Consistency. That is what they value. Perhaps because they are ever-changing, they will reward the mind that never wavers in its commitment.
Or maybe that is a lie, too. Most things are, when traced back to their beginning.
They defy understanding. They defy categorisation.
And for that, for that one indefinable truth, as I have often said, blessed be their many and malleable names.
So we come to Davin, and I was so sick with anticipation before the final warp-stage that I did not sleep for four nights.
It was, of course, another desert world. There must be something about them. Why do the gods not make themselves more obviously manifest in forests or factories or cities? When we came into orbit, all I could see was a second Colchis, parched and sharp, its ochre plains wrapped around a swollen equatorial zone and squeezing out all other terrain.
Once we'd made planetfall, it soon became apparent what the key difference was. The inhabitants were human, but only just. They were too strong, too strange, as if something had been working on them for a long time. I thought they were all terrifically ugly. My battle-brothers merely saw them as apt disciples for the faith.
This was, to be clear, faith in the Emperor. Let the irony of that sink in, for a moment. Our Legions landed on Davin for the first time, with the honest and thorough-going intent to turn its population into diligent atheists.
But I did not. I knew what we would find there, as surely as I knew what I would see in the mirrors that now lined my private chamber each time I glanced at them. All worlds have a harmonic - a resonance in the ether - and Davin was no exception. It was a thrum, a press of half-heard sound, like an endless mumbling that lingered on the very edge of intelligibility.
As I skidded across its heat-distorted landscape in my flyer, I could feel the hot pressure against my temples, a hubbub of murmurs guiding me to where I needed to be. Elsewhere, there was fighting. The savages of this world had yet to bow to the inevitable and were taking war to the Sons of Horus and Word Bearers. This resistance had shocked some of the mortal hangers-on within the fleet, who thought it suicidal and pointless, but they were blind to its true purpose. The fighting would be over soon, but it would keep all eyes away from the deep desert, where tombs lay deep and dormant under the baking sands.
I reached my destination, touched down and de-powered the engines. I emerged from my lander and breathed Davinite air for the first time. It tasted vaguely sweet, like overripe fruit. The dust dotted and stuck to everything - soon my armour's filters were working hard just to keep its airways clear.
Ahead of me rose a temple of some kind, though it had seen better days. Its mud brick and masonry walls were ruined, its towers collapsed. Old stains from old fires still marred the crumbling stonework, and its many doorways were open and gasping in the heat.
I glanced down and saw a ribbon serpent slithering around my ankle. Its black forked tongue flickered briefly, then it slipped away, making for the hard-edged lines of shadow ahead.
I walked up a long causeway, bounded on either side by broken human-sized statues. The further I went, the more I could see how the place must once have been magnificent, an octagonal city-temple of extraordinary size and complexity. We had larger cathedrals on Colchis, but nothing, perhaps, made with such a raw understanding of the relationships between the real and the unreal. I could see immediately that these long-dead architects had known what they were doing. They had known the sacred ratios and proportions. They had known where to site their watchtowers and campaniles so as to catch the red passage of Davin's ancient sun, casting shadows that looked, out of the corner of an eye, like teeth, or horns, or curved talons.
By then it was late in the day, and the air was seamy with tired heat. My surroundings were almost completely quiet only my breaths and my footfalls broke the stillness.
I found the priest squatting in the centre of a tumbledown courtyard. A fountain lay choked and gasping amid a heap of rubble, its water long gone. Gargoyles and stone dragons looked down on us from crumbling terraces, their gnarled expressions grotesque against the reddening sky.
The priest was as ugly as every Davinite was - a snaggle-toothed, greasy-haired wretch with dirty robes. He blinked as I approached him, then smiled broadly and obsequiously.
'You came,' he said, as if I were some delivery boy on an errand. I was comfortably twice his size, and could have broken his neck with a flick of my finger. He was clearly a fool, near the end of his strength and wits.
'I saw this place in my dreams,' I said. 'But not like this.'
'It's not what it used to be,' he agreed. He got up and limped across the courtyard. I followed him, having to check my stride to match his pace. We passed under the shade of the gargoyles and into chambers within, all adorned with cracked plaster and gap-tiled mosaics. As we went, I saw faded frescoes on the walls - angels fighting daemons, monsters writhing in combat with knights. I saw depictions of high walls crumbling, and flames leaping over falling towers. Repeated images of a gold-armoured warrior had been scratched out, his face replaced with crude images of a single eye.
Eventually we reached a larger chamber, one buried down in the heart of the city-temple. Its high domed roof was cracked like an eggshell, allowing red light to lance down on to the floor around us. A low stone altar stood in the centre of the space, surrounded by four ritual pillars. The surviving stonework was etched with lines of fine carving - tight-curled glyphs, repeated over and over, just like the screeds on my own flesh.
My skin tingled. I could feel the charge running through these foundations, apt to snap, like static charge, with my every movement. I was breathing faster, my primary heart pumping a little too hard.
'So this is where it will happen,' I breathed.
'It might,' said the priest. 'If you are indeed a true messenger.'
I was feeling heady at that point, intoxicated. It is one thing to witness visions, it is another to see the actual site, the actual stone, the actual bricks. I turned on him, catching him by his throat. He gagged, and I almost laughed out loud.
'Does this feel true, priest?' I asked, squeezing just a fraction harder.
He couldn't answer. It would take only the slightest movement to crush his windpipe. I very nearly did it. The nexus of death and power in this place was so complete and all-consuming.
But I halted, suddenly aware of someone watching me. I turned to see a little girl, barely more than a babe in arms, staring at me with dark, wide eyes. I couldn't interpret her expression. It wasn't fear. It might have been a kind of exhilaration, just like mine.
