#chairon

***

Valorem Gadriel’s knees buckled before the image of his Primarch. His template. The being who stood above every Ultramarine as a shining example of what they should all strive to be. Gadriel knew no deity, but if he did, it would be the cerulean and gold-clad titan before him.

“Well done, my son.”

An unfamiliar burning sensation built behind the Ultramarine’s eyes. The words, delivered with such pride, resonated inside his fused ribcage. No one had ever looked at him the way the Primarch looked at him now. Not his commanders. Not his battle brothers. Not even-

A memory slipped through the cracks in his mental conditioning. Another face, towering above him. A man. Smaller. Thinner. Features blurred, but full of disappointment.

Not smart enough.

Not strong enough.

Not enough.

It was his mantra when he made the pilgrimage to the Ultramarine fortress at ten years old. His mantra when conditioning sank his childhood beneath layers of doctrine. His mantra during every brutal day of training and enhancement, during every blood-soaked campaign that followed.

Not enough. 

It drove him on, on, always on. Reaching. Straining to be better.

In the Codex he found the strength he needed. Mortals withered away, voidships disintegrated in plumes of fire, even his battle brothers fell to death. 

But the Codex remained.

And now, finally, the Primarch himself was rewarding him for his adherence. Vindication swelled both of Gadriel’s hearts. His back straightened, chin lifting. Let the others scoff behind his back. Let them call him rigid, cold, obsessed. He was doing it right.

Their deviation had only brought them pain. 

Had it not?

The entire Strategium of the Macragge’s Honour seemed to freeze in place. Doubt gnawed at him like a rodent from the lower decks. The Lieutenant’s face came to mind. The way his eyes softened when they looked upon the quiet little serf girl, the lines of centuries of toil in the Emperor’s name smoothing just slightly. 

Peace.

He saw Chairon standing next to the annoyingly exuberant medica, mouth curved in a smile wider than any Gadriel had ever seen on a battle brother. Eyes alight with mirth… and something deeper.

Joy.

The concepts felt foreign. And yet, something buried deep inside him reached for them. A tugging at his very soul. The persistent whisper that his brothers, in deviating ever so slightly from the doctrine meant to be an Ultramarine’s lifeblood, had regained something.

Something Valorem Gadriel hadn’t realized was missing.

Lieutenant Titus. Chairon.

It took more effort than it should have to break away from his Primarch’s gaze and look around. He saw the Victrix Guard, led by Commander Cato Sicarius himself. He saw the Chapter Master, Marneus Calgar, standing at the Primarch’s side. 

Where are my squadmates?

The Primarch’s voice boomed out again. 

“Come, my son, and take your place at my side.”

Gadriel ached to obey. But….

“My squad… the Lieutenant, Brother Chairon… they should be here.”

A flash of purple in the corner of his eye. He snapped his head back to see the Primarch now directly in front of him, radiating a glow so bright it cast the rest of the Strategium into shadow.

“Why would you want to share your moment of triumph with the unworthy, my son?”

His words had grown softer, more coaxing. A great gauntlet landed upon Gadriel’s shoulder, its warmth seeping through his armor like spilled blood. His tongue grew thick and heavy in his mouth. 

Still, he spoke.

“They are… my brothers.”

“They are NOTHING compared to you.”

The shadows beyond the two of them intensified until they stood suspended in a black void. Gadriel tried to pull away, tried to get a bearing on his surroundings, but the Primarch’s gauntlet held him immobile. When opalescent lightning spit the darkness he found he could not even close his eyes against the sting.

“Look at what you could become.”

The swirling illumination congealed into images that burned themselves into his retinas. Hundreds, no, thousands of Ultramarines marched by in perfect unison. The thunder of their sabatons rattled the teeth in his skull. The air they displaced rocked him on his feet. 

Their armor shone like innumerable blue suns. Undamaged. Tabards utterly pristine. Weapons that looked fresh from the forge held at precision angles.

Not a Chapter. A Legion.

The image widened, revealing a vast field of these perfect brothers with their perfect armor arrayed in perfect formation. And all angled toward a figure nearly as resplendent as the Primarch himself, dripping in gilding and regalia, standing tall upon a pedestal. 

A commander for the ages.

“Who is….”

The words died on his tongue as the figure turned and Gadriel beheld his own face staring back at him. His own face… and yet somehow not. 

Gone was the scarring he’d borne for decades. His skin was clear as the statues of old heroes on Macragge. Every feature, from the set jawline to the pressed lips, carved like cold marble. The picture of stoic discipline.

The perfect Ultramarine.

“Yes.” The Primarch’s voice whispered directly into his ear. “Perfection. And it can all be yours.”

“I….”

He should want this. Surely this was what “enough” looked like. What he’d been striving for for so long. And yet, as he stared into the stony face, something struck him. The eyes. His eyes. Its eyes. 

Hollow.

“I do not….”

“Ahhhh.” The Primarch’s voice moved closer. “You see it too. Perfect order. Perfect discipline. And yet, perhaps, not quite enough?”

