The Bloodlit Crown
A final thread of hope remains for the last loyal sons of man.
The voice calls across the conflagrant Dominions and ruinous wastes of the Outer Palace, where few survive to heed it. It rings across the inferno of the Palatine, the greatest slaughterfield in human history, where the last remaining sons and daughters of the Imperium fight on in splintered cohorts against the overwhelming hosts of the traitor-foe, cut off, surrounded, their lines disintegrating as fast as their chances. For many of them, it is the last thing they will ever hear.
It echoes through sundered Eternity, and in past that gate, and into the final fortress, the Sanctum Imperialis, which has become the final feasting place of carnage, and no sanctum of any kind. This was the inviolable place, the bright citadel built to outlast time and history, and outlive dreams and the schemes of men. It was supposed to stand forever. Since the birth of the Imperium, the children of Terra have imagined many disasters and dangers, and foreseen calamities that they would have to guard against, but never did they conceive that the seat of Empire itself could be swept away, not even when the siege began. It would hold. It would endure, no matter what.
But now it falls, invaded from within and from without, its golden halls and soaring chambers set ablaze, and teeming with the conquering regiments of ruin. The voice rings out here too, but most of those to whom it speaks are too busy dying to hear its words.
It echoes across Terra itself, as the blazing Throneworld plunges into the maw of the warp, its material form digested by the alchemy of the empyric forces that envelop it. It echoes across firestorm continents and evaporated oceans, through devastated cities and wasteland states, and is heard by those scant pockets of resistance that remain, defying the swarming foe to the last. Most of those who hear it in the midst of cataclysm dismiss it as a wishful fantasy, or another of the endless lies of Chaos.
The voice is very fragile. It offers hope, but nothing else, no promise of salvation, or respite, or word of victory reclaimed. Few, if any, ever identify the messenger, or learn the name of hope’s envoy. They know it simply as the Praetorian’s ultimate command, Dorn’s last words to the defenders of Terra, the final wall that he is able to build to keep them safe, a wall of words alone, for all the solid walls of stone and steel he raised are perished and overthrown.
It is an idea of resistance, nothing more.
To some who hear it, like Fafnir Rann and Zephon Sorrow-Bringer at lost Hasgard, it is more than they ever dreamed to hear again. The frail hope it brings far exceeds anything they thought they would ever hear in what remained of their lives, for they had accepted death and consigned themselves long since. It puts strength back into their arms, and power into their blows, as they, and those few living souls still standing with them, oppose the overwhelming tide that has washed any trace of Hasgard Fortress away. None expect to live to see the hope realised. The voice is just an inspiring comfort as they strive to negotiate the highest prices for their lives.
To others, like Maximus Thane in the splintered plazas of the Inner Palace, assailed from all quarters by baying desecrators and the deluge of rout, it is a bitter, heartbreaking call that has come far too late.
To others, like Archamus, second of that name, in the field command of the Palatine catastrophe, or the seniors of the War Court in the besieged and smoke-choked Hegemon, it is a final, tantalising promise that makes them turn to their charts and cogitators one last time, and search for one last ploy or counter-move or gambit that could, as by some miracle, overthrow the incontrovertible predictions of defeat their data has been producing for hours.
Even at the very source of the voice, at the desolate black mansion, hope is dying, stillborn, for the Archenemy has heard the call too, and turns towards its source. The hosts of Chaos and Neverborn, offended by the words, emerge from the horizon’s smoke, feral banners high, and begin to converge across the endless tracts of mud, to crush Agathe’s last redoubt and silence it. She sees them coming, from every point that her compass can no longer identify, and orders her gunlines to load and prepare.
War makes noise. Its death song is deafening. Across the territories of its madness, the voice is, for the most part, not heard at all, for it is drowned out by the booming hymn of the red.
Or it is lost in the soughing whispers of neverness, which have been a constant murmur since the war began, and now rise to a crescendo. The Neverborn whispers are incandescent with outrage. There is nothing, nothing, that enrages them more than to see the generous gifts of Chaos shunned or spurned. To witness the Bloodlit Crown, the greatest honour that Chaos can bestow, rejected, is an insult that fires them with rancour.
To see it abused as a weapon, its generosity defiled, turns the whispers into shrieks.
The Emperor hears the voice, though the neverness storm rages around the walls of the Lupercal Court. It is a tiny thing, one grain of sand in a desert storm, one murmur among a trillion screams. It is not enough, nothing like enough. It is not the shield of humanity that will fortify Him to triumph, or replenish His ravaged body.
But it is enough to allow Him to stand, the bloody Bloodlit Crown in His hand. It is enough to force His first-found son into blind fury. The Master of Mankind has lost, but He can yet deprive Horus of his triumph. He will force His son to kill Him, for better the death and loss of everything, than eternity at his side as a grinning puppet-regent of the Old Four.
