[Several seconds pass before the Hrud behind you settle back into agitation rather than pursuit. You put distance between yourself and the mass of them and take a slow breath, rolling your hands and feet against the sluggishness the entropy field left behind.]
[The recovered entropy blade goes into storage. You intend to examine it properly later.]
[You bring the power armor around and appear above Captain Slyll and the squad, holding position in the slow climb of the morning sun.]
[From altitude, the church square is easy to find: green-painted Thunderhawk gunships sitting among the wreckage of vehicles, identifiable even through the urban debris that has collapsed around the square on three sides. Around the gunships, a handful of Astartes are still standing in defensive posture. Through the dark gaps in their armor, there is nothing left but decay. The entropy field had reached them long before anyone arrived to help.]
[The Sons of Medusa's first close encounter with the Hrud had not gone smoothly.]
[You signal downward: advance.]
[What follows surprises you slightly. The Sons of Medusa believe in the elimination of the weak as a principle. Yet without discussion, each of them tucks a mortal warrior under one arm and fires their propulsion systems toward the square. The Primarch's presence apparently carries more weight than the chapter's philosophy, at least for this morning.]
[While they move, you scan the ruined city stretching out in every direction.]
[A pattern. The Hrud are withdrawing into the underground again, pressing back into the shadowed gaps between structures where the sunlight cannot reach. Their enormous black eyes track every movement from those gaps, but they are not pressing forward. Not unless directly threatened.]
[Nocturnal instinct. Or something else. You note it and file it.]
[You drop low and fly toward the square.]
[Shortly after, Slyll's team arrives. The squad's Techmarine moves through the available gunships one by one, checking ignition systems and drive assemblies. The entropy field damage is thorough: of all the Thunderhawks, only one engine will turn over. The others have aged past the point of field repair.]
[One is enough. The cargo bay fits everyone with room to spare.]
[Boom. Boom. Boom.]
[The vector engines fire, and the green-painted Thunderhawk climbs through the scorching light of the pale red star, pushing hard for altitude and the orbital band above.]
[Inside the cabin, you reach up and remove the skull helmet. Around you, Astartes and mortal warriors alike visibly ease.]
[Before you can ask Slyll about next steps, he turns the red prosthetic eye toward you and speaks first.]
["My Lord Primarch. Once we are aboard the frigate, I would recommend a physical assessment."]
["Hm?"]
[You raise one arm. The vibranium surface of the vambrace reflects your face back at you, dulled but readable.]
[The bronze is still there. But the lines in your face have deepened. Your hair, already grey when the day began, has gone fully white.]
[The entropy field aged you. Not catastrophically. Somewhere between youth and middle age, compressed into the span of one engagement.]
["It is only appearance. Combat ability is not meaningfully reduced."]
[You lower the arm and let the breath out slowly.]
[The Sons of Medusa exchange glances that they clearly believe are discreet. Then they are quiet.]
[Approximately one hour later, the Thunderhawk docks inside the Sword-class frigate in near-orbital space.]
[Thud.]
[The cabin door opens. You step out onto the metal deck in Starfire Glory, one magnetic boot hitting the plating with the weight it always carries.]
[The thousands of ordinary crew members filling the hangar deck stop. The noise drops out of the space entirely.]
[Then, nearly as one, they go to their knees.]
["By the Divine Emperor above, he has finally made himself known!"]
["For the Emperor!"]
["We're saved!"]
[Your expression goes still. You set your jaw, activate the power armor's stride, and walk.]
[There is no way through except through them, and through them you go, heavy steps carrying you past kneeling figures in every direction, the weight of their gazes pressing against your back like something physical.]
[The complex feelings pass quickly, as they always do. What takes longer to pass is what replaces them.]
[You look at their faces as you move. Every one of them. The excitement in their eyes, the relief, the brightness of people who have been genuinely afraid and are now genuinely not. In the next battle, each of these faces will belong to someone spending the only life they have in service to an empire that will likely not remember them.]
[Something the Emperor understood, you think. Something he built into the role deliberately: you were not meant to be thrown around the galaxy simply to solve military problems. You were meant to be submerged in this. In the passion of ordinary people. In their suffering and their specific, individual faces. So that the love you carried for humanity in the abstract would become something you could not abstract away from.]
[Not the responsibility of a Primarch as a function.]
[The love of each person you actually encounter.]
["Tsk."]
[You stop at the entrance to the ship's passageway and turn back.]
[The mortal crew are still smiling.]
["As expected of someone tens of thousands of years old. The spiritual ambition is genuinely staggering."]
["Unfortunately, I do not think I will become what the Imperium hopes for. That path is full of traps and thorns, and the last human lord who chose to walk it is still paying for it on the Golden Throne."]