["Ha."]
[You looked at Konrad Curze across the corridor's length and let the sound carry whatever it needed to carry. "Even if we had no history between us before tonight, we certainly have one now."]
[The Heart of the Furnace came up in one motion and the trigger came back in the same motion, and the corridor filled with azure plasma fire, the spheres moving in the tight overlapping spread that the Ork-blessed weapon produced, wall to wall and floor to ceiling, no gap in it that something as large as a Primarch could fit through cleanly.]
[You were already gone before they arrived at his position.]
[Shadow Step placed you behind him. His reaction time was not the reaction time of something that could be surprised by speed, and by the time your boots found the deck he was already turning, the lightning claws coming up with the particular sound that high-voltage weapons made, a sustained sharp tone under the crack of discharge. He had gone through the plasma tide without being hit by it, moving through the gap that existed for approximately a fraction of a second as the spheres' trajectories intersected, and you filed that away because it told you something important about how his mind processed space.]
[The Blood Scythe swung and his claws caught it at the very edge, the blades meeting with a screech of metal and a discharge of power field energy, holding the scythe stopped in the air between you.]
[You were close enough to smell him.]
["Konrad," you said, through your teeth. "You need a bath."]
[His expression did not change. It had not changed since he appeared. You suspected it did not change very often.]
[The Heart of the Furnace left your other hand deliberately, the plasma weapon clattering to the deck behind you, and your fist came around from the elbow, the thruster firing at the point of contact. The blow landed on his abdominal armour with the force that Khorne's accumulated blessing had been building in your body for the better part of two months, the strength that was approaching Primarch tier from below without yet arriving there, and it was enough.]
[His face changed. Not much. Enough.]
[He took four steps backward before he arrested the movement. In that time you had already moved, pressing the advantage the way the power armour's training had made instinctive: forward, into the space his retreat had created, the Blood Scythe pulling free of his claws and coming around again.]
[He was faster than the retreat had suggested.]
[One claw released the Blood Scythe and the other drove forward, the blades finding the gap between your chest and abdominal armour that existed because your armour had taken too many hits on Signus Prime and had not been fully replaced, only repaired. The powered blades went in. You felt them go in. The sensation was not pain exactly, not immediately, the shock of the trauma and the ceramite damage registering in your nervous system as something that had happened rather than something currently happening.]
[He lifted you off the deck with the claws.]
[You were in the air, impaled, and you looked at his face from that position and he looked back at yours with the dark eyes that had looked into his own future and had not liked what they found there.]
["Conrad," you said. Your voice came out more level than you had expected it to.]
["My name," he said, "is the Night Haunter." He said it without heat. A correction delivered as fact.]
[Your grip on the Blood Scythe tightened. The claw that had been holding the scythe was still lowering, the attention split between the weapon and the impaled body at the end of his other arm, and that split was the opening. You pulled, two-handed, the full force of your remaining strength and whatever Khorne had added to it, and the green-lit necrodermis edge drew across his shoulder where the heavy armour's coverage ended.]
[The blade went through. Curze's flesh parted around it, and the expression that had not changed through the plasma barrage and the gut-punch and the impalement finally found something to react to. The wound was not fatal. The wound was real, which was the point.]
[Something moved in his face. Not pain. Anger, and underneath the anger something older.]
["You dare."]
[The second claw came up without further announcement.]
[It went into your chest in a different place from the first, and this time there was no managing the sensation, the vital systems in the space behind your breastplate encountering the powered blades directly, and the medical system firing everything it had left into your bloodstream in the same instant as a response that it had calculated would not be sufficient. You could feel the panacea working against damage that exceeded what panacea had been designed to address. The two hearts that the Astartes enhancement had given you were not functioning correctly. Then they were not functioning at all.]
[Your free hand had found the thermobaric bomb under the power backpack.]
[His grip shifted. He had sensed the movement, the sharp senses that were the Night Haunter's birthright picking up the subtle reach of your fingers, and the claws tore rather than withdrew, the motion designed to ensure that whatever came next from your body it would not include coordinated action. The armour came apart in that section. The organic matter behind the armour came apart in a different way.]
[The deck came up to meet you.]
[You lay on the metal floor of the Red Tear's corridor and looked at the overhead lighting and felt your breathing become something that was happening intermittently rather than continuously. The golden blood was on the deck around you, real and warm, more of it than you had seen leave your body before. The medical system had nothing left to inject.]
[Somewhere beyond the ringing in your skull, distantly, you heard the sound of wings. A sound like a storm resolving into a specific direction. The particular acoustics of very large wings moving very fast through an enclosed space.]
[And Sanguinius's voice, close, not close enough:]
["Konrad Curze! Prepare to meet your end!"]
[The smile came without you deciding to produce it.]
[Your breathing stopped. Your vision narrowed from the edges inward, the overhead lighting becoming a smaller and smaller point of reference, and then it was gone, and everything after that was quiet.]
[Simulation concluded.] [Duration: 60 days.]
[Three items can be retained from this simulation. Select one.]
OPTION I: THE SPEAR OF TELESTO (Authentic)
"This was among the personal weapons carried by Primarch Sanguinius throughout the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy."
"The blade is shaped as an elongated hollow teardrop, symbolising a drop of blood shed by Sanguinius in service to the Emperor. The haft bears an engraving of Sanguinius himself, rendered as a hooded, winged angel of blood; beneath this image, a mark of purity written in the Emperor's own hand is clearly visible."
"The spear can instantly unleash an energy that vaporises and annihilates completely any creature not carrying the blood of Sanguinius. Its melee capability defies straightforward description."
"The Spear of Telesto was lost during Sanguinius's final battle against Horus. It was later recovered from an ork warlord by the Blood Angels Chapter, and now rests enshrined alongside the banner of an unnamed Primarch."
"With the will to charge into the fight, and no thought of return: a flash of cold light, and then the spear strikes like a dragon."
OPTION II: MERCY AND FORGIVENESS (Authentic)
"These are the pair of master-crafted lightning claws carried by Primarch Konrad Curze throughout his life."
"The origin and history of these weapons remain obscured; Curze revealed nothing about them to anyone. Based on how they performed against other Primarch weapons in direct exchange, their material composition is not inferior to any of them."
"The names these weapons currently carry, Mercy and Forgiveness, are what the descendants of the Night Lords Legion chose to call them. How the Primarch himself regarded the names is not recorded."
"In a certain light, the fact that his personal weapons carry those names is the most precise irony in the history of the Primarchs. He killed countless innocents across worlds. He is said to have consumed the flesh of children. And he called his tools Mercy, and Forgiveness."
"That broken power sword was 0.01 centimetres from me, and then that heartless wolf cub grinned and used it." - Konrad Curze, kneeling before a statue of the Emperor carved from flesh and bone.
OPTION III: GENE DETECTION NEURAL NETWORK - THE MERCY OF SANGUINIUS (Primordial)
"This biological construct, consisting of four neural sheaths that must be implanted into the brain and spinal cord, is a carefully cultivated replica grown from organ cells extracted from Sanguinius himself."
"It appears to have been enhanced and blessed by the Emperor."
"Its presence grants a foundational ability: the memories of enemies can be accessed by consuming their blood and flesh. The construct's special capability was additionally blessed by Sanguinius himself at some point during the simulation. Full mastery will require extended exploration and use."
"Little brother, after I am gone, you will be me in some sense." - Primarch Sanguinius, speaking quietly at the threshold of his final moments.
"When you look into the abyss, the abyss looks back. Consuming the blood and flesh of your enemies is permitted. But do not eat too much." - The Emperor of Mankind, not turning his head as he spoke.