The Primarch of Liberty

Chapter 127: Resizing



"I want to shoot you," he stated matter-of-factly, his hand resting near the ornate sidearm at his hip - The Last Word, a gift from his brother Vulkan. "I should shoot you. But first, I want

to understand why."

The confession hung in the air between them, heavy with the weight of ten thousand years of consequences. Erda's eyes grew distant, seeing past the walls of her humble dwelling to the laboratories where godlike beings were forged.

"The Primarchs," she began, her voice taking on the tone of a professor delivering a crucial lecture. "You and your brothers aren't true Perpetuals, not in any biological sense. You are artificial equivalents, functionally immortal beings born from His blood and power and vigor. You were coded to accelerate His programme, designed to live long enough to see His plan through to its conclusion."

Her words carried the bitter taste of old wounds. "You were meant to be indoctrinated from birth, to follow His word without question, unlike naturally occurring Perpetuals. You were created to service His dream. He took what nature had wrought in the Perpetuals and built His own pathologized version. Through you, through your genetic lines, He would forge the Legions."

"He didn't achieve this alone," Franklin interjected, his voice carrying the weight of newfound knowledge gleaned from future archives.

The desert air sighed outside, carrying with it the distant sounds of livestock bells. Erda's silence spoke volumes before she finally continued.

"No," she admitted. "I was still with Him then, one of the last few. Myself, my colleague Astarte, a handful of others. We all had our doubts, but He..." She paused, searching for the right words. "He was compelling. By then, His power had grown beyond measure. He needed a geneticist, and that was my art. He needed rare gene-stock to mix with His own - a Perpetual's blood."

"Yours," Franklin stated, the word heavy with understanding.

"Mine." Erda's confirmation carried the weight of millennia of regret. "I was the other source. The genetic donor. He is the Father of Mankind. I was the surrogate mother, the clinician, the midwife. We created twenty magnificent sons." Her voice hardened. "But He allowed me no influence. I was merely a biological instrument. It wasn't until after your births that I truly comprehended the future He had planned for you all."

Her words came faster now, driven by ancient passion. "The bitter destiny He had written. The aggressively rapid and unnaturally savage evolutionary leap He intended to force upon humanity. Nothing good comes from coercing nature, Franklin. Through His sons, He would force the human race into the future, bend it to His will, and defy the very warp itself to achieve it."

The air in the room grew heavier as she continued, "He had created artificial Perpetual- analogues and weaponized them, preparing to resist the unbending cosmos. He planned a crusade to reclaim the stars - to seize back in a bloody century what humanity had lost over millennia. That was when I stepped away. Astarte remained to complete the Legion gene- work, but I... I left. Heartbroken and bereft, but I left nonetheless."

Franklin's hand tightened on the arm of his chair, the wood splintering beneath his grip. "And then?"

"I tried to save my sons." The words emerged as barely a whisper.

"You scattered us." Franklin's voice carried no emotion, but the temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees.

Erda leaned forward, her hands covering her mouth, eyes fixed on the ground. "I did. I took you from Him. I cast you onto the tides to spare you from His terrible ambition."

"What was His response?"

"Rage, for a time. I had already gone into hiding by then. I concealed myself for ages, always expecting His vengeance - He could be quite vindictive. But it never came. I found that odd. Eventually, I settled here, near my birthplace. I withdrew from the world, and He never sought me out."

Franklin absorbed this information with the same analytical precision he applied to battlefield tactics. His smirk returned, though it held a sharp edge that hadn't been there before.

"Gee Mom, thanks for actually making my job harder than it should be," he drawled, but the levity couldn't mask the steel beneath. His casual tone was a weapon in itself, wielded with the same precision as the blade at his hip.

The silence that followed was pregnant with unspoken accusations and justified fury. Here sat the woman who had cast him into the void, who had shaped his destiny with a single act of defiance against humanity's future. Yet she had also given him life, had sought to spare him from a fate she deemed worse than exile.

