"I have always believed in fair dealings—willing buyer, willing seller, Chosen of the Four."
"My reputation is known throughout the Empyrean."
Vashtorr handed the contract and agreement he had prepared to Horus. As Ezekyle Abaddon watched the endlessly unfurling document, his head immediately began to ache.
Leading men into battle and cutting down enemies, even charging into a situation with only a one-in-ten chance of survival, posed no problem for him whatsoever.
But paperwork was even more terrifying to Abaddon than facing the Ork Emperor.
Back then, Horus had led Abaddon and fifty of the most elite Justaerin Terminator guards in a boarding assault to behead the Ork Emperor, Urrlak Urruk, on Ullanor.
Facing those terrifying Orks, Abaddon had displayed astonishing combat prowess and vitality. Every other Terminator battle-brother had died, yet he remained alive and well to the very end.
But the Wolf Lord was unlike his son. He had never lacked patience. Horus lifted Vashtorr's contract with his psychic power and began examining it word by word for hidden traps and loopholes.
The primarch merely glanced over it and immediately grasped every detail within the document. For their extraordinary minds, this was nothing remarkable.
This Vashtorr... really is an honest daemon, Horus thought.
Vashtorr truly had not buried any traps or pitfalls in the clauses. His demands and everything he could provide were all written plainly in the contract. Such sincerity from a daemon genuinely broadened Horus's horizons.
"I am not a servant of the Changer of Ways. I do not share the fondness those blue-feathered birds have for schemes, deceit, and trickery. Within the Warp, I am the most rule-abiding being there is."
Although it instinctively felt profoundly absurd for a Warp daemon wreathed in psychic flames to solemnly swear such nonsense, he did seem to be