In one, you died in youth, the golden child-martyr of Colchis, slain by assassins seeking to restore the Old Ways. When the Imperium came to reclaim you, they found a world dead by its own hand, lost to the crusades of bitter fanatics.
In another, you were poisoned only three nights after retaking the capital in your holy war for the hearts of Colchis’s people. You were murdered by the wine in your cup, with the poison placed there by the hand of one you called Father, for he feared you could no longer be manipulated.
In another, you were not the master of your own temper, much like many of your brothers: in a confrontation with Sanguinius, you sank a knife into his back, and were in turn butchered by Horus for your sin.
In yet another, you defied the Anathema – the creature you name the Emperor, falsely considering it to be human – and you were executed by your brothers Curze and Russ. Your heart was cut from your corpse, and a great sorcery of alchemical and genetic power was wrought upon all who shared your bloodline. Your Legion was poisoned, reduced to madness, and finally annihilated by the fleets of the Ultramar Kingdom.
In another, you—
‘Enough.’ Lorgar felt pale, and suspected only his gold-inked skin hid that very truth. ‘Enough, please.’
As you wish.
The mountains continued to rumble with distant bellows as the world breathed fire into its own sky.
Lorgar opened his eyes at last. ‘Why me? Why was I brought here? Why not Horus or Guilliman? They are the generals I will never be. Why not Sanguinius or Dorn?’ He laughed then, a sneering, private snort. ‘Why not Magnus?’
Ingethel grinned, insofar as its mangled mouth would allow. The gods have touched many of your brothers in ways both obvious and occluded. One of them bears wings upon his back. Is that part of your Emperor’s genetic intent? Did he not wish to destroy all religious reference? Why then would he breed a son that stands as an angel incarnate?
Lorgar brushed the point aside. ‘Enough cryptic idiocy. Why not Magnus? He is the most powerful of us all, without a shadow of doubt.’
Magnus. Magnus the Red. The Crimson King. Ingethel laughed inside Lorgar’s mind, and gestured out onto the plains. He is already with us, whether he admits it or not. He came to us without needing to be summoned, and without ever considering the notion of faith. He came for power, because that is why all things of flesh come to us. And in five short decades, when the galaxy begins to burn, he will come here himself.
Behold this very world, Lorgar, in fifty years.
SEVEN
CITY OF LIGHT
FOR A MOMENT, to even face the light was painful. Silver in its artificiality, as cold and far removed from the warm gold of a natural star as could be imagined. Shadowing his face from the austere glare, Lorgar looked across the plains where Ingethel had gestured.
Shapes resolved themselves into an uneven skyline. Lorgar knew it instantly, for he had studied there for almost a decade, living among its people and coming to adore them as he loved the people of Colchis.
‘Tizca,’ he said the word only after swallowing his horror. Cracked spires of human ingenuity; great pyramids of white stone, pale metal and shattered glass; city walls fallen to nothing more than lumped rubble – this was the great and enlightened city of the Thousand Sons, reduced to the edge of devastation.
‘What madness do I see before me? What lies cruelly given shape?’
Tizca will burn in the crucible of the coming war. It must be so.
‘I will never allow this to come to pass.’
You will allow it, Lorgar. You must.
‘You are not my master. I would never hold faith in a god that controlled its worshippers. Faith is about freedom, not slavery.’
You will allow this to come to pass.
‘If this is the future, Ingethel, I will tell Magnus in the past. When I return to the Imperium, it will be the first thing to leave my lips.’
No. This is the final incident in Magnus’s illumination. Betrayed by the Emperor, betrayed by his own brothers, he will bring his city to the warp in order to escape final destruction. Here, he forges a bastion for the war to come.
‘What war?’ Lorgar spat the words. ‘You keep speaking of betrayals, of crusades and battles, as if I can already see into the same futures you describe. Tell me, damn you, what war?’ Lorgar started to move towards the ruined city, but Ingethel gripped his armoured shoulder.
The war you will begin, but will never lead. The war to bring all these truths to the Imperium. You came to find the gods, Lorgar. You have found them, as they always intended for you. Their eyes are turned towards humanity now. We said this to Argel Tal, as we say it to you now: Humanity must embrace the truths of divine reality, or suffer the same fate as the eldar.
Lorgar looked back to the city.
You already knew it would come to war. A holy crusade, to bring the truth to Terra. Too many worlds will resist. The Emperor’s grip on their lives is too complete, too merciless. The Anathema starves them of any chance to grow on their own, so they will languish – and then they will die – while shackled by his narrow vision.
The primarch smiled, the expression a mirror of his genetic father’s own faint amusement. ‘And in place of order, you offer Chaos? I have seen what walks on the faces of those eldar worlds lost in this great, drowned empire. The seas of blood and the cities of howling Neverborn…’
You look upon an empire that failed to heed the gods.
‘Even so, there are horrors no human will willingly embrace.’
No? These things are horrors only to those who look upon them with mortal eyes. Without belief in the true gods, humanity will fall to its own faithlessness. Alien kingdoms will break the Imperium apart, for humanity lacks the strength to survive in a galaxy that loathes your species. Your expansion will fade and diminish, and the gods will smite all who turned from the offer of true faith. Your kind can embrace the Chaos you speak of or it can taste the same fate as the eldar.
‘Chaos.’ Lorgar tasted the word, weighing it on his tongue. ‘That is not the correct word, is it? The immaterial realm may be one of pure Chaos, but it is changed when bonded with the material universe. Diluted. Even in this Great Eye, where the gods stare into the galaxy, physical laws are broken but it is not a place of pure Chaos. It is no random ocean of seething psychic energy. It is not the warp itself, but a meshing of here and there, the firmament and the aether.’
The primarch breathed in the ashy air, feeling it tickle the back of his throat. ‘Perfect order would never change. But pure Chaos would never rise in the first place. You desire a union.’
He turned to Ingethel. Blood ran from both the daemon’s eyes now, darkening its fur in bleak lightning streaks.
‘You need us,’ Lorgar said. ‘The gods need us. They cannot claim the material realm without us. Their power is strangled when they have no prayers or deeds offered in worship.’
Yes, but the need is not a selfish one. It is a natural desire. The gods are masters of Chaos as a natural force. The warp is every human emotion – every emotion from any sentient race – made manifest into a psychic tempest. It is not the enemy of life, but the result of it.