The heavy snow weighed down upon the entire world, and a piercing frost spread beneath their feet, extending alongside the leaden gray clouds toward the invisible edge of the world. The sight was so desolate that Horus began to doubt if this realm of ice and snow truly had an end.
A small figure was immersed in the swirling blizzard. Her dark brown hair fluttered in the wind, and her thin linen-colored robe was soaked by snowflakes. Bare feet stepped onto the slightly thawing snow; the accumulation and ice melted faintly beneath the girl's searing body temperature.
Horus watched the silhouette in the storm, lost in thought. He had been dragged from the altar of the Dark King, reshaped from fragmentation and death, and pulled back into the material universe. The moment he opened his eyes, he saw this slender girl. Horus immediately realized it was his father, merely transformed into another shape, inhabiting another vessel.
To be honest, Horus's aesthetic sensibilities made it difficult for him to understand the necessity of his father choosing such a female form—she was too frail, too thin, lacking in hardiness and strength.
But now, as Horus watched his father advance through the wind and snow in that delicate body, he found himself unexpectedly understanding. Before the storms of Old Night, had his father not also constrained himself within a narrow body to move forward like this?
Having been separated from the Dark King, Horus understood the essence of his father better than ever before. His father was the Dark King, the destined destroyer of the world; yet He was so noble that He would rather restrain Himself and discard His heavenly mandate to protect, lead, and rule humanity. At this thought, Horus felt a deep sense of guilt. The delusions of the gods had deceived him, leading him to ignite that pathetic rebellion and hurt his father like a clown. Now that his father had chosen once again to shoulder His destined fate, Horus felt only a burning, fierce loyalty.
While immersed within the Dark King, Horus had seen it: the Dark King would be born in the near future. His birth was inevitable, and the destruction of the universe was certain. All pain, sorrow, and sin would end—but in the process, the gods would surely resist, using extreme measures to stretch out the destined destruction into a long and agonizing execution. The living beings of the galaxy had already endured too much pain; there was no need for them to continue suffering such torment.
As Horus dithered in his thoughts, the girl's figure grew faint in the snow. Horus hurried forward a few steps to catch up with her.
+What are you thinking?+
The girl did not speak, yet Horus knew her question.
Horus hesitated for a moment. "I feel as if this place is like Fenris," he lied.
It wasn't a complete lie. The girl had led Horus through several daemon worlds, passed through Nurgle's domain, and found this ice world soaked deep within the Warp. However, Horus did not know the reason they had set foot on this world.
+Yes, this place is almost identical to Fenris.+
+I once borrowed the power of an ancient divinity from here. Gungnir, the spear that never misses, forever chasing the truth of things—the Wolf's Bane.+
"...The Dionysian Spear?" Horus's voice rose slightly, vaguely realizing what she was referring to.
+Exactly. Whether it be the Dionysian or the Apollonian, both were shaped using the power of this place or places like it.+
+Around the Golden Age, humanity achieved great feats in time, space, dimensions, and Warp technology.+
+Thus, humanity perceived the contradiction between the past and the present, realizing that much of the past had been buried and many old existences had been discarded.+
+Horus, there are many existences that were once worshipped by the masses, yet the masses forgot them. And in the Warp... forgetting itself means death.+
+This death is not merely of the present; it spans the past, present, and future. The things that once symbolized their existence vanish along with them, and the timeline changes silently.+
+Many ancient Old Gods—I can still speak their names, but you no longer can. From your perspective, they truly never existed.+
"I do not understand, Father." Horus wore a look of slight confusion.
+Malal, Olummirus, Arianka, Solkan, Dahla, the Nameless Creator, Ama-Yae-Glan... these were all divinities that once existed in the Warp, but now, they have never existed in the past, present, or future.+
"I still do not understand, Father. What does this have to do with the planet beneath our feet?"
+The death of gods is different from that of mortal things. They are a transformation, a state, a longer hibernation and silence. It is like a vast sea where waves no longer rise and it can no longer be observed—but it has not disappeared.+
+The sea is still there. These are the corpses of the gods, stacked and precipitated together with other forgotten and discarded things at the deepest depths of the Warp. That is how the things beneath our feet came to be.+
+This is one of the graveyards for forgotten gods and discarded things.+
"But what does this have to do with Fenris?" Horus felt more and more that the planet before him resembled Fenris.
+Russ just happened to be sent to Fenris, a world of wolves, a world where his talent and genes were perfectly compatible, a world where ancient legends and stories became reality, a world so fitting... even conveniently so. Have you never found it strange?+
+Russ shares the same origin as this place. Fenris shares the same origin as this place.+
+Humanity in the Golden Age excavated one of these graveyards and tried to resurrect it. The product was Fenris.+
+And Russ's essence is the product of that resurrection testing ground for the myths of Ice and Fire.+
+He did not drift to Fenris; he was summoned to Fenris.+
As she spoke, the girl stopped. She looked down at the thick snow, crouched slightly, and swept away the snow on the ice with her hand. Beneath the thick, cold ice, things were faintly visible... corpses.
Standing aside, Horus also saw the corpses deposited under the frost. It was the body of a one-eyed, haggard old man with a white beard. His lower body seemed to have been bitten off by a massive wolf.
"This is?"
+An ancient divinity. Not yet truly forgotten, but already dead.+
The girl shook her head slightly and stood back up. +Not here.+
+We must leave soon. I fear He has noticed I am here.+
"We left tracks when we passed through Nurgle's daemon world. Nurgle might sense our movements," Horus nodded in agreement.