Franklin's enhanced mind calculated a thousand scenarios, ways this meeting could end. His hand still rested near The Last Word, but the weapon remained holstered. Violence would be easy - justified, even. But as he studied the ancient being before him, he saw not just the mother who had abandoned him, but a piece of a larger puzzle.

The independence he so proudly championed, the liberty he fought to preserve - had her act of rebellion seeded these qualities within him? Would he have become the Liberator if he had been raised under the Emperor's direct supervision? The irony was not lost on him.

In the end, Franklin rose from his chair. His shadow fell across Erda, a physical reminder of what her son had become despite - or perhaps because of - her actions.

As he turned to leave, the doorway barely containing his massive frame, he reached into a compartment of his war-plate. The small pendant he withdrew seemed insignificant in his massive grip, yet it hummed with potential power.

"I won't thank you for what you did," he stated, not turning to face the woman who had cast him to the stars. "But I won't execute you either. Consider it a son's mercy - or perhaps his own small rebellion against fate."

The pendant arced through the air, catching the desert light as it flew toward Erda. She caught it with the practiced ease of one who had lived countless lifetimes, her ancient eyes studying

its intricate workings.

"Erebus will come for you," Franklin continued, his tactical mind already plotting moves in a game spanning millennia. "I don't know if he will do it in this timeline, but consider it a safeguard." A ghost of his characteristic smirk played across his features. "I know you're a powerful psyker, Mom, however, you're not as strong as me or Pops, who could smack around Greater Daemons with ease. Crush the pendant and help will come."

He paused at the threshold, one final piece of advice - or perhaps mischief - to deliver. "Visit the Old Man. With me around, my brothers will be saved one way or another. I will not fail a second time." His voice took on an almost playful tone, despite the weight of destiny in his words. "He's been very busy with his own projects, surrounded by nothing but nine-foot-tall men, Malcador and Sisters of Silence. Who knows? Maybe you could kindle the old man's passion again."

His chuckle echoed through the dwelling as he ducked through the doorway, the sound carrying both warmth and warning. It spoke of a son who had found his own path, who stood ready to reshape the future with the same determination that had forged empires.

As Franklin strode into the desert beyond, his massive form gradually swallowed by the shimmering heat haze, Erda held the pendant up to the light. Within its crystalline depths, she could almost see the shapes of possible futures - futures her son had already witnessed and returned to prevent. In that moment, she understood that her act of rebellion had indeed borne unexpected fruit: a son who had learned to choose mercy, who fought not just for victory, but for liberation.

The ancient perpetual closed her fingers around the pendant, feeling its latent power pulse in rhythm with her own immortal heartbeat. Perhaps, she thought, some failures truly were successes in disguise. The bells of distant livestock chimed in the desert wind, a mundane counterpoint to the cosmic drama that had just played out in her humble dwelling - a drama that would echo across the millennia to come.

The desert air crackled with untold energies as Franklin strode forth from Erda's dwelling,

Before him, a tableau of potential violence hung suspended in the dying light: Leetu and Denzel locked in a standoff that could have ended in brotherhood or bloodshed.

With a casual gesture Franklin signaled the Liberty Guard to withdraw. Their exodus was silent and precise, each movement a testament to transhuman discipline. These were warriors who understood that sometimes the greatest victories came not from drawn weapons, but from weapons wisely sheathed.

Franklin's trademark smirk played across features engineered for perfection as he approached the pair. Denzel's posture shifted almost imperceptibly. No shots had been fired, no blood had been spilled. This day would not see brother turn against half-brother, a small victory in the grand cosmic game Franklin played across time itself.

"A fruitful visit, my proud half-brother," Franklin declared, extending his hand toward Leetu. The words carried layers of meaning, each syllable weighted with knowledge of futures

yet to unfold and histories yet to be prevented.

Hostility radiated from Leetu like heat from a plasma core, his eyes darting between Franklin

and the distant figure of Erda, who stood watching from her doorway. The tension in his frame spoke volumes - here was a son who had expected to find his mother's corpse, not a

peaceful parley between demigods.

