Seeing Guilliman sent flying by his own attack, Fulgrim immediately gave chase.
He might not be a match for Zhou Ye, but he absolutely knew how to fight Guilliman. One might even say that in the grand scheme of the universe, there exists a certain rock-paper-scissors dynamic, and Fulgrim was something of a Primarch-killer.
With just two simple, incomplete truths, he had successfully distracted Guilliman and seized the opportunity to land a blow. Of course, he hadn't struck the heart; Guilliman's moment of stunned silence had been too brief. He intended to press his attack.
But he quickly saw that Guilliman had landed right in the middle of Zhou Ye's Honour Guard. The sight enraged him even further.
"You profane, ambitious Guilliman! I'll teach you to use my firstborn's gene-seed to create your legions!!!"
Fulgrim let out a heaven-shaking roar. Guilliman, however, had no time to spare for him. He clutched his chest.
That bastard's sword is poisoned. While not as potent as the toxin Nurgle had prepared for Horus, it was dangerous enough. It was this very poison that had kept Guilliman in a state of living death for ten thousand years. Of course, that time it had been a blade to the throat, disabling his ability to regenerate. This wound wasn't as severe, but it was enough to make Lord Thirteen press down on it, trying to staunch the bleeding.
But...
Zhou Ye's Honour Guard didn't bother with the details. A portion of them simply lifted Guilliman and started moving.
Fulgrim gave chase once more, only to slam face-first into the shields of four Custodian Guard. The four sentinels were knocked back, and the force of the impact repelled Fulgrim. Though he felt a flicker of familiarity from one of them, he had no time to dwell on it. He had to kill Guilliman.
However, this time...
"!!!"
A cold sweat broke out on Fulgrim's back. He whipped his head around to see a giant, radiating a dazzling golden light like a golden-red sun, hovering in the air behind him.
"Where's Angron?" Fulgrim muttered, glancing at the sword Zhou Ye was now swinging at him. Surely he didn't fall that easily?
---o---
Meanwhile, among Zhou Ye's Honour Guard.
"I think we grabbed the wrong person," one of the Astartes said, his voice muffled.
"Who cares? Just get him out of here. The Ultramarines' Honour Guard is useless! They're just getting in our Lord's way!!!"
Ashira, who had been sent flying earlier, was filled with contempt for the Imperial Primarch's pathetic performance. She was even more contemptuous of the Ultramarines' "stretcher team." She had never seen a more incompetent support unit. She wasn't sure if it was just the Ultramarines or if the whole Imperium was like this. They had absolutely no ability to anticipate their own Primarch's movements, nor were they equipped with special propulsion units to keep pace with him.
In the end, it was they who had to catch him. But fine, a catch is a catch. They had gone to all this trouble to reinforce Macragge for the sole purpose of waking this guy up. They couldn't just leave him lying there.
So, a few hundred of them broke off, hoisted Guilliman up, and started heading back.
They quickly met up with Calgar and his retinue, and then, directly...
They threw Guilliman at them.
Then, under the stunned gazes of Calgar and the others, who looked as if they were watching someone toss a precious family heirloom, the Honour Guard turned around and charged back into the fight. It was impossible for them to engage in a battle of that magnitude, but they could keep other daemons at bay and look for opportunities to take potshots at Fulgrim's back.
As for Guilliman, a Primarch that disgraceful should stay off the battlefield. He was just too lame.
---o---
"How did you go down so fast?" Zhou Ye was a little speechless on his end. "Well, whatever. You're useful for something, at least."
He hadn't expected much from Guilliman, but he truly hadn't thought Fulgrim would take him down so quickly. His original plan was to create a black hole, use the resulting time dilation to deal with Angron inside it, and then come back to finish off Fulgrim.
But who would have thought that the moment he kicked Angron in, Guilliman would get stabbed?
What was the point of dealing with Angron now? Just lock him up for the time being.
Of course, Zhou Ye didn't dare lock Angron in his Thousand-Person Theater. The theater's mainframe was still on his capital planet, and it contained too many important facilities. Locking that thing in there would be a disaster he'd cry over for years. Besides, a black hole was a much more suitable prison than the theater.
Feeling Angron raging wildly inside, however, Zhou Ye knew time was short. This would hold him for a few minutes at most, but that was enough. He would quickly send Fulgrim packing, then come back and slowly peel Angron apart.
"What a pity. I was thinking of sticking Angron's Butcher's Nails into Fulgrim's head."
Of course, that was just a passing thought. The Butcher's Nails in Angron's head now were definitely not the same as the ones from 30K. They had become a conceptual part of him, fused with his very being. If Zhou Ye actually pulled them out, they'd probably vanish just like any other daemonic corpse. It was something he wanted to try, but the conditions weren't right.
So...
"Angron..."
"Guilliman..."
"That useless oaf," they both thought.
A moment of silence passed between them. It was clearly the only consensus the two had reached: their respective allies were utterly useless. They clashed again, the immense shockwave forcing even Zhou Ye's Honour Guard to raise their storm shields.
Zhou Ye had already changed his strategy. With Khorne backing him, Angron's destructive power was too immense. He had to change the battlefield, but he couldn't just leave him here and let his own men die trying to contain him.
In that case... during the second exchange, Fulgrim sensed something was wrong.
The moment they made contact...
BOOM!!!
A pillar of golden fire erupted into the sky. In the center of that pillar was the twisted, massive form of the fallen Fulgrim, now completely engulfed in flames.
Ordinary conceptual powers didn't work well on Daemon Primarchs. Much like Guilliman, they possessed high magical resistance. But not all powers were created equal. Zhou Ye himself couldn't figure out why his golden flames, which were really just imbued with light, had a percentage-based armor-piercing effect against daemons.
