#(hehehehehh)

Lysander shifts his weight, bare feet gripping the warm stone. Clad in only the leggings of his bodyglove, the seams strain desperately around his monumental mass. The oil slick sheen of iridescent hues play along his curves, highlighting the enormous globes of his ass melting atop the crushing columns of his thighs. A lifetime of indulgences had forged him into a creature of exaggerated proportions, broad shoulders rippling with muscle just as wide as his hips.

His meaty pecs are as strong as they are squeezable, proudly bearing the warpscars of unspeakable cosmic violence in rainbows across his translucent skin. But they’ve grown softer as of late - he’ll need a harness for them soon enough. They’re starting to cover the plug sockets of his ribs. Not that he cares. The apothecaries could just biomancy them into whatever shape his duties required.

He was a genhanced engine of war that had been sculpted into something almost grotesquely beautiful, identical to the Primarch in every way magic and science could make him. The only real difference was the hair; he kept his short for convenience in his helm. Today the hot winds somehow fear to tousle it, rendering him a statue carved of the quartz upon which he stands. How long has he been here, again…?

"My Lord," a trembling voice squeaks from behind him.

Lysander doesn’t turn immediately. He takes a slow breath, letting the solar radiation cook the melanin-stripped breadth of his shoulders, savouring the tingle of his regeneration a moment longer. The familiar itch of his scars, the burn tissue along his jaw, the bullet pockmarks on his deltoids. He comes back into his own body after hours spent in stillness, heedless of the ancient pains within. He pivots with far too much grace for a being of such bulk.

The messenger from the Governor’s spire was knelt so low his forehead touched the ground, eyes squeezed shut against the light seeping around the seals of his goggles.

"Speak," Lysander growls, the grinding timbre of his voice deep enough to rattle the fillings in the little man's teeth.

"Governor… Governor Velorum humbly requests… that the Astartes refrain from low-orbit void exercises during the Summer Solstice Festival," the man stammers, sweat dripping from his nose onto the gold-striated quartz. "He claims the sonic booms are disturbing the vintage wine fermentations."

Lysander stares down at the top of the man's head, his crimson eyes narrowing to thin slits. The constant thrumming resonance of his psychic implant scrapes the inside of his brain, like nails through a block of chalk. His focus shifts to it, to the glassy dome over his third eye. It only heightens his perception of the creature grovelling before him, the animal simplicity of his fear. Mercy, he reminds himself, reciting the Primarch’s favourite chant in the darkest corners of his mind. Mercy, even for those he does not think deserving of life. It steadies him, though the anger does not leave his body.

"Is that so?" Lysander steps forth, the heavy thud of his heel a hammer blow. "Wine."

He flexes his black-clawed hands, the tendons in his forearms coiling like snakes. He needed to kill something. The itch in his blood was becoming unbearable the longer he stayed planetside and handled the pitiful diplomacy his Primarch should have assigned to someone else. The Twin Flame’s doctrine required balance, but Lysander had always leaned heavily into the fire. Combat was where he thrived.

"Look at me, worm." Lysander commands.

The courier lifts his head, terror etched into every line of his face. He makes the mistake of lowering his gaze a half-second later. It was impossible not to.

The genetic template of the Iridiates prioritized mass for aetheric endurance. It enabled intensely demanding spells that would wither those without enough calories to sustain their life force. On most, it filled out their bodies in delicate, sloping planes proportioned to voluptuous perfection. On Lysander, it had settled with a heavy, decadent gravity.

His hips are wider than the messenger’s armspan, flared out into suffocatingly thick thighs round, rippling and lush. The pants of his glove are losing a war against the ten-foot breadth of his ass, the fabric pulled so taut that every slight motion threatens to split the seams. The Primus bore a physique built for crushing, for sitting on a throne - or a throat - and refusing to move. To kneel before him and look up into such raw power put more than the typical transhuman fear into even the bravest baseliner.

"You will return to Velorum," Lysander says, his lopsided smile stretching the scar tissue of his jaw into a sneer. "And you will tell him that if he complains about my fleet again, I will have the Invictus conduct target practice on his spire. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Lord! Yes!"

