"Eden Grant… the Savior; the Emperor of the Imperium?!"
The Lion's gaze hardened the instant he read the words stitched upon the honor banner.
He knew exactly what it meant when words bore the Imperial Aquila and the stamp-seals upon an honor banner. It suggested that the one styling himself "the Savior" had likely prevailed in the political struggles on Terra, seized the authority of the Throneworld, and now held the Imperium's reins.
If that were the case, then things were not the worst they could be. The Imperium would still possess a beating central heart, barely capable of sustaining a crumbling order.
At least it would be better than unbridled chaos.
There was, of course, another possibility—that this man had betrayed the Imperium and founded a rival polity: a Third Imperium rising amid the long night and the warp-stormed dark.
A "Third Imperium"?
The Lion tasted the phrase, his expression growing ever more grave.
His tone cooled. "Zahariel, have you heard any deeds of this Eden Grant? Since when did our Imperium acquire a new Emperor?"
"Your Highness, I have never heard that name."
Zahariel stared at the honor banner as well, displeasure creeping into his voice.
"At least before I fell into that profaned void, I'd heard no rumors of him whatsoever. Perhaps he is a would-be upstart who has risen only in recent years—or a reckless traitor."
After Caliban's fall, warp-storms had soon swallowed their region of space and tangled time itself.
Zahariel and the other Fallen had only returned to realspace about four centuries ago, then continually fled the Dark Angels' pursuit—until another eddy had snatched him away and hurled him down upon this world.
In all that time he had never once heard of any "Savior" named Eden Grant.
The Lion's scion held scant goodwill for this self-proclaimed Savior.
The fellow was far too arrogant—audacious enough to call himself both Savior and Emperor of the Imperium.
Within Imperial dominions, almost no one dared that. The Imperium recognized only one Emperor: the Primarchs' father, the Master of Mankind—the Emperor.
Nor was it only the Lion's scion; the First Primarch—the Lion himself—took no liking to this unseen pretender, even finding him somewhat detestable.
Even when he and Roboute Guilliman and Sanguinius had "founded" that Second Imperium, they had—at most—claimed the title of Regent. None had presumed to reach for that name.
So long as the Emperor endured upon the Golden Throne, who would dare to crown himself with the word "Emperor" and don that diadem?
And yet now someone had done exactly that—openly—and beyond all propriety.
"Could it be that Father has… truly suffered some calamity—or even died?"
The thought flashed up, sharp and salt-bitter. The Lion felt a prickle at the eyes and swallowed it down.
His desire to go to Terra only deepened.
"…I must see Father. I must see him."
So the First Primarch vowed in silence—only to master the surge an instant later, refusing to let any vulnerability show.
Now more than ever, he was the Imperium's lone hope; he could afford no softness.
"Your Highness, perhaps this is merely some madman's self-amusement. We need not worry over it."
Zahariel seemed to sense his gene-sire's mood and offered the thought.
"Hm. That is possible."
The Lion nodded. He too had considered it.
After all, the honor banner's litany included other absurd epithets—"Hope Primarch," "Invincible Primarch," and the like.
An "Invincible Primarch," the most invincible among Primarchs?
He remembered no such brother—neither among those known to history nor the two veiled, unspoken ones.
No one named Eden, and no such "Hope Primarch."
The Lion's mouth quirked in a thin, self-mocking smile.
Perhaps this Eden Grant had read certain proscribed chronicles of the Primarchs and spun himself a counterfeit identity to hoodwink the credulous.
During the Great Crusade, the Lion had led hosts across the stars and seen plenty of petty kings and lunatics tucked away in their backwaters, all styling themselves emperors.
They were quickly dragged from their thrones and forced to kneel before him and swear fealty, without so much as a twitch of defiance.
What he did not say aloud was that—somehow—the name on that banner put him on guard.
Whether it was the man's brazen self-coronation or that leonine golden sigil so close to his own, the Lion found himself affixing the label "nuisance" to this Eden Grant, deep in his heart.
A nuisance second only to that self-regarding Roboute Guilliman.
Since hearing of the Ultramarines Primarch's supposed demise, the First had—now and again—grumbled at him in the privacy of his thoughts. Whether that was longing for his brother, or something else, he could not say.
"Come. Let us go meet this 'Savior;' this 'Emperor of the Imperium'—if the fellow is still here."
The Lion smiled faintly.
He intended to speak with this Savior—firmly—and acquaint him with the Imperium's rules.
Of course, if the man had not betrayed the Imperium nor committed unforgivable crimes—if he were merely ignorant—the Lion would neither strike him down nor mete out undue punishment.
At most, he would order the stripping of those arrogant titles and set the man back upon the proper path.
