Next update. Getting into the meat of The Imperium of Man, before the conclusion.
Chapter 30: Apotheosis
"War always changes. It is the only thing that ever does. The way they are fought? The places they are fought in? The nations that fought in them? They always change. If you want a world that is worth living for? What you have got to change are people, because they never do. You never change. They never change. Change yourself. Change them. Change the world. Don't come to my doorstep, and complain about how it is impossible. Do it, because you got to. Do it, or none of this will ever mean anything. Do it, because you got somebody back home waiting for a fool like you."
- The Courier
The Godhand was no more. I had seen to it. This world, this Earth, which I had grown to love as my own, and which I would christen as Holy Terra? This universe would know of peace. This crystal sphere? The plane I had won by conquest. There was only one stitching in my soul that had persisted throughout it all, but it would not last. It would come undone, and it would come undone because I was not satisfied with this.
The Heart of Darkness had to answer for every crime. What it had done to every person on this planet. The Sword of Damocles was hungry for retribution, it was starving for justice, and it would collect on that life. Just as it had collected on the lives of every monster. I would not be denied, and I would meet the Abyss. I would become the bane of every demon lord. The Hero of Many Faces. Then I would return, but not as myself.
No, I would be The God Emperor of Mankind.
This I had woven. The choices I had made would be what led to my damnation, but there was a chance. It was with that grievous miracle. I would leave my Golden Throne, and I would save all of them. The Imperium of Man was not lost. The road I would need to tread had revealed itself, and at the end of it? There was a home. A house I could call my own. There were people I loved who were still waiting for The Crow, The Knight Commander, and The Emperor!
They were waiting for Arlan Vorlesh, and I would be there to greet those children who meant everything to me. Whether I had to face a dozen demon lords! A hundred of them! A thousand of them! The Abyss could throw every obstacle it had at my doorstep. There was nothing that could stop the anathema. What I had become? It would lead to transience. The ephemeral would overthrow the ethereal.
This world would not be the same. It will not be eternal. That stasis which had entrapped it? It will be no more, and it will be no more because that is what I have chosen!
In the grim darkness of the far future?
There was only hope.
Leman Russ had been searching for it. That which he lost. Which he had relinquished. An heirloom of the past. When he was not lost in The Warp. He had embedded it into Yggdrasil, or whatever amounted to it in this realm. The Tree of Life, and many other names besides that one. The weapon had stood by him whenever he was alone. It was family. That blade had never failed him, and whenever he was in need of it?
The sword would make itself known.
It had a name, and it was Grunbeld. There were stories that claimed this had not always been the case, and that it had another name. Only Leman Russ could say for certain. The blade had divulged all things to the primarch. The Lord of Wolves was the person that had won the loyalty of it, and from that came a bounty of knowledge. Who his father had been. When war had not consumed the galaxy as it had. The stories were hard to believe, but if there was any truth to these tales? These myths that had been shrouded in mystery and hearsay?
Dragon Slayer would be salvation.
The wound had to be unmade, and it could only be unmade, if history was rewritten. The power to do this did not exist in The Imperium of Man. It did exist in this relic.
There was only one problem.
"It is a pleasure, brother." Angronius of Nuceria, the Daemon Prince, had been given a task. This great sword had to be concealed. It could not be found again. "The Lord of Wolves has come to my lovely abode."
Yggdrasil had been desecrated. The Tree of Life made to be a monument to death. It had been decorated with the corpses of countless Valkyries. These Sisters of Battle who stood watch over it, if only for the sake of their duty. The oath they swore to none other than their brother Leman Russ. Those maidens had been impaled on many of the branches. They fought bravely against The Lord of the Red Sands, but it was for naught. Angron was the epitome of what it meant to embody violence. He had inherited that. It was the only thing I had ever given him, and there was no escape from the mortification I felt now.
Vuragh'th intertwined with the entrails of every enemy that stood in his way. The Black Blade forged by the Dark Mechanicum on Sarum for Angronius of Nuceria. During the Siege of Terra? It had consumed a million souls, and it was a testament to that voracious appetite for war he was known for. This Daemon Prince was the favorite of Khorne, and he had become an extension of his master.
It was all a poison. That which I had bequeathed to my children? There was always a price for it. This blood was no gift, and through it they had known parts of my soul. The Warp played no part in it. These were the flaws of a mortality that was unfiltered. They had to endure all that I was. Both good and bad. Both love and fury.
The grievous miracle did not come without any consequence.
The Red Thirst, and The Black Rage. The Flaw. Sanguinius was not the only one who had to live with that insatiable thirst. However, when The Brightest One had won against it? The Red Angel reveled in the act of lascivious barbarity. It was a comfort. When all things had been taken from him? War had come to claim him, and in the same way it had claimed Arlan Vorlesh. The Immaterium despoiled this holy land, and only for what one could claim was dreadful truculence.
This is what I was. This is what I could have been. This is what I deny now.
"Do you have anything to say? Anything at all, or will you die a mute?" The Red Angel would not hesitate. Not even against any of his siblings. "If silence is to be the last thing on your lips--"
"Only this, Angron." Leman Russ wears a condescending grin. Those fangs of his glistening, in this sacred realm which had been painted red, and left violated by the corruption of The Warp. "Do well to remember it." As if in response to this declaration? This plane began to convulse. There was a storm in the distance. The rain would wash away all of the blood.
It would purify this sin.
"I am the wind."
The Heart of Darkness was born when murder was conceived. There was a brother, he held an envy, and that envy grew. He saw the love that he was denied. Envy would become hatred, and from that hatred? There came an idea. This idea would become an ambition of sorts, and from that ambition there came tragedy. The demise of the favored son, and the birth of malice.
This palpitation drew The Idea of Evil. The beat of this heart in everyone. There was no mortal who did not know of it, or who could escape it. The intimacy of this matrimony of sacrilege. This act of fratricide had become a contract. The price was not only his soul, but the soul of everyone like him. Those who had his blood. Which would be pumped in and out of every heart. Those children would prosper, and they would have children of their own. The heart would grow with every life, and those lives would nourish it. Until there was not a person on this Earth, that did not feel it, this beat.
This rhythm of frenzy.
The problem lied in the womb. That place from whence it came. Conception had led to divergence. Duality had been born. The destruction of the other? It had to be followed by the destruction of self. This was the balance.
The Heart of Darkness had to devour itself, in a way not unlike Ouroboros, and that was part of this purpose it had. It would eventually die, and all things would die with it. The covenant would be complete, this compact brought to a close, and renewal would come afterwards. There would be another Earth, and the people would call to it. This was the stability.
How many turns of the wheel had it been? The Idea of Evil had lost count. This link in the chain would be one of many, and the memories it had would begin to fade. Only purpose had the capacity to endure. Whether it was as a scapegoat, or as an excuse? The people always had need of it. It was easier than acknowledgment. Their guilt was a foe they could not understand, and did not want to even permit. This was the dependence.
These three things are what it served. It did not serve anything else. It could not serve anything else. It was like a machine, and it could not deviate. This was a program, and one that had been executed already. Which is why it had been disappointed by the conqueror. It had desired exquisite defeat, but the conqueror did not meet that expectation.
I did.
The Knight Commander of the Sixth Crusade. Arlan Vorlesh. That which bore the conqueror. Who would become a wandering specter entrapped in battle-scarred armor, and eventually return to the progenitor. The anathema. The Idea of Evil had found it. The death it had been seeking, and war which had clouded my vision. I was absolutely perfect.
