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"How I've missed this."

Angronius smiled in his sleep, feeling at peace for the first time since he left Nuceria for the Great Crusade.

His head rested against the soft thighs of his warrior-queen while her gentle hands massaged their way across his furrowed brow. Sonjita bent over his reclined form and planted little kisses on his forehead. Polgara lay draped across his massive chest, clutching one of his arms possessively to her breast. His absence from the ceremonies following the Triumph had not gone unnoticed, but the gladiator king didn't care.

He'd taken his wives to his room in the Atria Honorum and locked the doors behind him. Angronius had foregone the fellowship of his brothers for a brief respite afforded by three whole days of unrestrained passion. None dared disturb the Primarch's respite for fear of inciting his wrath, or the wrath of his wives. He'd missed being a husband. He'd missed being loved. All the accolades, the trophies and glories of base ambition could never compare. For truly, there was never quite anything like the touch of a woman.

"Is it done?" Polgara asked, "Is your covenant fulfilled? Will you come home to us now?"

Angronius sighed heavily as he pulled her closer, "Far from it. But let us not speak of this, not now. Tonight, I wish only to live in this moment."

"The years have been long..." Sonjita said wistfully, sharing Polgara's thoughts on the matter, much to Angronius' annoyance. "You've bled for the Emperor. Is it not enough?"

"And billions of worlds need a savior." The Primarch rumbled, rising from his bed suddenly. "You ask if it's enough? I tell you it is not. The Emperor showed me but a glimpse of the far-flung civilizations, enslaved or besieged by xenos empires in the uncharted recesses of space. Men and women like Nuceria of old, but without an Angronius to break their chains. The debt I owe is not the only reason why I fight, I do it because I want to be the one to save them."

"Angron, something happened on Nuceria. A treacherous cult had laid siege to the capital, we barely beat them back."

"Have I not left a piece of myself with you? Are there no sons, no daughters of mine? I raised them with you, made each a cornerstone in Nuceria's foundations."

The fiery haired warrior-queen lowered her eyes in deference, "Yes, you did."

"And did they not aid you in this matter?" Angronius demanded.

"They did."

"But it's not the same." Polgara said, braving her husband's ire as she wrapped her arms around his waist. "There stands an empty throne in the palace of Nuceria. Your people need their king, and we need our husband back."

The gladiator king sighed. "That you do. But this isn't something I can simply abandon."

The women decided it was best to drop the issue, knowing how stubborn their husband could be with his principles. They stayed with Angronius for as long as they could before he turned his attention back to being a Primarch. Polgara watched him slip into the robes fit for a god and marveled at how the years saw fit to only improve his divine form. He'd made her and Sonjita the mothers of demigods, he'd given them the thrones of Nuceria and Stygia. All of these things, all that a woman could ever want, they were all theirs for the taking.

But Polgara only wanted him, and he was no longer hers.

In that moment, as she watched her beloved Angronius take up the shaggy mane of a xenos hound and dress himself in scarlet robes, she cursed the Emperor of Mankind.

"Come, my sweet doves." Angronius beckoned, his big hands outstretched. "Come to the feast with me, and meet my brothers. Eat, drink and make merry- for we don't have long."

His wives took him up on his offer. They too dressed up and accompanied him on his way to the great hall. Long was the merrymaking of the Primarchs, and Angronius didn't miss much. But they, however, missed him. The Primarchs paused when they saw him descend the staircase, with a beautiful sorceress clinging tightly to one arm and a warrior-queen in the other. He was beheld by a mixture of admiration, awe, revulsion and envy.

"About time!" Leman Russ, ever the impertinent one, rose up from his fur-covered throne and wrapped his ceremonial garments over his arm. "I was beginning to think you were never going to leave that room. Although, I think I see now why..."

Polgara didn't care for the way he leered at her and Sonjita. A lifetime ago, she once saw Angronius as a beast of a man, more related to the hounds of House Thal'kyr. This one, this mountain of hair and roaring laughter, embodied exactly that.

"Sonja, Eanna... this is my brother- Leman Russ." Angronius introduced the Primarch of the Space Wolves to his wives. "King of Fenris and Lord of the Space Wolves."

"So..." Leman's eyes gleamed mischievously, "Are these your concubines?"

"Wives." Sonjita corrected him with a savage growl.

"How horribly uncouth!" Polgara bristled.

Angronius rolled his eyes, "Steady, my dears. My brother makes sport of testing your patience. Please, do not indulge him."

"Indeed." A towering crimson-skinned cyclops, just as regal and godlike as the rest, approached the group to pay respects to the gladiator-king. "Move along, Leman. You're drunk."

