Aiming for Nobledark

by OphiuchusDelta

Summary:

The Emperor is thrown back in time to before the primarchs were scattered, and has a second chance to try to make things right, both for humanity and for his family, one he does not intend to waste. However, this timeline is not quite the same as the original, nor is he the only one who has lived through the future.

Chapter 1: A Return

Notes:

When grimdark fails and gets you stuck in your own rotting corpse of a body on a golden throne in constant pain for 10,000 years while humanity slowly decays and dies around you, maybe aim for nobledark the second time around.

As a note, while the Emperor is nicer in this, he has still done absolutely monstrous things in his “ends justify all means” quest to save humanity and is only now trying to double-check if there are better means. He has good intentions, but is stumbling through trying to achieve what would be impossible to anyone else and has his own sets of traumas and biases which affect his judgment for good and for ill. Which is all to say that he is still stuck in that kind of mindset and while he is trying, he has difficulty determining when to listen to his conscience and when to make harsh decisions, all while living in the Warhammer universe where mercy and kindness can lead to the deaths of billions just as easily as cruelty does.

So yes, this is going to go swimmingly.

The Emperor blinked for the first time in ten millennium. He was in his lab. He was sane, debatably. Was this another dream of the warp? No, he checked himself over. His soul was intact.

His soul was intact ! He wasn’t broken across the galaxy, acting as a… as a…

God.

What had he become? What had his dream turned into? He scoffed out loud, then broke out into deranged laughter. Dream! It was a nightmare, it was a nightmare from the moment he took on the name of Emperor and he just kept telling himself it would be worth it in the end. Every atrocity, every “statistic,” every act of cruelty, it would be worth it, humanity would be safe and would never fall so far again. Trillions dead to save decillions in the future, his humanity sacrificed and ripped away so humanity would endure. And then everything fell apart, everything shattered.

And he was too arrogant to think he could fail. He told himself if he made every sacrifice, he couldn’t fail. If he gave everything to this dream, his humanity, his very morality, then it would succeed. Untold suffering, the worst of humanity laid bare for the universe to see for over ten millennium, all because of him. All because he justified every means to get to his end, without care as to what message he was sending, or what he was doing to humanity, his beloved mankind.

A psychic cry cut through the silence. He froze, and raised his head. Around him, were gestation pods, numbered I through XX. Before he realized what he was doing, he dashed to XII. Inside, XII cried, his form shifting between a human infant and red sand forming a vaguely winged humanoid shape. The Emperor scooped him up, staring down in wonder. “You’re alive…” he breathed. XII— Angron’s cries softened. “It’s alright, you’re alright. There’s no pain, there’s no nails, father’s here—” He choked, tears blurring his vision. “Father’s here.”

Then he said the words that he knew may save or damn humanity. “And he won’t let anything happen to you.”

He couldn’t do it. Not again. He couldn’t watch his son think he abandoned him, that he let his friends die without a care. He couldn’t send his son to war while those damned nails ripped apart his mind, as he put all plans of fixing it on the backburner until the Crusade was over. He couldn’t keep them out of the fighting, but he couldn’t throw his children to the wolves again. Well, metaphorically at least. Leman would kill him if he didn’t—

The Emperor looked up, glancing over at pod VI. It was occupied. He turned his head to I, then over to II and froze. The inside of the pod was scorched. Taking care not to drop Angron, he ran over and touched the surface before his psychic reach told him what his mind didn’t want to accept. He was gone.

Duo died upon collision with the planet, but his body did not. It became a puppet for some alien hive, one which lied and tricked his sons, endeared itself to them, then tried to kill them, infect them. It even managed to trick them into seeing him as a healthy, alive primarch, instead of the bloated, twisted undead corpse that had been forced to grow to his adult size by the hive. And Undecim— he stopped that train of thought. Chaos was enough of a memetic hazard in its own right, but a pure infohazard should not be thought of more than necessary. Sure enough, when he looked at XI, the inside was also charred to a crisp.

