Raldoron followed Sanguinius out of the Iron Blood's bridge.
His fists were clenched white at the knuckles.
Ten thousand sets of precision-tooled Terminator armour. Two thousand sets of Centurion armour.
What was that lord's intention? Charity? Or the price of silence — compensation designed to bury something he didn't want spoken of?
Two thousand of their brothers had died. More than two thousand Blood Angels, killed in that xenos encirclement, lost in this wretched system.
What they needed was to avenge those deaths themselves. To bathe in the blood of those xenos and offer it up to the brothers who had fallen.
Not equipment. Not gear, however badly they needed it.
And certainly not grapes.
"Father."
Raldoron spoke quietly, his voice low — but the fury in it was impossible to conceal.
"That lord — how could he insult us like that?"
Sanguinius said nothing.
He walked on, his pace steady, his face unreadable.
Raldoron followed at his heel, watching his father's golden hair catch the light of the corridor, the great frame ahead of him trembling faintly. The anger in Raldoron's chest slowly drained away, replaced by something that ached.
His father carried so much. He had always known that.
No one understood what the Ninth Legion was better than the Ninth Legion itself.
The genetic flaw had forced the Angel to conceal his own brilliance at times — terrified that it might draw the Emperor's displeasure down on the Legion he was trying to save.
For that reason he had cultivated the friendship of the Warmaster. He had overhauled the Ninth Legion from the ground up, stripping away savagery and impulsiveness, teaching them art and restraint.
The name "Revenant-blooded" that other Legions had thrown at them like an insult. Those moments on the battlefield where they lost all distinction between friend and enemy and became something barely human—
Even now, they hadn't fully left those days behind.
And their father was the one who had always stood at the edge of the abyss, pulling them back one by one.
For the sake of his Legion and his sons, the Angel was willing to do almost anything.
Raldoron had once been the Blood Angels' senior commander. But he was different from many of his brothers — composed, clear-headed, possessed of considerable tactical instinct. Even when the Red Thirst rose on the battlefield, he could force it back through sheer will. That quality gave him a perception for detail that others sometimes lacked.
"Father—"
He had been about to say something — to offer some small comfort, because his father was the most exhausted of all of them.
"Raldoron."
Sanguinius's voice came quietly.
Raldoron looked up.
"What do you make of my brother? What kind of man do you think he is?"
Raldoron paused, then answered without hesitation.
"Cold. Unyielding. And very dangerous."
Sanguinius gave a small nod.
"Anything else?"
Raldoron thought back to the encounter. That enormous frame, like a mountain. Those deep blue eyes, still as stone, giving away nothing. The flat, businesslike tone — as though he were negotiating a contract, not speaking with a brother.
But—
"He cares about his sons," Raldoron said, almost to himself. "The way you care about us."
Sanguinius's stride faltered, just barely.
"What makes you say that?"
"He is working hard to conceal it. But anyone paying attention can see it. The state of the Iron Warriors alone is proof enough."
Sanguinius said nothing. He walked on in silence.
Raldoron continued.
"He has transformed the entire Fourth Legion. He has... looked after them — I'm not certain that's quite the right word, but I think it fits. He has looked after them very well."
Sanguinius was quiet for a long time. Long enough that Raldoron and the others didn't dare say anything more.
Then, softly—
"Yes. He looks after his sons very well."
Raldoron didn't fully understand what his father meant by that. He didn't ask.
"Father."
Andrel stood before the Angel, intending to kneel — but Sanguinius caught him and held him up.
In the medical bay, the Angel moved through the rooms where his sons lay. Every one of them was badly wounded. Many were missing limbs, already fitted with mechanical replacements.
Some had not yet regained consciousness. But most could feel their father's presence the moment he entered.
They looked up at that perfect face, lips moving without sound.
Sanguinius's gaze moved over the familiar faces — veterans who had fought beside him across countless campaigns, sons he had personally dragged back from the brink of the Red Thirst — lying here, reduced to this.
In the Great Crusade, scenes like this were unremarkable. The Angel had long since prepared himself for them. And every single time, without fail, it hurt.
"You did well. All of you. I am proud of you, my sons."
