"Poison will breach any armor. When faced with an invincible foe, simply bless his bloodstream with venom. His own racing heart will carry the poison faster throughout his body. Fear is a venom just as potent."
Malcharion heard someone sighing before they entered his small chamber. He ignored, it was most likely Sargent Vandred with the report he had asked for on the new recruits.
"Malcharion." It called out, and Malcharion knew that voice. Lord Commander Shang´s voice. He dropped the ink stained quill and turned to his superior. "What are you doing?"
"Writing." Malcharion said without missing a beat.
"Really?" Shang answered, raising his eyebrow. "I know you are one of the more eloquent captains of the Legion, but I´d never thought you would write."
Malcharion shrugged. "It helps me think and pass time. And besides, if a mortal can write a book Curze reads, why can't I?"
Shang thought it frivolous, their gene-father would hardly care about something made by the legion.
"Any ideas on what to call the book?" Shang asked, with genuine curiosity, their lord may not care but he did and besides Malcharion was one of the few who came from the City Edge, just like him.
"Tenebrous Walk, perhaps." Malcharion answered and Shang face palmed.
"Tenebrous Path, it sounds better. Don't forget the reports I asked for."
Malcharion saluted Shang. Saluting was generally not something very much done in the 8th, but Malcharion insisted on doing it nonetheless, and Shang did not mind.
Shang turned away, he had to go to the chamber of their gene-father. Yet even as he left Malcharion heard him mutter. "Why does Sevetar never care about his logistics? I have my own chapter to deal with, I don't need his as well."
His sire stood silently on his throne, like a thing to focused to see his surroundings, yet he knew very well that nothing that happened in or close to the sanctum of the Nighthaunter, was something his Lord was not aware of, whether he sleep or stood awake, whether he was of ship or on the ship. Lord Commander Shang, the Equerry to the Primarch knew all of that, and unlike that he did not know why his sire stared at the smooth black Orb that he never had used before.
It was on his obsidian table, like the priceless artifact that it was, and his father simply stared at it from his throne from the other grand chamber of his sanctum 30 meters away.
He simply stared, and stared, and stared, and Shang had to stay armored waiting for his Primarch to call him. Waiting his Lord to say why he had called him to his Sanctum. Shang had been waiting for eight hours, kneeling on the floor.
There was little to do in those eight hours, kneeling. Shang knew it, and yet he had to wait. He used that time to ponder about what he had witnessed and was witnessing. Whatever that mortal was trapped in the sarcophagus in stasis, whatever he did, he said. Whatever he told his Primarch, it changed him. Changed him so much that perhaps, his Lord himself hadn't yet noticed. For him, who stood alongside his lord so often, it was not hard to notice the change in his sire's behavior. Before it was clear his father had become restless, his sight more and more taxing him whether awake or asleep, before his skin behind the armor he used, behind the Nightmare mantle was often streaked with scars that only half healed. Before he laughed like a madman when he spoke or he became a philosopher to rival Lorgar Aurelian, two states who could switch at a moment's notice, alongside the ever shifting twitching of his eyes.
Now? Now his sire kept himself measured, the restlessness of before giving way to slow and deliberate movements that before were streaked with quick flashes of indecision mid action. His sight taxing as ever grew more silent, or not as painful. Shang doubted the curse of the Nighthaunter would ever leave the Nighthaunter, however in the form it now remains, he saw physically his father being less taxed by it. If he saw less, and if the visions had halted for a long time, he had no way of knowing, but it was good seeing his lord being spared of his own curse. His skin, now still remained with the scars, half healed, yet far deeper than before. Wounds on his back clearly made of stub weaponry. By the age of those now showing wounds, and their nature they could only have been from his Lord´s youth on the sunless world, when the Primarch was still small enough and weak enough for such a simple and primitive weapon (in relation to what the Legiones Astartes used) to wound him. Why they had started to show now, he did not know. And most importantly of all. Now. Now his lord was usually silent, pondering, brooding far more than before. Now the edge in his voice whenever he spoke before, the ever present hiss of displeasure or annoyance was heard less and less.
"Shang." His Lord spoke in the clear Nostraman of their homeworld and the Equerry rose up from the floor.
"How may I be of service, sire?" The Lord commander replied back, measured and deliberate. Whatever was going on through his lord´s mind it was best to not bet on niceties. The Nighthaunter had not brought their world and many more to heel through them, and he doubted very much his lord changed enough for them.
