Raldoron and the others stood where they were for a long time, unable to speak.
The star burned bright and gentle, giving off light that was exactly right — nothing like the violence of Baal, nothing like the menace of its companion. It simply hung there, quiet and steady, at the centre of the Baal System.
And the person responsible for all of this was currently standing with their father, discussing the construction plans for Baal's primary world and its moons.
This lord was genuinely gifted in this domain. A single glance, and he already knew what should be built where, how each piece of terrain should be reshaped — his voice carrying an easy, unhurried confidence throughout.
"My lord—"
Raldoron's voice was a little dry.
"What — what did you just do?"
Perturabo turned and looked at him.
Those deep blue eyes were perfectly still, utterly without emotion — as though what had just happened was a trivial and unremarkable thing.
"I told you, didn't I? Changed your star. Otherwise, even if Baal is transformed, sooner or later everything will revert to what it is now."
Raldoron opened his mouth. He wanted to say something. Nothing came.
Changed your star. He had said it like changing a lightbulb.
Sanguinius stood to one side, the two pendants in his hands.
The two sealed red orbs rotated slowly inside their small mechanical housings — not unlike the little prayer-spheres Mechanicum Magi used to commune with machine spirits — giving off a faint, warm glow.
Two stars. Two stars that had hung in the sky above the Baal System for millions of years, now reduced to two pendants on a chain.
"Thank you, brother."
Perturabo waved a hand.
"Don't thank me yet. The planetary problems haven't been solved."
"Your home world — radiation levels beyond any safe threshold, barren soil, a thin atmosphere, almost no accessible water. Baal has managed to have every single flaw at once."
"If you want to implement the plans I described, those are what need addressing first."
Sanguinius nodded.
"I know. That's why we've been—"
"My engineering fleet will arrive in three days."
Perturabo cut him off.
"Within three months, I will resolve all of these issues. But there is one condition."
Sanguinius looked at him.
"Say it."
Perturabo's gaze moved to the expanse of red sand below.
"Your sons will be working alongside us. Not standing and watching — working. Getting their hands on the shovels, digging, moving stone, planting things — whatever needs doing."
"Having them build their own home world with their own hands is worth more than anything else."
Sanguinius blinked.
"You like to forge strong will, don't you? The transformation of Baal will not be easy — and it is nothing like a battlefield."
"The Blood Angels have developed quite a fondness for the arts under your guidance, haven't they? Once Baal is rebuilt, you can make as much art as you like."
"Fortress construction is a discipline you all practice regardless. I intend to transform the primary world and both moons into three fortified citadels. My engineering teams will provide support — but what you build with your own hands will mean considerably more to you."
Sanguinius thought of what Perturabo had said earlier.
"Perhaps you're right, brother," he said quietly.
Perturabo said nothing. His gaze fell on the red sand below, and something flickered in those deep blue eyes.
Three days later, Perturabo's engineering fleet arrived in the Baal System.
Three hundred enormous engineering vessels — each ten kilometres from bow to stern. Each one's belly filled with tens of thousands of Iron Circles and automata, dozens of engineering Titans, and the Mechanicum's enginseers and Forge Masters together with the Iron Council's engineers.
Thousands of support ships followed in their wake, loaded down with equipment, materials, seeds, and instruments stacked in quantities that strained the imagination.
When those engineering vessels appeared in orbit above Baal Secundus, the entire Blood Angels Legion was stunned into silence for the second time.
They had never seen anything like this.
The massive metal constructs descended from the sky, each landing kicking up vast clouds of dust. Ramps dropped. Iron Circles and automata flooded out like a tide, immediately beginning to erect temporary base structures, lay energy conduits, and assemble communication arrays.
Their movements were precise and swift — within a matter of hours, a camp capable of housing several million people had been established.
Then the engineering Titans were dropped from orbit.
BOOM. BOOM.
Every single landing shook the nervous systems of every Blood Angel present — and every mortal and mutant still on Baal Secundus.
They were looking at Titans.
