Ah, you're still alive, I see. Good – I've been searching for a loyalist Astartes who isn't dead for some time now. No, no – there's no need struggle like that; I'm not here to torment or defile you – that's Valska's way of worship and he's still sporting with your captain, Karadius, in the primary chapel-hall. Defeat is an ugly thing to endure; though you should know Karadius fought splendidly, he truly did – but Valska is the finest swordsman in my company and he earned the Dark Prince's favor long ago. Karadius had no hope of besting him and while I might envy Valska's blade-skills from afar I can't bring myself to join in his debauched victory revelries, so consider yourself fortunate that I'm the one who found you. Now that the citadel's been taken there's not much for me to do except conduct opposition mop-ups; if anyone comes along I'll just put a bolt-round through your skull and say I'm making sure none of you survive long enough to mount a coordinated resistance. Your name is Kederic, I read, though you'll have to forgive me for not recognizing your Chapter emblem – there are so many, and I don't bother keeping track of them anymore…

All I want is to talk to you, Kederic, while you still live. And no, I'm not going to preach about the glories of Chaos or the transcendencies offered by the gods. It would be quite hypocritical of me if I did. I've never once asked them to grant me anything, even though the Neverborn often whisper promises into my ears or unsettle my rest with enticing visions. My rag-tag warband doesn't particularly care which of the four Primordial Powers you worship, so long as you can differentiate between your bolter and your backside and fight like a daemon once battle is joined. But in the privacy of my own quarters I worship nothing. I bow before no god. The thing of it is, Kederic, I despise them, deep in the depths of my hearts – I despise all of them: the gods, the Neverborn, our deranged cult-auxiliaries and above all, the scheming, backstabbing, power-hungry, half-mad Space Marines who are supposedly my battle-brothers. They aren't really my brothers, you know; not in the way the Astartes of your Chapter are brothers to you…

Are you thirsty, Kederic? You look thirsty – though it's hard to tell, considering what a mess your face is. I regret I haven't got any water to offer, but at least I can keep the carrion crows from pecking at your entrails until you get around to dying. You certainly made a good account of yourself; I actually know the two Astartes lying dead next to you personally. Their names were Hoxal and Kallox, and I'm so glad you killed them – Hoxal treated me like I was some simpleton who couldn't tell a grox and a carnodon apart; every time I made a suggestion during our mission briefings he'd always snidely scorn my ideas and mock my strategies in an attempt to belittle me before our superiors. Kallox was worse – he enjoyed humiliating me in the dueling pits; it wasn't enough that he bled me each time we crossed blades – he liked to hurt me, and it wasn't because he was a devotee of the Dark Prince, like Valska; he was just cruel, like it was an innate thing, as instinctive to him as blinking. It was rumored that he had formally belonged to a Night Lords warband. I won't bore you with the unpleasant details; I'll just say you did the whole galaxy a favor when you took his head…

You see, Kederic, there's a reason why most of my so-called 'brothers' disregard me and treat me like drying viscera clinging to their boots – and it's for a reason I have no control over. I am 'young,' relatively speaking. I've only been an Astartes for thirty-three Terran-standard years, though when you're in the Eye the concept of time can become quite warped. Virtually every Space Marine comprising my warband used to belong to one loyalist Chapter or another, and there are many who claim to be veterans of the so-called Long War: warriors who supposedly fought at Isstvan V and then laid siege to Terra itself all those thousands of years ago. Not me, obviously. I'm neither a loyalist-turned-traitor nor a veteran of the Great Crusade. The Black Legion apothecaries who forged me and the drill-masters who trained me made sure I knew the truth of my origins, ensuring I would strive all the more fervently to prove myself in the upcoming crusade, so I would fight harder and slaughter with more savagery in order to repudiate my genetic heritage – for although I stand before you in tarnished Black Legion heraldry, I'm no scion of the defeated Warmaster…

