Chapter 27: Humiliation 2/5

"You have no hope. I will kill you," the Nurgle daemon roared. "I will imprison your soul and entertain you with a million bacteriophages, letting you understand what it means to wish for death."

"Do you think you can win?" Guilliman’s tone was laced with mockery. "By trying to disgust me to death with that hideous appearance of yours? If so, then perhaps there is a slight chance."

"Enough. The game is over, daemon. It’s time for business. What font do you prefer? I graciously allow you to choose a typeface and language of your liking." With a slash of the Emperor’s Sword, a terrifying power erupted from within Guilliman, striking with such immense force that it severed the Nurgle daemon’s weapon in two.

The flames of the Emperor’s Sword filled the daemon with dread, causing it to retreat several steps. Guilliman stepped forward, pointing the blade directly at his foe.

"Tell me your name, daemon." Guilliman rested the tip of the Emperor’s Sword against the creature’s heart. "I suggest you adopt a respectful attitude; don’t make me regret my mercy. Otherwise, I wouldn't mind killing you. You know what this sword is, don't you? It will end you completely. Once I pierce your core, you won't even be able to return to the Warp; you will simply fade into brilliant, pure nothingness amidst the golden flames."

The Nurgle daemon stared at the burning blade, its eyes filled with terror. It knew exactly what this was: the weapon of the Anathema, capable of utterly annihilating a daemon’s essence. (The Chaos Gods refer to the Emperor as the Anathema.) During the battle, several lesser daemons had already had their very beings obliterated by the sword.

Gurllo saw this and attempted to rush forward to relieve the daemon. If the creature were killed, his entire plan would collapse. Nurgle’s influence would recede, the Warp storms would subside, and this world would never become a garden for the Plague Father.

"Your enemy is me, traitor."

Sicarius intercepted him. Their weapons collided—the power sword against the traitor's axe—with a shockwave so great that Sicarius’s very frame trembled. Gurllo fared no better; his bloated body, straining the seams of his centurion armor, shuddered even more violently than Sicarius’s. The maggots covering him fell to the ground, and the flies that had been clinging to his armor took flight in a dense, buzzing cloud.

Nearby, an Astartes pulled the trigger on his flamer, and a torrent of fire erupted. The flies were incinerated, falling to the ground with a foul stench.

"Get out of my way!" Gurllo roared, swinging his plague axe at his opponent’s head.

"I grant you permission to do so. You are so round, you would surely roll quite fast." Sicarius parried the axe, continuing to obstruct him to buy time for the Primarch.

Watching the Emperor’s Sword inch closer to its heart, the Nurgle daemon finally chose to submit. It did not want to die.

"I am a Great Unclean One of Nurgle, Gath the Slothful," the daemon confessed its true name.

"A Great Unclean One? So small in stature? Gath the Slothful, you truly are a waste of space," Guilliman mocked.

Fury surged within Gath, but it had to endure. One day, it would have its revenge. This time, it had been careless, failing to manifest its full power when entering the material universe. Otherwise, it would never have been defeated so easily.

A true name is a daemon’s greatest vulnerability. Once in possession of it, one can enslave or banish them. However, one must be cautious; a daemon's true name cannot be spoken lightly. Even for ordinary mortals, merely reciting these names can lead to Chaos corruption, turning them into unspeakable monsters. History within the Imperium is rife with such incidents, where individuals attempted to control daemons by their names, only to become twisted monstrosities themselves. This was especially frequent among unsanctioned psykers.

The Ecclesiarchy, the Inquisition, the Grey Knights, and the Officio Assassinorum all keep such knowledge of Chaos sealed away to prevent contamination. As a Primarch, Guilliman possessed warp-attuned traits and his own "golden finger"—the power to command, which allowed him to channel human faith into strength—so he naturally faced no such issues. Not only could he recite the name, but he could also easily banish the entity.

"Very well." Guilliman swung the Emperor’s Sword, severing Gath the Slothful’s limbs, and then carved the words "Waste - Gath the Slothful" into the creature's chest. "You may crawl back now. Remember to give Mortarion a message: I am coming for him. If he doesn't want to be found, he had best hide quickly."