The most powerful war machines ever deployed in the Imperium's ground campaigns. The sacred machines the Mechanicum's priests venerated above all else.
Now fitted out and deployed as construction equipment.
This was genuinely, deeply wrong.
It wasn't just the Blood Angels who felt it — even Sanguinius felt a pang of something watching this.
"Brother, you—"
Perturabo waved a hand.
"Enough. They're just Resentment Intelligence. The Emperor hasn't stopped me. What are you all so worried about?"
"I'm not—"
"Get your sons ready. It's time to start building."
Sanguinius opened his mouth, then thought better of it.
An Iron Circle had already walked over to them.
"My lord, the engineering fleet is prepared. We can begin the transformation of all three worlds at any time."
"The Blood Angels will work alongside your forces in the construction of Baal. Please ensure task assignments are arranged on your side."
"Yes."
Perturabo looked at Sanguinius.
"Raldoron. Begin."
"Yes, Father."
And with that, row after row of red-armoured warriors grabbed oversized entrenching tools and charged forward alongside the automata and Iron Circles.
The entire Baal System began the most ambitious transformation project in its history.
The inhabitants of Baal Secundus were evacuated onto ships. There was no other option — no matter how resilient those mutants were, not even they could survive the conditions required for the work that was about to begin.
The only things that could survive here were Astartes and Resentment Intelligence.
The Iron Circles drove enormous excavation vehicles, peeling back the thick crust of irradiated dust from the planet's surface and loading it into transport carriers.
The carriers hauled the toxic material to designated processing stations, where massive furnaces heated it to tens of thousands of degrees — breaking down the radioactive particles in the extreme heat and rendering them into harmless mineral slag.
The Blood Angels worked their entrenching tools with a frenzy that nearly matched the Iron Warriors — but that initial enthusiasm lasted three days.
By day seven, the Blood Angels had begun to question the nature of existence itself.
Not from exhaustion — Astartes don't tire from physical labour of this kind.
They could fight continuously for dozens of hours without rest. Digging and hauling stone was, for them, genuinely trivial. Many of them regularly helped construct palaces and fortifications — none of that was particularly challenging.
But an engineering project was not a palace. When Perturabo gave the order to begin, thousands of large-scale machines descended on Baal Secundus and the construction began in earnest.
This was an entirely different thing from building a beautiful, elegant, defensively sound palace or fortress.
Efficiency and quality, both at once — that part wasn't the problem.
The problem was the sheer, crushing monotony.
The surface of Baal Secundus was buried under a layer of irradiated dust that had been accumulating for thousands of years. In the worst-affected areas, the deposits stretched to depths of several thousand metres. Looking at the sheer volume of contamination, Perturabo had to privately acknowledge that his brother and the mutants who'd managed to survive on this world were extraordinarily durable by any reasonable standard.
Clearing this volume of toxic material could only be done mechanically — and even so, it was enormously labour-intensive.
And the Blood Angels' contribution? One shovel at a time, loading material into transport vehicles, ferrying it to the processing stations.
Shovel after shovel, and the irradiated dust never seemed to get any smaller. No matter how much they dug, there was always more.
Three days, and most of the Blood Angels had entered a state of existential questioning.
This was nothing like the grand vision of building their home world they had imagined.
Andrel stood on a stretch of ground that had just been cleared, staring at the still-endless red sea stretching ahead of him. His entrenching tool nearly slipped from his hand.
How much longer do we have to dig?
He exchanged a glance with the brother beside him, equally glazed. In both their eyes: pure, undiluted despair.
By day three, Andrel had been struggling to hold himself together. He found himself thinking that dying at the hands of the Taros xenos might genuinely have been preferable to this.
He wasn't alone. Many of the Blood Angels, grinding through this environment day after day, felt a suffocating weight pressing down on them.
Look up — nothing but dust haze in every direction. Breathe in — nothing but irradiated particulate. If they hadn't been Astartes with full protective measures in place, they would already be developing silicosis and a catalogue of other damage.
The sheer tedium had even suppressed the Red Thirst.
