On Ideals

By author SIngemeister

The young man sat cross-legged on the dirt of the canopy-shaded courtyard. A fly landed on his nose. He bore it as one must, as one was meant to in this circumstance. He felt it wander across his skin, sensing the smallest hairs upon its feet, letting the wind from its buzzing wings wash across his face.

They called him Maratekeji, Rati for short, for how quickly and skinny he had grown. It meant "Bony Legs". He was taller than most, faster than many, and had a strength that belied his years.

And he was bored. Very bored. His mind worked faster too, faster than almost anyone except the masters here. He devoured information, guzzled experiences, took everything everyone had to teach him and asked for more. Even then, that was not really enough. He would go off, on his own or with his friends, to see what else there was.

The fly flew away. Maratekeji huffed in a mixture of relief and irritation.

He could no longer sit in meditation. He had spent too long trying to discover things on the inside—what more was there to be seen? The cool, soft sand had become coarse and irritating, winding up in places it should not. The bird song had grown somewhat dull once he had listened to it hard enough to hear their endless squabbles for mates and territory. They were on a new world.

Rati needed to explore it. There were lectures going on, lessons, discussions, fights, everything. He simply could not experience all that was happening whilst sitting here in the dust.

He reached out and tapped Skarax on the shoulder. The reptilian creature flinched, startled from his doze. The young man grinned. "Come on now, mate. Can't be sitting around for ever! We didn't come here to contemplate spiders."

Skarax growled in irritation, scratching his scaly snout as he looked into his friend's indigo eyes. "Agh, can you never leave anything be, Rati? Sit still for five damn minutes?"

A broad grin spread across the young man's face, wrinkling his cheeks, contorting the painted lines.

"No, never."

Skarax broke his stare, blinking furiously.

"Ugh, fine then. Have it your way. You'd only drag me off with you if I said no."

Rati laughed, deep and true.

"Fair! You will join me willingly, or you will join me by force!"

He set off with a jaunty stride, his companion trailing behind him, scurrying to match Rati's long steps.

Voices, eerie, near and distant at once, echoed through the shifting halls of the place. Debates, discussions, symposiums, all could be find here—in the distance, the sounds of battle came as the wardens drove away interlopers. Rati turned left, left, and left twice more, following the routes he knew to be novel through his old memories, trusting his own nature, his own mind to find its way through the maze. Skarax, who for all his talent had never been as comfortable within these halls, stayed close behind.

They stopped at the door to a lecturing space, peering over the crowd of cross-legged listeners who sat in rapt attention to the slow, steady speech of a grand thinking machine, a great rounded thing with a small circular head.

"War, violence, as ink, as oil, stains all it touches," the great iron speaker droned on, their voice soothing and stolid. "If a hand is open whilst a blade is held in the other, then is that hand truly open? Does the potential promise of the sword refute consent? War and violence can only promise more of the same. In this, they are as a fire, ever self-perpetuating until it runs foul of fuel—and only then it may die. As a fire, the more that war begets war, the more fuel—the more enemies—it can consume into itself, its heat, its intensity growing and growing."

Rati was half-interested, if only for the metaphor. Skarax snorted.

"Never heard of a bucket of water, this one."

Rati grinned, and nudged his friend with his knee.

"Want to move on? See if there's something more interesting?"

"Hmm. Might as well."

The pair set off through the winding ways, slipping through doorway to doorway, drinking in dashes of speeches, watching with glee as one heated conversation on the nature of the past and future devolved into a very present fistfight. Rati was half-tempted to join in, lay about himself as only he could here, but Skarax poked him in the ribs until he moved on.

They continued on in this fashion for perhaps an hour in this timeless place—until the sound of a particularly sonorous and angry voice tore through their wanders and grabbed their attention by the throat.

"Mankind turned on us! If not through malice, then through incompetence! When did the Veil first begin to shroud the galaxy? When their machines turned upon all life! They slaughtered non-Terrans by the trillion! The Federation required our aid to end the threat! They could not even solve their own mistake!"

Jeers rose from the crowd; though how many were in agreement or opposition, Rati could not tell. He peered round the doorway, gazing upon the narrow, pale figure roaring from its pulpit at the despairing figure at the opposing podium, a well-dressed collection of hive-worms clutching what would pass for their face.

"And then! And then!" the speaker roared over the tumult, "they failed once more! They could not contain their own psychic potential, as a thousand other species have succeeded in doing! Their waking-wychbreed tore the very fabric of reality! Unleashed powers beyond control, the wildest spirits of the Dreaming World! Went mad with power, enslaved entire worlds!"

It slammed two great, pock-marked fists into the arm of the chair.