"Father, the Captain — he—"
Andrel's voice trembled.
Sanguinius rested a hand on his son's shoulder, then moved past him.
He almost didn't recognise Alvareth. It was only by the familiar presence — the thread of gene-bond between them — that he could be sure.
The left arm was gone, the stump already sealed. Fourteen or fifteen wounds marked his face; the deepest ran from his left brow, across his eye, all the way down to his jaw. His chest was wrapped in thick bandages, the wounds beneath still slowly, stubbornly knitting together.
He was alive. But only just — the difference between this and death was technical at best.
Sanguinius reached out and rested his hand gently on Alvareth's brow.
"Father."
Raldoron's voice came from nearby.
Sanguinius turned. A tall Iron Warrior was standing to one side — not an ordinary Apothecary. The markings on his pauldrons and the unusual equipment mounted on his power pack identified him as a senior medical officer of the Fourth Legion.
"My lord. Captain Alvareth's situation is complex."
The Apothecary's voice was level — the measured calm of someone who had stood at death's side too many times to be startled by it.
"You have two options—"
"I know. Your Commander told me."
The Apothecary fell quiet and waited for the Primarch to decide.
"What are the risks of the surgical option?"
"Thirty percent chance of success. If complications arise during the procedure, we cannot guarantee the Captain's survival."
The Apothecary spoke plainly. The Primcast surgery had been designed and optimised around the Iron Warriors' own physiology — that was what made the success rate and recovery speed viable. That did not mean it was suitable for warriors of other Legions.
In truth, the Apothecary did not favour putting Alvareth through the surgery at all. As he saw it, the odds of death were high enough that Dreadnought interment was the more sensible course — and these were Achilles-pattern frames they were talking about.
"Proceed with the surgery. I trust Alvareth."
Sanguinius walked out, leaving the Apothecary to his preparations.
The Apothecary watched the Angel go. That retreating figure made him think, inexplicably, of his father.
He pushed the thought aside, summoned a medical automaton, and began the Primcast procedure on Alvareth — working alongside it, providing the support the process required.
Sanguinius settled in one of the medical bay's rooms, surrounded by his sons — most of them still confined to their beds.
"Father — that Fourth Primarch. What kind of man is he?"
Sanguinius looked at Andrel.
"Why do you ask?"
Andrel frowned — the expression of someone reaching for something just out of grasp.
"I keep feeling as though I've forgotten something. Since I woke up, it's been like a piece of a puzzle is missing. I asked the others — they feel it too."
"When I raised it with our cousins, they told me it was a side effect of the Red Thirst. But I don't believe that. No one knows this flaw better than we do."
Sanguinius's pupils contracted slightly.
"What is it you think you've forgotten?"
"I don't know." Andrel shook his head. "But I remember one thing clearly — they saved us. Quickly. Too quickly for a standard rescue operation."
Sanguinius rose. Raldoron and the others instinctively moved to follow.
The Angel held up a hand.
"Stay here. Keep our brothers company. Rest and recover."
"We can discuss everything else once you are well."
Andrel looked as though he wanted to say more.
In the end, he only nodded.
Sanguinius walked out of the medical bay alone.
He needed to speak with his brother again.
This brother was considerably more complicated than he had imagined.
Why was he concealing all of this?
Why had he refused the Emperor's summons in the first place?
Why remain in that distant backwater Olympia, rather than doing what every other Primarch did — conquer, fight, earn glory?
Sanguinius wanted to know.
On the bridge of the Iron Blood, Perturabo stood before the holographic display, watching the real-time status of the Taros System cluster.
Twelve systems, being swept clear inch by inch by the Iron Warriors. The xenos resistance had essentially collapsed. All that remained was scattered mop-up work.
Giving the Blood Angels ten days to finish off the remnants was sensible enough — let them vent their anger, and there was little risk of anyone dying in the process.
"Father."
Ferrix's voice came from behind.
"Lord Sanguinius has returned."
"Let him in."
Perturabo turned.
Sanguinius was coming through the bridge entrance.
The Angel crossed the floor toward him and stopped.
The two Primarchs faced each other again.
