Ah, at last, the triumphant hero confronts the wicked villain in his inner sanctum. The villain's guards lay dead, his armies shattered, his goals nothing more than...dust, in the wind. This is where the villain mocks the hero for his foolish efforts, then goes on to defend his actions as for the good of the galaxy, then begins to babble on and on, and the hero delivers a witty one-liner and engages him in battle.
How trite. How cliché. How droll.
That is not how this story goes. There will be no battle.
Here you stand, now, allowing the villain his last words, his last soliloquy before his death. How good of you. My actions...they were not for the good of the galaxy. I fully embrace the fact that they were wrong - heinous, wicked, evil, undoubtedly so. But do we not live in a wicked galaxy? A regime more corrupt and despotic than any that came before it stretches from one spiraling arm to the other. A thousand people are sacrificed, every day, to ensure that a corpse can continue to rule, unmoving, uncaring, from his gilded throne of lies on "Holy Terra." Innovation is stamped out as heretical the breadth of this glorious Imperium, and worlds are emptied of their promising young men and women as tithes, to feed the ever-hungry war machine of the fetid remains of a once-glorious Empire.
How do I know, you ask? How do I know all of this? You fool. I was there. I was there on Terra, landing with my brothers to throw down the Liar, and place Horus on the throne. I did not do so outside of some...blind, ignorantly-hopeful wish that this would bring peace to the Galaxy - no, I did it because it would end the Galaxy. But we know how that story goes. The final clash between father and misguided son, the entombment of your precious Emperor, the slow decay of the Imperium I once fought for, that my brothers DIED for! At first, I was angry - enraged, filled with such bile and hatred that I could scarcely think. I threw myself into conflict after conflict, seeking only to slake my warthirst on the blood of the followers of the Emperor that had cast us aside as TRAITORS.
But then...I began to think. And then my hatred left, replaced with naught but amusement. For in these past 10,000 years, the Imperium has done to itself what we had all strived and failed to do. It is dying. Shriveling up, drying out. Entire subsectors go dark, and it takes centuries for the bloated, bureaucratic hell of the Administratum to even notice the paperwork has stopped coming in!
And now...here we stand. Your blade at my throat. My armies scattered. My guards dead, my plans nothing more than dust in the dying breaths of wind from the Imperium's desiccated lungs. But I have won. For you listened. The seed of doubt has been planted, and it can never be expunged. You may kill me here, now, today. You will. I have seen it. But I will not die. I will be returned to the Occulus Terribus, and you will go and return to your fleet, and tell tales of your victory to your commanders, and then, twenty, fifty, one hundred years from now, that seed planted in your soul will grow. We will meet again.
Until then, my br