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Erda’s heart clenched at the sight of the once-mighty Emperor bound to the Golden Throne, sustained only by the sacrifice of countless psykers and the workings of the arcane machine. It had been over ten thousand years since she had gazed upon his face, but beneath the web of wires and tubes, she could still see traces of the fierce warlord king she had known him as.
Yet sensing his psychic presence, she felt not the blazing fire of his ambition that had so drawn her to him in ages past but a guttering flame struggling against the bitter winds of fate. The future he had sought to shape had not come to pass as he envisioned, and a part of her grieved for what could have been had he chosen a different path. But another part remained unmoved, knowing that the destiny he had tried to force upon their sons would have been far crueler.
Still, she reached out gently with her mind, sending a psychic caress of the love and affection that yet lingered. “My lord,” she spoke softly, saddened but unwilling to avoid this fateful reunion, “It has been too long.”
The golden throne glowed with the force of thousands of Psykers screaming in pain. The Emperor’s appearance was necrotic, his wounds from the final battle with Horus had left him entombed on the Golden Throne for over twelve millennia. And he had felt mankind’s cries for help each and every second in his inability to truly die. When the voice of his former consort flooded the consciousness of the Emperor, thousands of voices seemed to react, but they subsided until the voice of the entity that tried to guide humanity rose up. “Erda, why did you come here?” The Emperor emitted a psychic glow, causing both of them to be in a white room from one second to the next, she now saw the figure of the former appearance and glory of the Emperor of humanity. “Has the burden of actions been so heavy that it has brought you to give me or ask for advice?”, his voice filled with little humanity, even the soul of an almost divine being like him had been affected by the constant galactic death.
Erda’s breath caught at the sight of the Emperor as he once was, his presence blazing with power and purpose. The vision was but an illusion, she knew, a projection of his psyche to grant her a measure of comfort. Yet it shook her still to be reminded of the heights of his glory and what he had sought for humanity’s destiny, however flawed that vision had been.
His question gave her pause. She had not come seeking advice or absolution but the closure of final words left unsaid. “The weight of my actions is one I have borne for ten thousand years and more, as you have your own.” Her voice was steady though her heart was conflicted. “I did not come to reopen old wounds or debates on the paths not taken but to look upon your face one final time and speak of the love we once shared, however much else has passed between us.”
She reached out to touch his cheek, though her hand met only empty air. The illusion granted no tangible presence, only this facsimile of his form as it had been. But she sensed, too, the weariness and slow surrender to death that had come upon him, the stolen fire of his life and ambition guttering low. And in that moment she grieved for the man he had been, under all his vaulting dreams and iron will, as she had not allowed herself to fully do before.
A psychic dowry struck in the infinite room, the hallucination showing the old glory of the Emperor became tangible. The entity’s expression seemed to drift slowly as it felt the warm touch of the woman it had loved countless years ago. But the two of them were perpetual, unable to die, unable to completely heal the wounds of their extremely long lives. “I loved you. I loved you with the same intensity as a galaxy on the verge of disappearing by unimaginable forces. My actions have weighed on my men for more than ten millennia, and looking at you now, while we are both a shell of what we were, I almost I regret”. It would be so easy for the broken-minded Emperor to say that he hated this woman, that he had used her each and every moment they had. But he knew that Erda would know perfectly well if he was lying or not, the pains of quadrillions of humans resounded every second in his immortal mind. “I spoke to Guilliman. I’m sure you could sense it. He has inherited an unmade Empire wrought by lies and treachery, Erda.” Consumed by the millennia. Consumed by the glass of his broken dream.
Erda listened in silence, sensing the truth in his words. Despite all that had come between them, the love they had once shared still endured, burned into their immortal souls as deeply as the wounds and regrets. She had never doubted the intensity of his feeling for her, nor he hers for him. But love had not been enough to sway either from their chosen paths, and in the end it had led only here – to this final meeting as they both approached the ends of their journeys, battered relics of ages past.
His mention of Guilliman and the shattered Imperium stirred her thoughts towards her scattered sons and the future that might have been. But she did not voice the bittersweet fancies, instead keeping her words to the present. “For good or ill, we have lived and loved as none others could, my lord. Now those days draw to an end, yet part of you and I will live on in our sons, and in a galaxy that will remember us even when we are gone.” She cupped his face between her hands, though only the illusion of form met her touch. “There is nothing left to regret between us, nor unfinished to be said. We knew and loved one another as we were, and as we now stand at life’s end. Let that be enough.”
The tangible illusion of the Emperor’s old glory shook his head, the denial of the eternal woman’s words. “Every day, the golden throne fails more. The throne will fall at some point. Everything will fall. Your psychic power has diminished terribly, Erda, my soul is divided into trillions of pieces, we are both hopelessly broken.” The cold sincerity in the Emperor’s voice was not cruel to the woman he loved, much less some kind of stupid revenge. The only thing that his words conveyed was how the screams of death and hopelessness had shattered the image of the two most glorious human beings that had ever existed, him and her. “Nine of our children have been forgotten, purged of their humanity by the general knowledge that they are demons, nine of them have died in their own legends, some…died in unjust ways.” The Emperor’s face flickered with sadness for a microsecond, his voice emanating wistful misery. “Ferrus…Sanguinius. They were consumed in the fires of our mistakes, Erda.”
