Capítulo 121: Death of Liberty
As if summoned by Horus's desperation, reality split four times.
First came An'ggrath, the Bloodthirster of Khorne, materializing in a storm of brass and blood. Then Scabeiathrax emerged from a miasma of plague and rot, followed by Shalaxi Helbane stepping through a portal of impossible pleasure and pain. Finally, Kairos Fateweaver manifested in a shower of changing lights and fractured futures.
Franklin's response was not fear. It was not concern. It was laughter—deep, mocking, terrible laughter that echoed with the heat of dying stars.
"Well, well, well," Franklin's burning skull-face somehow managed to convey his signature smirk. "If it isn't the Loser Squad! Did you all coordinate your outfits for this reunion?"
An'ggrath roared, "Your Skull for—"
"My what?" Franklin interrupted, casually twirling the Deathsword. "Sorry, having trouble hearing you over the memory of your head rolling across Altansar. Remember that? Good times."
The Bloodthirster's roar faltered slightly. The other daemons shifted uncomfortably.
Franklin turned to the sneak attacker, Shalaxi, Still sore about the Crone World? I mean, you had one job. One! Keep the shard away from me. How'd that work out for you?"
The Keeper of Secrets hissed but said nothing. The memory of that defeat still burned.
"And Scabeiathrax! My moldy old friend!" Franklin continued, his mockery cutting deeper than any blade. "Still bitter about Austeria Extremis? I hear they're still cleaning up what was left of you. Well, the parts that didn't evaporate."
"This time will be different," the Great Unclean One gurgled, but there was uncertainty in its legion of voices.
"Oh, honey," Franklin's tone dripped with condescension. "That's what you said last time. And the time before that. Definition of insanity and all that."
"And if it isn't my favorite indecisive bird brain!" Franklin addressed Kairos. "Both heads still telling different lies? Or did you finally sync up your story about how you 'meant' to get banished?"
"The threads of fate—" both heads began simultaneously.
"Show that you're still a two-time loser," Franklin finished for them. "But hey, at least you're consistent!"
Then Franklin turned to Horus, his contempt reaching new heights. "And you, brother. Look at you now. Not content with betraying family, you need to hide behind other people's bodyguards? Borrowed power, borrowed courage, borrowed everything. Did they not tell you about how many times their champions failed? Or did you just not listen?"
The chamber's temperature spiked impossibly higher as Franklin really got going.
"What's the matter, Horus? Did dear old dad not love you enough? Not give you enough attention? Boohoo! Dad didn't tell me about his secret project, so I'll just piss all over our life's work! Boohoo, look at me, I'm Horus! I got bald and decided to heresy all over the Imperium! I took perfectly good Space Marines and gave them spiky bits because I'm extra dramatic! I turned against everything we fought for because daddy didn't tell me about his secrets"
Each word landed like a physical blow, and not just because of the psychic weight behind them. These were the taunts of a brother who had watched everything they'd built together burn, who had seen his sons massacred, and who now faced the architect of that betrayal with the full measure of his scorn.
"You understand nothing!" Horus snarled, but his voice lacked conviction.
"Oh, I understand plenty," Franklin shot back. "I understand you're so desperate for validation that you took the first offer of power that came along. Real picky about your friends, aren't you? Quality selection process there. 'Hmm, yes, these obviously evil entities that feed on suffering seem trustworthy!'"
"You're not a clown Horus, you're the entire circus"
The Greater Daemons bristled at the insults, each trying to defend their dignity.
"It was all according to plan," Kairos insisted with both heads.
"The Blood God cares not—" An'ggrath began.
"The Blood God cares not that you got your brass behind handed to you?" Franklin interrupted. "Convenient philosophy you've got there. Very flexible."
"The Great Game continues," Shalaxi attempted to sound mysterious.
"The Great Game of Getting Your Ass Kicked, maybe," Franklin retorted. "You're all starring in it. Multiple seasons now. Really consistent performance."
The chamber had become an inferno, reality breaking down under the combined pressure of divine power and absolutely savage burns. Franklin's transformed state seemed to feed on his mockery, the flames burning brighter with each devastating quip.
"We will have the final laugh," Scabeiathrax rumbled.
"Final laugh? You haven't even won the first one!" Franklin's response was immediate. "Look at yourselves! Four of the most powerful daemons in existence, plus my roided-out brother here, and what's your big plan? Gang up on me? Real original. Did you all get together and brainstorm that one, or did it just naturally occur to you that quantity might finally make up for quality?"
