The Long, Dark Night Lord of the Soul

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/27707936.

Rating: Mature
Archive Warning: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Category: M/M
Fandom: Warhammer 40.000
Relationship: Konrad Curze/Fulgrim (WH40K)
Character: Konrad Curze
Additional Tags: Character Study, Incest, Stabbing kink, Fulgrim gets art lessons
Language: English
Series: Part 4 of Traitor Primarchs Win AU
Collections: The Id of Terror
Stats: Published: 2020-11-25 Updated: 2022-03-04 Words: 1,709 Chapters: 4/?
 The Long, Dark Night Lord of the Soul
by BuddyWritesFic

Summary

After the Heretics kill the Emperor and seize Terra, Konrad struggles to find meaning in his
life.
 Chapter 1

Konrad Curze skulked the shadows of the Imperial Palace on heavy, dragging feet. He was
overtired and miserable. His life had been a maelstrom of noise and cruelty, and he’d endured
it so far with the knowledge that at some point, finally, the day would end, and his Father
would send someone to put him to bed.

But the nursemaid never came. There was no assassin, because there was no one to order an
assassin, because Father had blithely departed to his own grave without a thought for the
monsters left behind him or the galaxy they threatened.

It was an outrage! Konrad, a connoisseur of abandonment, had never felt so neglected in his
life.

He’d been too hopeful, too trusting. In retrospect, it was stupid to think the Emperor would
care enough to have him murdered, no matter how many times or how clearly he saw it. It
was his destiny to make stupid mistakes like that.

Now he wished someone would kill him for being an idiot as well as a monster.

He chewed his victim’s head, crushing the skull and smearing brain pulp on his face. He
wiped his gore-spattered mouth on the gilded marble carvings as he walked down the
hallway. No one did anything about it. No one cared.

He’d been stabbed in the gut once when he was little, and he felt that same pain now. It
spread out to his whole body, filled his eyes and ears, choked the breath from his throat. He
turned his steps toward Fulgrim’s studio, mangled corpse in hand. He couldn’t take one more
minute of being ignored. He was going to break something important.
 Chapter 2

A feint, a strike, and the battle was over. Fulgrim’s new body made him faster than before,
and Konrad wasn’t fighting to win, anyway.

The serpent reared above him, mouth gleaming with ivory knives. “IF YOU’RE BORED,” he
roared, “I CAN FIND YOU SOMETHING TO DO!”

Konrad nodded, anxious to meet his brother’s rage. “Yes!” he said. “Destroy me! End this
farce!”

Fulgrim laughed and ruffled his hair. “Well, then I’d get bored, and we can’t have that. You
lost, little brother. That means we do what I want. And I want you to stay right where you are
while I clean up this mess.”

It was a really impressive mess. The big canvas was pierced in several places and ruined with
paint, viscera, and strawberry jam, and the studio itself was no better. The source of the
viscera, one of Fulgrim’s sons, lay disconsolate in a pool of his own blood, masturbating.
Fulgrim gathered him up in one set of arms and cuddled him to his breast. “There, there, now.
Does Uncle play too rough?” He teased his child’s cock and brought him to a shuddering
orgasm followed by unconsciousness. “We’ll make it better.”

“As for you!” He wound Konrad in tighter loops of serpent flesh. Then he slithered to a table
and with his free hands, set a mass of gray sludge before him. “This is clay,” he explained. “If
you roll it like this, it gets long.” He took a piece between his hands and rubbed it back and
forth. “If you roll it like this, it gets round.” He rubbed it in circles until it was a ball. “If you
don’t like what you’ve made, you can squish it.” He set it on the table and pounded it flat.
“And if it gets too stiff or crumbly, dip your fingers in the water to make it soft. Have fun,
baby bat. I’ll check on you later.” He pressed a kiss to Konrad’s head. Then his length
doubled and tripled as he took the front end of his body to the other side of the room to tend
his wounded child, leaving Konrad immured in his back end by the table, with only his hands
free.

He tried biting at his fleshy prison, but the warden seemed to enjoy it. Eventually, for want of
any other occupation, he picked up the clay.
 Chapter 3

“Does it sting your pride, brother?” Konrad asked hopefully. “Do you want to kill me?”

“Yes, of course I do! But I also want to fuck you, and eat you, and brush your darling hair,
because that’s how my life works now. I’m a Daemon of desire, I want a lot of things.” One
set of arms did produce a brush and start stroking and arranging Konrad’s darling hair,
because it was still mucky with gore from earlier, and now it had clay in it.

“More than anything, I want to learn to do that.”

