~ Every 100 Power Stones = Bonus Chapter! Your votes keep this climbing. Thanks!
The dim cargo hold breathed with the sound of lungs and the faint hum of machinery.
Horus's challenge hung in the air like a lit fuse.
Kullen did not back down. Even facing the forr Wolf God, the First Legion's doctrinal rigidity was carved into his bones. "Lord Lupercal," he said, the honorific present, the deference absent.
"Emotion only brings weakness. Our existence is to execute unquestionable orders. The mont we start asking why we kill, the blade grows dull."
Horus shook his head. His massive fra cast a crushing shadow against the iron wall.
"Blind obedience has created many tragedies. If the Imperium is built on unthinking killing machines, it is not a sanctuary for humanity. It is a slaughterhouse."
Kellen sat on a crate to the side and watched.
Loyalty that is not absolute is absolute disloyalty.
In the 41st Millennium, if the Ecclesiarchy's fanatics heard the Wolf God's remarks about n and tools, they would sentence him for high treason and burn him on the spot.
But in Kellen's view, this was precisely Horus's most precious quality.
Horus understood the Emperor.
Not as a superior issuing orders. He genuinely, truly understood that grand blueprint, the one planned for humanity's survival. Because he understood it, he had placed himself in the role of inheritor and co-builder.
A tool has no initiative. It can only hack and slash. A person can weigh, reflect, and find a better path.
But did that make Kullen wrong?
The pride of the First Legion. This old knight was as rigid as weathered rock.
The reason the Fallen had endured 10,000 years of pursuit without going completely mad or turning to Chaos was precisely this paranoia, the total objectification of self, faith forged into insulation against everything.
Absolute obedience. Severed emotion. Draw the sword, kill.
In a universe crawling with daemons and xenos, valuing humanity often ant handing the Warp a way in. How many Space Marines had turned into playthings of Slaanesh or Tzeentch because of a little sympathy, a little arrogance, a little compassion?
The Salamanders and the Lanters were exceptions, of course. And the Raven Guard.
Neither of them was wrong.
The clash between these two was a living miniature of this tragic universe. Humanity against necessity. Human rights against survival. An unsolvable equation that had spanned the entire history of the Imperium.
Kellen even had the absurd thought: if you followed this logic to its end, in a parallel tiline where the Four Gods never reached their fingers into the board, would the great rebellion have been nothing more than a political struggle over the path forward? An uprising that sought a different future for the Imperium, one whose starting point could even be called righteous?
A pity. The four jesters in the Warp loved nothing more than this kind of drama, flesh and blood tearing itself apart.
They reached in, gave the board a slight flick, amplified the anxiety, twisted the cognition, and turned a conflict of ideology into a mad party that dragged the human race straight to hell.
The argunt was escalating.
Kullen clenched his fist. Knuckles ground against the power-armored gauntlet with a harsh screech.
Horus stepped forward. Three and a half ters of Primarch. The physical pressure alone made the air in the cargo hold feel thin.
If this actually ca to blows, the room wouldn't last 3 minutes before it was torn into space junk.
Kellen knew it was ti to earn his keep.
"Stop. Stop, stop, stop."
He jumped down from the crate and dusted off his trouser legs.
"Gentlen, if you're planning to hold a theological and philosophical debate in here and settle it by physical ans, give advance notice. I'll go find an escape pod."
Horus turned his head. Kullen shifted his gaze back.
"Two Ogryns," Kellen said, spreading his hands, "holed up in a cargo hold that never sees daylight, debating existentialism and instruntal rationality." His tone was pure mockery. "If this scene got out, the commissars outside would bite their own tongues off."
It wasn't a very funny joke. It worked anyway.
Horus's tense shoulders dropped. He pressed his fingers to his brow with a long-suffering look.
Kullen gave a cold snort and turned his head away, no longer looking at the Wolf God.
"Your two viewpoints," Kellen said, dropping the mockery, stepping forward, his gaze moving between them. "In this place, neither one is right or wrong."
"Horus, you believe warriors are people. That preserved your soul as a Legion master. Kullen, you believe Astartes are the Emperor's sword. That preserved your life through 10,000 years of exile."
"The overall environnt is rotten to the core. The paths you each hold to — they both have their reasons. But continuing to argue here accomplishes nothing except making the guards outside suspicious."
"We are all fighting for the Emperor. For humanity. The grand objective is the sa. So why are we tearing each other apart over ideological disagreents before the enemy even shows up?"
Blunt. Rough. No flowery rhetoric. Exceptionally effective.
Horus was a thoroughgoing pragmatist. Once that part of him was engaged, he could detach from emotion almost instantly. He sighed, gave Kullen a nod as a ceasefire, then turned and walked to the pile of dismantled Terminator armor parts.
Kullen said nothing. He walked to a corner on the other side and sat down.
The cargo hold settled into the clank of tal parts and the faint cycling of the ventilation ducts.
Kellen ca to Horus's side and nudged him with an elbow.
"In this dark age, preserving your humanity is rare and precious, my Wolf God."
"I know, Kellen. I know."
Horus sighed.
"I don't need to argue over it. I just... ah."
Kellen looked at him — bitter, conflicted, searching — and thought about how to change the subject. Then it ca to him.
Roboute Guilliman.
"What do you think the Master of Ultramar would say, the mont he woke up and saw the state of the Imperium?"
"Roboute?" Horus was still agitated. "I don't know. What would he say?"
"He would say he'd rather have died in the great rebellion than wake up in this dark age and take over the wreckage. That it shouldn't have been Sanguinius who died. It should have been him."
"Roboute is an idealist. He... he couldn't possibly say that."
Horus shook his head on instinct. His impression of Guilliman was less than warm, but he knew the Master of Ultramar was a good man, impractically idealistic, but good.
"What's impossible about it?"
"The Imperium's technology regressed 10,000 years. The internal bureaucracy is rotten to the root. Xenos run rampant outside, and fallen Primarch brothers are throwing parties across the galaxy. He slept for 10,000 years and woke up to a cesspit that has nothing to do with the Imperium he knew. The Five Hundred Worlds he built are history."
"Even the mightiest demigod, looking at that kind of wreckage, would break."
Horus went quiet.
Then Kellen shifted his tone.
"But I think he would persevere. Holding onto whatever ideals he had left. The love his adoptive parents gave him. The example his sons set. As a Primarch, he would stand up. He would let go of everything that belonged to a Legion master, a lord of the Five Hundred Worlds, and throw himself entirely into the damned political governance and the war."
Horus raised his head. Sothing in his expression had changed, as if he were seeing his brother for the first ti.
He understood what Kellen was doing. This wasn't really about Guilliman. It was a nudge, let go of the ideals that belonged to the Legion master you used to be. Right now, the only thing that mattered was pushing back the enemies of the Imperium.
Not philosophical questions.
Before the problem of survival, philosophy and ideology could wait.
Kellen pulled a book from his coat and pressed it into Horus's hands.
Horus looked down at it.
Codex Astartes. Author: Roboute Guilliman. Bundled with a copy of Astartes Chapter Archives and Historical Records.
"Use it to pass the ti. After you've read this much of the iceberg, you'll understand why the Imperium has so much damned trouble."
He grinned. "If it were you, you'd break too."
"A military treatise written by Roboute?"
The Wolf God raised an eyebrow and flipped open the title page.
➤ Next: Is the Codex Toilet Paper?
— .—— .—— .—— .—— .——
55 Chapters ready for binging.
3 Daily Updates for all Free mbers.
Read Ahead: Patreon（.）com/DarkGolds
Reviews
All reviews (0)