Fortune favored the fellow, then, to have met this Lion. Had it been the Lion of earlier years—or any of several quick-tempered brothers—the interloper's head would already be rolling for insulting the Father by usurping the title of Emperor.
In these latter years, though, the First Primarch had learned hard patience. Having wrought so much killing through wrath and tragic error, he'd grown steadier and more forbearing.
Unless necessity demanded, he would slay no one of the Imperium; better to bind them together and salvage what remained of a realm tottering at the brink.
"My father—the Emperor—is a pitiless conqueror of iron," the Lion thought, "and thus I followed him as a conqueror. But conquest is not my nature at its core."
He would hunt down every foe of Man; but he would not extort fealty or adulation from Kamas—or any world—by naked force.
At most, he would remove those who oppressed them; whether Imperial subjects chose to follow him thereafter was their own affair.
Such was the First Primarch's confidence: he did not need to threaten. People would follow—they always had.
In brief: he ruled by personal magnetism and innate kingly dominion, not by the Emperor's old calculus of "submit and prosper, defy and perish."
Too many proofs attested to the Lion's power to lead.
And soon enough, the tally would include this so-called "Hope Primarch," the Savior.
"Inform those within: the Imperium's First Primarch—the Lion of the First Legion—has arrived."
Striding toward the fortress wall, the Lion felt not a flicker of concern; such defenses could not bar a Primarch.
Nor were these tribesfolk mad enough to fire upon an Imperial Primarch—their guardian.
Zahariel quickened his pace to hail the wall-watchers and avert needless bloodshed.
He got no farther than a few words.
The fortress's mechanized heavy-battery grid spun up in full, the fanged muzzles ever so slightly slewing to cover the Lion and the column at his back.
The air tensed. The iron-knights drew their blades and formed for battle—though it would do little good against such engines.
"Lord Lion, can you break those… things?"
Hadda and the other iron-knights stared up at the long metal beasts crouched along the parapet, Adam's apples bobbing.
For all their stout hearts, the unknown still prickled their nerves.
…?
"What are they playing at? Do they truly mean to fire—or is this a show of force?"
The Lion's brow tightened.
He cast a glance back over the knightly cohort and eased his blade an inch from its scabbard—ready to flash onto the ramparts and smash those heavy guns.
Then the knights could surge in to seize control.
Minimize the killing.
Fortunately, the guns merely menaced. They never loosed. Under someone's intervention, the pre-heating bled away and the batteries went cold.
Timbers and concrete rumbled; the fortress gate yawned open, as if to welcome them inside.
"So—that fellow means to rattle me."
The Lion marked the ploy without heat; it was far too small to stir a Primarch's temper.
He ordered the knights to dress their lines and close up around him. A warlord should arrive in proper state.
Given the means, he would have mustered his household in gilded plate with full panoply and standards—both for the army's discipline and as respect to the one he came to meet.
Here, there was no such luxury. The iron-knights would stand as his guard.
He did feel a prickle of curiosity.
This Savior had raised a fortress wall in remarkable time.
He wished to see what else the man could do—whether he had truly forged a people into an army.
His armor's internal auspex showed no sign of major vehicles or landers in the vicinity.
Perhaps the Savior, like himself, had been wrecked upon this planet.
If the man's abilities proved real, the Lion might grant him higher honors and take him campaigning at his side.
The next moment checked him. His pupils narrowed.
"Are those… Astartes—no. Closer to Solar Auxilia?"
Through the gate, a force marched out—impressive in bearing.
At their head strode two bipedal walkers—Sentinels by the look—solid assets of the Astra Militarum for reconnaissance, search and destroy.
These two were larger and stouter than standard Sentinels. Each step thudded. Dark-blue livery. Heavy flamers slung beneath the housings.
Their bite, it seemed, was as hard as their stride.
Behind the walkers came twenty warriors in full-enclosure armor—rounded forms akin to power armor, driven by robust motive systems.
Shorter than Space Marines, but projecting more menace than ordinary carapace-armored Solar Auxilia.
Each carried a boltgun, and many wore chainswords at the hip. They looked like killers.
Behind them formed a hundred-odd common soldiers of the Astra Militarum—yet even they wore complete carapace rigs and bore a variety of arms.
Even melta pieces glinted in the ranks.
Within the Guard, this would count as a luxuriously equipped detachment—though the formations were a touch ragged.
A bestial roar rolled up from the corpse piles at the base of the wall the moment the column emerged.
More than twenty mutant raptors, long feigning death, burst from the carrion and hurled themselves at the column.
The response was crisp. The two Sentinels strode to block, heavy flamers belching sheets of burning promethium.
The mutants went to charcoal in a heartbeat—no time even to scream.
