"Oh, right, Lorgar." Angron seemed to remember something suddenly. He withdrew the arm draped over Lorgar's shoulder, and a faintly hesitant gleam, rather at odds with his usual demeanor, flashed through his crimson eyes.
"I... want to go back to Nuceria."
He paused, his voice dropping slightly, though it remained clear.
"My father... is still living out his retirement there."
Those words brought a brief stillness to the corridor.
The lenses beneath Curze's helmet seemed to turn toward Angron, silently "watching" him.
Sitting on Lorgar's shoulder, Anna stopped swinging her legs as well. Her amber eyes blinked, a trace of understanding showing in them.
"Oh, right." Lorgar remembered almost immediately. Recollection stirred in his golden eyes, and he nodded, his tone certain.
"Oenomaus, correct?"
The old gladiator who had taken Angron in when he climbed out of the lowest depths of the arena, still just a boy full of anger and pain, and taught him combat and discipline—in a sense, giving him his first sense of humanity and his first emotional bond.
He was the only man Angron called "Father," entirely different from the lofty "Emperor" who had given him his genes.
"Curze and I," Lorgar continued without hesitation, glancing sideways at the silent lord of the Night Lords beside him. His tone was as natural as though this had been agreed upon long ago. "How about we go back with you?"
He did not ask Curze's opinion, but his calm tone held a certainty that made asking unnecessary.
Curze neither objected nor asked any questions. His midnight-blue helmet merely dipped almost imperceptibly in assent.
The decision was made so quickly that there was no further discussion. Lorgar immediately turned toward the other end of the corridor.
At some point, First Company Captain Rockefeller had finished attending to his "official