Aurelian

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  A nameless world. We are here because you saw all you needed to see.

  The primarch laughed without intending to. Just as he mustered enough control to speak again, a second burst of laughter broke from his lips.

  I fail to see the amusement, Lorgar.

  ‘You show me my armies laying siege to my father’s palace, allied with daemons, waging war against my brothers, and you ask why I wished to see more than handful of seconds?’ Lorgar shook his head, the laughter dying down. ‘I am finished with being led by the nose into your prepared lessons, creature.’

  Ingethel drooled. Watch your tone when addressing one of the gods’ chosen.

  ‘I am here by my own choice. I will leave here by the same virtue.’

  Yes, the daemon stood straighter, eliciting several wet cracks from its vertebrae. Keep telling yourself that, Lorgar.

  The primarch gripped his crozius, aching to draw the weapon and wield it out of spite, swinging it in anger, reasserting control over life through the use of violence. In this, he was as any of his brothers, and he knew it. The desire was always there. What better way to bend reality to one’s desire? Bleed those who would defy your choices and there is no longer any opposition. The destroyer’s way was always an easy one. It fell to the builders, the visionaries, to do the difficult work.

  Lorgar did something none of his brothers would have done in his place. He released the weapon, leaving it undrawn, and took a calming breath.

  ‘I am here to learn the truth of the gods, Ingethel. And you are here to show it to me. Please do not force my temper.’

  The daemon said nothing. Lorgar stared into its bloated eye, still weeping ichor. ‘Do you understand me?’

  Yes.

  ‘Now tell me why you summoned me here. I heard the call of this place, the shrieking of my name through the solar storms. I came to maturity on a world where our ancient holy texts spoke of this dead alien empire as a heaven for humanity. I want answers, Ingethel. I want them now. Why have I been shaped from birth to be brought to this place? What does fate want of me?’

  The daemon drooled again. Its gums were bleeding now and two of its arms were curled close to its glistening chest.

  ‘What is wrong with you?’

  I am nearing the end of this incarnation. My essence sits uneasily in this cage of bone and flesh.

  ‘I have no wish to see you die.’

  I will not die, as you perceive the concept. We are the Neverborn. We are also the Neverending.

  Lorgar swallowed a pulse of irritation, not letting it rise to the fore. ‘True immortality?’

  In the only possible way. The daemon looked to the horizon, just as Lorgar had done only minutes before. Its gaze milked over, going turgid with thought. You ask a question, despite already knowing its answer. You are here, now, because you have been summoned, you are here, now, because your life was engineered to ensure this moment took place. You are here, now, because the gods wished it. In the tangled skeins of time’s web, I have seen innumerable possible futures where you never came to us, Lorgar.

  In one, you died in youth, the golden child-martyr of Colchis, slain by assassins seeking to restore the Old Ways. When the Imperium came to reclaim you, they found a world dead by its own hand, lost to the crusades of bitter fanatics.

  In another, you were poisoned only three nights after retaking the capital in your holy war for the hearts of Colchis’s people. You were murdered by the wine in your cup, with the poison placed there by the hand of one you called Father, for he feared you could no longer be manipulated.

  In another, you were not the master of your own temper, much like many of your brothers: in a confrontation with Sanguinius, you sank a knife into his back, and were in turn butchered by Horus for your sin.

  In yet another, you defied the Anathema – the creature you name the Emperor, falsely considering it to be human – and you were executed by your brothers Curze and Russ. Your heart was cut from your corpse, and a great sorcery of alchemical and genetic power was wrought upon all who shared your bloodline. Your Legion was poisoned, reduced to madness, and finally annihilated by the fleets of the Ultramar Kingdom.

  In another, you—

  ‘Enough.’ Lorgar felt pale, and suspected only his gold-inked skin hid that very truth. ‘Enough, please.’

  As you wish.

  The mountains continued to rumble with distant bellows as the world breathed fire into its own sky.

  Lorgar opened his eyes at last. ‘Why me? Why was I brought here? Why not Horus or Guilliman? They are the generals I will never be. Why not Sanguinius or Dorn?’ He laughed then, a sneering, private snort. ‘Why not Magnus?’

