Transcription
If you somehow managed to miss possibly the biggest thing to happen in all of Warhammer 40K in quite a few years, your old pal West is here to inform you that Lionel Johnson, lord of the First and Primarch of the Dark Angels, has in fact returned to the Warhammer 40K setting. And saying that he's missed out on a lot over the last 10,000 years is a massive understatement. His release was heralded by the final book in the Arks of Omen series, which happened to come out before his novel, *The Lion: Son of the Forest*, which we're going to be talking about today.
It seems like every other lore tuber has already made a video covering the Arks of Omen book, but nobody's talking about the novel yet. If you've been watching my videos for a long time, you know I get most of my lore from the novels, because that's personally where I get the most enjoyment out of the franchise. If I'm not reading the physical books during the day, I'm falling asleep listening to the Warhammer audiobooks literally every night of my life, which, now that I think about it, honestly explains a lot.
This book came out about a week ago now, and I've already read and listened to it all the way through twice. It's amazing. Mike Brooks is very quickly becoming one of my favorite 40K authors, especially after he hit it out of the park with *Brutal Cunning* and the *Alfarius* novel. *The Lion: Son of the Forest* takes place before the Arks of Omen, and the story literally begins with the Lion waking up. So in this video, we're gonna find out exactly what happened from the time the Lion woke up until his introduction in the Arks of Omen. And there is a lot of crazy stuff that happens in this book. But that being said, it is a full-length novel, so I'm gonna be abridging the absolute hell out of it and just telling you what you need to know.
I also kind of, sort of, stayed up for like three days straight making this, so you'll have to excuse me tripping over a few words here and there and also skipping my normal green screen intros. I'm gonna be honest with you, it's 6:30 in the morning, I'm exhausted; the idea of being on camera right now is just—this is not going to happen. But before we get into it, a quick shout out to this video sponsor, and then we're gonna dive headfirst into the Grim Dark.
If it was up to me, I would be playing Warhammer 40K every single day. I've been obsessed with it for 15 years, but unfortunately, sometimes life just gets in the way, and I don't have the time to dedicate to a full game. That was all until I downloaded Warhammer Tacticus, an amazing free-to-play, fast-paced strategy game set in the Grim Darkness of the 42nd Millennium. It allows me to get my Warhammer fix anytime I need it. The big news this month is that the Dark Angels are finally coming to Tacticus, starting today, April 30th, and a new battle pass event where premium pass holders can unlock the legend himself, the Keeper of Truth, Asriel, Supreme Grand Master of the Dark Angels. I got to play around with this dude recently, and he is an absolute monster, which makes sense considering that he's famed for being a tactical genius. His Lion's Home passive grants friendly units a huge boost in damage reduction whenever they block and also increases all of their Overwatch damage. But his ultimate is where it's really at, as he calls upon the forces of the Raven Wing to deliver death to the enemies of mankind in the form of a Dark Talon bomber. This thing deals massive damage to everything in a straight line, and if they somehow manage to survive, they'll be hit with the suppressed condition, making them easy prey for the rest of your squad. The new battle pass season begins on April 30th, so don't miss this opportunity to unlock Asriel for yourself.
The game features dozens of Legendary Heroes and iconic units from Warhammer 40,000, each one modeled with an expert eye for detail and an art style that makes them look exactly like the miniatures from the tabletop game. It seems simple at first, but Tacticus has a whole lot of overlaid systems that reward smart decision-making and clever loadouts. There's also a ton of unique game modes: arena battles, multiple campaigns, raid bosses, and a whole lot more. You can download the game for free today by clicking on the link in the description or scanning my QR code here on the screen. Big thanks to Warhammer Tacticus for sponsoring this video.
Before we dive into the meat and potatoes of this book, I'm going to add a quick segment through the power of editing because, as I was putting the finishing touches on it, I realized that, as amazing as this novel is, it's not the best for beginners. It really expects for you to know a lot about the Dark Angels, Lionel Johnson, and the Horus Heresy. So real quick, I'm going to give a summary of his backstory, so if you're brand new to this faction, you'll at least know what we're talking about.
The Dark Angels were the first Legion of Space Marines created by the Emperor of Mankind. They came to replace the Thunder Warriors shortly after the Unification Wars. Because they were the first, they had to be good at everything, capable of handling any situation they might find themselves in; thus, they were a very Jack-of-all-trades style Legion. Close-quarters combat, siege warfare, gorilla tactics—whatever you can think of, they had a foundation in it. The Legions that would come later were made for much more specific purposes. The Raven Guard, for example, had a greater mastery of stealth-based tactics, and nobody in their right mind would argue that the Dark Angels were better at siege warfare when compared to the Iron Warriors. But even still, because of their adaptability, many Warhammer fans consider the first two also to be the best.
Their Primarch, Lionel Johnson, whose gene-seed was used in their creation, had landed on the death world of Caliban when all of the Primarchs were scattered. This was a medieval world ruled over by knight households and plagued by great beasts that terrorized the population. Lionel Johnson grew up in the woods, fending for himself against these monsters. He was eventually discovered by one of the knights named Luther, who brought him—him—into their order. It was within this knightly order that, over the years, Lionel Johnson would rise through their ranks and eventually achieve the highest position possible. It was then that he led a great crusade to scour the world of Caliban and kill all of the beasts that plagued it. Shortly after this, the Emperor's ships arrived, and the Lion would be taken to Terra, reconnected with his father, and set to lead the Dark Angels as their Primarch.
After this, the Dark Angels would fight many battles in the name of the Imperium during and before the Great Crusade, and eventually, when the Horus Heresy came to pass and nine of his brothers and their Legions turned traitor, the Lion would side with the Imperium. He left a large portion of his Legion behind on Caliban in order to garrison it, thus leaving his sons out of the fight. After the Horus Heresy had finally concluded and the Lion and the Dark Angels that were with him were returned to Caliban, he found that his world had not been immune to the seeds of corruption. Luther, the man that had found him in the woods that day and the Lion's oldest friend, had given himself over to the ruinous powers and spread lies throughout the Dark Angels that had been left behind on Caliban. When the Lion's fleet arrived in orbit, Caliban opened fire. He had been completely caught off guard, so the Lion and the Dark Angels had to defend themselves. They fired back and made planetfall. It was like a mini Horus Heresy: Dark Angel against Dark Angel, brother against brother. The Lion would slaughter his way through his own sons until eventually he reached the traitor Luther. In a titanic battle, Luther employed the powers of the warp to apparently mortally wound the Lion.
