The Horus Heresy: The Master of Mankind

Constantin Valdor ran to the Emperor’s side, oblivious to the fact his master was playing no part in a performance that had all happened before.

The Emperor had turned to him then, Ra recalled, and said ‘Summon Jenetia Krole. Assemble the Ten Thousand.’ This time though, he did not.

‘At once, my liege.’ Valdor turned away to make it so.

‘Something is coming through!’ cried one of the human workers.

The Emperor ignored the spreading chaos. ‘Hear me, Ra. You must take word to the Ten Thousand and the Silent Sisterhood. I am leaving the Golden Throne. I am coming to you.’

Ra’s blood sang. Eyes wide, he felt riven by sudden hope. It struck him with physical force.

‘Sire… How…’

‘The how does not matter. Hold, Ra. Fight. I will join you in the Mechanicum’s tunnels.’

‘But, my liege, all your work…’

The Emperor silenced him with a stare.

Behind Ra, the discoloured webway portal vomited incandescent flame into the throne room. He felt its searing heat, just as he had on that long-ago day. He watched himself with exalted, distracted eyes, moving to the Emperor’s side, forming a shield of Custodial auramite to protect his monarch from harm.

The machines were detonating around them now. Many of the humans were on the floor, clutching at their bleeding eyes. The hateful radiance emerging from the webway had stolen their sight.

Those still standing were no safer. Shrapnel flew in a lethal, burning blizzard, cutting them down in their dozens, shearing limbs from bodies, severing heads from shoulders. Wreckage clattered against Ra’s armour now, just as it rained against the same armour he had worn five years before. A dagger of jagged metal speared into Amon’s side, causing the Custodian to grunt across their shared vox.

A bleeding, desecrated behemoth melted through the webway portal. It dripped with the blood of the souls it had sacrificed to reach this point in space and time. Laughter haloed its terrible form, the laughter of mad entities pantomiming as gods. Their laughter formed the silver strings of puppeteers, pulling at the creature’s limbs and thoughts.

It said one word, one terrible proclamation with enough psychic ferocity to slay half of the panicking humans still breathing. They warped and thrashed and burned beneath the pressure of that single telepathic damnation, their flesh losing all integrity, their essences devoured from the inside out.

+FATHER.+

Valdor was firing. Amon was firing. Ra, then and now, was firing. He and the image of himself reloaded in temporal harmony, slamming fresh sickle magazines home in their guardian spears, resuming the torrent of upward bolter fire.

The pain of Ra’s wounds was gone. He didn’t think, didn’t care, that this was a memory. He unloaded his guardian spear into the daemonic avatar of Magnus the Red, just as he had done on that fateful day. He screamed through clenched teeth – again, just as he had done before, just as he was doing not two metres away now.

+Awaken, Ra,+ said the Emperor. +Fight on.+

And as ever, His Custodian obeyed.

Twenty-One That most sacred duty / The end of many roads / Awakening

1

The Archimandrite calculated with all haste. There were doubts, of course. Hesitations. On some level it mused over the heretical nature of its choice, but to consider its actions heresy would be the result of flawed and limited perception. The Ten Thousand and the Silent Sisterhood, proving themselves untrue to the word given to the Fabricator General himself, were the guilty ones. The route back to Mars had to remain viable. The Aresian Path must stay in Imperial hands. Ensuring that circumstance was as far from heresy as could be conceived. Indeed, it was a sacred duty.

And if it could not, would not be fulfilled by those responsible? Then the answer was not to flee back to Terra. Terra was safe. Terra didn’t languish under the traitorous grip of the false cult. Terra needed no reinforcing.

No, there was only one logical answer that conformed to the relevant needs of Martian primacy. Only one course of action to take.

With the webway’s cartography playing out in repetitive reassurance within the Archimandrite’s thoughts, it had been no hardship to plan the dispersal of the war servitors, robots, Protectors and Myrmidon war-priests that answered to the Archimandrite itself rather than the Ten Thousand. Those that the Archimandrite didn’t personally lead were sent with the earliest sections of the evacuation convoy, then granted enough insight into the Archimandrite’s mental map to deviate from the line of retreat and journey through secondary tunnels to double back. They drifted away at key junctions, navigating the webway via their overlord’s exloaded data.