: humanity builds their Webway and gets off the Warp’s lawn, and the four of them just bunker down in the Immaterium to live a quiet, peaceful life. You don’t bother us, we don’t bother you. A perfectly happy ending for everyone.