I let the priest go. 'Who is that?' I asked.
'Only Akshub,' he gasped, rubbing the weals on his neck ruefully. 'Do not hurt her, I beg you.'
I studied her, vaguely amused, and she stared back at me fearlessly. 'Why would I do that?' I asked. 'Is she dangerous?'
Then my gaze wandered off, roving across the faded frescoes. They were badly eroded, hard to make out even with my enhanced eyesight. In all of them, though, I saw the same image, over and over again, picked out in the desert colours of terracotta, ochre and sallow.
A knife. A blade. A flint shard, crudely fashioned, the length of a mortal man's spine. I knew without needing to ask that no such weapon had ever been fashioned on this world. These ancient artisans had been working from visions, casting their minds out on the ether's tides, knowing what had to come here to fulfil their lives' purpose.
'Where will I find it?' I asked.
The priest looked up at me, fear and resentment marring his old face. 'I think that is your task to discover, messenger,' he said.
I smiled dryly under my helm, feeling my new tattoos flex across my skin. It was a good irony, to leave this dried-out old husk to meet me here, the desperate last cough of a half-dead people. If I had waited another decade, there might have been no one left at all, just the stones and the dust and the serpents in the sand.
'Rebuild it,' I said coldly, looking up at the s
tate of the walls and the roof. 'A governor will be appointed when the fight is over - he'll ensure you have what you need. Rebuild it all, just as it was.'
The priest grinned pathetically. 'There are so few of us left. Can you not send us... help?'
I knew what he wanted. Slaves culled from our many conquests, the kind he had dreamed of owning ever since he had learned the words of the old curses.
I didn't bother giving him an answer. He glanced back over at the girl, who hadn't moved. She squatted in the darkness, watching, saying nothing.
'I'll see you again,' I said, sealing the deal.
And for all of this, I am hated.
For being there at the outset, for laying the foundations that others would willingly build on. I think they wish to find something in this story that explains things - some moment of decision, some choice that could later be regretted or accounted for. But it's just as I said - none exists. I have always been on this road, never turning never deviating.
A long time ago, aware of my limitations, I formulated an expression to capture my condition: blessed is the mind too small to doubt. I am very attached to this maxim, and propagate it wherever I can. I hope it will be taken up with enthusiasm once our task is completed and the False Emperor is expunged from eternity.
For now, though, I am content. I am loathed by those I betrayed, and loathed by those I guided into betrayal. I have brought a Warmaster to the Truth, and cracked the galaxy's vaults to speed his armies. I have burned worlds, and been burned by them, and who thanks me for this? This rebellion does not even bear my name - it bears the title of the scorpion I stayed closest to, the most dangerous of the breed who will ever live.
Now I observe my disgrace. I consider the wounds I have suffered, and the pain that will dog me forever. I consider those that inflicted such ignominy upon me, and how they started their stories so nobly and will end them in the gutter.
They hate me not because of what I am, but because of what they were. They hate me because they turned, and I did not. The records of our enemies call us all turncoats, but I changed no allegiance. I was always here just as I am now, aware of myself and the universe that made me. I lied with every breath I ever took, except to myself. That is purity, of a kind, and something that no other soul in this grand armada of renegades can boast.
I look on Terra now from my void-cold vantage and see its huddled lights glimmer in the fragile dark. Soon the order to attack will come and the final act will be entered. The monsters I created will burst from their fetters, giving no thought to what long labours brought them here.
Horus mutilated me, my own primarch discarded me. That could be a cause for self-doubt, here on the edge of Terra's fall. That could make a lesser soul slink away, gnawing on his failure even as humanity's bastion collapses at last. But that's never been my way. I've been stung before and I always come back for more poison. I'm still the boy in the shadows of Colchis, pulling on the garrote-string and feeling my blood pump.
The old games never really ceased, in truth. Only the players changed.
Nothing remains to be explained. I can whisper these truths to my own screed-inscribed face, if I wish, that I can now hold up in front of my own eyes as my only audience. The ragged flesh is dry and cracking now, and will fall apart soon, but I keep it, just as I used to keep my mirrors for the same purpose.
I took this face from another man, once, to become what I wanted to be. Now it is my reminder, that all despots are fragile, and that the hand of destiny will always be despised.
Such is my power, now, I could fashion a new skin in moments. I choose not to. My face still weeps blood under my helm, glistening on flayed muscles. It hurts, and that too is a reminder.
I was there at the start. I was there before we even had names for all the things we're doing now. I have no congregation any more, but I will again. The faithful will come back, thirsty for accounts of how this feat was achieved, and I will have stories waiting for them. Such stories. Stories that will make their ears bleed and their hearts burst.
So it's not done yet, Erebus. Not yet. Just watch.
Just watch.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chris Wraight is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Scars and The Path of Heaven, the Primarchs novels Leman Russ: The Great Wolf and Jaghatai Khan: Warhawk of Chogoris, the novellas Brotherhood of the Storm and Wolf King, and the audio drama The Sigillite. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written The Lords of Silence, Vaults of Terra: The Carrion Throne, Watchers of the Throne: The Emperor's Legion, the Space Wolves novels Blood of Asaheim and Stormcaller, and the short story collection Wolves of Fenris, as well as the Space Marine Battles novels Wrath of Iron and War of the Fang. Additionally, he has many Warhammer novels to his name, including the Warhammer Chronicles novel Master of Dragons, which forms part of the War of Vengeance series. Chris lives and works in Bradford-on-Avon, in south-west England.
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