Vandel’s subordinates noticed Garrett’s ally as well, moving to intercept the infiltrator before they could reach the Black Knight. With swords drawn, the guards struck, but instead of drawing blood, their steel blades shattered like glass against the attacker’s flesh. Before the knights could process the sight, the possessed individual backhanded them with a surge of raw force, throwing them aside.
“Out of my way, pissants!” The possessed drew a twisted dagger from beneath their cloak, lining up a strike toward Vandel and Garrett.
The moment the weapon cleared its scabbard, thick daemonic energy radiated from the blade. My body reacted on instinct upon recognizing the artifact as a corrupted item containing a sealed daemon. I extended my hand, ripping Vandel and Garrett backward with a sharp pull of telekinesis. They flew clear just as the enemy thrust the blade forward, aiming to drive the curse into a new host body.
“Protect your princesses!” I said, commanding the palace guards and Vandel’s remaining men. “The rest of you, stay clear of that psychopath. The blade may be poisoned.”
I could not risk exposing the true nature of Chaos to the crowd; claiming the weapon might be poisoned was the next best thing. As the guards scrambled to obey, the possessed turned a murderous gaze toward me. I summoned my blade to my hand, preparing to end the threat before the other corrupted targets could converge on the courtyard.
Just as the assassin prepared to charge, they froze, their eyes widening in sudden horror as they stared at me.
“Why does the Corpse Emperor’s light dwell within you?!” The daemon within recoiled, hissed words scraping against the air. “His zealots should not exist in this world.”
The creature shrank back from the golden psychic light radiating from my aura—a manifestation visible only to those touched by the Warp. Hertrude and her people stared at us, completely lost on what the assassin was screaming about.
Before the princess could ask, the assassin’s body contorted, the flesh swelling and tearing apart.
As the daemon claimed dominion over its host, the vessel’s height ballooned to ten feet, its posture widening into the hulking, monolithic mass of a crimson giant. Massive, corded muscles rippled and split beneath dense, blood-red skin. A pair of brutal, jagged tusks punched upward through its lower jaw, while three-foot-long, razor-sharp blades extended directly from its fingernail beds like elongated, metallic talons. Black, bloodshot eyes flicked from me toward Garrett and the royal retinue.
“What… what are you?!” Garrett cowered behind Vandel, clutching the old knight’s armor. “You are not a Holy Kingdom agent! You are not one of my informants!”
“Haha!” The courtyard reverberated with the daemon’s guttural laugh. “You have played your part well, puppet. Now, it is time to cull the cattle!”
The hulking abomination vanished, blurring forward to reappear in front of the petrified mortals. Before its massive arms could descend, I caught it from the flank with a strong shoulder-check, slamming the beast into a nearby stone pillar. It swung blindly in retaliation, its finger-blades cutting through empty air.
“Get out of here now!” I reappeared in the daemon’s blind spot, my blade tearing a deep gash across its chest. Purple mist began pouring out. “This creature is far beyond your strength. Fall back and guard the princesses! Everyone else, follow behind them!”
“You fucking bastard!” The daemon staggered backward, clutching its open wound. “Where did you get that blade?!”
Though the weapon had only grazed it for a split second, every fiber of the daemon’s existence knew the blade could kill it permanently. Faced with absolute erasure, it attempted to dissolve back into the warp to escape. I extended a hand, searing glowing runes directly onto its flesh to anchor its spirit within the physical form.
“You… What… How…!?” The daemon stared at me in disbelief.
With its entire soul bound to the mortal vessel, the creature succumbed to pure bloodlust and rage.
The daemon unleashed a city-shaking roar, a call that summoned its hidden companions straight to the courtyard. While I was frustrated that my initial strike hadn’t been a clean killing blow, bringing the rest of the cultists here saved me the hassle of tracking them down.
“Are you all bark and no bite?” I offered a mocking grin. “Pathetic.”
The taunt locked its focus entirely on me. We lunged forward, trading a torrent of blows. The impact of our strikes obliterated the royal garden, sending dirt, shattered stone, and torn foliage exploding outward at blinding speed. A chunk of the fractured walkway struck Vandel in the head; the sharp pain snapping the old knight out of his daze.
