Sons of the Emperor

by Warhammer 40K

  'Why did you not escape?' asked Vistario.

  'I would have, but the seismic shockwaves of Isstvan's death went deeper and lasted longer than any could have foreseen. The roof of the cavern collapsed, trapping me here as you see.'

  Vistario glanced at the strange device hooked to the interior of the wrecked starship.

  'And what is that?'

  'A sonic weapon of some kind. A handful of my former brothers found this place and sought to kill me. They failed, but the power of their weapons crippled me and left me as you see me now.'

  'And you wrought it into, what? A distress beacon of some kind?'

  The Dreadnought's vox-caster grated with what Vistario took to be a rueful chuckle.

  'A distress beacon?' said Rylanor. 'No, a lure.'

  'A lure for what?'

  The sound of dead skin slipping over rock sent a chill down Vistario's spine.

  A silken voice answered the Dreadnought's question.

  'For me,' it said. 'Isn't that right, Rylanor?'

  Vistario's mouth fell open as a towering, serpentine shape emerged from the shadows of the cavern. Multi-limbed, sinuous and beautiful, ivory white hair spilled across the shocking purple of his sculpted war-plate.

  'At last,' said Rylanor. 'Fulgrim.'

  The primarch was an abomination, even by the standards of warriors who had seen their own father hideously changed by the transformative energies of the Great Ocean. Vistario felt aether-fire pulsing within Fulgrim's body, his ability to manipulate its energies massively powerful yet unsubtle.

  Swords glittered at his midsection, and his eyes roved the chamber, taking the measure of the presented tableau. How long had he been watching and listening? In the centuries since the Battle of Terra, the Phoenician's behaviour defied rational understanding or a sense of predictability. Magnus himself had given up any form of prognostication concerning his brother's actions, so how could Vistario even begin to predict what Fulgrim might do next?

  'Ancient,' said Fulgrim, sliding over the floor with grotesque, peristaltic motions. 'You look terrible. A disgrace, even.'

  'What has become of you, my primarch…?' said Rylanor, his horrified disgust clear even through the degraded quality of his vox-caster. 'You are a monster.'

  'Says the scrap of ruined flesh maintained by grotesque machinery,' said Fulgrim, circling the four of them. His pale eyes were pearlescent orbs without pupils, soulless and devoid of anything that had once made him great. They regarded the warriors before him with only passing interest.

  'Why does Magnus send his broken sons to Isstvan III? Did you leant nothing from the Wolves' destruction of Prospero? My hermit brother should know by now that his meddlesome curiosity only leads to disaster.'

  Vistario fought to find his voice, always a problem in the face of a primarch. Doubly so in the presence of one so altered. Yet even though Fulgrim's appearance had changed so terribly, pangs of longing stirred in Vistario's breast.

  'We heard his message,' he managed.

  'Too bad for you,' said Fulgrim with a grin, taking in their predicament. Murshid still hung like a limp fish in Rylanor's grip, Vistario was covered by the assault cannon, and Akhtar stood immobile, his weapon trained unerringly upon the Dreadnought's sarcophagus.

  The Phoenician approached Rylanor.

  'So, old friend,' said Fulgrim. 'You have my attention. What is it you want me to hear? And do try to make it diverting - after all, you've had millennia to perfect it.'

  Rylanor dropped Murshid and used the wheezing, grating limb to push its carapace upright. Vistario saw the muzzle of the assault cannon track away from him, following the primarch's movements.

  He eased his mind into the warlike enumerations, letting the power of the Great Ocean into his flesh.

  +Be ready,+ he sent to his brothers. A flash of thought only.

  He felt their understanding, and flexed his psyche in readiness for wielding his powers. Conflicting visions pressed upon the meniscus of his mind: shredding bullets and mass-reactives, fire and an unstoppable tide of virulent destruction.

  The omens are not good.

  Dust and rubble fell from Rylanor's armour like sand in an hourglass. Fresh portions of the smashed object beneath the Dreadnought's body were revealed, and humming power cables ran from Rylanor's sarcophagus to an opened control panel.

  Vistario felt his blood chill as he finally understood what it was.

  'Has it truly been millennia?' asked Rylanor, his voice stronger now, coming from a time long ago and filled with infinite sadness and patient regret.

