Thrust, slice, riposte. Cut, sidestep, thrust deeply. Dance between the claws.
Let your body move. Listen to your senses. Let the caw of your friends speak of your life's ender. You have always heard them.
Thrust, slice, riposte. The blade sings as it moves—sharp, perfect, familiar. And yet—no, not quite.
A misstep.
The caws grow louder.
Thrust, slice, riposte. No, that's wrong. That's wrong.
The rhythm is breaking. His body moves, but his mind lags behind. A hitch in his breath. The scent of blood, his own, though no strike has landed.
The caws aren't outside anymore.
They're in his skull.
He falters.
The blade clatters. His knees hit the ground. A gauntleted hand presses to his unhelmeted face. It does nothing to stop the pain behind his eyes.
And then, Sevetar screams.
The pain…
The cawing rings in his skull, not a sound but a shriek, tearing through thought, through control. Familiar, yet distant. He has heard this before. But they are not memories. They are…
He cannot think.
Only feel.
His mind, his…
He sees blood. It drips from his nose, down his lips, stains his chin. Instinct makes him taste it. Iron, sharp, familiar. His own. A taste he has known a thousand times before.
But he cannot savor it.
The shrieks. The caws. They do not stop. They do not end. They are in his skull, in his bones, in his screams.
They are…
They are…
His sight darkens. His body is heavy. His mind, stronger than steel, was slipping into an abyss.
He…
He… He felt the bright light on his eyes, the microsecond of his trans-human sight adjusting, revealing the dark metallic ceiling above him, where the light came from… No, where it almost came from.
"The first captain has woken up," he heard the familiar voice of an apothecary saying.
He twisted his body so that he could sit, it didn't pain him at all, yet in his eyes. His eyes hurt the most. Like his very nevers were in flame, yet he did not speak or even grunt. He closed them, attempting to rest them, this was such a strange thing for an Astartes. He closed them and he felt the cawing in the room, subtle quiet but he felt it.
When he opened them back again, he could see, in the corner of his vision high in the room near the ceiling, feathered wings clapping slowly.
"They're here," he grunted, annoyed.
"Who is here, Jago?" Orrin asked, as he checked the vital signs of the first captain.
"Crows, Valzen." He replied back to the legion´s chief apothecary.
"Crows again? I can only see a single crow here, isn't that right, Prince?" Valzen laughed.
"I can hear them, Valzen, I can see them in the corner of my sight." He said pointing up to the ceiling where the feathery avian was.
Valzen looked up. "There is nothing there, Jago. Whatever is happening with you has nothing to do with your body."
"You say that as if it's the first time I collapse due to them"
"It's the third, and they are slowly coming closer to each other. The last one was a month ago."
""I can feel my mind bleed, Valzen. And you expect a damn scan to show that?""
"There is nothing in the scan that indicates that. Your vitals have been steady the entire time. You should go and speak with Zharost about this. Didn't this start after that training bout with the Primarch and Zharost? Wasn't that when the headaches started?"
"That was almost six months ago, and I´d rather not humor the Terran, he is already annoying enough as he is."
"Well, don't come to me when Curze starts breathing down your neck about it. I have to report this to him. The last collapse was a month ago, the one before that two and a half and the first five months ago."
"Dont report anything." Sevetar grumbled. "Curze is already insufferable as he is. I swear, I understand him even less now with all his scheming and politicking."
"Speaking that way about the Primarch could be considered sedition."
"Don't preach to me, Valzen. He's our Primarch, and I'll follow any order he gives. Doesn't mean I have to like him."
"You may not like it, I for one, am thankful he isn't spiraling down into his obsession every waking moment."
.
Curze was still staring at the hololithic display. When the door to his chambers had been opened. From it strode the soft pressing footsteps of an unaugmented mortal. Just like he had just foreseen.
He turned his head towards him, in a way resembling an owl turning its head, unnatural, inhuman but somehow he did it.
The small man stepped forward, the darkness in his room, something as prevalent as stars on the night sky shrouded him like a comforting cloak, his bionic eye shining in the darkness like a threat of a las round. Curze smirked at that, Melkor did seem far more intimidating veiled in the darkness than he should, perhaps he should make something for that to be constant. Words, after all, are mighty, but one should never underestimate the value of fear.