I would be the executioner, and the absence of love would prevent any more interruptions. The wheel would turn. There would be no hesitation. It was war that would save it.
"No." I murmur. "It is not war."
It would be love.
It began with the death of Void. When Destiny's Embrace had disappeared? This Earth, that would become Holy Terra, had changed. It was like The Eclipse, but rather than being localized, the whole of this plane was drawn into it. Not just this planet, but the galaxy as well. I had no doubt the universe would be enveloped by it too.
This cascade of ether could only come from the birth or rather rebirth of a god. This was The Heart of Darkness as it truly was. The Idea of Evil made manifest. The heart was floating at the center of it all. That nexus where all the souls it had devoured lived. Their torment which had been unending, and I could hear their screams. This was my doing.
The death of this plane, and I was the harbinger. At least, that is what the heart thought. That I had come to answer that prayer. That I would be the hero. No, I was the villain of this story. I would challenge it. The natural. The nature of this world. The evil that had become the purpose of it. The corruption which I reviled.
If this was what world was? Then I would remake the world. It would be from the ashes of this monstrosity. This abomination. I would build my empire on these ruins of the past, and from it what would flourish? If not this love that I would venerate.
No more dead fathers and mothers. No more dead brothers and sisters. No more dead sons and daughters.
No more war. No more, no more, no more!
This was the end of tragedy, and it required of me a miracle. One that I no longer had, but there was always a way. I had learned that much. I could not use Radiance. That ardent grace would mean my end. This soul of mine was about to break. After it had been fractured by the effort of casting Wish.
The Godhand were all slain. I had made certain of that, and there was only one stitching I had left. That kept those shards of The God Emperor of Mankind fastened together.
That tied me to this dark god.
"That was a mistake." I had every intention of using it. I had been at a loss. How could I sever everyone from The Heart of Darkness? The answer was that I couldn't, but I didn't even need to. I should have seen it but I didn't. That was because I had forgotten that I would not survive this. The solution I had been searching for?
I already had it.
I cast Tether Essence, using that stitching as a medium, and draw The Idea of Evil into myself. It becomes my heart. I embolden the spell with Conduit Surge, and pour as much of the ether as I can into it. I did not need to separate them all from this monster.
I only had to separate it from them.
I turn towards Guts Vorlesh, of House Vorlesh. The White Swordsman, and The White Wolf. The Lord of Wolves who I had nurtured into a hero. The son I could rely on.
"How about another spar?" I knew that he would triumph. He would not lose. "Do not disappoint me." Victory was always in his blood, in the very marrow of his bones, and in his heart. Whatever that obstacle would be? It would feel the bite of Dragon Slayer.
His father was no exception.
The White Wolf almost seems to recoil. He could sense it, and what I had done. The divinity that was afforded to him by birthright? It had expanded every faculty. All five of his senses, and it even granted him a sixth. This paranormal intuition that had the ability to discern transcendental phenomena like this. "What the hell did you do? You crazy fucking bastard--"
The Eclipse is dismissed with a snap of my fingers, and the vortex of souls is torn asunder! They would be free, and their torment would end! That torture is of their past, and their deliverer was none other than Arlan Vorlesh!
Regardless of the protest of this treacherous heart beating inside of my chest. The Heart of Darkness was livid. It could not predict an action born out of love. The portfolio it had claimed hatred, and only that hatred. These deities were always constrained by their domains. If it had been war? It could have seen it. It would have anticipated this, but this was not part of the plan, and any dissent from it would amount to nothing. I was in control.
ł₮ ₩łⱠⱠ ₦Ø₮ Ⱡ₳₴₮.
It just had to remind me. The ring has been broken, and I have broken it. There will be no Earth that replaces this one, and your game is over. Die miserably. Die a failure. Die bereft of any purpose.
"Show me what you have become, my son."
I would make it count.
"Sanguinius always did wonder where those wings came from." They unfurl themselves from beneath my robes, and burst from my back. "If only I revealed the truth, and before he met his end at the Eternity Gate." Those black wings which I had inherited from my incarnation as The Crow, and which I would entrust with the most benevolent of my progeny. It was no wonder that I drew the attention of Andoletta. I was one of her flock.
Grandmother Crow watched over us all. Ember was my sister, and she had been sent as a lesson. That I would have an example of what The God Emperor of Mankind needed to be. That war had been a lie. This love was not. It never would be.
"If it is any consolation, Guts? I never asked for them." I was not Griffith, and I had no intention of becoming like him. "They are most unsettling."
I evoke Mordenkainen's Sword, and an entire plane of force is folded onto itself. The universe is reforged into a blade, and I reach for it, grasping it tightly in both of my hands. I could not use Radiance as I was now, but that did not mean I was ever helpless. Normally, this spell could only be used sparingly as an attack. I would wield it as my weapon, and eschew that tradition.
It was nothing compared to Dragon Slayer, but it would suffice. At the very least? It would be able to withstand the temporal abolition the great sword was known for.
"I am not going to do this, Arlan." The White Swordsman plants his blade into the ground. "I can't." Uncharacteristically? That crusader of mine began to tremble. If he did not have the strength to do this? I have only delayed the inevitable, and I would fall victim to the succor of that nightmarish heart.
"If you do not? The Heart of Darkness will prevail." That smile I had? It could only belong to a father. "I am going to die anyway, and I would have my story end at the hands of someone I love." I tilt my head. "Why not, Guts?"
"Why not?" The White Wolf practically roars. How could I be this selfish? "Why not!" The wolf had become frantic. There was an unease. This had to be a dream. This just had to be a nightmare. "I thought it was over."
"What was over?"
"The Eclipse... but it never ended."
"It did, Guts." The White Wolf had to know. That this was how he would ascend. This was his apotheosis, and in turn it would become mine. "I brought an end to it."
"No." The White Swordsman grips the hilt of Dragon Slayer, and the great sword ignites. "I don't think it did."
"It did." I affirm. "I promise."
The tremors begin to stop. Guts Vorlesh looked at Arlan Vorlesh, and he realized that truth. There were only a few things that he was certain of in life, and one of them was that a promise had power.
If anything could change the world? It had to be a promise.
"That is where it began. It is the grievous miracle. That promise made by my mother at the grave of Caelum Vorlesh, and which I inherited from her." I smile at him. "Which you will bear. This is an heirloom, Guts. It will remain when I am gone."
"I don't want this kind of inheritance!" The White Swordsman sobs. "I don't want any of this, if this is what I have to do!" The tears would flow freely.
"Oh, I think you will come to regard it with pride." There was a clarity. What exactly would come forth from this decision I made? It was laid bare before my eyes. The White Wolf who would journey to Faerûn. "It will be the way back home."
The hero who would slay The Dead Three, and lay waste to Avernus. Zariel brought to heel, and in the distance? I saw a tree.
Yggdrasil.
"Remember this: three lives, three deaths, three sacrifices. The second life, death, and sacrifice was never resolved. When I had cast myself into The Worldwound? The Idea of Evil postponed it. This prophecy? Complete it." The God Emperor of Mankind needed to die. That was the only way he could be reborn. "If you manage to do that? I promise that I will return."
The God Emperor of Mankind as he was always meant to be. The Eye of Terror would be closed. The Warp would know of loss. I would begin my counterattack.
I would bring an order to the chaos.
"No waterworks, Guts." I assume a stance with Mordenkainen's Sword. "Time is of the essence."
"I hate you." The crusader prepares himself. "I won't forgive you." He grits his teeth. "Not for making me do this, Arlan."
