Chapter 318: Illusion?
Mortarion declared Ferrus Manus to be the fourth of his most hated Primarchs.
The first was Konrad Curze.
The second, Perturabo.
Incidentally, the third was currently Magnus.
Mortarion despised everything inexplicable—and yet, his brothers had an endless talent for doing inexplicable things in inexplicable situations.
And they always had equally bizarre reasons to justify their actions: logic, intuition, prophecy, psychic visions… or simple madness.
For instance—right now. Vulkan insisted that they go into that eerie tunnel.
After receiving a signal from Ferrus Manus' armor, Vulkan immediately contacted the Iron Hands Legion. At first, those iron-willed Astartes were hesitant and evasive when faced with Vulkan's questions, but under his insistence, they finally admitted that they did not know where their Primarch had gone.
In order to swiftly crush the Eldar forces hiding in the desert, Ferrus had opted for a surprise assault. But when the Iron Hands struck at a dried-out canyon within the sands, a thick mist and the Eldar ambushed them at once.
As for what truly happened in that canyon, the Iron Hands remained absolutely silent. Even under Vulkan's stern questioning, they would only say that the Legion had suffered heavy losses—and that, amid the confusion and the choking fog, their Primarch had vanished.
Mortarion's expression did not change. For the first time, the Lord of Death realized that working with his brothers could bring him a multitude of unique miseries—not just those caused by Konrad Curze.
He vaguely recalled how, in the halls of Malcador, the other Primarchs had described Ferrus Manus as efficient and rational.
Mortarion now suspected that their definitions of "efficient" and "rational" were… very different from his own.
No—he realized—that their reference point for this assessment was probably Konrad Curze.
He began to miss Hades. Or Horus. Even Guilliman, perhaps.
"Vulkan, you truly choose to believe the Iron Hands' "uh," "sorry," and "we can't say"?"
But Vulkan looked back at him with unwavering resolve, and in the Fire-Born Primarch's eyes, Mortarion saw a strange flame kindle—one that felt uncomfortably familiar.
It was the same light he had seen in Guilliman's eyes whenever he spoke of plans and policies.
Mortarion decided to retract his earlier thought that Vulkan was "easy to deal with."
"My brother,"
The giant—even taller and broader than Mortarion—spoke slowly, in a tone so gentle it made the Lord of Death's skin crawl.
"We should trust our brothers, Mortarion. I believe our brother's sons must have reasons they cannot share. You see—aside from the details of that battle, they told us everything they knew. From their voices, I could hear the anxiety they feel for their Primarch's disappearance."
Mortarion let out a derisive snort. He wasn't sure whether he was mocking Vulkan's naïveté—or himself, for constantly enduring such needless torment.
The Death Lord sneered, "Then by all means, believe them."
Vulkan, however, detected something in Mortarion's tone that made him uneasy. He did not understand why his brother—who had been cooperating so well just moments ago—now sounded so cold, so dismissive.
Mortarion's unspoken meaning was clear: he did not believe them.
Why would he not trust their brother's Legion? True, there had been friction between him and Ferrus, but they were both sons of the Imperium. Such distrust seemed unjustified.
Perhaps, if Vulkan knew of Mortarion's clashes with Konrad Curze, he would understand him better.
But, alas, that information had been sealed away.
As Vulkan continued to speak his useless words, Mortarion carefully studied the great obelisk before them—and the gate beneath it, its surface carved all over with strange runes.
Mortarion's eyes suddenly widened.
Even though the Lord of Death could not read the Eldar tongue, he recognized something disturbingly familiar in the arrangement of those runes.
This was…
Mortarion stared hard at the blasphemous sigils, the words of Vulkan fading into meaningless noise beside him. The Lord of the Salamanders seemed to be saying something about intuition again, but when he noticed Mortarion's sudden stiffness, he called out to his brother.
"Mortarion? Mortarion!"
It was a teleportation device!
Behind the toxic mask, Mortarion drew in a sharp breath. The xenos mechanism was still active. What they were seeing was only the outer shell—a crude layer of defenses. The real structure, the true machinery, lay beneath the surface.
Teleportation could occur at any moment. Mortarion had no idea how extensive the device's range might be, nor how it would trigger—but judging from the size of the construct, the reach would not be small.
That meant anyone standing nearby could be transported without warning. And retreating now was already too late.
"I'm going underground with you. We move immediately, Vulkan."
Mortarion's voice rang out, cutting off the Fire-Born's words. Vulkan blinked, surprised, but the Lord of Death only gave him a few curt instructions, offering no explanation for his sudden change in attitude.
