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They were made and engineered and built from the ground up from sturdy foundations to be nothing more than tools of war. Their hearts were to be stone, and they were only to love battle and their primarchs and the Emperor. They were the guardians of Terra and the Imperium of Man, and that duty and that honour was the sole focus of their every endeavour.
Not so, for Sigismund. There must have been some flaw in the primary heart of the First Captain of the Imperial Fists. For a time it was full to bursting, for Sigismund loved so profoundly and with such depth as to unravel the forged genetic workings of the greatest mind to have ever lived.
***
A benefit of the incredible enhancements to the human form that the process of gene-forging an Astartes warrior wrought was the ability to set one’s mind to a multitude of tasks. On the outside, Sigismund was a wall: standing stoically stock-still, a tremendous intimidating presence projecting a sense of order and calm throughout the room.
Another part of him was tracking the tense conversation between his primarch and that of the VIIIth legion. His father was the sun: golden and glowing, the mere proximity to the man stoking a white-hot scalding heat within his breast.
Curze, on the other hand, was a silken void– a dark grasping hole of unlight that was one of the few things in this world to cause a chill to caress his genehanced warrior’s flesh. There was a cruel tingling at the base of his skull like icy fingers under his skin when he looked upon the Night Lords’ primarch, but he felt the tension between the two brothers and he knew that at least part of him must focus on their quiet conversation lest something go terribly awry.
He wasn’t entirely sure what help he would be in a dispute between two men powerful enough to erase him from existence with a swing of a fist too quick for him to track. But possibility mattered not in the face of duty and loyalty both.
Another part of his mind, though, was still free to slip away from the cooking pressure of the interplay of light and the dark that crackled ominously at the centre of the room. It was still his responsibility to scan the space for danger, and with his helmet graciously off it was the job of his Astartes senses and not the lenses that would normally superimpose a red threat rune upon the source of danger.
However, surrounded by some of the most dangerous Space Marines there were, his sixth sense for imminent violence was pulsing in his brain. He had no doubt that if he were to don the helmet mag-locked to his thigh, much like a Night Lord, everything in his vision would be bathed bloody by the constant threat of violence in the room.
From the hulking bodies encased in midnight blue Terminator armour, to the men with their backs against the ship’s hull whose ceramite battle plate was draped in skulls and severed arms and newly bleeding flesh, Sigismund knew that he would no doubt be awash in the pernicious chemicals of fear if such an emotion wasn’t totally foreign to him.
His wandering gaze slid over the members of the assembled VIIIth and fell upon a particular individual. There was something about him that drew the eye: his impressive chainglaive was one, and the curious blood red of his gauntlets another. Something about the man pulled viciously at him, and he studied his weapons and his armour and his stance to try and find out why. Eventually his gaze wandered to the man’s void-black eyes.
The Night Lord Captain was staring right back at him.
Born of the look in the inky depths of his gaze Sigismund felt his armour react to his elevated heartright. It would be a tremendously inopportune time for his plate to flood him with combat stimms, but there was something so darkly dangerous about this man that Sigismund felt his scalp itch with anticipation.
They held each other’s gaze for a moment that seemed to stretch on into the eternal. But in the heartbeat before Sigismund’s fingers itched to curl around the hilt of his sword, the other man’s scarred face split open in a bewildering and provocative little grin.
Sigismund was taken aback at the unexpected change in the other captain’s countenance. He kept his own face studiously stoic, but that didn’t seem to deter the Night Lord at all. He broke his gaze with what must have been a roll of his black eyes, if the way he tilted his head and raised his eyebrows meant anything. Sigismund almost smiled himself at seeing such an expression in such strange eyes.
But he kept his look stern. The other man seemed undeterred by his reticence. The Night Lord’s scarred lips moved, and Sigismund didn’t need to have superhuman lip reading skills to be able to see the clear blah, blah, blah that the other captain was mouthing, while tilting his head back and forth at every word.
Sigismund, more out of shock than anything, sucked his lips between his teeth. The other captain, seeing that he had almost pushed the Imperial Fist towards a response, winked. Sigismund never balked in the face of danger, but at this point, he felt that he just might be in trouble.
Because it was his nature to run headlong into trouble, he attempted to open a private vox channel with the other man via the bead in his armor’s gorget. There was a strange and subtle jolt in his primary heart when his request was accepted.
“This is serious, cousin,” Sigismund voxxed him under his breath. He looked at the huge table where the two primarchs sat. Neither of them seemed to care, or perhaps even notice, that he had quietly spoken.
“Everything’s serious to you, Fist,” the silky slightly accented voice whispered.
