001.M31.
Aboard the Hrafnkel, flagship of the Space Wolves, Navigator Gianluigi Belisarius boarded a monorail.
The train hummed into motion, speeding past the Astropath and Astromantic districts.
He didn't get off at the Navigator's Sanctum, continuing onward.
Along the ship's spine, every few hundred meters, a stone carving stood, its base dirtied by soil from a dozen worlds.
They were the only remnants of the ruins left by the Wolves' passing.
The train slowed. Masked, leather-clad Wolf warriors entered Gianluigi's world.
Belisarius studied them with interest. When he had first arrived aboard this Gloriana-class battleship, they had all looked the same but now, he could tell them apart by their leathers, more distinctive than their faces.
Grey leather with crimson patterns, fiery in battle, cold and silent at rest.
Grey leather with spiraling patterns, wild as the wind, cold as frost.
.....
The train stopped at the command spire. Belisarius rose slowly, clutching a heavy book, and walked to Leman Russ's throne room, the Great Wolf's Hall.
He walked the long corridor to the hall, passing the familiar Wolf Guard emerging from dwellings made of giant ivory tusks, nodding to them.
Belisarius passed through the suffocating heat of the braziers, the flames flashing in his eyes, burning his vision.
He reached the end of the corridor, looking up at the great serpent coiled around the round ivory door.
It was an Ouroboros, its jaws clamped on its own tail, an ancient Terran symbol of eternity.
The beasts depicted on the door seemed to come alive, emerging from the Fenrisian sea formed by the serpent's coils.
Their jaws lunged at Belisarius. The Navigator raised his arm, about to tear the silk ribbon from his forehead. Cold tendrils coiled around his arm. He shivered, his arm freezing instantly.
His thoughts slowed, as if buried beneath an iceberg. His breath condensed on the door, forming droplets of ice.
Whoosh!
Two golden beams shot from Belisarius's eyes. The beasts vanished. The cold tendrils were gone.
He wiped the cold sweat from his face. He knew that without the Emperor's psychic reinforcement during his soul-binding ritual, he would have succumbed to the Warp-tainted vision.
He couldn't help but feel envious. 'I wish I could drink mandrake tea, like Visccher, as casually as I drink tea.'
Belisarius could buy, at a high price, some mandrake from Imperial worlds outside Nareth's domains but it was scarce, and he had to compete with the Astropaths. He could only afford it on rare occasions.
He couldn't afford a cup before every audience with the Wolf King.
'Navigators need mandrake, and now the Astropaths are also turning towards Nareth.'
As a Navigator, Belisarius was not surprised that so many houses sided with Nareth.
The Shadows of Order's fleets held vast star charts of the galactic north and east, a powerful lure for any Navigator.
Flamini had invested heavily, jointly developing the Coronid New Zone, tying numerous houses to his cause.
Except for House Belisarius, almost every Navigator House now held assets or shares in multiple worlds within the New Zone.
Flamini's approach had not only solved the massive funding and resource gap, but also leveraged the networks of the Navigators, Astropaths, and nobles like Peyarch to secure markets, selling Mill World's wines, Cyclothrathe's Termite drills, and other products at high prices across the Imperium.
It was even more impossible to exchange with the Shadows of Order through the Legion; since the Lord of Winter and War was defeated by Nareth at Dulan, beasts like the Fenrisian Kraken were also regularly hunted and sent to Vostroya.
Belisarius couldn't understand, was the Wolf King forever indebted to Nareth just because he lost?
Lord Ferrus had also lost, and he simply forged a suit of armor. And on that redacted world, the Wolf King had lost to Nareth again, without any cost.
The Wolf King's silence on all matters concerning Nareth and the Shadows of Order was even stranger.
The whispers of the Warp that always filled his ears tempted him to uncover the dark secrets, but he dared not.
He feared the secrets the Wolf King hid, and he feared falling into the traps of the Warp's predators.
Belisarius pushed open the door. He stepped into the Great Wolf's Hall, feeling as if he had entered a hibernation den.
There was no artificial light, as if he had left human habitation behind.
The only light came from braziers and resin torches.
Rune Priests, wearing primitive bone talismans, watched him like priests of a barbarian tribe.
Belisarius approached the throne, carved from animal bone. He felt the light shift.
The wind howled.
"Gianluigi, the pack welcomes your return."
The wolf-masked guards laughed heartily, some wearing helmets shaped like wolf skulls. They raised their mead horns high.
Russ's voice transported Belisarius to a primal cave, back to humanity's savage past.