"Humans lost the right! The right to the mantle, to responsibility! They proved themselves unworthy of respect as a great power, as trustworthy, as valued for anything other than subservience! Until they earn their place!"

The tumult became a riot of furious roars and bellows. Skarax grabbed Rati and began dragging him away, so much so that the young man barely caught the sight of the great squamous and flabby symposiarch silencing the squabbling hall with a burst of psionic energy that made Rati's eyes boggle and ears bleed.

The ringing subsided eventually, and the man managed to bring himself to look back at the worried stare of his Tarellian friend.

"Are you alright? That seemed to take a lot out of you."

Rati tried to speak, but his voice came as a hoarse croak swallowing his words. As he worked saliva into his desiccated mouth, he clapped his friend on the shoulder in assurance.

Skarax nodded, patting the hand.

"Sorry you had to hear that. I don't believe that sort of thing, you know. There's… some enmity towards humans, but I don't see the point. No reason to."

Rati gave him a weak smile.

"Don't you go worrying about it. That sort of nonsense doesn't bother me. Any fool who lumps all of one kind into one group is just that—a fool. I'm a human, not all humanity. Can't be rightly judged by their full actions."

"A wise way to view the world."

The pair jumped at the sudden voice behind them, whirling around to see—nothing. Skarax grabbed his knife. Rati took a deep breath and reached into the reservoir of power his mentor had—

His mentor.

Of course.

He sighed and shook his head with a wry grin.

"I know it's you, Elder. Come out and show yourself."

The shadows swirled in this place where no shadows fell, forming and informing a small, hunched shape. An avuncular chuckle issued hissing forth from the twisting umbrae that hid itself from the watcher's eyes.

"Ah, perceptive as ever. A skill that will serve you well in the time to come."

Skarax and Rati gave each other a confused glance, Skarax's eyes watering as he did so, never able to bear.

"Time, elder? What time would that be?"

"Time to leave this place. There is little more to learn. You already know how to walk between the stars, have learned how to draw on your own essence. The lessons here… will drain you more than they complete you, I think."

"And if I think I am not yet ready?"

"My finest student." His mentor smiled. "Ever curious, ever arguing, made for more than this. This memory, more than others, will stay with you, even in this place where memories do not form."

One scabrous hand reached out, and drew from nowhere a beautiful, eldritch stave, made of singing crystal and bladed long and sharp.

"For your wanderings I give this to you, for I no longer have need of it whilst you yet will. And with it I gave another gift. That of a name."

The six-fingered hand reached up, and upon the finger tips appeared a pale substance, ghostly almost, that was daubed across Maratekeji's forehead, completing his markings, circling his third eye.

"The serpent. The wanderer.

Yoorlungkura"

could not catch his breath. They were here, again. Once more they had found him, found him through every baffle and trick and falsehood he could lie behind him. How? The same ships, wreathed in blood, painted in ash, black as the starless night, in the mind's eye had come for him. Even now he as he reached out, into the darkness, seeking a pathway between the worlds, he knew the emptiness of those that hunted him, the all-swallowing lack of soul.

"Hail, friend."

Yoorlungkura turned. A man stood there. An old man, long in beard, kind of face—no, wait. A man. An old man, yes. No.

Yoorlungkura closed his eyes, willing them to see through the mist and shadows before him. His eyes opened. A man, a giant, clad in gold, no, an ur-gold, an apex gold that reflected that eerie light of the Dreaming World. One hand was hold open towards him. The other held a flaming sword.

"Well met."

The voice was warm and kindly, imperious and commanding and yet something hid behind it still, something hidden behind the image of the giant too, a curtain drawn, swallowing the truth.

Yoorlungkura said nothing. He levelled his gaze at the stranger, meeting his eyes.

For the first time, he blinked before another person did.

"I only wish to talk," said the stranger.

"Then drop your sword," replied Yoorlungkura.

The man smiled. Yoorlungkura reeled slightly. He could feel the power cascading off this fellow, "I did not know what I might meet here. Forearmed is forewarned, after all."

"I'm certain you could have dealt with it. Relieve yourself of your sword."

The man inclined his head, and flicked his eyes towards Yoorlungkura's spear.

"Will you disarm as well?"

Yoorlungkura narrowed his eyes, rolling the spear in his hand. After a moment's thought, he placed it carefully on the forest floor, point facing towards the other person. The man smiled, and dropped his sword to the ground.

"Thank you. I know this isn't the most friendly of meetings, but—"

"Why couldn't you just leave me alone? You couldn't just let me be?"

"You are needed. For my great undertaking. I had to find you."

"I didn't want to be found! Wasn't that obvious from the running?"

"You needn't run from me. I will not harm you. I am the Emperor. I am your father."

"I know what you are."

"But do you know what you are? Why you can do what you can do?"