“Damn it!” Vandel shielded his granddaughters with his armored frame. “All of you, move now! If anything happens to either princess, I will hold every one of you personally responsible!”
The terrified guards were slow to react, still rooted to the spot by supernatural dread. Vandel shoved the nearest men, physically breaking their fixation on the nightmare before them. The retinue scrambled away at a frantic pace, overcoming the paralysis.
“Die! Die!! Die!!!” The daemon rained a furious downpour of strikes upon me, its razor-talons tearing frantically at my fading afterimages. “Just fucking die!”
“Come on! This isn’t even a warmup for me!” I taunted, completely outmaneuvering the beast as its blades sliced through empty air. “My mother hits harder than you, you whiny bitch.”
Blinded by rage, the daemon pushed its physical vessel to the limit and unleashed a sweeping blow. Instead of leaping over the strike as the beast expected, I dropped into the splits and brought my blade down in a vertical arc. The daemon’s attack tore a gaping hole in the palace wall just before a faint, glowing line divided its monstrous frame down the center. A fraction of a second later, fractures of searing light radiated outward. It released an inaudible death throe and exploded into a cloud of dust.
Vandel and the royals witnessed the execution, unable to process the sheer speed of the strike. They wanted to ask if the danger had passed, but a chorus of screams erupting from outside the palace walls provided an immediate answer.
“Keep moving!” I waved them off. “Don’t let that bastard Garrett escape your sight. We need him alive to extract everything the Holy Kingdom has planned. If he dies, our lead dies with him.”
“He won’t escape; do not worry.” Hertrude seized Garrett’s collar with a death grip, her voice shaking but resolute. “But when this is settled, I expect a full explanation from you, Lord Aremus.”
Vandel ushered the retinue into the keep just as the remaining four daemons materialized in the courtyard. They arrived soaked in the blood of the guards they had slaughtered en route, and my lip twitched with icy rage at the sight. Until now, I had yet to test any of the Jedi skills I had reacquired from my past life. It seemed like the ideal moment to use them, given the challenge of four hulking monsters at once.
I drove the tip of my blade into the shattered cobblestones, closing my eyes and drawing a deep, measured breath. As I shut out the chaos of the courtyard, my mind became as calm and clear as a mountain lake. The world around me slowed to a standstill as an unrestricted current of energy flowed through my veins. The moment I ceased restraining my wellspring of power, a torrent of majestic strength coursed through my frame. When I opened my eyes, I drew the blade from the earth and twirled it; the heavy steel moving like a paperweight in my hand.
“The… The Corpse Emperor!” The four daemons recoiled, their twisted souls threatening to shatter under the weight of the oppressive psychic aura bearing down on them. “He walks the Materium once more!”
Unbeknownst to Leon, through the warp-eyes of the daemons, he was indistinguishable from the Emperor of Mankind. The Master of Humanity’s blinding light radiated from his form, and his towering silhouette mirrored the legend itself—from the cascading, raven-black hair and domineering green eyes to the awe-inspiring majesty he emitted from his mere presence.
“The Realm of Man is not yours to claim, foul beasts! Let your pitiful existence be swallowed by the Void as I cast you out, screaming in agony!” I extended an arm, pinning all four monsters within a localized field of compressed psychic force.
“Damn… You… Corpse… Emperor!!” Their physical vessels and souls fractured, howling the words through cracked lips.
“I am not the Emperor of Mankind,” I said through gritted teeth, tightening my telekinetic grip until the air imploded. “My name is Leon Fou Aremus, Second Son of the Emperor!”
As the words left my mouth, both form and soul were compressed to the extreme. The force eviscerated the monsters before they could scream, let alone think. Wary that the cultists had distributed more of these cursed blades to activate as disposable pawns and distractions, I extended my consciousness across the capital.
Two additional daemons were fleeing the city, carving a bloody path toward the port. The moment they witnessed the golden light, they had run for their lives, abandoning their role as a distraction to save themselves. Their souls had yet to fully fuse with their new hosts, trapping them in the Materium and preventing an escape into the Warp. Just as the docks came within reach, one daemon had a glowing blade driven through its back while a giant, gauntlet brimming with psychic power clamped around the other’s skull.