"Has the Emperor given us new orders for the Crusade?" The Orb reflected nothing, almost like a magnet jealously snatching all light in the dim lit chamber. It reflected nothing, nothing except the pale features of his lord, mirrored and re-mirrored many times, like different layers of his father being shown in each different circle of the spherical psychic instrument.
"There have been no new orders from Terra, my Lord."
Curze tapped his fingers on the arm rest. He continued to stare, and stare and stare. Shang didn't know what to make of it.
"How long has it been since I sent the request?." Curze asked, his eyes never straying from the Orb, not even to glance at his son.
"It has been 300 days since the filling."
"Almost a standard Terran year, and still silence from Terra." The fingernail tapped more and more on the clear obsidian. "Sometimes I think father forgets I exist." There was something that Shang couldn't quite put it. "I wonder, Shang. What will I see if I decide to try and use the Orb Magnus gave me all those years ago? It has been almost half a century since I last talked with him. Do you have any idea what it will show me, Equerry?"
"Do you, Sire?" The Equerry said, and Curze grinned, a fanged grin.
"I don't." The Primarch confessed, the grin staying on his face. "My visions never showed me looking through the Orb." The grin died there. "Then again, my visions never showed me that mortal coming to my room, nor his injury when I sent him to Fulgrim."
"Then why don't you look through it?" Shang did not know what had come to him to ask such a question. He felt his twin hearts pound as he waited for his Lord's reaction. A reaction who would certainly be terrible.
"Time is linear Shang. Did you know that?" an explanation was something Shang did not expect in his wildest dreams. If they had been talking about justice, he knew that was a possibility, his father loved to speak about justice.
"No, my Lord."
"A line in the sand that is the fabric of the universe. A line that comes all the way from the moment the universe was born until its end, and we live just in a part of that line. Some may think there is a choice in each moment we live, but in truth the line is already there, and we just run on top of it, following it as we live. The sight me and the Angel possess allows us to see blinks of that already woven strand of fate. He may believe otherwise but that is the truth." Shang noticed something in his father's voice. Sadness? No, surely not. Hollowness? Perhaps, but unlikely. His father was a Primarch. Then what was it?
"You are unappreciative of the mortal, why?" It eventually said.
"He is mortal, without skill or trade. Little man that speaks much and does little, Lord."
"Stop with the honorifics Shang, I'm tired of hearing them." Curze said and his eyes glanced for the first time away from the Orb. Shang nodded in understanding.
Curze returned to the Orb, that void like sphere, in silence, and Shang remained just as silent as he had been in the eight hours before.
There were many things going on through the Equerry´s mind. How reasonable his Lord was being, for example, he was pretty sure if this conversation had been happening a year earlier his Lord would have already sent him away or snarled at his answers. How the tone of his master sounded almost peaceful, almost devoid of the scars he bore. And above all, what was the importance of this mortal?
He had heard rumors from Sevetar and both the 10th and 13th companies, on how this mortal spoke, of what he spoke, how he in one breath condemned the methods of their lord and in the next claimed understanding of their need. How in one he decried Nostramo´s Dark King, and in the other he said that they had been necessary if half of the tales about the sunless world were true. All of them were true. It was strange, it was useless speech. They were Astartes, they did what their Primarch wished them to and nothing more. Yet he couldn't shake the inkling that his Lord was too enamored by this mortal. As if a great mighty beast decided to take on a strange weak thing as its pet.
"There is a question in your mind, Shang, ask it." His lord said out of nowhere, halting the Equerry´s thoughts dead in their tracks.
"Sire, I-" Curze cut him off as he stared into the Orb.
"Ask the question Shang." There was an edge of annoyance in the Primarch´s words, yet his characteristic snarl remained absent.
"The mortal." He stared. "Why don't you dispose of him? What reason keeps you from shutting down the stasis field and allowing him to die?"
His Lord moved, his head shifted from the orb to the equerry, he stared at him for a few seconds. Shang could feel his twin heart pound as his gene-father looked at him, with an sight that seemed to pierce his very soul, his throat was dry and it became hard to breathe, the air seemingly vanishing from the room. Never before in all the years he had severed the Nighthaunter did he feel so much dread and awe. His mind was elated, the byproduct of the close ties between Primarch and genesons and yet his heart pounded in dread. His body wanted to take a step back, perhaps even run away, his mind wished to get even closer, to feel the warmth of his gene-father's hand, in the end he remained where he stood. He stared, and stared and stared until he rose from his throne. His unshielded snow white skin scarred in a thousand places, wounds taken in a time before Shang had been born.