"I know." There is something mischievous about my grin. "I want you to use it."
This feeling would be transformative. It would take that whelp I had met, and from it forge another grievous miracle. Those who watch can only be spectators. Their dice will be broken.
This destiny our own.
Mjalnar had been broken. The frost blade failing to pierce the hide of Angronius of Nuceria, and Leman Russ is flung backwards by a swipe of noxious claws. Elavagar is fractured by the blow, and the artificer armor fails this primarch. It had survived the Horus Heresy, but it did not survive this. If not for luck?
The Lord of Wolves would have died.
"Did you not learn from Krakenmaw?" The Red Angel snorts, and brushes away the shards of the frost blade that had embedded themselves in his carapace. "This weakness is because of your mortality. Accept the Ruinous Powers, if you mean to win." Angron growls in displeasure. "Swear fealty, and become death. Imagine it. War everlasting!"
There was no death in The Warp, for all things beholden to it? They had become immortal. There was eternity in service, but who would ever want that?
"War everlasting?" Leman Russ already knew what that was like. "No, I have had my fill of war everlasting." Ten-thousand years of tragedy that befell their empire. "I refuse, Angron." The Imperium of Man made to be a mockery of what it had represented. Only the highborn, those despicable nobles, had managed to reap a bounty from it. On every Imperial World they grew in influence and affluence, and the citizens of the empire were treated as nothing more than their slaves. They call themselves the finest, but they were the worst. The Emperor would have seen to their punishment personally.
Leman Russ knew that much.
How I abhorred a tyrant, but I had turned that ire towards the clergy instead! I had become a tyrant myself! Only those Rogue Traders, who I had granted a Warrant of Trade, stood against the horrors of what my empire had become. The Star Child would meet the dragon, and that corpse on a throne.
What I had become.
Uriah Olathaire, if only I had heeded your warning. I was wrong but my arrogance had turned my vision towards war. Sanguinius had wisdom I did not. The people had to be free. There was no world in which my proposal would have worked. I could not starve those lurking in The Warp. The Immaterium would last, and what it would become? It rested entirely in the hands of those who lived in this galaxy!
It had been known as the Abyss, but after I routed every demon lord as The Hero of Many Faces, and cleansed it of that corruption? It had become malleable. Permeable in ways unknown to many. All save for those privy to the matters of The Phlogiston, and hailing from planes alien to this one. The people had become the master of it. Their feelings, their thoughts, their imaginations, and their dreams? They would paint that canvas.
Otherwise, I would have to sterilize everything that made mortals worthy of life to begin with. They would become like any macabre servitor. Those slaves stripped of their identity, and malformed into drones. I would have to abolish it. That practice was unseemly, and definitely absent of any morality.
The rot in my empire was everywhere. I had a lot of work to do, if I was to rebuild it from the ashes. I had to pray. I grew to loathe it in this life, but I had to do it.
If only for the sake of my legacy.
That spark of divinity had fled. It had gone with death, and the life that Guts Vorlesh had lived as The White Wolf. Only my own blood could be found in his veins. Fenrir had gone silent, but there was something else.
There was a fire. A light in the darkness. This was a sun waiting to be born.
It was a grievous miracle.
"Then join our brothers, Leman Russ." Angronius of Nuceria plunges Vuragh'th into the heart of the wolf. The Black Blade would greedily devour this soul. "Join them in death."
There was a memory.
Garnets he could never forget. Those eyes belonging to a woman he loved. Her amethyst hands wrapping around him, and there was an undeniable warmth. The drow had been a paladin. Just like his Casca, but unlike her there was a brutality in Minthara Baenre. There was ruthlessness. The dark elf had her flaws, but he saw in her what he had lost. The wolf knew that it was inevitable. When you are immortal? The patterns become obvious. Reincarnation was always predominant in these realms, and it could be seen everywhere. Casca sought him out, and she had found her Guts.
In turn, Guts had found her.
"The Lord of Wolves about to die at the hands of his own brother, and all he can do is reminisce? I didn't take you for a sentimental fool." Minthara scolds him in the way that only she can. "I did not marry Drizzt Do'Urden. I married The White Wolf." The drow forces the wolf to rise from his grave. "In Menzoberranzan, blood feuds were as frequent as in The Imperium of Man. The answer was always the same."
Dragon Slayer almost seems to materialize in her hands. "They can only be solved with violence, and in this case a disproportionate amount of violence." The drow shoves the great sword into his hands. "Guts Vorlesh, of House Vorlesh! This is not a request from your wife, but an order from Minthara Baenre! I want to see Angronius of Nuceria dead at your feet! Honor our house with his life, and bring me his head as a trophy!"
"I must apologize, Angron." Leman Russ had stopped the blade. It was caught in his hand, having pierced his sternum but failing to perforate his heart, and when he gripped Vuragh'th with all of his strength? It began to crack. Angron tried to free it, but this was not the Leman Russ that he had known. It did not budge, and the grip could not be broken. "I'm not allowed to lose." There is a savagery. This desire for victory was unheard of in the primarch. The wolf was roused from his slumber, and he was on the hunt. "The wife is watching."
"What manner of power is this?" The Daemon Prince only had a moment to indulge in confusion, and that is when a fist dug itself into his face. Angronius of Nuceria is hurled backwards into Yggdrasil. The Tree of Life was the size of any Hive World, but it shook regardless of that fact on impact. The branches began to fall, and the trunk had splintered. Vuragh'th had been broken. The Black Blade reduced to nothing but dust. "Have you swallowed your pride at last, and accepted one of them as your master?"
"No, Angron. This is the grievous miracle." Leman Russ had to relish this. "It is mortality unfiltered. That which is the bane of those high above and deep below." The words had been etched into his soul. Caelum Vorlesh had become an echo in his nephew.
The strike had untangled this plane from the taint of The Warp, and banished those demiurges. This was no place for monsters, and those Valkyries who had sacrificed their lives to protect Grunbeld? Their souls had been set free, and they would return to my side in The Astronomican. They would be celebrated in a Valhalla of my own craftsmanship. No harm would come to them, and their reward would be a place by the side of The God Emperor of Mankind. "What nonsense is this? The Warp has already made you take leave of your senses--"
"I never had any to begin with!" Leman Russ grabs the betrayer by the throat. This coward who spurned his own flesh and blood. "There is nothing to take, but I do have something I can share with your masters." The grievous miracle began to coalesce. It had searched for something familiar. Anything that spoke to this Leman Russ, and what he symbolized. "It is this pain."
It was always the wind. That which would fan the flames. This coaxing of the fire.
The Storm of Vengeance is evoked, and they are both caught in the tempest. That gale had become a tornado. The wind would never harm Leman Russ, but the same could not be said for his sibling. The Lord of the Red Sands screams in agony. This was a pain he had never known, and not even the immortality granted to him by those Ruinous Powers, could protect his soul. The Red Angel would not return to them, and his fate was to be the same as Horus Lupercal.
Oblivion.
Yggdrasil is disintegrated by the spell, and Dragon Slayer is able to escape those roots. The great sword falling back into the hands of Leman Russ.
"How I have missed this." Grunbeld could only whisper. "Welcome home, Guts."
The White Wolf had returned.
"I do not like this hesitation!" I would desire perfection. "Regill was your teacher, and so was I!" In fact, I would accept nothing less from my son. "I am an obstacle!" I shake my head. "There can be no mercy! Dragon Slayer is to take my life!" Mordenkainen's Sword crashes against Dragon Slayer. "That is an order, my crusader!"