Franklin's enhanced eyes took in every detail of Leetu's form, from the archaic lines of his Second Generation Power Armor to the way he carried himself - a warrior of an earlier age, proud but technologically outmatched. The chuckle that escaped Franklin's lips carried no malice, only the knowing amusement of one who had seen the evolution of warfare across

millennia.

With practiced efficiency, Franklin's gauntleted hands accessed a compartment in his mechsuit. The object he withdrew seemed to bend the light around it, its geometries suggesting realities that human minds were never meant to comprehend. The Tesseract Labyrinth caught the desert sun and reflected it in impossible angles, its ancient Necron technology a stark contrast to Leetu's relatively primitive wargear.

"What's this?" Leetu's question carried equal parts suspicion and curiosity, his fingers hovering near the impossible object.

"New equipment," Franklin replied with deliberate casualness, "to protect Dear old Mom better." The words were simple, but they carried the weight of futures witnessed and horrors prevented. In that small cube of impossible mathematics lay the power to imprison entities that most mortals couldn't even comprehend and new equipment for his half brother.

As Franklin turned to leave, he left behind a baffled Leetu - a warrior of the present confronted with technology from humanity's far future, given by a brother who walked through time as easily as others walked through doorways. The gift was more than a weapon; it was a promise of protection, a bridge between brothers who shared a mother's blood but walked very different paths.

In the depths of the "Sweet Liberty," within a training cage forged from technologies that spanned millennia, divinity and transhuman might engaged in deadly dance. The chamber's walls thrummed with power - containment fields designed to withstand the fury of demigods

at play. Franklin, moved through the final sequences of combat. Before him, the Image of Eldanesh- legendary hero of the Aeldari's golden age - wielded blade and sorcery with the skill that had once challenged gods themselves. No psychic buffs enhanced Franklin's movements, no divine blessings strengthened his strikes. This was pure skill against legend, transhuman might against mythic prowess.

The final exchange came with devastating swiftness. Franklin's blade traced impossible geometries through the air, each movement a calculation of angles that defied conventional physics. Eldanesh's image, proud and terrible in its ancient majesty, met the assault with equal skill. But where countless others had failed across the millennia, Franklin's blade found its mark.

As the phantom of the greatest Aeldari hero faded like morning mist, so too did Franklin's wounds seal themselves, the training protocols releasing their hold on reality. Blood that had

painted the cage's floor in abstract patterns of violence disappeared, leaving only memory and achievement in its wake.

Within the vast cathedral of Franklin's enhanced mind, Khaine manifested. The Bloody- Handed God's presence was a forge-fire of consciousness, burning with the heat of a thousand battlefields. His approval radiated like waves of heat from a sun.

You have accomplished what few could claim, even among the warriors of old, Khaine's voice

echoed through Franklin's thoughts. To best Eldanesh without enhancement or blessing - this is no small feat.

Franklin's characteristic smirk bloomed across features that bore ethereal beauty even by

transhuman standards. "Of course I'm talented-" he began, preening like some magnificent bird of war.

Do not let victory inflate your ego beyond reason, Khaine cut him off, divine amusement mixing with stern warning. With the effort and lessons invested in your training, even a common Auxilia might rival an Astartes in knowledge and lethality.

Franklin's chuckle echoed through the chamber, a sound that contained both acknowledgment and challenge. "Speaking of lessons," he segued smoothly, "time for

magic?"

The god's sigh resonated through Franklin's consciousness like the cooling of meteoric iron. Not these shenanigans again...

"Oh come now," Franklin pressed, his tone light despite addressing one of the most violent

deities in known history. "Surely among all those spells you've taught me, there's something

for size alteration? Being fifteen feet tall isn't always practical, you know. Sometimes a demigod needs to blend in."

Among the myriad spells I have imparted, Khaine responded with divine dryness, there are

indeed several that might serve. Perhaps you should search for them yourself, since you so proudly proclaimed mastery of all Aeldari rune-magic.

