Lord of the Night

'I don't have to listen to you, traitor,' she said.

The quaver in her voice was impossible to conceal.

And oh, oh warpspit and piss, she did need to listen to it. She did need to hear what the beast had to say.

Why? Why did she feel so obliged?

A self-appointed test of her faith, perhaps?

Or perhaps just the comfort of knowing she was not alone in feeling such doubts...

The crucified beast gave no sign of fear at the gun's wavering attention.

'So,' he nodded, brows arching, 'you have the love of one being, out of countless billions? And that is enough?'

'More than enough! You'd understand if you hadn't turned from His light.'

He smiled, genuine warmth appearing on frozen features. 'And can there be an Emperor, without an Empire?'

'No, but—'

'No. They are intertwined. One billion billion souls despise you. A single soul — so you say — loves you. You don't think this a bitter ratio?'

'Without the Emperor's love there is nothing. Vacuus Imperator diligo illic est nusquam.'

She was reduced to parroting lessons of her youth, and the Night Lord's slow smile told her that he knew it.

'I used to think the same,' he said, as if conceding a generous point. Then: 'Once.'

She racked the gun meaningfully, trying to find a reserve of conviction in her voice.

'Spare me your attempts at corruption. My faith is stronger than steel!'

He leaned down from his tall perch, eyes brimming with earnest curiosity. 'Why do you fight me,' he asked, 'when we are the same?'

'I'm nothing like you!'

A petulant rage gripped her then, the last vestiges of her tattered pride spreading wings of outrage at the very suggestion of her likeness to that... that devil... and before she could stop herself she'd squeezed the trigger of the apparated weapon.

The shot struck the crucified figure in his side, tearing a strange slash of flesh clear, to boil off into the sky, dissolving as it went, and in this curious inner-realm what flowed from the rent was not blood, but light.

He gave no sign of pain.

'Of course you are,' he hissed, and any trace of shock was gone now, any sense of childish bewilderment was lost. Now his eyes glimmered with guile. 'You are the unclean filth that serves in His name. You are the hated one. They fear you, and they loathe you, but still they use you...'

'No, no...'

'Yes. They use you up until you cease to be useful, you understand? And what then, little witch? You think they will thank you?'

'It's... you're wrong... it's not like that...'

'The only difference between us, girl, is that where you still wear your yoke of slavery, my master broke me free!'

Mita almost roared, sudden venom choking her mind, clearing the clouds of doubt that the Night Lord had sowed. 'Free?' she snarled. 'You got your freedom by turning to Chaos! You got your salvation from Heresy, warp take you! That's not freedom — that's insanity!'

Such calmness in his face. Such ancient sadness.

'You're wrong, child. We were never slaves to the Dark Powers. We fought beneath a banner of hate, not of corruption.'

'Hate? What did you have to hate? You fell from grace by choice, traitor, you were not pushed!'

For the first time real, honest emotion ignited behind his eyes. This was not a part of some elaborate game of words, she understood suddenly. This sentiment boiled from his guts and infected the air before him like a cloud of locusts, as heavy with conviction as it was with contempt.

'Hate for the accursed Emperor. Hate for your withered god.'

'I'll kill you! Speak one more word of this filth and I'll—'

'You ask what I hate? I hate a creature that speaks of pride and honour, that fosters the love of his sons, that smiles and scrapes at every obedient act, and then turns like a diseased dog and stabs his own child in the spine!'

'Shut up! Shut up, damn you!'

'I hate a being so sick, so certain of his own brilliance, so twisted by the call of glory, that he repays the greatest sacrifice of all with betrayal''

Mita seized at the flapping cords of the Night Lord's voice, struggling to pull herself free of the confusion gripping her.

'Sacrifice? Your master sacrificed nothing but his soul!'

The Night Lord's eyes bored into her.

'He sacrificed his humanity, child.'

And suddenly his voice was so melancholic, so deep and so calm, so bloated by sadness, that Mita found all her rage dissolved. The gun faltered in her grip and she lowered it, tears in her eyes.

'W-what?'

'He became a monster. He formed us, his Night Lords, in his own image: to spread terror and hate, to forge obedience through fear. He rescinded whatever purity he had, he cast off the humanity that was never intended for him... he risked insanity and damnation, and all to bring order to his father's Imperium.'

'He sacrificed his soul to the dark, and—'

'You aren't listening. You weren't there. I tell you, little witch: he sacrificed his soul at the Emperor's behest. He became the tame monster the Imperium needed. And how was he repaid? He was reined in. He was humiliated before his brothers. And then? The assassin's kiss.'

'He went too far! The histories do not lie! The excesses of the Night Lords are famed thr—'

'Excesses? We obeyed every order! We did what was asked of us! Listen to me, child! The "excesses" of the Night Haunter were sanctioned.'

'No...' her mind rebelled at the suggestion, lights flashing before her eyes. 'No, no, no... the Emperor would never countenance in—'

'He needed order, where only savagery could bring it. He sent in the Night Lords, and we gave him the order he yearned. And then he made us his scapegoats. He cried with false outrage, and the Imperium cried with him!'

'You're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong...'

'My master craved nothing but pride from his father. And all that he ever received was scorn. Little wonder he threw-in his lot with the Heretic rabble. Little wonder he marched to war beside them, sensing that they might weaken his father's grip. He was wrong!'

'...no no no no no...'

'Look at me, child. Look at me.'

Mita's head snapped up at the command, the empty mumblings falling away from her mouth. It was all too much to take, too much to absorb. Too much for a single mind to contain.

'My master was killed by an assassin. You know this, yes?'

She dredged details from long-gone lessons, struggling to recall histories that had seemed so unreal, so mired in the soup of myth.

'Y-yes... yes, she was sent to kill the fiend w-when the Heresy was over... The other Legions fled in... in disarray. Not the Night Lords. The High Lords of Terra, they... they thought if Curze was slain the Legion would dissolve...'