  Ingethel grinned, insofar as its mangled mouth would allow. The gods have touched many of your brothers in ways both obvious and occluded. One of them bears wings upon his back. Is that part of your Emperor’s genetic intent? Did he not wish to destroy all religious reference? Why then would he breed a son that stands as an angel incarnate?

  Lorgar brushed the point aside. ‘Enough cryptic idiocy. Why not Magnus? He is the most powerful of us all, without a shadow of doubt.’

  Magnus. Magnus the Red. The Crimson King. Ingethel laughed inside Lorgar’s mind, and gestured out onto the plains. He is already with us, whether he admits it or not. He came to us without needing to be summoned, and without ever considering the notion of faith. He came for power, because that is why all things of flesh come to us. And in five short decades, when the galaxy begins to burn, he will come here himself.

  Behold this very world, Lorgar, in fifty years.

  SEVEN

  CITY OF LIGHT

  FOR A MOMENT, to even face the light was painful. Silver in its artificiality, as cold and far removed from the warm gold of a natural star as could be imagined. Shadowing his face from the austere glare, Lorgar looked across the plains where Ingethel had gestured.

  Shapes resolved themselves into an uneven skyline. Lorgar knew it instantly, for he had studied there for almost a decade, living among its people and coming to adore them as he loved the people of Colchis.

  ‘Tizca,’ he said the word only after swallowing his horror. Cracked spires of human ingenuity; great pyramids of white stone, pale metal and shattered glass; city walls fallen to nothing more than lumped rubble – this was the great and enlightened city of the Thousand Sons, reduced to the edge of devastation.

  ‘What madness do I see before me? What lies cruelly given shape?’

  Tizca will burn in the crucible of the coming war. It must be so.

  ‘I will never allow this to come to pass.’

  You will allow it, Lorgar. You must.

  ‘You are not my master. I would never hold faith in a god that controlled its worshippers. Faith is about freedom, not slavery.’

  You will allow this to come to pass.

  ‘If this is the future, Ingethel, I will tell Magnus in the past. When I return to the Imperium, it will be the first thing to leave my lips.’

  No. This is the final incident in Magnus’s illumination. Betrayed by the Emperor, betrayed by his own brothers, he will bring his city to the warp in order to escape final destruction. Here, he forges a bastion for the war to come.

  ‘What war?’ Lorgar spat the words. ‘You keep speaking of betrayals, of crusades and battles, as if I can already see into the same futures you describe. Tell me, damn you, what war?’ Lorgar started to move towards the ruined city, but Ingethel gripped his armoured shoulder.

  The war you will begin, but will never lead. The war to bring all these truths to the Imperium. You came to find the gods, Lorgar. You have found them, as they always intended for you. Their eyes are turned towards humanity now. We said this to Argel Tal, as we say it to you now: Humanity must embrace the truths of divine reality, or suffer the same fate as the eldar.

  Lorgar looked back to the city.

  You already knew it would come to war. A holy crusade, to bring the truth to Terra. Too many worlds will resist. The Emperor’s
grip on their lives is too complete, too merciless. The Anathema starves them of any chance to grow on their own, so they will languish – and then they will die – while shackled by his narrow vision.

  The primarch smiled, the expression a mirror of his genetic father’s own faint amusement. ‘And in place of order, you offer Chaos? I have seen what walks on the faces of those eldar worlds lost in this great, drowned empire. The seas of blood and the cities of howling Neverborn…’

  You look upon an empire that failed to heed the gods.

  ‘Even so, there are horrors no human will willingly embrace.’

  No? These things are horrors only to those who look upon them with mortal eyes. Without belief in the true gods, humanity will fall to its own faithlessness. Alien kingdoms will break the Imperium apart, for humanity lacks the strength to survive in a galaxy that loathes your species. Your expansion will fade and diminish, and the gods will smite all who turned from the offer of true faith. Your kind can embrace the Chaos you speak of or it can taste the same fate as the eldar.

  ‘Chaos.’ Lorgar tasted the word, weighing it on his tongue. ‘That is not the correct word, is it? The immaterial realm may be one of pure Chaos, but it is changed when bonded with the material universe. Diluted. Even in this Great Eye, where the gods stare into the galaxy, physical laws are broken but it is not a place of pure Chaos. It is no random ocean of seething psychic energy. It is not the warp itself, but a meshing of here and there, the firmament and the aether.’

