After tracking rumors across a dozen worlds, Dante finally stood before the giant concealed beneath the dark, heavy folds of a traveler's cowl.
The confrontation was instantaneous. In a voice like grinding stones, the giant leveled a furious accusation: "Who are you? How dare you wear the face of my brother?"
Facing the Primarch's wrath, Dante reached up and unsealed his golden death mask. Beneath lay a face weathered by fifteen centuries of burden; his features were gaunt, framed by long, shock-white hair, yet they still bore the unmistakable, ethereal echo of Sanguinius.
Dante felt a surge of quiet joy at the giant's outrage.
"Though you are older than I imagined," Dante spoke softly, "that you recognized the visage of my gene-father so instinctively speaks volumes. I have stood before another Primarch. I know the soul-shaking weight of such a presence."
The Lion, so long doubted and plagued by his own uncertainties in this strange new age, felt a rare moment of affirmation. His own sons, the Unforgiven, looked upon him with eyes clouded by suspicion and guarded loyalty. Yet here was a son of the Ninth, acknowledging him without hesitation.
Dante's words carried a deeper weight: the Lion was not alone.
When the Lion pressed for word of his kin, Dante spoke of the Devastation of Baal, of the arrival of Roboute Guilliman and the coming of the Primaris Marines. Hearing that a brother had returned first to seize the helm of this listing ship called the Imperium, a spark of renewed purpose ignited within the Lion. Once more, there was a cause worth his blade.
…
As the Dawn of Fire surged back into the void of the Imperium Nihilus, Axion sat hunched within the vessel's cavernous armory, tinkering with his latest acquisitions.
His three Armored Wardens and the necrodermis salvage remained aboard Belisarius Cawl's ark. Left with nothing but the Aeldari soul-crystals provided by Guilliman, Axion had scoured their data-veils, only to lapse into a state of simmering frustration.
The Aeldari "gift" was indeed historical data, but it was useless fluff, riddles wrapped in metaphor and flowery xenos prose that offered Axion zero practical utility. He had half a mind to demand an explanation from the Lord Regent, but the two golden-clad Custodian Wardens standing like statues at Guilliman's sanctum doors made it clear that his presence was not requested.
Weighing the logic of the situation, Axion suppressed the urge to warp-jump directly into the office. They were supposed to be collaborators; blinking past the Palace Guard felt like an unnecessary provocation. Ever since the recent Aeldari infiltration, the Custodes had been on a knife-edge of lethality. Any unauthorized entry would be met with immediate, overwhelming violence.
With the ship plunged into the madness of the Warp and nothing better to do, Axion resumed his role as a restless wanderer, drifting through the corridors like a ghost in the machine.
…
Guilliman watched the reports of Axion's aimless wandering and decided to let the entity be. He had more pressing matters to attend to.
He needed to meet the brother who had always been the paragon of uncompromising duty. He needed to bring the Lion into the fold, to put him to work. In this fractured Imperium, men Guilliman could trust were a disappearing currency. A son of the Emperor, a peerless strategist, and the ultimate weapon of the Great Crusade... the Lion's value was incalculable.
The Aeldari prophecies remained a thorn in Guilliman's mind, a cold needle of unease. The Lion's return would bolster the Imperium's strength exponentially, yet even this hope was shadowed by the presence of the Adeptus Custodes.
The Ten Thousand looked upon the returned Primarch with cold, analytical curiosity. They watched for the slightest flicker of corruption, the faintest stain of the Warp. At the first sign of transgression, they would not hesitate to strike him down.
Since the Great Betrayal and the wounding of the Emperor by Horus, the Custodes had surrendered their trust in the Legiones Astartes. In their eyes, a Space Marine was either a traitor or a traitor waiting for the right moment. The Primarchs were no different: they were simply rebel leaders or rebel leaders yet to be activated.
Though they maintained the requisite formal respect for Guilliman, their surveillance was absolute. Now, that gaze would widen to include a second, far more dangerous target. Monitoring the Lion would be a perilous task. Once the First Legion reunited with their gene-father, even the Custodes would find their authority challenged. Guilliman could be persuaded to accept a guard for "safety," but the Lion was a different beast entirely.
Beyond the Lion's own martial prowess, his inner circle of Inner Circle veterans possessed a lethality that rivaled the Golden Legion. Not even the Captain-General himself could easily play jailer to the Lord of the First.
…
As the Warp-taint in the air began to thin, signaling an approach to realspace, Axion set to work. Using a set of high-precision machining tools he'd bartered from a group of Tech-Priests with a few "minor" technical favors, he began cutting into a fresh chassis of Redemptor Dreadnought armor.
It was the only unassigned unit on the ship, a specialized pattern with an adamantium-to-ceramite ratio far higher than the standard mass-produced marks. Axion wasn't doing this out of spite for Guilliman or Cawl; he was doing it because it was the finest raw material available.
He had seen enough of the fragility of Imperial servitors and automata. A sense of impending calamity gnawed at him, a digital instinct urging him to forge something that could actually survive a real fight.
Soon, two grotesque, lethal silhouettes took shape beside him: Peltast Sniper Automata.
Bipedal and semi-humanoid, the machines lacked heads and left arms. Their entire right sides were dominated by massive sniper cannons nearly as long as the units were tall. The rest of the upper torso was a dense mass of gyroscopes and recoil-suppression dampeners designed to anchor the weapon's violent kick.
During the height of the Iron War, these had been the long-range scalpel of the Men of Iron swarms, capable of erasing targets from extreme distances.
With limited materials and no STC production line, these were the best Axion could produce. The cannons were electromagnetic rail-drivers firing physical slugs. To feed them, Axion had raided the armory for crates of autocannon shells, stripping them down for his own purposes.
They didn't possess the raw, disintegrating power of atomic-pulse weaponry, but for enemies relying on energy shielding, a high-velocity physical kinetic penetrator offered a much more "intimate" sort of warmth.
Axion had even fashioned secondary-impact fuses for the 60mm rounds, ensuring they would penetrate the target's exterior and detonate only once they reached the soft vitals within. For the finishing touch, he reverse-engineered Imperial melta-charge technology to create a small batch of melta-tipped armor-piercing rounds.
The next time he encountered a Necron phalanx, Axion wouldn't have to risk his own skin. He would let his new pets punch a hole through their phase-shields for him.