  'It has,' said Fulgrim, moving closer. 'Think of all that time wasted. All the glory unearned, all the victories denied.'

  Rylanor gave another grating bark of laughter.

  'Glory? You think I sought glory? How little you understood of your own Legion. Yes, I have indeed perfected what I wish you to hear,' said Rylanor as Fulgrim reached out to touch him. 'And though I am sure you will find it diverting, it will not be me that says it.'

  Fulgrim's grin faltered as he too saw what the Dreadnought's body had obscured.

  'No,' he said, as if he thought he could stop what was about to happen with a word.

  'Yes,' said Rylanor, sending an activating pulse of energy to the armed warhead of an unexploded virus bomb.

  Vistario saw the moment of detonation a fraction of a second before it happened. Instantaneously, he beheld a vision of the explosive spread of the Life Eater virus as it consumed them, dissolving like frost before the sun. He saw their doomed bodies transformed into replicating flesh refineries in which the hyper-evolving viral strands mutated and found ever more inventive ways of destroying organic material.

  All of this he witnessed in the space between life and death, the most fleeting glimpse into an inevitable future.

  But a fleeting glimpse was all an adept of the Corvidae needed.

  +Akhtar!+

  Already in the blunt, pugnacious enumerations, Akhtar was unleashing his power even as the detonation circuits of the virus bomb triggered. The casing shattered as the explosive heart of the bomb cracked open and the isolated viral compounds mixed in the precise amounts to catalyse the unstoppable reaction. Fire bloomed from the warhead in tortuous slow motion, lapping around Rylanor's sarcophagus like low-grade viscous promethium.

  +I cannot hold it for long!+ cried Akhtar, his Raptora powers stretched to their limits in holding back the explosion. Vistario reached out with his mind and poured his power into the warrior, feeling Murshid do the same.

  Fulgrim laughed as the creeping death slid slowly over the Dreadnought's body.

  'Is this it?' he said. 'You sought to draw me here to kill me?'

  Rylanor triggered his assault cannon, but - fast as quicksilver - Fulgrim caught it and crushed it before it could fire.

  'No, I don't think so,' said the primarch, effortlessly ripping the arm from the Dreadnought's body. Sparks flew from the ruptured limb and Fulgrim gave the weapon a dismissive glance before tossing it aside.

  'You betrayed us,' bellowed Rylanor. 'Your sons! You led us here to die. There is no forgiveness for that. None! You must die by my hand! The Emperor's justice will fall upon you. Not even Fulgrim the Illuminator can escape the Life Eater.'

  Fulgrim leaned in close to Rylanor and shook his head.

  'You wish me dead?' he said, scathing pity dripping from every syllable. 'Why? Because you think I betrayed you? The Legion? Oh, Rylanor, your thoughts are so narrow. If you could only see us now, how beautiful we have become. We shine so brightly, each of us a brilliant sun.'

  Fulgrim reached down, sliding his bare hand inside a rent torn in the Dreadnought's armour. He smiled, closing his eyes and letting his tongue slip across his lips as he pushed deeper inside.

  'Ah, there you are!' said Fulgrim, as Rylanor's vox-caster grated in fury. 'Wet and wriggling. I can feel your panic. It's delicious!'

  Rylanor's power fist swung around, bathed in fire. It struck Fulgrim on the shoulder, but Akhta
r's psychic force was not simply confined to the Life Eater's detonation. Fulgrim laughed off the sluggish attack and one of his lower arms drew a glittering sword of alien origin. The blade sliced in a cruelly precise arc, cutting through the fibre-bundle motivators and servos.

  Rylanor's arm fell limp at his side.

  Vistario watched the viral fire spread over the Dreadnought's carapace, slipping inside his buckled plates of armour. Rylanor did not care whether he lived or died, only that Fulgrim went with him.

  'Do. Not. Do. This!' barked the Dreadnought.

  'Why not? I am your master - I can do whatever I like. I can crush you or I can raise you up. Return to the Legion. Accept the gifts of the Dark Prince and you will walk at my side, clad once again in flesh. You can be anything, old friend! I will sculpt you into something beautiful - a god to these mortals!'