Just as Vulkan had chosen to trust the Iron Hands, he now chose to trust Mortarion. Though confusion lingered, he was genuinely relieved that his dour brother was willing to join him in searching for Ferrus Manus.
Perhaps, Vulkan thought, that strange dream he'd mentioned earlier had taken root after all.
Before the campaign began, he had dreamt of a stranger—smiling, teasing, urging him to follow his instincts.
That stranger had called him "a child who needs guidance."
Then, a sudden thought crossed Vulkan's mind: perhaps Mortarion had seen a similar dream?
The tunnel was long and narrow, winding endlessly into darkness.
They marched forward without hesitation—into the serpent's gaping maw.
From deep within, something made a faint, indistinct sound.
A strange sense of familiarity crawled over Mortarion's spine. He tightened his grip on his scythe, checked once more that the Death Guard Techmarines followed close behind, and confirmed that their anti-psyker weapons were armed and ready to fire.
The walls were etched with warped carvings, studded with glittering shards of unknown crystal.
The deeper they went, the stranger it became—hazy, unreal, dreamlike.
Mortarion felt his patience—and his sanity—eroding bit by bit.
The psychic energy here was growing stronger.
He cast a glance at Vulkan.
Something was wrong with the Fire-Born's expression—he was glaring at the carvings with open fury.
Mortarion called his brother's name, testingly.
Vulkan turned toward him, eyes dazed, as though he didn't understand why Mortarion had spoken.
After confirming that Vulkan's life readings on his armor showed no anomaly, Mortarion muttered something vague and shifted the topic—but quietly slowed his pace, falling a step behind, ready for anything.
When a flickering point of light appeared in the distance, they found the first chamber branching off from the tunnel.
From within came shouts—and screams.
Vulkan, leading the way, took one look inside and roared, charging in with his Salamanders at his heels.
But the moment the last of them crossed the threshold, a psychic barrier flared to life at the doorway—cutting the two Primarchs apart!
Mortarion reacted instantly, hurling a black grenade at the barrier—but it fizzled uselessly. The psychic saturation here was too intense.
The Lord of Death stormed forward, rage mounting. Through the shifting energy field, he saw a group of ragged, half-mad humans gathered around a dying Eldar witch, shouting and jeering.
A man dressed like a tribal priest was torturing the xenos sorceress.
Vulkan charged forward.
The Primarch's fury was incandescent—he struck the frenzied humans aside like dust, moving straight toward the dying Eldar witch. Yet her attire was unlike any of the Eldar Mortarion had seen on this world—what little remained of her garb was darker, more twisted, more profane.
"Vulkan!"
Mortarion shouted the Fire-Born's name, his voice echoing through the tunnel—but Vulkan didn't seem to hear him at all. It was as if the Lord of the Salamanders had forgotten Mortarion even existed. He stumbled toward the witch with a look of desperation, almost grief.
Did Vulkan know this Eldar? Mortarion remembered a passing conversation with Malcador—about how Vulkan hailed from Nocturne, a world once ravaged and enslaved by Dark Eldar raids, until Vulkan himself had ended that bloody history.
Mortarion suddenly understood.
Expressionless beneath his mask, he cursed under his breath.
He knew now—this was a psyker-forged illusion.
And Vulkan had walked straight into it.
Those damnable Eldar.
Because the tunnel was too narrow, the Wraith Knights couldn't enter (and Mortarion would never unleash a Wraith Knight in front of Vulkan). He had brought only a detachment of Death Guard, several soulless blanks disguised as "Hadeshound," and a few Techmarine missile servitors.
He found himself, absurdly, missing Hades.
After a quick calculation, Mortarion judged that Vulkan could survive this—at least for an hour. The Lord of Death would conserve his limited ammunition for what lay ahead.
He glanced back, confirming the Techmarine adepts and Death Guard were still following close.
Still no sign of Eldar resistance.
They pressed on through the mist. Soon, another chamber appeared along the tunnel—and from within came Ferrus Manus's roar.
Mortarion had expected as much this time.
Peering through the warped psychic haze, he saw Ferrus locked in combat with a monstrous creature—its upper body human, its lower body a serpent's coil.
Mortarion couldn't tell why Ferrus looked so distraught, but he suspected the illusion was drawing on the Primarch's memories as well.
Compared to Vulkan, Ferrus's situation looked far more dangerous.
Still, Ferrus seemed close to victory.
Mortarion thought for a moment.