Eighteen hours a day, one shovel at a time. Truthfully, most of them would have preferred boarding a hostile warship and taking a suicide mission over spending another moment here.
But they didn't stop.
Because their father was working alongside them.
Sanguinius was personally operating a heavy boring machine — the enormous drill bit grinding shrieking sparks from the rock face, the roar of it carrying for kilometres in every direction.
His wings were folded tight. His golden hair was tied back with a simple cord. His face was streaked with grey dust, and somehow still couldn't manage to look anything less than handsome.
He felt, inexplicably, a surge of genuine excitement as he worked — something about the way the enormous drill punched through solid rock under his guidance was extraordinarily satisfying. Rock that would have taken considerable effort to break with his bare hands was reduced to shattered rubble in an instant by the machine. He couldn't quite describe what it was, and he would not have admitted to his sons that he was actually having a wonderful time — because their experience of this was markedly different.
"Why are we doing this?"
Andrel was having a quiet breakdown.
Nobody answered him.
In the distance, engineering Titans were scooping up tonnes of irradiated dust with each pass of their enormous buckets — accomplishing in a single movement what it would take dozens of Astartes an entire day to match.
The Iron Circles and automata worked with perfect, continuous efficiency — precise, fast, never stopping, never complaining.
Compared to them, this group of warriors looked decidedly like raw recruits.
Andrel stood there in a minor daze, but watching his brothers working their entrenching tools until the blades were a blur, he gritted his teeth and started digging again.
The transformation of Baal Secundus continued steadily.
The irradiated dust was shovelled up load by load and delivered to the furnaces for breakdown.
The refined harmless slag was repurposed as foundation material for roads and structures.
Artificial topsoil — and other substances of unclear composition — was spread across the surface by Iron Circles and automata, truckload after truckload. Black earth spread outward in slowly expanding patches. The red sea began, gradually, to retreat.
The Blood Angels moved through phases: from complaining, to silence, to a kind of resigned numbness.
They learned to shovel with the most energy-efficient technique. They learned to identify which categories of irradiated dust required separate processing protocols. They learned the precise timing for taking a quiet moment's rest whenever an engineering Titan passed nearby.
During breaks, they sat on the freshly laid ground and watched the massive machines at work in the distance, talking about nothing much in particular.
"What do you think that lord is actually like?"
One Blood Angel — golden-haired, normally handsome, currently indistinguishable from everyone else under the grime — voiced the question.
Andrel was sitting beside him, holding a ration bar. An Olympia speciality, grape-chocolate-liver flavour.
He would have preferred the herbal-corn-fermented-soy-milk flavour, but his brothers had already taken every last one of those.
"No idea."
Andrel took a large, deliberate bite and let himself enjoy it for a moment.
"But I don't think he's a bad person."
"Obviously — would a bad person swap out our star and rebuild Baal for us?"
The brother beside him, working through a bitter-gourd-citrus-fermented-tofu variety, interjected.
"Doesn't necessarily follow."
The younger warrior pushed back.
"Maybe he has some kind of ulterior motive. All that armour and weapons just given away, and now building our home world — maybe this lord is the same as Lords Fulgrim and Ferrus Manus—"
"Enough. Watch your mouth."
Andrel cut that line of conversation off.
Then he glanced around, confirmed that no one nearby seemed to be paying attention to them, and leaned in conspiratorially.
"Word is this lord has a very long memory. Don't let yourselves get caught."
"Anyway, I'm telling you, I—"
In the distance, Perturabo was standing on a temporary observation platform, watching the Blood Angels working and resting below.
Sanguinius stood beside him, taking a break.
Perturabo's mouth twitched slightly. His sharp gaze was fixed on several of the smaller warriors — chatting and laughing one moment, pulling expressions of earnest diligence the next.
"Your sons don't seem particularly good at enduring hardship either."
"They may not be accustomed to this kind of construction work yet," Sanguinius said with a rueful smile.
"Did you really think building a few palaces and fortresses counted as engineering? That level of difficulty and they're already struggling — and these are the people who claimed their wills were forged in the crucible of Baal. You may need to do some work on their perspective."
