"You..."

"You have to take good care of my children..."

The ancient being was in tears. Reluctantly, he handed his child over to the scoundrel standing before him. 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

"All right, all right, quit yapping, will you?"

The man in golden armor snatched the dazed Mortarion from the ancient being’s hands, then released the ancient being’s ten thousand children from the sky.

"Ah..."

Watching his followers regain their freedom, the ancient being let out a helpless sigh. He looked deeply at the man in golden armor, then finally shook his head in resignation.

"You are... Father Emperor?!"

"You’re not dead? They told me you were stuck on the Throne for the rest of your life and would never get up again!"

Even though Mortarion did not recognize the unfamiliar face before him, the golden radiance pouring off that man told him everything he needed to know. This was the great Emperor.

His eyes widened. He had never imagined that one day he would see his father again, much less see him alive and vigorous, stronger than ever.

"If I couldn’t get up, would that make you happy? Then I suppose I’ve disappointed you as a father, haven’t I?"

"Even if you died, I wouldn’t!"

The man in golden armor grabbed Mortarion’s arm and drew every last trace of Chaos power out of his body and into himself.

As the Chaos corruption dispersed, a flicker of clarity returned to the primarch’s eyes.

"What... what have I done?"

Now that he understood everything, the primarch looked stricken and miserable. He did not dare imagine the kind of unforgivable things he must have done during the time he had been controlled.

"If you know you were wrong, then go make it right. Don’t curl up and brood, brooding won’t save humanity."

The man in golden armor patted Mortarion on the shoulder and smiled gently.

Behind him stood a knight in gray armor, and a handsome, taciturn man in red armor.

"Fulgrim..."

The moment Mortarion saw Fulgrim, he suddenly felt that maybe being forgiven for his own crimes was not that unreasonable after all. If a bastard like Fulgrim could be forgiven, then surely a bastard like him could be forgiven too, right?

After all, there had once been a man who opened his mouth with "I love the Emperor most," closed his mouth with "I love the Emperor most," and even taught his Legion to love the Emperor together because they were all the Emperor’s sons. He had been so loudly loyal that he moved the old man enough to win permission to bear the Imperial Aquila as his emblem. And then, when the Horus Heresy began, he turned traitor faster than just about anyone...

"..."

Fulgrim looked at his brother and said nothing. He only turned his head aside, averting his face, as though he did not dare meet the eyes of any of his brothers.

"All right, enough nonsense. We still have other people to find. A few are lost, a few are half dead, and a few have gone completely off the rails."

"The road is still a long one..."

The great Emperor in golden armor led his little rescue team onward and continued down the path of saving people.

It was a bastard squad rampaging all across the Warp.

Sometimes they moved through Khorne’s battlefields. Sometimes they wandered through Tzeentch’s backyard. Sometimes they took wooden clubs and went cracking Slaanesh right in the ass. Sometimes they gave Nurgle a bath and followed it up with antibiotics...

"We need a ceasefire!"

The four Chaos Gods might oppose and hate one another, but they were Chaos, and Chaos was one whole.

That damned bastard had truly driven them to the end of their patience.

"He inherited the power of that hypocrite in the material universe, and he keeps making a mockery of us. He has to pay for this!"

Khorne was the angriest of them all. Ever since he ran into that bastard, he had not gotten a real fight, not a single one. The other side either played hide-and-seek with him or ran away nonstop. It was infuriating.

"I know exactly how you feel. While we were in the middle of it, while I was off guard and the two of us were joined as one, he used my own power to contact Fulgrim and steal him away!"

Slaanesh understood Khorne’s feelings perfectly. They were not human, of course, but even so, they did not want to admit that whatever Jovian was could be called human either.

At this point, they were starting to miss the Emperor. Sure, the Emperor had been shameless and had played them, but at least he had still been a person. This outsider, what even was he?

However anyone looked at him, he had absolutely nothing to do with humanity.

"He threatened me! Not only did he threaten me, he captured my children and used them to threaten me! A brute! Shameless! Unreasonable! Not a shred of compassion! He’s the real Chaos God!"

Nurgle understood Khorne and Slaanesh very well. He was the eldest, and in his eyes all beings were children. He considered himself a compassionate existence, but he simply could not bring himself to show Jovian any compassion.

"Heh..."

Tzeentch looked at Slaanesh, Nurgle, and Khorne and laughed. He laughed at how foolish the others were, getting toyed with so thoroughly by an outsider who had acquired that hypocrite’s power. Unlike them, he was clever. He was intelligent...

