‘I stood upon a world once,’ said Roboute Guilliman, watching as the life eater crept across Quradim in a wave of ravenous catastrophe. A thin bloom of toxic green cloud swelled across the pole, sending questing tendrils down across the beleaguered world. In a remarkably short span of time, half of Quradim’s misshapen surface was consumed by it, and before long, it was completely covered. The viral zephyrs would cling to the planet for a time before finally feasting upon itself and dissipating, transforming a planet of little life to one of absolutely none.
‘You remember it,’ continued Guilliman. ‘We were there together. One of the countless worlds lost to greater mankind during the darkness of Old Night. One that, after we culled the xenos from its carcass, revealed that the aliens had not been the agents of its demise. Its own people had consigned themselves to self-inflicted extinction through the use of their own weapons of great destruction. We walked through its ruins, learning its history and piecing together its fate.
‘I swore that such weapons would have no place in my Father’s new dominion. That I, and my Legion, would give our dying breath to help create a world where such monstrous devices were relegated to myth and the faded tomes of history. That we would never see their like again. Such a conviction only became stronger, after Horus’ treachery.
‘Thoas.’ He quietly breathed the name, like a contemplative curse. ‘It is so long ago and yet it is right here again, before my very eyes. A planet and its people, our people, lost to our own instruments of destruction. Some of my brothers, perhaps too many, would ask the question, if we need such tools to preserve this Imperium, is this an Imperium worth preserving? What future are we building upon such foundations?’ He looked back to whom he was addressing. ‘Are such ruinous means anything besides a harbinger that our time has passed, and that the only righteous path that remains for us is to fade away, and walk hand in hand into extinction?’
The skull on the plinth stared back at Guilliman, offering no counsel, no advocacy in favour for one point or the other that the stalwart warrior had always offered in life. The Primarch of the Ultramarines stared into the hollows of its eyes, his mind retracing a thousand conversations with the mind that had once occupied it, so long ago.
‘No.’ Guilliman’s jaw tightened and set. ‘That cannot be the way. My shoulders must now bear the weight of humanity’s survival, more so than many of my brothers were ever asked to bear. I finally understand Dorn, now, standing sentinel against Horus, courting the end of all humanity. No soul but his, and our father’s, has carried this burden.’
He looked up across the stars. ‘The moment that Horus died, and my father was resigned to the Golden Throne, I became the foremost of all the Emperor’s sons. Think of that. To inherit that kind of power, in an instant.
‘Ten thousand years ago, the Ultramarines Legion was without peer, and there was no goal beyond our reach. We were not bled dry by the Siege of Terra, and I as their primarch emerged from my brother’s Heresy alive and unscathed, standing in sole command of the single largest military force that was left in the entire galaxy. All others, traitor and loyalist alike, were ghosts of their former strength. I only had to give the order, and the Ultramarines would have put the crown of the undisputed ruler of the human race on my head.
‘This strength, the ability to make this a reality, is not what made my Legion special. What made us special was that each and every one of us saw that reality clearly, that the entire galaxy was ours for the taking. We had already built the empire of the Five Hundred Worlds. We had already created our own Imperium Secundus. The simplest and clearest means to erase our shame of its collapse, and the greater shame for being absent during the siege would be to make it so that there never was a siege at all, to rewrite history with ourselves at the forefront. All we had to do was conquer, and yet when the time came, we did not do it. We walked to the edge of that precipice, and made the choice to turn from it.
‘I did not feel arrogance, or disregard, or contempt for an Imperium that would have collapsed without me. Instead, I felt an unbelievable, crushing responsibility. Again, humanity was on its knees after tearing itself apart in the Heresy, and every xenos species, every rebel within the Imperium, and all the forces of Chaos saw that just as clearly. The Ultramarines were the only thing that could keep our species from going extinct.
‘I even took my greatest weapon, my Legion, and destroyed it. My Codex fractured my life’s work into a thousand pieces, but the Ultramarines as a Chapter still inherited the same burden of responsibility they bore as a Legion. Imagine that, the weight of responsibility that had crushed a force of hundreds of thousands, now placed upon the backs of just one thousand. That is what it truly means to be an Ultramarine.
‘Seeing someone weaker than ourselves does not make us superior, it makes us responsible for their safety. My sons are men, walking amongst children. And we cannot indulge despair, not now at our darkest hour.
‘If I must use such savage weapons, then let it be so. If the galaxy must be razed, and its ashes used to regrow our kingdom, then I will do so. The Imperium that rises from the brink of annihilation shall be truly my father’s realm, and not the rotting den of corruption time has made of it. That is what I will fight for, what we will all fight for. To create a future worth living in. The only path available to us, old friend, is the same one that it has ever been. War.’
The primarch of the Ultramarines gathered up the sole remains of Marius Gage, holding his favoured son reverently in his hand as he turned and walked from the scene below.
‘This war will decide everything, and it is only just beginning.’