They died young, too young. Their souls moved on past where he could ever reach. And theirs were the pods destroyed. A quick check told him every other pod was intact and safe, but seeing those two obliterated caused the pain to well up all over again. Putting the mourning aside for later, he continued on his rounds through the pods.

When he reached Horus’s, he shifted Angron to one arm and reached inside. Gently, almost afraid of breaking some illusion, he brushed his fingers against Horus’s cheek. A pair of bright eyes looked up at him, shifting from a sea green to gold and back again, utterly guileless, utterly untouched by the Ruinous Powers. The Emperor closed the pod again and, after checking the last of the pods, returned to XII, setting the now calmer Angron back inside.

His sons were here, and they were safe. Suspicion nagging at his brain, he pulled out a dataslate and looked at the date, then broke down sobbing again, this time out of sheer, overwhelming emotion. It was the day after he finished the primarch project. The Great Crusade hadn’t begun, and they were still preparing for what lay ahead. He had made mistakes, and even now he wasn’t sure what the right answer was, but he certainly knew what the wrong answers were. He could fix things.

No, he corrected himself. He had a chance to fix things. That didn’t mean he would succeed. Idly, he strode over to IX and picked up Sanguinius. His form shifted between a being of pure light dripping rivers of phantom blood and a wide-eyed infant reaching up for him with a smile. He had believed in him until the end, he had died for him, his body torn and beaten into a quite literal bloody pulp. That was what awaited him if he failed again. Regardless of how they lost, regardless of if humanity raged against the slow but inevitable dying of the light or were wiped out in one cruel stroke, Chaos would make sure to hurt his sons in the process for the sole reason that they were his sons.

Carefully, he set Sanguinius back in his pod and continued on, picking up Roboute, who was sticking in his human form for now. He had adjusted quickly, the Emperor noted. His thirteenth son, the Imperium’s last hope in the far flung future, who had carried the fate, the hopes, and the survival of humanity on his shoulders. His very own custodes had served as his personal guard, knowing his was one of the last glimmers of hope for the Emperor’s carrion dream.  

His custodes… Constantin… Malcador…  how would he explain any of this to them? Should he? Should he burden them with potential knowledge of a future he had lived, one which had evidently affected parts of the present? He wanted to tell them, he especially wanted to tell Malcador, to confide in him, but that kind of knowledge was painful. If he were to tell them, it could forewarn them, but it would ultimately be selfish. The warning was minimal, as there was little either of them could do with the knowledge that he himself couldn’t do on his own. But… not confiding in his sons had caused several of them to fall, could doing the same with Malcador lead to a similar outcome? They had been in this together since the moment he had taken his current name, and he had never hid anything of this magnitude from him before, not without Malcador knowing he was keeping information from him and why. Yet when he thought of Malcador’s death, tortured, ripped asunder— he couldn’t talk to Malcador about it, whether he told him the truth or not. Even now, the memory ached, and he knew he couldn’t get through the recount without breaking down.

Which meant that he would likely need to steer this ship on his own, so to speak. He needed to save humanity, he needed to prevent the theocratic Imperial future, he needed to protect his sons and those he held dear: in that order, unfortunately. One constant those all held was the need to defeat Chaos. Humanity’s future would never be secured while it could overrun them, it would always be a driving factor in forcing humanity to run to other divinities to protect them, and it would always try to get at him through his sons.

The door to his lab slammed open. He set Roboute back in his pod and turned, only to see Constantin and Malcador running in. Malcador, his oldest and truest friend, the man he had taken as his partner in life, the man who had sacrificed himself completely for humanity, for him, was alive, and in front of him. He still hadn’t decided if he would burden him with his knowledge, but right now merely having Malcador here was enough. And Constantin, his original son, stood beside him. Another son he had failed, which he would need to remedy.

He opened his mouth to feign normalcy, to ask why they were here, but frowned as he took in their expressions. Constantin looked shellshocked and was staring at him like he had seen a ghost, whereas Malcador had on an upset expression that the Emperor dubbed ‘angry with worry’ in Gothic—the language lacking a better exact word—only to a far greater extent than he had seen a long time. Constantin stumbled forward, then dropped to one knee in a reverential bow. Malcador, on the other hand, marched up to him and grabbed him by the collar, looking like a storm cloud.