"Lord Russ, I have completed my mission. I bring Nareth's biography."
Russ rose from between the two great wolves, one black, one silver, that lay at his feet, and took the book.
"Give Gianluigi mead!"
He sat back down between Freki and Geri, his ice-blue eyes fixed on the cover.
'The Shadow Sovereign'
'Very fitting. His true nature is hidden in shadow.'
Both Nareth and the Lion had been potential candidates for Warmaster. Neither had openly expressed dissatisfaction at Horus's appointment.
But Russ could sense the Lion's ambition. He believed that, as Primarch of the First Legion, he should have been the first among his peers, leading his brothers in the Great Crusade.
Nareth's attitude was strange. He seemed completely unconcerned about the position.
There were only two possibilities: he was loyal to the Allfather, wholly indifferent to fame and power; or he had no interest in the Warmaster's title, and had his sights set on being the Regent.
The fire crackled as Russ flipped through the pages, searching for hidden answers.
Page after page of Bondsman No. 11 flew past. His finger stopped.
[Nareth, after hearing Lewis von Valancius's briefing, immediately decided to liberate the Coronid Deeps.]
[He intended to free the billions enslaved by the Mitus, but he also keenly recognized the potential of the entire region, despite its remoteness, to grow into a new Imperial sector.]
Russ's ice-blue eyes narrowed. 'Just as I thought. Nareth's liberation of the Coronid Deeps wasn't just about freeing the enslaved.'
'He saw its value. His pup, Flamini, is quite capable, in just over a century, he's turned that remote frontier into a thriving new expanse. It shouldn't be long before it's formally reorganized as a new sector.'
'Nareth's Vostroya Sector has already been formally established. He also controls two relatively vast territories, the smaller Osiris Cluster, and the Necromundan Sub-sector...'
Russ continued reading, paying particular attention to Nareth's thoughts as recounted in the book.
'Nareth is certainly an able administrator, even more capable than Guilliman. If any of my brothers were to be made Regent, he would be the most suitable.'
'What he wants is not the Warmaster's title, but unified civil and military power. But in the present Imperium, no such position exists.'
The Council of Terra governed the Imperium, but the Warmaster still held military command through the War Council. Their jurisdictions overlapped in recruitment, logistics, and other areas.
The Warmaster still had a voice in certain civil matters. Though the Council of Terra supported the Departmento Munitorum's development, the Warmaster ultimately decided military campaigns.
'Could it be... he wants the Allfather's position?'
Russ laughed and shook his head. Nareth was ambitious, but loyal to the Allfather. Such a notion was absurd.
He put down the book, looking at his Chief Rune Priest, Kva.
"My Who-Is-Divided, have you figured out what Ahriman is trying to achieve with Hawser?"
Kva's twisted, emaciated form approached. His right arm was as thin as a reed, frailer than a mortal's.
His specially crafted armor concealed a body weaker than any Astartes, too feeble to have survived childhood on Fenris.
Wherever he passed, the Wolf Guard spat on the deck.
They meant no disrespect to the mighty priest; it was to keep the unclean things at bay.
A tribal custom, driving away filth.
Outside the pack, others might think Kva's title, Who-Is-Divided, came from his twisted, broken body but in truth, it came from the disease that had plagued him since birth, leaving him on the verge of death until the Allfather came to Fenris.
Though the Allfather couldn't cure him, He had halted the disease's progression.
"He craves our knowledge. Magnus's sons always hunger for such things. That much is clear."
When the archivist Kasper Ansbach Hawser arrived on Fenris, Kva had sensed the corruption within him, Amon, Magnus's Equerry.
No one doubted Kva's word. His skill at weaving the threads of fate was unmatched, allowing his frail body to achieve two miracles: Surviving to adulthood on Fenris; and passing the Morkai's Trial to become a Space Wolf.
"But beneath the shadow, the stench of his schemes has spread across the lower decks."
"Longfang is still investigating, but his skill at weaving fate is not yet sufficient to determine exactly what it is."
Longfang was the Fenrisian name of Wolf Priest Ulfir Hjorr of the 3rd Great Company.
Hawser had been travelling with the 3rd Great Company, under the watch of Longfang and the Grey Hunter, Bjorn.
"I want you to watch him. He may try something at Nikaea." Russ said, his eyes fixed on Kva.
"As you command, my Jarl." Kva's frail form bowed.
The mechanical limbs of Ohthere Wyrdmake, Rune Priest of the 5th Great Company, creaked. 'Sanchez, Nareth, the Allfather will pronounce judgment on your abuse of sorcery at Nikaea!'
....
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