As of the time of recording this, there isn't actually a novel detailing the Battle of Caliban, so we only have the codexes and abridged summaries to go off of, but apparently, after wounding the Lion, Luther suddenly realized what he had done and how far he had fallen. He dropped to his knees and refused to fight anymore. This infuriated the Chaos Gods, who subsequently destroyed the planet, ripping it apart at the seams and taking all of the quote-unquote traitorous Archangels, sucking them up into the warp and scattering them across space and time. The Lion's ultimate fate was unknown, as he had been on the planet's surface when it began to come apart. Over the next 10,000 years, reports would come in from time to time of one of the traitorous Archangels being spotted. They had come to be known as the Fallen, and the modern Dark Angel's primary objective was hunting down each and every one of them for their past sins. The Lion's fate was still unknown, but many believe that the Legion's greatest secret lay within the deepest bowels of The Rock, the Dark Angels' Fortress-Monastery, which had actually been a chunk of Caliban. It was here, within its darkest, most restricted section, accessible only by the alien, Eldritch creatures known simply as the Watchers, but the Lion supposedly slept until the day that he was needed once again. And that's where our story picks up.
So, without further ado, let's dive right in. Our story begins in a strange forest. There's an old man here that we, as the audience, know to be Lionel Johnson. He suddenly finds himself aware. He's been listening to the melody of the forest for as long as he can remember: the birds, the insects, the wind rustling through the trees, and the sound of a nearby river. He doesn't know how long he's been here listening to the song, nor, for that matter, does he know who he is, what this place is, or how he even got to be here. He looks at himself in the reflection of the water and doesn't recognize the old man looking back at him. But he looks up and sees another man sitting in a boat floating on the river. The man looks hurt, and the Lion attempts to wade out to him, as maybe he can help him figure out what's going on here. There are dark shapes under the water's surface, moving quickly back and forth, and he suddenly sees a figure shrouded in green robes, no larger than a child. It tells him that those things in the water will kill him and to come back to the safety of the riverbank. He recognizes this creature to be one of the Watchers in the Dark, and he can't really remember what they are, but he knows that the Watcher's word should always be heeded. He—he returns to the riverbank and demands it tell him what is going on, but the Watcher doesn't answer. He can infer that it's not that the Watcher is withholding information, just that there isn't any information to give. Frustrated, he heads off in the opposite direction of the river, deeper into the woods. Fragments of memory start to come back to him over time. He remembers that he has brothers, but he can't remember their faces. He thinks for a moment that he could return to the riverbank and go back to sleep, pretending that none of this had ever happened, but the path of ignorance has never been the Lion's way, so he presses on. He never sees the Watcher move, but every time it leaves his sight, it reappears before him in a different location. After a while of chopping through the trees, he eventually comes across a strange, beaten path, and at the end of it he sees a building made of smooth stone. The Watcher speaks within his mind, telling him not to take that path, as he isn't strong enough yet. Frustrated, he accuses the Watcher of cautioning him yet not giving him any kind of information to make sense of his situation. What would the Watcher have him do instead? The Watcher simply tells him to follow his nature. The Lion sniffs the air, and where at first he was surrounded by the deep scent of the forest, a combination of life and death, he detects something else: something malignant, horrific, and jarring; something that is wrong and twisted and shouldn't be there—corruption. He knows what he must do. He knows what his purpose is. He is a hunter, and a new quarry has presented itself. So the Lion runs. He runs towards his prey. As he runs deeper and deeper into the forest, it starts to change and shift around him. Whereas the woods he had been in before seemed vaguely familiar to him, but he didn't know why, this new forest felt completely alien, and all the while the scent of corruption was growing stronger and stronger. Suddenly, he can make out the faint sounds of people screaming in the distance, and he's overwhelmed with this compulsion to protect those who can't defend themselves. He bursts forward into a clearing and sees a group of what appear to be peasants being attacked by a Chaos Beast. He's armored, but he doesn't have any weapons. However, that doesn't stop the Lion, as he surges forth like a battering ram into the creature's side. As he's fighting it, his helmet ends up getting spattered with blood and obscures his vision, so he tears it off and throws it to one of the peasants, telling him to clean it while he continues to fight, which is a very Lionel Johnson thing to do. Two more of the beasts emerge from the forest, charging straight towards him. The Lion fights all three of them off single-handedly, bringing his fist down on the head of one of the beasts so hard that, as it strikes the Earth, it takes its body a few moments to keep pace. He rips the scorpion-like stinger off the tail of another and throws it like a dagger right into the third beast's mouth. After the creatures are dispatched, the civilians thank him profusely and tell him to come with them to their encampment, as it was one of the only safe places left since the sky opened up and the bastards came. They want to introduce him to their protector, and he says that's fine, but he needs them to tell him the name of the planet they're on. They look confused, but they tell him that it's Camaf, a world that the Lion had never heard of. They make their way back into the forest, and at the campsite the Lion notes that everyone here looks completely downtrodden; even the children are only making as much noise as is necessary, such as the life of a group of people that are constantly being hunted. It's at this point in time that a dark figure in black power armor emerges from one of the tents. The Lion assumes it to be the protector of this group, and when the two make eye contact, he immediately recognizes the insignias on his chest and shoulder: a winged sword. In that moment, his mind buckles as a torrent of painful memories come rushing in: images of a planet coming apart all around him, a sword, the shape of nature changing, a monstrous bat-winged form, a glowing golden presence, a different planet, but this one condemned to death by his own hand, as seen from above as silvery specks of destruction rain down on its surface, followed by a cascading string of explosions—Caliban, the Emperor, his brothers, that traitor Horus, and the thrice-damned monster, noble Sanguinius, brash, swaggering Russ, and even the insufferable Guilliman, watching Terra burn because he was too late, and watching his homeworld of Caliban burn around him, facing Luther and seeing the monster his old friend had become. The Lion remembers who he is as his mind is being bombarded with memories. The figure sees the Lion's face. He draws his pistols and opens fire. However, the Lion is way too quick for him. In the microsecond that the Space Marine's fingers began to twitch, he was already moving. He dodges out of the fire in the direction away from the civilians and launches forward, knocking the Space Marine to the ground and disarming him. They both shout "Traitor!" at each other. With his memories mostly returned to him, he realizes that he recognizes this individual: it's Zabriel Taryn, born of Stockholm Hive, Diacom of the Order of the Three Keys, initiated the Dreadwing, formerly the Host of Bone Knight of the Second Destroyer Squad in the Third Company, 15th Chapter of the First Legion. The peasants are absolutely horrified and beg him to release their protector. The Lion shouts at them that he is a traitor, one who has now tried to murder him for the second time. The pinned Space Marine snarls through his teeth that the Lion was the traitor and accuses him of abandoning his sons, Caliban, and the Imperium—lies! The Lion roars, "Then where have you been for 10,000 years?" demands Zabriel. This is the first the Lion has heard of just how much time has passed, and it's left him momentarily paralyzed. He didn't mishear him; he fully absorbs the impact of that sentence. It just shakes him to the core. He demands Zabriel take off his helmet, so his son complies. He sees an aged face, dark skin, and hair streaked with gray. He remarks that he's never seen a Space Marine so old before and reaches up to touch his own face, one that he still doesn't recognize as his own. Zabriel's power armor is scarred and dented and looks like it's been repaired vastly more times than Legion protocol would allow for. This Space Marine was undoubtedly from his time, so he should be long dead by now. As Zabriel explains to him that, from his perspective, the events on Caliban were only 400 years ago—that's when the warp spat him back out. It had been 400 long, terrible years of running and hiding from his lethal brothers within the modern Dark Angels Chapter. He tells the Lion that the Dark Angels are ruthless in the pursuit of any they deem a foe, but "Ten thousand years of hatred to extinguish guilt? Truly, my Lord Lion, you have taught your sons well." "What mockery is this? We return to Caliban from Terra to find the system held against us. You open fire on us without warning, and your leaders had made pacts with powers I will not name." The Lion thinks for a moment before asking his new son why he attempted to kill him the moment he had seen him; he opened fire—why shouldn't his modern sons hunt down traitors like him? The Primarch and his son go back and forth on the events leading up to Caliban's destruction. From Zabriel's perspective and the other Dark Angels stationed on Caliban, they had been abandoned. They were the finest soldiers ever made, crafted only for battle, and had been left out of the greatest war Humanity had ever seen. They were hurt by—by this, but they were not the ones that decided to open fire on the Lion's fleet when he arrived in orbit above Caliban. That was a decision made by the higher-ups. From his perspective, war had come to Caliban; fire rained from the sky, and his brothers had landed with the goal of slaughtering them. "The first time I saw my Gene-sire on Caliban was when the Lion was butchering his way through the Legion's neophytes that had only earned their Dark Angels colors a few days before. Even as the planet splintered and the war breached out to seize us all, it was the expression on your face that has remained with me for the long years since. It was hatred and rage, pure and unfettered. You were intent upon our deaths, and we knew better than any others that once you set your mind on something you could not be deterred. When I saw you here, having walked out of that forest, I could not mistake your features despite the age that had overtaken you. Your face was haunted by dreams for centuries. Either you were a Chaos-bound mockery of my Primarch, spewed forth from the warp to torment me, or you were the Lion, here to finally kill me. I was prepared to tolerate neither without a fight."
