He smiled suddenly as he realised that it didn’t matter whether his life and faith had been based on a falsehood. He had believed what he had seen and he had come to this place with a heart open and emptied by grief. That openness had allowed the spirit of his god to enter his soul and filled the emptiness within him with love.
What makes faith so powerful is that it requires no proof. Belief is enough.
He had devoted his life to his god, and even with the understanding of how his fate had been manipulated by random chance, he found no resentment in his heart. He had spread a doctrine of love and forgiveness from his pulpit and no amount of clever words would make him regret that.
The door to the narthex was still open and, as they passed through its cold embrace, the Emperor pushed open the main doors of the church. Howling wind and sheets of rain blew inwards and Uriah clasped his robes tightly to his body, feeling the night’s cold stab into his body like a thousand shards of ice.
He looked over his shoulder towards the altar of his church, seeing the lone candle beside the doomsday clock snuffed out by the gale. Once again, his church was swathed in darkness and he sighed to see this last illumination extinguished. The wind blew the internal doors shut and Uriah followed the Emperor out into the darkness.
Rain soaked him instantly and a crash of lightning lit the heavens with an actinic blue glow. Hundreds of warriors stood in ordered ranks before the church, brutal giants in pugnacious armour he had last seen on the battlefield of Gaduaré.
They stood immobile beneath the downpour, the rain beating against the burnished plates of bronze in an unrelenting tattoo and causing their scarlet helmet plumes to hang limply at their shoulders. There had been some refinements, saw Uriah, the armour now all-enclosing and each warrior sealed from the elements by an interlocking series of artfully designed plates.
Huge backpacks vented excess heat in steaming plumes like breath, and each of the warriors carried a burning torch that hissed and fizzed in the downpour. Huge guns were slung over their shoulders and Uriah shivered as he remembered the murderous volley, like the thunder at the end of the world, that had felled so many of his comrades.
The Emperor put a long cloak about Uriah’s shoulders as a group of armoured warriors stepped towards the church with flame lances raised. Uriah wanted to protest, to speak out against what they were about to do, but the words died in his throat as he realised they would have no effect.
Tears streamed down his face along with the rain as torrents of flame erupted from the warriors’ weapons and licked over the roof and walls of the church. Other warriors fired grenades that smashed through the stained-glass windows of the church and percussive booms thudded from inside as the hungry flames took hold of the roof.
Thick smoke billowed from the windows, the rain doing nothing to dampen the destructive ambition of the flames, and Uriah wept to think of the wondrous fresco and the thousands of years of history that was being destroyed.
He turned to look up at the Emperor, the warrior’s face lit by the fires of destruction.
‘How can you do this?’ demanded Uriah. ‘You say you stand for reason and the advancement of understanding, but here you are destroying a repository of knowledge!’
The Emperor looked down at him and said, ‘Some things are best left forgotten.’
‘Then I hope you have foreseen the consequences of a world bereft of religion.’
‘I have,’ replied the Emperor. ‘It is my dream. An Imperium of Man that exists without recourse to gods and the supernatural. A united galaxy with Terra at its heart.’
‘A united galaxy?’ said Uriah, averting his gaze from his blazing church as he finally grasped the scale of the Emperor’s ambition.
‘Indeed. Now that Unity has been achieved on Terra, it is time to reclaim humanity’s lost empire among the stars.’
‘With you at its head, I presume?’ said Uriah.
‘Of course. Nothing of such grand scale can be achieved without a singular vision at its heart, least of all the reconquest of the galaxy.’
‘You are a madman,’ said Uriah. ‘And you are arrogant if you believe you can subjugate the stars with warriors such as these. They are powerful to be sure, but even they are not capable of such a thing.’
‘You are right,’ agreed the Emperor. ‘I will not conquer the galaxy with these men, for they are but men. These are the precursors to the warriors I am forging in my gene-labs, warriors with the strength and power and vision to bestride the battlefields of the stars and bring them to compliance. These warriors shall be my generals and they will lead my great crusade to the furthest corners of the galaxy.’
‘Didn’t you just tell me of the bloody slaughters perpetrated by crusaders?’ said Uriah. ‘Doesn’t that make you no better than the holy men you were telling me about?’
‘The difference is I know I am right,’ said the Emperor.
‘Spoken like a true autocrat.’
The Emperor shook his head. ‘You misunderstand, Uriah. I have seen the narrow survival path that is all that stands between humanity and extinction, and this is the way it must begin.’
Uriah looked back at the church, the gleeful flames reaching high into the darkness.
‘It is a dangerous road you travel,’ said Uriah. ‘To deny humanity a thing will only make them crave it all the more. And if you succeed in this grand vision of yours? What then? Beware that your subjects do not begin to see you as a god.’
Uriah looked into the Emperor’s face as he spoke, now seeing past the glamours and the magnificence to the heart of an individual who had lived a thousand lives and walked the Earth for longer than could be imagined. He saw the ruthless ambition and the molten core of violence at the Emperor’s heart. In that instant, Uriah knew he wanted nothing to do with anything this man had to offer, no matter how noble or lofty his ambitions might be.
‘I hope in the name of all that is holy you are right,’ said Uriah, ‘but I dread the future you are forging for humanity.’
‘I wish only the best for my people,’ promised the Emperor.
‘I think you do, but I will not be a part of it,’ said Uriah, casting off the Emperor’s cloak and walking back towards his church with his head held high. The rain beat down on him, but he welcomed it as a baptismal.
He heard footsteps approaching him, but he heard the Emperor say, ‘No. Leave him.’
The outer doors of the church stood open and Uriah walked into the narthex, feeling the heat of the flames as they billowed around him. The statues were on fire and the doors to the nave were gone, blown off their hinges by the blasts of grenades.
Uriah marched into the blazing heat of the church, seeing a wall of flame devouring the pews and silken hangings with insatiable hunger. Smoke filled the air and the fresco above him was almost obscured by the roiling blackness.
He looked at the clock face on the altar and smiled as the flames closed in around him.
The warriors remained outside the church until it collapsed, the roof timbers crashing down into the building in a tremendous flurry of flying sparks and wreckage. They stayed until the first rays of sunlight crested the mountains and the rain finally extinguished the last of the flames.
The ruins of the last church on Terra smouldered in the chill morning air as the Emperor turned away and said, ‘Come, we have a galaxy to conquer.’
As the Emperor and his warriors marched down the hillside, the only sound to be heard was the soft chiming of an old and broken clock.
After Desh’ea