As Guilliman spoke, Gath felt an invisible force pulling at its existence. The material universe was rejecting it.

"I will return—" Gath began, intending to utter a threat, but one look from Guilliman silenced it. It feared that if it spoke, Guilliman would change his mind and strike it down. The Nurgle daemon was banished back to the Warp.

"No!" Gurllo screamed in despair as he felt the power of the Warp recede. He could not accept that a plan he had labored over for so long had failed.

With the daemon dealt with, Guilliman turned toward Gurllo, who was still locked in combat with Sicarius. He had his own reasons for letting the Great Unclean One go, but there was no need to spare the ringleader of this treason. While Gurllo could trade blows with Sicarius, he was no match for a Primarch; he was dispatched in a single stroke, his battle-axe shattered by the Emperor’s Sword.

"It seems this planet still belongs to the Imperium." With that, Guilliman thrust his sword into Gurllo’s chest, ending him once and for all.

The remaining daemons were either banished or fled back to the Warp. There was no point in staying; they could not win. The Imperial forces held the upper hand, and the daemons knew that even if they could not be truly killed by conventional weapons, being destroyed meant they would have to endure a long, agonizing wait in the Warp for resurrection, subject to Nurgle’s permission.

Guilliman understood that killing that Great Unclean One would have been pointless; Nurgle would simply create another. His priority now was to consolidate the Imperium and prepare for the onslaught of the traitor Primarchs. The Chaos Gods were still preoccupied with the Emperor, and they were embroiled in their own internal conflicts, so the immediate threat was manageable. They would only unite against him if they perceived him as a threat equal to the Emperor. Unless that happened, the gods would only target the Imperium as an afterthought while warring with each other.

Even if Guilliman carved insults into Nurgle, the god would not open a portal to face him directly—to do so would leave its own domain vulnerable to the other gods and the Emperor. The true problem was the traitor Astartes and the Primarchs. Daemons could not enter reality at will, requiring the rituals and sacrifices of cultists to manifest, but the traitor Astartes could move freely, and the traitor Primarchs had nothing better to do than weave complex schemes against him.

If his memory served him correctly, Magnus, Fulgrim, and Mortarion were the ones targeting him. It was better to flush them out early; otherwise, fighting an enemy in the shadows was a disadvantage. He was already outnumbered, and with the enemy hiding, the war would be grueling.

*If not for my questionable status, I would have dragged a few loyalist Primarchs back to work,* Guilliman thought to himself. The Primarch of the First Legion, the Emperor’s greatest tool and the most likely candidate to challenge Horus for the title of Warmaster, Lion El'Jonson, should be sleeping in the Tower of Angels—the Rock. Of course, there was the possibility he had been lost in the tides of time. He would be such a useful tool—a powerhouse who could take a beating—to use as a distraction, which would relieve much of the pressure.

Then there was the Primarch of the Eighteenth Legion, the Perpetual Vulkan. He was likely on Nocturne. He had been active during the War of the Beast, eventually sacrificing himself to take down a Great Ork Warlord. Of course, given his nature as a Perpetual, he wouldn't truly die; he would simply exist in death for a time before resurrecting. He was essentially a real-world daemon. Nocturne was his most likely location.

Regrettably, Guilliman could not seek these Primarchs out—at least, not until he had absolute control over the situation. Primarchs were among the most intelligent beings in existence; he feared they would deduce his identity, complicating matters further. Even the Dark Gods and the Emperor might eventually realize who he was and notice the changes within him. How long that would take was uncertain.

His best option was to solidify his grip on the Imperium before things worsened. Guilliman did not want to gamble his life on the reactions of the Emperor or his brothers. One wrong step, and he—and humanity—would be doomed. Another civil war would be the end of everything.

As the battle concluded, the soldiers cheered for their victory. The people of Sarah Star, in particular, wept with joy.

"Clear the battlefield. Execute all traitors. Save the wounded. Check on the civilians and have them send a representative to see me," Guilliman said, pushing his thoughts aside and issuing his orders.