To be a Vane or an O'Brien, That Is the Question

Malum stood up and asked tentatively,
"Lord, should we save the life of this poor mortal?"
Anda merely waved his hand, flicking away a nonexistent booger, and said,
"No need for that. This man is steeped in iniquity; even death by being torn apart by four horses would not be excessive."

Malum asked with curiosity, "Lord, did you probe his mind?"
Anda burst into laughter, "Unless one of my own biological sons messes up royally, I won't touch the minds of the guilty. It's too disgusting. It reminds me of my uncle."
"It's just that the manufacturing method for this kind of war machine was transmitted to me a moment ago by a distant memory from the future. Damn it, I want to beat up my future self—he can't even speak clearly."

Changing the subject, he explained,
"In your terms, this is a daemon engine. It's just that nowadays the barrier between the Warp and realspace is stable, so many materials are of realspace origin, while only the most core rituals reflect the true nature of the Warp. Just now, I saw several daemons waiting to devour this man's soul, which shows just how profound his sins are."

Malum was not quite used to His Majesty taking on the tone of a religious zealot; it diverged too sharply from the education they had received.
It was one thing for the Ultramarines to accept the Imperial Cult, considering their meritorious service in sustaining the Imperium.
Yet here His Majesty was, acting as if he were playing a god-simulator, occasionally dropping remarks that would sound utterly blasphemous even to the Ecclesiarchy.

Malum did not know that the Emperor's most zealous days were still far in the future.

As the sinner had his limbs severed and was impaled upon the ram at the front of the war chariot, his foul soul instantly surged upward, torn at and fought over by daemons.
Anda stared fixedly, a divine brilliance flashing within his golden eyes. It was not to save this sinful soul, but to annihilate it, using its demonic energy to construct the technology integrated into this chariot.
Ah, pfft—this should be the power of the God-Emperor. Or rather, the Omnissiah.

After finishing, Anda laughed, "I must disgust my future self; I can't let him disgust me unilaterally. By the way, we have specialized institutions for researching heresy and xenos—they haven't caused any trouble, have they?"

Malum could not fathom what His Majesty was doing now, so he answered methodically,
"At least within the archives of the Ultramarines, aside from the disposition of Titus and the conflict with the Space Wolves, there are no other issues."
"I have vaguely heard rumors of secrets within the Imperium regarding the study of daemons; they are even attempting to probe the power of Your Majesty's Living Saints. I acknowledge their faithful loyalty, but I despise their actions."

Anda nodded,
"Very well, I understand. I have always trusted only myself. Now, I have been coveting the technology of those daemons for a long time. Good stuff, yet it falls into the hands of these obsessed ideologues."
"Wait, let me see... Vashtorr. It's actually a daemon's true name. Interesting."

Malum felt a sense of impending doom, suppressing the impulse to draw his chainsword against His Majesty and shout, "Why does Your Majesty rebel?!"
He always had the feeling that His Majesty was playing with something extremely dangerous.

Far away in the Warp, Vashtorr felt no shift in how another force was altering his craftsmanship. To use the words of Tzeentch—who was watching the spectacle for amusement—this was someone abducting your child, while you were the one who handed them the front door key.

Who told Vashtorr to expose his true name right off the bat? It was equivalent to leaving his home address for the Emperor of the past, warmly welcoming this time-traveling thief to the future to pilfer those precious technologies.
That thief was simply too detestable!

Tzeentch squeezed the small blue bird in his hand, having already crushed goodness knows how many of them to death. Yet at the same time, he felt a certain excitement. Such actions, completely oblivious to the catastrophe they would unleash, made him feel as comfortable as if Slaanesh had poached one of his domains.

Recently, his experiments in the Changing of the Ways had run into a few minor hitlocks; countless isomers were proliferating endlessly, yet none were substantial enough to grow into fragments like Greater Daemons.
He had no choice but to hold them in his grasp: those who could answer his questions lived; those who could not were crushed to death and thrown back.

"Hey, you two! How dare you slack off? Hurry up and transport those rear components! If you delay, I'll sacrifice you both to Horus!"
On the high platform not far away, Anliwen spun around, just about to feel satisfied with the completion of the chariot's frontal ram, only to spot two lazy workers, prompting him to scold them fiercely.

For some reason, the deity who had bestowed this craftsmanship upon him demanded that he use the honorable name of "Horus," requiring him to invoke Horus's name no matter what he did.
It seemed the Pharaoh was truly a walking, living Horus upon the earth!

Under Anliwen's conscientious labor, even those superior priests, second only to the Pharaoh, treated him quite cordially.

Anda pacified the about-to-erupt Malum, smiling apologetically as he brought him along to get to work.
"I seriously doubt the intelligence of the daemon named Vashtorr. Not only is it his true name now, but even the daemon's habitation in the mortal realm has been discovered by us."
"How on earth does he choose his servants?"

Anda grumbled about his opponent's feeble intellect—this certainly wasn't Tzeentch's doing.
At least Tzeentch knew enough to take precautions, leaving the daemon Be'lakor without memories of the future, and nearly crushing his own son in the process.
If that dagger had been the real deal, it might have caused him centuries of pain.

The two arrived at the edge of the forge, picked up the distributed tools, and began striking the metal castings.

Malum reminded him, "This is a gift intended for Jaghatai."

Only then did Anda concentrate, applying the appropriate amount of force; otherwise, he would have merely put on a show.
He was truly not an industrious person. Oh dear, what excuse could he possibly find to entrust all these matters to Guilliman?

With the completion and assembly of numerous metal castings, all those components that required demonic rituals for their forging were replaced by Anda.

Vashtorr's craftsmanship was practically open-source to him. To put it bluntly, this daemon was practically showing off his mechanical wife to everyone else.
He had no idea his house had been broken into, and that his mechanical wife had been fondled all over by an obnoxious, brown-skinned Asiatic barbarian, leaving behind various marks.

Well, nothing could be done about it; once this chariot was finished, it would have to bear his family name.

As the chariot of Ra sank completely below the horizon, the artisans were released.
They only needed to report back for work each day; artisans with local residences could even save on a meal allowance.

The Pharaoh had no intention of concealing his intentions regarding what he was crafting, planning to unveil it on the day of the Dionysian festival to boost the people's spirits.

Then the great army broke camp, roaring like a tiger over the city of Thebes!
For millennia, this had been a contested strategic ground, playing host to countless battles both large and small.
How could it now become the burial ground of Egypt simply because of the taint of those wretched Roman barbarians?

Upon returning home, Anda briskly took a bath, with Malum carrying a bucket and pouring water over him.
"Haah, refreshing. We need to pick up the pace and get this chariot finished quickly. Let's not call it a daemon engine anymore; let's call it the Neos Engine. In Greek, it means a new era. Calling it the Emperor Engine directly sounds a bit strange."

Then, after drying himself off, Anda picked up the bucket and personally doused Malum from head to toe.
He did the exact same thing when bathing a slightly older Aaron—convenient and fast.

Feeling as though he had received divine grace, Malum was profoundly moved and instantly dropped to his knees in prayer.
In the religious rituals of ancient Terra, did this seem to be called... baptism?
In that case, shouldn't he address His Majesty as godfather?

Wait, Malum's brain began to calculate. Since his father Guilliman hadn't been born yet, that meant I call you Dad, and you call me Big Brother!

Such supreme blasphemy!
Malum tightly shut his eyes, banishing these atrocious thoughts into oblivion!

Having spent too much time with His Majesty's family from B.C. times, Malum was also becoming excessively anthropomorphized.