The image vanished so quickly it sent Gadriel’s senses reeling. For a disorienting moment he felt weightless, careening through nothing. Blind and flailing. 

The Primarch’s voice echoed through the emptiness.

“Your thoughts turn to your brothers, my son. What they possess.”

The scent hit him first. He’d smelled it before, upon the Lieutenant when he returned from his quarters. Upon Chairon when he returned from one of his many visits to the Apothecarion. Faint then, now it drowned him in its syrupy sweetness. 

Then the sounds. 

“My Lord….”

“So handsome… so strong….”

“Valorem… Valorem...”

“My love….”

The touches came next. He gasped aloud as cool hands pressed against his burning skin. Stroking down his chest, across his back, up his thighs. Fingers running through his hair and tracing the metal of his interface ports. Soft. Softer than anything he could remember.

A whine rose in the back of his throat as one of the unseen hands cupped his face. He couldn’t stop himself from pressing into it, a hunger like he’d never known clawing at his insides.

“Yessssss. This is what you hungered for.”

The Primarch’s voice. And not the Primarch’s voice. It had thinned, growing higher and smoother, every word ending on a breathy hiss.

“Look upon what you could have, oh deprived one.”

A pulsating, purple glow swirled around him. At first, he could only see vague outlines. Two bodies, small and mortal, entwined about him and each other. Their silky skin pressed against his scarred muscle. Their perfume filled his lungs to bursting.

“Touch them. Feel them.”

He could move his body again. Obeying some primal instinct, he grasped handfuls of plush flesh and squeezed, listening with dazed amazement to the resulting moans. The bodies moved faster against him, hands touching with greater intimacy.

Valorem Gadriel hardened for the first time.

A laugh like the clashing of blades rang out around him.

“So easy. So easy! Always the most disciplined ones hide the most delicious depravities.”

This was what his brothers had experienced. This is what they’d been keeping from him. Gadriel pressed his face into soft hair and inhaled.

“All that work crafting the image of the Perfect Ultramarine… and all you really desired was the pleasures of the flesh.” Another sharp laugh. “Just like the other one.”

Hot mouths against him. Tongues lapping at his skin. Pleasure rolled in waves through his body, and yet something about the words sparked unease. 

“What other-”

“Look at them. Look at what I can give you!”

The hazy outlines solidified.

Red curls.

Dark waves.

Green and honey brown eyes, gazing up in vague adoration.

Gadriel froze. “No….”

“No? You wanted what your brothers possessed, yes? You can have them!”

“Valorem…,” Sera breathed, hands running over his chest. 

“We love you…,” Vesta moaned, rocking her hips against his thigh.

“NO.”

He ripped himself away from the soft embraces of his brothers’ women. Their wounded cries almost pulled him back, but he refused, shaking his head. Light and sound and sensation fractured around him. He was falling.

“Fool!”

The hissing shriek drove nails into his skull. He heard himself make noises more suitable to an animal than a man.

“Surrender to me! And I will give you the power, the recognition, the love you crave!”

“Never!” He howled into the spinning void. “I will never betray them!”

“Then you doom yourself to an existence of starvation, hungering for the barest scrap of something you cannot even bring yourself to name!”

“Be silent!”

Mocking laughter tore his skull apart from the inside out.

“You live in the hope of recognition for your great restraint. It will never come! All your sacrifice means NOTHING.”

He thrashed wildly. “I am Valorem Gadriel. I am an Ultramarine. I am a Son of Guilliman!”

The voice sank to a low, poisonous whisper.

“And it is not enough, is it?”

He screamed denial as more laughter echoed from everywhere and nowhere, burning like acid on his skin. Direction meant nothing. Time meant nothing. He could feel his sanity fraying.

Then.

“Awaken.”

Another voice. Barely a whisper amidst the shredding cacophony. Somehow familiar.

“Awaken, brother.”

Memory flooded back. The trap set and sprung. The dark little room. The Warp rift. A point of light appeared, within the maelstrom or within his own mind, he could not tell. But he strained toward it with every fiber of his fragmenting soul.

“AWAKEN.”

“It… must… be… enough!”

The light engulfed him.

***

Brother Librarian Atius slipped from the Apothecary’s grasp, one knee hitting the metal grating with a resounding thud. Blood dripped from his face to spatter across the floor. But his lips twitched upward in satisfaction. 

“One…,” he panted, “one soul freed.”

Callistus hauled him upright again with a growled oath. Around them, Captain Acheran and the rest of the squad filled the little room to capacity. The Captain was snarling more orders into his vox.

Atius could hear the tension in his voice.

The Librarian felt as though he’d been scraped raw. But he’d manage to break through the daemon’s barrier and pull one of his brothers out. Where Sergeant Gadriel was now, and in what state, he could not say. Nor could he dwell upon it.

His eyes locked on the scorched mark bisecting the room. Warp energy lay thick in the stale air. Closing his eyes, he sensed the daemon’s outrage at losing its prey. He also felt its renewed determination to cling to those that remained.

The next soul would not be so easy.