‘I cannot give that credence,’ said Guilliman plainly.
Eldrad Ulthran gave a dry chuckle. ‘How difficult it must be for you, a child of the Emperor’s enlightenment, to judge these things. The armour sustains your soul. When you were wounded by your fallen brother, the cut went past flesh and wounded your eternal being. That wound will never heal.’
‘It is true I feel an emptiness inside myself,’ said Guilliman.
‘That is the injury of the soul.’
‘Be that as it may, you have not answered my question. Will I survive?’
‘The question is wrong. It is not will you survive, but are you capable of surviving?’ Eldrad raised his hand and gestured at the circling runes. ‘These are the tools by which I might read the skein,’ he said. ‘These runes represent you. There are many of them, as you can see. Their interaction is complex. Hard even for me to read. If I go into the othersea, where I may look directly upon the branchings of what may come to be, your path is difficult to follow. To remove the Armour of Fate risks not only death, but ultimate annihilation. Even if you do not die, its removal will affect you profoundly in a way you will find uncomfortable. There is grief woven tight about every possible future for you, Roboute Guilliman. Take off this armour, and the emptiness you feel will grow to a void that can never, ever be filled.’
‘Sorrow I can bear,’ he said. ‘I have endured more of that than any being. What is a little more?’
‘You do not know my sorrows,’ said Eldrad. He looked again at the primarch. When his head shifted, Guilliman realised he could see the ceiling through the helm. Eldrad was fading away. He must get his answer quickly, or not at all.
‘You cannot know all of mine either, for all your psychic gifts.’
‘This is true,’ said the farseer. ‘Remove the armour, if you wish. There will be consequences. Of what degree is down to you – it is an outcome dictated by your will, and the strength of your own soul. Annihilation, death, or simply sadness. I cannot answer this question, no more than could Cawl’s puppet. You can answer it only yourself, and ask it only by doing.’
‘Then I will not die,’ said Guilliman firmly.
Eldrad nodded. ‘That is entirely up to you.’ The aeldari and his runes were vanishing from view, a spectre caught in full sunlight. ‘There is a further thing you have not said.’
‘Is there?’ asked Guilliman.
‘You wish to be free of the influence of my kind,’ Eldrad said, his voice fading with his body. ‘You see the armour as a gaoler holding you hostage to our whims. Know this – the fates of humanity and aeldari are bound together. Either both species will survive, or neither will. Your Emperor understands this. There are greater enemies than the primordial annihilator. In the times to come, you will see. The struggle is only beginning. The old war returns.’ Ulthran was an outline, a shadow. ‘Remember this conversation, and reconsider carefully, on the day realisation comes, whether you wish to stand alone.’
Eldrad Ulthran was gone.
Guilliman left the unliving city to itself.
Guilliman chose his arming chamber for the task of removal. The day came quickly, and before he knew it, he was on the cusp of the moment. Four high-ranking adepts of the Cult Mechanicus waited on his command, as did medicae, Apothecaries and a host of servitors. Apart from the large, upright arming cradle made for his stature, the room was more operating theatre than armoury, being full of medical equipment, the air prickly with the astringent scents of counterseptic. A large section of the space was taken up with a primarch-sized operating table, over which a multi-limbed chirurgeon hovered in readiness.
Nobody spoke. Guilliman stood in the door. Weighing his decision one final time, he looked behind him into the greater hall that housed his museum of weaponry. The lights in the Grand Hall of Armaments were out, and the collection of armours it contained were dark silhouettes, all inert, simple machines that possessed none of the dangers his own wargear did.
This section of the ship was the one most badly damaged by the Red Corsairs during their tenure. He remembered coming aboard after the vessel’s retrieval, sorrowing at the damage done, soothing his anger by its restoration. He wondered, as he returned his gaze to the specially made machinery awaiting him, if he was risking similar damage to all the Imperium by taking this course of action.
What if he died?
I can be nobody’s slave, he thought firmly. He stepped into the arming cradle and gripped the armrests so tightly the metal sang.
‘Begin,’ he said.
A servitor raised a cybernetic arm, the power tool mounted in place of its hand already rotating. The bit engaged smoothly with a locking bolt upon the primarch’s greave.
Guilliman gritted his teeth as the bolt was withdrawn, and he took his fate back into his own hands.
About the Author
Guy Haley is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Wolfsbane and Pharos, the Primarchs novels Corax: Lord of Shadows, Perturabo: The Hammer of Olympia, and the Warhammer 40,000 novels Dark Imperium, The Devastation of Baal, Dante, Baneblade, Shadowsword, Valedor and Death of Integrity. He has also written Throneworld and The Beheading for The Beast Arises series. His enthusiasm for all things greenskin has also led him to pen the eponymous Warhammer novel Skarsnik, as well as the End Times novel The Rise of the Horned Rat. He has also written stories set in the Age of Sigmar, included in War Storm, Ghal Maraz and Call of Archaon. He lives in Yorkshire with his wife and son.