"I know your name. I hear it whispered on the Dreaming Winds."

There was a silence.

"Oh?"

"Anat'ma. That is what I have heard."

The warm voice suddenly became cold as the void between the stars.

"You should be careful with that word. It is a dangerous name, and you have it in neither fullness nor truth."

The Emperor, it seemed, did not want him to hear the whispers of the entities of the Dreaming World.

"Ha! I've seen your Truth. Enough to make me think you've no grasp of the concept yourself."

"I have seen more than you have. You must trust me on this matter."

"Trust you? Now, for what reason would I find myself doing such a thing?"

"I cannot say. Not yet. Not until you join me."

Yoorlungkura sighed in resignation.

"There is no other choice here, is there? Either I join with you of my own volition or you drag me away from here."

The Emperor almost seemed to wince, and there was reticence in his reply.

"I would not have it be so. I would much prefer you choose to be at my side. Please, trust me."

That word again. Yoorlungkura began to shake his head, as he came to understand who he was talking to, what he was talking to.

"No. There's another choice. There always is."

In a fluid motion, he called the spear to his hand, lunged from his heel, and drove the curved blade with whiplash speed towards the Emperor's throat.

He could not help a flicker of satisfaction at the shock in the man's eyes.

The flaming sword—never dropped, merely concealed—swung up, batting the blade away. Yoorlungkura turned the motion into a pirouette, springing on his feet as he twisted the spear around the slice it over the Emperor's eyes.

One golden gauntlet caught the spear mid-strike.

"We needn't do this. Just come with me to my starship. We can talk there; I can show you everything there."

Yoorlungkura gave a manic laugh, his feet shifting, his free hand drawing sigils in the air. "Do you think me an idiot, fellow? Go aboard your warship? With you?"

"I need you to trust me. Please."

There was a desperation in the Emperor's voice that bewildered Yoorlungkura.

"Trust you? Murderer, slaughterer, tyrant! I have seen the ashes in your wake, taste the blood that coats your hide!"

"Bloody necessity. All regrettable."

"So say all such slaughterers. You think yourself different from them?"

"The difference is that I am right."

The ritual completed, just in time. The Warp billowed and swallowed the Primarch as his gene-wright unleashed a corona of sheer force. Yoorlungkura drove the spear blindly behind him as he stepped back into the Materium, letting himself enjoy the moment of the blade driving through the golden armour, inflicting a scratch on the monster of mankind.

"There is no other way!"

"No? What other ways have you tried?"

The Emperor spun faster than he had any right to, and advanced upon his son, the burning blade striking once, twice, thrice. Yet each blow was without lethality, without murderous intent.

"You ignorant child. Thousands of years I have tried. Mankind has tried. Your ways failed, time and time again. Do you want to know what happened, when we first met creatures from beyond the stars?"

"Spare me the hateful ramblings of an old monster," Yoorlungkura spat.

The Emperor ignored him. "We were so young then. So naïve. So idealistic. We dreamt a dream of the brotherhood of all sapient beings. These newcomers, these 'Eldar' came on their starships into Sol in the 6th millennium. We sent forth a voidcraft of emissaries to the outer edges of our only star-system, to greet them as brothers. I was on that voidcraft, child. I was there!"

Golden light blazed around the Emperor, a shining sun of rage. Yoorlungkura almost shrieked at the power of it. It was like nothing he had ever felt. The light felt hateful to him. Blinded by it, he had to close his eyes.

"The Eldar, smiling, agreed. Then they shot down our voidcraft. Only my psychic power allowed me to survive. Then they descended on Terra in blood and flame. Were it only that that was all they brought. Even fire is a quicker death. But no, it was not all. They did crueller things than fire to the people of Terra ere they grew bored of the torture and the slaughter. Crueller things by far. By the time I arrived—propelled myself through the void by force of will alone—Terra lay like a vision of Hell out of Man's nightmares. Trillions dead, trillions more still dying, subjected to torments of cruel imagination worse than I can describe. I was already fifteen-thousand years old. I had seen fifteen millennia of man's inhumanity to man. But I had never seen anything like this."

Yoorlungkura struggled to repel the blows, a hurricane of sword-strikes that came crashing down upon him. He parried, battled, twisted his body; yet every second he was taking half a dozen steps back.

"That day," said the Emperor, advancing, his blade a blur of flame, "I learnt what mankind learnt again, dozens of times over, in the early history of our expansion across the stars. Xenos can never be trusted. Xenos always despise us. Xenos never care for human beings, no matter what they may pretend. Mankind must survive. No other option is tolerable, no other way that does not risk that survival. It is us or them."

Yoorlungkura stumbled back, barely dodging or deflecting each strike. He had never faced an opponent a tenth of this. He could feel a frustration, no, an anger, slow yet terrible, rising in his foe.