He usually avoided using it because it tended to incinerate daemons completely, leaving him nothing to consume. But since he had to take out Fulgrim first, the situation was different.
In the next moment, Zhou Ye retreated several hundred meters and plunged his sword into the ground once more. The massive firestorm spun, expanding several times in the blink of an eye. The unlucky daemons caught in its vicinity, whether Khornate Bloodletters or Slaaneshi Daemonettes, let out horrifying screams.
The twisted, giant figure within convulsed violently.
"FATHER!!!"
Fulgrim's screams echoed from within the flames. He could feel his very soul beginning to burn. In his perception, a golden-red sun was searing his spirit. In that instant, he felt as if he were facing the full wrath of the Emperor.
Even the fallen Primarchs acknowledged the Emperor as their father. And though they spat the words "False Emperor" and "Corpse God," if they were to truly stand before him, all of them except Angron would be no better than grots. (As for why Angron was the exception: It was the Butcher's Nails that were ascended; Angron was just the wetware that came with them.)
Right now, Fulgrim felt his father's gaze upon him, and his entire being was on fire.
---o---
"Cough, cough..."
Elsewhere, Guilliman, having been retrieved, slowly sat up under the healing light of a Black Abyss, White Flower-like device. He stared blankly at the scene. For a moment, he wondered if the Emperor's Sword in his own hand was a fake.
In that short time, he noticed the sons of this mysterious brother—that group of shining golden Grey Knights—looking at him with a certain... disdain. What made it even more unbearable was that his own Emperor's Sword was trembling. The blade's soul—no, its machine spirit—seemed to be disgusted with him, a psychic blank.
So...
"How long was I asleep?"
"Ten thousand years."
"..."
Realizing Fulgrim hadn't been lying, Guilliman fell silent.
"Oh, Emperor!!!"
But before Guilliman could start spiraling, the Living Saint Celestine closed her eyes, tears streaming down her face, and began to pray silently. She wasn't alone. To Guilliman's collapsing worldview, the Imperial Grey Knights and even his own sons were now kneeling on the ground, weeping as they prayed. Four Cherubs flew up, singing a resounding hymn.
The sight of those things sent a chill down Guilliman's spine.
He wasn't the only one. The shining golden Grey Knights nearby had to fight the urge to put a bolt round through the constructs. They—or rather, all of Zhou Ye's people—could not stand them. Not just them, but the Machine Cult's unholy trinity: Servitors, Servo-skulls, and Cherubs. The most tolerable of the three were the Servo-skulls, and that was only relatively speaking. If they could, they would never want to see any of them.
"Father, what has happened to you in these ten thousand years? My brothers... did you all just watch as the Imperium fell to this state?" Guilliman lamented, before pushing himself to his feet once more. He knew the Imperium had rotted. The Imperial Truth had been abandoned. The Imperium now truly believed in Lorgar's drivel, even his own sons.
In that moment, Guilliman felt a profound sense of suffocation and despair. But then he noticed a group that stood apart from the praying masses.
Those black-and-gold Astartes. They weren't praying. And they had retained their Legion structure. This brought Guilliman a measure of comfort and a great deal of curiosity.
This time, however, he didn't charge off. He walked over to a command console that had been deployed with Zhou Ye's Honour Guard and, with a familiar air, began analyzing the situation displayed upon it. One side showed the deployment of Zhou Ye's forces, the other showed their own Macragge forces.
"Am I permitted to command you?" Guilliman looked from the dataslate to the Grand Master of the Trailblaze Grey Knights.
"Of course."
"Thank you..." Guilliman breathed a sigh of relief. Then, something else occurred to him. "What was that Fulgrim said, about my using his firstborn's gene-seed to create a legion?"
"The heretic spouts filth. Pay it no mind."
"Mm..."
"Hm? What is this?" Guilliman pointed to a symbol on the map. It was a very strange design.
"That is our Trailblaze mixed company of Ultramarines and Word Bearers. Macragge is currently swarming with daemons, and we need the Word Bearers' genetic trait... er, what's wrong?"
The Trailblaze Grand Master hadn't finished speaking when he saw Guilliman's expression change.
Old man. Subway. Smartphone. That standard meme expression appeared on his face.
As for his own Honour Guard nearby...
"Blasphemy! This is blasphemy!!!"
"?"
"All of you, be silent!"
Looking at his own bewildered sons, Guilliman took a deep breath and silenced them. Then he pointed to a black shadow on the map. What was that bat symbol?
"That is your brother, the Eighth Primarch, Konrad Curze. He is currently leading his sons, the Knights of the Night, to hunt the blasphemous sons of the fallen Primarch, the Night Lor—"
CLICK-CLACK.
The sound of a bolter being racked echoed through the air, leaving the Trailblaze Grey Knight with a look of utter confusion.
"..."
Guilliman fell into a brief silence, then looked at the Grey Knight and asked slowly, "Are you really here to reinforce Macragge?"
"Yes."
"Which means Konrad Curze is on this planet right now."
"Yes."
"He's a pretty good person, just a bit mentally unstable..." the Grand Master added, looking at Guilliman with clear, uncomprehending eyes.
Guilliman, despite his injury, was now breathing heavily. In that instant, he suddenly wondered if he had slept for ten thousand years, or if the timeline itself had changed.
A pretty good person?
Him?
Konrad Curze?
The most famously insane one of all his brothers?
In that moment, Guilliman felt that the world had gone mad.
Well, perhaps not that mad.
"This brother of mine... why don't I remember him?"
"That is a secret!!!"
"A secret???"
The moment the Grey Knight finished his answer, a group of nearby Dark Angels began to tremble.
Uh... uh... uh...
---o---
tl/ps. sorry for late update. I was feeling unwell yesterday