And they shall know no fear

[Wulf]

Horand ploughed against the torrent. Raw power, spilled over from the aethyr, churned at his feet. Colors shifted and specks of light and shadow frothed like whitewater as they parted before his greaves. An earsplitting cacophony of noise assailed him despite the noise reduction of his helmet set to maximum. His eardrums felt about to rupture and tear apart.

He knew he was getting closer to the Emperor and Horus. He'd been cut off from his brethren, from the honoured Sanguinius and his lord, Rogal Dorn, and the Emperor. There had been something wrong with the teleportation. They had been scattered, separated from eachother aboard Horus´ flagship. How many had never come out of the warp or had ended up lost in space? He had managed to link up with a handful of his brothers and Blood Angels, but the hellpit that was the Vengeful Spirit had devoured them one by one. It was small consolation that they had sent an equal number of the Son of Horus to whatever damnation awaited the traitors. Five Sons had died by Horand´s hand, amongst them two of the wretched Justaerin.

All communications had failed. There was no point trying to reach anyone on the vox-net. He'd tried numberless times, reporting his location and status with the discipline expected of a veteran Imperial Fist. All he ever received in reply was either static or the insane whisperings and wailings of the warp. For all he knew, he could have been the only one of the assault force alive aside from the Emperor, although somewhere in his heart he knew that he'd felt it if Dorn were dead.

But he knew he was closing in. There was nowhere else the very essence of the immaterium could be pouring out from but where the Emperor and Horus were. They were locked in battle like nothing the history of mankind had ever seen. Every attack, every counter was felt throughout the ship as two beings with power like gods did battle. Yet above everything, Horand could hear the words of Horus and the Emperor. They cut straight into his mind and soul with crystal clarity and razorlike sharpness. Their psychic voices drowned everything else with their power and magnificence.

”How does it feel, father, to look your failures in the eye? To see your empire torn down by the ones you used to build it. Your mistakes have come back to haunt you.”

”My mistakes are many, but what you have done far exceeds them. I look at you and all I see is misery, Horus. I weep for you. You stand ready to doom the entire human race... and you stand proud. What have you become?”

”I've become free. Free from your shackles. Free from your forced ignorance. I have become  powerful. It's something you'd never let me, or anyone else.”

”You have gained something you think is power. And at what cost? Can't you see what you've done? Are you so drunk with power you can't see what you've become?”

”What, father? A tyrant, like you? An anathema to freedom? A destroyer of worlds? A name to be hated by untold millions? Have I become you?”

”If you seek to hurt me with your words, you don't understand me, Horus.”

Horand´s jaw was locked in a rictus of anger as he battled against the flow of power. How dare Horus? He dug his heels in deeper and powered forward. It was as if he was wading through rushing water up to his shins. His eyes stung and ears felt like bursting. His lips were dry and cracked, while blood seeped from beneath his fingernails in tiny streaks of red even Larraman´s Cells were powerless to stop.

”You claim I do not understand you? You who never understood his sons! Who alienated a full half of them. You would deny us what or who we were. You reduced Perturabo to a mere caretaker of occupied worlds while others basked in glories of conquest. He paid in his sons´ blood for every planet claimed in your name, yet you would never reward him as you rewarded Sanguinius, Dorn or even myself.”

”I rewarded Perturabo plenty. Was it truly that he never received the praise that others did, or was it that he never appreciated it? Roboute and Lorgar conquered and garrisoned many worlds, but they never were as bitter about it as Perturabo. How much of his perceived slight was real and how much of it was in  his heart only?”

”So you deflect blame, making the scapegoat out of the victim. Isn't it always like that? Like Konrad.”

”He was out of his mind. When he went too far, I offered my help but in his paranoia he rejected me. His means had become the end he sought, terror just for the sake of terror.”