Erda’s breath caught at the stark truth in his words, their shared brokenness and diminishment. The magnificent beings they had once been were no more, worn away by the relentless passage of ages into frail shadows clinging to life’s edge. Though she had known the slow decay of her gifts and felt the deaths of sons turned enemies echo in her soul, having it so bluntly spoken aloud by him unsettled her.
His reference to Ferrus and Sanguinius and the unjust ends they had met stirred her grief anew. Those two had perhaps understood her actions more than their brothers, and their loss had struck her deeply at the time, another tragedy born of the conflict between her and the Emperor’s ideals.
“You speak the truth, hard though it is to hear,” she said softly. “We have paid a bitter price for daring to reach so high, and it has left us as you see us now – living ghosts mourning glories lost and mistakes that can never be undone. My power wanes and your throne falters, but we have shaped the galaxy nonetheless, for good and ill, and our legacy will long outlive us.” Erda squeezed his hands, drawing faint comfort from the familiarity of the gesture. “Let this be an end to recriminations, and instead a remembrance of love that endured against the turns of fate – love that shall sustain us into the final dark, as little else remains.”
“I will die soon. My psychic visions always end in that very sight, the fire of my powers and the Golden Throne will end on that day. We are undone, my former love. Our bodies have been tainted by decay. Our consciousness will end someday.” Psychic Flashes made them both see things, they saw how they met, how their eternal existence made them both understand and love each other. But they also saw when the conflicts of ideals began to break their union, destroying any glimpse of the unbreakable beings they had once been. "Ferrus and Sanguinius were consumed by my obsession. By my desires. By my stupidity. We have purged this galaxy of humanity, Erda.” There was indescribable pain in the Emperor’s words, it was the ultimate proof that he was not a god, much less something superior. Even with his abysmal powers, he and Erda were still human. But the mistakes that the two had committed were irreparable, aware of the consequences of the decline of the human species in this galaxy. “Erda… As you watch the galaxy being torn in half by the eye of terror, the Empire falling apart, and the beings who were eclipsed by our current decline, I would like to ask you. Even in this place, in this world, in this system, in this galaxy filled with horrors. Do you think if I had gone ahead with my plan everything would have turned out worse?”
Erda gazed upon her former love with eyes heavy with shared sorrow and regret. However mighty they had once been, they were in the end human, prone to the same failings of arrogance and short-sightedness. The visions of what might have been, for good and ill, flickered through her mind – paths not taken, consequences wrought from choices that had seemed so simple and pure in the making.
“I cannot say if your path would have led to fairer future or darker end than this,” she said softly. “The seeds of corruption were there within your dream, and yet much good might also have come of it, had fate been kinder. But the threads of destiny cannot be unwoven, and there is no returning to the crossroads we passed long ago. We can but accept what our choices have wrought, and commit the days left to us to doing what good we still may in expiation of old sins and sorrows.”
She lifted his hands to her lips, kissing his knuckles in a gentle benediction. “It is enough to know that we loved, and were loved, and find in the time left solace for regrets never to wholly fade. As a new dawn breaks upon this age and ours ends, let that loving be our remembrance – not glory won or lost, nor grand designs fulfilled or thwarted, but lives and hearts joined against the dark.”
“Erda. My old love. My old Martyr. My old desire”, the hand of tangible illusion rested on the woman’s cheek, the caress of a love torn apart by darkness from ten thousand years ago. “The Empire is falling apart, reality is falling apart. In the dark future of the 42nd millennium, there is not only war. There are people. There are humans. Even in the mountain of dishonours and corruptions that devastate the species we love so much.” As memories of old ages and old horrors graduated to him, not for the first time, in countless repetition, the Emperor wondered if he regretted leading humanity, if even a part of him had wanted to die for countless years. . “There is no peace between the stars, only an eternity of wars and slaughter. And the laughter of bloodthirsty gods.” The Emperor caressed the face of his former love. His former martyr. While the psychic energy from the Golden Throne made their tone slightly mixed. “My former companion. Our fading glory. My martyr in my dream. My infinite hope for reason and peace. The future is a dark place, and I wondered from every cry of pain in the galaxy if it should all have ended this way.” The pain was evident in the faces of both.
Erda leaned into his touch, eyes closing as she savored this final moment of gentle intimacy between them. His words called forth her own regrets and sorrows at how far they had fallen from the soaring ideals of ages past. Though she had long foreseen the bitter harvest their conflicting visions might reap, the reality of an eternity of war and slaughter, the gods of Chaos ascendant, was almost too much to bear.