This is a lot for anyone, even a Primarch, to take in, and the biggest stinger is that the Lion detects no falsehoods in his words. And he bitterly admits to himself that he hasn't always been the best judge of character. "You say I abandoned the Imperium? Do you swear to me, by whatever you hold dear, that you remained loyal? That whatever the allegiances of your commanders, that you loved the Emperor and Humanity? That you only raised your hand to your brothers and me because you thought you were betrayed in turn?" Zabriel swears that, despite everything, he is loyal, but surprisingly he repeats the Lion's own words back to him, demanding to know where his loyalties lied, which admittedly irritated the Lion to no end. He had never been spoken to by a Space Marine like that, but he understands where Zabriel is coming from, so he swears to his son that he was and will always be loyal. The Lion helps him to his feet and asks him to explain the situation: what had happened to the Imperium and his brothers while he slept. When Zabriel warns him that this is going to be a lot, but he does his best to summarize everything, even though admittedly there's a lot of blank spots for him as he hasn't exactly been welcomed with open arms within Imperial territory since his arrival in this time. He tells him that the Emperor is still on the Golden Throne, entombed, and he's not actually sure if he's alive or not, but all of humanity has taken to worshipping him as a god. This makes the Lion sick to his stomach, but he goes on. He tells him of the Imperial Creed and the Ecclesiarchy, one of the most dominant powers within the Imperium, a church full of fanatics that are, in his opinion, no better than the Word Bearers of their day. To them, to deny the Emperor's divinity was a death sentence. He tells him that all of his brothers were gone. It happened in different ways at different times, but they had passed into the realm of myth and legend. The Lion is hit with a tidal wave of grief and wonders if it's better to be told of all of your brothers passing at once or to have been around to see each one of them fall. He doesn't really know the answer.
Zabriel continues. He tells him that most of the traitor Primarchs are still alive, but that's all we can really tell; most of their locations are unknown, and they seem to be doing their own thing. If anything, Abaddon the Despoiler was the current largest threat to the Imperium. He tells him that the Legions are—are no more; that they had been broken up into Chapters by Lord Guilliman shortly after the Heresy. After hearing all of this, the Lion says that he must journey to Terra; he has to see the Emperor for himself. And Zabriel tells him that that's not possible and explains how, after the destruction of Cadia, the Great Rift formed and split the galaxy in half. Eventually, the Lion is hurt enough; even a Primarch has their limits, and he feels that the revelations for him had only just begun. He assesses the situation: he is a man out of time, and the two of them are cut off from Terra; travel would be difficult and dangerous, and the fabric of the Imperium was coming apart all around them. He tells Zabriel that if all of his father's work had been destroyed, then he would return to what he knew before he met the Emperor: keeping people safe. His father had been a conqueror, and thus he had been made a conqueror on his behalf; that was not in his nature. He killed enemies, and all of Humanity's enemies were his enemies. He tells Zabriel that he will demand nothing of the people from this world and certainly refuses to be worshipped, but he would kill their oppressors, the Warband of the Ten Thousand Eyes that had been preying upon them. He asked Zabriel if he's willing to fight by his side. He tells him that he will, and that these oppressors had a base of operations nearby.
The Lion and Zabriel traveled through the forest towards a Blood Angel's bunker that the Warband of the Ten Thousand Eyes had taken over. Once they get there, they fight their way through, slaughtering cultists and mutants alike. These things are no match for a Primarch, but the Lion notices that his fighting capabilities are not what he remembers them to be. There's something wrong with this place, whether it's the corruption or that there's a witch nearby that is sapping his power, he's not really sure. They eventually reach a room with a group of Chaos Space Marines, and in the ensuing fight the Lion is still unarmed, as all of the weapons they've come across in the preceding battles were either viciously corrupted and not safe to be used or were too small to be wielded by a Primarch. The Lion announces his presence to the shocked Chaos Space Marines and charges into them. After smacking a couple of them around for a bit, he realizes that he's going to need a weapon, so he frantically searches for something that he can use until eventually he breaks into an armory. The Chaos Space Marines are in pursuit, firing volleys of corrupted ammunition.
At him, under normal circumstances, one-on-one, a Space Marine would be no match for a Primarch. But underestimating the enemy has spelled the deaths of narcissistic Warlords throughout time. They are still dangerous. He picks up some frag grenades and hurls them at his pursuers to buy himself some time, and grabs a Bolter magazine in case he's able to find something he can load it into. He's having no luck, and then all of a sudden he has a vision. He can see the forest canopy above his head, and the rockcrete floor that he was walking on blurs slightly and is overlaid with the vision of grass and dirt. To his right, a pile of rubble begins to take the form of a large boulder, and embedded inside of it is an elegant Power sword.
