Warhammer: Start with a dog.

Chapter 519: Morning of a Chaos Space Marine Champion
Roboute Guilliman opened his eyes in his own chamber.

He is alive and still here.

Suspended in the vortex of the Warp, thousands of light years away from his homeworld of Macragge.

He was silent for a moment, listening.

Though he had heard the whispers and enticements of the Warp in many tongues here, he listened now and heard nothing but the sound of waves lapping against the shore at the edge of the Storm Ocean.

Oh, that's not the case. There was another firm voice coming regularly from deep in his chest.

His heart was beating strongly, and this bizarre dream of the warp was just like what he had experienced before, giving him an extremely real physical feeling.

The air purification system detected his waking up and automatically turned on, sucking out the warmed air and starting to hiss into the room with a breeze that was kept at around twenty degrees. Although Hong Suo tried his best according to his own strict standards, he still couldn't completely eliminate the subtle post-purification odor inside.

Only after actually trying to repair the air purification system here with Hongsuo and others, did Guilliman deeply realize the terrible meaning behind this seemingly insignificant matter of maintaining fresh air throughout the entire ship of his fourth brother's Iron Blood.

Of course, the air here is definitely more comfortable than that in the New Thorn Palace, the fleet of Atasiya, or the ships of Salomba. The former uses a large number of candles and incense to cover up the smell of blood, corpses, murder and conspiracy, while the latter two - the Primarch of the Ultramarines dispelled the smell of some memories and the images they evoked from his mind.

If Hong Suo hadn't repeatedly pleaded and given several warnings beforehand, he would have picked up an axe and found an opportunity to chop these... these...

The sound of some metallic mechanical structure flapping its wings interrupted his thoughts.

He frowned and turned around, and as expected, he saw a creature that could perfectly demonstrate to what a pathetic and ignorant state the Empire, or the entire galaxy, had fallen into. It was flying towards him with his schedule for today.

Cherubim.

Although intellectually, Guilliman knew that their infant-like flesh came from the cell culture tanks of the Mechanicum or similar laboratories.

For example, this one was a damaged Cherubim that Honsou had specially found and had re-bred and repaired for Guilliman in his own laboratory. He also knew that each of these special servitors, which were transformed from the appearance of a baby, was unique and of extraordinary value. Some of them could even have emotions of their own, depending on the craftsmanship of the maker. Whether in the Empire or elsewhere, an exquisite Cherubim assistant was regarded as a symbol of status, and depending on the direction of reinforcement, they also had different practical values.

But he couldn't help thinking with disgust of the contents mentioned in the historical documents that Hong Suo had written to him in his busy schedule.

Like the birth of these little robot servants, with skin as pale as death, body temperatures not much hotter than ice, preservative fluids coursing through their veins, reinforced with chrome and brass, with cables and repulsor engines and speakers and other things sewn into the delicate skin of babies who had never lived.

The earliest record of their creation is about two thousand years after the end of the Horus Heresy. When the Primarch thought about the fact that they were actually first produced and launched by the State Religion and the Mechanicus at the celebration of the Emperor's Ascension Festival, with the aim of "deliberately making their image 'close' to the child angels beside God in ancient human legends, in order to make them appear purer in the eyes of the Emperor" and "to enhance the sanctity of their users", his eyes could not help but become cold.

Everywhere there is the glorification of death and suffering, everywhere there is an indulgence in the admiration of sacrifice, the morbid fanaticism is like a cold wind blowing through the ribs of the huge rotting corpse of the empire, passing through the empty eye sockets of the cherubim and servo skulls. The crazy flesh-and-blood mechanical technology of Mars has extended to every part of the human empire. In the eyes of these mechanical religious lunatics or geniuses, human beings themselves have been quantified into a kind of material, a religious tool, a materialization that seems solemn and dignified but is actually morbid to the point of being unnecessary.

As if sensing his disgust, the brass wings of the Cherubim flapped twice in grievance - yes, the reason why he agreed to appoint this Cherubim as his symbol of identity, liaison officer and secretary attendant despite his disgust was because Hong Suo told him that he had integrated a part of the brain waves of Tech-Sergeant Hestia, one of Guilliman's unfortunate descendants of the Fifth Company who were all sleeping in the life-support cabin, into the body of this repaired angel servitor in the Indomitable.