"Get out of my sight."

The man scrambles away tripping over his robes, and Lysander turns back to the ocean, folding his thick arms. Being the steward of a paradise world had its perks; the food was exquisite, the aesthetics pleasing to no end, but the lack of skulls to cave in chafed at his soul.

+You frighten them unnecessarily, brother.+

A soft, melodic voice laves silkily between his ears with the weight of a collapsing star. Lysander straightens immediately, the arrogance bleeding out of his posture and replaced by pure discipline. He turns and drops to a knee, head bowed.

"Father."

A presence materializes before him, that which had always been part of this world and only now coalesced into his awareness. The humidity thins from the salted sea air. All sound and motion drains from the universe. And in that moment of eternal stillness, the Primarch of the Iridiates allows himself to be perceived.

Delicate toes on sun warmed quartz diffuse into Lysander’s vision, clarifying from the static noise flooding his senses. Sight returns to him, though he cannot remember when he’d lost it, warped and quivering like he’s staring into a volcano. His pulse spikes despite decades of conditioning. He sucks in a thin gasp, forcing himself through the regulating breath-counts of his training. No matter how long he spent at the Primarch’s side, those first few moments of Lucien’s presence always sent the animal part of him into panic.

The long, elegant rise of smooth calves compel his gaze upwards, every fiber of his being grasped by the eldritch beauty in every particle of his gene-father’s form. Nine and a half feet of perfection stands before him wrapped in iridescent silks, the fabric so sheer it suggests more nudity than it conceals. It pools asymmetrically across one shoulder, offering up a glorious expanse of porcelain skin that seems to glow from within. The faintly luminous curve of a soft, heavy breast hangs freely, the tender pink areola wide and puffed, incomprehensible colours of the warp shimmering through barely-visible veins.

Platinum hair spills to his ankles in a curling cascade of liquid starlight, an ever-shifting nebula cloud that moves with the awareness of something alive. Each fine strand refracts light into colors that shouldn't exist, framing a face that Lysander can never look at directly. The graceful column of Lucien’s pale throat makes his mouth go dry, those soft shapely lips parted ever so slightly beneath the hooked tip of his nose. The golden half-mask prevents Lysander seeing much further, though the panic in him shrieks he needs an Apothecary now when he glimpses the fuzzing of reality just by the Primarch’s high cheekbones.

A survival instinct drops his gaze lower, back to the bare chest spilling over a luscious belly more fit for childbearing than power armour. The Emperor had designed this body to be held, though Lysander knows the deception of its softness well. He’d seen those elegant hands crack ceramite like eggshells, watched those graceful arms hurl Dreadnoughts through ferrocrete and tear the plating off ships without heed for vacuum.

Where Lysander was a heavy, brutalist interpretation of the geneseed, Lucien was the divine original. The cathedral his fortress-body had been built to protect. Looking at him was a lesson in want, especially now as the Primarch shifts his legs apart and they melt back together with the fluid inevitability of mercury pooling.

The movement sends a ripple through flesh and silk that Lysander feels in his teeth. His hearts won’t stop pounding and his skin feels too tight, especially at the crotch seam of his bodyglove. Every augmented nerve ending in his massive frame seems to orient toward the Primarch like iron filings to a lodestone. But Lucien is patient, and allows him to collect himself.

Around Lucien's throat, a thick golden collar hums with low static. It’s covered in filigree so fine it seems more like frozen light than metal, an ethereal glow pulsing through the engravings. Its hard edges offer a devastating visual of restraint against the Primarch’s soft skin, whispering of something so overwhelming it required the Emperor's own hand to leash it. It kept the voices of the suffering galaxy at a manageable volume, and that was all Lysander knew of its function.

Lucien’s mask was wrought of the same artifice, though more for the universe’s protection than his own. To even catch a glimpse of his eyes in one's peripheral vision was to lose all comprehension in the span of seconds, and claw your skull to splinters for a measure of peace. Through a bubble on the mask, the pearl-like protrusion on his forehead could be seen - his third eye, glinting with soft iridescence that seemed to both swallow and caress the sunlight. All his sons bore the mutation, through which their proprioception increased to the point of precognition.