"Not drunk enough." The wolf-king retorted with a challenging smile, wagging a finger in Angronius' direction. "I expect you to drop by my corner. We have some catching up to do."

"Thank you, Magnus." Angronius sighed, relieved to have that bit of drama gone. "I am glad to see that there are more saner heads in the room than before. We haven't had the chance to speak since the first days of the Triumph."

"I was preoccupied. It's truly a miracle I found the time, though I foresee that my endeavors would prove worth the effort." Magnus the Red, a living conduit of the Warp, felt like the sun had descended from the heavens and walked among them. Polgara was in awe at the psychic strength emanating from his very being. Every single one of the Primarchs commanded that same awe and respect, even the eldritch emanations of the Warp however small, but Magnus stood out to her.

"Never mind Leman's offer. I would have you sit with me, instead of wasting your presence around such debased animals."

The Crimson King showed his brotherly warmth and a disarming sense of humor that one might never expect from such a scholarly figure. His mastery of topics of the higher mysteries intrigued Polgara, but bored Sonjita out of her mind. The food and drink, at least, were made for a pantheon of gods. Served on platters of silver and gold, cooked to perfection by the Imperium's finest chefs, the aroma made even the Primarchs' mouths water.

Heavy footfalls heralded the presence of Vulkan, Father of the Salamanders. With skin as black as coal, eyes red like smoldering embers, he looked like a statue of the darkest marble with rubies for eyes. He towered over the seated kings, and his hand weighed heavily on Angronius' shoulder when he leaned over. Twisting about, the Nucerian greeted the giant with a smile and firmly locked hands with him. Others joined Magnus' table. Lorgar Aurelian, the angelic Sanguinius, and the beautiful phoenician Fulgrim.

Easy on the eyes, majestic beings all, enough to make the wives of Angronius feel out of place.

Then, there were the monstrous like Perturabo and Mortarion- grim beasts locked by a thin flaxen leash of civility. They dined in silence, casting a pall of gloom around their table. According to Angronius it was favorable for them to be present than to have avoided the feast altogether as the Lion, Guilliman and a few others have done.

The quiet ones, like the calculating Ferrus Manus and Corvus Corax, hovered in the rear. They listened, learned, and offered little in matters of merriment. Corvus, especially. When Polgara first saw him, she mistook his demeanor for one of disdain. After spending some time at the feast, she found him rather pleasant to be around with. He reminded her of Angronius, when he was yet of the ludus all those years ago. Dark of hair, dusky-eyed and with the prowling look of a predator on the hunt. Angronius had outgrown that trait when he married Polgara.

At the cusp of the celebrations, Horus Lupercal stood up and made his announcement. The suspension of the Great Crusade would be lifted within the week, all the Primarchs were to formally declare their support for the Warmaster's cause and assist in the preparations for departure. This news saddened Polgara and Sonjita, but in their hearts they've already prepared for the worst. Having met Horus, a true friend of Angron's, they knew he was in good hands.

One by one, the Primarchs left the dining hall to return to their legions. Angron used this opportunity to introduce his family to Erda, whom he'd safely hidden away from his brothers. His wives and his children gathered round and took part of a long overdue reunion. Angronius would be the only Primarch to have reconnected with his biological mother, the others simply couldn't be bothered with. Erda took some solace in that fact, feeling undeserving of the love of her sons. There was no surprise there, she deserved worse for her mistakes. She was lucky, very lucky, to have met Angronius first.

She met the two halves of Angronius' heart, his queens, the ones who saw him rise from a mere slave to god-king of Nuceria. A tear escaped her eye as she beheld the primaris, the firstborn of Angronius Thal'kyr. She could see herself in the faces of his daughters and his sons. Erda held them close for as long as she could, for the Great Crusade would claim them all once more. Though she remained under Angronius' protection, the woman would likely never see them again.

Nevertheless, their parting was sweet. And in the grim darkness of the far future, a sweet parting was a deeply cherished gift.

The Maw of Orcus,
Ludus Legiones

A deep frown narrowed Khârn's eyes into slits and furrowed his brow. Before him stood Mercerandres, an aspirant from Nuceria who claimed to be one of the primaris progenum.

They stood together in the center of the Ludus Legiones proving grounds, upon a silver-colored ring with the relief of one of their gene-sire's many battles carved into the metal. Dozens of spacemarines sat or stood in a scattered pattern about the ring, as spectators to the trials for the newest addition to their legion. Khârn then wore a grimace of disgust as he paced around the primaris aspirant. He had Gorefather, the original weapon Angronius used in his famous revolt against Old Nuceria. Mercerandres wore a master-crafted suit of power-armor, forged by the finest smiths in Nuceria and painted with the honorable colors of the legion he so aspired to join.

