#neves writes

At first he had settled contentedly into his usual divorce routine, entering his meticulously-preserved time loop of a "Happy Divorce" party plucked from the Terran city-state of Nova Yoruk in early M3 as the Imperium kept its years.

As had been the case so many times before, the Lord of Solemnace basked over and over again in the reassurance of the assembled middle-aged humans that he was indeed so much better off without that asshole in his life, rounding off the festivities with a cake depicting a miniature confectionery figurine of Trazyn using a guillotine on a similarly-constructed sugar-based effigy of Orikan.

It was all very gratifying, and he was certain that when the amusement faded he would return to find Orikan waiting for him apologetically, his eminently bullyable faceplate resembling a weeping juvenile felid.

It was, however, not to be. He returned to the Galleries to find no trace whatsoever of Orikan. He was so disconcerted that he even briefly considered retrieving his much-prized clone of the primarch Fulgrim from stasis, but decided against it. It had, after all, only been a few subjective decades since he had placed the clone into a detailed diorama of the genuine being's final battle with his erstwhile companion Ferrus Manus for enrichment purposes. He had been thoroughly pleased with himself for coming up with entertainment of such realism and, judging by his mute tears of joy, so too was the clone.

What a wonderful caregiver I am, he had thought, jauntily walking away. Perhaps he and Orikan should adopt, which when used by Trazyn the Infinite is a word which means kidnap, an Astartes or Aeldari together.

Time passed and with no sign of Orikan's return, Trazyn felt it justifiable to seek other outlets for his multifarious urges. After exhausting every category on Cronhub and getting banned from Nemesorindr, he arose to find that the necrodermis of his lower limbs had spontaneously reformed itself into the shape of a baggy, ill-maintained example of the Terran garment known as sweatpants.

This could not stand. He resolved that he would start A Project, an undertaking of such majesty and glory that no one, least of all that cycloptic fool Orikan, could deny him the attention he deserved.

After brief forays into stop-motion animation and painting miniature Space Marines (accomplished by shrinking normal Astartes through arcane technosorcery and ignoring the resulting high-pitched noises as he applied pigment of a much too viscous consistency to their battleplate) his thoughts returned once more to his display of the battle between the primarchs on Isstvan V.

Theirs was a tragic tale of heartfelt companionship severed by corruption and betrayal. He himself had mentally projected several hundred phaeronfics about them to the great repository of the Necron race whose name, although untranslatable into any other language, was best rendered as The Sarcophagus-Belonging-To-Us-Alone, and some of them had even received multiple scarabs of approval from the discerning audience entrapped there forever.

Surely, he reasoned with the confidence of a being who had long since activated the developer console of his necrodermis body and manually increased its confidence, intelligence and charisma variables to 100, this meant that no one other than he could restore their friendship.

And so, in single-minded pursuit of compassion and friendliness, the Archaeovist and his forces wrought a swathe of destruction across the galaxy.

A foray into the Eye of Terror itself resulted in the capture of Fulgrim through the use of a vast two-pronged stick to pin the writhing daemon prince to the ground where he had been basking one day, while the sacrifice of his entire collection of ancient Terran doujinshis to the haemonculi of Commorragh itself had given him forbidden knowledge sufficient to wrest back the very soul of Ferrus Manus himself and place it into a suitably prepared necron host body via the biomorphic resonance of the necrodermis which had coated his hands in life.

Finally, the moment of glory came. The daemon Fulgrim and the metallically resurrected Ferrus Manus were placed into the same containment chamber and -

It was not at all what Trazyn had hoped. After a monumental bout of hand-to-hand combat lasting for hour upon hour, the two primarchs had settled into an uneasy stalemate, in the sense that Fulgrim was currently coiled around a light fixture on the ceiling and Ferrus had run out of objects to throw at him.

"You're even uglier now than you were when you had flesh," Fulgrim hissed venomously.

"And you were more of a snake then than you are now," Ferrus shot back, the frozen inexpressiveness of his necrodermis faceplate matching the famously stone-faced countenance he had displayed in life.

Fortunately Trazyn, who never made a mistake of any kind whatsoever, had prepared for such an eventuality. A concealed slot opened in the ceiling of the containment chamber, dislodging Fulgrim from his perch, and through the opening there descended a vast garment of woven silver-metallic fabric, emblazoned with inscrutable Necron symbols and sized in such a way as to accomodate the bodies of both primarchs.

