The mourning of the last day
Loken tries to stop his father, but nothing can stop his father. Nothing can stop the monstrous, bloodlit personification of Chaos, so wretchedly bloated with power, so hideously sure of itself. Horus doesn’t even need to touch him. Loken, sword raised, is swept out of his path by the crackling field of immaterial energies that surrounds his father’s bloodlit form. The stinging aura brushes Loken aside, as a wind might lift and scatter motes of dust, and sends him rolling and clattering across the oil-dark deck.
He rises to his knees, numb and concussed, and yells his father’s name, but to no avail, for his voice is drowned out by the rushing whispers that fill the air of the Court.
So he can only watch, his eyes wide with tears, as Horus Lupercal commits his final blasphemy and slays the Emperor.
There’s no joy in it. No sense of victory. Not even the contentment of closure, of a battle squarely won, and a compliance achieved. To kill a helpless man, to crush His head into the deck with your maul when He can’t even stand or open His eyes… What does that say about you? Some warrior. Some Warmaster.
The infinite legions of the Neverborn are delighted, at least. They are whispering. Whispering to each other. The rapturous hush and lisp of their voices is building around you, filling the Court, beginning to drown out even the dry-wood crackle of the burning warp. What is it they are saying?
‘Stop your whispers,’ you tell them. You have no time for their jubilation.
You need a moment to contemplate. Can’t they see that? You need a moment to reconcile, to centre yourself. Look at what you’ve done. Gods can do anything, and they do not make mistakes, but look at what you’ve done. You lever Worldbreaker’s spiked head out of the deck. Blood and years drip from it. There isn’t even a skull left to place in reverence on your chapel’s altar. Your maul crushed His head entirely and gouged a deep crater in the deck beneath. There’s nothing but a mess of blood and pulped flesh, fragments of splintered bone, matted hair, a dislodged, staring eye–
Steel yourself. To be Warmaster… It’s not about glory and prestige, it’s about possessing the strength to see things through to the end, even when that end is regrettable and unpalatable. War demands it, and only the strongest have the stomach to finish what they started.
You are the strongest. War is ultimately a bloody, tragic business, and only the strongest have the wisdom to understand that once they unleash it, they must be prepared to accept the cost.
He was just a man, and now He’s dead. Forget that. Forget the mutilated horror at your feet. Remember what He was. Remember what you were fighting. The tyrant. The King-of-Ages. The liar. The ruthless master who enslaved a species and used you all. The betrayer. The schemer who wove His damned and secret plans for thirty thousand years without a second thought for the lives and blood that would be spent to achieve them.
Yes, think of that. Content yourself with that. Let those thoughts be your consolation. Think of His crimes and His atrocities. Remember that He, and He alone, knew that suffering created lethal and unstable horrors on the other plane of reality, yet saw fit to breed a generation of transhuman warriors like you to subjugate the stars. And when Chaos became a focused, existential threat, He seemed dismayed by the bloodlit consequences of His actions.
You should have turned against Him sooner. You and all your brothers, for all of them had wit and sense. You should have rallied them earlier, long before Ullanor, long before the crusade began to soak the stars in blood. A band of brothers, all of them masters of war, born to understand the properties of conflict… You could have stood together, demanded His capitulation with one voice, removed Him from power, and prevented this, all of it, before–
And if He had refused, then you could have stopped Him. Together. Stopped Him cleanly, before the price became a trillion lives. A quick end. A clean death. But they were all too much like Him, each one of them a copied part of Him. Rogal too stubborn to listen, Sanguinius too forgiving to see the flaws, Russ too enflamed with his own ego…
Throne, all of them! All of them too much like Him, even the ones that eventually sided with you when the blood began to flow. Fulgrim too in love with his own glory, Angron too agonised to know any different, Magnus… Magnus too headstrong and sure of himself.
All of them, all of them, all of them… Too much like Him, because that was how He made them. Too much like their father.
Your father.