"Brother, I have questions I'd like to put to you."
Perturabo gave a small nod.
"What are you hiding? Is it fear of the Emperor and the Imperium — or something else entirely?"
Sanguinius came at it directly, without softening a single word.
Perturabo looked at his beautiful brother and found himself momentarily at a loss.
The Trident Guard felt the air change. Something they had collectively assumed stirred at the back of their minds, and — somewhat boldly — hands drifted toward weapons at their sides.
Ferrix and Dantioch quietly halted those small movements before they went further.
"I don't follow you, brother."
Those deep blue eyes carried a dangerous flicker, but Sanguinius didn't flinch.
"Don't pretend you don't understand. You know exactly what I'm asking."
"Your strength. Your Legion. Those surgical enhancements—"
"You could be making a far greater contribution to the Emperor and the Imperium. You could be gaining far more from the Great Crusade. So why hide?"
"Because I don't care about them."
The answer landed, and Sanguinius stared.
"I don't care about honours or reputations. I don't care about whatever the Emperor has promised that may or may not materialise."
Perturabo's voice was flat and unhurried.
"What I care about is my Legion. The weapons I forge. And whether the xenos will threaten my worlds."
"Everything else is irrelevant."
"And the Emperor? The civilians of the Imperium? Do you not care about any of that either?"
Perturabo didn't answer. His silence was answer enough.
Sanguinius drew a slow breath.
"You know something, brother."
He said it quietly.
"I thought the same way once."
"When I first returned — on Baal — I saw what my sons had become."
"They had suffered terribly. Their reputation in the Imperium was dire. Almost no one cared what happened to them."
"And I thought — what if I simply took them and left? Found some distant system, far from everything, and disappeared. What would that have meant?"
There was something hollow in the Angel's voice.
"But I couldn't do it. There were too many on Baal depending on me. I couldn't walk away."
"My sons had endured so much. If I had left then, everything they had already given would have counted for nothing. I resolved to change them completely."
"And the Emperor had shown me what the Imperium was — I couldn't stand by and watch humanity be slaughtered and enslaved by the xenos. The Imperium needed me. Humanity needed me."
"So I chose a different path."
His gaze became something unwavering.
"I chose to stay and fight. To change my Legion. I chose to ally with Horus — because improving the Ninth Legion's standing in the Imperium meant accepting things I didn't like, tolerating what I found distasteful, pulling my sons out of the abyss one step at a time."
"It was a hard road. But I believe the results speak for themselves now. They were worth everything we did for them, brother."
Sanguinius looked at Perturabo, his eyes full of something genuine.
Perturabo found he couldn't quite hold that gaze.
"I couldn't do what you've done. Not everyone can."
He redirected.
"But you can't replace what I contribute either, brother. In these past years since my return, I have made a substantial difference to the Mechanicum's weapons development — to how the entire Crusade arms itself."
"Six of the heavy tank variants currently issued to all Expedition forces are designs I improved and developed. The new bolter and plasma weapon patterns you all use, the latest marks of power armour — those upgrades are mine."
Perturabo's gaze moved to the holographic display, settling on the sons fighting across those twelve systems.
"I can keep them alive."
"I give them the best equipment, the greatest firepower, the safest battlefield conditions I can engineer. I send them out to kill the enemy. And then they come home."
"That is something you cannot do, brother."
Sanguinius followed his gaze.
The Iron Warriors were advancing through the xenos cities — formations tight, fire concentrated, every step placed with deliberate certainty.
They were nothing like the Space Wolves in their wild ferocity. Nothing like the Luna Wolves in their swift aggression. Nothing like the Dark Angels in their mystery.
They were like a slab of iron pressing against the enemy line — immovable, overwhelming, grinding forward without pause.
"Your sons are very well looked after."
Sanguinius was quiet for a moment.
"But do you know, brother — what you're doing isn't always good."
Perturabo turned to look at him.
"My sons will die charging. Die in boarding actions. Die in those wild, heedless moments when everything is thrown into the breach."
"But they will carry no regret for it. They fight for glory and for a future worth having."
