"How could he just disappear all of a sudden?"
Mortarion sat rigidly on the edge of the bed, his fingers pressed deep into the bedding that still held traces of warmth. He stared at the hollow left in the folds, as if at any moment a human shape might reappear there.
The night raid had been a sudden decision. Mortarion had looked at Caelan's exhausted face after days of battle and could not bear to wake him.
But no one expected that in a single night, Caelan would vanish like morning dew.
Typhon's boots scraped back and forth across the stone floor, pacing around like a caged beast.
The metal ornaments at his waist clattered with each anxious step, his muttered words spilling between heavy breaths:
"Could the teacher have gone out to look for us? Then why didn't he tell Debbie?"
"Where did he go? He couldn't have just left us… No. No, impossible…"
Mortarion lowered his gaze. "Typhon, your heart is in turmoil."
Typhon froze mid-step, the harsh scrape of his boots echoing through the room. "You're one to talk! You think you're calm? If your heart isn't in turmoil, then why are you sitting there looking so desolate? What's that supposed to be?"
"I am thinking, Typhon." Mortarion's fingers paused on the bedding. He slowly raised his head, his pale face in shadow like a cold mask. "You are only running in circles in panic."
"What have you thought of then?"
"Father would not leave without reason." Mortarion's voice was low and steady. "His toil and wandering are always because of me and my brothers. If he left me, it must be because one of my brothers needs him."
Typhon clenched and unclenched his fists, joints cracking. "And us? Don't we need him too?"
Mortarion's eyes lifted to Typhon. 'Who is this "we"? He is my father. What does he have to do with you? We are father and son. You are only teacher and student.'
Mortarion rose slowly. "He will return."
"On what grounds?"
"He will return." Mortarion's deep voice trembled in the air. "Because he promised me, before I grew up, he would not leave."
Typhon tilted his head upward, his gaze climbing Mortarion's towering three-meter frame. "You haven't grown up yet?"
"I don't think I am."
"And if… if he doesn't come back?"
"Then it would mean one of my so-called brothers was selfish and willful enough to drag him away from me. And I'll personally pay him a visit to demand an explanation."
His voice was like stagnant water, each word sinking heavily into silence, stirring no ripple.
"But now," Mortarion's tone hardened into steel, "we must finish what remains undone. The people of Barbarus are waiting. Liberation cannot be delayed. If we falter because of this, it only proves we are not resilient enough!"
Typhon's pale knuckles trembled, his eyes burning with jealousy and frustration. "You're so noble, aren't you? So untouchable! You can look down and pity everyone from above! You are a primarch, a prince born high, with the throne of the Imperium waiting for you."
"Well, I can't do that. I'm not you, I cannot be as ressilent. I'm just a man, your companion, a scribe, born to crawl through the mud! The teacher was the only one who reached out to me! I have no one but him!"
Mortarion's voice spread like dead fog, slow and heavy. "You are wrong, Typhon. No throne waits for me. Only barren lands to be reclaimed. I was not born to rule, but to endure for duty."
"In my veins flows not royal blood, but the poison fog of Barbarus. I, like you, like them, am a Barbaran, one of the souls struggling for survival in this rotten soil, yearning for redemption."
"As for Father, yes, like you, I have only him left."
"But I am more resilient than you."
Typhon's lips twisted in a sneer. "Ha, so you can calmly pretend not to care?"
Mortarion's voice was slow. "I can hide my care."
Typhon's laugh was sharp. "Like those cowards who kneel and wait for death? Hide it so long you forget how to stand?"
"You are wrong again, Typhon." Mortarion's voice was firm. "I am more resilient. I will not forget Father's teachings. For me, endurance is not suppression nor weakness, it is tempering."
Tempred emotions do not vanish. They ferment, swell, and grow in the dark… until the vessel bursts.
"What are you two muttering about?"
The voice came suddenly from behind, breaking the tense standoff.
Mortarion's shoulders eased slightly. He and Typhon turned to see Caelan rubbing his eyes, sitting up slowly from the bed as if he had only taken a nap.
Caelan's gaze moved between them. "What happened? Why are you arguing?"