“And to you, is nothing serious?” Sigismund asked, trying to sound stern. It seemed the Night Lord wasn’t buying it.
The other man took a soft breath. It sounded a little like a laugh. “Try relaxing,” he said. “Or you’re going to lose all of that glorious hair.”
“And you’re relaxed?” Sigismund asked him, a little more playfully than he had initially intended. He didn’t miss the dark circles under the Night Lord’s black eyes, and the lines of tension that were interlaced with the scars by the corners of his eyes and his lips. But still he saw the Night Lord smile.
“It’s amazing what a little flensing will do for your blood pressure,” he said.
“Mm?” hummed Sigismund, looking around the room to see if their whispered conversation was being overheard by anyone.
“Would you like to flense with me, cousin?”
That almost undid him. But he kept his lips pressed firmly together. “I don’t believe I would, actually,” Sigismund told him. Maybe the corner of his mouth was pulled up, just a little. “Thank you.”
He looked back to the Night Lord, who cocked his head and gave a little shrug to match his wistful smile. “Your loss,” he whispered.
There was a moment where Sigismund’s focus returned to the two primarchs. But soon enough he broke the silence between them. “But maybe we could spar instead.”
He watched as the other captain looked him up and down from across the room. “You’re a big boy,” the Night Lord told him a little salaciously. “But I think I could take you.”
Now that made Sigismund laugh.
He closed his mouth as fast as he could, as if he could retract the little bark of amusement that the other captain had teased from him. But it was too late– Rogal Dorn looked at him sternly from where he was seated across from Konrad Curze. He felt his face heat a little as he bit the side of his cheek to silence any further outbursts.
The look on his face, he supposed, was what made the other captain laugh. And at that, his own primarch gave him a cool look too. Sigismund didn’t think the Night Lord could get any paler, but in the Emperor’s Imperium, maybe miracles were indeed possible.
“I do hope we’re not straining your attention, Sev,” came Curze’s strange sanity-bending voice. Sigismund felt it unwise to look at him, but once again he catapulted himself headfirst into the danger. It seemed for a split moment that there might have been a sparkle in Curze’s black eyes. Was it amusement? Or was this strange man going to be murdered in front of him? And before Sigismund ever got a chance to try to off him himself in the training cages, no less.
“Feel free to step out, if you must,” Curze continued. It sounded like a death sentence but also a command that created an almost irresistible pull to follow.
“My apologies, lord,” the other captain said. Sigismund was genuinely impressed by his relaxed tone. He was ready to get on his knees to apologize to Dorn. He wondered what manner of things went on in the other legions when it came to concepts like order and discipline.
But Dorn and Curze must have had more important things to do than reprimand their sons. With matching long looks– Sigismund never would have thought it, but in that moment he sensed the two primarchs’ brotherhood– they were back to their quiet chat. The tension between them seemed to have been bled from the room somewhat, though.
There was a moment of blessed silence between them, where Sigismund refused to look at the other captain and stared straight ahead. But he broke it himself when he warmly whispered, “if you’ve gotten us in trouble, I’m going to break your nose when we spar tomorrow.”
He took a quick glance at the other man. He was smiling again. “Tomorrow?” the Night Lord asked, pleasure and mischief warming his cool voice.
“First thing,” promised Sigismund.
Out of the corner of his eye Sigismund saw the man nod. “It’s a date,” said Jago Sevatarion.
***
Sigismund stood up on the gantry high above the sand-strewn floor. From here, his enhanced hearing could easily pick up the cheering and the screams from down below. Even the sound of fists on flesh met his ears, but he wasn’t paying attention to the joyful noise of the intimacy of battle. Instead he looked at the man beside him, who was gazing down at the fight below.
“Did you come down here to watch the fight, or me?” Khârn asked him, looking at him with a crooked, charming smile. Sigismund tilted his head and raised his eyebrows as if his cousin in the XIIth had a point. But unselfconsciously he looked for one moment longer at Khârn’s perfect form. Scarred and tattooed and marked with ports that matched his own, he saw no shame in appreciating the compact, muscled form of his cousin, who had accompanied him down here in only the bottom half of his fatigues.
Sigismund felt almost prudish in his robes that hid his bulk from the world. But it didn’t really matter, in the end. It wasn’t like Khârn had told him that there was a dress– or undress– code in effect in the bowels of the Conqueror.
But looking away from Khârn, soon his attention was on the fight again. Two pairs of World Eaters were chained to their partners. Their other wrists were chained to their weapons, Sigismund noted. He filed that thought away to ask Khârn about later.