Suddenly the torrent rushed forward with a spike of fury, no doubt overspill from a psychic attack unleashed by the two combatants. Horand gritted his teeth. It hurt to do so, even more than the pain he felt everywhere as the psychic energies stung him. His choler rose, thinking of the betrayal against the Emperor. It was hard to believe that such a trivial reason as bitterness over his tasks would have driven Perturabo to turn on the Emperor, no matter how much Horand despised the Iron Warriors and their primarch.

”Means to an end. Oh how many times you denied us those means, or even the end itself? Need I mention Lorgar or Magnus? With Lorgar, you not only forbade him from worshipping you, but you denied him his very image of himself. What he had always believed right and proper, you tore down and with it your son´s love for you. Perhaps you thought to humble him, but disgraced him instead. Do you wonder why he hates you now?”

”He would have made me a god. Is it truly what you think would have been for the best? He would have created an idol for mankind to follow, instead of freeing it from the chains of superstition and false gods. Instead of seeking strength within, men would have looked to me for it. As the human race evolves, we must find strength in ourselves, not in distant gods. It is the only way we can control the emergent psychic potential within our kind. But of course, I wouldn't expect you to understand.”

”Even as I stand before you, you still talk of false gods. You disgust me, father.”

”And I pity you, my son.”

”Save me your pity, father, I have no need for it.”

Such vanity! Such heresy! Strange sounds and smells assailed Horand with almost overpowering intensity. If not for the discipline and determination instilled in him by the indomitable Dorn, he might have hesitated. Instead, he grimly set forward against the rush of psychic fallout. The walls shifted and squirmed with indescribable motion and hands, tentacles, claws and pincers reached out to drag him into their unnatural embrace. His powerfist tore off limbs and combibolter blew away chunks of flesh and stone as he crushed his way through. The floor sucked at his feet like it was primordial ooze, but he had long forgotten about it, the thought of Horus and the Emperor locked in combat filling his mind. He didn't know what chance he stood against a primarch such as Horus, but any kind of aid he could offer the Emperor, he would.

”And what of Magnus? You denied him his whole life´s work. You rendered him a blind scholar, unable to learn, forbidden from seeking knowledge. What were you thinking?”

”Some things are best left unknown and some secrets undiscovered. He was not ready for the knowledge he sought. Neither were you and look what you've become. I wanted to teach him myself, to guard him against powers that would exploit his thirst for knowledge.”

”Or to control him, perchance? I see through your lies, father.”

”Yet you've let yourself be played for a fool. Ask yourself, are you the master of the powers you claim to wield, or are you their tool?”

”You would speak of me being a tool for someone else, you who used your own sons as nothing better than tools? What more was Angron to you than a tool? You never loved him as your son. You kidnapped him and used him like an executioner´s axe, nothing more. What would you have done with him once the Great Crusade was over, I wonder.”

”I did what I could for him, whether you see it or not. I weep at what they did to him back on Desh'ea. Don't ever dare say I did not love him!”

”Yet you plucked him from Desh'ea against his wishes. He wanted to die, but you would not let him. Not while you needed another general for your precious crusade. You forced him to betray his only friends so that he could serve you.”

”Whether he wanted it or not, I could not allow him to die without seeing if I could help him. I wanted to help, but he never allowed me.”

”You had the Custodes, the Astartes, the Imperial Army, everything, but you would not save his friends. You would not even fill the one wish he had. Is it any wonder he never trusted you after that?”

”His friends? You were not there on Desh'ea when I tried to reason with him. He was completely insulated, with homicidal psychotics whispering in his ears while I tried to convince him to join the Crusade. If I had saved them, I would have had to fight them myself instead to get him off the planet. I either had to let them be killed or kill them myself.”

”So you stole him and then you forsaked him. Dumped him with your War Hounds and wished for the best.”

”Who better than the War Hounds to teach him the ways of mankind? They were his sons, they were the ones who shared his temperament the most, they were the ones he would feel the most kinship to. I was never going to be loved by him, but given time, I thought he could learn to understand that I loved him.”