“I will not allow even one of you to escape!” I split the impaled daemon in half with a flick. Before the second could screech, I drove my blade straight through its heart.
When their physical and spiritual forms dissolved into nothingness, I cleared the dark residue from my blade and sheathed it. I glanced back, saddened by the swath of mangled bodies left in their wake. All of them were preventable victims, but I lacked the resources to save everyone. I was a weakened Primarch, not an omnipotent deity.
‘I must begin creating Astartes soon,’ I thought, watching the families of the deceased cling to their loved ones as they wept. ‘Without powerful, reliable subordinates to aid me, tragedies like this will become a regular occurrence.’
Before the surviving citizens could process the horror, I channeled my psychic power to alter their minds, replacing the memories of the daemons with images of ordinary human assassins. In the Imperium of Man, standard protocol dictated the execution of any mortal exposed to Chaos. The mere sight of a daemon was believed to shatter a mind and maybe lead to possession in the future. I had always despised that cruelty; memory alteration via psychic talent or technology was entirely possible. My father simply never bothered because it demanded too much time and effort.
‘I am not the coldhearted tyrant my father was. A human life is a treasure, not something to be snuffed out for the sake of expedience.’
I returned to the palace, gathering the cursed items along the way. Once inside the courtyard, I secured the original dagger and stored all three artifacts inside my inventory. I needed to study them to decipher how they cloaked their daemonic signatures. If relics like these lay hidden within the Holfort Royal Palace, I had to find them before they were found by others.
“Sorry you couldn’t help in that fight, Solaris. We can do some more pirate hunting when we return to—” I turned back to where he was supposed to be, but the space was empty. “Solaris? Where did you run off to?”
<Rawr...>
A roar drifted from overhead. I tilted my head back and spotted my friend three stories up, wedged into the keep’s wall. Not sure how he had launched himself up there, all I could think was that at least he hadn’t fled like the others. I pulled him free with telekinesis, brought him down, and dusted him off.
“Next time I say run, that includes you too.” I buffed his chassis with a rag. “How many times must I tell you? I don’t have spare parts to fix you. Please don’t put me in that position, boy.”
<Rawr… Rawr.>
I knew he wanted to be more than a traveling companion, but my hands were tied. While Luxion could replicate basic components with his Mass Fabricator, certain complex systems remained beyond his ability to recreate. We did not know what those specific parts did, and I refused to dismantle my friend to find out. The only solution was to avoid damage. It put him in a bind, but it wasn’t permanent. The data might lie within the tech caches I bought from Wiz; time would tell.
“Are all those abominations dead?” Vandel poked his head out of the keep door.
“The capital is clear,” I replied. “Aside from the five that targeted the courtyard, two more struck the city. They left a trail of bodies as they rushed toward the port.”
“I understand.” Vandel’s expression darkened.
He wasn’t angry with me; he was furious with himself. The Black Knight was supposed to be the strongest warrior in the Principality, yet he had frozen in terror before that monster. A foreign noble had done what he could not, and the realization stung his pride.
“Before I brief you and the princesses on the full situation, I have a request,” I said. “I must alter the memories of the palace staff and your men. It sounds unbelievable, but exposure to what you witnessed makes a mortal susceptible to the same corruption. Only the three of you can be allowed to remember, because you need to understand the danger.”
We locked eyes for a long moment. With a heavy sigh, Vandel agreed. While he loathed the idea of altering minds, he could not risk more of those monstrosities manifesting. The Principality had erected countless enchantments and warding circles to protect the princesses after their parents’ death. Not a single ward had triggered today, meaning either the mages who constructed the defenses had tricked them, or the enemy possessed a method to bypass the security. As a grandfather and protector, he had to take every precaution.
“I will have everyone rounded up. Just to be clear, what will they remember?”
“Instead of those creatures, I will make them recall heavily armored knights deployed by the Holy Kingdom. If anyone asks, an elite strike force penetrated the capital’s defenses to assassinate the royal family.”
Vandel nodded, gesturing for me to follow him inside where the survivors had gathered.
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