“Revelation, if you ever become a god again, I will atomize every bone in your body, burn the ashes of your soul, then smother your divine self with a pillow!”

Notes:

If you’re wondering why the primarchs are Like That, they’re warp entities in flesh suits and their infant bodies can only keep them grounded, not fully hold them just yet so they kinda just… glitch between forms until said meat puppets are strong enough. Also I absolutely took inspiration for that one from NumberOneGondorFan and their If the Emperor was a Good Dad fic.

For what each primarch looks like:

Lion: primal nature spirit made of plant life and stones, held together by darkness and always wielding a sword
REDACTED
Fulgrim: winged serpentine creature with wings burning with white and lavender fire surrounded by soft music and painted colors
Perturabo: metal objects connected together, shifting between different items constantly(gear, gun, wrench, pliers, hammer, etc.) and surrounding a burning furnace
Jaghatai Khan: lightning in the approximate shape of a stallion, constantly surrounded by a gale of wind
Leman Russ: white wolf with fur tinged with frost, surrounded by cold
Rogal Dorn: shifting bronze cube
Konrad: bat-winged scales, emitting an aura of darkness that usually obscures his actual form
Sanguinius: glowing being of light with rivers of blood pouring from him constantly
Ferrus Manus: floating liquid metal
REDACTED
Angron: red sand in the form of a winged humanoid
Roboute: laurel wreath surrounded by golden and sky blue light and mathematical and logistical symbols, the light takes a variety of forms depending on convenience
Mortarion: moth-winged figure made of plants, with medicinal herbs falling from him
Magnus: red winged biblically accurate angel, with purple light blotting out all but one eye
Horus: void wolf coated in golden dust
Lorgar: halo of light with the faint sound of choir music
Vulkan: dragon made of black metal, with eyes, nostrils, and mouth alight with an inner inferno
Corvus: flock of ravens, each with eight eyes: six on their faces and one on each wing
Alpharius and Omegon: twisting knots of snakes, glitching in and out of existence

Chapter 2: Decisions to Be Made

Notes:

Erda is not the Primarchs’ mother in this, but she is one of the geneticists the Emperor brought on to assist with his projects on occasion, including the Primarch project. The Emperor did use other genetic samples than just his own or ones he created, but none from Erda.

“You remember…?”

“Yes, Revelation, we remember .” Malcador’s voice crackled with a sharp edge of lightning. “What, exactly, did you do?”

“You believe I caused this?” the Emperor asked.

“Either you, or some part of what you had turned into.” Malcador’s expression turned grim. “There are few other entities in the universe who could, as far as I’m aware, and it being their will is likely a worse situation for us.”

“If it was me, I have no memory of it,” the Emperor admitted. “Who else remembers?”

“None of the custodes I’ve seen since I awoke,” Constantin confessed, still kneeling. “I didn’t see signs of anyone else remembering on the way here, either.”

He let out a breath, pressing his fingers against his temple. “What is the last century you each were aware of?”

“Are you asking if I know what my “Inquisition” turned into? The raging garbage fire filled with prometheum and religious zealotry the Imperium became? Or how your godly throne-self managed to pull himself together just enough to give Roboute deeper depression, an existential crisis, and a complex? Actually, let’s add Mortarion to that as well, because I’m fairly certain setting a certain rot god’s gardens on fire would cause at least one of those.”

“I’m getting the picture,” the Emperor muttered, still reeling. If the process caused everyone who had returned to have his knowledge, then that was another point of evidence toward his godly self being the culprit—

“I was not aware of those last two,” Constantin admitted, causing that train of thought to come to a screeching halt. The Emperor turned to Malcador, confused.

Malcador just sighed. “Revelation, I was there.”

The Emperor’s eyes widened as he took in the realization and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Constantin start. Malcador continued, “Every moment on that throne, though my soul was dust in your orbit, though I could do almost nothing but exist, I was there. I never left, and you never perceived me. Granted, I never perceived much of anything in any kind of traditional manner either, certainly not in any way that let me react to anything in the moment.”