"Do you have any idea how unnatural it is to see someone like that?" Melkor asked once he was close enough for an actual conversation. Close enough that he didn't have to elevate his voice.
"How was it? Ullanor?" Curze questioned, curious how Melkor had handled what was by far the hardest assignment he ever gave him.
"A Lot of nobility, I missed the parade which is a blessing considering I would have to be there for an entire morning watching legionnaires and titans march. Too much time, even on the tribune. Do you have any idea how boring it is to watch someone march?"
Curze smirked.
"Do you have any idea how boring it is to read your stuff? It lacks substance, it is like a child wrote the text purely to deliver information."
"That's exactly the objective of what I wrote, and you know it."
"And don't make me start on your mistakes. Your knowledge of Nostraman was tenuous at best when you wrote it. The amount of times you switched the meaning of the runes."
"Says the demi-god that can learn a new language in the matter of days. Sorry that I was not born in a place where language was through symbols with meanings instead of phonetics."
"Sounds… How overrated." The Primarch says in false seriousness.
Melkor walks forward and punches him on his hand, he attempts to hit his shoulder, but strikes his hand instead.
"How insufferable you are going to be today? Do I have to tell Malcador that you went mad and there is no hope of recovery for you to stop it?"
"Malcador cares about my state of mind? How comforting." Curze says, boredly surprised.
"He asked me to report it." Melkor says seriousness returning to the chamber.
"What do you plan to write in them?"
"What do you want me to write?" Melkor asks. After all he is still Curze´s subordinate, perhaps the one subject with the greatest leash in the entire imperium, but still still a subject.
Curze ponders for a moment, before bringing the hololithic display to life. He scours through it, looking for the one thing that could make even a Primarch to tears.
The Horus Heresy.
"How likely do you believe it is to happen?" The Primarch asks in a soft sad tone. He has foreseen it before, he has read this file before, more than once. He has seen himself in this war, he has read about himself in this war. He has foreseen the tragedies, the death of a dream. However. However to read and to foresee is not to live, and there are yet years before he may live it.
Hope… That is a dangerous thing.
"There is still a chance to prevent it, but it will be in the Emperor's hands. And it is not something he may stop with lies. Your father lies a lot."
Curze clenches his hand. He felt a watery substance in his eyes for but a second.
"I have been preparing in case it happens. Now we should plan how it will happen."
"Then, you have to choose where you desire to stand at its end."
.
.
Glyphs on the wall shone brightly, the intricate pattern on blood of the floor shimmered in the candle light and the very air felt thick. Within it an opened book shuffled through its pages as if the wind itself desired to read it. Words burned with its immaterial meaning as the pages were ruffle and all the while the Master of Prospero chanted words in a language not for mortal ears.
Words flared bright in the inky pages older than empires. With the glyphs of wardings, and the runes of sight Magnus desired to go deep into the immaterial sea and find the answers he sought.
For that man, named Melkor, is strange beyond count. By no right he should have been able to resist him so long ago. What sort of influence did he hold over his brother, what sort of power did he hold?
A few moments after the book started to burn, the flame cold bearing the hue of slightly tinged clouds.
It burned, and burned, and burned and it was not, its flame formed into a spherical ball burning in nothingness.
There. There would be his guide. He would use the flared up words, the immaterial soul of the book´s words. Its tale, for it seemed this book, the book Malcador had given him. Ringmaster, it was called, and that somehow was tied to Melkor even though he was not mentioned once.
The moment the flare of fire started to slip into nothingness… No, not nothingness. The moment the flame parts the veil he does so himself, slipping into astral form. In the sea he is like a silent sailor traversing waters as turbulent as the galaxy´s unknown history as he follows the flame like one attempts to track candle light amidst an inferno.
The sea beyond the veil is different than before, it is always different. It is dead and alive, blood hued and with ever changing currents. Like an uncontrollable tornado of rage and sorrow. To see the immaterium, to truly see it, gaze into its depths and not the superficial current powering forth from a wound in real space was to gaze at things that were, be, and would come. It was like staring at a palette and gazing upon colors that your mind could not see or understand.
