Lord of the Night

'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...'

'Half truths. Half truths and lies!'

'I... I don't understand...'

'Do you know what the Night Haunter's final words to me were? Do you know what he said, as he seated himself and awaited the assassin?'

'N-n—'

'He said "See how the mighty are fallen."'

'W-why?'

'Because he had finally realised what nobody else had ever seen. That his father, his glorious Emperor, his Divine Creator, was just as vicious, just as terrible, just as merciless, as the Night Lords themselves. See how the mighty are fallen. See how divinity lowers itself to dispose of the monster it created!'

One final pulse of rebellion — alone and drowning in a sea of doubt — struggled to be heard in Mita's heart. 'L-lowers itself? By sending an assassin? After all that Konrad Curze had done? After the horrors of the Heresy? What else could the Emperor have done?'

For an instant the doubt seemed to retract. For an instant she felt she'd somehow scored a point, landed a blow.

The Night Lord remained resolutely unphased.