The twenty heavy-armored troopers, formations untidy but nerves steady, advanced to finish the survivors with boltguns and chains.
Meat flew.
The raptors' talons and barbs could find no purchase on the thick plates.
They were, to the Lion's eye, scaled-down Space Marines—and fearsome.
"Your Highness—what are those units?"
Zahariel's gaze had sharpened. He could feel that, together, those twenty could threaten him.
"You don't know either?"
The Lion shook his head, interest piqued. "Then they must be a new pattern of Imperial troops. Perhaps the Savior's work."
He found, to his own surprise, a flicker of gladness. New strength for the Imperium was worthy of praise.
Judging by the armor, though, they would be costly. Fielding them in mass would be hard.
Likely the Savior had forged a private guard in imitation of the Astartes.
Their numbers could not be large.
Soon the column had cleared the ambush and marched toward the Lion.
He looked from that polished, potent—if slightly showy—force back to his own knights: hair matted, faces smeared, caked with grime.
A dull pang touched him.
The Savior's force—sharp and resplendent—threw the Lion's feudal host into brutal relief.
His men looked ragged—trailing heaps of salvaged iron like tinkerers.
Two castaways upon a primitive sphere; yet the gulf between them gaped.
He had already ceded the first exchange, by aura alone. The talk to come would be harder.
He searched the gate-mouth again—no Savior.
By courtesy, both commanders should stand forth at such a meeting.
The First still bore the chivalric habits of Caliban's orders. He did not set aside ceremony.
Yet this Savior had not appeared. How lofty, to leave him waiting.
"Soldiers. Have your Savior come out to meet me."
The Lion drew a slow breath, held, and did not advance another step.
He had lost the opening, perhaps, but he would take back the field.
It had been long indeed since he had felt such a sting.
"The Savior?"
"Ah—praise the Savior, His Majesty!"
"His Majesty the Savior is almighty! He gave us arms and armor so we could stand against the monsters!"
The First Primarch's words struck like a catechism's trigger.
These tribesmen—in the Savior's ranks—broke into prayer, heaping thanks for their sovereign's mercy and generosity.
Majesty upon majesty, praises upon praises—until the Lion's eyelids twitched.
What shocked him more was the fitness of this gear for common folk: in a single month they had learned and adapted to these weapons, armor, and vehicles—
—and could even coordinate in battle.
"Is this Savior here among your tribe?"
Zahariel stepped forward to ask; he knew these people and spoke more easily with them.
"Guardian-sir, His Majesty the Savior is in the heavens. How could he be inside our tribe?"
One tribesman answered, the others nodding fervently—then launching into another wave of praise.
From their telling:
The gear had simply fallen from the sky a month ago, terrifying half the settlement.
Then they'd gathered it up and used it.
"Heh. Then the fellow is not on this world," the Lion said, part wry, part regretful. "His ship must have hit a warp squall, dumping its cargo hold onto this place."
"Not so, good… new Guardian-sir. Those supplies were His Majesty's gift, he said we were all his subjects, under his protection."
That toppled the Lion's convenient hypothesis.
But their account was a jumble—half devotion and half myth. There was no piecing together a tidy truth, only that the things had dropped from the sky and were easy to use.
That big machine, for instance—study the manual, heed the voice prompts, and it would spew streams of gray mud-slurry and raise a wall in no time.
Not something you harvest from the jungle.
"We will have to unravel this patiently."
The Lion listened to the muddle without losing temper.
"New Guardian-sir," said a tribesman in a general-issue combat suit, awe in his eyes at the giant before him, "what have you brought your army here to do?"
The question stuck in the Lion's throat.
He glanced back at his iron-knights—wide-eyed, like yokels fresh through a city gate—and felt a twinge of embarrassment.
We came to rescue you? Hardly.
They had a fortress, engines, arms to spare—and could thrash his knights on a parade ground.
Even in the Great Crusade or the Heresy, this would be a fine kit-list for a line command.
The Savior, unseen, had already stolen the Lion's thunder.
Left him with strength in hand and no place to put it.
After a few seconds' silence, he forced out a single, cool line: "We have come… to deliver food. Let us speak inside."
He let it drop there and resumed a lofty reserve.
Truth was, he was tired of talking.
This world was famine-poor.
But he had hauled more than a hundred wagon-loads of precious food here—enough to spare these people from the worst of it, and to spare him needless awkwardness.
Else, with no need of his arms, nothing else to offer, and empty hands—what was he to do? Ask them to follow him out of sheer face?
How mortifying.
Several of the tribesmen looked as though they wished to speak, then swallowed it when the Guardian made no reply.
Soon enough they guided the Lion and his people beneath the fortress gate…
(End of Chapter)
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