And then he moved from the throne chamber for a few moments. He went to the office he had never used in his Sanctum and came back with small printed sheets of paper and clothed in his feathered cloak. By its smell, leather made from human skin. The Nighthaunter lazily threw the book at his Equerry.
He grabbed it midair and he turned confused to his lord. "What am I supposed to do with this?"
"You asked why I don't let Melkor die." He used the mortal´s name. It had been a very long time since it had been used by anyone on the ship. "Read it, the answer lies there."
Shang was confused for a few seconds, but then opened the book at random and started reading. He did not care much about it. Curze sat back on the throne, legs and arms crossed, his eyes closed.
On the Nature of Belief.
Disclaimer, I am no theologian nor a philosopher.
"Read it out loud." Curze said as Shang was mid sentence.
Humanity always held beliefs. In gods, in spirits, in other people. It is something as old as the species. In all the ages I know about, humanity always struggled to accept differing beliefs. Once people made war with it as an excuse, or perhaps some of those that marched truly believed in what they shouted.
Belief is something that both made humanity thrive in dark times, and chained it in Golden Ages, but it was never belief itself. What chained humanity back was always the interpretation and the perception about those beliefs.
Belief has always been tied with faith, but they are not the same. Faith is but one of many beliefs a man may have. Perhaps he has faith in a higher power than himself, revering it so that when his life is no longer in his hands his fate may not be for nought. Perhaps he has faith in his equals, in his greatest friends, in his partner, in his family. Perhaps he has faith in a pet, like a dog enthusiast trusting unconditionally the dog he owns. And Perhaps he has faith in only himself. In any of these cases where the faiths they possess may be wildly different they all possess beliefs. Beliefs that their friends may come to their help or anything else.
The difference between faith and belief, is that faith is belief without factual evidence. It requires no proof to convince. It grants conviction to those who believe. It brings hope to the hopeless, and where it flourishes, fates change.
"Ah." Curze mused, his finger taping the obsidian throne again and his face turned to a grin. "You opened the book in the forbidden section."
Shang froze.
"You don't need to be worried. That section is merely the part where he wrote things that may be going against the Emperor´s commands. Melkor wrote quite a lot there. Do you get it now? Why I keep him?"
"No." Shang answered, still confused. If it was only for the discordant belief he doubted very much his Lord would keep him around.
"A pity." Curze´s grin fell from his face. With his hand he gestured to his Equerry to give back the book.
Shang complied and gave the book back to his Lord, who then promptly threw it into the office he took it from. It landed in that lightless chamber with a loud thump.
"The truth is, Shang, I do not know why I have kept this mortal alive. I have never seen him in the strands of fate, he disrespects me at every turn and yet he knows what to say to me." Shang knew that his lord was now speaking more to himself than to him. "The Emperor praised me for my rule over this world. Even Fulgrim admired it. A model of compliance. An obedient world, they said. Were my people happy? Did that even matter? I made these people human, despite their feral drives. Do you know what Melkor said about the methods I used on Nostramo to civilize it?"
"I have no interest in knowing, sire." Shang´s hearts quickened at the lie and Curze smiled.
"He called me a brutal but just king. A king. A King. A King." His laughter was like a shrill voice in the air, and just as suddenly as it started it stopped. "Do you know what he called me after that? Do you? No? Oh, I´ll tell you. He called me a child." And he laughed again. "A Child. No one ever called me that." He stopped. "Do you think I am a child, Shang?"
"No, my Lord." Shang answered, and it was a truthful answer. What sort of being could cower entire worlds by their mere whisper and be a child?
"Come on, Shang." His Lord almost pleaded, and Shang could see he was being ironic. The Nighthaunter using irony? Even in the solitude and privacy of his own chamber, Shang couldn't have thought that such a day might have come. "I am laying bare anything that comes through my mind. aren't you even a little bit curious on what goes through the mind of your Primarch?"
Such a question, such a confession. Why was his Lord speaking these words to him? Why now? Why confess? Why to him? He did not know what to say, so he went with the most truthful "Sire, why are you saying that to me?"
"Sev is too uncaring, if not for his wit and jests I´d say he was an automaton in power armor. You on the other hand… You care. Out of all my sons you care. You care about Nostramo and you care about me" he started to laugh as he said the last sentence. "You genuinely care about me, and that is puzzling."
"I am honored you find me puzzling, sire, and uncaring as the First Captain is, he is still popular amongst the Legion." Shang answered honestly. There was some sort of pride in being called puzzling by his lord.