Sanguinius said nothing again. He looked at those red figures labouring in the dust — one shovel at a time, one stone at a time, one load at a time — and something quietly ached in his eyes.
Their movements weren't as clumsy as they had been on the first day. They had found a rhythm, and with it came their own kind of efficiency.
"Do you know what they're thinking right now?"
Sanguinius said.
Perturabo shook his head.
"They're thinking about why you've asked them to do this."
"Does it trouble them?"
"I believe so."
Perturabo looked at his brother. Those eyes of his were genuinely something — they could make a person feel hope in their weakness and, in their strength, make them feel genuinely seen. And it was real.
"You asked me earlier — when my sons look back one day, what will they remember?"
Perturabo's gaze settled on the Blood Angels below.
"I want to see what your sons remember. When they have built Baal with their own hands — if they survive long enough to think back on this moment — what will it be?"
Sanguinius stared at him for a moment, then a smile crept across his face.
"Brother, you're quite strange sometimes."
Perturabo didn't answer.
Sanguinius flew back down toward the heavy boring machine. He had developed something of an attachment to it.
"What is this?"
Andrel and several of his brothers stood at the edge of a deep pit, staring down. Heavy radiation and a smell that defied easy description rose from below.
At the bottom — something that was either dark red or deep green, resembling extremely unpleasant sludge.
Everyone present was having a quiet crisis.
"Your task is to clear out this former waste-processing pit, which has since become a mixture of irradiated sand and various other accumulated matter. You have several days to complete it."
An Iron Circle delivered this information without emotion.
"Why us?"
"Your advance direction happened to bring you here."
"Surely something like this is a job for the engineering machines. Or for you."
Andrel attempted to redirect responsibility.
The Iron Circle simply shook its head.
"This is your assignment. The large machines are occupied elsewhere and will not be allocated to a site of this scale. You will need to handle it yourselves. If the other teams complete their quotas for the day, they may be available to assist."
The Iron Circle walked away. It hadn't lied — it had its own work to attend to.
Andrel and the others turned desperate, hopeful eyes on the brothers working not far away. But those brothers — who had been driving their entrenching tools with frantic energy only moments ago — had inexplicably slowed to a thoughtful pace. Several of them had even begun carefully wiping sweat from their brows.
Through full environmental protection suits.
There's nothing to wipe.
Andrel stared at them with a profound sense of being abandoned.
The unidentifiable gases drifting up from below were making his stomach turn, and the sludge at the bottom had a texture that communicated wrongness from a distance.
Andrel clenched his jaw, made a decision, and jumped straight in. The others, seeing no other option, followed.
The impact of landing in the sludge punched the breath out of all of them.
No one allowed themselves to think too much about what they were touching. The entrenching tools moved — and somewhat to their bewilderment, the actual physical resistance of the material was considerably less than irradiated dust, far less than cutting through an enemy. And yet Andrel felt, with absolute certainty, that his entrenching tool was a thing he would never be able to regard the same way again.
He thought he could feel the tool's machine spirit screaming in his mind.
Entrenching tools don't have machine spirits. This was purely Andrel's imagination — because the ones actually screaming were the warriors.
For several consecutive days, the surrounding Blood Angels could hear mournful wailing coming from that pit. A few of the brothers, moved by something like pity, approached to investigate helping — but the smell that greeted them at the rim firmly reconsidered that decision on their behalf.
Sorry, brothers. First call on the next boarding action — that's the best we can offer.
It was the most meaningful gesture of solidarity available to them.
Perturabo's mouth curved upward slightly. The grapes in his hand tasted somewhat sweeter.
One month in.
Forty percent of Baal Secundus's irradiated dust had been cleared.
The material that had once blanketed the surface had been heaped into dozens of enormous mounds scattered across the moon — each one encased in thick containment layers, awaiting final processing.
Artificial topsoil now covered fifteen percent of the surface. That black earth gleamed in the new sunlight. The first plants were growing.
They were improved seed stock Perturabo had brought from Olympia — adapted for Baal's conditions, and growing fast.