Even if this was an illusion, killing a Primarch outright was nearly impossible—such constructs were meant to trap, not destroy. And now the device was holding two of them.
If this was indeed a psychic illusion, then all Mortarion needed to do was destroy its power source.
There was no point engaging the illusions themselves.
The Techmarine's initial scans had shown no major side tunnels—so the power source had to lie deeper in. Mortarion pictured what he might find there: witches wired into machines, burned alive as psychic batteries.
The thought actually lightened his mood a little.
So he kept going.
The fog grew thicker.
The third chamber emerged from the haze.
The Lord of Death walked steadily along the passage.
He turned his head to glance inside—curious, almost morbidly so.
He wondered what illusion he would see.
A dying Hades?
His corrupted Death Guard?
Perhaps Calas Typhon, gasping out his final breath?
He had lived through all those already. Mortarion almost wanted to see what else this illusion could conjure—what it thought could still unnerve him.
But when his eyes fell upon the vision, Mortarion stumbled back a step.
His pale face drained even further of color.
He saw himself.
No—not the corrupted reflection he had once imagined, not the daemon-twisted figure of nightmare.
The illusion couldn't even fully replicate him—the form was fragmented, half-shaped, flickering like a broken image.
He saw…
No. No, no, no, no. This was false. It couldn't be real.
He refused to believe it.
He refused to accept it.
Mortarion backed away, shaking his head violently—and when he turned around, he realized he had reached the tunnel's end.
Beyond lay a vast hall.
Psychic lightning arced through the air; an archway descended from above, humming with power.
And in that instant, Mortarion understood the source of that sickening familiarity.
He had seen something like this before—deep beneath the Imperial Palace on Terra, when he had once stumbled upon one of the Emperor's secrets.
At the time, Mortarion had known very little.
Malcador had persuaded him to leave—using vague words, half-truths, and references to "friends of the Emperor" that Mortarion had never quite identified.
The Emperor… studying xenos technology?
No— no, no, no. That much Mortarion could understand. Even within the Death Guard, there were secrets of similar nature, forbidden experiments justified by "necessity."
But what was this doing on this planet…?
Mortarion's hand instinctively went to the black grenade at his belt. He opened his vox-link to call the Techmarine team—and realized he was completely alone.
His breathing remained steady; the Lord of Death forced himself to calm. He stayed alert, pulled the pin on a black grenade, crushed it in his gauntlet, and let the dark powder coat his armor. Then, moving slowly and deliberately, he began to withdraw.
At least now he had seen the device's true form.
Mortarion was certain they would not be suddenly teleported away—but this construct would not be destroyed by a few grenades. He doubted even a Wraith Knight could shatter it.
Still, this was the source of power feeding the illusion.
As he weighed his next move, psychic ripples stirred beneath the archway. Reflections shimmered into being on the floor around his boots. Mortarion couldn't tell— were these echoes of the past, the present, or the future? Nor could he tell where the originals of these shadows truly were.
Within the vast hall built from alien bone, two Eldar stood facing one another—sharp-eared, long-fingered silhouettes outlined by dim light.
Mortarion found it strange that he could hear them speaking at all.
But he had no way to silence them now.
The one with the sharper ears spoke first:
"Steel must make his own choice. We cannot choose for him. The Smith has already been chosen—he loves him more than we foresaw. That makes interference… difficult."
Steel… Ferrus Manus?
The Smith… Vulkan?
The other, a snaggle-toothed Eldar, interrupted:
"And what of the Guardian? The river's course has changed too many times already."
Mortarion's breath grew heavier.
He didn't fully understand their words—but something in their tone felt like an insult.
"Hard to say," the sharp-eared one replied.
"If he accepts, then far in the future, his fate will be bound to that of the aliens—not just ours."
"And that," the snaggle-toothed one asked, "is that good or ill?"
"A mixture of both."
Then the vision faded—gone as if it had never been.
. . .
(Author's Note)
In the original canon, the planet Ibsen is indeed a deeply strange place—dreamlike, unreal.
It was assaulted by three Legions: the Death Guard, Salamanders, and Iron Hands.
Both the Salamanders and Iron Hands have short stories tied to this campaign.
For the Iron Hands, it's "Feat of Iron." I couldn't find an official Chinese translation, so I read through parts of the original text.
The Eldar prophecy, Vulkan's insistence on entering the tunnels, the underground visions witnessed by Mortarion—and even the scene of the Emperor's "guidance" to Vulkan—all appear in the original material.
But in this retelling, they have been heavily rewritten and transformed—only the shell of canon remains.
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