The Emperor could hardly speak for a minute. “How are you still sane?”

“How are you? ” Malcador replied. “Same reason, most likely.”

“I— my friend, I’m sorry—” He was abruptly cut off by a lightning bolt from Malcador.

“None of that,” he scolded. “Apologies are a luxury I do not need. If you try again, I will set your cape on fire.”

The Emperor smiled, fighting back tears. He had missed Malcador desperately. Still trying to keep composure, he turned to Constantin. “Rise, my son. What of you?” After Malcador’s revelation, he was almost afraid of the answer.

Constantin got to his feet. “I was trying to bring you back, as you were not as the… thing on the throne. I made a pocket in the warp for you to rest and recover in, or coalesce back into a more human soul in as the case may be, and use as a new base of operations when the time came. The exact memories fail me, however. It feels more like a dream, more than the warp usually does.”

The Emperor stepped forward, altering his size, and caught Constantin in a hug. The captain-general froze, then returned the embrace, burying his face in his father’s shoulder. By the time they broke apart, Malcador had dragged four chairs around one of the work tables, two baseline-sized and two custodes-sized. At their look, he made an impatient gesture for them both to sit down.

Once they had, he tapped his finger on the table. “Why we have returned is a concern for later. For the time being, we need to replan everything. The Great Crusade was a disaster even before the Heresy. Not to mention how every transfer of power contingency and planned abdication scenario failed almost immediately. The High Lords of Terra as they stand are not a viable successor for governance of the Imperium, not without a complete reform. The sheer list of plans, policies, and strategies that need to be reevaluated is staggering, and we will likely need more work just to prioritize which work should be started first.”

He glanced over at the pods. “For now, we can start with the twenty— nineteen elephants in the room.”

“Malcador—”

“If you haven’t revoked Erda’s access by now, I will hit you with this.” Malcador waved his staff threateningly. The Emperor paled and grabbed a dataslate, revoking the other perpetual’s access before getting hit over the head with a flying aquila staff. It wasn’t hard, although for a baseline it may have warranted a trip to the infirmary. The thing about immortality, regeneration, psychically and genetically modifying yourself over thousands of years, and having an old friend who did the same thing was that you tended to become desensitized to what would would be considered assault and attempted murder had it been done to a random person, just because it came from a friend.

Malcador shook his head. “By Terra, Revelation, how was that not your first thought?”

“I was more concerned about the state of my sons,” the Emperor retorted.

“And?”

“They’re not corrupted,” he answered. “But Duo and Undecim…” he gestured to the pods in question. Constantin stared down at the table in silent mourning while Malcador started, staring at the pods. Under other circumstances, he would’ve teased the sigillite about missing the obvious, but not about this. Never about this.

“...that wasn’t your doing? They were like this when you came to?” Malcador demanded.

He nodded. “They’re gone, completely. Before you ask, no, I have no idea why it occurred, and my theories are not comforting. None of the others have any chaos corruption in their souls, however.”

Malcador stood and began to check on the pods for himself, one-on-one, and Constantin and the Emperor stood to join him. Malcador stopped at Horus’s pod, checking him over more thoroughly than the others. “Nothing,” he concluded, letting out a relieved breath.

“I all but decimated his soul, but there’s no evidence of harm now,” the Emperor added. “If there is some backlash or bleedover from the future, it hasn’t affected him.”

“I wouldn’t be so certain,” Constantin warned. They turned, seeing he hadn’t left Magnus’s pod. He reached for the latch, then hesitated. “May I?”

The Emperor smiled, trying to force down the worry at that comment, and stepped over to guide Constantin’s hand. The pod opened and the custodian hesitated before reaching, picking up and cradling the infant in his arms. Magnus looked comically small, on those rare occasions he was in human form. Most of the time, however, he was a creature comprised of many red wings and an a spinning ring, with a large eye in the center of the mass of wings and clouds of violet light on and around him. “The first time around, I didn’t have long with him before he was taken. However…” Constantin met his father’s gaze. “He had more eyes before, didn’t he?”