The Blood Angels were adjusting. Something like routine had settled over them.
Each morning they emerged from their temporary barracks, ate their ration bars, took up their entrenching tools, and followed the Iron Circles and automata to the work sites. They dug, hauled, transported, until the sun dropped — then returned to camp, ate, cleaned off as much of the day as they could, slept, and began again.
The complaints had stopped. They had learned to talk among themselves while working, slack off judiciously when the opportunity presented itself, trade absurd boasts during breaks, and spend the last minutes before sleep imagining what Baal might one day look like.
And Baal Secundus was visibly changing. New green growth gave everyone something to feel hopeful about. Warm sunlight fell across their shoulders — and in those moments, the Blood Angels felt that every shovel, every load, every tedious hour had been worth it.
Month two.
The irradiated dust clearance was complete.
The reddish mounds were demolished, transported to the processing stations, broken down into harmless slag, and used for foundations, roads, or to fill the excavated pits.
Artificial topsoil covered forty percent of the surface. Hundreds of millions of seedlings were growing in that black earth.
The first batch of greenhouses began construction. Perturabo's design was clean and direct — enormous transparent domes, each containing a complete internal ecosystem. Sunlight filtered through the canopy, warming the air, evaporating moisture, forming cloud, cycling rain to feed the growth within. Each greenhouse could sustain one hundred thousand people.
The Blood Angels were now helping build them.
They learned to install the enormous transparent panels, to lay the irrigation networks, to calibrate the climate control systems.
This was considerably more interesting than digging. Their enthusiasm climbed again.
"Captain."
Andrel stood inside a greenhouse that had just had its roof sealed, looking at the crops growing within.
Alvareth stood beside him.
He had completed the Primcast surgery during the first month and returned to Baal. He stood now at two point eight metres — significantly larger and broader than his brothers had known him. Even Raldoron's frame fell short of his, which had stirred quiet thoughts about the surgery in no small number of Legion members.
"What is it?"
"Look."
Andrel pointed toward the distance.
There — a stretch of green crops growing in the sunlight. Wheat, maize, potatoes, vegetables — every kind of plant, standing tall and living in neat, even rows.
"We planted every one of those. Ourselves."
There was something raw and genuine in his voice.
Alvareth said nothing. He looked at the green spreading out before him, and thought of the red dust-storms that had once filled this sky. In those blood-red eyes, something that looked very much like hope was glowing.
Month three.
The transformation of Baal Secundus entered its final phase.
All irradiated dust clearance was complete. Artificial topsoil covered ninety-five percent of the surface. Three large hive city foundations had reached near sixty percent completion. All twenty-two large greenhouses were fully operational and growing food at scale.
The first grapes were planted.
Vast vineyard rows were laid out, and small green clusters hung in their infancy on the frames.
Perturabo had specifically requested this. He had cultivated a specialised stock from Olympia — bred for Baal's conditions, capable of growing outdoors, and with a rapid growth cycle: one harvest per month.
The Blood Angels planted them by hand — one vine at a time, one row at a time.
"These will ripen quickly. When they do, you'll be able to start making wine."
Perturabo stood at the edge of the vineyard and spoke to Sanguinius.
Sanguinius looked at those small green shoots, and before he quite realised it, he was laughing quietly.
This was the happiest he had been since returning to the Imperium.
He had never felt anything like it before.
"Thank you, brother."
His eyes carried a warmth so genuine and direct that Perturabo was briefly caught off guard by it.
"Don't thank me. Your sons planted these."
Three months had passed, and Baal Secundus had been transformed completely.
Hundreds of millions of hectares of farmland had been cultivated. The first crop cycle had already been harvested, and the second planting was underway — fertiliser prepared and applied, Olympian-produced, colourless, odourless, and entirely clean.
But what occupied the Blood Angels' minds most of all was the grapes.
They stood before the vineyard, looking at the vines they had planted with their own hands, and none of them could find words.
Large, plump purple clusters hung from every frame. They could smell the fragrance from a distance, without even needing to approach.