It was a contradiction, where flame could carry sorrow, death carry life, expression carry deception and pain carry exaltation. Amidst all of that traversed the soul shard of the fifteenth son, gliding through this great ocean like a star falls from the heaven.
And just like heaven´s own fall. He fell, deeper, deeper, and deeper, into a place he hadn't yet seen. Places under normal circumstances he would not have gone, for the wisdom of his father yet guided him. For the respect of his knowledge, his age still weighed heavy on his soul. Yet this was not a regular circumstance, this was not a regular quest.
Through the layers of the great sea he went, sinking deeper as he saw the flame that was his guide shift color and pass beyond the stratum aetheris, the warp´s shallow heart, the surface most would only know, into the stratus profundis, the arteries of the very sea where currents were the strongest for they pulsated with almost life that was not.
Beyond the arteries was the soul, the darkness beyond the darkness, the light too bright for any to stride upon. It was a place of fear and love, where even gods treaded not lightly. Normally he would have remained in the sea´s shallow waters, for already there was more knowledge than entire races, civilizations old and new possessed, to traverse the arteries was to sail through danger. Just as a man will never win a war against the current, so would he, as a Primarch struggle in the arteries.
Thankfully the flame that was his guide didn't seek the uttermost depths, instead it halted in its descent just before they reached it, it reached them. From there it sailed at its edge until the sea slowly lost its form, until he somehow started to what seemed land. What seemed grass, what seemed trees of green leafs. He saw mountains and lakes, rivers and hills. He saw things that felt wrong to be in the sea, for they were as life would be under the stars of the galaxy.
They were not perfect, their beauty was not transmogrified by the sea that coursed through its dirt. He stepped on it and walked slowly, following the flame, and the longer he followed the flame in this place the less the veil seemed to remain, as if he was walking through a warp rift, a passage to the material world from the immaterial.
He stops for a moment, to admire the very land that seemed to course with the sea through its very veins. It was material and immaterial. In a sense it was alive, for what is both immaterial and material but not life? Humanity, the Aeldari, even the crude Orks were material and immaterial at once. Life is immaterial and material all the time. Yet this was more.
In many old tales of man, tales of fiction rather than reality, in worlds where magic is a reality the concept of dragon veins, ley lines where the world´s very soul, the world's magic courses through as if it was the lifeblood of the entire world. This could be described as such, in some form, in some strange form.
Beneath the earth, thousands of meters below he could feel them, the distant power felt by his preternatural gift, all converging beneath a mountain. No not a mountain, a trio of peaks covered in beautiful snow, under a twilight that should not be, for no moon was in the sky. No moon, and the stars, the stars felt wrong, almost distorted ever slightly.
But before he would reach those mighty towering peaks, peaks who split the heavens he would walk beyond another mountain range, one lesser in might and even splendor. Following a river which was fed by several tributaries to the right of the Primarch, reaching a lake as pristine as it was untouched by civilization, beneath the shadow of a peak that seemed beautiful in a strangely peaceful way he heard someone walk.
He heard and then when he saw it. Like a specter strong of built, humanoid yet small and with a beard long and braided, the small man approached him. It was like gazing at a shade. One that was and was not. An echo of once was or what might have been, a memory long fading yet still anchored to something that should not be.
"Do not walk further manling," it says, his voice deep like the dirge of a mountain´s fall. "Sometimes it is best to not seek what you desire."
Magnus looks at it, briefly questioning if he should deign a reply to this lingering spirit, lingering neverborn. In the end he does deign him, as he walks further behind the flame that had started grey but now was amethyst black.
"Why should I trust a neverborn? Liesmiths are you all."
"There is nothing you may give me, and I in turn nothing I can give you but the piece of wisdom in my words," it says. "Once I too delved too greedily and too deeply for what I sought, the silver riches beneath the mountain. It undid all I had built over millennia. Father of a kind I was but I doomed mine own sons to an exile and to sorrow for the riches. I thought I desired more than all. Sometimes to pursue what you desire is to damn what is truly most precious."
He brushes it aside. Liesmiths, all neverborn are. Deception is their nature, their every word a poisoned offering. To demand nothing but to be heard is to ask to be trusted, and that is the first lie. Perhaps there is truth in his warning, but Magnus knows where the real falsehood lies—in action, not speech. If this shade seeks to turn him back, then he must be close to what he seeks. And so, he presses on.