The Emperor felt his stomach drop and inspected Magnus more closely. There was still no sign of chaos corruption, but as Constantin said, he could remember Magnus’s infant warp form having many eyes. A cold thought wormed its way into his mind: what if there was something preventing him from sensing the corruption? If that was the case… he glanced at Horus, Lorgar, and Mortarion: the nearest corrupted primarchs. If the corruption did work recursively, like Duo and Undecim’s true deaths, then that gave the Four a direct route to his sons. If the corruption wasn’t hidden, then they were just recursive aftereffects and his sons were fine. If it was… if it was then he was risking losing all of his sons by keeping them around. If they were older, at least once they solidified into human forms, then they could resist it but not while they were this young. Would keeping them separate work? It might save the rest, but if they were corrupted, the Four would claim and take their souls. He’d be handing his children over to an eternity of suffering and unlike last time, he may not be capable of freeing them from it. However, there was no evidence they were corrupted, and the thought of having to kill his children again— no. He couldn’t, but perhaps a stasis on their bodies and souls alike? But he wasn’t sure if he could make one in time—

“Revelation.” Malcador’s voice cut through his spiral. “Help me check the last five, then we’ll discuss it.”

He let out a breath and nodded. The last of the primarchs were much the same as their brothers: healthy and apparently free of Chaos. He took a seat in one of the regular chairs, changing his size to be closer to a baseline size, and fell deep into thought. Constantin and Malcador sat as well, and the Emperor noticed Constantin still held Magnus in his arms, his every movement slow and cautious.

The Emperor began, “I have sensed no sign of Chaos in any of them, and I know you would have mentioned it if either of you detected anything amiss. But it may be hiding, or something may have happened to us that makes us unable to sense it. Magnus is enough proof that there are some lingering effects, but as for what they are…” He covered his mouth with one hand, then glanced up at his eldest son. “Constantin, hand me Magnus.”

Constantin, however, hesitated. He looked down at Magnus, brushing a thumb over a fluttering wing Magnus was using to tap against his gauntlet. The Emperor felt his expression soften and he let some of the despair he felt show. “I won’t hurt him, I only want to hold him.” He tried to ignore the truth: I can’t kill him, not without breaking.

Reluctantly, Constantin handed him over. “My Emperor, there are clearly variations between now and the original past,” Constantin began. “It’s certainly more likely than hidden corruption.”

“Chaos is capable of worse deceptions,” Malcador corrected. “But the Primarchs aren’t capable of hiding their souls for now, and the Emperor became the dark gods’ antithesis. If it was present and his nature is still as fundamentally opposed to Chaos as it was when he was a… god,” he nearly spat the word out like a curse, “then he should have sensed any corruption, no matter how slight. We don’t know for certain either of those is the case, however, or of anything that may have happened to us or them in the process of returning to this time. For all we know, Chaos still has a seed in them that will grow and infect them from the inside out. Every piece of information we have is conjecture.”

The Emperor felt sick, rejecting every part of the reality Malcador was suggesting. His children, his sons, the most precious things he had ever created, his pride, his wonder, his joy. He couldn’t let them get hurt. He started to speak, but Malcador cut him off.

“All that being said, your children are being put down over my dead body and that is a threat, to you and anyone else who would try.”

The Emperor fell silent as Malcador continued, “There is a risk we are taking, but it’s an acceptable one. Even if they are corrupted, we will likely be able to tell one way or another before a year is up. We’ll be raising them together, and if we see anything alarming we can respond then. But this all came about by seeing the exact same recursive effects that we know affected Duo and Undecim! By Terra, by the logic we were using, all of them could have corruption by sheer virtue of being exposed to it so much in the future and having weaker defenses against it now. And separating them into different groups will only preselect where battle lines would be drawn. For the foreseeable future, we act as if this notion, this conversation, never happened. We will leave the utilitarianism for the Imperium, not for ou- your children.”