They had imagined they would immediately rush forward, grab the fruit, and devour it — these grapes that had once been almost mythically scarce. But standing here now, looking at this abundance they had created, none of them felt any particular desire to take anything.
Amit stepped forward and very carefully lifted one cluster — the famous Flesh Tearer, in this moment almost delicate with caution, as though afraid to damage something fragile.
"Father, I want to plant some of these in our monastery."
He turned and looked at the Angel.
Sanguinius looked at this son of his — notorious for ferocity — and nodded.
He turned and looked toward the distant figure standing on the observation platform.
Perturabo was there, watching the transformed land below.
Sanguinius flew over and landed before his brother.
"Brother — if the Fourth Legion ever needs anything, the Blood Angels will come. Wherever, whenever. You have only to call, and we will answer."
Perturabo said nothing. He looked at his brother for a moment.
"Your sons did well."
"Yes," Sanguinius said. "They did."
The smile stayed on his face.
The two Primarchs stood side by side, looking out over the reshaped earth, and said nothing more.
Sanguinius took in the transformed Baal Secundus — the mortals who had been returned to the surface, their cheers and laughter visible even from up here — and felt something in his chest he couldn't quite name.
He wanted to get back on the boring machine.
His hands were itching for it.
But their good mood didn't last long.
Because the mortals and mutants dropped to their knees simultaneously, turned toward the Angels, and began to pray.
Perturabo stood on the observation platform and looked at the prostrate figures in the distance. His brow drew together slightly.
Sanguinius stood beside him, the discomfort on his face entirely unconcealed.
The mortals and mutants were kneeling in their thousands — the mass of bowed heads extending from the farmland all the way to the edge of the newly built hive cities. They pressed their foreheads to the black earth, lips moving in prayer.
Even from this distance, Perturabo could hear the words clearly.
"Praise Sanguinius—"
"Praise the Great Angel—"
Sanguinius's wings drew tight. His expression was one of helpless resignation.
"Have you spoken to them about this?"
"Many times."
His voice was quieter than usual.
"From the very first day of my return I told them — I am not a god. They don't listen."
Perturabo's gaze returned to the prostrate crowd.
Their faces were radiant with devotion. Their eyes burned with the light of something fervent and absolute.
They didn't care what Sanguinius had told them. They didn't care about Imperial Truth. They didn't care about the Emperor's edicts. All they cared about was the perfect, winged being before them — the one who had saved them from everything that had tried to kill them.
To them, Sanguinius was a god.
"You know, brother, I encountered something similar once."
Sanguinius turned to look at him.
"On Olympia, when I had just unified the city-states — there were people who tried to make a god of me too. They knelt on the ground and shouted things like 'Lord of Iron' and 'Saviour.'"
"They had suffered oppression for so long that when someone freed them, they gave that person their faith."
"But I am not a god."
"I wasn't saving them either. I needed unity and order to build the world I wanted. That was all."
"I am a lord. Like my adoptive father before me — he was a famous tyrant, and I replaced him, and was harsher than he was, but more capable and considerably better at thinking. His methods, I simply did better."
"Do you want to know how I resolved the problem of faith?"
Something lit up in Sanguinius's eyes.
"I had them imprisoned, and then used them as the vanguard during the conquest of the Olympia system. Consumed them."
"What?"
Sanguinius stared at him.
"There are no gods. If you present yourself as a lord — a ruler — and if no one is actively promoting this kind of thinking, then it fades over time on its own. It's that simple."
"That way they will only fear you because you established order, and obey because of that order — not because you are divine and they were born to serve you. These are two very different things."
"In a more extreme case like yours, my recommendation would be to relocate them entirely. Bring in a different population — people who know nothing of your history, who have no mythology built around you. There's nothing to believe in if there's nothing to believe."
"As for the people who were moved — once you're absent, and the relevant thinking is removed from education, within a generation or two — a few decades at most — the ones who believe will have died, and their descendants will never have learned to."