You put your face back on. The front of your skull is so ruptured and wrenched open, like a split fruit or the husk of a seed, you fear for a moment that the power inside you, the power that you have become, will spill out of the cracked shell of the human you once were, or that some new and still-more-terrible form of you will escape from your human rind.
You maintain your physical integrity. You push the hinged-open part of your skull back in place, reknit the bones, re-form the muscles and the flesh, and heal the skin unblemished. The severed dermal tubes and pipes across your scalp and cheek regrow like the creeping roots of trees, and re-socket themselves with a sibilant hiss of steam and a whir of machined connectors.
You repair yourself. And you maintain your mental composure despite the indignity of your father’s underhand assault. You are strong. You’re Horus Lupercal. You reflect that your father’s uncompromising defiance is quite admirable. It is who He is. He has not relented once in His life, and for most of yours, you have worshipped that fortitude. His steadfast mien is what made Him great even when you hated Him.
His unwavering strength is the very reason you love Him and despise Him. You are His son, so you have inherited His character and His traits. This is reassuring. If He is strong, then so are you.
So you will not give up either. You will not bend or break. You will remain resolute and patient, those hallmarks of a truly great king, and not give in to the homicidal coal of anger that burns in your heart, the impulse to shred Him apart in a welter of blood for His insolent perfidy.
That would be too easy. Too weak. The act of a child. You will deny Him the satisfaction of making you snap, and deprive Him absolutely of the pyrrhic victory He seeks. You will not give Him the death He wants. You will not cheat yourself.
You will make Him accept the fate you have ordained.
You rise.
He has recovered His war-sword. He must have been feigning before, because He stands unaided, and displays some vitality of body and spirit that seemed previously to have drained from Him. He has the Bloodlit Crown. He raises it in His claws and shatters it so you can watch it break.
‘I can make another,’ you tell Him. ‘I can make a thousand more. I can make as many as I need to make until you are too weak to shake them off your brow.’
You tell Him you can take His pain away, for only pain awaits Him if He persists with this. You can spare Him that pain as He never spared you yours.
You can tell He thinks that you know nothing of pain.
On the contrary, father. I have been the surrogate of your pain. I was born to channel it, just like all my brothers. We were made to bear your pain for you, and suffer it on your behalf. One by one, we have all discovered this. Some, like Ferrus, understood it too late. Some, like Konrad, are broken by it, or are driven into madness to escape it, like Lorgar or Fulgrim. Some, it has compressed to the dullest mettle, like Perturabo or Rogal. Some flee from it, like Russ or Jaghatai, hoping they can outrun it. Some, like Magnus and Roboute, strive in vain to please you so that you might take the pain away.
Some, like poor, naive Sanguinius, think they can spare you by accepting it completely.
‘Only I have defied you,’ you tell Him. ‘Only I have turned and said that I reject it, for it is no way a father should treat His sons. Only I have the strength to condemn you, and return the gift you cursed us with. You should be proud of me, for I alone have exceeded your wildest expectations.’
He is not listening. A father, it seems, cannot bear to hear when His son enumerates His failings. Will you be the same, when the time comes, and your sons turn to you with their discontents? Not the sons you have, for they, save one, have embraced your outlook and would never think to question your decisions. They are but drones, toys of war, sired only to fight and not to think, so they will simply do your bidding and never form an opinion that matters.
No, the sons you have yet to father. The pantheon of primarch sons, and daughters too, that you will sire and bring into the world, your Neverborn children of ageless wisdom and endless power, who will rule the provinces and demesnes of your realm until the stars go out. They will be transcendent, and they will supplant the boorish, single-minded simpletons who were spawned from your genetics and currently call themselves your sons. Their time, and their purpose, is done. The dynasty of sons and daughters you will nurture after this will be sublime wonders, and you will love every one of them. Of course you will listen when they raise complaint, for they will be your equals and your blood, and you will gladly respect all issues they might bring to you.
Though there will be none to answer. Ever. No child of yours will ever confront you, for you will never give them cause. You will never make errors. You will be perfect.
Make no mistakes. That’s what your father taught you, and it’s the only thing He ever taught you that you intend to honour.
Starting now. You will not give Him long enough to recover further. You attack Him directly, and without compromise.
You stride directly towards Him, and swing your maul with such force the head of it produces a sonic boom. He avoids it, just, and thrusts with His war-sword. The blade splits your refractors and slides deep into your belly.
You let it. He wrenches it out and manages to back-step fast enough to avoid the swipe of your Talon. He ducks aside, and slices with His sword, cleaving your refractors a second time and hacking almost a third of the way into your torso just above the hip.
You let Him.
