Hades stood at the shuttle boarding entrance, watching the children going through baggage checks.
They were allowed to bring one or two personal belongings each.
After two rounds of selection, just over two thousand passed the trials in total.
The initial signup number for this Legionary recruitment drive was over 2.3 million.
In the second round of selections just concluded, most passing groups had a minority form teams first before prohibiting snatching by force.
Of course, there were also turncoats. Children originally suppressing seizures would become the seizers themselves, driven by hunger.
Once it was confirmed no one came forth to rectify things in those rooms, they were promptly eliminated entirely. There was no need to prolong their suffering fruitlessly.
In the minority where force was seldom used, some opted out consciously too.
And in the very rare one or two rooms, there was never any dispute from start to end.
But chaos replaced order in most rooms toward the later stages.
Unqualified.
Any child who actively snatched or goaded others into seizing resources was disqualified entirely.
In contrast, those who actively intervened to prohibit such acts (taking initiative to step in from a bystander's position) and willingly shared their own provisions were considered qualified even if they eventually opted out halfway.
The unsuccessful children would undergo short-term memory erasure to forget the details of both screenings. They would be given a week's worth of rations and sent back.
"Soil?"
The Tech-Priest Mortag's words jolted Hades out from his musings.
Hades shifted his gaze onto the child. Ah, it was Antai.
Hades certainly remembered this peak-scaling child. His room was among the rare few with zero dropouts in the second trial.
The boy held a small glass bottle with some soil inside.
This piqued Hades' interest.
"What did you bring?"
"Soil, sir," Antai answered honestly, standing in place.
"Why bring soil?" Hades asked.
"I...I heard Legionaries seldom return to Barbarus afterward. So I took some soil from my family's fields," came the reply.
Hades blinked. He reached out to take the bottle.
The dreary soil of Barbarus sloshed inside it.
Hades covered it with the Black Halo.
The minute traces of psychic essence disappeared.
"Very well."
Hades returned the little bottle back to Antai.
"You may certainly bring it aboard."
Hades stepped back, arms crossed as he continued scrutinizing this batch of children.
When they were just about done boarding, Mortarion appeared as well, done arranging the next phase of Barbarus' colonization plans.
Mortarion regarded the children with more or less personal effects in hand pensively.
"They weren't allowed to bring anything the first batch."
The initial Legionaries had no personal belongings whatsoever.
Mortarion felt it necessary to let this batch bring some things of their own when they returned to the ships too.
Hades shrugged.
"Most don't have much to take anyway."
He recalled his own humble abode. Apart from essentials, he really lacked anything else.
Imperial stuff was still the most durable.
"No," Mortarion disagreed.
"They need to retain memories of Barbarus for themselves."
Mortarion's scythes, his censers...they reminded him unceasingly of where he came from.
"Past adversity shapes us. And Legionaries ought to remember every hardship," he elaborated.
"Hardship that we struggled through, that wears us out, that makes us tougher, more resilient, more cognizant of why we live on."
Hades blinked.
"I forgot about all the big and small campaigns on Barbarus long ago."
"Then perhaps you ought to keep a memento too."
"What could I even take? Don't tell me to bring my used bowl up," Hades joked.
"Maybe something else," Mortarion said slowly as he lifted one of the censers dangling from his armor. Thick fumes rose up.
He unscrewed the censer, reaching inside to take out—
A half slab of rock.
"This is?" Hades looked at the rock piece. It had an odd yet vaguely familiar feeling somehow.
Mortarion gave him a blank look.
"You really are forgetful."
"Here."
Hades received it. It was just half a rock slab, the other part gone to places unknown.
He tried sensing it with the Black Halo—
Whoa?!
Hades suddenly recalled.
Was this from that first battle when he initially tapped into the Black Halo?!
Xenomorph Overlord Lazaar!
"You kept this?!" Hades blurted out randomly.
"It's proof of the Death Guard's first xenomorph overlord kill, apart from me. Why wouldn't I keep it?"
"Other than this, I also kept the first overlord's skull and ribs from when the Southern Rebels first jointly took one down," Mortarion stated matter-of-factly.
In the Primarch's personal space, odds and ends proving the Death Guard's feats on Barbarus had piled up quite a bit.
Mortarion believed his stash would soon fill up with spoils of war from other campaigns in space.
Presently, he already had the skull of a high leader of Garspa prominently displayed in his vault.
Hades shot Mortarion an odd look.
He suddenly recalled that while there were no decorations aboard the Endurance, Mortarion had ordered all campaigns undergone by the Death Guard engraved on the prow.
Now, the Garspa campaign was carved in High Gothic across the Endurance's forehead.
Hmm...thinking of how Mortarion still adamantly used his xenomorph stepfather's scythes, hmm...
Feeling complicated, Hades tossed that half rock slab into the compartment of his power armor.
Speaking of which, many Primarchs seemed to have such tendencies—the Night Lords with achievement blankets stitched up, the Blood Angels with art commemorating battles.
Most Primarchs tended to amass items symbolizing past battles in their personal names.
It's just Mortarion's collecting had a certain rugged aesthetic...
Skulls and rocks and stuff.
"How's the migration plan going along?" Hades decided not to mull on it further, changing the subject to ask instead.
"Just about done," Mortarion answered.
"Can finish migrating most of the population in one Barbarus standard year."
"There aren't actually that many left on Barbarus now," he continued slowly.
Because the previous Blackstone facility had proven the peculiar psychic conditions here, they decided to move the majority off-planet onto the orbital habitats instead.
Most had voluntarily migrated up already beforehand.
Though it facilitated his work, this fact still left a subtle feeling of dismay within the Primarch.
He had assumed the people would choose to stay behind and temper themselves.
Meanwhile, Hades secretly contemplated—
Actual surface development of the planet would only commence once the Death Guard found a way to resolve its environmental issues.
He had to think of methods to try getting some budget Blackstone Pylons set up.