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‘GUILLIMAN, HEAR ME.’
And so Guilliman heard. Son. Tool. Thirteen. Traitor. Liar. Hope.
Ten thousand years had made monsters of men. Where progress once shone like a beacon, darkness reigned. Ignorance. Malice. Hate. The Inquisition. The High Lords. Roboute found his jaw uncomfortably tight at the mere thought. The great oak desk had many documents for his perusal before the night was over.
Senseless. Corrupt. Wasteful. Since his return, how many times had Guilliman had to intercede when loyal Imperial subjects were due to be censured based on nothing but rank dogma and misguided faith? Loyal lives that would’ve been wasted on the altar of suspicion when mankind was already spent on all sides, fighting war unending. How many more had been wasted in the ten thousand years away he had been away?
Faith. That was what set this era apart. It wasn’t the rationale of the Imperial Truth, the promise of science that everything could be deciphered that drove this Imperium, but faith, blind or otherwise.
Faith, he mused, was not necessarily malignant, but whatever twisted force these heirs of Lorgar pushed that led to the burning of innocents certainly was. Madmen, worshipping him as the son of God, screaming hymns to his creator. Willing to throw their lives into the furnace of war at his mere word. Useful tools, but madmen all the same.
He despised this new millennium. He despised that it yielded him no rest. Even less than during the days of the Great Crusade. He was leading an Empire without an Emperor. Even his sons; they looked as they once were during the Crusade, but even they had the taint of this new age upon them, worshipping his instructions as sacred law. He would trade the entire Inquisition for the return of one of his brothers. What he would give, to have the wise words of Vulkan, or the charming speeches of Sanguinius, or even the proud boastings of Russ.
Back then, he had his brothers, his mother, even others like Aeonid, who he could speak to as equals, or who understood his plight.
In this galaxy of terrors, he was alone.
In this new Imperium, Roboute was no longer one of many sons. The weight of the Imperium’s survival fell on his shoulders and his shoulders alone. Fight, these men of a new age sung, the prayer on their lips, as they led themselves to the slaughter, Guilliman thought bitterly. They fought. For a future and creed they hardly understood, if what scraps they knew weren’t a lie. For the Emperor. For the Imperium. For his sons, who were not his sons. For humanity. What was left of it, after ten thousand years had stripped all light from their dream. For the Emperor. For the Imperium. For humanity. For the Emperor. For the Imperium. For humanity. Roboute did not notice as the stylus in his hand cracked as the words repeated like mantra in his mind.
He never wanted this. He never wanted to unleash his legions against his brothers. They drove once back the evils of old night together, all twenty sons…
Stop.
Anger clouded the mind. Anger had its place of course, but not when he was thinking. That self-pitied, entitle tone, almost reminded him of Horus. After he had gone mad. The Lord of Ultramar unclenched his fists that had tightened with the effort of self-restraint, laying aside the stylus that had broke within his grip. His anger, he saved for another day, locked within his mind. The Emperor’s words rung again through his mind.
Son. Tool. Thirteen. Traitor. Liar. Hope.
Son. Tool. Thirteen. Traitor. Liar. Hope. Hope. Hope.
The truth was more bitter than the poisons of Mortarion, and sweeter than the wines of Macragge. It had been his dream. It was still. Their dream. The age of hope and triumph and reason that they battled so long and hard for. He endured gladly for every step paid in blood, to see mankind even one step closer to that dream. There was once a time, where even his wayward brothers and he shared the same vision. Magnus the Red. The Lord of Iron. Even thrice damned Lorgar. Before they fell.
Others may have cursed his name, seeing him as a bloody tyrant, a schemer, a cruel spender of lives, but unlike others, Roboute never did those things for the sake of them. Anything he did, he did for that ideal the Emperor had promised him. Was that future the being now on the Throne promised sincere, or was it all a mirage, a vision where the Avenging Son only heard what he wanted to hear?
Roboute was alone indeed. Even those wayward brothers of his, though they were not dead, were not truly alive. The arch-enemy had claimed them now, and there was naught left of those he knew. For the men they once were, Guilliman had to stand, for he alone had seen with his own eyes the heights of what humanity could achieve. A better tomorrow than this wretched Imperium. For them, who had knew nothing of darkness and still yet strived for a promised future the priests cried for.
A future that they could only have faith in the promise of. A future that Guilliman knew they could claim once more. For them, he had to triumph.
Roboute was alone indeed. Perhaps that was a blessing. For it was his dream that mankind would grasp with both hands.
And so Guilliman dared to dream once more.