  'Never! All we have left between us is that we will die together!' roared the Dreadnought, the upper portion of his carapace burning with blue flames. 'I am Rylanor of the Emperor's Children. Ancient of Rites, Venerable of the Palatine Host, and proud servant of the Emperor of Mankind, Beloved by all. I reject you now and always!'

  Fulgrim laughed and said, 'I'm sorry, did it sound like I was offering you a choice?'

  The primarch wrenched his hand from Rylanor's sarcophagus, dragging a sopping mass of fluid and matter with him. Glutinous ropes dripped from his fingers; he was like a midwife holding a mewling newborn. Ruptured cables spilled amniotic fluid so stagnant it must surely have been poisoning Rylanor with every passing second.

  'I will remake you, brother,' said Fulgrim. 'You will be my crowning achievement.'

  Though his body was little more than rags of wet meat, Vistario sensed Rylanor's horror at this last violation. An inescapable destiny where he would become that which he hated most.

  +What do we do?+

  The question was Murshid's, and the connection between the Thousand Sons was so strong that the Athanaean's perception for emotion spread to all three of them.

  Vistario felt Fulgrim's infinite malice, his cruel enjoyment of Rylanor's anguish and the helplessness of the Thousand Sons. The primarch of the Emperor's Children revelled in his overweening pride, a trait Magnus had more than once told Vistario had been present long before his fall.

  But more than anything, stronger even than Fulgrim's spite, Vistario felt Rylanor's pride and honour, the unbending core of greatness that had set him against his brothers and seen him descend into obsessive madness beneath the surface of a dead world.

  Vistario took the measure of Fulgrim, seeing nothing worthy in him.

  His warriors felt the moment his decision was made.

  +Primarch Fulgrim!+ sent Vistario. +Rylanor deserves better than you.+

  The primarch looked up, his once bright eyes now black and filled with the darkest poison.

  +He deserves better than all of us.+

  He raised his bolter and fired a mass-reactive into the back of Akhtar's skull. The Raptora's head exploded and with his death, the psychic force holding back the warhead's detonation ended.

  Vistario saw fire.

  And once more, all life burned.

  It took much less time for the Life Eater to burn out on Isstvan III's second death. Its first ending had claimed eight billion lives, snuffed out in a matter of hours when Horus launched his bombardment from the Vengeful Spirit. With such plentiful mortal flesh to fuel the bio-killer's fury, the psychic scream was said to have eclipsed the Astronomican itself.

  A shadow emerged from the undercity, a serpentine outline of cinders, held together by a web of neverborn energy. Not even the viral toxins wrought by ancient science could unmake that which the darkest powers of the warp had raised up.

  The Phoenician's form was already weaving itself anew, but his soul was broken. For no pain, no hurt and no injury could wound such a being as much as denial of its magnificence.

  That was Ancient Rylanor's final victory.

  'Every man casts a shadow, not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit.'

  - Emerson, M2

  Years later, long after the Triumph of Ullanor, and the great bloodshed of the Heresy, and the darkness of the Fall that ended it, men forgot the hope they had once shared.

  It had been a fine thing, a spirit that had invested and fortified every soul, human and post-human alike as they stepped out from Terra upon the undertaking of reunion. They were torch-bearers, every one of them, carrying hope like a pure flame to illuminate the worlds and stars that had become lost from view in the long shadows of Old Night.

  History knows this time as the Great Crusade, but the name was not favoured by the men who led it. The Emperor, who is now a watchful god, spoke to his sons on many occasions, affirming his desire that a better name be found. The word 'crusade' implied vengeance and cleansing, a scouring of worlds and a ruthless doom to all enemies. 'There may be no enemies at all,' Horus Lupercal had said. 'Distance and strife have walled the galaxy from us, and the old high routes and shiftways have fallen to disuse and are choked with unstirred dust. We have not passed that way in centuries. We have not been able. True, we bear our arms and strap our harness-plate upon us, ready to deal soundly with enemies arising. But we should not expect them, nor treat all we meet with that potential.'