But not you. You were the only one who overcame the inheritance of your bloodline. You remained true. You alone stayed strong. You have saved the human race, or what remains of it. Remember that. You had to mash the skull of your helpless father into the floor to do it, but ugly deeds are the price you pay when the cause is just.
Your own father.
You try not to dwell on that part. You try not to think of Him that way. You try to forget the bond you once had, the thirty glorious years, or how proud you felt to be His first-found son…
It’s finished now. You take the time you need to collect yourself. You’ll decide how long that will be. A period of mourning. A time for reflection. You just need some peace now. A long measure of peace. Some silence.
But the whispers. The whispers are deafening.
‘Stop,’ you murmur. Why won’t they leave you alone? They have been whispering, incessantly, behind your back, since Maloghurst first woke you from your dream to begin the final illumination.
No, not Maloghurst. Argonis. That’s right. The boy, Kinor Argonis. Oh, it’s so hard to think with the whispers gnawing at your brain. You want to settle your mind, and get all of this clear and straight, so that when you dictate it to Mersadie Oliton, she records a true account of it, and history will remember how hard you tried, and how deeply you struggled with your conscience, and how heavy was the price you paid. But the whispers…
‘Leave me alone,’ you say.
The walls breathe. It is very bright in the Court, like being outdoors in the searing starlight of Calastar, or the labyrinth-knot of Uigebealach in the blazing warp. Light, almost maddeningly bright, strobes slightly, flickering through leaves swayed by the wind. Or something like leaves. You don’t care. You don’t look.
You hear a man weeping nearby, somewhere behind you. That, unlike the whispering, you can forgive. You understand Loken’s grief, for it is your own.
You don’t look around. You can’t take your eyes off your father.
‘Help me,’ you say, over your shoulder. ‘Garviel… Help me with Him. Help me bear Him up.’
You hear him rise to his feet behind you. You kneel, and lift your father’s body in your arms. What whole part of it is left, at least. He is so light, so fragile, there is nothing of Him. Like rags, like a bundle of sticks, dry and paper-thin–
‘Please, Lupercal, stop now,’ Loken says.
‘It’s too late,’ you reply. You clear your throat. ‘I have stopped, Garviel. It’s done. It’s finished.’
‘It’s not too late,’ he answers.
You turn to look at him, your father in your arms. Loken gazes up at you, his eyes dark hollows, his sword forgotten on the deck behind him.
‘Help me with Him,’ you say. ‘Help me lay Him to rest in honour. He was my father, after all.’
‘It’s not too late,’ Loken insists. ‘Not for you. Not for us. You’ve done what you set out to do. Let go of the power.’
‘Why would I want to do that?’ you ask.
‘To prove you are Horus. To prove you are a man and not a puppet.’
‘I told you–’
‘You did. But their claws are deep in you, and their lies delude you. Prove them wrong. You say you took the power into yourself to achieve this end. Well, it is achieved, father. So if you meant what you said, you don’t need the power any more. Set it aside while you still can. Show the world of men that you are still one of them, and true to your word. Show the foul gods you are not their plaything, or a helpless instrument of their designs.’
‘The power is mine,’ you say. The boy has no understanding of anything. ‘The power is mine to keep and use as I see fit. It’s not the power, Loken, it’s what you do with it. It is not the evil you think it is.’
‘You have just slain a golden king in a cathedral of darkness,’ says Loken. ‘Did those aspects, light and dark, choose themselves?’
‘They are just aspects!’ you laugh. ‘Contrivances of presentation. Darkness to oppose light. You see? I chose my aspect to counter His arrogant show of glory. The darkness isn’t evil, Loken, no more than the light is good or true. They are just symbols–’
‘Symbols have power, father–’
‘Not in the simplistic way you think, my son.’
‘Then cast them off,’ says Loken. ‘Get rid of them, this darkness, this black heart, this palace of terror. Cast the power away now you are done with it. Use the one thing you had that your father did not.’
‘And that is what?’ you enquire.
Loken places his hand on his chest.
‘A feeling heart,’ he says bitterly. ‘You just killed your father. Be a man and show you are sensible to it.’