He reaches out for it and pulls it; it slides out with the faintest whisper of metal on stone. It's a beautiful powerblade that, oddly enough, is perfectly sized for the Lion. The hilt is a simple crossguard, which has a winged design around a miniature version of The Sword itself—the symbol of the Dark Angels. The Lion smiles and thumbs the activation rune; the vision of the force fades away, and he uses the blade, that he names Fealty, to slaughter the corrupted attackers. He goes to interrogate the last one, who is mortally wounded, and demands to know why he's still fighting at a diminished raid after he had killed the sorcerer. The Chaos Space Marine is choking on its own blood, but even still, he's utterly confused by the statement. He's like, "Who the hell are you? You came in, slaughtered all of my men like it was nothing, and you speak of having your power diminished?"
He tells him that he is Lionel Johnson, son of the Emperor and Lord of the First. The Marine is shocked by the statement, but then he starts to laugh at him. He tells him there is no spell; he was just old. The Lion finishes him off.
With the Chaos Space Marine threat taken care of, the Lion and Zabriel push further into the bunker, searching for answers to what happened to the Ruby Crescent Space Marine chapter of the Blood Angels that had been stationed here. Eventually, they find several of them still alive; they've been horrifically twisted and mutated by the warp. They are mindlessly savage, and seeing no other alternative, the Lion grants them the Emperor's Mercy. They destroy the bunker, taking with them as many uncorrupted weapons as they can carry to arm the men and women back in the camp. It is after this that the Lion rallies them to his side, as the bunker was only the beginning; they were going to take back their world.
A big chunk of time passes, and eventually, the Lion and the men and women of the camp are in the process of taking back the very last city. There are still a few remaining pockets of resistance on this world, but most of the Chaos forces have been wiped out. Aside from the Space Marines in the bunker, there hadn't been any sign of the Astartes of the Ten Thousand Eyes; only the mutants and cultists they had left behind. By this point, the Lion has gathered an enormous force to his side, his numbers growing with each victory.
The Lion and a Magos of the Adeptus Mechanicus that they had found in a previous battle journeyed to the spaceport to see if they can get a signal out. When they get there, the Magos informs him that the cogitators had been horrifically corrupted, and it would take some time with his data scrubbers to get it working again, if it was even possible. The first step of his plan is to get a message out to the rest of the Imperium. Then, after that, if they could find a working shuttle, they might just be able to get up to the debris field which is orbiting the planet to see if one of the ships up there could be repaired, at least well enough to get them to the next system.
It's at this point in their plan when the men and women of the world presented him a group of 10 of their most elite warriors; they call the Lion Guard to serve as his personal protectors. The Lion argues that, out of all of them, he was the one that least needed protection, but Zabriel tells him that, within their culture, it's a sign of respect for him, so he allows it. It's at this moment that he feels an overwhelming compulsion to go back in the forest, and he feels something calling to him from the Northwestern edge of the city. He doesn't know what it is or if it's even a threat, but he needs to investigate it. So thus, him, Zabriel, and the Lion's Guard hop in a Goliath and head for that part of the city.
They decide to investigate further by pushing inside of the forest, and the deeper and deeper they go, their equipment starts to behave erratically. Even the targeting arrays in the Lion's helm refuse to lock onto anything. They don't like this, but the Lion is determined to figure out what is calling to him. As they proceed, the force starts to morph and twist around them, just as it had when the Lion originally left the riverbed. He asked Zabriel if he had to take an estimated guess what this new forest reminded him of. Zabriel confirms his suspicions; it looked like the forest of Caliban from 10,000 years ago. They can hear some great beasts howling off in the distance, which makes the group of humans that are following them nervous, but they continue onward. Once again, they pass by that suspicious dome structure that the Lion had seen at the beginning of the story. He remembers the Watcher's warning that he wasn't yet strong enough to face whatever was inside, and he worries that if the Watcher had spoken the truth, by entering there he would be putting these people in danger, so they ignore it and continue on the path. Eventually, the force starts to give way again, the trees becoming far more thin and stretched out; the rich detritus of the forest and the dirt under their feet begins to be replaced with sand. The Lion realizes that he has been teleported once again, just in time for a man in desert garb to approach on a dune buggy, demanding to know who they were. He turns and looks at the man and says that he is Lionel Johnson, son of the Emperor, and he needed to speak to whoever was in charge.
It's revealed to us that this is, in fact, a completely different planet, and the people of this world were not expecting a Primarch, 10 humans, and a Space Marine to show up out of nowhere. A small army arrives to meet them, but when everyone sees Lionel Johnson, their mouths are left to gape. They take him back to the planet's capital, where he is greeted at the gate by Marshall Haraj, the leader of the planet after the Governor had stepped down when the Great Rift had not faded away and martial law was determined to be an ongoing necessity. The Lion clearly does not look like a regular person, and he's much larger than even a Space Marine, but aside from his huge stature, this is supposedly a figure from myth and legend that just appeared without warning. The Marshall tells him that he's going to need to provide proof of his claim. When he can't provide any other than his word, she says that her psyker was going to have to probe his mind. The Lion is not having any of this; he turns to the portly gentleman and calls him a witch. The man protests, saying that his powers were, in fact, sanctioned by the Imperium, to which the Lion tells him that that couldn't possibly be true; all psychic powers had been expressly forbidden at the Council of Nicaea, something that had only been briefly overturned in the hour of their darkest need during the Horus Heresy, and even then it was only Astartes that were permitted to wield such powers, of which this guy clearly was not. Zabriel tells him to consider the situation and convinces him to allow it. He tells the psyker not to linger in his mind any longer than was necessary; he was a man that didn't enjoy sharing his secrets. The psyker's only in his mind for less than 10 seconds before he suddenly drops to his knees, supplicating himself and weeping before him. He says that he is telling the truth; it was Lionel Johnson. All of the onlookers in the room suddenly erupt into applause; some cheering, some crying, all enraptured in an overwhelming sensation of wonder. Then the Lion notes to himself that, even though they were celebrating, nothing of the Imperium's predicament had changed; the Great Rift still split the sky, Humanity was besieged on all fronts, but in that moment, for the people in that room, everything had changed. This section of the story concludes with the Marshall instructing her astropathic choir to shout into the void of the Lion's return, his message echoing across the stars.