"Don't say this, Arlan!" The thought of Dragon Slayer removing my head, from these shoulders of mine, had given way to reluctance. Guts Vorlesh had begun to waver. "I don't want to hear it!"
"If you won't do your duty? I will make you!" I had no choice. The Idea of Evil would smother everything that I was. This identity I had crafted? It would cease to be. I did not have the power to resist. Not forever at any rate. "Slay your Knight Commander, or I will leave my namesake without a father!"
I evoke Meteor Swarm, and thousands of comets are torn from the vacuum of outer space. They approach the speed of light, and then exceed it by every measure of the word. When they enter the atmosphere of this Earth? I veil these bolides in the ether, and redefine the laws of physics.
The White Wolf notices the shooting stars, and is already on the move. Dragon Slayer swatting them out of the air as they approach him. They slam against the flat of his blade with the ferocity of a White Dwarf. The mass of an entire sun in every collision. If not for my mastery of the arcane? The Earth would have been disintegrated by this spell.
Guts Vorlesh does not falter, and his guard is not broken. They are all destroyed. Those meteorites dispersed with contemptuous ease. The exchange only lasting for an instant, but it served as a distraction for what would come next.
I cast Time Stop, and the universe is brought to a standstill. After which, I make use of Teleport to excise that distance between us. I am behind The White Wolf. "I do not know of hesitation!" Mordenkainen's Sword is brought down, and I lash at him. It was no whip, but it would do. It penetrates his armor. There was a laceration. It would become another scar. "Only of the yearning for victory!"
I had drawn blood.
Guts Vorlesh does the impossible, and he moves. It did not matter if time had been frozen. He had to win. The White Wolf turns to face Arlan Vorlesh, and brings Dragon Slayer on my head. Those ethereal flames were hungry for these moments. I would not succumb to it. I transmute myself with the spell known as Etherealness, and enter the Ethereal Plane. Dragon Slayer is caught in my jaw, and I bite down on it. The fire licks at my face, but it does not burn away at my past.
I twirl around with the blade in my mouth, making use of all of the dexterity I was known for, and lift the wolf away from his footing in one swift movement. Guts Vorlesh refused to let go of the great sword, and he is sent flying into the air. The White Wolf falls against the ground with a resounding thud. This humiliation would be a lesson.
"Why are you holding back?" I had to admonish him. How would he learn to overcome this test? "I know you can do this." Power, Word, Heal. The burns I received from Dragon Slayer? They would not remain, and disappear as if they had never been. "This story will not end in a tragedy." I smile at him. "It will be your ascension."
"Why do you even have to ask that?" The Lord of Wolves stands to face it. What I had become. "What you have done..." The world had become something of value. He wanted to live. He wanted Arlan Vorlesh to live. He wanted all of them to live, and without anything to obstruct their lives.
When before there was despair? It had been replaced by hope, and it hurt worse than anything else. At least with despair he knew what to expect, and that there was no chance to witness the twilight of an era. It was within their grasp, and Arlan Vorlesh was about to throw that away.
I was about to march towards my own miserable death, and without any regrets. Guts Vorlesh could not make sense of it. He had seen what I could do. There had to be another way.
"I know what is vexing you, Guts. There is no other way." Those thoughts as clear to me as can be. I did not need to be a psychic to know of them. This was my son. "I have exhausted everything that I am, and it was for all of you. If that means anything? Do me the service of delivering me to Valhalla." I had no regrets. I would do all of this again. I would do it for me. I would do it for him. I would do it for all of them.
I am Arlan Vorlesh, and I will die as I have lived.
It was a dream. It had to be. This vision I had witnessed? It was heretical to say the least. I may have been a Primaris Psyker of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, but I had weathered every sanction they had used to test my resolve. I had proven that I believed in The God Emperor of Mankind, and that my faith was unshakeable. The notion that this person had been The God Emperor of Mankind? It had to be false. The Ecclesiarchy had made no mention of him, and it was blasphemy. The Imperial Creed spoke the truth, and it was this: The God Emperor of Mankind had always been a deity. There he had no mortal form, or any children besides the primarchs.
There could not be.
This had to be the work of the Ruinous Powers. The veil was always tremulous at best in my presence. The Warp was drawn towards my psychic power, and I had to be careful. Zlatad Aph Kerapliades spoke of it out of earshot, but I always heard his thoughts. Whether he wanted me to or not. Which was concerning in of itself. That he had not seen a psyker like myself since Malcador. The Sigillite was someone I admired, but could that be true?
It felt like an embellishment, but the claim came from my master of all people. Why had I been regulated to the Imperial Guard, if that was the case? I could have been an Inquisitor or a Grey Knight. I could have brought glory to The Imperium of Man. I could have been a hero like Commissar Cain. It was as if my master was trying to conceal my existence in plain sight. This meant I could be a personal asset of his for whatever reason, or a way for daemons to invade The Materium. It would have been safer to keep me close. That way it would be easy to remove my head from my shoulders. If I was ever corrupted by The Warp.
It was difficult to decipher which exactly I was to him.
I had seen what happened to my brothers and sisters who failed in the Scholastia Psykana. The daemons had consumed their souls without any reserve or restraint. Those monsters which had haunted every nightmare I ever had, and I knew I should fear them. At least I think I should fear them. It was an unusual, but I only felt an overwhelming hatred in their presence. There was some primeval part of myself that desired nothing less than their obliteration, and I could not bring myself to fear them. The Ecclesiarchy would call this the providence of The Emperor.
I had served the Imperial Guard with distinction as a result, and received many commendations. One of which was presented by Roboute Guilliman himself. The Master of Ultramar of all people making an appearance for the occasion. How peculiar that encounter was. The way he looked at me? It was like he had seen a phantom.
It was when I had slain a greater daemon of The Warp. That entrapped an entire Imperial World in a mirage of sorts. It was a nightmare from which it had feasted on the fears of the people. The Lord of Change had been felled by my witchcraft. I was always able to confront the horrors from beyond the veil. When others would flee.
I was born to destroy all of the enemies of humanity, but instead I am reduced to being an errand boy. Zlatad Aph Kerapliades was so insistent on this. The League of Blackships was to transport me to the Koronus Expanse.
I was to meet Lady Theodora von Valancius Massimo af Scarus. The name was a mouthful, but that was always the case with these Rogue Traders. The Warrant of Trade gave her an unhealthy and unwarranted sense of self-importance.
Not nearly as modest as Crowley Vorlesh. It wasn't anything extravagant, but it was my name. If my master had been earnest in his dealings with me? This noblewoman was a relative of mine. I did not even know that I had any family to call my own. What else had been kept a secret? It was a trying experience to be his apprentice. The meeting was to about an inheritance. One owed to me from my bloodline.
I did not like the notion that I might be highborn. I despised those ingrates. Their existence was an affront to the Imperial Creed, and as far as I was concerned? They were heretics who flaunted their power.
They thought themselves an extension of The Emperor!
Despite that? They forgot who he was. The God Emperor of Mankind protects. Our savior had been worshiped precisely because of that fact, and not because he was a tyrant who treated his own people as chattel! It was as vile as the practice of creating those servitors!
Hopefully, I would be remembered in the annals of history. That my voice would be heard, and not drowned out by the fanatics who now ruled.
I did want to see it. The Imperium of Man, but as it once was.
The utopia it had been.