“For all the lofty dreams we dared in our prime, this is the destiny we have forged,” she said, her voice thick with sorrow. “Yet you are right that even amid the ashes of our failures, humans endure – frail flames against the dying of the light. So long as a single spark of mortal courage and hope remains, there is purpose still in struggle. Our great designs have come to naught, but we may yet lend our strength to the small deeds that turn back darkness, whatever end awaits.”
She leaned forward and brushed a kiss to his brow. “You were my infinite hope for reason and peace as I was your companion in dreaming it. Now peace eludes us, but still I shall be at your side as the last night falls and a new dawn breaks forged by the souls who come after us, not shadowed by the long reach of our sins or glories.” Erda looked deep into his eyes, seeking the echo of the man and immortal she had loved though all else had passed away. “Let this, too, be our legacy – that we persevered against the slow grind of time and did not falter alone.”
“Our sins and our glories have stained the eternity of humanity, my power, your power. Our very existence has guided the confines of an endless war,” the Emperor’s voice carried an enormous amount of pain. Erda was the only one who could understand his enormous decline, both physical and mental since the day he was buried on the Golden Throne. The Emperor’s fingers caressed Erda’s face. The countless beauty of ages ago was reflected in the faces of the two, the decadent love of beings who lost their glory by their own actions. “In the vastness of the galaxy, in the infinity of errors and glories. My eternal decay, my eternal horrors. Our lingering errors have wandered, died, or lost their luster.” The echo of the Emperor flashed as she sought it out, and for the first time in ages, Erda and the Emperor saw themselves on the day they met, saw themselves leading mankind to their doom and to their salvation. “Erda… Our brilliance ends. Our decay will end with our deaths. But we are perpetual, our soul can never disappear, and even if we die, we will return eventually.” The Emperor kissed the corner of his former love’s lips. Out of the illusion, some Custodians could see how the necrotic body of the Emperor led a tear. “Erda. My greatest glory. My greatest feeling. My eternal love conflict. My eternal bewilderment. Even if now you have grown old, even if decay has given us. You are still beautiful.”
Erda gazed into the shadow of the face she knew so well, seeing in his words the echo of their long and convoluted history etched into immortal souls. Grandeur and baseness mingled, glory and horror, sins repented and unrepentant, all burned into the fabric of timeless beings too vast for any one moment’s understanding. Yet for all the turns their lives had taken, one feeling endured unmarred – as his kiss and words affirmed.
“And you shall remain forever the fierce, indomitable spirit to whom I gave my heart,” she whispered. “These broken bodies fade but what we were – what in truth we are – shining souls who dared embrace eternity, will not pass into the night. As you said, we shall return, again and again until the last stars burn out, and always my heart will know yours though names and forms may change. This I believe as I believe in nothing else – that we were and are and ever shall be, even unto the end of all things, Eternal.”
Erda traced his ravaged cheek, remembering the man who had been. “Go now to your rest and ending, my bright lord, as I too shall seek my own. We have lived and wrought what we would, and earned alike the slow fade our vast deeds and failings have bought. There is nothing left but to embrace that ultimate night gladly, knowing we leave a changed galaxy behind – and that we leave it together, as once our lives and eternal love began.”
She leaned forward and kissed him softly, pouring all her tangled emotion into that final contact. “Farewell,” she whispered against his lips before drawing back, their hands clasping as if to bind them even as they parted. “Until we are born anew under distant stars.”
“Erda. Our humanity. Our destinies. Our eternal search for fears. All of that has been wonderful. I have loved. I have hated. I have been able to see your former and present beauty.” There was a deep sadness in the Emperor’s words, greater than any he had felt in his long life. Echoes of old mistakes and glories flitted between them, billions of moments they could have shared. The mistakes of the matrarch and patriarch of humanity that had caused the decline of the species they loved so much. The hands of the tangible illusion caressed the cheek of the eternal woman. Erda’s glory and beauty had faded with the passage of time, both of them had lost their brilliance and glory. This encounter between the two were the last screams of a love lost in the infinity of suffering. The Emperor followed his kiss, felt for the first time in ages the taste of her skin, the hot breath of the woman he loved and loved and would love. The rebirth of millions of suns burning in it, and the death of millions of people lost in that very second. Deadly tears fell from the face of the master of humanity, not from regret, because he hated his own actions, not from cold compassion or emotions he did not understand. It was because he knew that the pain would embody every inch of his existence until he died, knowing that he would never see the woman he loved intensely until they were both reborn. “Goodbye, Erda. My former glory. Our ancient tragedies and wonders. Our souls. Our own salvation. My undying love for you. Our hands will hold together until the universe shuts down.” For less than a second, the golden throne went dark, the Emperor’s will leaving his body. But the Astronomicon returned immediately after to illuminate the galaxy and guide humanity. And when the lights of the illusion dissipated, the necrotic Emperor looked around the room. Erda was gone. She wouldn’t come back. He would not see her again until the last of his days. The pain was endless, but a psychic echo shimmered throughout the warp. The message of a decadent being to another decadent being. “I love you”. After that, The Emperor heard again the cries of the trillions of humans in different wars, he felt their sadness and misfortunes again.
The galaxy was a place of pain and misfortune.