"Your sons will survive. They will fight many battles and kill many enemies. But when they look back — what will they remember? The victories? The glory? Or something else?"
"You are a slab of iron, all of you. But all I can see inside that iron is emptiness."
Perturabo laughed suddenly. A faint, dry sound — those deep blue eyes carrying something that might have been amusement.
He looked at this sincere and flawless brother of his.
"If you could speak with Fulgrim's eloquence and rhetorical brilliance, perhaps I would have been moved, brother."
Sanguinius frowned slightly.
He was about to say more, but Perturabo cut him off.
"You chose to have Alvareth undergo the surgery?"
The Angel nodded.
"I would not have recommended that. The procedures I developed were specifically tailored to my own Legion's physiology — the success rate for warriors of other Legions is very low."
"Better to have him placed in a Dreadnought. The frames I've built can make him considerably more capable than before, and the degree of physical awareness and control they offer is close to that of a living body."
"But I believe he would not choose an iron coffin as his final home. That is not how he would want to live."
Perturabo said nothing for a moment.
"If the surgery fails, I will keep him alive — but he goes into a Dreadnought."
"Then I owe you two debts, brother."
Sanguinius gave a short, quiet laugh, turned, and walked toward the door.
At the threshold, he glanced back.
"Ten days. My sons will fight here. They will kill those xenos themselves and avenge their brothers with their own hands."
"After ten days, we leave. These twelve systems are yours. I can guarantee that no record of this system cluster will appear in any Blood Angels archive."
He left.
Perturabo stood where he was and watched the figure disappear through the bridge door.
"Ferrix."
"Here."
"Give the Ninth Legion whatever support they need. Armoured companies, air cover — you can even expose some of the automata and Iron Circle units. If necessary, drop Legio Cybernetica assets in directly to assist."
"But do not interfere with their decisions. Let them take their vengeance themselves. They have earned that right."
"Yes, Father."
Andrel watched the xenos burn beneath a storm of fire and felt the memory of his encircled brothers press against him.
The Captain was between life and death. Brothers in their hundreds were dead or broken.
The bolter in his hands fired faster.
His eyes bled red. The fangs were lengthening again. The Red Thirst was coming.
He looked at the mortal auxilia fighters his Legion had brought forward to support them, and felt the hunger surge — and then his father's face surfaced in his mind, his father's voice, and he forced it back down.
He drew the chainsword at his hip, roared, and charged into the xenos line.
The blade shrieked — louder today than usual, somehow — and the thick green blood, the flesh and bone, could do nothing to slow the churning teeth. Andrel and his assault brothers drove into the collapsing xenos formation.
These were remnants. The fighting strength was gone. What remained had no real ability to resist.
Ten days. In ten days, the Blood Angels had come close to eliminating every xenos presence in the system.
The Blood Angels of this era were not the savage force they had once been — but they were considerably more formidable. In the Great Crusade they rarely resorted to open violence at all, relying instead on the Angel's remarkable personal magnetism to negotiate outcomes peacefully. When those negotiations failed, however, what came next bore no resemblance whatsoever to the measured diplomacy that had preceded it — and the enemy would understand at last why the Legiones Astartes were called the Angels of Death.
The Terminator and Centurion armour Perturabo had provided moved through the xenos' last desperate resistance like heavy tanks, crushing what remained.
Andrel stood on the rubble of the final xenos fortress and looked down at the alien commander still twitching at his feet.
He drove his chainsword — still keen, still whole — through the creature's skull. Shards of blood and matter scattered across the stone.
"We need to go, brother. The battle is over. Father wants us back aboard the Crimson Tear."
One of his brothers — wearing the Terminator armour Perturabo had provided — spoke from beside him.
"I know."
On the bridge of the Iron Blood, Perturabo stood before the holographic display and watched the last stages of the Taros campaign.
The system was clear. The remaining eleven were in similar condition — the final sweeps should be complete within three days.
Considerably faster than projected.
The Blood Angels were withdrawing. Stormbirds and Thunderhawks rose from the surface one after another, climbing toward the Crimson Tear in orbit.
"We're heading back now, are we, brother? How exactly do you intend to transform my home world into an environment that can grow grapes like these — on your own?"