With another chuckle, Franklin delved into the vast repository of mystical knowledge burnedNôv(el)B\\jnn

into his enhanced memory. His eyes lit with triumph as he located what he sought - ancient formulae of transformation, crafted in an age when reality itself was more malleable. Power coursed through him as he shaped the spell, his massive frame shrinking and shifting. Where once stood a transhuman demigod, now stood a figure that could have stepped from the War in Heaven itself - an Aeldari warrior of the ancient epoch, bearing impossible grace

and deadly beauty.

"How do I look?" Franklin asked, examining his transformed self with evident satisfaction.

Like myself, minus the molten rage, Khaine observed, a note of surprised approval in his psychic voice.

Franklin's face - now bearing the ethereal features of ancient Aeldari nobility - split in a

triumphant grin. "Bravo to me then! I used you as a reference template. Though I must say, the lack of lava is probably an improvement."

And why, Khaine asked with growing suspicion, would you choose this particular form?

"Well," Franklin drew out the word with theatrical consideration, "I was thinking it might be useful for flirting with Farseers during their meditative states..."

NO!" The god's voice thundered through Franklin's consciousness with the force of exploding

stars. "You will NOT use my likeness for such... such... frivolous pursuits! Never!" Franklin's borrowed features arranged themselves into an expression of pure innocence that fooled neither of them. With fluid grace that spoke of perfect muscle memory, he moved through forms that mimicked Eldanesh's own battle-dance, each gesture a perfect recreation

of ancient combat arts.

"Remarkable", Khaine admitted grudgingly. "Few could distinguish you from a true ancient, though you would seem alien even to modern Aeldari. They have forgotten how their ancestors moved in the War in Heaven - the raw power, the absolute certainty, masters of the

Immaterium unlike now cowering against a God of their own making, Though perhaps that works against you - you move too much like them too ancient. You

would seem... alien to them."

Isn't that ironic?" Franklin mused, admiring the efficiency of movement in his new form. "A son of Terra appearing too ancient for the eldest race in the galaxy. Though I suppose that's what happens when you have both the Emperor's gene-craft and the God of War's tutelage."

You take remarkable joy in defying expectations, Khaine noted, the words carrying a complex mixture of approval and concern.

"It's a gift," Franklin replied, already planning how to use these new capabilities. "Besides,

what's the point of being a demigod if you can't occasionally mess with people's perceptions?

Speaking of which, how do you think the old man would react to seeing his son playing dress- up as an ancient xenos?"

Finally, with another surge of runic power, Franklin returned to his own form - though not his full size. The spell of reduction brought him down to a mere eight feet in height, his massive power condensed into a more manageable frame. Strength and speed, rather than being diminished, seemed to coil more tightly within him, like a star compressed to terrible

density. "Perfect," he declared, testing his reduced form with experimental movements. "All the power, half the doorway problems."

You take such gifts lightly, Khaine observed, though there was something like fondness in the

god's mental tone. These are arts that once shaped reality itself.

"And now they help me avoid hitting my head on low ceilings," Franklin agreed cheerfully.

"Isn't that what progress is all about? Finding new uses for old tools?"

The training cage fell silent save for the subtle hum of containment fields and the whisper of

ancient magics. In that moment, god and champion shared an understanding that transcended their usual banter - acknowledgment of how far they had come together, of

futures yet to be forged.

Your irreverence masks wisdom, Khaine finally admitted. Though if I find you using my

likeness to seduce seers...

"No Guarantees"

"FRANKLIN!"

The god's groan echoed through Franklin's mind as the Primarch began testing his

compressed form with combat maneuvers. In the confined space of the training cage, divine power and transhuman might danced together, weaving a tale of transformation that would have been impossible in any other age.

Here was proof that even gods could learn new tricks, that ancient powers could find fresh purpose in the hands of those willing to reinvent them. As Franklin moved through combat forms with his newly condensed frame, each perfect motion was both tribute to ancient teachings and promise of innovations yet to come.