"War always changes. It is the only thing that ever does. The way they are fought? The places they are fought in? The nations that fought in them? They always change. If you want a world that is worth living for? What you have got to change are people, because they never do. You never change. They never change. Change yourself. Change them. Change the world. Don't come to my doorstep, and complain about how it is impossible. Do it, because you got to. Do it, or none of this will ever mean anything. Do it, because you got somebody back home waiting for a fool like you."
- The Courier
The Godhand was no more. I had seen to it. This world, this Earth, which I had grown to love as my own, and which I would christen as Holy Terra? This universe would know of peace. This crystal sphere? The plane I had won by conquest. There was only one stitching in my soul that had persisted throughout it all, but it would not last. It would come undone, and it would come undone because I was not satisfied with this.
The Heart of Darkness had to answer for every crime. What it had done to every person on this planet. The Sword of Damocles was hungry for retribution, it was starving for justice, and it would collect on that life. Just as it had collected on the lives of every monster. I would not be denied, and I would meet the Abyss. I would become the bane of every demon lord. The Hero of Many Faces. Then I would return, but not as myself.
No, I would be The God Emperor of Mankind.
This I had woven. The choices I had made would be what led to my damnation, but there was a chance. It was with that grievous miracle. I would leave my Golden Throne, and I would save all of them. The Imperium of Man was not lost. The road I would need to tread had revealed itself, and at the end of it? There was a home. A house I could call my own. There were people I loved who were still waiting for The Crow, The Knight Commander, and The Emperor!
They were waiting for Arlan Vorlesh, and I would be there to greet those children who meant everything to me. Whether I had to face a dozen demon lords! A hundred of them! A thousand of them! The Abyss could throw every obstacle it had at my doorstep. There was nothing that could stop the anathema. What I had become? It would lead to transience. The ephemeral would overthrow the ethereal.
This world would not be the same. It will not be eternal. That stasis which had entrapped it? It will be no more, and it will be no more because that is what I have chosen!
In the grim darkness of the far future?
There was only hope.
<<X>>
Leman Russ had been searching for it. That which he lost. Which he had relinquished. An heirloom of the past. When he was not lost in The Warp. He had embedded it into Yggdrasil, or whatever amounted to it in this realm. The Tree of Life, and many other names besides that one. The weapon had stood by him whenever he was alone. It was family. That blade had never failed him, and whenever he was in need of it?
The sword would make itself known.
It had a name, and it was Grunbeld. There were stories that claimed this had not always been the case, and that it had another name. Only Leman Russ could say for certain. The blade had divulged all things to the primarch. The Lord of Wolves was the person that had won the loyalty of it, and from that came a bounty of knowledge. Who his father had been. When war had not consumed the galaxy as it had. The stories were hard to believe, but if there was any truth to these tales? These myths that had been shrouded in mystery and hearsay?
Dragon Slayer would be salvation.
The wound had to be unmade, and it could only be unmade, if history was rewritten. The power to do this did not exist in The Imperium of Man. It did exist in this relic.
There was only one problem.
"It is a pleasure, brother." Angronius of Nuceria, the Daemon Prince, had been given a task. This great sword had to be concealed. It could not be found again. "The Lord of Wolves has come to my lovely abode."
Yggdrasil had been desecrated. The Tree of Life made to be a monument to death. It had been decorated with the corpses of countless Valkyries. These Sisters of Battle who stood watch over it, if only for the sake of their duty. The oath they swore to none other than their brother Leman Russ. Those maidens had been impaled on many of the branches. They fought bravely against The Lord of the Red Sands, but it was for naught. Angron was the epitome of what it meant to embody violence. He had inherited that. It was the only thing I had ever given him, and there was no escape from the mortification I felt now.
Vuragh'th intertwined with the entrails of every enemy that stood in his way. The Black Blade forged by the Dark Mechanicum on Sarum for Angronius of Nuceria. During the Siege of Terra? It had consumed a million souls, and it was a testament to that voracious appetite for war he was known for. This Daemon Prince was the favorite of Khorne, and he had become an extension of his master.
It was all a poison. That which I had bequeathed to my children? There was always a price for it. This blood was no gift, and through it they had known parts of my soul. The Warp played no part in it. These were the flaws of a mortality that was unfiltered. They had to endure all that I was. Both good and bad. Both love and fury.
The grievous miracle did not come without any consequence.
The Red Thirst, and The Black Rage. The Flaw. Sanguinius was not the only one who had to live with that insatiable thirst. However, when The Brightest One had won against it? The Red Angel reveled in the act of lascivious barbarity. It was a comfort. When all things had been taken from him? War had come to claim him, and in the same way it had claimed Arlan Vorlesh. The Immaterium despoiled this holy land, and only for what one could claim was dreadful truculence.
This is what I was. This is what I could have been. This is what I deny now.
"Do you have anything to say? Anything at all, or will you die a mute?" The Red Angel would not hesitate. Not even against any of his siblings. "If silence is to be the last thing on your lips--"
"Only this, Angron." Leman Russ wears a condescending grin. Those fangs of his glistening, in this sacred realm which had been painted red, and left violated by the corruption of The Warp. "Do well to remember it." As if in response to this declaration? This plane began to convulse. There was a storm in the distance. The rain would wash away all of the blood.
It would purify this sin.
"I am the wind."
<<X>>
The Heart of Darkness was born when murder was conceived. There was a brother, he held an envy, and that envy grew. He saw the love that he was denied. Envy would become hatred, and from that hatred? There came an idea. This idea would become an ambition of sorts, and from that ambition there came tragedy. The demise of the favored son, and the birth of malice.
This palpitation drew The Idea of Evil. The beat of this heart in everyone. There was no mortal who did not know of it, or who could escape it. The intimacy of this matrimony of sacrilege. This act of fratricide had become a contract. The price was not only his soul, but the soul of everyone like him. Those who had his blood. Which would be pumped in and out of every heart. Those children would prosper, and they would have children of their own. The heart would grow with every life, and those lives would nourish it. Until there was not a person on this Earth, that did not feel it, this beat.
This rhythm of frenzy.
The problem lied in the womb. That place from whence it came. Conception had led to divergence. Duality had been born. The destruction of the other? It had to be followed by the destruction of self. This was the balance.
The Heart of Darkness had to devour itself, in a way not unlike Ouroboros, and that was part of this purpose it had. It would eventually die, and all things would die with it. The covenant would be complete, this compact brought to a close, and renewal would come afterwards. There would be another Earth, and the people would call to it. This was the stability.
How many turns of the wheel had it been? The Idea of Evil had lost count. This link in the chain would be one of many, and the memories it had would begin to fade. Only purpose had the capacity to endure. Whether it was as a scapegoat, or as an excuse? The people always had need of it. It was easier than acknowledgment. Their guilt was a foe they could not understand, and did not want to even permit. This was the dependence.
These three things are what it served. It did not serve anything else. It could not serve anything else. It was like a machine, and it could not deviate. This was a program, and one that had been executed already. Which is why it had been disappointed by the conqueror. It had desired exquisite defeat, but the conqueror did not meet that expectation.
I did.
The Knight Commander of the Sixth Crusade. Arlan Vorlesh. That which bore the conqueror. Who would become a wandering specter entrapped in battle-scarred armor, and eventually return to the progenitor. The anathema. The Idea of Evil had found it. The death it had been seeking, and war which had clouded my vision. I was absolutely perfect.
I would be the executioner, and the absence of love would prevent any more interruptions. The wheel would turn. There would be no hesitation. It was war that would save it.
"No." I murmur. "It is not war."
It would be love.