The absurdity of the situation—a transformed demigod roasting four Greater Daemons and a Chaos-empowered Primarch while in the middle of a universe-defining battle—was not lost on anyone. Yet Franklin's words carried power of their own, each mockery undermining the very confidence that gave Chaos its strength.
The Greater Daemons launched themselves forward as one, their combined might enough to shatter continents. Franklin's wings spread wide, steel feathers blazing with divine fire. "Form an orderly queue, please! I'll send you all back to your masters – again – one at a time. Or all at once. Makes no difference to me. I've got all day, and my win-loss record is looking pretty good so far."
Franklin's blade sang through reality itself as it bisected Scabeiathrax, the Greater Daemon of Nurgle exploding in a noxious cloud that seemed to hang in the air like a toxic constellation. Yet even as he moved to face his remaining opponents, Franklin felt something wrong – a creeping lethargy that had no place in his transformed state.
An'ggrath's massive axe carved through space where Franklin had been a heartbeat before, while Shalaxi Helbane's elegant blade sought gaps in his defense that shouldn't have existed. Kairos Fateweaver's twin heads spoke words that made reality curdle, each syllable a curse designed to unmake him.
"FRANKLIN."
The voice resonated within Franklin's mind as he kicked Shalaxi away with enough force to shatter void shields. It was Khaine's voice, ancient and terrible, yet tinged with something almost like concern.
"You are infected."
Franklin parried An'ggrath's follow-up strike and bisected one of the Bloodthirster's legs in a move that should have been faster. "Kind of busy here," he thought back, his internal voice maintaining its characteristic dry humor even as he dodge-rolled away from one of Kairos's reality-warping spells.
"The Plaguefather's final jest," Khaine's presence expanded in his mind, showing him the truth. The cloud from Scabeiathrax's death hadn't been random at all – it had been precisely engineered to bypass every defense, every immunity Franklin possessed. "It is... how would you say it... Space AIDS?"
Franklin actually laughed out loud at that, the sound echoing strangely through his avian skull of flame as he deflected another of Shalaxi's strikes. "Did you, an Ancient Aeldari God of War, just make a joke?"
"I have spent enough time in your mind to understand your peculiar humor," Khaine replied, his tone grave despite the word choice. "But this is no laughing matter. The disease spreads rapidly through your system. Even now it works to slow you, to weaken you. Given time, you could cleanse it, but..."
"Time's not exactly something we have in abundance right now," Franklin thought back, punctuating the statement by launching a counterattack that forced all three remaining daemons back. The metal of the deck beneath them had long since turned to vapor, leaving them fighting in a void held together by will and corruption.
"I can hold it back," Khaine's voice carried the weight of divine certainty. "But not without cost. I must slumber, and when I do, the disease will accelerate exponentially. If my calculations are correct – and they are – you have five minutes from the moment I begin."
Franklin spun away from another of Kairos's spells, his movements already noticeably slower than before. "Five minutes to kill three Greater Daemons and the Warmaster of Chaos? Cutting it a bit close there, aren't you?"
"If I were whole, this would be simpler." For a moment, genuine regret colored the god's mental voice. "But we could not locate all my fragments in time. This is the best I can offer, my champion."
"Right then," Franklin thought, gathering himself for what would have to be the fastest daemon-killing spree in history. "Let's call this lovely parting gift 'Heaven's Rot.' Seems fitting, given where it came from."
"Your penchant for naming things in the midst of battle remains mysterious to me," Khaine replied, and Franklin could feel the god's power shifting, preparing to engage with the disease. "Are you ready?"
Franklin's burning gaze swept across his opponents – An'ggrath, bleeding but still mighty; Shalaxi, beautiful and terrible in its deadly grace; Kairos, both heads already speaking new curses into existence; and beyond them all, Horus, watching with eyes that held galaxies of malice.
"Five minutes to save the Imperium and kick my brother's ass?" The smirk was audible even through his transformed state. "Yeah, that'll do."
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Look upon your victory, Warmaster. See how the mighty Eagle burns.
You watch him burn through time itself, this brother who dares defy the inevitable. The corruption spreads within him like dark honey, sweet and inexorable, yet still he fights. Still he burns. Four minutes and counting, each second marked by the dying echoes of gods.
Three minutes in, An'ggrath falls. The Bloodthirster's essence unravels like crimson thread, scattered by wings of molten steel. You observe the efficiency of it, the brutality masked as necessity. How like him, to make even slaughter seem righteous.