Colors that he did not earn.

The captain of the War Hounds First Company spat the words, each laced with corroding venom that stung the younger demigod's pride. "You think yourself worthy of the Legiones Astartes, whelp?"

"I am worthy." He declared with all confidence, unwilling to balk before the veteran legionnaire's baleful stare. "More worthy than any of the rabble that makes your ranks."

Khârn reached out and touched the armor, getting a good feel of the surface. Not a scratch, no dent nor crack from usage. Shiny and new, polished to an unearthly sheen like the pompous perfectionist bastards of the Emperor's Children. Mercerandres even wore a pelt of black wolfskin, a direwolf pelt that swayed from his shoulders like an honorary garland. In this legion, animal pelts were granted to officers or legionary heroes in a grand ceremony that befitted their sacrifice of blood and sweat.

To Khârn it was an insult to the traditions of the Warhounds to see an undeserved aspirant donning such a thing. It made the veteran's blood boil. "Speak your name."

Mercerandres turned his head to face Khârn, his gaze like solid steel. "I am Mercerandres, son of Angronius, the Orcusian Dragon."

"Oh?" Khârn tilted his head to either direction, to each spacemarine in attendance of the trials. "Guess what, so am I."

With a violent tug, he ripped the pelt off of Mercer's shoulders and cast it aside. "And I see no dragons here! Here, there are only Hounds!"

He kept circling Mercer, tearing off pieces of his armor while the bewildered and furious aspirant looked on. Khârn's voice grew harsher, guttural, like the grating of iron upon stones. "And before me stands a pup, soft in teeth and small of stature, looking to run with the big dogs because he fancies himself a Hound of War!"

Mercerandres' head tilted low, his eyes now murderously aglow with hate. The fingers on his right hand danced across the handle of his father's chainaxe, a move that Khârn noticed without giving so much as a sidewards glance. He would make his test, now.

Khârn moved behind Mercer and, with one swift motion, detached the power core pack from the aspirant's armor. He kicked Mercer forward, causing him to stumble in surprise. With a wave of his hand, Khârn commanded a sergeant to activate the graviton plates built into the ring. Mercerandres halted in his tracks, the strain on him making itself evident upon his face.

"What is this?!" Mercer demanded, his hand leaving his sword and grasping at thin air all of a sudden.

Without power, his armor was just a cage of ceramite and adamantine. The combined weight of it all would've surely broken the bones of mortal men, perhaps put a monumental strain on astartes. For him, it was as if a giant hand was pressing down on him, forcing him to kneel and be crushed against the silver figure of his father carved beneath his feet.

"You came to be judged, son of Angronius!" Khârn declared, "Now be judged!"

Two Hounds approached the struggling fool, one armed with a deactivated power-maul and the other with a deactivated powersword. Even without the molecular destabilizing fields on, their weapons were powerful enough to shatter ceramite. With enough blows, they could shatter primaris bone too. Mercerandres braced himself, for he was too sluggish to move out of the way. One blow was struck at his side, another at his middle. A third at his back, then a fourth behind the head.

That last one sent him to his knees.

All the while, the First Captain's words rang clear above the din of cracking adamantine and bruised pride. "Know this, pup! An aspirant does not come before the legion in his armor, lest he puts his faith in its strength to see him through the trials! See and feel your error! Brothers, carve and beat it into his flesh!"

And carve and beat it in, they did. Mercerandres grunted, growled and groaned as they hammered Khârn's point in. He couldn't move, not with the damnable graviton field restraining his entire body. It was a humbling moment for the Orcusian Dragon. All his life in the dueling halls of Nuceria, he'd always enjoyed the upper hand afforded by his superior genetics. Mercer had never lost a fight, and he prided himself in that.

He would not lose one now.

"Your armor will fail you when it matters most! So too will your blessed arms, your weapons of war! What will you do then, when the odds are stacked against you? What will you do when the very weight of the world was set upon your shoulders?"

As the integrity of his armor cracked and crumbled, Mercerandres spat the blood from his mouth and raised his head. He saw the power-maul coming and felt it slam full-force against his forehead. His skull had a minute fracture split down his temple, and his head rang with an excruciating ache that felt like it would last forever. His eyes blinked, staring with a gradually dimming vision at the sanguine pool collecting beneath him. The face of Angronius, of silver stained with godsblood, stared stoically back at him in turn. Would he bend, he who claimed to be the finest of his father's sons?