+I am not worried about Nurgle.+
The girl gently brushed the snow from her hair. +I am only worried about Alexander.+
"...I do not know much about that individual," Horus said, lowering his hands slightly. His gaze shifted; the girl's tone just now was subtle—there was a hint of reminiscence, familiarity, a dry laugh, and a touch of the absurd, as if someone she was very familiar with, very fond of, and could not imagine as an enemy had become her enemy.
+He is Doraemon.+
+How absurd it is for me to be an enemy of Doraemon.+
For once, a clear emotion surfaced in the girl's voice. This made Horus's heart feel complicated. He did not understand why that "Doraemon" held such a unique status in her heart.
+He has many ways to find me.+
+I have laid many decoys to confuse him, trying to make his props for prophecy and judgment fail.+
+But there are too many of those props. I cannot cover them all completely; I can only hope to divert his attention.+
+For example, I left an arrangement on Slaanesh.+
A flash of purple light flickered in the girl's hollow eyes.
+This was an inspiration I got from Cegorach.+
+The nature of the Prince of Pleasure is hunger; He always uncontrollably plunders too much.+
+After my death, the happiness, pleasure, and joy of humanity are immense nourishment for Him.+
+So, I deliberately unbonded more connections with humanity, releasing many emotions mixed with a bit of my faith to influence and interfere with Slaanesh. My escape from Slaanesh and my resurrection on a Slaaneshi daemon world without attracting notice were all thanks to this.+
+Furthermore, I hope to use this to cover our purpose of trying to obtain the Angel of Exterminatus.+
Horus nodded. He roughly knew what the Angel of Exterminatus was. It was a divinity born from the blood of Isha, the goddess of life, and Khaine, the god of murder and war. Life and murder overlapped incessantly, contradicting each other, and it killed Isha—the symbol of life—the moment it was born.
Thus, a Death God with infinite destructive desire was brewed. That was the early-born Ynnead, and also the young god who seized the throne of the Dark King. It was meant to destroy the enemies of the Aeldari and then turn back to destroy the Aeldari to complete its ascension.
However, because Slaanesh had not yet been born, and the position of the Dark King was stuck, the Angel of Exterminatus failed to ascend. Instead, it became weak after destroying the enemies of the Aeldari. This gave the Aeldari and their gods a chance. Using technology left by the Old Ones, they made Isha reborn in the past and present simultaneously.
The cause of the Angel of Exterminatus's birth was the threat to the Aeldari's survival and Isha's death; the enemy was wiped out by the Angel from the past, present, and future simultaneously, which is why it became weak. When Isha was resurrected, the cause of the Angel's birth was completely destroyed. Therefore, the effect—the Angel of Exterminatus—naturally never existed.
Similarly, if the Angel of Exterminatus existed, Slaanesh would not have been born using the Aeldari as a sacrifice. Thus, the girl's attempt to resurrect the Angel would inevitably affect Slaanesh. She was trying to poison Slaanesh to cover her search for the Angel.
"Can this hide it from Him?" Horus asked.
+It is difficult, but the Angel of Exterminatus itself can be used to attract his attention and cover my other purposes.+
The girl shook her head. +I am not sure how many cards of mine He knows. I can only disrupt his vision as much as possible.+
+If my understanding of him is correct, he should have noticed the anomaly on Slaanesh.+
+He should use a certain predictive prop... I suspect it is the 'Fortune Telling Box'.+
"Then Father, what is our next step? Continue looking for Russ? Find Lorgar or Omegon? Resurrect the Angel? Or find that 'Number Zero'?"
+If I determine my next step, Alexander will know... Hmm, the Right-or-Wrong Divination Machine.+
Saying this, the girl took a die out of her linen pocket.
+So, let us roll the dice.+
"Ta-da! Fortune Telling Box!"
Alexander sensed the anomaly on Slaanesh. He didn't need to think twice to know that the escaped "brat" had started moving. The problem with Slaanesh was clearly an arrangement left by the Dark King.
But the real key was which cards the Dark King was playing this time. Alexander had seen thousands of the Dark King's methods in his dreams—whether it was Primarchs summoned from apocryphal texts, the "Number Zero" who shouldn't exist, or even the deceased gods of law. The most exaggerated time, one brat even successfully summoned that long-horned big rat from the other side of the Warp...
Fortunately, Alexander truly had a prop that could determine what cards the Dark King was playing.
[Item Name: Fortune Telling Box][Origin: 22nd Century Earth — Future Department Store][Production Time: 231.M3][Function: A small box-like prop. Speak what you want to divine to it, then shake it gently. It will spit out three cards predicting the future, but the content requires interpretation.]
"What does the Dark King want to do?" Alexander asked the Fortune Telling Box in his hand.
Three pieces of paper fell out of the box in sequence. An angel burning with blue flames, covered in a deathly aura... an Angel, a classic card.
Then a wolf head... Russ. What does he want to do with Russ this time?
The last one was...
Alexander looked at the two venomous snakes appearing on the paper, and a slight smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.
"Who?" Just as the girl was about to throw the die, Horus suddenly snapped his head up, looking into the blizzard.
+Do not worry, I summoned them.+
The girl signaled Horus not to be concerned. +I influenced the past from the present, interfered with the birth of the secret cult, and secretly left behind codes and instructions to summon them here.+
Horus saw the pair of twins. They were wearing cyan-blue power armor and holding spears. Beneath their bald heads, their faces wore similar smiles. They were significantly smaller than Horus, yet they could be identified at a glance as Primarchs.
"Alpharius?"
Horus's voice dropped low as he looked at the twin-like Primarchs. "And Omegon?"
"I thought at least one of you died..."
"No."
The two said in unison: "We are neither Alpharius."
"Nor Omegon."
"We are two brand new heads."