"Calm down, all of you, don’t..."

Tzeentch put on a friendly face, seemingly ready to smooth things over with the other three. The Warp was only so big, after all, and they were all competitors. As long as that outsider remained, the power of the other three would be effectively restrained.

But right in the middle of trying to persuade them, Tzeentch’s expression suddenly changed.

"You discuss it first. I need to leave."

With that, Tzeentch hurriedly turned to go.

"And where do you think you’re going?"

The other three were no pushovers, Khorne least of all. He had always treated the other three gods of the Warp as enemies too. The moment he saw Tzeentch’s face change, he moved to block him. He knew that if Tzeentch suddenly wanted to leave, then something bad for Tzeentch must have happened, and anything bad for Tzeentch was something Khorne wanted to see.

"I..."

"You’re still fighting among yourselves at a time like this? Are you only going to be happy once he picks us off one by one and we all end up finished?!"

Tzeentch had not expected Khorne to try and screw him over even now.

"I’m not trying to stop you. I just want to know where you’re going, that’s all."

Khorne’s avatar looked at Tzeentch and gave him a sincere smile as he explained.

"Oh, fuck off..."

Tzeentch slapped Khorne’s arm aside, broke through the blockade, and vanished from the space.

"..."

The other three Chaos Gods watched Tzeentch disappear, and they almost seemed to be smiling. The four true gods of the Warp were practically blood brothers. Their relationship really was that good.

When that sly and great existence returned to the labyrinth he had worked so hard to weave, and saw the wreck of it, ruined beyond recognition, he exploded with rage.

"Jovian!!"

Tzeentch naturally knew Jovian’s real name. He cried it out in pain.

"I will never forgive you!"

Gone was his usual elegance and poise. Tzeentch roared in fury. Even a Chaos God could be angry.

And while Tzeentch was raging...

Jovian was busy doing something else.

He had carved out a small house in the Warp, in the Realm of Chaos. At that moment, several people were seated inside.

Jovian sat in the center. Around him were the primarchs he had recovered, those who had either been corrupted or lost in the Warp and then brought back by him. But now that these brothers had reunited, there were no moving words, no heartfelt scenes. The air was cold. There was too much resentment between them.

"I refuse!"

"I absolutely refuse. Unless you let me roast Fulgrim, I absolutely refuse!"

Ferrus Manus glared at the silent Fulgrim, who had done nothing but keep his mouth shut ever since seeing his brothers again, and ground his teeth hard enough to crack them.

"Is it really that serious?"

Jovian looked at the furious Ferrus Manus, whom he had dragged back from the wrong path, and smiled.

"Yes, it is. Have you forgotten what this thing did?"

Ferrus Manus clenched his fists, itching to smash Fulgrim’s head in with one punch.

"Fulgrim, don’t you have anything to say for yourself?"

Corax stood in front of Fulgrim and shouted at him.

"..."

Fulgrim turned his head away and refused to look at Ferrus Manus. His face had gone even paler, but he still said nothing.

"Just look at him. Really look at him. And he still has the nerve to call himself the Emperor’s Child? What a wonderful son of the Emperor you turned out to be."

Corax was furious. If the Emperor had not been present, this would already have become a war.

"If you know you were wrong, then apologize to your brothers."

Leman Russ raised his head, his gaze incredibly complicated. He believed in the Emperor. If even the Emperor was willing to forgive Fulgrim, then what was he supposed to say? He was never a man who liked wasting words in the first place.

"Just kill them all!"

"Kill all of us and get it over with!"

Angron was cursing up a storm from where he stood, and there was a trace of grievance in the way he looked at Jovian.

"Fine, I’ll do it for you!"

Corax was already ready to draw his blade.

"That’s enough. Quiet down."

Jovian felt like his head was about to split open. The Emperor’s family had way too much personality. He was already tired down to the bone.

"I don’t care what you people think, what grudges you carry, or whatever other complaints you have. I want you alive. I want you back in the Imperium of Man. I want you fighting for humanity again."

Radiating the sacred light of the Emperor, Jovian addressed the primarchs in a deep voice.

"Fight for the Imperium of Man again?!"

Angron clenched his fists, his feelings impossibly tangled.

The other primarchs who had taken part in the Horus Heresy looked just as conflicted. They were traitors. Their shame had already been nailed in place for all to see. They were men who had once raised weapons against their own kin. Did people like them still have the right to fight for the Imperium?

"Listen, this isn’t a question of whether you have the right. It’s a question of duty."