”You thought the Astartes would mold a primarch in their own images instead of the other way around? Foolish. Idiotic.”

”Do you know what, Horus? I thought Angron would come around by being around you. In you, he might have seen the greatness of Man, the greatest warrior the Great Crusade had seen, and respected you. Even accepted you as his general. Perhaps it even happened as I planned, perhaps you gained his respect. But then you used it against me.”

”Don't try to deflect blame once again, father. You failed with Angron, as you failed with Alpharius. Perhaps if you loved him just a little more, instead of leaving him almost as soon as you had met him, he wouldn't be leading Guilliman and Lion on a merry little dance of death right now.”

”I admit I was mistaken about Alpharius and it vexes me. I thought him stronger, wiser. Believe me, the last thing he needed was to be loved. He never craved affection. All he wanted was my trust and confidence. He did not need me looking over his shoulder, guarding him against mistakes or patting his back and telling him what a good job he was doing. No. Him and I, we shared my vision for Mankind, he just needed the tools to further that vision and the freedom to what he felt necessary.”

”Unlike Magnus. You're such a hypocrite. So you gave Alpharius the freedom you never allowed so many of us. How fitting that he uses your tools against you now. Such delicious irony.”

Horand´s vision was starting to fray at the edges. Swirling colors from the raging current of power lashed out like galeforce winds, whipping him even despite the protection afforded by the impenetratable tactical dreadnought armor. Cracks appeared that seeped blood as his skin dried. The thin streams dried and flaked off almost as soon as they appeared but they kept bleeding. His gums and lips were like parchment and he could taste blood in his mouth. He knew he was approaching something far beyond his power to overcome, but with stubborness reminiscent of Dorn himself, he forced himself to continue.

”I wonder, my once dearest son, why do you feel so confident yourself. Once all this is over, what happens then? What will you be left with?”

”Freedom, father. Freedom from your slavery and unbridled power.”

”Freedom to do what, Horus? You point out my mistakes, yet you fail to see your own. How long, I wonder, before you came face to face with your own failures?”

”Nothing I may face can no longer stand before me. I'm not only free from your servitude, I have become so much more than you ever imagined possible.”

”Not imagined, son. Feared is the word you seek.”

A searing flash of light rocked Horand, followed by four more in almost inseparably quick succession. His vision swam, colours ebbed and flowed in his eyes even despite the Occulobe and the dampening of the terminator armor helmet visor. He knew instinctively that one or the other had unleashed yet another psychic attack of unimaginable power. He closed his eyes and inhaled, switching to prey sight at the same time. It was of little help. When he opened his eyes again, he could still see the current of warp energy. It only had changed form, now coming at him like a fell wind, rushing over him. He felt like he was being sandblasted inside his armor.

”Horus, my son, do you have any idea of the consequences of your actions? You've laid waste to the galaxy and opened the floodgates for the horrors of the warp. Yet you are proud of what you've done.”

”Yes, father, I am. You see only destruction and horror in my wake. I see freedom and growth. From the ashes of your tyranny will rise new life, free of oppression and ignorance.”

”Oh how blind you are. You've burned and slain your way to a mankind adrift in an uncaring galaxy, with the powers you've unleashed looking to devour and enslave it. You've become so obsessed with my destruction that you've become blinded to the reality. Where we had unity and strength, you've sown dispersion and weakness. Mankind will splinter and die, left at the mercy of the xenos and demons. Your army will shatter and kill itself. How long before Angron turns on you instead when he no longer has me to hate? How long before Perturabo grows bitter at you? How long before you have to deal Konrad´s madness? In the end, you will have accomplished the utter and complete destruction of mankind, not by choice but by folly.”

”The bitter monologue of a dying man. Choose your words wisely, father, for you are about to die.”