"This is also to take into account the extensive renovation requirements that the Inflexible needs now and the safety of my cousins. After all, this is the Great Whirlpool. Who knows what will happen if they sleep there and we can't always go to see them. So I reawakened a part of Hestia's spirit, who is most friendly to machinery, and connected it to this blank body as a mobile interactive interface here. He is also very happy to serve you."

This was indeed the case. Although they could instruct Honso's original warband warriors to help to a limited extent, there were a few more secrets in the Indomitable, and Honso's opinion of Huron was a little too high, so many things still needed the three of them to keep an eye on personally. Apart from the food and coffee that were always brought by Vannus himself, the trivial secretarial work such as helping the Primarchs of the Ultramarines put on their armor or cleaning their power armor and weapons, making appointments for repairs and maintenance, daily news, schedule reports, work progress, etc. were all naturally handed over to Hestia, who had been partially awakened.

After all, Cherubim are still a kind of advanced robot servants with the appearance of babies. Their small mechanical bodies have hydraulic and power devices that are inconsistent with their appearance, so it is not too difficult to deal with them in daily life. In the large niche on one side of the room, Hong Suo also installed a mechanical automatic system to help penetrate armor at his request...

Guilliman glanced around the room again.

At first, Grendel and his team, who were in charge of decorating the Primarch's private room, wanted to decorate a magnificent shrine-style bedroom for him in accordance with today's aesthetic tastes, full of dark Gothic and death-worshipping styles. To be honest, in the eyes of outsiders, this style would be very suitable for the status of a high-ranking noble of the Empire, a bishop of the State Church, or a high-ranking dark apostle of the Word Bearers. But the Primarch, who obviously came from nine thousand years ago, did not appreciate this. Instead, Honso believed that the bedroom of the Lord of Macragge was originally a private room. "There are only a few of us who know the identity of His Highness here. Who are you doing this for?" In this case, the Primarch should decorate it according to his own preferences, but if he wants to blatantly hang the Imperial Eagle Flag, then forget it.

In the end, this place became what it is today: a simple room with no additional decoration except for a large bed, a desk, a chair and a few Ultramarines-style war tapestries and carpets that were originally on the Inflexible. Niches are hidden behind the door panels decorated with elegant and simple lines, where weapon racks and other equipment are stored. This room painted in a soft creamy yellow color even has the atmosphere of his childhood residence on Macragge.

I wonder what has become of his old quarters on Macragge? Guilliman still remembers the room in Hera's Fortress where he grew up, learned, laughed and cried, and almost died. What has become of it? I heard that it is now very popular in the Imperium to preserve relics and objects that are considered sacred... Perhaps his memories are still there...

The Primarch's extraordinary deductive power brought another related possibility to his attention.

Although never telling anyone, including Honsou, Robouti Guilliman had actually calculated some other possibilities after being awakened from this Warp dream, including the possibility of him being awakened as the only Primarch in Hera's Fortress on Macragge, surrounded by his sons, with the recognition of the Imperium and the prayers of his believers.

But the data collected later added a heavy yoke of despair to this calculation, so heavy that he could hardly breathe. Guilliman soon realized that if this was true, he would be overwhelmed by such a heavy and earnest hope. All the superstitions, hopes, lives and futures of Macragge, Ultramar and even the billions of people in the entire Imperium would be weighed down on his shoulders. He was even more horrified to find that despite this, he would still... like a horse desperately trying to pull a huge ship that was about to crash, wanting to save as many humans as possible from the cruel and decaying corpse of the Imperium, and even let more people survive. Just for this, he might have to give up much more and more important things than he did now. He would have to become some of the people he once criticized...

Even though the Primarch believed that he was not truly afraid of this kind of pressure, the loneliness, despair and pain calculated by his powerful deductive ability almost suffocated him. At certain moments, when he realized the deduced situation, he even thought with some luck, fortunately, I woke up here, I was in the dream of my soul, and I still have brothers who are alive and fighting.