Jovian looked at this pack of overgrown sons he had inherited from the Emperor and let out a weary sigh. It was bizarre, really, having to counsel a bunch of old men who were all older than he was.

"Our duty is to carry the banner of humanity’s survival."

"Can you understand that?"

"Of course, I know some of you have complicated feelings. Some of you think too much and spend all day guessing this and guessing that..."

"And some of you are hoping for my forgiveness. You don’t need to overthink it. I forgive you. No matter what you’ve done, I forgive you."

"But remember this, if you do something that betrays humanity, something that betrays your own people, ask your own heart first, who is the one who suffers the most?"

Jovian had no interest in preaching grand empty truths. He was only looking at these ten-thousand-year-old men, each of them slumped and dispirited, and feeling disappointed in them. Maybe when the Emperor sat on the Throne, he often wondered too, how had the Imperium of Man, once so sound, ended up in decline?

How had his finest son, the glorious Warmaster, ended up betraying him? What exactly had he done wrong when all he had ever wanted was to fight for humanity?

"I..."

Fulgrim spoke for the first time. With a trembling voice, he tried to say something. Once, he had admired the Emperor more than anyone. He swore that out of all the Emperor’s children, he had been the one who admired and revered him the most, but...

"There’s no need to say anything. I assume by now you understand that when something is taken to the extreme, it turns into its opposite. If you understand that, then do the job right from now on."

Jovian did not need Fulgrim to say anything. Some things did not need to be spoken aloud.

"...Okay."

Fulgrim nodded, still keeping his head down. He did not dare look at anyone. He truly had no face left to show them.

"And you..."

"Are you still angry that I forcibly snatched you away?"

"That’s your own fault for not measuring up. If you had beaten me, wouldn’t you have been able to stay where you were?"

"Not only would you have stayed, I would’ve handed the Imperium over to you to manage too."

Jovian shook his head as Fulgrim began to loosen the knot in his heart, then walked over to Angron and spoke as if he were joking.

"..."

For a moment, all the primarchs stared at Jovian in shock. In their memories, the Emperor had always been meticulous and severe, like a stern god who would never reveal such a joking, vulnerable, human side of himself.

"I..."

What Angron had always been waiting for was just one apology from his father. That was all he had ever wanted.

"Take a good look at the universe as it is now."

With a wave of his hand, Jovian displayed the state of the Imperium before the primarchs’ eyes.

"Look carefully at the ordinary soldiers of the Imperium and how they fight and bleed with everything they have."

"You’re tearing each other apart while the soldiers of the Imperium are shedding blood. Aren’t you ashamed?"

"You are the Emperor’s sons. You were supposed to become humanity’s guardian gods. And what happened?"

"You quit the moment things got hard. You’re more cowardly than mortals."

Jovian criticized the primarchs sharply. The greatest loss of the Horus Heresy had not been the power of the primarchs, nor even the Emperor’s divine might. What the rebellion had truly shattered was the heart of the Imperium. It had broken humanity’s spirit. Once people’s hearts were in chaos, everything followed.

The four Chaos Gods had played one hell of a hand. They had given the Emperor a lesson he would never forget.

"When you go back, every single one of you is going to push humanity’s borders outward by another ten thousand light-years. Do you hear me?"

"And even if you think you didn’t hear me, hear it clearly now!"

Jovian clasped his hands behind his back and addressed this pack of foolish sons in a deep voice.

"We... we understand..."

The foolish sons all lowered their heads and answered in gloomy voices.

"Did you hear me clearly?"

Jovian’s expression darkened as he asked coldly.

"Yes!"

Jovian’s voice crashed through their minds like thunder, jolting their spirits and snapping every last one of them to attention.

"As for how you make the people of the Imperium accept you again, that depends on your own abilities."

"As for your fall, I’ll let it slide this time, since it’s your first offense. But if there’s a next time, I’ll make sure you never forget it for the rest of eternity."

Jovian still had to say what needed saying. Without that warning, there was no telling what kind of trouble these primarchs would stir up again. He did not believe that after he had toyed with the four Chaos Gods this hard, they would simply let the matter go.

As for these primarchs...

Heh, a bunch of pain-in-the-ass sons. If he could not keep this bunch under control, then he might as well go back to his own universe and start farming.

"I’ll be waiting for you to make your move."

After inheriting the Emperor’s power, Jovian seemed to have taken on some of his domineering presence as well. He wore the look of someone who had already planned for everything.

Once Jovian was done lecturing this group of disobedient children, a portal suddenly formed in front of him. Through the Emperor’s Webway, the group began walking out of the Warp...

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