Sanguinius was holding a cluster of the grapes — enormous, round, deep purple. Even in a Primarch's hand they had considerable presence.
He plucked one from the stem and placed it in his mouth. The sweetness, the lack of seeds, the clean full flavour — his eyes half-closed. He kept eating.
The Sanguinary Guard were all holding clusters of their own by now, though their approach to eating them was considerably less dignified than their father's.
One enormous bite taking nearly a fifth of the bunch at once — and the flavour, they had to admit, was genuinely remarkable. Entirely different from the tinned grox rations that constituted their usual benchmark for palatability.
"My engineering fleet has already departed. By the time we arrive, they should be close behind."
Perturabo watched this group devouring grapes with a certain inexplicable feeling he couldn't quite place.
"The state of your home world must be even worse than I'd imagined."
"It is. Life for the mortals there is genuinely harsh. Radiation levels are dangerous. There are creatures that would give even a Space Marine considerable trouble."
When the subject turned to Baal, the Angel stopped eating entirely. Something pained moved through his eyes.
"Given that — why not simply relocate to a functional system? I would have thought a Primarch returning to the Imperium's fold could manage that trivially enough."
"Because the harshness of Baal forges stronger will. I want the people of Baal to improve their world through their own efforts. When the Great Crusade is over, my sons and I will return and continue that work — until the day something worth eating actually grows in that soil."
Perturabo looked at Sanguinius and felt, for the first time, a genuine appreciation for just how thoroughly foolish his brothers could be.
"Who told you suffering builds character?"
"I — what?"
The Angel looked mildly confused, as if the question had no answer because the answer was self-evident.
"Suffering is suffering. It has no inherent value. It does not lead you toward success, and it is not worth the reverence you seem to have for it. The only reason it forges anything is because it is there and you cannot avoid it."
"The only thing about suffering worth praising is the person who walks out of it."
"You have the ability to solve this problem easily. Why are you allowing the people on that world to go on enduring it needlessly?"
Perturabo's expression was not entirely pleasant as he looked at Sanguinius.
"Is it for the Blood Angels' future recruitment pool?"
"Then what did all your grand declarations amount to?"
"Is forcing yourself to suffer a virtue in the Blood Angels? Or does keeping Baal's mortals in misery give you some kind of satisfaction — a sense of superiority now that you've succeeded?"
"I—"
Sanguinius was briefly lost for words.
"That is not what Father means by it, my lord — we simply—"
"Then what do you mean by it?"
"Do you miss the miserable conditions of Terra? Is it that you can't bear to see others living better than you?"
"My Olympia has none of these so-called trials. And yet by my observation your warriors' resolve and capability are not obviously superior to the best graduates my academies produce."
"If my sons hadn't been here for this campaign, how many of yours might you have lost?"
"Is that what Baal has given you? Is that the return on that investment?"
"What is the point of any of it?"
Perturabo's argument had drifted into sophistry — but no one present could find the words to push back.
He looked at Sanguinius and the indignant faces around him, shook his head, and said nothing more. He had no desire to keep arguing with people whose thinking was this tangled. But he still wanted to offer his brother at least one more alternative.
"Rather than spending enormous resources transforming your home world, it would be simpler to relocate to a viable system entirely. I doubt the mortals and mutants of Baal would particularly mourn leaving that hellscape behind."
"Are you still set on the transformation?"
"Find a decent system and I can turn it into a garden world. You could build a monastery on Baal — use it as a proving ground for initiates when selection time comes. What do you think?"
Sanguinius was quiet.
"Fine. I'll help you transform Baal. You clearly aren't going to agree to anything else."
Perturabo abandoned the attempt.
"But I will not be preserving any of the harsh conditions. Whatever you're planning — don't go behind my back and reintroduce them. Are we clear? Because if you do, I will not help you restore it a second time."
"Yes, I understand, brother."
The Angel's tone was faintly perfunctory.
Perturabo stared at him, utterly without words.
Sure you do.
Why were his brothers, every last one of them, so stubbornly contrary?