The handfasting vows are adapted from this (from Argyll & Bute Council of all places)

And I thought I'd take the opportunity to push a little personal theory of mine that Ferrus's name is so literal and on-the-nose because it isn't really a name at all, just a description similarly to his primarch project number or the things the various entities on Medusa called him.

For example right at the start of Canticle it says "the boy had no name" and I feel like that stays true forever, that Ferrus Manus / Iron Hand is only his name in the same way that Bigfoot or Mothman or Nessie are called those things. He's a Medusan cryptid basically.

Today's entertainment was an old favourite of theirs, and a way for Fulgrim to show off the knowledge he'd gained. Fulgrim loved nothing more than to show off.

"And here we see a typical cabinet of curiosities," he said, leading the way into the wide, marble-floored hall dotted with exhibit cases that formed a space so stereotypically like a museum as Fulgrim understood the term that, to an outsider, it would have verged on parody.

A strictly delimited playhouse, everything arranged just so and built to perfectly suit the superhuman build of the Primarch who was not a Primarch, in which Fulgrim had free rein to explore and learn as he wished.

Ancient scientists had done such things with rats in mazes once.

"They are also called wonder-cabinets," Fulgrim continued, eager to share his knowledge with his visitor. He was suitably attired in purple silks, and delicate gold bangles shifted on his wrists as he gestured to the object in front of them.

"Although the gathering of disparate objects and artefacts has no real scholarly intent or value, they represent an important step in the development of Old Earth's versions of museums as we would know them."

"How fascinating," Trazyn said, playing his role of distinguished guest to perfection.

"I think so too," Fulgrim answered. "And although the exhibit appears to be fully authentic to its ancient origins, further inspection reveals that the curator has included a number of deliberate anachronisms."

"Deliberate, you say?"

"Yes. To reward the attentive viewer for his study. For example, in the centre, beside a truly ancient specimen of monodon monoceros tusk, we can see a comparatively much more recent piece. A bust of an unknown subject by the remebrancer Delafour."

"Oh, how intriguing." Trazyn leaned closer, as though seeing the sculpture for the first time. "May I touch it?"

"My deepest apologies, honoured guest," Fulgrim replied, "but these objects are too fragile to touch. Lord Trazyn forbids it."

Trazyn stood back with a gesture of mock offence. "But I am, as you say, an honoured guest," he said. "Surely there's something here I can touch?"

The script being old didn't make the play any less entertaining.

Fulgrim hesitated for a moment. "The fragile objects are forbidden, but... I am not, honoured guest."

Sometimes he remembered that he had been something else, once. A being created for a very different purpose. But remembering brought pain and after so much time among Trazyn's other possessions it was infinitely easier to let go, to drift into the comfortable haze of being simply one more pliant, complaisant object to be arranged alongside many others. And so he did.

"A most agreeable solution," Trazyn said, radiating satisfaction as he moved closer to Fulgrim. "Shall we continue?"

The Archaeovist's hand settled comfortably in the small of Fulgrim's back and directed him onwards through an ornate archway with a subtle application of strength.

"Of course, honoured guest. We now enter the gallery of Terran dolls."

"Oh, how appropriate."

They halted in front of a tall, glass-fronted display case containing a multitude of dolls with painted ceramic faces and wigs of genuine human hair.

"In this exhibit," Fulgrim said, "we see every surviving product of the warrior and artisan Jean-Andoche Juneau, a toymaker from ancient Franc. The effort required to gather them here must have been vast."

"It was," Trazyn said. "Put your hands on the glass."

Fulgrim obeyed, bending gracefully at the waist to lean forward and place his palms flat on the cold surface. The dolls in their serried ranks smiled vacantly up at him.

"Good. Look only at yourself."

He locked his gaze onto his own face reflected in the glass, reducing Trazyn to a blurred outline as the Overlord of Solemnace moved behind him.

"Every object has a purpose, does it not?" Trazyn asked.

Fulgrim swallowed dryly as the Archaeovist's hand began to stroke languidly up and down his back. "I would agree, honoured guest."

"And, having acquired a truly beautiful, precious object, would it not be shameful for me to deprive it of its purpose?"

Necrodermis fingers glided up over the back of Fulgrim's neck and into his hair, stroking through it with intermixed possessiveness and reverence. He was intensely aware of how easy it would be for Trazyn to grab it if he wanted to.

"What is the purpose of a doll, Fulgrim?"

"To be looked at," he replied quietly. "To be dressed and posed as its owner pleases."

"And above all?"

"To be played with."