  The primarch breathed in the ashy air, feeling it tickle the back of his throat. ‘Perfect order would never change. But pure Chaos would never rise in the first place. You desire a union.’

  He turned to Ingethel. Blood ran from both the daemon’s eyes now, darkening its fur in bleak lightning streaks.

  ‘You need us,’ Lorgar said. ‘The gods need us. They cannot claim the material realm without us. Their power is strangled when they have no prayers or deeds offered in worship.’

  Yes, but the need is not a selfish one. It is a natural desire. The gods are masters of Chaos as a natural force. The warp is every human emotion – every emotion from any sentient race – made manifest into a psychic tempest. It is not the enemy of life, but the result of it.

  Lorgar breathed deeply, tasting more of the ash on the wind.

  He said nothing, for there was little to say. Argel Tal had brought these words back with him, and now they were Lorgar’s to hear firsthand.

  Chaos seeks symbiosis with life: the Ensouled and the Neverborn in natural harmony. Union. Faith. Power, Lorgar. Immortality and endless possibility. Sensations beyond mortal comprehension. The ability to feel maddening delight at any agony. The gift of ecstasy even when you are destroyed, making even death a great joke, knowing you will incarnate in another form over and over until the suns themselves go black.

  And when the stars die, Chaos still lives on in the cold – still perfect, still exultant, still pure. This is everything humanity has ever dreamed of – to be unchallenged in the galaxy, to be omnipotent above all other life, and to be eternal.

  Lorgar would no longer look at the fallen city. ‘You have chosen poorly. I am pleased and proud to have discovered the truth. I am honoured to be chosen by beings powerful enough to be considered divine by the truest meaning of the word. But I will struggle to bring this light to humanity. I cannot win a war against the god sat upon the Terran Throne.’

  Life is struggle. You will strive, and you will succeed.

  ‘Even if I believed all of this…’ Lorgar’s blood ran cold. ‘I have one hundred thousand warriors. We will be dead the moment we make planetfall upon the Throneworld.’

  You will attract more, as you liberate world after world. It is written in the stars; after you sail from here, your Legion no longer spends years crafting perfect worlds venerating the Anathema as the God-Emperor. You will crush resistance beneath your boots, and draw fresh, faithful humans into your service. Some will be slaves in the bowels of your warships. Others will be your flock, to shepherd them toward enlightenment. Many more will be taken into your genetic harvester asylums, and bred into Legionaries.

  The primarch resisted the urge to curse. ‘I am growing increasingly uneasy with you discussing my future in such definite terms. None of these events have happened yet and may never occur. You have still not answered the one question that matters. Why must it be me?’

  It has to be you.

  His teeth clenched together, hard enough to squeak. ‘Why? Why not one of the others? Horus? Sanguinius? The Lion? Dorn?’

  Each of the other Legions would die for their primarchs, and lay down their lives for the Imperium. But the Imperium is the cancer killing the species. Even when some of your brothers turn against the Emperor, they will fight to command the Imperium. Only the Word Bearers will die for the truth, and for humanity itself.

  Faith and steel must now be joined. If humanity becomes an empire instead of a species, it will fall to alien claws and the wrath of the gods. It is the way of things. What has happened before will happen again.

  Lorgar pulled a sealed scroll from his belt, unrolling it with exaggerated care. Red dust clung to the parchment from the surface of Shanriatha, as did a few speckles of blood from carnage beneath the Eternity Gate. They dotted the cream page, bold against the pale paper, almost like tiny wax seals.

  His son’s blood. The lifeblood of one of his Legion, fifty years from now. A warrior destined to die on the home world of humanity, countless systems away from where he’d been born. Had that warrior even been born, yet?

  Lorgar screwed up the parchment, destroying the Colchisian cuneiform scripture, and let it fall to the cold ground.

  ‘Is Magnus here now? Are we here, fifty years from the night I entered the Great Eye?’