When perfectly good options were laid in front of them, it was as if something in them recoiled from sense — as if a kind of defiant instinct made them dig in and refuse, just to refuse, as though there was some benefit to doing the opposite of what was clearly correct.
Perturabo did not understand this thinking. If this were anyone other than his brother, he would not even trouble himself with respecting the other person's choices.
He would simply have compressed the fool's skull in one hand and saved himself the ongoing irritation of knowing such a person existed.
A week later, the Blood Angels fleet arrived in the Baal System.
Perturabo's engineering fleet was still roughly three days behind.
But looking at the crimson orb of Baal's second moon, the primary world — already wholly silent, a dead world in every meaningful sense — and Baal's first moon, which had almost nothing left worth preserving—
Perturabo's instinct was that abandoning these planets outright was the rational choice.
Particularly that red star. Perturabo took one look at it and knew it was nothing but trouble.
He had known Baal's conditions were bad. He hadn't expected this.
From a single survey, he could see that Baal Secundus was nearly drowned in an ocean of red sand, stretching to the horizon in every direction. The cracked earth was bare of any growth except the occasional mutated succulent trembling in irradiated gales.
Two red stars — one large, one small — beat down on the surface, between them inflicting radiation levels that should have ended all life on these worlds long ago. The mutants who had somehow survived here scraped through each day by sheer, desperate endurance.
Sanguinius had chosen to stay in a place like this.
What was going through this brother's mind?
If Baal was this bad — what was Fenris like?
Perturabo was becoming increasingly convinced that his brothers were simply, fundamentally not quite right in the head.
"You've survived in conditions like these, and people wonder why they call you strong-willed."
He watched Raldoron and the others subtly lift their chins, a faint trace of pride crossing their faces.
Perturabo very nearly put his fist through something.
"Brother, can you truly fix this?"
There was genuine anxiety in Sanguinius's voice.
"Anything the Mechanicum can manage, I can manage better. Give me five months. I'll bring the primary world and both moons back to life."
Something visibly lifted in Sanguinius's expression. Even his white wings shifted slightly, spreading just a little.
"Then I am in your hands, brother."
"Before anything else, we deal with these two stars. Nothing on those planets will ever recover while they're there."
"You can address that as well?"
The Angel looked startled — but it was startlement shading into hope. If the stellar problem could be solved, then everything about Baal's situation could be solved.
Perturabo raised his right hand, palm extended toward Baal's larger red star. Five fingers slowly closed.
Every Blood Angel present witnessed something they would carry with them for the rest of their lives.
The two red stars — one large, one small — shuddered. Then they began to contract. Slowly at first, then faster, then faster still — and then they were gone.
In Perturabo's open hand, two small orbs of brilliant, churning red light rotated slowly against his palm.
Sanguinius stared at them and felt something fundamental in his understanding of the world quietly give way.
The Angel himself managed to hold his composure — just. Raldoron and the others did not.
"My lord, that — that—"
"What's all the fuss about? This isn't difficult. The Emperor could do the same."
He produced two small mechanical canisters and sealed the orbs inside, then attached short chains and fashioned them into pendants.
"A gift. If your warships, weapons, or planetary shields ever face power shortages, use them. Two stars — enough to last you a very long time."
Sanguinius held the two pendants, feeling the savage, barely-contained energy pulsing within — the colossal radiation locked behind whatever psychic seal Perturabo had placed on them.
He didn't know what to say. He had been about to offer his thanks when he noticed a new light appearing in Perturabo's other hand — bright and steady, like a main-sequence star.
"Brother — that isn't—"
"Something I kept aside, a long time ago. The right size for the Baal System."
And before them, a new star appeared in the space where the twin red suns had been, and with it, the gravitational balance of the system quietly, naturally restored itself.
"Now we wait for the engineering fleet. How do you want these worlds arranged? Do you have any plans?"
Perturabo spoke to Sanguinius, who was still standing there in a state of mild dissociation.
"What? Oh. Yes — I have had some thoughts."
Raldoron and the others took considerably longer to recover. They looked at Perturabo — that frame larger even than the Emperor's — and felt a certainty settling over them.
Was this person actually human?