  Wars happened, and deeds of violent compliance driven by necessity. Those are the actions history remembers from that age. But for every world or culture that resisted, or denied the offer of friendship, for every xenos race that baulked and drew arms at the approach of mankind, a hundred worlds rejoiced and hymned their relief to see the expeditionary fleets take high anchor in their skies. The Great Crusade, so called by those who came later, was for the most part bloodless. Though the expeditionary fleets raced out from Terra like the fragments of a nail bomb, they voyaged not to destroy but to locate the lost and scattered branches of the human species, to rebuild and re-light a galactic culture that Strife and Old Night had, together, put asunder.

  Men forget that now. They forget the hope that had carried them forward. The wound of the Heresy War acts as monstrous punctuation in the texts of history, making it impossible to recall or even believe the spirit of optimism that had prevailed in the years prior.

  Two days before his death, Horus Lupercal is said to have cried out that all hope was gone.

  He was not foreseeing the murder that would end the civil war. Those close to him, though there were only a few left by then, believed he was lamenting the age before Ullanor, before Davin, before Isstvan and Calth. The time of uplifted spirit, and a resolve that seemed unbreakable. A glorious and inspiring template for the future that came from dreams of noble majesty, not visions of heresy.

  A future that had seemed possible, until it was suddenly not. A future worth dying for, and, certainly, worth living for.

  Ullanor had been marked. The greenskin xenos, 'orks' in expedition parlance, had risen to be one of the foremost real enemies of the Reunion Project. There was no dealing with them. Their bestial nature brooked no compliance and no negotiation. Plans had been drawn, threats assessed, and Ullanor had been identified as the site where the xenos menace would be met and put down.

  The expedition fleets were rearming for deployment. Time was precious. Fleet strategists proposed a window of eight months relative before Ullanor ceased to be a viable fight zone and the xenos campaign would be obliged to shift strategies to a new target world.

  Lupercal's fleet, the 63rd, lingered in the heliopause of the Issinium System, awaiting the return of compliance missions to Kest's Sun and Velich Tarn. Though eager to make shift, Horus Lupercal would not leave fleet elements behind.

  The 63rd had remained on station at the Issinium fringe for twenty months, and in that time had recorded six compliances, all peaceful. First Captain Abaddon had led missions to Kiskayde and Phocis, and obtained glad fealty from the cultures on both worlds. The Ordinators of Kiskayde, indeed, had furnished the expedition with auxiliaries to demonstrate their
willingness to support the Imperial cause. Kiskaydin jump-troops in engraved chrome armour lodged in the troop decks of the flagship, drilling in preparation for the xenos compliance, and learning, wide-eyed, the histories of Terra that they had missed out on. Kiskayde was a human colony culture established during the Age of Technology's stellar exodus; though their accents and habits were strange, they had not forgotten their rites of birth and blood.

  Captains Targost and Sedirae had brokered peace with the Fiefworlds at Orlustre. Captain Goshen had negotiated settlement with the wary and mistrustful Motherland of New Hearth, gently easing their concerns with gifts of high science and assurances of staged integration. Horus Lupercal had commended Lev Goshen for his adroit and sensitive diplomacy.

  Lupercal himself had led an embassy to Issinium, and won the free compliance of High Concerns who governed the system. He had feasted with them for nine days, and shown no loss of enthusiasm as the performance of their oral history, which lasted for the entire feast, rolled on and ever on, sing-song.

  Signals had come from Kest's Sun. Captains Loken and Qruze reported that the culture there was long dead. The signals that had drawn the fleet's attention had been found to be the automatic broadcasts of old telecommunication systems. Some viral plague, long defunct, had taken the ancient colonies during Old Night, and their beacons had been calling for help, pointlessly, for seven centuries. Loken and Qruze had spent a month searching the empty tomb cities for signs of life, or of stasis-held survivors. Now they were en route back to the fleet.

  Seven cultures: six new friends and allies returning to the fold, and one lost. A fine result to show for twenty months' work, with no loss of life, though the Mournival quietly complained for lack of martial practice.

  'Tell them it will come,' Horus told Maloghurst, his equerry. 'Ullanor awaits, and Ullanor will give them the test they seem to long for. But tell them too… they should not wish for it. That we can bring our kin together, and no blood spilled, is the way my father would prefer. We are sensible beings, so we have prepared ourselves for war better than any species in the sea of stars. But though we are well made for battle, we always must desire it least of all possible outcomes.'