It began with the death of Void. When Destiny's Embrace had disappeared? This Earth, that would become Holy Terra, had changed. It was like The Eclipse, but rather than being localized, the whole of this plane was drawn into it. Not just this planet, but the galaxy as well. I had no doubt the universe would be enveloped by it too.
This cascade of ether could only come from the birth or rather rebirth of a god. This was The Heart of Darkness as it truly was. The Idea of Evil made manifest. The heart was floating at the center of it all. That nexus where all the souls it had devoured lived. Their torment which had been unending, and I could hear their screams. This was my doing.
The death of this plane, and I was the harbinger. At least, that is what the heart thought. That I had come to answer that prayer. That I would be the hero. No, I was the villain of this story. I would challenge it. The natural. The nature of this world. The evil that had become the purpose of it. The corruption which I reviled.
If this was what world was? Then I would remake the world. It would be from the ashes of this monstrosity. This abomination. I would build my empire on these ruins of the past, and from it what would flourish? If not this love that I would venerate.
No more dead fathers and mothers. No more dead brothers and sisters. No more dead sons and daughters.
No more war. No more, no more, no more!
This was the end of tragedy, and it required of me a miracle. One that I no longer had, but there was always a way. I had learned that much. I could not use Radiance. That ardent grace would mean my end. This soul of mine was about to break. After it had been fractured by the effort of casting Wish.
The Godhand were all slain. I had made certain of that, and there was only one stitching I had left. That kept those shards of The God Emperor of Mankind fastened together.
That tied me to this dark god.
"That was a mistake." I had every intention of using it. I had been at a loss. How could I sever everyone from The Heart of Darkness? The answer was that I couldn't, but I didn't even need to. I should have seen it but I didn't. That was because I had forgotten that I would not survive this. The solution I had been searching for?
I already had it.
I cast Tether Essence, using that stitching as a medium, and draw The Idea of Evil into myself. It becomes my heart. I embolden the spell with Conduit Surge, and pour as much of the ether as I can into it. I did not need to separate them all from this monster.
I only had to separate it from them.
I turn towards Guts Vorlesh, of House Vorlesh. The White Swordsman, and The White Wolf. The Lord of Wolves who I had nurtured into a hero. The son I could rely on.
"How about another spar?" I knew that he would triumph. He would not lose. "Do not disappoint me." Victory was always in his blood, in the very marrow of his bones, and in his heart. Whatever that obstacle would be? It would feel the bite of Dragon Slayer.
His father was no exception.
The White Wolf almost seems to recoil. He could sense it, and what I had done. The divinity that was afforded to him by birthright? It had expanded every faculty. All five of his senses, and it even granted him a sixth. This paranormal intuition that had the ability to discern transcendental phenomena like this. "What the hell did you do? You crazy fucking bastard--"
The Eclipse is dismissed with a snap of my fingers, and the vortex of souls is torn asunder! They would be free, and their torment would end! That torture is of their past, and their deliverer was none other than Arlan Vorlesh!
Regardless of the protest of this treacherous heart beating inside of my chest. The Heart of Darkness was livid. It could not predict an action born out of love. The portfolio it had claimed hatred, and only that hatred. These deities were always constrained by their domains. If it had been war? It could have seen it. It would have anticipated this, but this was not part of the plan, and any dissent from it would amount to nothing. I was in control.
ł₮ ₩łⱠⱠ ₦Ø₮ Ⱡ₳₴₮.
It just had to remind me. The ring has been broken, and I have broken it. There will be no Earth that replaces this one, and your game is over. Die miserably. Die a failure. Die bereft of any purpose.
"Show me what you have become, my son."
I would make it count.
𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕯𝖆𝖗𝖐 𝕶𝖎𝖓𝖌
𝕮𝖔𝖗𝖛𝖚𝖘 𝕬𝖘𝖕𝖊𝖈𝖙
𝕮𝖔𝖗𝖛𝖚𝖘 𝕬𝖘𝖕𝖊𝖈𝖙
"Sanguinius always did wonder where those wings came from." They unfurl themselves from beneath my robes, and burst from my back. "If only I revealed the truth, and before he met his end at the Eternity Gate." Those black wings which I had inherited from my incarnation as The Crow, and which I would entrust with the most benevolent of my progeny. It was no wonder that I drew the attention of Andoletta. I was one of her flock.
Grandmother Crow watched over us all. Ember was my sister, and she had been sent as a lesson. That I would have an example of what The God Emperor of Mankind needed to be. That war had been a lie. This love was not. It never would be.
"If it is any consolation, Guts? I never asked for them." I was not Griffith, and I had no intention of becoming like him. "They are most unsettling."
I evoke Mordenkainen's Sword, and an entire plane of force is folded onto itself. The universe is reforged into a blade, and I reach for it, grasping it tightly in both of my hands. I could not use Radiance as I was now, but that did not mean I was ever helpless. Normally, this spell could only be used sparingly as an attack. I would wield it as my weapon, and eschew that tradition.
It was nothing compared to Dragon Slayer, but it would suffice. At the very least? It would be able to withstand the temporal abolition the great sword was known for.
"I am not going to do this, Arlan." The White Swordsman plants his blade into the ground. "I can't." Uncharacteristically? That crusader of mine began to tremble. If he did not have the strength to do this? I have only delayed the inevitable, and I would fall victim to the succor of that nightmarish heart.
"If you do not? The Heart of Darkness will prevail." That smile I had? It could only belong to a father. "I am going to die anyway, and I would have my story end at the hands of someone I love." I tilt my head. "Why not, Guts?"
"Why not?" The White Wolf practically roars. How could I be this selfish? "Why not!" The wolf had become frantic. There was an unease. This had to be a dream. This just had to be a nightmare. "I thought it was over."
"What was over?"
"The Eclipse... but it never ended."
"It did, Guts." The White Wolf had to know. That this was how he would ascend. This was his apotheosis, and in turn it would become mine. "I brought an end to it."
"No." The White Swordsman grips the hilt of Dragon Slayer, and the great sword ignites. "I don't think it did."
"It did." I affirm. "I promise."
The tremors begin to stop. Guts Vorlesh looked at Arlan Vorlesh, and he realized that truth. There were only a few things that he was certain of in life, and one of them was that a promise had power.
If anything could change the world? It had to be a promise.
"That is where it began. It is the grievous miracle. That promise made by my mother at the grave of Caelum Vorlesh, and which I inherited from her." I smile at him. "Which you will bear. This is an heirloom, Guts. It will remain when I am gone."
"I don't want this kind of inheritance!" The White Swordsman sobs. "I don't want any of this, if this is what I have to do!" The tears would flow freely.
"Oh, I think you will come to regard it with pride." There was a clarity. What exactly would come forth from this decision I made? It was laid bare before my eyes. The White Wolf who would journey to Faerûn. "It will be the way back home."
The hero who would slay The Dead Three, and lay waste to Avernus. Zariel brought to heel, and in the distance? I saw a tree.
Yggdrasil.
"Remember this: three lives, three deaths, three sacrifices. The second life, death, and sacrifice was never resolved. When I had cast myself into The Worldwound? The Idea of Evil postponed it. This prophecy? Complete it." The God Emperor of Mankind needed to die. That was the only way he could be reborn. "If you manage to do that? I promise that I will return."
The God Emperor of Mankind as he was always meant to be. The Eye of Terror would be closed. The Warp would know of loss. I would begin my counterattack.
I would bring an order to the chaos.
"No waterworks, Guts." I assume a stance with Mordenkainen's Sword. "Time is of the essence."