"Why do you care about me, Shang?" His lord was now more serious than before, more akin to when he spoke staring at the Orb, unlike the continuous eye contact with his son. A contact that felt more soft and much less awe and terror inspiring than the first time. "Why do you care about Nostramo?"
Shang remembered Nostramo clearly, he remembered his youth almost as clearly as he did the men he flayed in the Great Crusade. He came from City´s Edge, the best part of Quintos, the best part of Nostramo, and his memories and experiences there, his life with both parents not being completely miserable in life was something that differentiated him from his Legion brothers.
He came from City´s Edge, because he passed the test required to enter, in a time where gang rats and sons of rich lords vied to enter the Legiones Astartes.
"You are our Primarch, the Legion´s father. Is it not natural for me to care about you?" Shang asked his Lord.
"I am a monster, Shang." Curze replied, looking at the ceiling. "I do not deserve to be cared for. My own father will order my death, Shang. Do you think I deserve to be cared for if the Emperor himself will give that order?"
There was an oppressive silence after the Nighthaunter spoke those words, Shang tried to keep his face unmoved, neutral, but to do so after being told such a thing… He doubted he succeeded.
"Does it matter, Lord?" Shang then countered. The silence had been oppressive, but his father had made a question and Shang would answer. "You are still our father."
Konrad Curze blinked before speaking, those dark pupils sliding beneath the snow pale skin for one of the few times his Lord ever blinked. "Many of your brothers do not feel that way."
"Many of my brothers did not live in City´s Edge, I did."
Silence returned once more, like an oppressive void engulfing all sense, until Curze spoke again "Nostramo… Why do you care about it?"
It took a while before Shang answered the question. He had many emotions to go through, Nostramo was not a kind world, but it was his home. "It is my home, sire. I grew up there, I lived my life there before joining the Legion."
"So did I Shang, and it was a world of savages and beasts." There was truth in his father's words. Shang could not argue about that, he had heard the tales when young on how Nostramo before the Nighthaunter had been, somewhat distant tales for the young mortal he was except the fear that permeated Quintus´ every wall.
"It was, and it most likely still is… But it is my home, though I confess, in the 80 years I have served you it has most likely changed immensely in my absence, not much of course, Nostramo will always be Nostramo." There was a certain levity in Shang´s tone, as if he was joking with himself. Curze did not move.
"I am a monster, Shang. I became one to raise your people above the level of beasts, and yet Nostramo will always be the den of beasts." His father mused staring up at the now star lit ceiling. "I did what I had to do, fear was the only thing your people understood. Justice, your people, your society was not just, yet when I tried to make it so, the only thing you would obey was fear, the only way to bring justice to Nostramo. As long as your people understand fear there will be justice." He turned to the Orb again "And yet, Melkor says fear is like iron, the iron my brother Perturabo loves so much. It cracks before it bends... the mortal says it will never be enough."
There was bitterness in his voice, hate-driven bitterness. But hate at what? Shang wondered. At the world, at Nostramo, or perhaps, at himself?
"Whatever the mortal speaks of, I only know this, Father, your bloody work left the streets silent. We heard the cries of the men and children being flayed through the vox, but it kept our world... at peace." Shang's voice was steady, though he felt a strange unease.
Curze's eyes narrowed. "Not men and children, Shang, criminals. Gutter rats who spat on the mercy I gave them. I allowed them to live, and now see what their ilk do to my Legion. Nostramo is poisoning it from within."
Shang's unease deepened as he searched his lord's face. "Sire, what are you talking about?"
"Poison, Nostramo is a poison coursing through our blood stream. I should have destroyed the gangs. Giving them mercy if they halted their ways was a mistake; death was the thing they deserved."
Had the gangs chosen to betray the king they themselves acclaimed? Shang thought. Were they mad? Going against Dominus Nox was asking for death. Only his brothers and the Emperor could escape that from the Nighthaunter and even then…
"I am a monster. I killed and flayed to bring justice to Nostramo, to try and bring some form of justice to the Galaxy, but look how everything turns out. Even when I tried showing my hands to mercy they spat on it the moment I turned my back on them. I should have killed them all Shang, this way there would still be peace." Curze sighed, his body slumped against the throne, and he stared up at the star lit ceiling. A ceiling that Shang knew one of the little lights was the poisoned sun of Nostramo. "Leave me Shang."
Shang turned to leave, but before the hydraulic adamantium door closed behind him, leaving his Lord alone in his sunless Sanctum, he heard the faint hissing whisper of his gene-father.
"I am a monster… I am a monster."
