Everqueen Reclamation - 52

The boy was so small.

This was objectively untrue, of course. The Sixth Primarch was as tall and broad as most fully grown men. While he was leaner than he should have been due to the harsh conditions of Fenris, George's son was still healthier and stronger than most humans.

And yet…his hands were tiny in George's own. He was still gangly in the face that adolescents were, and the baby fat on his cheeks was still visible behind the thick, wild mane of hair he had grown.

It was hard not to look at the boy and see children from lifetimes past.

Right now, the child was sleeping on the bed of the ship's medical deck, Isha's hand on his forehead, keeping him asleep as she ran a check.

Green light engulfed him as Isha examined him body and soul, while one hand was kept in the Emperor's own.

Finally, the aura of light faded from the boy's body and Isha backed away. 

“He is in fine condition,” She said quietly. “He could do with more food than was available to him on the planet, but I cannot call him malnourished in any way or form. I checked his soul as best as I could for anything like the curse laid on Magnus, but I didn't find anything. Just to be sure, however, I would recommend checking yourself.”

The Emperor frowned slightly, as the Witch stirred within him at Isha's words.

Letting her rise to the surface once more didn't sit well with him, but…Isha was correct. There was no point in taking unnecessary risks just because of his personal hang-ups.

With some reluctance, the Emperor's aspects shifted and receded as he transformed into the Witch.

Now dominant, the Witch looked down at the boy, feelings the Emperor usually kept suppressed surging forth. Affection, sorrow…but above all, pain.

She looked at the Sixth Primarch and saw all that she had lost, the child gone mad that she had killed with her own hands.

Hands which were still larger than that of the child in front of her, even if they were smaller and paler than they had been only moments ago.

The Witch swallowed, and for a moment there was a different child holding her hand, smaller, with hair that was short and dark rather than small and blond, clad in old-fashioned pajamas rather than a medical robe.

Then the moment passed.

The Witch shook her head, steeling herself. This was not the child she had killed, and if the other Aspects had their way, she would have no influence on his upbringing.

She wasn’t even sure she wanted to have any influence over it. If she wanted to commit to the pain that inevitably accompanied loving a child.

“Are you alright?”

The Witch startled, having almost forgotten Isha was there at all. Green eyes met black ones, and there was a deep understanding and sorrow there.

The Witch resented it as much as she appreciated it.

But more than anything, she could not bear it.

Averting her gaze, the Witch began her task. “I am fine,” She said, before diving deep into the young Primarch's soul.

She remembered it well, for she (the Emperor, rather but she was him and he was her) had crafted this soul with great care and precision, just as they had crafted twenty other souls in the same way.

They had not the resources and knowledge of the Old Ones when it came to the arts of god-forging, only the knowledge inherited from a fragment, and whatever they had managed to learn by themselves in their long. Meagre scraps they had gathered through their own studies.

So she - he - had improvised. With the power of the Shepherd, they had wielded the powers they had refused to touch for millennia, and called upon the spirits of mankind.

They had pulled together the souls of fallen heroes who had died recently enough to be called. Even of those heroes who had died long ago, their souls long dissipated into the tides of the Aethyr, she had called forth the imprint their legends had left on the Warp, in the collective subconscious of mankind.

And they had taken those ghosts and echoes, and melded them together into a single precious soul. Not a god, only a godseed, that might never realize its potential but containing the spark of divinity nevertheless.

Then they had placed the godseed into the vessel of flesh and blood forged from the finest science and sorcery that mankind had to offer. A body that was only a pale imitation of her own strength, but it was the best she could do.

Twenty-one times they had performed the process, toiling away in the heart of the Himalayas, to forge twenty god-seeds and implant them in their vessels, just as the shamans of primordial Terra had created her. It had drained much of her/his/their strength and demanded their attention, leaving Malcador and Constantin to manage the demands of their empire.

But it had been worth it. When finished, the Emperor had presided over his work with satisfaction, all of their Aspects at peace for once. The Eagle had preened over its newborn princes, the Knight had surveyed his future generals with approval, the Shepherd had been quietly satisfied with his work and the Witch had surged with the triumph of a scientist who had just achieved their greatest accomplishment.

And they had all hummed with paternal pride, though they had tried to pretend it was not there.

In the same way, they had all been incandescent with rage when the Primarchs had been stolen, vowing vengeance upon the Four even as fear and memories of tragedies gone by gnawed at the back of their minds.

For Horus, those fears had not come to pass. For Magnus, some of them (but not all) had.

Now to see what had been done to the boy in front of her.

The Witch sifted through the soul of her sixth masterpiece, and at first, there seemed to be nothing. 

But there had been nothing obvious on Magnus at first either, the Witch reminded herself.

So she continued, checking again and again and again until-

Ah, there it was. The tiniest trace of Chaos, the lingering mark of the Ruinous Powers. 

To her relief, it was nothing like the intricate curse laid on Magnus. There were similarities, a taint that could not affect the boy but might affect his Legion, but it was only an attempt to twist traits that were already there, an attempt that had failed at that. There was a risk for the boy’s Legion, but a low one, nothing like the curse that had wormed its way into the hearts and souls of every single Marine of the Fifteenth Legion. 