"I hate you." The crusader prepares himself. "I won't forgive you." He grits his teeth. "Not for making me do this, Arlan."
"I know." There is something mischievous about my grin. "I want you to use it."
This feeling would be transformative. It would take that whelp I had met, and from it forge another grievous miracle. Those who watch can only be spectators. Their dice will be broken.
This destiny our own.
<<X>>
Mjalnar had been broken. The frost blade failing to pierce the hide of Angronius of Nuceria, and Leman Russ is flung backwards by a swipe of noxious claws. Elavagar is fractured by the blow, and the artificer armor fails this primarch. It had survived the Horus Heresy, but it did not survive this. If not for luck?
The Lord of Wolves would have died.
"Did you not learn from Krakenmaw?" The Red Angel snorts, and brushes away the shards of the frost blade that had embedded themselves in his carapace. "This weakness is because of your mortality. Accept the Ruinous Powers, if you mean to win." Angron growls in displeasure. "Swear fealty, and become death. Imagine it. War everlasting!"
There was no death in The Warp, for all things beholden to it? They had become immortal. There was eternity in service, but who would ever want that?
"War everlasting?" Leman Russ already knew what that was like. "No, I have had my fill of war everlasting." Ten-thousand years of tragedy that befell their empire. "I refuse, Angron." The Imperium of Man made to be a mockery of what it had represented. Only the highborn, those despicable nobles, had managed to reap a bounty from it. On every Imperial World they grew in influence and affluence, and the citizens of the empire were treated as nothing more than their slaves. They call themselves the finest, but they were the worst. The Emperor would have seen to their punishment personally.
Leman Russ knew that much.
How I abhorred a tyrant, but I had turned that ire towards the clergy instead! I had become a tyrant myself! Only those Rogue Traders, who I had granted a Warrant of Trade, stood against the horrors of what my empire had become. The Star Child would meet the dragon, and that corpse on a throne.
What I had become.
Uriah Olathaire, if only I had heeded your warning. I was wrong but my arrogance had turned my vision towards war. Sanguinius had wisdom I did not. The people had to be free. There was no world in which my proposal would have worked. I could not starve those lurking in The Warp. The Immaterium would last, and what it would become? It rested entirely in the hands of those who lived in this galaxy!
It had been known as the Abyss, but after I routed every demon lord as The Hero of Many Faces, and cleansed it of that corruption? It had become malleable. Permeable in ways unknown to many. All save for those privy to the matters of The Phlogiston, and hailing from planes alien to this one. The people had become the master of it. Their feelings, their thoughts, their imaginations, and their dreams? They would paint that canvas.
Otherwise, I would have to sterilize everything that made mortals worthy of life to begin with. They would become like any macabre servitor. Those slaves stripped of their identity, and malformed into drones. I would have to abolish it. That practice was unseemly, and definitely absent of any morality.
The rot in my empire was everywhere. I had a lot of work to do, if I was to rebuild it from the ashes. I had to pray. I grew to loathe it in this life, but I had to do it.
If only for the sake of my legacy.
That spark of divinity had fled. It had gone with death, and the life that Guts Vorlesh had lived as The White Wolf. Only my own blood could be found in his veins. Fenrir had gone silent, but there was something else.
There was a fire. A light in the darkness. This was a sun waiting to be born.
It was a grievous miracle.
"Then join our brothers, Leman Russ." Angronius of Nuceria plunges Vuragh'th into the heart of the wolf. The Black Blade would greedily devour this soul. "Join them in death."
There was a memory.
Garnets he could never forget. Those eyes belonging to a woman he loved. Her amethyst hands wrapping around him, and there was an undeniable warmth. The drow had been a paladin. Just like his Casca, but unlike her there was a brutality in Minthara Baenre. There was ruthlessness. The dark elf had her flaws, but he saw in her what he had lost. The wolf knew that it was inevitable. When you are immortal? The patterns become obvious. Reincarnation was always predominant in these realms, and it could be seen everywhere. Casca sought him out, and she had found her Guts.
In turn, Guts had found her.
"The Lord of Wolves about to die at the hands of his own brother, and all he can do is reminisce? I didn't take you for a sentimental fool." Minthara scolds him in the way that only she can. "I did not marry Drizzt Do'Urden. I married The White Wolf." The drow forces the wolf to rise from his grave. "In Menzoberranzan, blood feuds were as frequent as in The Imperium of Man. The answer was always the same."
Dragon Slayer almost seems to materialize in her hands. "They can only be solved with violence, and in this case a disproportionate amount of violence." The drow shoves the great sword into his hands. "Guts Vorlesh, of House Vorlesh! This is not a request from your wife, but an order from Minthara Baenre! I want to see Angronius of Nuceria dead at your feet! Honor our house with his life, and bring me his head as a trophy!"
"I must apologize, Angron." Leman Russ had stopped the blade. It was caught in his hand, having pierced his sternum but failing to perforate his heart, and when he gripped Vuragh'th with all of his strength? It began to crack. Angron tried to free it, but this was not the Leman Russ that he had known. It did not budge, and the grip could not be broken. "I'm not allowed to lose." There is a savagery. This desire for victory was unheard of in the primarch. The wolf was roused from his slumber, and he was on the hunt. "The wife is watching."
"What manner of power is this?" The Daemon Prince only had a moment to indulge in confusion, and that is when a fist dug itself into his face. Angronius of Nuceria is hurled backwards into Yggdrasil. The Tree of Life was the size of any Hive World, but it shook regardless of that fact on impact. The branches began to fall, and the trunk had splintered. Vuragh'th had been broken. The Black Blade reduced to nothing but dust. "Have you swallowed your pride at last, and accepted one of them as your master?"
"No, Angron. This is the grievous miracle." Leman Russ had to relish this. "It is mortality unfiltered. That which is the bane of those high above and deep below." The words had been etched into his soul. Caelum Vorlesh had become an echo in his nephew.
The strike had untangled this plane from the taint of The Warp, and banished those demiurges. This was no place for monsters, and those Valkyries who had sacrificed their lives to protect Grunbeld? Their souls had been set free, and they would return to my side in The Astronomican. They would be celebrated in a Valhalla of my own craftsmanship. No harm would come to them, and their reward would be a place by the side of The God Emperor of Mankind. "What nonsense is this? The Warp has already made you take leave of your senses--"
"I never had any to begin with!" Leman Russ grabs the betrayer by the throat. This coward who spurned his own flesh and blood. "There is nothing to take, but I do have something I can share with your masters." The grievous miracle began to coalesce. It had searched for something familiar. Anything that spoke to this Leman Russ, and what he symbolized. "It is this pain."
It was always the wind. That which would fan the flames. This coaxing of the fire.
The Storm of Vengeance is evoked, and they are both caught in the tempest. That gale had become a tornado. The wind would never harm Leman Russ, but the same could not be said for his sibling. The Lord of the Red Sands screams in agony. This was a pain he had never known, and not even the immortality granted to him by those Ruinous Powers, could protect his soul. The Red Angel would not return to them, and his fate was to be the same as Horus Lupercal.
Oblivion.
Yggdrasil is disintegrated by the spell, and Dragon Slayer is able to escape those roots. The great sword falling back into the hands of Leman Russ.
"How I have missed this." Grunbeld could only whisper. "Welcome home, Guts."
The White Wolf had returned.
<<X>>
"I do not like this hesitation!" I would desire perfection. "Regill was your teacher, and so was I!" In fact, I would accept nothing less from my son. "I am an obstacle!" I shake my head. "There can be no mercy! Dragon Slayer is to take my life!" Mordenkainen's Sword crashes against Dragon Slayer. "That is an order, my crusader!"