"This? This is your justification for genocide? For slaughtering hundreds of species simply because they are not human?"

He wondered if this was what fear felt like. And if he should be laughing yet.

"It is the only way. We have seen time and time again the consequences of 'inter-species solidarity', whenever well-meaning fools attempt it. It always ends the same way. The xenos see us as prey, or livestock, or sport. The Eldar, the Orks, a thousand others—whenever mankind was weak, whenever we looked vulnerable, they struck at us! They descended like wolves on the fold!"

The flaming sword feinted from the right; Yoorlungkura moved left only to be smashed to the ground by a golden gauntlet that hit him before he could blink. He barely rolled out of the way of the first strike, coming back to meet the penetrating stare of the one who would bind him to his service.

"You know that is ridiculous! You know you can't blame the many for the actions of the few!"

The flaming sword came down once more, borne by the full fury of a god, burning with the howling anger of a man. Yoorlungkura brought the spear up across himself, throwing the shaft between his body and the blade.

"Only 'few'? You think you know our history better than I do? Ignorant boy, I was there! You were not! I made you almost yesterday! But I—I saw it with my own eyes! For thousands of years I saw what xenos' word was worth! How little!"

The singing crystal screamed as it snapped in half. The blade continued on its path, the heat singing the Primarch's eyebrows…

…as it stopped an inch from his eye, forcing his gaze away.

The Emperor still did not want to kill him. Yet.

"I will educate you," said the figure towering over him, blazing gold. "Remove this cancerous, treacherous sympathy you bear for those who have preyed on us."

Yoorlungkura spat blood, but forced a last, bitter grin as he looked up to meet the eyes of his assailant, his own watering in strain and terror.

"Have you thought, Anat'ma, that humanity's blood stains its own hands more than theirs?"

The Emperor's face flickered, the veil lifting, the passive glamour disrupted by sudden burst of ire.

The Emperor hated—hated—to see Yoorlungkura, his 'son', use that word for him: Anat'ma, the word whispered to him by the entities of the Dreaming World as a name for the Emperor. That only made Yoorlungkura more determined to use it more.

"That humanity's own machines and own inability to control their psychic awakening devastated the galaxy first? That humanity failed, Anat'ma, and caused so much suffering, even before the Aeldari's Fall? Will you, Anat'ma, make mankind pay itself for its own sins?"

He could feel the Emperor's anger, building up inside him like storm floods at a dam, ready to burst its banks. It drove Yoorlungkura on. Venom, snakelike, welled up inside him as he spat, "Maybe they got what they deserved!"

The Emperor's anger was so great that it had gone past the heat of fury and out the other side. The deep voice sounded cool and calm; but Yoorlungkura could hear the wildfire raging underneath.

"Either you are a liar or you have been lied to. What you believe is nothing like history. I would know; I lived it."

The syllables of the Emperor's voice struck like hammers, and the Dreaming World trembled to hear them.

"You spout the lies of xenos, and you call your own kind 'they'? Your follies are many, my son. Your instruction will be thorough."

Fire, golden, white, burned in the Emperor's eyes, incinerating the facade, revealing the truth behind.

Just a man. Old, and tired, and as powerful as he was alone.

Yoorlungkura spat blood in his face. "I am no son of yours."

The sword came down—

—Yoorlungkura's eyes snapped open, startling his equerry. That gene-brute of the Emperor's making bore his gaze for a second before he had to avert his eyes from the intensity of his heritor's stare.

He did not see the shining on the Primarch's cheeks before he wiped it away. He did not see the Primarch's hands shaking, trembling as he ran them over the imperceptible cracks in his spear, never fully mended, impossible to fully heal. He did not see the Primarch desperately attempt to wrench the rune-inscribed auramite shackle from around his neck.

Yarohaja lifted his eyes, blinking away memories suppressed by his own psycho-conditioning and reawakened by Yoorlungkura's violet eyes.

He was still unsure what to make of the light shone upon his past by his induced dreams. Was his memory truly so altered? Was his fathe—no, his Primarch (for, genetic link or not, Yoorlungkura had made clear he did not deem his Astartes sons) trying to change his thoughts? Trying to twist what he remembered?

And was his father's contempt for the Emperor still so strong? Had there been any truth whatsoever, when Yoorlungkura proclaimed to be reconciled to the Emperor? Had there been any change at all, apart from that caused by the passage of centuries? Had all of it been a lie? And what was Yarohaja, who loved his Primarch and loved his Imperium, to do, if it had been?

He looked upon his gene-sire, seeing only that rare, almost warm half-smile on a calm and passive face.

"No more yielding than a dream, eh? Tell me now, what did you see?"