Only the bare traces of poison buried in the soul, one which could be removed.

+Isha, here.+  The Witch called, and the Eldar Goddess obliged, reaching into the boy’s soul herself to survey what the Witch had found.

Manageable. Isha hummed. Shall we?

+Of course.+ 

Golden flame and emerald light burned away the poison in a flash until it was as if it had never been there at all, and Isha kept the boy asleep even as he turned and twisted in his sleep, easing the pain that would otherwise have been agonizing.

At last, they both withdrew, standing over the boy once.

Isha placed a hand on the child’s forehead. “A mild fever,” She said softly. “It will not take long to fade.” 

The Witch nodded, feeling an exhaustion - more emotional than physical - bleeding through her. 

Then, her Aspects shifted and rippled, and the Emperor returned.

He ran a hand through his dark hair, golden eyes soft in a way that they rarely were as they considered the boy. A snap of his fingers produced a warm golden blanket, one which he promptly wrapped around the boy’s shoulders. The child grumbled, exposing tiny fangs as he turned and cuddled deeper into the bed.

“It is fortunate that this went so well,” The Emperor said with a sigh. “We can only hope that the other Primarchs will go so easily.” 

Though he doubted it would be so easy, and Isha likely thought the same.

“Yes,” Isha nodded. “Now the only thing left to do is for the child to awaken,” 

The child, hm. They needed a better name than that.

The Emperor let himself detach from linear time ever so slightly, visions of futures that could have been but were not flash before his eyes.

“His name is Leman,” He said eventually. “Leman Russ.”

A flicker of surprise crossed Isha’s face, followed by realization. “Leman, of course,” She obliged wryly.

There was silence for a moment, before Isha spoke again.

“There is one thing I need to ask again, however.” 

“Yes?” The Emperor asked absently, only half paying attention as he mulled over what was to come.

“Really, why did you instill this strange affinity for wolves?”

The Emperor sighed at the question.

“It was an experiment,” George admitted. “I attempted to instill various different traits in several of the Primarchs, to see if it would help. With Leman, the idea was to give him supernaturally potent hunting instincts and senses, even by the standards of his brothers. The affinity for animals was not intentional, merely an unexpected side-effect.”

Isha nodded in understanding, an intrigued expression on her face. “What traits did you experiment with for the other Primarchs?”

The Emperor paused to consider the question, but ultimately he decided there was no harm in answering it.

And if a part of him wanted to discuss his masterwork with one of the few people in the galaxy who could actually understand it…well, what was the harm in that?

"The Ninth has wings,” George answered. “In addition, I designed his geneseed to be uniquely compatible with abhumans and mutants, allowing them to be perfectly viable recruits for Space Marines. That ultimately proved unnecessary thanks to your aid, however.”

"How fascinating,” Isha mused, clearly turning over the idea in her mind. “Using geneseed to mutate and alter the bodies of the recipients to suit your needs…very clever. It must have taken quite a bit of work though.”

“It did take several decades worth of tinkering,” George admitted, and he would be lying if he hadn't been a little rankled when Isha had rendered all that work entirely unnecessary. It had been a petty impulse, so he had restrained it, but it hadn't been there.

Fortunately, Isha didn't seem to notice, lost in thought she mulled over the idea. “The gene-seed as essentially a virus, twisting both DNA and body…yes, I can see how it would be useful. What of your other experiments?”

“I sought to imbue the Twelfth with potent empathy so that he could serve better as a leader of men, and perhaps a peacemaker among his sons,” George said, pulling up other memories. “The Fourteenth is unusually physically resilient, and especially resistant to toxins and chemicals. The Fourth was…complicated.”

“Complicated?” Isha asked with a raised eyebrow.

“He is physically the same as the rest of his brothers, but I experimented with the psychic programming for him,” George admitted. "There is a full database in his head, of quite a lot of my technical knowledge, far greater than the instinctive understanding of warfare and combat I programmed into the others. He even knows his name: Perturabo.”

Isha looked distinctly dubious at this. “I…see.”

“I am aware it was a questionable idea in retrospect,” George said with a grimace. These past years with Isha had led him to realize how that could adversely affect the Fourth Primarch's mental growth, especially with Perturabo no longer under his direct supervision. “We will have to find him as soon as possible, and check his mental growth. I hope he will be alright.”

“Let us hope so,” Isha replied. 

“There is also the Eighteenth,” The Emperor said, trying to change the subject. “I was the most ambitious of all with him.”

“Oh?”

“I sought to imbue him with the same resurrective immortality as us…incarnated warp constructs.”

Isha's eyebrows shot up. "Truly?”

“Yes.”

“How would that even work? The Primarchs all have physical bodies, not avatars as we do.”

“Well, I am not certain it worked,” The Emperor admitted. ”There wasn't exactly a safe way to test it, but the way I designed it was…”

The next few hours passed peaceably as they discussed warpcraft and bioengineering, and especially the craftsmanship that had gone into the Primarchs.

But then Leman woke up screaming.