The Primarch's voice comes in a deluge of warm honey sliding down Lysander's spine. "You’re okay, love. It’s alright."

The words vibrate through his chest cavity, bypassing his ears entirely and settling directly in his brainstem. Lysander shivers, barely daring to breathe. He had been gene-forged to worship this being. Every surgery, every modification, every carefully calibrated hormone adjustment had been an attempt to make him into a pale shadow of this divine entity. And knelt before the original, Lysander understands with brutal clarity that he will never be anything but a grotesque imitation of something too perfect for even transhuman comprehension.

His genefather takes a step closer, and Lysander stops breathing entirely. He doesn’t remember what happens next, only that his mind is clear, his body free of the stress hormones telling him he’s on the brink of death, and his words come back to him now.

“Father,” he says, his voice strained for some reason he cannot discern. He blinks rapidly, vision swimming.

“That’s me.” Lucien replies with a smile, barely holding back the palpable desire to scoop his Primus up into his arms. “You do so upset the mortals with your brusqueness. The Governor has been having strong words with our delegates.”

"Velorum is a leech," Lysander mutters, keeping his eyes on the quartz beneath them. "He forgets that he rules only because we allow it."

"He is a child playing with blocks," Lucien murmurs, drifting even closer until they are mere footsteps apart. The air temperature drops ten degrees - his psychic pressure is heavy today, and Lysander feels it squeeze his body uncomfortably. "We do not hate children for being loud. We guide them."

"I would guide him off a cliff."

Lucien laughs softly. "Which is why you are my sword, Lysander, and not my diplomat. Stand up. You know I mislike seeing you grovel."

Lysander rises. Standing before his Primarch, the resemblance is both uncanny and divergent. They share the same face, the same hair, but where Lucien is long and lithe hiding his strength under a veil of softness, Lysander is dense, compacted violence.

Lucien reaches out, a slender hand resting on Lysander’s shoulder. Through the lightest of touches, a flash of amusement becomes known to him, alongside a wave of affection blanketing the red-hot fury of the Primarch’s dormant other half.

"You are restless," Lucien observes. His hidden gaze sweeps over Lysander’s form. "Your blood runs hot."

"There has been no incursion for three months, Father. The drills are... insufficient." Lysander crosses his arms, thick biceps swelling against his chest. "I need resistance. I need something that breaks when I hit it."

Lucien drifts around him, the silk of his robes brushing against Lysander’s heavy thighs. The Primarch pauses behind him. "You have been neglecting your meditations."

"Meditation is for the calmness of the void. I am the fire that burns within it."

"So dramatic," Lucien teases. A tendril of thought flicks the fattest part of Lysander’s ass with a kine pulse, a stinging impact that makes the Primus jump. "And so tense. You carry the weight of your brethren here, in your hips. You need release."

Lysander grunts, his face flushing slightly. "I need a war."

"You may get one sooner than you think," Lucien says. The playfulness in his tone evaporates, replaced by the cold vacuum of prescience. "The veil thins near the Tartarus Gulf. Something is clawing its way through."

Lysander’s red eyes flare, his boredom shattered instantly. "Daemons?"

"Neverborn," Lucien corrects, his voice hardening. The distinction mattered, lest the creatures be empathized with. Names tended to humanize one’s foes. “Soon.”

A feral grin exposes Lysander’s sharpened canines. "Let them come. I will paint the sands with their ichor."

"I know you will." Lucien steps back, turning to leave. "But first, you must center yourself. You will be of little use if the Flame takes you before the first drop lands. Go to the training cages. Find Brother Caelus or Captain Sokolov. Work this..." he gestures vaguely at Lysander’s expansive lower body, "...frustration out. I want you clear-headed when the sirens wail."

"As you command, Father."

Lucien’s aura wraps him in warmth just before he begins to fade out of awareness. " Wear the helmet this time. Last simulation, you nearly bit a servitor's arm off…"

And then he is gone, leaving Lysander with the desperate, yearning tightness in his body he can only release through violence. To the training cages, then. And may the Emperor protect whoever he finds there.