The Emperor handed Magnus back to Constantin. “Watch them, guard them,” he ordered, and stepped out of his labs into the passageway.

He made it ten steps before collapsing to the ground, nearly hyperventilating. He just spent five minutes with filicide even on the table over the fears of Chaos corruption. He had told himself he wouldn’t hurt them, everything in his being screamed at him to take care of them, and yet again… yet again the realities of the world oozed their way in. What would happen when one of them was lured astray by Chaos? What would happen if Magnus broke the webway again? He reacted too harshly, he didn’t make sure his intentions were conveyed, he didn’t reach out himself. He made a mistake then, and just now, he wasn’t sure which decision would be a bigger error. Doing nothing and pretending the idea had never occurred to him, that was what he wanted to do. But was that the right call? Was he risking not only the rest of his children, but humanity as a whole?

Malcador sat down next to him. He hadn’t even noticed him following. “There are no easy answers.”

“I considered killing my own children.”

“And it would’ve killed you.” Malcador set his staff on his lap. “For what it’s worth, I don’t believe the Four have their claws in any of the primarchs anymore. I do, however, believe there will be scars.”

“How was that my first thought?”

Malcador was silent for a while. “How many friends have turned to chaos? How many thought it was the solution to the Age of Strife, only to destroy themselves and entire planets? Or sectors? How many times did we try and solve things across the galaxy with less drastic methods only to fall and fail, over and over and over again? How many times did we trust the wrong person?”

The Emperor brought his knees up to his chest. “If Lansan isn’t long dead, he will be if I ever see him again.”

“Assuming I’d give you the chance,” Malcador scoffed. “I need to immolate that eldar bastard slowly .” He coughed. “The kind option had not been a luxury we thought we could afford for a very long time, but it may be one we need.”

The Emperor tilted his head back. “And if we fail this time?” he looked at Malcador with tired eyes. “Mal, we won’t get another chance.”

“And doing things the “safe” way worked so brilliantly the last time.” The sarcasm was thick enough to cut with a sword. “But for the love of Terra, Revelation, don’t make your children into tools again. Not only for their sakes, but for yours and the Imperium’s. You want to be a father, you want to raise them in safety until they’re grown? Then do that . Don’t plan out your relationship with your children, I’ve seen your ‘stern and authoritarian’ ‘parenting plan’ and I’ve seen how horrifically that’s gone with some of them.”

The Emperor fell quiet for a long time. “I don’t have a plan, Mal.”

“Oh, I gathered that by the barely restrained panic attack,” Malcador muttered. “We’ll make adjustments to the old one.”

They sat in silence for a while.

“How are you? After everything?” the Emperor asked at last.

Malcador’s expression was unreadable to most, but not to the Emperor, as he stood up, bracing himself on his staff. “I’m going to check on your children, I’d suggest you come with.”

Notes:

And here we see the Emperor’s trust issues and trauma rear their head. He wants to pick the humane option, but that carries risks that he can’t always accurately gauge the severity of, and he got burned by picking the humane option about a thousand too many times. Add onto the fact that he just regained his sanity and general sense of humanity after a thousand years of having both of those things fractured amongst millions of different parts of himself and he's not doing great.

Chapter 3: On Names and Knowledge

The Emperor realized quickly that he was going to stay on this couch for a long time. The primarchs still needed to sleep in their pods and all monitoring equipment was set up in the lab, so as they couldn’t bring them into the nursery yet, Constantin had dragged some couches, rugs, and pillows into the lab for the time being which created a comfortable place to sit and a safe place for the primarchs to be out of their pods. The Emperor had laid down on the couch, with Horus and Magnus resting on his chest, both fast asleep, and Sanguinius held in one arm. Malcador rested amongst pillows on a rug, with the twins floating around his head and peering at a book in his hands, Lorgar on his lap, and Leman within arms reach trying to tear up a cushion. Constantin stood, keeping watch over the others in their pods, occasionally taking one out to visit.