He pointed at the clay. It was a face, whether a portrait of an individual or a synthesis of

Konrad’s imagination, he didn’t know. It was more or less a two dimensional work, about the
size of the face of a mortal man, and it lay flat on the workbench like it were flayed and
stretched to dry. The details were unpracticed and crude, but that only made it more
impressive that it depicted a feeling so acute it pierced his hearts. The agony, horror, and
despair were unmistakable. And he had practiced for years, and he could still only do ‘vague
smugness’ and ‘a bit of a frown!’

“You’ll teach me,” he insisted.

“I can’t teach you!” Konrad cried. This was awful. He’d come here to die, not to meet more
impossible expectations. Why hadn’t he seen this coming? He reached out to destroy the
offending sculpture, but Fulgrim lifted him up and back from the table.

“I didn’t ask if you could,” he said, “I said you will!”

“I don’t know how to teach art!”

“Well, I do!” Konrad had a dreadful intuition that he couldn’t sway him, and his intuitions
(with one exception) were always right. The hands gripped his hair more tightly now. “I’ll
teach you how to teach. I’ve taught thousands. And then you’ll teach me how to emote.”

Konrad pouted bitterly. “You’re a frivolous slut,” he said.

Fulgrim laughed. “And you’re a brunet, if we’re saying obvious things.” He kissed his
temple.

Konrad pulled away to the best of his limited ability, bound up as he was in Fulgrim’s coils.
Fulgrim noticed this and pulled him closer, to kiss him again.

“I thought I’d get to die,” Konrad said, near tears now.

“Well,” Fulgrim cooed, kissing the tears away, “you came to the wrong place for that. You’re
my education student now, and my sculpting master, and my prisoner. I need you much too
much to let you die.”

The tears turned to ragged sobs.

Fulgrim hugged him tight to his breast and rubbed his back. “I know, I know. Life is painful.
I’ll help you. Pain isn’t always bad, is it?” he asked, pushing one claw through the flesh of
Konrad’s shoulder.

“Mm…” The Night Haunter made a pleased little sound. “You can’t fuck away all your
problems,” he said. “I’m still a horrible person, and I still need to die.” But he leaned into the
point and edge of the talon. His skin ran with gooseflesh. Amusement crept into his face.

“Do you?” Fulgrim teased. “There are alternatives these days.” He sank another claw into his
brother, drawing a moan from him. “Daemonhood, for one.”

Konrad shook his head, doing his best to hang on to his bad mood as his brother tried to tug it
from his hands. “Not ‘need’ in an existential sense, smartass. In a moral sense. I should die.”

“Well, there are alternatives to ‘should,’ too. Like Daemonhood. I recommend it. For
example, I have it on good authority that I ‘should’ kill my brother right now. And instead,
I’m doing this.” He pinched a knot of flesh in his talons, working it between them, opening
the wound up wider and letting the blood spill out. “And who can stop me?”

Konrad yielded under his claws, then his teeth, then his cock. If anyone could stop Fulgrim, it
wasn’t him.
 Chapter 4

"C'mere, honey," Fulgrim purred, the low rumbling of his breath vibrating his chiseled
Daemonic form as he wrapped around Konrad. "It's time for a lesson."

"I told you I'm not an art teacher," Konrad said. "There are beings who are. You could ask
literally any of them."

"I don't want them, Konrad, I want you." Fulgrim's wide, hungry shark-eyes left Konrad in no
doubt of his sincerity. "And I have you. And you'll do as I say. Now, teach me how to draw a
circle."

"You know how to draw circles. I've seen you."

"I know, baby," said Fulgrim. "This is practice. If we leap right into you teaching me how to
sculpt emotion, I won't be able to critique your teaching, because I won't know what you're
leaving out. Now tell me how to draw a circle."

Clawed and tentacled Daemons brought them paper and crayons. Fulgrim picked up a blue
one and handed Konrad the red.

"I'm going to suck at this," Konrad said, chewing moodily on the crayon.

"I know, darling," said Fulgrim. "I'll suck too. Everyone sucks the first ten million times they
try something. That's why you try it ten million and one."

Slaanesh, lord of gamblers and addicts and artists. Konrad could smell the musk already.

"You're going to get mad again and trash the studio," he said, relating the visions he'd had on
the subject.

"I know," said Fulgrim. "And I'll trash you as well. Many times. It's part of my creative
process."

"Can we skip to that part?" Konrad asked.

"No."

He swallowed his mouthful of crayon and started chewing on a Daemonette. "You really
want to draw ten million and one circles?" he asked, with his mouth full.

"At least!" Fulgrim enthused as he squeezed him tighter in his serpentine coils. "Now, let's
get started!"

Konrad had often found himself in the position of being compelled to some bizarre farce by a
stronger madman. He supposed this was no different than before.
"All right," he said. He thought for a while. How the hell do you tell someone how to draw a
circle? He swallowed the Daemonette's claw and resolved to try. "Draw a circle," he said.

"Okay," said Fulgrim, tapping his tail, "I have a few notes to start with..."
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