Three minutes and forty-five seconds: Kairos Fateweaver's twin heads speak their final paradox. The Oracle of Tzeentch, who sees all futures, somehow failed to foresee his own dismemberment. Both heads still prophesy as they fall, their words lost in the roar of divine flame. How amusing, that even fate itself bends before his determination.
Four minutes and fifteen seconds: Shalaxi Helbane's perfect form dissolves into echoes of pleasure and pain. The Keeper of Secrets takes with them the last vestiges of grace from this ravaged chamber, leaving only the raw arithmetic of violence.
You see it then, the moment his divinity begins to flicker. The burning skull-visage wavers like a candle in a hurricane. Those wings of steel, which carved reality itself, start to lose their luster. The corruption blooms within him like a garden of entropy, Grandfather Nurgle's parting gift making itself known at last.
Four minutes and thirty seconds.
Feel the change in the air as Khaine's power fades from him. The ancient god of war and murder slumbers now, leaving your brother defenseless against the corruption that courses through his transhuman form. Watch as the avian skull of flame that crowned him flickers and dies, revealing once more the face you remember from brighter days. That insufferable smirk remains, even now, even as his divine aspect crumbles away like ash in a furnace wind.
The Deathsword still burns in his hands, but its fury is muted now, its edge dulled by the same corruption that claims its wielder. See how he struggles to raise it, his movements slowing, his perfect form faltering. The strongest of the Emperor's sons, they called him. The one who never lost a duel.
Until now.
"Borrowed power... borrowed plans... even this isn't your victory. It's theirs, my poor deluded brother" You don't answer. Words are beneath gods, and in this moment, that is what you are. The power of four deities thrums through your veins, while he stands before you in failing armor, divinity burning out like a guttering candle. Worldbreaker rises, its mass distorting reality around it.
Four minutes and forty-five seconds. His stance is perfect despite everything, the Deathsword raised in defiance. Even now, corrupted and failing, he maintains that insufferable dignity. That unshakeable belief in concepts as ephemeral as liberty.
The strike, when it comes, is poetry. Worldbreaker meets ceramite and transhuman flesh with the finality of colliding galaxies. You feel his skull give way, feel the crunch of bone and the splash of blood that runs too hot for even daemons to touch. The mighty Franklin Valorian, self-proclaimed strongest of the Primarchs, falls just as his angelic brother would have.
His body lies there, a broken temple to failed ideals. Those who approach it burn, their daemonic forms unable to withstand the lingering heat of his divine essence. Even in death, he denies Chaos its trophies. How typical of him, this final act of defiance.
You stand over him, victorious yet unsated. The corruption that felled him was masterfully crafted, a virus capable of infecting divinity itself. Heaven's Rot, he named it in his arrogance. As if anything of heaven could survive in this age of darkness.
Five minutes. Time runs its course, and with it, another piece falls into place. Soon father will come, and this scene will play out again with different actors but the same ending. The galaxy burns, reality tears, and all paths lead to this moment of triumph.
Yet something nags at the edges of your god-given perception. The body burns too hot, the blood flows too bright. Even the daemons cannot approach it, cannot claim it as a trophy of war. In death, as in life, Franklin Valorian remains untouchable, unconquerable in some fundamental way.
You turn away, leaving him where he fell. Let him be a message to those who would oppose the inevitable tide of your victory. Let his broken form show what becomes of those who cling to outdated notions of Freedom and liberty.
But deep within, in places even the Gods cannot reach, something whispers: You killed him because you had to. Because given another thirty seconds, given even a moment more of his divine strength, the outcome might have been different. Because of all your brothers, he alone made the Gods tremble.
The whisper fades, lost in the chorus of divine power that flows through you. Victory is victory, after all. The means matter less than the end.
Yet still his body burns, and none dare approach. Even in death, the Eagle of Liberty refuses to submit entirely to darkness. How perfectly, infuriatingly appropriate.
Time resumes its normal flow. The stage is set for the final act. Soon father will come, and all will be as the Gods have foreseen.
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The Lupercal Court of the Vengeful Spirit became an arena where gods bled. Through the vast viewport, Terra burned like a sacrificial pyre, a testament to ambition's ultimate price. Horus stood triumphant over the broken form of an eagle.
"Poor Franklin," Horus's voice carried the weight of galaxies and the hollow echo of damnation. Blood-light pulsed beneath his skin, each beat a percussion of power that had nothing to do with humanity. "I offered him a position of power in the new order. He could have had a seat at the right hand of a god." The words dripped with a peculiar melancholy, as if some fragment of the man he once was mourned the necessity of fratricide. "Alas, he chose to align himself with the losing side."