Later on that night, the Lion and Zabriel are discussing what to do next. Earlier in the day, the Lion had asked if this world had come under attack recently. The people here told them that it hadn't, but there had been a strange incident where a ship had touched down in the waste, but when they went to investigate, there was no one aboard. He finds this strange because if it had been full of enemies, they definitely would have made their presence known. If it had been Imperial allies, however, they would have reported to the center of command. He reasons that whoever had been aboard that ship was somebody that wanted to go unnoticed, somebody like Zabriel. The two of them reasoned that there was a possibility it may have been full of other Fallen, so the Lion instructs Zabriel to investigate and track them down. The Space Marine sets off into the night, disguised as best as he can be with a heavy cloak, perhaps to resemble some type of gene-enhanced laborer. He knows the symbols to look for; his brothers would leave markings in certain locations to direct other Fallen to their location. The markings were obscure enough that somebody outside of their order wouldn't exactly know what they were looking at if they happened to stumble across them. Eventually, he tracks down one of the symbols he's looking for—a set of three swords carved into a building near one of the sites of Emperor worship. He follows them for some time and eventually comes to a small house, and when he knocks on the door, he can hear a voice behind him telling him that if he moves, he dies. The voice is pitched low enough that no one other than a Space Marine could hear it. The voice tells him to turn around, and he can just make out the barrel of a gun in a nearby window. He tells the shadowy figure that his name was Brother Zabriel and he had come, and the figure tells them that they're going to see about that. The figure ushers him inside a separate building, and Zabriel is surprised to see that there are two more of his kind in here. The third figure enters and recognizes Zabriel, speaking his name. Zabriel asks how he knows him, and he says that he's the one that trained him. He removes his helmet, and Zabriel is shocked to see the face of Night Sergeant Athcar, who had indeed been his mentor back on Caliban. However, due to Zabriel having been spit out of the warp far earlier than him, he is now hundreds of years older than his former Captain. The other two Fallen here are named Lohawk, or the Red Whisper as the group likes to call him, and Kai. They had all been spit out of the warp at different times but had managed to find one another and now work to protect and keep each other safe. As Zabriel asked them if they had heard of the Lion's return and they say they did, but they don't necessarily believe it. He tells him that it's true and that he was there with him. They're all immediately on edge by this statement; they've been hunted by the Dark Angels for a long time, and the last time they saw the Lion, he had tried to kill them. He tells them that the Lion claims he had remained loyal and that the Battle of Caliban had been an accident; the planet was the one that fired on his fleet first, and if there had been any treachery, it came from their superiors. They asked him what the Lion's intentions are, and he says, quite simply, he wants his sons back; he wants to reconcile with them, and he has come to believe that not all of the Fallen were traitors. They eventually agreed to go with him to see the Lion; if their Primarch had need of them, their loyalty had never faltered, even after all this time; they would fight by his side once more.
Zabriel voxes to the Lion that he had managed to locate three of his brothers and that they would meet him in one of the gardens within the city. Some time passes, and they all arrive at the determined location. The Lion tells the group that he failed his father, that he had failed his brothers, and he didn't want to fail his sons. Knight Sergeant Athgar steps forward and tells him that the sentiment is somewhat late. The Lion tells them that he had been deceived by Horus for years while he pretended to be loyal to the Emperor; he had been deceived by his brothers and was deceived by the powers they served. When he returned to Caliban, it seemed that all of them had been deceived as well; he witnessed Luther wielding foul sorcery that he had only ever seen the Traitors use, and he had now come to believe that many of his sons on Caliban had been deceived by him and the higher-ups. Athgar tells the Lion that it's very convenient for him to come to that conclusion now, what with the Imperium being in ruins; where was the benefit of the doubt when he had most of the Legion at his back? The Lion sighs and tells them that his upbringing in the woods of Caliban had distilled in him a personality that required acting quickly, and that he admits to having acted too hastily on Caliban. However, Caliban had fired on its own brothers without warning. If they truly believe the fault was his alone, why were they here? Kai steps forward and says that he doesn't believe this is their Primarch. He brandishes a Power sword and says that if he truly is the Lion, then prove it in combat. Without warning, he lunges forward, the Lion bringing up his Power sword and activating it in the split second before the two swords made contact. The Lion and Kai duel back and forth for a while, and Kai is an incredibly skilled swordsman, but eventually, the Lion kicks him in the chest so hard he goes flying back 10 feet. He closes the distance, knocks the sword out of his hand, and brings the blade up to Kai's neck. He tells him never to challenge him like that again. Kai laughs and removes his helmet; there's a big smile on his face. He falls to his knees, any doubt to the Lion's claims immediately having been resolved. He tells the Lion that words are easy to utter, but nothing reveals the spirit quite like swordplay. He could have killed him just then, but he didn't, and if his intentions really were to safeguard this world and others, then he pledges his blade to him. Loark, the one they call the Red Whisper, also steps forward and pledges his service to the Lion, but the Lion doesn't recognize his voice, so he asks him to remove his helmet, to which Loark respectfully declines. He says that he can't. The Lion's puzzled by this, but the other two Fallen vouch for him, saying that this is how it's always been since they met him; he always eats his meals in private, and they've never seen his face. The Lion tells the group that he will not rule; he has no desire to. He will command, though, those who have a desire to be commanded, and will lead those who will follow. Kai had pledged his services to him, and if both of them vouch for Loark, then he would accept that, but he asked Athgar where he stands. Athgar asks if they encounter more of their kind, will the Lion give them the same opportunity they had given them? He tells them that he will, but if they are corrupted, he will not stay his hand. However, he would not assume corruption without proof. Athgar says, "If you are not who we thought you were, then we are fools; fools that fired on their own battle-brothers for no reason." The Lion tells him not to say "for no reason"; say that he was deceived, as he was; that he now had the opportunity to atone for whatever mistakes he believed he had made, beside the Lion instead of from the shadows. He tells his sons to come with him; they have a campaign to plan.
So this is going to be an abridged version of the next couple of chapters because I don't want this video to go on forever, and I want to save all of the juicy battle scenes for you if you decide to read this book for yourself. But what happens next is a Chaos fleet of the Ten Thousand Eyes attacks the world of Avalis, which is the one that the Lion and Zabriel had been teleported to. They were brought here by the astropathic choir as they had heard the Lion's message and believed that Avalis was shouting defiance into the stars—defiance that wouldn't go unchallenged. The planet of Avalis had given the Lion control of their fleets, which he used to fight off the invaders, and during the fighting, a group of pirates actually comes to the Lion's aid, and it's revealed they are led by other members of the Fallen. After the void battle is done, this is where the Lion and Zabriel part ways. Zabriel is sent to the moon of Gamma-2, as it is believed there are a couple more members of the Fallen there, whereas the Lion agrees to meet with the Pirates. We'll talk about what Zabriel gets up to first, and then we'll get back to the Lion.