“What a strike,” Sigismund heard himself whisper under his breath. “Tremendous power behind that swing.” He felt his hands tighten on the railing in front of him. The chemicals in his gene-forged body and the very structure of his mind ached to reach for his own sword, and to mirror the men' s parries and thrusts.
“Yes,” Khârn agreed. “Wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of that one. Though I think, if it were me, I would have beheaded him with that move.”
Sigismund laughed, caught up in the energies of the men and the crowd and the captain at his side. “I don’t doubt it, cousin.”
Khârn nodded and quietly appraised the fighters again. Sigismund found that he couldn’t keep his mouth shut like the other captain. “Ah,” he grunted, sucking air between his teeth. “So close.” Bewitched by the violence before him he twitched his neck and shoulders, like some part of him was ducking and weaving with the combatants.
This time, he felt Khârn’s eyes on him. “You look like you want to join in.” Khârn was smiling a little indulgently, gazing up at him with a knowing look.
“Me?” said Sigismund, the picture of Imperial innocence.
Khârn bumped his bare shoulder against Sigismund, though it didn’t quite reach his own. “Don’t deny it,” he told him.
Sigismund hummed to himself and put his eyes back on the match. “Ooh,” he murmured, impressed that one of the fighters in the pit was able to separate his opponent from one of his arms. “Do you often fight?” he asked Khârn, after a moment.
Khârn turned his head to the side to spit, and laughed. Sigismund watched amusement ripple through the other captain’s chest. “Don’t change the subject,” Khârn said.
“Well, do you?”
Khârn shook his head. The implants in his skull made a gentle tinkling noise as they made contact with each other. Sigismund watched the side of Khârn’s face seize for a moment, before he closed his eyes briefly and cleared his throat. “No,” he said. “Not really.”
“Why not?”
Khârn grunted and clenched his fists, before flexing his muscles and rolling his neck and shoulders. “Somebody has to stay conscious to keep an eye on the legion.”
Sigismund smiled. “You’re just afraid you’re going to lose,” he taunted.
Khârn gave him a sidelong look, though he was grinning back. “Are you trying to goad me, Fist?” Sigismund’s smile grew wider. “It won’t work.”
“Won’t it?”
“What a finisher,” Khârn said, electing to ignore the question. Blood sprayed in a hot red fan from a gaping slice in one of the warrior’s chests. He fell to the ground with a definitive thump. “That’s second blood.”
Sigismund’s eyes returned to Khârn once more as his cousin carefully observed the cleanup and the actions of the Apothecaries as they tended to their fallen brethren. He really was handsome, Sigismund couldn’t help but think. The angle of his nose, his strong chin, the cut of his cheekbones. His perfect teeth. It would truly be a tragedy if the perfection of his face sustained any permanent damage, from war or from play.
“Is it vanity, then, brother?” Sigismund began, upon this discovery of a new plan of attack.
“What?” asked Khârn.
“The reason you decline to fight.”
Khârn raised an eyebrow. “Are you joking?”
“Am I known to joke?” Sigismund replied with a smile. “So are you merely protecting that pretty face, so untouched compared to your bloodthirsty brothers, who so often meet in battle below us?”
There was a pause, and Sigismund savoured the tension.
“All right, so,” began Khârn, raising himself from where he was leaning against the rail of the gantry. “The next fight is ours.”
Sigismund grinned and followed Khârn down the ladder to the arena below.
***
“I didn’t know you played,” said Sigismund, as he set up his side of the Regicide board.
Abaddon looked up at him, not dignifying the comment with a verbal answer, but communicating what he thought of such a notion with the piercing nature of his glare.
“But I suppose it makes sense,” finished Sigismund lightly. Horus would no doubt want his sons to dominate on the board as well as on the field of battle. His First Captain should of course be a confident victor when it came to the game of strategy.
Abaddon grunted and nodded and Sigismund seemed to have mollified him, if he were to glean any information from the fact that the corner of his mouth was propped up just the tiniest bit.
“You won’t best me, though,” Sigismund continued, as he put his castellan and fortress in place. It wasn’t even really a boast: he was fully confident that no man stood a chance against him. His defense was impenetrable and there was no one who could crack the solid wall of his strategy. “No man has.”
Abaddon’s smile widened. “You’ve not played me before, brother.” Abaddon didn’t need to expand upon the thought, but Sigismund knew that he considered himself above all other men. He nodded and finished placing his pieces upon the board.
“One match is all it’ll take,” he said, warming to the banter. Abaddon’s massive presence and reputation didn’t intimidate him and it was almost refreshing to feel that the feeling was certainly mutual. After all, he was widely known for the size of his form and his personality too, as well as his consummate skill as a warrior. “And you’ll end up like all the rest,” he finished.