The Emperor stood transfixed, reality's fabric trembling around his magnificent form. Here was the architect of humanity's future, reduced to a father witnessing the culmination of his greatest failure. His voice, when it finally came, carried millennia of regret in a single word: "Why?"
Laughter erupted from Horus, a sound that had nothing to do with mirth and everything to do with the madness that lurked between stars. "Why? You ask me why? Have all those millennia taught you nothing?" Contempt carved new lines into his transformed features. "Weak fool, your timidity prevented you from binding the forces of Chaos. You shied away from the ultimate power. I have bound it to my will and will lead humanity into a new age. I, Horus, Master of Chaos."
The Emperor's response came quiet, measured, a father trying to reach the son lost in delusion's embrace. "No man can master Chaos. You have deluded yourself. You are the servant, not the master."
The battle that followed transcended mere physical combat. Lightning arced between them as father and son clashed on every conceivable level of existence. The air itself seemed to scream as weapons meant to shape worlds met in devastating confluence. Each blow carried the weight of collapsed civilizations, each parry held the force of extinction-level events.
Yet even as they fought, the Emperor held back, unable to unleash his full might against his beloved son. Horus showed no such restraint. His lightning claw opened the Emperor's throat with surgical precision, while another blow severed the tendons of his wrist. The sword of humanity fell from nerveless fingers as insane laughter echoed through the chamber.
The systematic destruction of the Master of Mankind continued with almost playful cruelty. Ribs splintered under Horus's fist. Flesh melted from the Emperor's face, an eyeball burst, hair ignited. Through it all, the Emperor refused to give voice to his agony, even as darkness threatened to claim him.
Then came the moment of ultimate degradation - lifted high and brought down across Horus's knee, the Emperor's spine shattered. In the instant of blackness that followed, consciousness returned only to experience new heights of agony as Horus tore his arm from its socket.
But fate, or perhaps liberty itself, had one final card to play.
Then came movement behind the Warmaster – Franklin Valorian, the Liberator, one side of his head a ruined mass of Tyranimite and flesh. In his hands, the dormant Deathsword, His voice, when it came, carried that same insufferable confidence that had marked him among his brothers as drove a blade deep into his brother's back: "I ain't hear no bell, HORUS!"
The words, delivered with that characteristic smirk even through blood-filled lungs, carried all the defiance that had made Franklin legend. His remaining eye blazed with an intensity that denied death itself, his body moving purely on willpower as he created the opening his father needed.
In that moment, the Emperor saw with perfect clarity through his remaining eye - saw the madness that had consumed his finest son, saw the warrior's death-denial in Franklin's face, saw the necessity of what must follow.
Power gathered around the Emperor, more concentrated than a laser, more destructive than a dying sun. Horus turned, horror replacing triumph as he sensed the gathering doom. The bolt of pure force struck him with the fury of humanity's collective grief, twisting his massive frame in apocalyptic agony.
As the energies played over the Warmaster's form, the Emperor felt the Powers of Chaos withdraw from their chosen vessel. Sanity returned to Horus's eyes, bringing with it the crushing weight of recognition. Tears gleamed as understanding dawned - understanding of all he had done, all he had become.
For a moment, father and son looked upon each other with clear eyes. The Emperor saw his son return. Yet he also saw the risk - the possibility that Chaos might reclaim its puppet once he was gone. His own life ebbing, he could not take that chance.
The final blow carried no hatred, no anger, no emotion at all. The Emperor had emptied himself of everything save necessity. Horus met his gaze with understanding, perhaps even gratitude, as oblivion claimed him.
In the aftermath of godhood's death, Franklin Valorian stood motionless, a statue of defiance even in victory. The light that claimed him was brighter than Terra's sun, a final salute to liberty's champion. He died as he had lived - standing, unbroken despite his wounds, that perpetual smirk still ghosting across his shattered features.
The price of liberty, it seemed, was paid in the coin of sacrifice. But in that sacrifice lay victory, and in that victory, hope for a future where angels might still fly.
Terra still burned, but it burned with the light of dawn rather than dusk. The Emperor, broken but victorious, looked upon the still form of Franklin Valorian and knew that some legends are written not in victory, but in the defiance that precedes it.
The strongest Primarch had fought his last battle. He had won.
The silence that followed was the sound of history being rewritten, of fate being defied, of liberty being bought with the currency of courage. In the end, it was not power that had won the day, but the simple refusal to accept defeat, encapsulated in five words that would echo through eternity:
"I ain't hear no bell."
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