  Yes. Where we stand now is mere days after something humanity will come to recall as the Razing of Prospero. Magnus fell victim to his own arrogance, and now resides in the tallest tower of his broken city here, lamenting the destruction of his Legion and the death of his hopes. He intended only the best, but his curiosity saw him damned in the eyes of the Emperor. He looked too deep, too long, into ideals the Emperor did not hold.

  Lorgar nodded, expecting nothing less. It was hardly unprecedented, after all. His own Legion – a hundred thousand Word Bearers kneeling in the dust of Monarchia…

  He shook his head, looking back to the city, and the tower at the heart of it.

  ‘Why does he come here, to the empyrean?’

  To hide where the Emperor’s dogs cannot catch him. He is here to lick his wounds. For his sins, Magnus was sentenced to censure. He chose exile over execution.

  Lorgar started walking.

  ‘I am going to speak with him.’

  You will not be allowed to stand before the Crimson King.

  He didn’t need to turn to know the daemon was smiling. ‘We will see,’ he called over his shoulder.

  There was no answer. Ingethel was gone.

  HE WAS THREATENED by an abortion wearing the cardinal red ceramite of the Thousand Sons Legion.

  ‘Denlcrrgh yidzun,’ it demanded. A bronze bolter was wrapped in the quivering flesh-coloured tentacles it used as arms. Behind this lone sentry, the fallen city wall of Tizca rose in mounds of rubble.

  Lorgar breathed a slow exhalation. Even from a dozen metres away, the Thousand Son reeked of spoiled meat and the rich, coppery tang of aetheric secrets. What remained of its face looked as if it’d melted down the front of its skull.

  ‘I am Lorgar, Lord of the Seventeenth Legion.’ He gestured to the bolter in the thing’s limbs. ‘Lower your weapon, nephew. I am here to speak with my brother.’

  Another attempt at speech left the Thousand Son’s ravaged features as a meaningless blur of syllables. It seemed to recognise its own inadequacy in this regard, for a gentle, cultured voice drifted into Lorgar’s mind a moment later.

  I am Hazjihn of the Fifteenth Legion. You cannot be what you appear.

  Lo
rgar buried his discomfort beneath his father’s smile. ‘I could say the same words to you, Hazjihn.’ The ground gave a particularly violent shudder. Glass shattered in the lowest levels of the closest pyramid as more rocks tumbled from the ruined city wall.

  The Crimson King tells us we are the only human life on this world. Hazjihn’s dripping face snuffed back a mouthful of air in ungainly respiration. You cannot be Lord Aurelian of the Word Bearers.

  Lorgar spread his hands in a display of unarmed beneficence. ‘You know me, Hazjihn. Do you recall the evening I lectured on the Khed-Qahir Parables, in the west garden district of the City of Grey Flowers?’

  The bolter lowered a fraction. I recall it well. How many of my Legion’s warriors were present that night?

  Lorgar nodded in respect to the Thousand Son. ‘Thirty-seven, among a mortal crowd of over twenty thousand.’

  The warrior’s sloping eyes blinked slowly. And what is the fiftieth principle of Qahir?

  ‘There is no fiftieth principle of Qahir, for he died of a consumptive sickness soon after penning the nineteenth. The fiftieth principle of Khed is to maintain cleanliness of flesh and iron as surely as one would maintain purity of soul, for the external inexorably bleeds into the internal.’

  The warrior lowered his bolter. You may yet be a deceiver, but I will take you to my lord. He will judge you with his own eye.

  Lorgar inclined his head again, this time in thanks. He followed the limping figure of Hazjihn, ascending the mounds of rubble to enter the city proper. The warrior’s halting stride set his armour’s servo joints snarling.

  Lorgar watched the warrior’s limping movements. Whatever benefits the mutations offered, they were hidden by the Legion’s armour. Above all, a randomness lay in Hazjin’s corruption. Lorgar couldn’t help contrast it to the shaped, lethal warping of Argel Tal in his previous vision. His own son’s alterations had all the hallmarks of malicious intent, as if a greater intellect had kneaded the Word Bearer’s flesh, rewriting his life at the genetic level, crafting him into a living engine of war.

  Hazjihn’s mutation showed no such design. If anything, he seemed diseased.