Time, the essence of life. What allows it to come into being. What permits sentience and what gives meaning. Time is all of those things and none of them simultaneously. It is the measure by which Empires crumble to dust , by which wisdom comes about and which life is judged as good or evil.
Yet for all its things, mortality has always a lack of it, always wishing it had more, to do more or to not even have to do things in the now. Yet this lack is what drives, what drove humanity forward. What pushed them for more, once they mastered their world. The wish to accomplish more with the time allowed to them. Mankind has always been a greedy race, never content with what they possess, never gazing at what time and life could have thrown them into.
They threw themselves into the stars to see how far their hands could grasp, how far would time allow this delusion they believed, the delusion of needing and wanting always more and that it was theirs to take, would be permitted. They sought more, and more, and more and in the end they almost lost everything.
All things were bust dust in the face of time, for all things that begin must come to an end. Such is the one law that all things are bound to, even in a place where time has no meaning. Once the masters of the Immaterium, the seeders of life, those that had achieved immortality perished before another younger race which tried to rest immortality from their hands. Time had ended for the immortals, just as it soon seemed to this younger race.
Time brought mankind to the brink of extinction more than once before. When we were but another animal running in Terra´s plains that nature saw fit to test us, and we were almost wiped. Then in the Age of Enlightenment, in that age remembered by Darkness, our own creations turned against us. We thought ourselves masters of the universe, nature was at our mercy, the stars within our grasp, and yet we almost fell down to the abyss of extinction.
In thousands of worlds in thousands of different systems, humanity changed as each place tried to weather a storm of our own making, and brothers became cousins.
Terra´s green pasture died in that storm, and in its place arose the irradiated desert sands, sands I have never seen.
The wind on my face, me above a hill, gazing down at the green forests and farms in the valley below, and on the mirrored slopes, on the other side the small houses of villages. In their place will not be the gothic metallic towering structures that once had been perfect archeologies built upon Standard Template Construct, and the artificial intelligence that kept everything balanced. In their place will not be a Hive City, for there are no hives in this land, for unlike Lutetia in the land of Franc this land was not spared by the ancient irradiated conflict that engulfed Terra in Old Night. No in the place of his home, the realm he had been born, and the brother realm his nation hated and loved, warred and allied in equal parts over the course of history was also nought but dust.
Yet there are still those in this age who try to bring it back to the little green and blue pearl. The Emperor, most notably. The Emperor and his Imperium, whose crusade across the stars reconnects the many worlds of humanity, bringing as much enlightenment as destruction in their wake. The Emperor claims lordship over man, but man never had one ruler… Perhaps it did in the Golden Age, perhaps humanity was but one state, a confederation, yet such a thing I do not know, I was not there, and both pride and reason make me think otherwise.
Mankind is anathema to unification in the long run. Perhaps with cultural unification and other such things it may be possible, I doubt it will be. It is like asking the balkans to stop trying to blow up each other for five minutes. They will stop for a single one with luck.
And just as Mankind is anathema to unification in the long run, the Emperor is Anathema to Chaos. To those parasites who seep into reality to take what was never theirs to begin with. The Anathema to Chaos wishes to deprive them of their power, the power of faith and emotion. He will not succeed, even now they plot to prevent this. He will try, and perhaps if he remembered what is to be human he would succeed. Perhaps he remembers and chooses to forget, perhaps he does not remember at all, yet through all of this one thing remains the same. Anathema or no Anathema, mankind will never trade faith for reason. They will trade one for the other, yet the faith will remain, instead of a god it will be in science, and that is perhaps as bad as the divine.
Perhaps I can tell this to Curze, perhaps he will listen to me. When the Parasites strike the Imperium is not a thing worthy of belonging to, it is a state built by a tyrant to be ruled by uncaring tyrants from Terra. Such a thing may be necessary in the later ages, but perhaps we could try a third path.
I do not know what vision he saw when he witnessed the Emperor for the first time on Nostramo, I will never know unless he tells me. Yet I suspect he saw his father wounded in the Golden Throne, as the Corpse God the traitors will in time call him. Perhaps he saw the Imperium as it will become without the guiding hand of the Emperor, Malcador and the Primarchs. But is the Imperium worth defending? Is it worth throwing the maddened son into the defense of a realm who will never appreciate him? No.
Terra will burn. I cannot change that, whether it's Horus, Sanguinius, the Lion, Guilliman or Dorn leading the crusade of the Parasite Gods and wounding the Emperor unto death.
Terra will burn, and perhaps we should try a third path.