Now, Zabriel is acting as the Lion's emissary, and he's given a pre-recorded message of the Lion's testimony vouching for his character. This testimony orders all that encounter him to offer him whatever assistance they can. As Zabriel is pretty confident this will work with most people he comes across, but if any of them happen to be modern Dark Angels, revealing the Lion's message would be seen as an even greater heresy to them than whatever crimes they believe he is guilty of. When he arrives on the moon, he is greeted by two more Fallen—one in Mark III armor who introduces himself as Night Sergeant Lancio, and another in hulking Cataphractii Terminator armor known as Glad. They take little convincing to come to the Lion's side; now, first and foremost, they want to see if it's actually true, and they don't want to miss this opportunity to see their Gene-sire's face. But additionally, whatever misgivings they have about the Primarch, there's only so much they can do to protect the people of this world, and they would not deny them the protection that a Primarch could offer. They also tell Zabriel that there's another member of the Fallen, a psyker, who was taken to living out in the desert as a hermit. He was more than welcome to go and visit him as they often did, but he had removed himself from the conflict and most likely wouldn't join. They organize a speeder vessel for Zabriel, who then takes off to find his lost brother. When he locates him in a cave, he's surprised to see that there is another member of the Fallen here as well. The other guy's name is Baylor, and he actually follows the leader of the Ten Thousand Eyes, Sarphax. So we're given a scene where Zabriel is trying to convince the psyker to come over to his side and join the Lion, and Baylor is trying to convince him to join the Ten Thousand Eyes. The big takeaway from the conversation between the three of them is that the psyker reveals that the Lion was telling the truth; he was fired on first. They believed that he had turned traitor and had come back to Caliban to gather up whatever resources were left in order to continue the fight against the Imperium. But even if Luther had been lying to them, even if this wasn't true, the Primarch was still at fault; he had watched the entire Imperium fall around him rather than let these Space Marines fight, whereas Horus had brought every asset at his disposal to bring down the Emperor. The Lion had left thirty thousand of the greatest soldiers ever created to sit on a backwater planet; he was either a traitor or grossly incompetent, or on the other end of the spectrum, he viewed his sons as one of those two things. How could there possibly be any reconciliation after that? When it's all said and done, Zabriel wants the psyker to join him and the Lion to fight for Humanity, and Baylor wants him to join his call and follow the Ten Thousand Eyes. He denies them both, and they both leave; no blows coming to each other, even though by all accounts they are enemies, and the next time they meet won't be on the sparring grounds like it was in the old days. This interaction reveals that the Fallen have a very complicated relationship with one another; even if they fall on different ends of the chaotic spectrum, there is a kinship and a bond amongst the hunted that cannot be denied, even if they disagree with what the best path forward is. They harbor no love for either the Imperium or the other followers of Chaos, but they simply leave each other to follow their own path rather than coming to blows. However, after Baylor leaves, the psyker tells Zabriel to wait, and he agrees to come with him; at the very least, he wants to see the Lion for himself.
Okay, so now back to what the Lion was doing during this time. Night Captain Boars, or Boar's One Eye as his compatriots call him due to his missing eye that has not been fitted with an augmentation, informs the Lion that back at their base of operations there were more Fallen, but it would require making multiple short warp jumps in order to get there—not the best way of traveling, but it's pretty much how the Fallen have to get around considering their circumstances and lack of resources. While this process is happening, the Lion takes some time to meditate in his chamber. This is actually a process that he's not very good at; in fact, thinking about nothing is the opposite of his skill set. You see, the Lion is an entity of perfect singular focus; it's a skill he had to develop to survive in the woods of Caliban, and it's a mindset that has come to dominate how he views things. He can focus on any one thing better than anyone else alive, but clearing his mind entirely is nearly impossible for him, which, considering the endless barrage of dilemmas, problems, thoughts, and questions that have been plaguing his mind since he woke back up, this makes a lot of sense. The more he tries to focus on clearing his mind, the more aggressive these thoughts become. For a moment, he thinks back to what happened on Caliban; he didn't want to fire on his world, but he had, and when he thinks about it, those munitions that he used had no real possibility of shattering an entire world; they just weren't powerful enough. It must have had something to do with the foul sorcery that Luther was employing. He tries to shake these thoughts away and focus on the forest of Caliban. Even though his eyes are shut, his senses inform him that his surroundings have changed. He opens his eyes, and he's no longer in the chambers aboard his ship; he is once again in the forest. He was not anticipating this to happen, but he thinks to himself that he probably should have and wonders if this strange teleporting ability is something that he will be able to control. When he opens his eyes, he realizes that he is next to a large castle, and when he goes inside, he eventually comes upon a great hall where a wounded King is seated in front of three objects: a chalice, a candelabra, and a golden spear dripping with blood. The wounded King has a pool of blood pooling at his feet. He tries to speak with the King, whose eyes turn in his direction, but other than that, he makes no indication that he even acknowledges his presence. He asks him who he is, but there's no response from the King. He asks him how he can be healed, but once again, the King just looks annoyed. He goes to open his mouth to ask a third question, and suddenly the shadows cast by the King's throne start to reach out towards him. He realizes that they are the same shadows that were in the river, the one that the Watcher warned would kill him. The last thing he sees is a look of great disappointment on the wounded King's face before he suddenly finds himself back in his chambers on his ship, the vox chiming to warn him that they had arrived at the pirate station. The station... these...
Marines have made their home in a station of ancient Zeno's design. There's a great wrongness about it. It's not obviously dangerous, or covered in spikes and skulls, or anything like that, but every angle is off, ever so slightly. It makes it even more disturbing to look at because you can't quite tell what unnerves you.
The Lion asked Bores what he thinks of utilizing a Xeno structure like this, especially when they had been tasked with eradicating all Zenos that posed a threat to mankind. Morse tells him, quite simply, that if it hadn't been for this station, him and the men under his command would have been long dead. So you do what you have to do.
The Hawaiian thinks back to the Emperor and how stuff like this should have been destroyed; it was what they were made to do. But he also realizes that the Emperor isn't here and that he had to step out from behind his father's shadow and make the decisions he felt were best. He's not surprised that his sons had followed a similar path of logic. He mentions that he would give anything for one of his brothers to be here by his side; this was all such a huge burden for him to bear alone.
Bores asks him, even Russ? He thinks about that for a moment before saying, "Yes, even Russ." His wolf king brother had a remarkable simplicity about him that, although would have been infuriating, would have been welcomed.
When they board the station, the Lion comes face to face with about seven of his sons; five of which are clad in black, one in the white of an Apothecary, and another in the rust red of a Techmarine. He tells his sons that he is glad to see them, and one of them asks if he is there to kill them. He says that he's not here to kill anyone and tells them of everything he has learned since he awoke: of the treachery of Luther, Astalon, and all the others allied to them; how he has since found sons that he believed had no involvement or knowledge of the attack. He tells the pirates words that, "If you wish me to, I will leave you in peace, and I will make every attempt to make every one of my sons who wear the mantle of a Dark Angel to do the same. The only exception is if you prey upon humanity and continue to do so."
The Techmarine steps forward and tells him that, from his perspective, it's been 700 years since the Breaking of Caliban, and in that time he's seen the Imperium to be a worse place than ever. "It was wretched, short-sighted, superstitious, and hateful. It clung to tenants it didn't understand and pursuit of goals it could not remember and would never realize. Why should they fight to protect what was left of it?"
The Lion tells him that the Imperium, by all accounts, is gravely flawed, but many of the people within it bear no responsibility for that. They were beset on all sides by ravening Xenos the Dark Angels had failed to exterminate and by foul powers that our brother Legions, and indeed some of our own battle-brothers, had enslaved themselves to. He asks, "Should we leave these mortals to reap the consequences of their ancestors' decisions and the failures of the Astartes and the Primarchs?" The Lion points to the humans that are aboard this ship; the Fallen here were protecting them, and asked them why not extend their borders.