Typhon's eyes reddened, his voice trembling. "Teacher…"
"What's this? You're grown men, why are you crying?"
Caelan wiped his tears gently with a fingertip, like comforting a child. And Typhon was indeed still a child; he had taught many like him. Children grow twisted when they lack love in youth. Unless they are born bad seeds like Erebus, those deserve a bullet, or several.
Typhon's tears still streaked his face, but Mortarion stepped forward.
His massive frame loomed like an iron wall, shadow engulfing Caelan.
"Father," his voice rumbled from deep in his chest, each word heavy, "where did you go?"
Caelan raised his head, meeting Mortarion's dark eyes. That gaze was like two blunt knives, scraping his nerves inch by inch.
He knew Mortarion too well. Without a proper explanation today, he might never sleep again.
"I just met another of your brothers." Caelan patted Mortarion's tense arm, as if calming a beast. "Though I don't yet understand the mechanism, I seem to be switching between two worlds."
He still did not know how he traveled, but the common factor was always the primarchs.
Despite many crossings, he had not found the pattern. Not rank, not preference. His three favorites of the Second Imperium had not yet returned.
So he'd concluded, it was random.
The Primarchs were equally vital to humanity. If chosen by preference, it would plant disaster. Randomness was the fairest way.
Curze was first purely by chance. Mortarion, Caelan mused, seemed touched by numerology, seventh to return, fourteenth from the end.
Perhaps this "shift" wasn't a coincidence, but fate correcting itself.
He explained his theory. Mortarion was silent long, then asked softly: "So… did I deprive a brother of his chance?"
Caelan added carefully, "It is only my theory."
Mortarion fell silent. Caelan's guesses were often close to the truth. Conflict churned in his heart. He had once hated his brothers who stole his time. Now he himself was the thief. Guilt weighed like lead.
"Father," Mortarion's voice was thunderous, "which brother did I replace?"
"Jaghatai Khan."
If not for Caelan's intervention, Jaghatai's life was already on track, but not loyal to the Imperium or Emperor.
His White Scars were always apart, deliberately distant from other legions. During the Heresy, they wavered between sides, nearly siding with Horus. They withheld aid, defied Dorn's orders, and hesitated at Horus's lies. Yet Jaghatai's reason drove him to seek truth, finding Magnus's soul fragment in Prospero's ruins, uncovering the Heresy's dark secret.
Horus sent Mortarion to sway him, but it led to battle. Mortarion was ill-suited to persuasion, but Horus had few choices. Fulgrim possessed, Angron and Curze mad, Lorgar treacherous, Alpharius and Omegon secretive, and Magnus shattered. Who else could he send? Perturabo?
In the end, Jaghatai chose loyalty to the Imperium. Even after death and rebirth, he declared: "This must be Father's power."
Yet his deep suspicion of the Emperor remained, a seed of betrayal. Had his path shifted slightly, he might have chosen as Mortarion did, bowing to Chaos.
Caelan could teach him little, only tell him truth as with Mortarion: the Emperor was no saint, but he fought for humanity's survival. Misunderstandings piled, worsened by the Emperor's secrecy.
Mortarion lowered his gaze. "When will you see him again?"
Caelan smiled tiredly. "Probably after I fall asleep."
On Barbarus, he closed his eyes, opened them on Chogoris. On Chogoris, he slept and returned to Barbarus.
"Father," Mortarion said quietly, "if you see him… please, deliver a message for me."
....
Chogoris, Talskars Tribe.
In the main tent, Jaghatai stared at the empty bed where the stranger had vanished. The wool mat still held a hollow, faint warmth struggling in the cold air.
At dawn, they had returned with Haelun's women, children, and livestock. Back in the tent, he had demanded truth. Caelan revealed not only why he was there, but deeper truths, buried truths flooding like a broken galaxy, harsher than he imagined.
"Master of Mankind…"
Jaghatai's fingers pressed his chin, voice grinding the title between his teeth.
His father had created him, gifted him powers beyond mortals. He and his brothers should have thrived together on Terra's fertile soil, not been scattered across the galaxy, turned into strangers who were most familiar yet most distant.
