"Garlic Bird, Garlic Bird, calm down, Zhuang Sen! We're already here, it's the holidays, Azrael didn't mean it! He's just a child!"
"That's right, Zhuang Sen. Keep beating him and there won't be enough left to resurrect. At least leave the boy an intact corpse! You've already turned him into paste."
Mordred and Guilliman's attempts to intervene helped, but the real credit went not to those two kindly uncles, but to Russ.
Russ had principles! The instant Azmyow's skull developed self-awareness and tried to transform into one of Balala the Fairies, he lunged like a dog pouncing on food and snatched up his dear nephew's head.
One glance was all it took: certified dead with his eyes wide open! They could start the funeral feast right away.
"That fucking little bastard! That damned rebellious son dared to lie to me, and kept it from me for so long!"
The Lion King flung the minced flesh from his hand, seething. The easygoing attitude he had painstakingly cultivated shattered in an instant. His elderly-kitty mode kicked into overdrive, and he turned red with rage.
Literally red-hot, too, furiously hissing at everyone around him.
"No wonder he sneaked away! I thought that rebellious son was trying to spare my dignity. Who would've thought he was fleeing the scene of the crime?
"I wondered why Caliban's planetary defenses never activated! Of course they couldn't! And no wonder I could never find the bastard who blew up Caliban. There was a traitor on the inside."
"Wait!"
In that instant, Zhuang Sen realized something utterly absurd. "So we were fighting our own people all along? Fallen Angels or Dark Angels, there weren't any traitors at all—just this rebellious son!"
"Brother, you can't put it that way."
"That's exactly what happened."
Their eyes met. Facing a brother