They had been rotating the various primarchs between outside and pod time for the past several hours. Jaghatai, one of the first they brought out, had just calmed down enough to go back in his pod and had at one point, made a break for the door to the lab. Suffice to say, all the primarchs were watched more carefully after that. They alternated between pure energy and being utterly comatose, and it took only seconds to switch from one to the other. He’d need to add more monitoring to the doorways of the nursery, not just to verify who entered but also who teleported or broke the sound barrier to get out of there.

Speaking of the nursery, he realized it sorely needed updating. Not that it wasn’t suitable for children—it was, and he still resented the implication he had gone overboard with it—but he knew what his children were interested in now! Yes, he had given them extra gifts in certain areas, trying to guess at and reflect what their souls showed him, but that didn’t determine personal interests. He figured Perturabo enjoyed having knowledge, but hadn’t realized just how much he loved creating and inventing, not until it was too late. And while he had guessed Fulgrim would orient himself toward the arts, he didn’t expect Sanguinius’s love of painting. Assuming his children found the same interests this time around, he ought to add more things that he knew they would love, both in the nursery/future playroom and in their personal rooms for when they got older. Some of them, Konrad, Angron, and Mortarion, for instance, would need more activities. They didn’t really develop many… mentally or physically healthy hobbies the first time around. He could probably give Konrad a sewing kit and fabric in the meantime. At the very least, he was enthusiastic about that.

Malcador clicked his tongue as Lorgar switched to his warp form and the book began levitating. “Drop it,” he ordered, firmly but not unkindly. The choir music became louder for a second, then the book fell back into Malcador’s hands and Lorgar switched back to a human form. “Thank you, Lorgar.” He paused, thinking for a moment, then handed Lorgar the book, propping it up as Lorgar grabbed at the cover and pages with both hands. “Revelation?”

“Hm?”

“Do you plan to keep their names?”

Oh, huh. That was a good question. To honor humanity’s earliest interstellar colony, he had initially gone with the old Centaurian custom of natonyms: giving children at birth a temporary name, meant to be transferred into one of their middle names, until they were of an age that they could either choose or approve of a suggested proper name, usually between the ages of three and seven. As early settlers of Proxima Centauri b had issues with record-keeping and infant mortality in the initial decade or two of the colony, it became more efficient to only record citizens after they reached five years of age. Coupled with the fact that legally changing a name was a nightmare for a similar reason, many parents included their children in on the decision-making process. As such, even after the database computers, methodologies, bureaucracy, and algorithms were all at last given priority and figured out, it had become a bit of a cultural practice, so it was passed down. Typically, these temporary names were themed around something. In his case, after spending so much time looking between the numbered genetics and psychic projects that had become his sons, he had just gone with numbering them.

At least, that was what he told anyone who asked about the missing primarchs’ names, and given his goal of reuniting humanity’s lost and scattered worlds, it was a good justification. In truth, he had focused on every other aspect of their creation and preparation of their future curriculum and living and learning quarters that he had forgotten to think of names, and they were scattered before he could decide on names for all of them. After, he figured they would have names of their own by the time he found them, and for the most part, he was correct. He always had the notion that Malcador suspected, but his friend had never called him out on it.

Duo and Undecim never grew past their natonyms, never had other names, so he still referred to them as such. He chose Konrad’s name over Nighthaunter despite his son’s own protests to try and give him some normalcy other than being a homicidal and sadistic force of his warped idea of justice, but all the others had names chosen or granted to them. That said, this was all in another life, another timeline, and there was no guarantee they’d approve of those same names again. Still…

“Let’s keep them as suggestions,” the Emperor suggested. “If they have issue with their names, they can change them once they’re older.”

“And what of Konrad?” Malcador asked. “He never approved of his name.”

Konrad had been one of the few names he had decided he liked and was planning to use. “He may want it changed, or he may have no real opinion now that he has never been the Nighthaunter,” the Emperor admitted. “If any of them reject their names, we’ll call them by their natonym until we can find a more appropriate one.”

“And if they ask where their name comes from?”

That brought the Emperor pause again. “When they’re older, when they’re grown.”

