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Frustration.
The great Wolf God felt frustration for the first ti.
After listening to Kaelen's account, Horus's expression held no joy. Only anger and sorrow.
He was angry at his own pathetic performance. Sorrowful over his paranoid thoughts and twisted emotions, over the atrocities he had committed against the Imperium and the Emperor both.
Chaos corruption and decay...
He had always believed that with his willpower, even death could not make him a marionette of those things in the Warp.
That belief had first cracked when he heard about Jubal of the Tenth Company, one of his Legion's own sons, possessed by the daemon Samus on a planet designated 63-19 and turned against his brothers. Loken had ended him in the end. But the incident had left Horus uneasy in ways he hadn't wanted to examine.
At the ti, he hadn't truly believed in daemons. Or rather, he had deliberately avoided believing. He had held the Emperor's Imperial Truth as his creed. But after Jubal, that faith had begun to waver.
Unbidden, he recalled the words of Sindermann, the Legion's primary iterator and preacher of the Imperial Truth.
"We have always called these things heresy, superstition, xenos trickery. But what if they are real? If there truly is sothing that draws power from our fear, our ambition, our hatred, then the Imperial Truth we believe in has opened the widest door for it. Because we deny its existence, it can grow unchecked in the dark."
"The most terrifying enemy is never the one pointing a gun at you. It is the one that makes you willingly lower your guard — and even reach out to embrace it."
"Chaos is a terrible curse."
The Wolf God drew a slow breath and rubbed his temples, agitated.
"Even now, I feel anger and sorrow at what I beca during the Heresy. Chaos manipulated my thoughts, my convictions. It twisted my perception, dug out the deepest things in my heart and reshaped them into sothing unrecognizable..."
"It is also why the Emperor convened the council on Nikaea and banned the use of psychic powers across the Imperium. It is a curse upon every thinking species."
"More accurately," Kullen said, "it was because of that scholar from Prospero."
"The situation with the Thousand Sons was growing worse by the day. And the things Magnus said publicly..."
"Kullen, you are right. My brother was conceited and arrogant. He ignored the threat the Warp represented." Horus looked at him and shook his head. "But that was not the root reason the Emperor issued the Edict of Nikaea."
"Then what was?"
"If I am not mistaken..."
The primarch's mind turned back to that council. At the ti, he had been neutrally opposed to the psyker ban. The Legions needed their Librarians. Psykers had played no small role in the Great Crusade. He had obeyed because the Emperor's authority demanded it, and he had swallowed his resentnt. But now, looking back, his father's reasons seed far less simple than they had appeared on the surface.
"A great plan."
Kaelen said it for him.
"A great plan to free the human race from the Warp. Like a stage magician's trick that looks completely impossible right up until the mont it works."
"The Emperor didn't want those filthy things noticing what he was building. It had to be a secret." Kaelen glanced at Kullen. "Not unlike your Dark Angels."
Kullen's brow furrowed. He had never liked how freely Kaelen spoke about the First Legion's secrets. But the answer cracked sothing open in his thinking.
"A great plan. What exactly is it?"
"Look at the tithe demands Terra sent down after I was made Warmaster at Ullanor," Horus said. "Eleven unreasonable levies. A plan that required resources on a scale that beggared belief. A plan that, as a side effect, made every Legion feel estranged from the Imperium it had bled to build."
Back then, Loken had asked him the sa question. And back then, the Wolf God had been willing to trust his father without condition, even though his father had never told him — had never told anyone — what the plan actually was.
He certainly hadn't told Horus.
So Horus had guessed. He was still guessing.
"But the plan failed." Kaelen stretched, rolling his shoulders. "Now is the age of psykers. The entire human race is developing toward psychic potential, just like the Aeldari. And they have long since started worshipping the Emperor as a god."
"Does that count as violating the Imperial Truth?"
He looked between Horus and Kullen.
"We have all violated the Imperial Truth," the old knight said.
But the Wolf God said sothing different.
"The gap between the Imperial Truth of the past and the faith in the God-Emperor today, and whatever reconciliation might exist between them, can be debated after humanity is no longer on the brink of annihilation. What I rember of the Imperial Truth is that it taught us reason. If supernatural forces exist, we face them. Turning away and pretending otherwise has never been a solution."
"So you're tacitly acknowledging the Emperor is a god?"
Kaelen raised an eyebrow.
"No. I do not believe my father is a god the way Lorgar does." Horus shook his head. "But if that identity allows him to accomplish things, many things that benefit humanity and the Imperium, then I would support it."
"A political calculation."
"That is what it is. But very few share that view." Kaelen's tone shifted, quieter. "Especially once the Living Saint arrives. Saint Celestine, the Emperor's Chosen. When you et her, my Wolf God, you may find your thinking changes."
"The Chosen. Can I understand that as an agent?"
"More or less. Which is also why I said that having Celestine et you once could go a long way toward clearing your na as a traitor. A powerful psyker, a Chosen, can see through your soul."
Kaelen didn't know much about the Chosen beyond the basics: spokespersons of the gods, walking the mortal realm, carrying the will of their patrons. Celestine, the Living Saint under the Emperor, was no different.
And Kullen's earlier shift in attitude toward Horus suggested the Emperor had likely already noticed Horus's return. If that was true, Celestine would have no reason to remain hostile. No reason to want him dead. Her orders ca from the Emperor. Whatever the old man said, went.
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"My Castellan. You should rest."
Inside Kraf's Keep, Kell spoke quietly. Creed's personal bodyguard, standard-bearer of the Eighth Regint, and the closest thing the old general had to a friend.
Creed kept his cigar clamped between his teeth. He paced in front of the Cadian battlefront hololithic, back and forth, back and forth, running troop dispositions through his head, probing for the gaps the enemy would find before he did.
"Rest." He murmured it like a word in a foreign language. "If only our enemies would give us the chance."
He looked up at Kell.
"Has the reward been issued to Sergeant Kaelen?"
"Handled. The Phoenix Infantry Regint's commissar delivered the dal of Honor and the promotion certificate to Captain directly to Sergeant Kaelen."
Kell paused. He was thinking about the battlefield, about the 2 Ogryns fighting at Kaelen's side, the way they moved.
"My Castellan, why not bring Kaelen into the Eighth Regint?"
"No need."
Creed said it simply.
"It is a form of protection for him. I know his Ogryns are unusual. I have seen more Ogryns than I can count, and none of them have ever moved like those two." He turned back to the hololithic. "My instincts tell those two are not what they appear. The tallest one, especially. There is sothing about him. The bearing of a commander."
"Then... should we look into their backgrounds?" Kell's expression sharpened.
"Trust the people you use." Creed waved it off, tone final. "The first report of Voskany's betrayal ca from Kaelen. A mole doesn't burn his own operation."
He fixed his eyes on the sand table. Hard as iron.
"We must unite every force we can. To hold Cadia's defenses. The ground we stand on, and the will of the n standing on it."
➤ Next: The 13th Black Crusade
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