"Don't say this, Arlan!" The thought of Dragon Slayer removing my head, from these shoulders of mine, had given way to reluctance. Guts Vorlesh had begun to waver. "I don't want to hear it!"
"If you won't do your duty? I will make you!" I had no choice. The Idea of Evil would smother everything that I was. This identity I had crafted? It would cease to be. I did not have the power to resist. Not forever at any rate. "Slay your Knight Commander, or I will leave my namesake without a father!"
I evoke Meteor Swarm, and thousands of comets are torn from the vacuum of outer space. They approach the speed of light, and then exceed it by every measure of the word. When they enter the atmosphere of this Earth? I veil these bolides in the ether, and redefine the laws of physics.
The White Wolf notices the shooting stars, and is already on the move. Dragon Slayer swatting them out of the air as they approach him. They slam against the flat of his blade with the ferocity of a White Dwarf. The mass of an entire sun in every collision. If not for my mastery of the arcane? The Earth would have been disintegrated by this spell.
Guts Vorlesh does not falter, and his guard is not broken. They are all destroyed. Those meteorites dispersed with contemptuous ease. The exchange only lasting for an instant, but it served as a distraction for what would come next.
I cast Time Stop, and the universe is brought to a standstill. After which, I make use of Teleport to excise that distance between us. I am behind The White Wolf. "I do not know of hesitation!" Mordenkainen's Sword is brought down, and I lash at him. It was no whip, but it would do. It penetrates his armor. There was a laceration. It would become another scar. "Only of the yearning for victory!"
I had drawn blood.
Guts Vorlesh does the impossible, and he moves. It did not matter if time had been frozen. He had to win. The White Wolf turns to face Arlan Vorlesh, and brings Dragon Slayer on my head. Those ethereal flames were hungry for these moments. I would not succumb to it. I transmute myself with the spell known as Etherealness, and enter the Ethereal Plane. Dragon Slayer is caught in my jaw, and I bite down on it. The fire licks at my face, but it does not burn away at my past.
I twirl around with the blade in my mouth, making use of all of the dexterity I was known for, and lift the wolf away from his footing in one swift movement. Guts Vorlesh refused to let go of the great sword, and he is sent flying into the air. The White Wolf falls against the ground with a resounding thud. This humiliation would be a lesson.
"Why are you holding back?" I had to admonish him. How would he learn to overcome this test? "I know you can do this." Power, Word, Heal. The burns I received from Dragon Slayer? They would not remain, and disappear as if they had never been. "This story will not end in a tragedy." I smile at him. "It will be your ascension."
"Why do you even have to ask that?" The Lord of Wolves stands to face it. What I had become. "What you have done..." The world had become something of value. He wanted to live. He wanted Arlan Vorlesh to live. He wanted all of them to live, and without anything to obstruct their lives.
When before there was despair? It had been replaced by hope, and it hurt worse than anything else. At least with despair he knew what to expect, and that there was no chance to witness the twilight of an era. It was within their grasp, and Arlan Vorlesh was about to throw that away.
I was about to march towards my own miserable death, and without any regrets. Guts Vorlesh could not make sense of it. He had seen what I could do. There had to be another way.
"I know what is vexing you, Guts. There is no other way." Those thoughts as clear to me as can be. I did not need to be a psychic to know of them. This was my son. "I have exhausted everything that I am, and it was for all of you. If that means anything? Do me the service of delivering me to Valhalla." I had no regrets. I would do all of this again. I would do it for me. I would do it for him. I would do it for all of them.
I am Arlan Vorlesh, and I will die as I have lived.
<<X>>
It was a dream. It had to be. This vision I had witnessed? It was heretical to say the least. I may have been a Primaris Psyker of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, but I had weathered every sanction they had used to test my resolve. I had proven that I believed in The God Emperor of Mankind, and that my faith was unshakeable. The notion that this person had been The God Emperor of Mankind? It had to be false. The Ecclesiarchy had made no mention of him, and it was blasphemy. The Imperial Creed spoke the truth, and it was this: The God Emperor of Mankind had always been a deity. There he had no mortal form, or any children besides the primarchs.
There could not be.
This had to be the work of the Ruinous Powers. The veil was always tremulous at best in my presence. The Warp was drawn towards my psychic power, and I had to be careful. Zlatad Aph Kerapliades spoke of it out of earshot, but I always heard his thoughts. Whether he wanted me to or not. Which was concerning in of itself. That he had not seen a psyker like myself since Malcador. The Sigillite was someone I admired, but could that be true?
It felt like an embellishment, but the claim came from my master of all people. Why had I been regulated to the Imperial Guard, if that was the case? I could have been an Inquisitor or a Grey Knight. I could have brought glory to The Imperium of Man. I could have been a hero like Commissar Cain. It was as if my master was trying to conceal my existence in plain sight. This meant I could be a personal asset of his for whatever reason, or a way for daemons to invade The Materium. It would have been safer to keep me close. That way it would be easy to remove my head from my shoulders. If I was ever corrupted by The Warp.
It was difficult to decipher which exactly I was to him.
I had seen what happened to my brothers and sisters who failed in the Scholastia Psykana. The daemons had consumed their souls without any reserve or restraint. Those monsters which had haunted every nightmare I ever had, and I knew I should fear them. At least I think I should fear them. It was an unusual, but I only felt an overwhelming hatred in their presence. There was some primeval part of myself that desired nothing less than their obliteration, and I could not bring myself to fear them. The Ecclesiarchy would call this the providence of The Emperor.
I had served the Imperial Guard with distinction as a result, and received many commendations. One of which was presented by Roboute Guilliman himself. The Master of Ultramar of all people making an appearance for the occasion. How peculiar that encounter was. The way he looked at me? It was like he had seen a phantom.
It was when I had slain a greater daemon of The Warp. That entrapped an entire Imperial World in a mirage of sorts. It was a nightmare from which it had feasted on the fears of the people. The Lord of Change had been felled by my witchcraft. I was always able to confront the horrors from beyond the veil. When others would flee.
I was born to destroy all of the enemies of humanity, but instead I am reduced to being an errand boy. Zlatad Aph Kerapliades was so insistent on this. The League of Blackships was to transport me to the Koronus Expanse.
I was to meet Lady Theodora von Valancius Massimo af Scarus. The name was a mouthful, but that was always the case with these Rogue Traders. The Warrant of Trade gave her an unhealthy and unwarranted sense of self-importance.
Not nearly as modest as Crowley Vorlesh. It wasn't anything extravagant, but it was my name. If my master had been earnest in his dealings with me? This noblewoman was a relative of mine. I did not even know that I had any family to call my own. What else had been kept a secret? It was a trying experience to be his apprentice. The meeting was to about an inheritance. One owed to me from my bloodline.
I did not like the notion that I might be highborn. I despised those ingrates. Their existence was an affront to the Imperial Creed, and as far as I was concerned? They were heretics who flaunted their power.
They thought themselves an extension of The Emperor!
Despite that? They forgot who he was. The God Emperor of Mankind protects. Our savior had been worshiped precisely because of that fact, and not because he was a tyrant who treated his own people as chattel! It was as vile as the practice of creating those servitors!
Hopefully, I would be remembered in the annals of history. That my voice would be heard, and not drowned out by the fanatics who now ruled.
I did want to see it. The Imperium of Man, but as it once was.
The utopia it had been.
<<X>>
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