At the moment when he was distracted, his body had habitually walked onto the armoring console and started to put on the armor. This huge power armor that fit his actual body was hastily made for him by Honso and Grendel. The materials and reactor components were all taken from the damaged armor of the Fifth Company and the Dreadnought. They did not dare to risk using any armor materials from real Chaos Astartes.

To be honest, although one of his two nephews has the title of Smith, the other now seems to be better at pharmacists and court warfare. After all, Guilliman had carefully understood and learned some of the superiorities of the Iron Warriors ten thousand years ago. The function of a war blacksmith is actually similar to that of a legion archon in other legions, except for a few jobs unique to the Fourth Legion. In this respect, Hong Suo has a bit of a retro talent that has come by accident. Moreover, with his mouth, he can even become the Primarch's personal pharmacist. It can be seen that his fourth brother's temperament has indeed become a lot better after the accident.

And while Grendel was good at accounting, he was obviously more focused on the ways of war. They only had some knowledge of the precision craftsmanship of building Primarch-sized power armor, but luckily they still had Hestia - although without his own body, the technical sergeants could only draw pictures, give verbal instructions, and do fine welding, but it was better than their mindless modifications, so in the end Guilliman obtained this barely acceptable gun-silver power armor - although he had been using the Primarch-level phantom camouflage to disguise himself, the purpose of camouflage was to disguise and distort existing things, not to create things like power armor, internal circulation devices, respirators, and sound amplification arrays out of thin air.

The blue paint plating was carefully removed during production, and the shoulder armor was painted yellow and black stripes. Hongsuo also ingeniously created some additional decorations on the power armor for him during production, making this armor look a little bit like the style his brother liked to wear. Guilliman was told that this could serve as a second layer of insurance - who knows if the camouflage will suddenly fail, but it doesn't matter. Anyway, the camouflage is always on, and he has always been wearing red armor, with spell paper scrolls wrapped around his limbs and waist, and a Chaos image with demon horns on his head.

Hestiaan, totally unaware that he had just been thought over by the Gene-Father, pressed the button of the device with his now tiny fingers, then flew up and began to perform his duties, circling around the Primarch, silently chanting binary hymns while checking the maintenance of various parts of the power armor.

"Inspection completed, praise the God of All Machines! Praise the power armor of the Father of Genes! The Machine Soul is happy! May the Machine Soul bless your armor and weapons!"

Fortunately, Hestiaan was his son, so after he repeatedly expressed his dissatisfaction in a tactful but firm manner, the technical sergeant somewhat uneasily cancelled most of the appeasement rituals, leaving only this prayer. Guilliman really didn't want to recall the first time he saw the other party chanting those long hymns and the rituals of burning incense and anointing oils when he was inspecting the power armor. He couldn't believe his eyes and ears, and at the same time, his evaluation of certain departments in the empire was once again lowered.

If it weren't for Honsou and the others being by his side all the time, and if the Iron Warriors' master potion-master would occasionally take out some objects with a painful look on his face that matched what he had previously understood, Guilliman would sometimes really think that he had either lost his sanity due to sleeping too long, and was now suffering from the hell of religious ignorance he had imagined in his own mind, or he had actually died from Fulgrim's poison blade, and the time that seemed to be passing and the many things that were happening now were just the eternity of darkness that he glimpsed in the last moment before his death.

He took a step out onto the mechanical platform. The work platform with several mechanical servo arms made a clicking sound of contraction. The eyes of the skull embedded on it turned from red to green, and then went out. The platform was retracted into the large niche along the track, and the room returned to peace.

"Your schedule for today, sir." Hestiaan pulled out a long roll of parchment from the scroll box behind him. "Master Vannus said that today's breakfast will be ready in six minutes, and he will personally deliver it to the bedroom."

"Very good. Is there anything special you should pay attention to in today's schedule?"

"Yes, the fleet has been assembled, and we are about to set out to attack the predetermined target. Before departure, Lord Hong Suo sent a message saying that he will perform the third stage of surgery on the Blackheart King, and he hopes that you will prepare the operating room..."

"…During the four hours you rested last night, I recorded eight duel invitations for you in the Indomitable's communications…"

"...Lady Atasiya...assign the base renovation and banquet..."

"...Ms. Zalumba...a thrilling invitation to harvest by racing..."

(End of this chapter)