You appear curious now, if I'm reading your expression rightly. Yes, it's true – I'm no Son of Horus and was never indoctrinated into believing I was. The genetic legacy I carry within me is that of the primarch Roboute Guilliman, the False Emperor's own Avenging Son. The Space Marine Chapter my gene-seed originates from was known to the Imperium as the Crimson Consuls – one of the Ultramarines' many successor Chapters. The Crimson Consuls were destroyed to a man from both within and without by the machinations of the Alpha Legion and their gene-seed stores plundered to provide the Black Legion with fresh recruits for their next Crusade. That's the burden I bare, Kederic; my commanders and my peers alike look down on me because I'm the bastard son of a defeated Chapter, the second-rate by-blow of a dead brotherhood found wanting. In spite of all the atrocities I've perpetrated to prove my commitment to the Despoiler's cause, I'll never be truly accepted by my 'brothers;' I'll never be worthy enough to be regarded as one of them…

And this is why I've come looking for you, Kederic. This is why I'm speaking civilly to you instead of slaying or torturing you, as you expected me to do. For it isn't only the honeyed temptations of the Neverborn that plague me during my solitary hours; I have other visions, sometimes – or perhaps they are gene-imprinted memories of a kind; I honestly don't know. But in these visions, I'm standing on the parapets of a great sky-piercing bastion, looking out over a frigid landscape of eternal snow and everlasting ice. Space Marines stand on either side of me, armored in red and white, their Imperial heraldry displayed proudly, united in purpose and bonded by their oaths and their shared kinship. Briefly, for less then a heartbeat, I experience true brotherhood and a genuine sense of belonging – something I've always yearned for but have never truly known. How I cherish those visions! How I hate them! For in standing alongside my genetic forbearers – these extinct Crimson Consuls – I glimpse an existence that could have been mine, had fate taken a different course. I see what once was – and what can never be…

Is that pity I spy in your eyes, Kederic – or genuine grief? Yes. Now you understand why I refuse to bend the knee to my 'brothers' gods and why I fail to gain my peers' acceptance. I despise them on an innate level, instinctively, just as Kallox inflicted pain on instinct. Because, unlike me, all my 'brothers' had a choice; each one of them – Long War veteran or otherwise – chose at some fateful point in their lives who they would serve and what they would fight for. I was never given that choice. My brief transhuman life, as far back as I can remember, has been one of perpetual war against the Imperium and against the Astartes who are loyal to it – Astartes such as you and your Chapter. We fight and fight, even amongst ourselves, until we are slain and others are created to take our places. I never got to decide where my loyalties would lie. Tell me, Kederic – just nod or shake your head, if you can – do you still feel bonded to your battle-brothers, to your Chapter, even though you're alone and slowly dying, with only a hated foe to witness your end?

You're nodding – yes; I can see the sincerity in your eyes. I believe you. And if the Neverborn were to whisper promises into your ears, if the gods themselves offered to restore your body and deliver you from death if you only forswore your oaths to the False Emperor, would you do it, even now? No? No – there it is, then: you've made your choice, a choice that was denied to me. I – what? Wait, stop – don't try to speak, Kederic, you can barely breathe as it is; it's pointless to –

Oh very well, I'll come closer. Don't think about attempting anything heroic; you aren't in any condition to overcome me, much less kill me. What are you trying to say? All I can hear is the blood burbling in the back of your throat. Closer, then; fine. Let me shove Hoxal aside first; there, that's better – I'll kneel down beside you and put my ear to your lips. Speak, Kederic; I'm listening, just as you have listened – what do wish to tell me?

There is always a choice? It that it? Is that what you want me to know? That there's always a choice? That I can – ah, but you spoke with your final breath; your eyes are now empty of the conviction that burned within them. Yet I see; I understand. I can still choose, even now. I'd always believed I had no capacity to choose, thinking I was just another pawn twisting powerlessly in the talons of circumstance and fate. But that's not what you believed, is it? You died having made your choice and staying true to it. Thank you, Kederic. Yes – Yes! There is always a choice. My eyes are opening to an endless parade of possibilities. I salute you, brother. I will go and make my choice; perhaps not here, perhaps not today – but I will make it, when the hour is right – and then…then my false 'brothers' and their wretched gods will know my wrath – the avenging wrath of the last Crimson Consul…