Ra knew this, yet never had it been related to him in these exact words, flavoured as they were by the promise of prophecy. With the webway, humanity would need no Navigators. They would never need to rely on the unreliable warp-whispers of astropaths. Vessels would never enter the warp to be lost or torn apart by the entities that dwelt within it. But the eldar had done the same, had they not?
+No. They eradicated their reliance on the warp but they never severed their species’ connection to it. I will do that for humanity, once and for all.+
Ra twisted in the nothingness, turning to stare at the light of so many distant stars. He faced Terra without knowing how he knew its direction, only knowing that he was right. One of those pinprick starlights was Sol, so far away.
+I have conquered humanity’s cradle-world. I have conquered the galaxy, in order to shape mankind’s development as it at last evolves into a psychic race. No isolated pockets of our species may remain free, lest in their ignorance they invite destruction upon us all. I have shattered the hold of faith and fear over the human mind. Superstition and religion must continue to be outlawed, for they are easy doors for the warp’s denizens to enter the human heart. This is what we have already done. And soon I will offer humanity a way of interstellar travel without reliance upon Geller fields and Navigators. I will offer them means of communicating between worlds without reliance on the warp-dreams of astropaths. And when the Imperium shields the entire species within the laws of my Pax Imperialis, when humanity is freed from the warp and united beneath my vision, I can at last shepherd mankind’s growth into a psychic race.+
The primarchs, thought Ra. The Thunder Legion. The Unification Wars. The Great Crusade. The Space Marine Legions. The Imperial Truth. The Webway Project. The Black Ships, with psykers huddled in the holds, watched over by the Silent Sisterhood. It is all about–
+Control. Tyranny is not the end, Ra. Absolute control is but the means to the end.+
The hubris… Ra couldn’t fight the insidiously treacherous thought, to see the hidden depths of his master’s ambitions. The sheer, unrivalled hubris.
+The necessity.+ The Emperor’s voice was iced iron. +Not arrogance. Not vainglory. Necessity. I have already told you, Ra. Humans need rulers. Now you see why. A single murder is on one end of the spectrum, for rulers bring law. The hope of the entire race is at the far end of the continuum, for I – as ruler – bring salvation.+
Ra stared towards distant Terra, unsure if he was humbled or touched by the alien sensation of something akin to terror.
+You are shedding tears, Ra.+
Surprised, the Custodian touched gold-clad fingertips to his tattooed cheeks. They came away glinting with faint wetness in the light of distant suns.
‘I have never done so before.’
+That is not true. You wept on the night your mother died. You merely do not remember it.+
Ra still looked at the faint moisture on his fingertip. How curious. ‘Forgive the indignity, sire.’
+There is nothing to forgive. The immensity of my ambitions sit ill within mortal minds. Even among mortals that will live as close to eternally as my Ten Thousand.+
And yet, Ra thought in another treasonous whisper, it is all threatened, coming apart at the seams.
+The primarchs,+ agreed the Emperor. +Witness them.+
Ra dragged in a cold breath. He was on guard immediately, his spear in his hands, razor gaze flicking across his surroundings, seeking threats. But in every direction, all he saw was a featureless landscape far too flat to be of natural origin. No matter where he looked, the horizon was a pale line of useless, bare land meeting a cloudless sky. Even his retinal gauges registered his surroundings as impossibly even. This was the work of the Mechanicum and their continental geoplaning engines.
In that moment, he knew where he was.
‘Ullanor.’ His voice echoed strangely. For all he knew, he was the only living soul on the whole world. The wind took his word and carried it away.
‘Ullanor,’ the Emperor confirmed. Ra turned to see his master clad in the brazen light of layered golden plate, festooned with Imperial aquilas the way a shaman might decorate his flesh with wards against black magic. ‘Do you remember when you last walked the earth of this world, Ra?’
How could he not? It had been at the Triumph, when millions of troops had gathered to bid the Emperor farewell from the Great Crusade, in the final hours before He returned to Terra. The day that nine – nine! – primarchs had gathered together at their father’s side.
The day that Horus had been proclaimed Warmaster.
A single breath later, Ra was back there once more. The salt flats of geoplaned banality were host to a sea of colours: banners, flags, soldiers, tanks, Titans. The eye couldn’t take in the immensity of the sight. The mind couldn’t process it. The Martian Mechanicum had cleaved an entire continent to make the procession possible, dismantling mountain ranges, filling valleys, contouring the planet’s crust for the most monumental gathering since the declaration of the Great Crusade.
And the sound, the sound. The thrum of so many engines was a living, draconic roar. Regiments of pristine warriors standing beneath remade war standards cried their victories to the sky. A single Titan’s footsteps made for infrequent, rhythmic thunder. A battle division’s worth of giant war machines made for a storm capable of shaking a city to its foundations. Here walked thrice that number, and thrice again, and thrice more beyond that. The Martian behemoths strode over and through the millions of troops at their ankles, leaving immense footprints that served to finally carve features upon the plain plateau.
The Luna Wolves had mustered in unified ranks at the procession’s vanguard, still clad in the pearly white of their nobler incarnation rather than the murky green of their self-damnation as the Sons of Horus.
And with them? Phalanx upon phalanx of warriors from every Legion. Even those without primarchs present still stood proud beneath the million war banners waving in the desert wind.
The primarchs stood apart, occupying the colossal dais erected for their specific purpose. They towered above even the great Imperators and Warmongers that no other war machine could match, and each of the Emperor’s geneforged generals variously bathed in or endured the shouted jubilation of the organised masses below.
One by one they walked forwards to greet the assembled host. Angron, raising his weapons high, consecrated by the army’s roars just as he had once been exalted by the cries of arena crowds in his life as Angronius of Nuceria, Lord of the Red Sands.
Lorgar Aurelian, Herald of the Emperor, throwing his arms wide and beckoning the millions of loyal souls to shout louder, harder. He was a demagogue presented with a crowd that offered nothing but vindication.
Sanguinius was next, reluctant and wrathful and soulful Sanguinius, the Emperor’s eagle-winged son and the living avatar of the Imperium. The cries that met his presentation rang loudest of all, and the tens of millions of men and women gathered below were too far distant to ever see how their near-worship flickered uneasily in the Angel’s eyes. Even so, as they bayed and begged, he drew his sword in salute to the masses of humanity arrayed across the plain. They cried their throats raw as he spread his great wings wide. A single feather flew free, descending upon the wind in slow whirls. It would become a sacred relic to the Imperial Army regiment that claimed it, with the image of a single white feather forever after emblazoned in a place of honour upon their campaign banners.