“A tactic that has worked absolute wonders in the past,” Malcador quipped. “I’d wait on starting the human webway project if that’s your plan.”

“Any satisfying answer leads to more questions, ones which lead to an explanation of Chaos and of what happened. I would be explaining to Konrad that he skinned people alive for the most minor of crimes, or Angron what butcher’s nails are and how they were lodged into his brain, or Roboute that he had another set of parents who will never know him in this life. They will have the weight of a galaxy on their shoulders and they will need to be prepared for that, but they can have a childhood of as much blissful ignorance as can be afforded.”

“It’s not blissful when Chaos comes knocking at the door,” Malcador pointed out. “And from its asynchronous nature, it may know and decide to target the same primarchs as before because it knows it could get at them!”

“If they even know of Chaos, it can get at them easier regardless!” the Emperor retorted. He was trying to keep his voice even but the snap in his tone made Horus wake, he lifted his head, flickering between forms, then nudged Magnus, who flailed awake, wings fluttering wildly.

The Emperor hastily maneuvered to keep Magnus from falling off, causing Sanguinius to wake up as well. Magnus hovered above them, one eye glaring at Horus, then at Sanguinius as he flew over to where Magnus was previously lying and started poking at Horus, splattering him in phantom blood in the process.

“There’s a line between limited information and complete ignorance. Chaos will target them regardless, you know this,” Malcador reminded, lowering his voice and trying to pull the pillow away from Leman, who growled at him. “They need to know what to look out for and the danger it poses. Names or specifics at this age may be too dangerous, but they need to know there is something out there, that it wants to hurt them, and the more you know about it the more dangerous it is.”

Magnus had just noticed the book and floated over to Malcador, nearly plopping down on top of Lorgar and causing the music to turn into something that vaguely reminded the Emperor of gospel metallica for a second before fading again into a softer hymn. The Emperor glanced over at them. They were his most psychically adept sons. Would things have been different, if he had been honest? If he had told Lorgar what his gods were? If he had warned Magnus and showed him what Chaos felt like? Or would Chaos have seized the opportunity given to them on a silver platter and use the added leverage the knowledge gave them to destroy his sons then and there? He thought he could protect them now, keep them out of Chaos’s grip, but could he? He could stop Erda from giving the Four an opening, but that didn’t mean his other defenses would be enough, that didn’t mean other attacks wouldn’t happen.

Once he saved his sons, he had introduced a change which would alter future events. This always happened when trying to alter a path he had seen, but the further out events were, the harder it was to control the effects of the changes. He couldn’t protect them, not perfectly: that was the lesson to take. So they would need to defend themselves, and to do that… to do that he had to give some warning.

“After they’ve solidified in their human forms and can properly remember what I tell them,” the Emperor acquiesced. “They should know that there is an enemy.”

“And of the future?”

The Emperor shook his head. “I don’t want their childhoods spent with what is essentially a potential prophecy hanging over their heads.” At Malcador’s noise of disagreement, he looked him dead in the eye. “Look at Lorgar and tell him he got his brothers corrupted by Chaos to the point where many of them begged for death. Look at Magnus and tell him he was tricked into destroying any reasonable hope for humanity's safety from the archenemy. Look at Sanguinius and tell him his brother beat him into a pulp of blood, viscera and broken bones!” Sanguinius and Horus looked up at him as Malcador fell silent. The Emperor pulled them in closer. “We’ll tell them when they’re adults.”

A strangled sound came from Constantin, snapping both of them to attention and distracting them from their discussion. The captain-general turned and stared at them with panicked eyes. “Lion, Corvus, and one of the twins are gone.”

Notes:

By the way, Proxima Centauri b natonym lore(and every other bit of lore about it in here) is just something I made up because I think that kind of cultural practice sounded interesting and also a reason for why the Emperor doesn’t have any other names besides Latin numbers for the primarchs.

And after planning that lore, I realized “hyperfixated and planned out literally everything else about his kids and then when he was done realized he hadn’t spent any time picking out names, then needed to come up with a plausible excuse as to why he hadn’t” is both entirely in character and infinitely funnier.