This is where the braggart Kai steps forward from behind the Lion and points at them accusingly, saying, "These Fallen were scared." Up until this point, the atmosphere in the room was pretty tense, to say the least, but because of Kai's outburst that has been shattered. The Fallen of the Echo Station are raising their weapons, and the Lion looks at him to rebuke him, but realizes it's too late.
Kai goes to give this speech: "I know the feeling. I felt it too, back in the days of the Great Crusade. I was part of something huge. I had my brothers around me, and I knew my purpose. Even when we were exiled on Caliban, I felt that connection more so even because I knew that there was so much good that I could be doing if I were simply allowed to get out there and do it." He drops his hands to his sides, and then the breaking happened, and the storm threw him through space and time, and he ended up alone and without purpose. Even when he found a pair of companions, we had no plan other than to keep our heads down and survive. "How could we three make a difference to the Galaxy?" He points at the Lion. "But now we can, Brothers. Our Gene-father says he has no wish to rule, and I believe him, but you must realize that everywhere he goes, Humanity will cling to him like a drowning person to a flotation device. They will hang off his words and take his statements as law. Even if it's only a handful of star systems, that is still trillions of lives that the Lion will be protecting. You have the choice of joining him, finding a new purpose, standing next to other Warriors and having no enemies other than those who seek to destroy Humanity; or refusing him, remaining here and waiting for a passing Xeno fleet to grant you a meaningless death, or to finally be captured and tortured by The Unforgiven."
The Techmarine from before asked the Lion, "What of his other companion?" gesturing to the Red Whisper. "Does he have a similar eloquence to Kai?" In a growl, the Red Whisper tells him that he does not; that he does as the Lion wishes him to. And that was the end of it. When they hear his voice, though, the Apothecary notes that the rasp here sounds like an old injury and asks if he needs medical attention. The Lion informs them that Lohark does not remove his battle plate in the sight of others, but they thank him for his concern. The other Fallen asks him why he doesn't find that strange. The Lion tells them that he suspects many of his sons have developed quirks since the Breaking; he would not condemn without proof. Lohark had pledged himself to the Lion and given no reason to doubt his word; he would extend the same trust to all of them.
There's an obvious shift in the mood here, and the Lion realizes that his words have struck on something. The Dark Angels had always prided themselves on being the first, the best, the template that all Astartes were built upon. He wonders what insecurities have developed in his sons in their long period of isolation, unable to influence the greater Galaxy. There is fear here, but not fear of death or pain; a Space Marine would face that unflinchingly. It was a fear that they had lost the only thing that told them who they were, and that any attempt to reclaim it would see those fears confirmed.
The Lion tells them, "My sons, you and I spent centuries doing what we were told. Now I simply wish for you to do what is right, and I need your help to do it. For so long as you will give me that help." They ask him who he is fighting, and he tells them of the Ten Thousand Eyes. Now these Fallen are very familiar with Seraphax and his filth, and if that was who the Lion was going up against, then they were with him. He was one of Luther's favorites back on Caliban, and he was, without a doubt, a traitor through and through.
The Lion has gathered more of his sons to his side, but this happy moment is ruined when he suddenly receives word from his ship that they had picked up a distress call coming from Kamarath, the first world the Lion had found himself on, and the first one he had reclaimed in his Crusade. The Ten Thousand Eyes had returned, and without him there to protect them, they had burned the entire planet.
The Lion and the Fallen that have joined him, that he now refers to as the Risen, move as quickly as they can, but by the time they get back to the planet, it had been too late. This wasn't a conquest; it was a slaughter, similar to the ones the Dark Angels had committed against hundreds of Xeno species in the days of the Great Crusade.
Now this is where he meets back up with Zabriel, as his ship had received the same distress signal. He briefly introduced the Fallen that he has found to their Gene-sire, but more proper introductions will have to wait, as there were more pressing matters at hand. The Lion asked Zabriel if he had seen what had happened to Kamarath, and he tells him that he had. The Lion can sense an overwhelming burden of grief in his son, seeing the world he had fought so hard to protect in flames. The Blood Angel's bunker from earlier in the story is one of the only places that is not on fire, and the Lion feels that tugging sensation from before; there was something there for him to find.
Him and his son's journey to the planet's surface, and when they arrive at the Fortress, they encounter a Chaos Space Marine who has a message for the Lion, but he will only grant it if he is struck down. Zabriel obliges, cutting his head off, but the Chaos Warrior doesn't fall; his body simply stands back up, picks up his severed head, and his mouth whispers silent words. Then he vanishes into thin air; none of them could hear the message except for Zabriel, who informs the group that Seraphax wished to meet with the Lion on the world of Sable.
I actually went over this section of the book in my previous video, the plot to kill the Emperor, so you should definitely check that out, but I'll briefly summarize the following events here. The Lion has learned that he can use meditation to teleport back to the Ethereal Forest, so he attempts to do so by bringing his sons with him. They all close their eyes and meditate together, and sure enough, they end up in the ethereal ghost of Caliban's woods. This is the path they use to infiltrate Sable, as although their ship had entered the space surrounding the world, if they had gotten any closer, pretending they had come in good faith, they were well aware that Seraphax's warband would have shot them down. They don't know exactly what he's planning to do, but they're sure it has something to do with the grotesque floating disc orbiting around the planet, made from the bones of every single person that had lived here before the Ten Thousand Eyes had come and slaughtered them.
The Lion and the Risen infiltrate the Governor's Palace, where Seraphax makes his presence known. He leads them on a great chase, but what the Lion doesn't realize is that this is a trap, and Seraphax binds him with a set of unbreakable chains and begins conducting a ritual designed to pull the Lion's soul from his body. Now this dude is absolutely crazy, a sorcerer, but when he reveals what his ultimate goal is, it's not what we, as the audience, are expecting. He says that in order for Humanity to survive, Chaos must be destroyed, and the only person that could do that was the Emperor, but in order for the Emperor to do that, his physical body would have to be killed, so his spiritual body could ascend to godhood. He planned to possess the Lion's physical body so he could walk into the Imperial Palace unchallenged and slay the Master of Mankind.
The Lion will not allow this to happen, even if the sorcerer's words are true. His sons needed him, and Humanity needed him; he would not abandon them again. Before the ritual can complete, the Risen break into the chamber and destroy a mirror that was being used as part of the ritual and attack Seraphax, who ascends into something of a Demon Prince and fights back against them. The ascended Seraphax proves to be incredibly powerful and sucks the souls out of all of the Risen, trapping them in his wings. All hope seems lost when suddenly Balor, the Chaos Fallen from before that had argued with Zabriel in the cave of the psyker, betrays his master, grabbing his dagger and running him through with it.
Outraged, Seraphax spins around and plunges his claws into his chest. With Seraphax being killed, all of the Fallen souls get released from his wings and back into their bodies, and the Lion is able to break free from his chains. He asked Balor what made him switch sides, and Balor tells him, "Because that wasn't Seraphax anymore. He had lost his way, and when he saw the Lion and the Risen fighting side by side, he knew that this was not the same man who had attacked Caliban." Seraphax had turned his magic against them, but the Lion fought to defend his Fallen Sons.
