As ever, the characters in our tale are dragged kicking and screaming from properties owned by Games Workshop and Hasbro, with a hint of If The Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device thrown in for seasoning.

Konrad Curze looked around the room as he waited for the people his father had called on to be introduced. It was somewhat large, though not nearly enough that eighteen Primarchs, their Equerries, and a half-dozen of the Adeptus Custodes would make it feel anything but crowded. As always, snatches of half-formed visions and glimpses of possible futures rarely to be trusted as literal or even remotely true jolted through his brain as his fever-bright gaze flowed around the room.

From the ludicrous /Azkaellon doubled over laughing at something that had been said to Sanguinius…/ AZKAELLON? Even Guilliman thought the man had a stick up his arse…
To the vaguely plausible /Angron, soaked in Fenrisian mjod, grabs hold of a Custodes’ Guardian Spear as he kicks its owner into the wall and does his best to murder Russ with it.../ that could happen easily enough…
To the puzzling/Sanguinius, eyes glowing faintly, looking utterly poleaxed by something revealed to him by his own gift.../ I wonder what it is, and if it’s even a true vision…
To the just-plain-disturbing/all of the Custodes, more-than-half-mad with grief... wrestling while naked except for loincloths and their helmets and.../ ukashan... I don’t want to see any more of THAT…
To the profoundly troubling /Erebus’s shadow reaching out to stab his own Primarch in the back before growing and burning and hating and and devouring and laughing and screaming and… /ow-headache-athasavi-fijehia-vey-kalshiel!

Konrad winced slightly, knowing that vision was far more metaphorical than the others but trusting it implicitly. Lorgar’s First Chaplain was soaked in darkness and filth to his very soul, enough to make the Night Haunter’s hands flex unconsciously in the movement that would have extended the claws of his armour, had he been wearing it instead of relatively simple civilian clothes. He swiftly smothered the urge to draw one of the many concealed Widowmaker knives that even the Custodes had missed and put it through Erebus’s brain. That wouldn’t be justice.

His father walked up onto the small stage in the room, as impossible for his son to read as always, not from lack of visions but instead from the terrifying, painfully muddled multitude of them twisting and churning around each other. One of the Custodes /Ten millennia of stoic suffering as the last of them to hold to his duties, and then it gets worse when the Emperor is able to communicate again and he has to explain what has happened to the Imperium in the interim.../ poor bastard, I genuinely hope whatever tragedy I just glimpsed never comes to pass, I don’t think I could stomach his brothers’ descent into... *shudder*… ushers in their guests onto the stage.

Their introductions pass into his brain without him paying conscious attention to them because /their true forms shine bright in his eyes, not young women and a scrawny teenager all with wildly-colored hair but a collection of small, painfully adorable horses and a tiny dragon-child/ I don’t even need to look at my smug angel of a brother to know that he sees the same and that is what my vision showed as stunning him more effectively than Vulkan’s hammer slamming into that overly-pretty face… Konrad smirked slightly as he noticed Sevatar’s look. The Captain of the Atramentar might not be able to see what his Primarch can, but he noticed the reactions of the Night Haunter, the Angel, and of bloody course Magnus.

Curze spoke softly in Nostraman as the Emperor’s guests filtered down from the stage to mingle with the Primarchs and some of the station’s staff brought out food and drinks, “Things have gotten more interesting than even I realized. I’ll explain later.”

As the reception went on, he found himself, along with Russ and Angron and their Equerries, speaking to Starlight and Spike. Well, mostly it was a back-and-forth between the Wolf and the girl, with occasional comments from Khârn, Bjorn, and surprising himself more than anyone, Konrad. Angron mostly just glowered positively welcoming, from him, and Spike was studying them all intently. Russ was going on about his homeworld, sipping mjod from a large flagon, and Curze heard the extremely energetic pink-haired girl Pinkie Pie? Guess her parents were on to something when they named her… launching into a rather amusing anecdote to Sanguinius and Vulkan across the room. Something clicked in his brain as he realized that two of his visions were about to collide. Oh, this is going to suck.

While Guilliman liked to show off his ability at processing information by dual-wielding stacks of paperwork while looking at a news feed and reading a book all at the same time, the other Primarchs had similar skill at it, and Curze’s mind calculated trajectories and timing and reactions, and just before Pinkie got to her punchline of “And I said, ‘Oatmeal, are you crazy?!’”, he tapped Russ on the shoulder to get his attention.

As such, the Wolf’s impressive spit-take hit him instead of Angron. As all of those around him looked equal parts shocked and amused, and Russ looked genuinely mortified, Konrad breathed a sigh of relief at having averted disaster, or started to, anyway. “Eurgh… How do you drink this stuff, brother? I can smell my nose-hair burning away!”

“How do you think the Vlka Fenrika hone their sense of smell? Let’s find you a towel,” was the Primarch of the Rout’s amused response as he looked for one of the human staff, and noticed that Azkaellon was laughing himself hoarse, with a genuinely impressed Sanguinius smiling at Pinkie Pie.

Author's Note

Sorry for the long delay and short chapter, many, many things decided to get in the way, and I'm only now getting back into the mindset to write this again.

And yes, after Konrad seeing a vision of what the Custodes might become, he is pretty determined to make sure nothing happens to his father, just to prevent THAT from happening.