His words cut you. Does he really think this of you? Can’t he see? Perhaps…
Perhaps there is some truth in what he says. Perhaps you should shed this black aspect of terror, to show that it is yours to command, and not the other way around? The work is over. It would be a relief. It would take this weight from your limbs, and the guilt from your heart, and this deadness from your mind. You could breathe again, and hurt, and grieve for what has been done, and clothe yourself in white and gold for mourning. It would make the pain go away. It would justify your actions.
The future can see you. You dare not imagine a future that only knows you as this.
You let it go.
Just for a moment, you let it go.
Just for a second.
You let it slip from you, like a falling cloak. You let it slide out of you like a withdrawing knife, its thorns raking your meat and marrow as it drags away. You let it drain from you, and pour out of you, like blood. There’s so much of it, but everything stops bleeding eventually.
The whispers rise again, in horror. They shriek at you.
‘Stop it,’ you say. ‘I answer to no one.’
But the whispers won’t cease. They swirl around you, saying the thing they have been saying since this all began, again and again, like dead leaves skittering in the breeze or shushing under foot. Like the dry wing-cases of beetles. Like whirring moths. Like the fire-spit of the warp, unending–
What is it that they keep whispering? It’s infuriating. You can almost make out the words.
The name.
One name… No, one phrase, uttered and repeated, echoed and amplified by psychoacoustic force. One phrase, made of white light, uttered in unison by a million voices. Two million. An entire species.
The Emperor must live.
No. That’s not–
Speak this with me, as it is spoken to me. The Emperor must live.
No!
Lift up your hands. He must live.
A trick. A last trick. A last damned trick! A lever to prise open your armour. A feint to make you drop your guard. A magician’s encore sleight of hand. The final desperate scheme of an eternal and ruthless schemer.
You make to cast your father’s corpse aside, because you understand it is merely part of the trick, but the body is already disintegrating into papery ash and luminous dust. It was just an aspect, another discarded aspect, another empty husk.
He is not dead.
You cry out, in anger and despair. You try to snatch the power back into yourself, but it is pooled around you in a great black slick, sticky and sluggish, slow to respond, slow to obey, reluctant to reinhabit the vessel of your body now that you have scorned it. You draw it back in as quickly as you can. You inhale to fill your lungs and soul with it. You gather it in frantically, for you must be ready to defend yourself.
The worst of it… Your human heart, still raw and exposed, feels relief. A kind of joy. Your father is not dead. Your father is not dead. You didn’t kill Him. He lives–
Loken faces you, His sword is in his hand. But it’s not Loken. It never was. Loken is still sprawled on the deck to your left where you threw him, gazing on in horror.
Or is it wonder?
You will not die like this. You will not be tricked like this. The power begins to flood back into your veins. The darkness of it. The sweet agony. The reassuring rage. The strength–
Loken steps towards you. The other Loken. The Loken who is not Loken. The sword in his hand is not Rubio’s old blade. The sword in His hand is the great war-sword. The face is not Loken’s. It is His face. The aspect of Loken collapses into voidmist as your father steps out to meet you in all His bloody majesty.
His wounds are great. Blood is dried black across His face and His ruined arm. But there is a light inside Him, a light behind His eyes, the pure white light of a species that, in its madness, believes in Him beyond all reason, and trusts in Him beyond all logic, a species that imagines Him to be its shield and protector, and has such faith in that act of imagination, it is made real.
He could not fight you alone. He could not beat you alone. But by bluff and ruse and stratagem and sacrifice, He has held your attention until He no longer has to.
To be absent in the body is to be present in the Emperor. That’s what the whispers are screaming. A whole species is present here, its will united in one form, not a man, not a father, but a king of all the ages.
He looks like a god. A wounded god, but a god nonetheless. It’s not His power, it’s where it comes from.
We are one and the same, the whispers say, mankind and Emperor, Emperor and mankind, souls bound together. We are together as one or we are nothing.
‘You are no god!’ you shout.
