"Did you hear what I just said about the Iron Warriors Legion?"
Locke deliberately kept pace beside the Thunder Warrior codenamed "Iron Man," who inexplicably gave him a sense of familiarity.
He did not know that inside that massive suit of Thunder Warrior armor was a clone of his Primarch.
"Not what you just said. What you said several hundred sentences ago," Perturabo replied coldly.
"So you think he was an asshole too, right?" Locke asked.
Perturabo fell silent, his thoughts churning.
Am I really an asshole?
When I say "I," do I mean the original body or the clone? Is Perturabo merely a codename, or does it carry some symbolic meaning?
Do the Iron Warriors still have anything to do with me? Should I bear responsibility for the original body's absurd actions?
Perturabo spoke to himself in his mind as he pondered. Even after thinking it over, he remained silent, making him seem like an unapproachable Thunder Warrior in Locke's eyes.
This greatly surprised Locke.
Because Thunder Warriors were basically Tyranids. They were not usually so grim and burdened by hatred, and their augmentation surgeries did not place special emphasis on suppressing emotion.
The intense emotions capable of resonating with and tearing apart reality had been weakened, but other emotions had not been diminished.
"He was an asshole." After pondering for quite a while, Perturabo gave Locke an ambiguous answer. "But not entirely."
Locke tilted his head, but did not dwell on it.
There were never many battles along the way, and those they encountered were easy to resolve. What troubled the clone Primarchs was not the absence of formidable enemies so far, but the journey itself.
Because to kill a Warsmith, one first had to find a Warsmith.
Both Horus and Magnus firmly believed that the Emperor would