“Victory will be all the sweeter when I watch your confidence crumble,” Abaddon replied. “It will be a pleasure to drag you down from the heights of that pedestal upon which you perch.”
And at that, Abaddon began. Sigismund reached up to stroke his chin and the rasp of stubble was for a moment the only sound in the First Captain’s quarters.
“The Grivaldi Opening,” Sigismund murmured, as he immediately saw what Abaddon was about. It shouldn’t have surprised him– the man was all about offence, and such an aggressive way to start the game was completely in line with his method of warmaking.
Abaddon nodded, and Sigismund felt that he was already beginning to win the other man’s respect. That would only make the game more challenging, he supposed. If Abaddon didn’t think him a simpleton who played at random, with no proper grasp of strategy, he wouldn’t be underestimated and Abaddon would play with all his strength and cunning. That was right and fair, thought Sigismund. Despite his goading of his opponent, it would be a match between equals, and all the sweeter for it.
The board developed quickly, with each man’s enhanced faculties allowing them to not only think a tremendous number of moves ahead, but also able to play instantly and without hesitation. A mortal mind would struggle to keep track of the game, but Abaddon and Sigismund peppered each play with subtle acknowledgements of the other’s strategy.
“Ah, the Marmax Defence.” Abaddon smiled as if he expected no less from his opponent. To counter it he moved his cannonades into position, with support from the tetrarch. Sigismund’s citadel was under heavy pressure.
Sigismund wasn’t surprised at Abaddon’s aggression, but as he took another of his opponent’s warriors he was a little shocked by how seemingly careless he was with his pieces. No, not careless, he amended– just willing to sacrifice as many pieces as it took to crack Sigismund’s defences. He threw piece after piece at Sigismund, seemingly unheeding of the cost of battle. Sigismund didn’t want to admit it, but the gambit– one he hadn’t seen in many years of play– was starting to pay off.
If his advanced physiology would allow it, it was at this point in the endgame that he would have started to sweat. Abaddon had his emperor pinned, and it seemed like defeat was imminent. Abaddon looked into his eyes, ravenous for the win and daring him to submit. But at the last moment he noticed it: neither of them could win. Abaddon would put him in perpetual. The game would end in a draw.
“Look,” Sigismund told him, impressed by the challenge. If he didn’t have so many lungs, he would have almost been out of breath from the pace of the game.
Abaddon glared at the board and he saw it too. The two men stared at one another for a moment. Neither really wanted to make the first move. It was miraculous, then, when both captains stuck out their hands simultaneously. They gripped each other firmly by the forearm. They nodded at each other, and neither could help but grin.
“A rematch, then?” Sigismund asked. Abaddon studied the board as if to see where he had fallen short, absently flicking the cascading hair of his long topknot over his shoulder. He looked up again, and Sigismund thought he saw the embers of regard growing there. If nothing else, it would be nice to spend more time with the man. Regicide was as good an excuse as any. He would just have to be sure to stay focussed on the game, and not be distracted by the First Captain’s solid musculature and piercing gaze.
“I believe I have the time,” said Abaddon, and he began to set up the board anew.
***
“This doesn’t strike me as particularly honourable or fair, brothers.” Sigismund’s words came out calmly, despite his rising heart rate at the challenge of the task before him. “Two against one?”
“Two against one?” Sevatar asked, with mock incredulity. “Are we acting together, as some sort of team, cousin?”
“I don’t recall agreeing to such an accord with you,” replied Khârn. “It’s every man for himself out there.”
Sevatar nodded, and feinted with his glaive as Khârn swung with his axe. Sigismund dodged one, and then the other.
Sevatar grinned and rolled at the last moment as his opponent countered and cut high with his sword. “Are you saying you can’t take us both?” he asked.
The three men sparred in the cage, the tempo of their training causing sweat to trickle down between their pecs, leaving their abs shiny and damp. Sigismund looked from one man to the other. He smiled and considered the question.
“Easily, brothers.”
***
They were made and engineered and built from the ground up from sturdy foundations to be nothing more than tools of war. Their hearts were to be stone, and they were only to love battle and their primarchs and the Emperor. They were the guardians of Terra and the Imperium of Man, and that duty and that honour was the sole focus of their every endeavour.
Sigismund sat, sharpening his great sword, its chains cast to the corner of his sparsely-furnished room. It had been many, many years since last he duelled and fought and competed for the joy of it. His hearts, now stone, were more befitting the weapon he had become. He ran his fingers over its killing edge and tested the blade, and felt nothing as he considered the campaign to come.