Then this will be a fair fight, the whispers answer.
You howl your defiance as He comes at you. He is clearly weak and wounded, but you are weak too. You have gathered up but a fraction of the power you had. You must keep Him at bay for a moment longer, hold Him back while you recover your full strength.
For in this moment, you are just Horus Lupercal.
You swing Worldbreaker and deflect the path of His sword. Sparks fly like comets. Your Talon rakes through armour, flesh and bone. Blood fogs the air between you. His mind burns through your nervous system, disrupting your motor control and cascading pain through your core. You block His mind, twist it sideways through thirteen dimensions and render irreparable ischemic damage. You clamp His throat with your Talon.
You crush His windpipe and sever His carotid. Blood squirts out in a hosing arc. More blood snorts and spurts from His mouth as He chokes. He batters His blade across your skull and shoulder, shredding the Serpent’s Scales. You push Him away, refractors banging as they fail and collapse, and punish Him with your maul as He staggers back, clutching at His throat. You break His wrist. The warblade clatters from His hand. You crunch His ribs. You unleash bloodlight from the eye on your chestplate and torch His face. His hair burns. The flesh of His cheek melts to the bone. One eye roasts and bursts. Worldbreaker shatters His spine.
You feel the power returning to you. It can’t come fast enough. You need all of it. You need all of it–
Reeling, He burns you back. A beam of light rakes from His one remaining eye. Pure force, blue-white, the focused will of the human race, piercing your darkness as the beacon of the Hollow Mountain pierces the void.
The pain is–
The pain is–
The pain is more than a man can bear.
And you are still just a man. It’s not the power, it’s what you do with it. And you, fool, let it go.
You let it all go.
You fall to your knees, on fire within and without. His psychic beam continues to incinerate you.
Please, you ask. Please, you implore. Give it back. Give the power back to me–
Oh, they will. They will. The Old Four will let you have it all back, because it serves their interests. But they will make you suffer first, as a cautionary reprimand for spurning their generous gifts. They will make you pay for that, in fire and agony, and they will let that punishment last a while. The Emperor, their only real foe, cannot kill you, after all. For all the power He has salvaged and scraped together, for all the tricks He has played to weaken you and render you vulnerable when you were entirely invulnerable, for all the ways He has made you look like a fool, He cannot actually kill you. He does not have the means, not even Him, to kill the limitless thing you have become. The instrument of Chaos Incarnate.
Because that’s what you are, Horus Lupercal.
That’s all you are, Warmaster.
That is all you’ll ever be, first-found son.
A slave to their darkness. A weapon in their hands. A puppet on their strings, beguiled by their promises and lies. An instrument, with no mind of its own, designed to shatter the shield of humanity and tip the human species into the neverness of the warp.
On your knees, caught in the torrent of your father’s flame, you look up at Him. You see it now, at last, perhaps as He has always seen it. A simple truth. A secret that should have been kept, despite everything. Some truths are too dangerous to know, or too lethal to hear. That’s why He kept it for thirty thousand years. Now you know it too. You see, through insurmountable pain, everything… everything that has been ruined, and everything that has been betrayed. You cannot ask Him for forgiveness. You don’t dare, and you can’t speak anyway. But He can see it in your eyes. You were too weak to resist them then, and you will be too weak in another moment when they relent and replenish you with their abominable gifts.
Your eyes beg Him for mercy. A son to his father.
End this. End it now, if you can. If that is even possible. End it before it is too late. If you can’t do it, no one can.
The burning stops. The psychic beam abates. You sway, gasping.
Your father has a knife. An old stone thing. What is it? It’s so small in His hand, so ugly. That won’t do it. That won’t be enough.
He seems to hesitate, reluctant.
You clench, in sudden spasm and convulsion, and cry out. The power is returning. It is flowing back into you with great rapidity, as though the Old Four are suddenly desperate to restore their gifts. What do they know? What have they seen that makes them act in such haste?
Your father looks at the knife.
+I wait for you and I forgive you.+
He drives it into your heart.