A massive shockwave shook the whole ship. Horand was cast off his feet and thrown into a wall. His eardrums burst with headsplitting pain. Despite his Lyman´s Ear and being no stranger to pain, he roared in agony and trashed and flopped around the floor like a fish out of water. His vision turned slowly crimson as blood seeped from his eyesockets. He vomited and urinated blood. Even as his conscious mind was in turmoil, in his heart he knew that the Emperor had just been gravely wounded. Without rational thought, he struggled to his feet and shambled and lurched towards the origin of the blast. Prey sight showed nothing but static in different shades of crimson. He switched it off.

Further ahead, a black iris stood open and vomiting dark and threatening power from the aethyr into the corridor and straight at Horand. He knew that beyond the iris were Horus and the Emperor. Horand gritted his teeth. They rattled in his dried and withered gums, drawing a trickle of fresh blood inside his mouth. He checked the magazine of his combibolter and made sure his power fist was ready. Even though he knew it was a lie, he whispered through clenched teeth.

”And I shall know no fear...”

He stepped through the portal.

Horus stood on a raised dais in all his terrifying magnificence. Pools of shadow and darkness swirled and rushed around him while the foul Eye of Horus shone on his warplate like the embers left behind by his armies. Its deep, dark red combined with the shadows to make the bridge the deepest bowels of hell. Walls writhed and squirmed with numberless faces trapped in agony and despair. Spirits and demons lurked and hungered in the tempest of shadows, eager to rend and devour. Yet they were but a hint of the darkness that was Horus in his warpspawned power. Even through the veil of blood in his eyes, Horand could see that he had not a chance in hell against the primarch.

But Horus´ twisted splendour and the terror of the warped bridge paled in comparison to the horror that lay at the foot of the dais. The Emperor lay in prone and motionless, his golden armor torn asunder and his beautiful face a molten and charred waste. His features were indistinguishable from the ashen mass, aside from one eye. Horand looked the Emperor in the eye and wept tears of blood.

He clenched his rattling teeth and turned to face Horus. The expression on the primarch´s face was unreadable through Horand´s bloodstained eyes but he didn't seem at all fazed. Horus didn't even deem to raise his mace or his hideous talon. Horand raised his bolter and aimed it straight at Horus´ bare forehead.

The weapon bucked as Horand fired off a long, enraged burst as he charged forward, bringing his powerfist back to strike at Horus.

”Watch, father. After all, this might be the last thing you see. Look at the fate of your empire.”

The bolter shells either never reached Horus, exploding midair, or bounced off his skin like they were peas. Horus flicked a finger casually towards Horand as if swatting away a fly. The shadows swirling about him swooped at the Imperial Fist. Their onslaught tore him apart, reducing the terminator armor to atoms in a matter of seconds. Horand felt his flesh dry and dessicate even as his motion carried him forward. Nerves screamed and burned as his flesh was stripped from his bones. The agony was indescribable. He disintegrated before the very eye of the Emperor.

As he was shredded, demons swooped in, tearing and clawing at his consciousness. To his horror he realized they were devouring his soul. He wanted to scream, but his body was already dead and no more than ashes.

The Emperor´s one good eye flickered.

”No more!”

His voice was like the crack of thunder. The bridge shook. Demons flinched and were buffeted away like leaves in a hurricane. A golden light filled the bridge, driving shadows and darkness before it as the Emperor´s full power manifested. Horand´s agony ceased. As the shadows fled,  the golden glow coalesced into a searing white lance and speared Horus right through his chest. The foul eye on his warplate was impaled. Horus froze, rigid and stiff. He hung on the lance of light with his eyes open and his mouth open in a silent scream. Slowly the light faded. Horus fell limp and collapsed, crashing to the dais.

Horand felt himself drifting into oblivion. His senses had failed him as his body had died. For a moment, anchored by the Emperor´s psychic image, Horand hung in the room. He couldn't feel Horus anymore. The primarch was without a doubt dead. The Emperor himself was but a faded echo, nothing like the commanding presence Horand remembered from the Palace on Terra.

The one final thing he sensed before he passed away was the weak and wounded voice of the Emperor.

"Son..."