He pulls the blade free, and circles you. A feint, then another, then a superb thrust that drives the war-sword through your central body-mass.
You let Him.
You draw the warp into you so that He can see it. You need to make Him understand, for He does not seem to have grasped it yet, despite that acclaimed wisdom He boasts of. Your power is infinite. His is not. No matter how many times He gets back up, to renew the fight for another desperate go-around, He is merely postponing the inevitable. He is a warp-attuned creature of great power, by any mortal standards, and rightly has been feared His entire life. But His great strength is finite. You are an infinite being of the infinite warp. Your power will never run out, and can never be sapped, no matter how many or how grievous the injuries He inflicts upon you. You cannot be killed.
This contest was over before it began. It was superfluous. You only permitted the fight to take place at all because He seemed to need it. It was all for show, a demonstration of your new-found state, a symbolic, ritual act to consecrate your reign. You fight only to wear Him down to nothing until He is rendered entirely helpless and subject to your will.
Surely He sees that now?
The pair of you circle. He strikes at you again, then again, a thousand thrusts with His sword, a thousand raking blows with His claws. Each one dapples the floor with your blood. You let them all land. You let the minutes pass, the hours, the wounds. For every two or three blows He lands, you hammer with your maul, or tear with your Talon. Some of these strikes land, but most are simply thrown to make Him duck and dodge, weave and retreat. You are eroding His strength, His stamina and His will. As He begins to slow, you find yourself pulling blows that would have killed Him. No death today. No death for Him. No escape to the freedom of agonised oblivion from the fate you have wrought to contain Him.
Still you circle, filling the Court with the ring of steel and the breathless gasps of His effort. This contest has become pure ceremony, pure spectacle, a rite of sacrifice to tear out His will and offer it to the gods. It has lasted a thousand years already. It will last another thousand, another ten thousand, another million, if needs be. You have all the time you need.
His fatigue begins to hang from Him like a cloak of lead, bowing His shoulders and dragging His steps. You can see the misery in His eyes, the curdling, thickening exhaustion. He has tried everything, to no avail. You are letting Him see the wounds He scores upon you, and the indifference with which you regard them. You are letting Him verify the implacable nature of your immortality. It is not like His. His can be ended. Yours cannot.
You control your rage. You bite back physical pain, for it is transient, and you let go of any resentment, for it serves no purpose. He bruised you when He first arrived and seemed to look through you. It hurt when He would not acknowledge you. You are past that now. You have been maturating all this time, and the stages of your duel have allowed you to learn and grow into your new self. You are calm and sanguine. You understand now that when He came to your Court, He ignored you because He was scared. He hurt you because He didn’t know what else to do. He did not acknowledge you because you were no longer you, and He did not recognise you. He saw what you had become, a fathomless power that He could not compete with, and He lashed out in petty ways to wound you, like any frightened soul cornered by the absolute.
You are past that now.
You have become one with the divinity invested in you, and He has lost.
It’s not your father’s power, it’s how you grind it out of Him until He begs you to relent.
He tries to melt the deck, to blow out the entire floor and cast you down through the levels of the ship. You do not fall, for everything in this place obeys your will, including the very air that holds you up, and gravity, which is anxious not to offend you. With your mind, you wrench up one of the five thrones from its foundation. It was the one you prepared for the Angel. He will not be needing it.
You throw it at your father.
His ailing willpower swells, and suffuses His blade, and He demolishes the throne into a million fragments with a frantic slice of His sword. You pluck up the thrones intended for Constantin and Rogal too. They will not be required either, for two thrones will suffice.
With the last shred of His will He annihilates Constantin’s throne in mid-air before it can smash into Him.
He has nothing left to stop Rogal’s.
He disappears beneath its granite bulk, mashed backwards and crushed into the deck.
The rubble of the throne, some pieces weighing a tonne or more, heaps upon Him like a cairn. When you send them flying with your mind, He does not move. He lies flat, like the recumbent effigy of a king on the lid of a tomb, swathed in dust. He is barely breathing.
You pause to fashion a new crown in your hand. As the bloodlight threads weave and form between your Talon’s claws, you step forward.
Reality splits open in your path, and two men slither out of the material tear like newborn lambs from an amniotic sac.
An odd, belated arrival. The pair of them are just human. They steam with immaterial vapour, and they are wet with thawing interstitial ice. They stink of the distances of empyric space, as though their journey has been wayward and long, from one end of time to the other.
Have they come to kneel at your feet? They are both dazed, disorientated, confused by the abruptness of their arrival after a voyage so long.
They look up at you. An instant of recognition. A fleeting moment of shock as they realise where they are.
You see the sudden and utter terror in their eyes, and know that it is fully justified. They have made a tragic mistake of navigation, and a colossal error of judgement.
You feel sorry for them.