Beyond the first range he goes, one that gives way to plains of cold winds and tall grass, a steppe before the mighty peaks he seeks. The closer he gets the better he sees them, the better he understands them, made of slag and of seemingly volcanic rock. Once they must have possessed fires that burned hot, now they seemed to have ran cold, yet at their feet where rivers of flame must have once flowed from stands a gate, one he goes through into the darkness.
He goes deep, and it feels familiar. The sight, the proportions, that hall it is almost as if he had seen it before. The very ambient sound seems almost remembered to his mind, from so long ago but he does not. All he knows is that he goes deep and that it all feels akin to a familiar sight. A painting seen before now seen again.
Eventually he passes through an open door, it is hardly ornamentation even though it opens up to a hall of magnificent proportions unlit in its twilight darkness. At the very back is what can only be a throne, enormous, a chair of rock dark as coal grander than his father, perhaps grander in this shadow than the very golden throne and there sat upon it is a miniscule thing.
A thing so small that compared to the throne it looks like an ant. Yet he is no ant.
He tries to think of the name, to remember it but instead he is greeted by the towering figure of a giant clad black plate seated upon that same throne. The two images shift together, bleeding into each other. To the point the ant ceases to be there, to the point he sees the towering giant.
He is so beautiful, so grand, so powerful. At least it feels powerful even as he seems to be slipping, his eyes, the color of blinding light without pupil or sclera open but not reactive. His hair is of dark and his skin is of silver yet it is sleeping.
"Your presence disturbs his sleep, scion of the Anathema. I must ask you to leave." Someone says from behind him. He turns and is met by one with golden hair, smaller than him with ears shaped like leaves. He looks akin to the Aeldari, but he clearly is not. Not as thin, not as arrogant… No definitely arrogant, more than arrogant.
"Who is he?" Magnus asks expecting an answer.
"One whom you should trust." is the answer that he receives.
"Who are you? What name do you go by liesmith?"
"In all my time I have had many names, but I am the Admirable One, and you should heed my words, scion of Prospero. For we all are born of mankind´s mind. We are just old memories given form."
"Auta ar etsena." Magnus hears mumbled by neither he nor the so called Admirable. A word mumbled by a disturbed dreamer, a disturbed slumbering giant.
For a moment all is still, until he feels the very world adjust, align in rebellion with the universe and he is sent back in the split of a second to the Photep, back where it all started. Glyphs written on the walls, blood poured into the floor of his chamber in a ritualistic circle and a book that should have been burned yet is not.
He stares at it for a moment, not understanding what happened.
"Shall we begin, father?" Someone asks. A voice that he knows, his first captain´s voice.
And then it hits him. He has not started but he has seen all of that, all but what is beyond that gate.
"No, Ahriman. I have the answers I sought. I shall let this matter to rest."
He may speak those words, but in truth, something inside him is more than unsettled, for he was there. He knows he pushed the gates open, that he witnessed something and spoke with a neverborn yet he remembers it not. Like an ordered piece told to leave and forget all in there. And if something may reshape reality in such a way even a Primarch can do little but to be a victim. Something that forces an event, as if he himself rebelled against the very existence. A rebellion against all laws known to the materium and the immaterium. That was as dangerous as it was unsettling. That was something better left untouched, better left to sleep. Better to be willingly forgotten.
.
.
"To stand with Horus, or to stand with my father." The Nighthaunter pondered, the holithic´s lue shimmering in his face. His silky hair flowing down covering his shoulder like a cloak of immaterial beauty. "To stand with my brother who shall be a pawn, or with the blood that abandoned me."
"It is a hard choice, Konrad, but it must be taken."
"What about you, Melkor? Would you follow me to death if I chose damnation?"
The mortal closed his eyes, his hand went to his neck, feeling the twin feathers strapped to his cloak, the beautiful angelic´s plumage and the dark raven's feather. A gift from the angel and a gift from the monster. A gift from Curze and Sanguinius.
"If you chose damnation" he said slowly, heavily. "And I cannot not drag you from it. Then I will try and drag your sons from it."
"Why? You have nothing to gain."
"I never had anything to gain when I called you a child. I never expected to gain anything."