"Or, if you prefer a more thorough solution: eliminate those who hold these beliefs and replace them with people who don't. The fastest and least complicated option. A number of our brothers have probably reached for this one at some point. The Emperor may have as well."
"Would you like my help?"
Sanguinius was silent for a long time. When he finally spoke, his voice was slightly rough.
"Brother — I can't do that."
Perturabo nodded.
"I know."
"So which option will you choose?"
"Or — will you keep explaining it to them, over and over, while they continue to kneel and continue to see you as a god, and you remain unable to reach them — and in any case the Great Crusade leaves you without the time or attention to do anything about it properly."
He looked at his conflicted brother, genuinely curious to see how he would handle this.
Removing religious belief was a necessity as far as Perturabo was concerned. He would never permit any form of worship to exist in any world under his authority.
Sanguinius was at a loss. He genuinely did not know what to do.
"Father."
Raldoron's voice came from behind.
Sanguinius turned. His son was covered in mud and dust from head to boot.
"Some of the mortals — they would like to see you."
Sanguinius nodded.
"Bring them here."
A few minutes later, several hundred mortals were brought to the base of the observation platform.
There were men and women, old and young.
Their faces still bore the scarring left by years of irradiated dust. Their clothes were worn and plain. But their eyes burned with something extraordinary.
"Great Angel!"
"Lord Sanguinius!"
"Thank you for saving us!"
Perturabo watched from the side, waiting to see what his brother would do.
"Stand up. No kneeling."
"Angel, we—"
"Stand up."
Sanguinius's voice carried an edge that made them flinch. But their heads bowed lower. They had no idea what had offended the god they revered — and the terror of having done so planted thoughts of offering themselves up to appease the divine anger.
Sanguinius was frustrated. But looking at these people, he didn't know what to do with that frustration.
He wanted to shout at them. For a brief moment he even found himself thinking that perhaps Perturabo's more extreme suggestions were worth considering. That thought was dismissed immediately.
He turned and looked at his brother.
He needed help.
"Stand up."
Perturabo noticed the request. He didn't ignore it.
He stepped forward to stand before the crowd, his expression giving nothing away.
The crowd didn't move. They stayed on the ground.
Perturabo walked among them.
"Stand up."
His voice carried a cold edge.
The people felt it like ice moving through them.
They lifted their heads and looked at the figure before them — taller even than the Angel, a colossus in white linen and a green wreath, not armoured, carrying nothing. And they understood, in the way that living things understand danger, that this was also a being to be feared.
This time, they stood. Because they felt that not standing would be genuinely unwise.
"You are also an Angel, my lord — you are also—"
One of them began, trembling.
"I am not a god."
Perturabo cut them off without ceremony.
"Neither is my brother."
"We are simply people who are stronger than you. Nothing more."
"There are no gods. Go. The Baal we rebuilt was not made so you could come here and pray."
"From this day on, no one on Baal may propagate the worship of divine beings."
He glanced at Sanguinius. Now was the moment.
"Those who violate this—" Sanguinius thought for a moment. "Imprisonment."
"Fire."
Perturabo's voice became heavier — carrying a weight that left no room for negotiation, dropping everyone in earshot back to their knees.
"Stand up and go."
He watched them scramble away with no small amount of disorder.
Then he looked at Sanguinius with an expression that conveyed clear disappointment in what he was seeing.
"Is your heart always this soft?"
"They don't understand, brother. Your punishment—"
Sanguinius was visibly pained. But he looked at Perturabo's cold, indifferent eyes, and did not refuse what had been said.
Perturabo's footsteps carried him off the observation platform, leaving only Sanguinius and Raldoron behind.
"My son — do you think I did the right thing?"
"What?"
Raldoron blinked. He hadn't expected his father to ask him something like that.
"The way I've dealt with the mortals all this time. Was it wrong?"
"I don't know. I only know one thing."
"Father — you have never given up on us. And you've never given up on them."
A tired smile crossed Sanguinius's face.
"Thank you."
Raldoron couldn't find anything else to say. He simply stood beside his father.
The good feeling that had come with transforming Baal Secundus was gone now.