Gathering his thoughts and fighting through the pain, the aspirant let out a defiant roar. Like a dragon bursting out of his skin, Mercer leapt from the broken frame of his armor and tackled the spacemarine in front of him. He'd made a gamble that the graviton field affected only his armor, and succeeded in exploiting that flaw.

Mercer, clad only in the synthetic second skin that allowed him to operate the armor, unleashed his fury and wreaked his vengeance upon the two Hounds. The one he tackled didn't lose his balance and planted both his legs firmly into the floor. With his arms still wrapped around the spacemarine's middle, Mercer primed the krak grenade hanging by his belt, then quickly rolled to the floor. There was a burst of fire and smoke. The Hound dropped too, his right leg blown away at the hip.

And yet, he was still very much alive! The Hound said nothing, not even a grunt of suffering as he crawled with a gaping hole where his leg used to be. He rose up on one knee and two hands, reaching for the power-maul that he dropped in the fall. Mercer grabbed it first and swung it at the spacemarine's face so hard that the visor broke away, revealing a face twisted with silent agony.

The spacemarine wouldn't drop in defeat, so Mercer had to switch targets as the second one moved to impale him with his sword. The aspirant let him pass his blade harmlessly over his chest in a last-second twist of the upper body, then knocked the sword out of his wrist with an upwards strike of the elbow. In one swift motion, the spacemarine drew back and raised his combat knife.

Mercer spitefully twirled the power-maul and slammed it down on the maimed Hound's head, knocking him out of the fight.

Haughtily, the aspirant hurled the weapon at the control panel keeping the graviton field up and raised his bare hands in challenge as he called out to Khârn. Sparks flew and metal bent before the heavy weapon's impact. His fancy armor collapsed into pieces once the field dissipated, "The weight of the world? Hardly!"

He charged up against the second Hound and leapt at him, his knee connecting with the spacemarine's helmet. There was a resounding crack as the Hound's head snapped back, and he fell to the floor in advance of Mercer. The vengeful aspirant removed the helmet and gouged out the unhappy legionnaire's eyes with his thumbs. The spacemarine cried out, grasping wildly for the knife that had tumbled from his fingers in that short span of a minute. Blood squirted from his sockets, flesh parted and nerves flared. With an almost sadistic joy, Mercer dug his fingers deep until he was almost hitting brain.

Seeing all this, Khârn stomped forward and grabbed Mercer by the neck. He wasn't finished with the lesson.

He throttled the aspirant to the floor and planted his boot on Mercerandres' throat. The Hounds that bore witness to the brutal spectacle had watched in silence, and even afterwards they remained in silence. Khârn humbled the primaris, and humbled him some more. Mercer strained against the captain's boot and rasped while his breath was slowly crushed out of him.

"You're not getting it, pup." Khârn snarled, "You aspire to become one of the legion because you think to reap personal glories from the Great Crusade. Such glories are for the Ultramarines and Sons of Russ!"

His voice reverberated across the great halls, ringing clear even within the bruised head of the seething aspirant. "Join them if that is what you want. Leave, I will have no gloryseeker in my legion."

He lifted his boot and stood back. Mercerandres glared up at him, "No. I came here to become a War Hound. I will become a War Hound!"

Khârn reached down and grabbed him by the throat again, raising him up to eye-level so that he could look at him one final time and judge his answer. "You think that just because you are of the primaris progenum, you have the right to defy me? I said leave."

"No." Mercer would not be moved, "I will become a War Hound, even if I have to kill every last one of you on this damned vessel!"

"There's a thousand and forty-seven of us in this fleet, pup."

"Then send them all!"

Hubris, perhaps? Or maybe it was determination? Khârn couldn't be certain, but there was enough favorable traits in the aspirant for him to consider. Mercerandres wasn't the kind who had nothing to lose, he could always have a place elsewhere, a fallback option when things couldn't go his way. That was mostly why Khârn hated him. But now that he saw what the son of Angronius was made of, he couldn't help but smile to himself.

This was going to be fun.

"That, pup..." Khârn dropped Mercer to the floor, "That was the right answer."

Mercerandres quickly got to his feet and straightened himself up.

"As a neophyte, you will enter our halls deprived of arms and armor." Khârn held up Gorefather, "You dishonor the legion by donning colors you have yet to earn, and armed yourself with a weapon you do not deserve! You do not stand in the recruitment centers of the Imperial Army, you are in the halls of the Twelfth Legion- the War Hounds of the Emperor himself!"

Every War Hound present, save for the injured ones being carried away, stood at attention and slammed their fists against the Imperial Aquila on their breastplates.

"You will break, pup." Khârn promised, "And I will hold the hammer that breaks you."

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