"You had everything to gain. You had nothing, any word, or action was greater than inaction Melkor."
"Still I had never expected to end up as your friend. I never expected a life like this."
"You are not my friend, Melkor." Curze said softly.
Melkor frowned in confusion.
"Am I not? I advise you on your path without inhibition, I speak without deference when we stand in private. Just now you insulted my writing and I in turn made light of my weakness compared to your strengths."
Curze was silent for a moment.
"Don't tell me…" Melkor continued, but then he realized. "You are afraid."
"You have read what this war will cost you. Perhaps not in its entirety, but you have read enough and you are afraid that it will cost you even more…"
"Fear is a gift that my father has denied me or my brothers," he said.
"Then what do you feel? Do you feel your heart pound with anticipation? Your mind unsure of the path forward, a desire to avoid walking the path before you."
Curze closed his eyes, slowly. He felt his heart pounding, he felt everything in his body, so much so he did not answer.
"Tell me Melkor, do you truly believe only the Emperor could stop this war from happening?"
For a moment Melkor went into thought, analysing his memories, the knowledge he possessed that could not or that he had not put into words yet.
"The moment your father made you and your brothers, this was an inevitability. Perhaps it might not be Horus to lead you, perhaps it might have not been those specific brothers that might have turned, but this war would have happened sooner or later with your father´s choices."
"Why?" Curze asks. "Why was it inevitable?"
"Because to make you, your father relied not only on his knowledge and powers. He also made a bargain. A bargain he forsook the moment he succeeded. The powers that spurned have in truth only come to collect. They have come to damn mankind due to your father's arrogance and pride. Or perhaps it's simply because your father is the greatest threat to the power´s own existence and you and your brothers are the easiest tools to use to bring him down. I don't know, both are valid theories."
Curze sighed, bringing up a galactic map to life through the hololithic display.
"What powers will stand behind Horus then? None of us alone could bring our father down."
"I call them Parasite Gods, one you know will call them the true gods. They are the Primordial Annihilator, chaos made manifest. Entities of the warp powerful and big enough to have become cancerous and toxic to themselves, the warp and reality. Undivided they bear an eight pointed star as their symbol, each point representing a facet of the Annihilator, yet only four stand to action. Rapturous Sensation, Infernal Tempest, Putrid Corruption, and Heedless Slaughter, these are the aetheric dominions of the great four. Though they have as many names as there are mortals to worship them, their dominion is a tool. Yet there are still two of the four uncounted I have knowledge of."
"So will these four feed the leader of the rebellion power to strike our father down?"
"They will, yet how your father goes down is an open question. The Dark King is still to come."
"The Dark King. That is a prophecy I am aware of."
"Indeed. It is from your prophecy and events yet to be, that I know of what I do."
"Then crowned in his stead, the Dark King. One that is once born immortal is born again as a king of All Darkness. The black shell cracks, thus he ascends, in the timeless time, and is elevated to the gods, to reign as a dark-crowned king." Curze said. He had seen and foreseen this many, many times before. "Yet still what is the Dark King?"
"Besides being a very cool sounding title," Melkor said smiling at him, making light of the fact Curze himself used that title. "The Dark King is… it is, by some accounts, a name first written in the time before man, and repeated ever since, unbidden, by the prophets of all species. It is a name symbolising the rising god to come."
"There are no gods," Curze said. "Only powers deceiving others of their divinity."
Melkor smirked "There can be no proof of a god with a big G. One that old monotheistic religions claimed to exist. However gods with minor g, that is debatable. Is it not the nature of the divine to provide solace in some measure through its existence and in turn receive praise? Then some great powers of the warp, including those of the Primordial Annihilator are gods. For they provide solace in the mortal´s heart as they in turn dedicate to them. In fact they give more than solace, they give gifts and blessings for their followers. Things we would call lies and abominations."
"You give too much credit to those things. Such a transactional relationship with a powerful being could also exist with great kings of Old, or even me and my brothers, and we are no gods."