The Lion tells him that they are with him because they choose to be. "This galaxy may call them Fallen, but I call them the Risen." Likewise, he tells Balor to rise. Balor protests, telling him that he is a heretic. The Lion tells him that this Legion was his responsibility; he did not see what had festered in the hearts of his sons or his Fallen Brothers of the Order. If he had done so, maybe all of this could have been avoided. He tells him that, "You turn from the course of your own will," and tells Balor once again to rise. Balor does so, rising to his feet, saying that he did, but it was too late. The Lion sadly agrees. He says that the wiles of Chaos run deep, but he wants Balor to know that in coming to the aid of him and his sons this day, he had gained his gratitude and his forgiveness.
Balor tells him that he knows he will not survive the wounds that Seraphax had inflicted on him, so he asked the Lion for a cleaner death. He picks up Fealty to grant his wayward son the Emperor's mercy, but he hesitates; he had sworn that he would not see any more of his sons die this day, and he's loath to prove himself a liar, even if Balor had asked for this. He nods and raises Fealty, severing his head in one smooth motion.
After this is done, the Lion tells his son, equipped with a flamer, to burn as much of this place as he can. After this, they depart. This victory was significant, but there was still much for them left to do.
In the aftermath of these events, the Ten Thousand Eyes would fracture into hundreds of different competing factions, each vying for power. The Lion would go on to unite and defend more worlds, slowly prying Imperium Nihilus back from the traitors. Wherever he goes, he is hailed as a hero, a protector, a god—a notion that he steps back from always—but he realizes that it's inescapable. His father is seen as a divine being, and thus, accordingly, his risen son will also be seen as at least semi-divine. It's a notion the Lion finds incredibly distasteful, but at the same time, he understands that the people that live in the horrors of Imperium Nihilus are desperate for something to believe in. And if they are so desperate to find a god-figure, he would rather it be him than the other horrors that lurk in the Immaterium.
He has one final thing that he has been putting off for too long, but now believes that he has the strength to see it through. Through his meditation, he journeys to the forest once again and finds himself in front of the building with a smooth dome that the Watcher had warned him about. The Watcher is standing there waiting for him, and the Lion tells him, "When I first encountered this place, you said I was not strong enough yet." The Watcher tells him that he wasn't. He asks him if he's strong enough now, and the Watcher says that that remains to be seen. He steps inside, and he is wholly not prepared for what he is about to find, as out of the darkness steps a figure of similar stature to himself, a Primarch with a rough face and long blonde hair much like his own, but partially braided, armor in the grey of winter instead of the black of night, a face with flashing blue eyes and elongated canine teeth.
Leman Russ growls, "Hello, brother," before launching himself forward to attack. And I know I had the exact same reaction when I read this; my jaw hit the floor the whole thing. But let's not get ahead of ourselves, as it's not actually what it appears to be. It turns out that what was in here was some type of warp entity, and this was the final trial of the forest for the Lion to face. He engages him in combat and takes the form of each and every one of his brothers, each who mock him for his failures. It shifts from Russ to Horus, and then through all of the rest of the Primarchs, each one pushing him to his absolute limits and beating him to a pulp. He fights back against every single one of them, and the final one being the one he dreaded the most: Curze.
During his fight with the Night Haunter, he suddenly sees light glaring from a kite shield hanging on the wall. It's richly decorated and embossed with an eagle crowned with laurels. He reaches out for it, and when he touches it, he has a vision. He's suddenly standing on a battlefield under a dark sky, but when he looks up, he can see all of the stars, and he knows each and every one of them by name. He can feel everything around him: all the humans hurting and bleeding and dying, all the Xeno species, all of those abominations, and all the tiny creatures burrowing through the soil and the trees and the grass and the wind. He can feel it all; it's all connected, a web of power, and somehow this is not overwhelming; this is just how he lives: instant to instant to instant to instant to instant. He staggers, and the vision is gone, but he knows the touch of that mind; he has felt it before; it was his father.
Conrad Curze lunges out of the darkness with his claws aimed for the Lion's heart. The Lion brings up the Emperor's shield, deflecting the blow. Curze, or whatever the warp thing wearing his face that his father had set to guard this place, freaks and recoils from the shield. The Lion can feel the echo of the Emperor's aegis, the great power his father had used to shield the Imperial Palace during the Siege of Terror, coursing through the shield. He lashes out, slamming the shield into his brother and pinning him to the ground against its glowing radiance. The warped creature shrieks in pain and dissolves against the shield's light. Watching his brother die the death he could never bring himself to inflict on him brings him no satisfaction, but it's done. The past is dead now, and in the grim darkness of the far future, there was only war.
Some amount of time passes, and we learn that the Lion is desperately searching for some word that part of the Imperium still remains. He's been sending expeditionary fleets out and broadcasting messages on every possible channel, but with each new world they find in Imperium Nihilus, the story is the same: they've been cut off, and they have no wider knowledge of the rest of the Galaxy or what is going on on the other side of the Great Rift. He hopes that the Imperium survives and that he just happened to end up in a place where the warp storms were particularly really bad, but he has no way of confirming this. He worries that although the people here are grateful and willingly followed him, that they had only done so because they were desperate for a protector. What will happen when he encounters a section of the shattered Imperium that has been able to cling to the old ways? Will they denounce him as an imposter and declare war on him and the people he has sworn to protect? What will he do then? He doesn't want to create an empire, and he doesn't want to supplant the Imperium, but he knows what it will look like to the others. What if, when the Imperium does come, its intentions are hostile?
It's at this point that several ships appear; they bear the heraldry of the Blood Angels, and they hail the Lion. They wish to meet with him. A trio of three Thunderhawks touched down, and sixty Blood Angels descend the ramps, one of them in ornate golden armor, a jump pack rising from his back, and a very particular golden mask obscuring his face: the death mask of Sanguinius. This infuriates the Lion, who, at this point, had high hopes for the meeting, but he flies into a rage, demanding to know who the hell this guy was to wear the face of his brother. This initial gut reaction is proof enough to Dante of the Lion's authenticity. He removes his mask to reveal to the Lion an age-worn face, far older than even Zabriel. The Blood Angels drop to their knees and kneel before him. Dante introduces himself as Commander of the Blood Angels Chapter and tells him that he has never felt a presence quite like this before, except for the last time he met a Primarch—a phrase that causes the Lion to pause. Another one of his brothers yet lived. Who was it? Dante tells him of Lord Guilliman's resurrection, the Primaris Marines, and the launching of the Indomitus Crusade to take back the Imperium from its enemies. The Imperium still existed; he was not alone in this galaxy, and Humanity still lived on. There would be more defenders that he could link up with to face off against those that would prey upon Humanity. But all of that pales in comparison to the one thought that rises in his mind: Guilliman. The Lion was not alone.