The schemes of the Chaos Gods had cast them apart. Some brothers had already returned to the Imperium, but many still struggled alone on alien worlds.
Jaghatai bore no resentment. He did not hate the Emperor. The Emperor had failed to protect them from the Chaos Gods, yes, but the fault lay with the gods, not him.
The Emperor sought to reclaim him. The Four Gods sought to corrupt him. They played the galaxy as a board, wagering humanity's future, staking everything in their game.
Yet none of them ever asked the primarchs, those torn by fate, whether they wished to be pawns.
Jaghatai understood: they did not care. Just as humans never care for the ants beneath their feet.
He felt little affection for the Emperor. From Caelan's description alone, he knew the Emperor was a stubborn tyrant. But he loathed the Four Gods even more; their naked malice was revolting.
As for Caelan, these truths should have been uncovered by his own hand. When he united Chogoris and returned to the Imperium, he would have sought them himself. But Caelan had robbed him of that chance, dumping all the truths upon him at once.
He hated Caelan. Caelan was just like the Emperor, self-righteous. Believing all primarchs needed his teaching, believing it his duty to reveal the truth, then leaving without warning.
Yet Jaghatai craved the truth.
Caelan called himself an ordinary teacher. That self-description was apt. His teaching was ordinary, stuffing truths into him like rote feeding, clumsy and graceless.
But Caelan's bluntness ensured fairness. Absolute objectivity did not exist; it was only an ideal. Every telling carried the speaker's imprint. Without that, Jaghatai would never have believed a stranger's words.
Perhaps that was Caelan's teaching method.
"Then you are at least a barely competent teacher," Jaghatai muttered. His original judgment had been "competent," but Caelan's sudden departure forced him to add "barely." What teacher abandons his student without warning?
The fragments Caelan left were like broken puzzle pieces, gnawing at Jaghatai's mind. The unanswered truths burned in him like a fire he could not quench. He longed to uncover them himself, not inherit secondhand wisdom.
But the answers were so close, and he could not refuse them. He was not one of those brothers who had met Caelan as infants. He did not need Caelan's guidance. But he needed a narrator to tell him the truth.
Caelan was that man.
And now Caelan was gone. Jaghatai did not know where or when he would return. Only riddles and waiting remained.
He admitted that the stranger had won.
He would march to war. First to conquer the grasslands, then the mountains of Chogoris, until every star in the galaxy bowed before Chogoris's riders.
Jaghatai lifted the felt curtain of the main tent. Outside, the warriors of Talskars feasted around the bonfire, devouring roasted meat and drinking mare's milk wine.
As his figure appeared in the firelight, every warrior lowered their drink, fists pressed to chests in salute.
"Khan!"
Jaghatai was the new Khan. None disputed it. He was Ang Khan's foster son, he had avenged Ang Khan, and he had nearly annihilated the Haelun tribe.
The men supported him. The women and children adored him. Who else could lead Talskars better?
"Brothers! Sisters!"
His wolf-like gaze swept the gathered tribe, his voice deep and resonant like a morin khuur.
"Long Heaven has taken our Khan-father! The grassland has lost its eagle!"
"We have sacrificed Haelun's blood to honor him! But hatred on the grassland is thicker than cattle hair! Tribal slaughter fiercer than wolf packs!"
"The same pastures feed us! The same blood flows in our veins! Why let hatred stain this land?"
"I swear to end this chaos! I will bind all tribes together like leather thongs on a horse pole! Let peace cover the grassland like spring grass!"
"Long Heaven above, warriors who will walk with me, raise your blades! Let Heaven witness our oath!"
"Long Heaven above, for the Khan!" The warriors roared like thunder. Dozens of curved blades flashed silver in the firelight.
"We will be golden eagles soaring the nine skies!" Jaghatai cried, his hawk eyes piercing the night. "With talons to tear wolves! With sharp eyes to watch the plains! Let all tribes look up to our wings!"
"Golden Eagles! Golden Eagles!" The warriors' shouts shook the bonfire, flames leaping wildly.