"Indeed, under the loose definition I provided, Gilgamesh of old Mesopotamia, Alexander of Macedonia, the Primarchs and the Emperor could have been considered Gods. Strong entities, material entities, who were given praise and in turn provided solace of some form. Some through glory others through order, yet still solace. Yet these are all material entities. Beings that live and die, for nothing in the materium is truly immortal. Anything and everything that bears the materium in its existence is never immortal. Not even your father. Yet the immaterium is based on concepts and belief. You cannot kill a concept, nor can you kill belief. It can be reshaped and adjusted but whatever entity bound to that specific belief will remain and exit, perhaps in impotence, but it will remain."
"How much do you know of this?" Curze asks knowing this kind of knowledge would be a gold mine in the hands of another of his brothers.
"Enough that I should have gone mad. Yet something keeps me tethered. I do not know what it is, and at this point I doubt it is my lack of psychic gift for it is too much. My memories have not been slipping as fast as they should. In fact some have started to return, even though time has but marched on. I know something is wrong with me, yet know not what."
Curze closed his eyes. Primordial Annihilator, the facets, the Dark King, gods. That was a lot and yet he hadn't come to the first question. The only question that mattered. To side with Horus or with the Emperor.
Curze breathed deeply before opening his eyes and staring at the map before him. "I have seen what will happen to the Imperium without the Emperor. Stagnation, fanaticism, hate and dogma. But I…" he stops, thinking of the next word deeply. "But I am unsure if I should follow the Emperor. I could change it, my sons once all the reforms are done will work both as judges and soldiers. But…."
"You feel it won't be enough."
"I know it won't be. Even if my legion became all judges, practitioners of law we would be what? One son of mine per sector or subsector?"
"Then follow Horus in his rebellion"
"You just told me that to side with him is to damn myself."
"I said earlier the chaos and the gods that will feed him power will damn those who stand by them. Now I am saying to use the rebellion for your goals. You are a Primarch, a King. Already you possess an empire within an empire. It is small, it is not Ultramar, yet from what I learned you have made strides to consolidate this region of space surrounding your home. Carve an Empire out of it. An Empire under your control, one you can shape how you will."
"That is impossible." Curze said. "I alone wouldn't be able to stop Horus or the Imperium after the first war is done, they would have more resources than I could outmatch through military means. Besides, should Horus win, how would I stand to him? If he can defeat father then he can break me as well."
Melkor smirked, he approached Curze and said slowly, "Stand alongside another of your brothers and concerning Horus. I am sure you remember Noctolith"
"You had everything planned already didn't you?" Curze questions him, staring into his eyes, everything aligns too well.
For a moment Melkor feels his heart beating the pressure of a thousand stares above his head, but then he smiles. "I never liked the Emperor, you know that already, and I´d rather die than see chaos on the rise. This is my contribution to the war for humanity´s soul. A third power in this dichotomy is far more beneficial to mankind than first apparent. But no, not everything."
"And yet, you still havent told me what this Noctolith is capable of. It better be good. You have started that enterprise with my funds."
"It possesses the capability to either empower or shut down the immaterium´s turbulence and shut the materium´s connection with the warp or make it worse. I believe with less strength we may halt warp turbulence and yet just permit that smidge of immaterial bleed to remain alive. We just need to find out how to properly use it. A string of Noctolith pylons currently unidentified by the Imperium are the only thing holding the eye of terror from expanding further."
"So you claim." Curze said.
"So I claim." Melkor repeated
Curze then shut the hololithic map. "I will think of your words. For now however you have a trial to attend at Ulan Huda. A ship of the Mechanicum is already in the system to bring you there." He said, turning to the mortal.
"Only now?" Melkor questioned. "I thought I was much more annoying than it seems I was."
"The levity in your tone is misplaced. They only brought it up because you have been part of my legion´s council for a long time and they needed proof that I could not simply refute. Ulan Huda, after all, has a special relationship with this legion and me. You will attend the trial on three hundred and fifty seven accounts of minor tech heresy. Take everything you need and be sure to not lose it."
Melkor nodded slowly and bowed slightly.
"I will think about your words. Now have your fill with the Mechanicum. I don't want them pestering me about you again."
So it has come, that i finally managed to write the bloody thing. Inspirition that had left me suddenly returned yesterday night and i wrote 45% of the chapter and the other 45% a few hours ago. Thanks it to the fact it is thrusday my editor was available and we quickly went over it deliviring unto you a gift.
I hope you all enjoy it and i am anxiously waiting to hear what you have to say.