"I disagree!"
The words rang out again, but this time it was the Emperor who spoke. He had no idea what Hogg was up to. Perhaps it was a joke, or perhaps he was taking the opportunity to mock him.
But this time, the Emperor thought Hogg was serious.
Hogg's feelings for the Emperor were complicated, and the Emperor felt the same way about Hogg. Ever since their first meeting, their relationship might have been father and son, but they were more like two friends who loved to give each other a hard time.
The day the Blackwatch recovered its Primarch, the Emperor had told Malcador that Hogg was different from his other sons. He couldn't make Hogg serve him with a grand crusade the way he had with the other Primarchs.
The Emperor had long since realized that Hogg had no attachment to this world. If anything, he despised it. He hated everything here and felt no interest in any of it.
The Emperor knew why Hogg felt that way, because he was the same. He had lived through every era and experienced the full forty thousand years of humanity's history.
The greater the gap, the lonelier one felt. That was why, during the Great Crusade, the Emperor hadn't ordered the Blackwatch to join the battlefield early. As long as they didn't cause trouble, they were free to develop as they pleased.
As it turned out, this giant of a man, whose parenting skills were abysmal, had actually gotten it right for once. Since they shared the same ideals, Hogg had gradually been drawn in by the Blackwatch and had begun, little by little, to adapt to the Imperium.
With emotional ties to anchor him, Hogg was no longer a man with nothing left to hold on to. He