Chapter 90 - He Will Forgive You
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Loken followed two Custodians through the broad corridor deep within the Imperial Palace.
The oppressive weight of the place was almost physical.
Walking beside him was the gene-sire of the VIII Legion, Konrad Curze. By blood lineage, Curze was something like his uncle.
But right now, this "Night Haunter" had not a shred of the majesty a Primarch should carry.
Jutting from Curze's greasy, disheveled black hair was a fist-sized bruise, purple-black and absurdly conspicuous. Just over half an hour ago on the landing pad, the Great Angel Sanguinius had put it there himself, without ceremony or hesitation.
The summons had originally been for Curze alone. But just before departure, the Captain-General had sent an urgent order, the one on the Golden Throne had specifically named Loken to accompany him.
Loken kept his spine ramrod straight, his tactical boots landing with millimeter precision.
Fainting dead away in the Throne Room was, for a former Captain of the Luna Wolves, an unforgivable dereliction of duty. He would not make the same mistake twice.
Curze, however, could not leave anything alone.
He cocked his head sideways, those pure-black eyes locked onto his nerve-strung nephew.
"You were there. The day he killed Horus." Curze spoke without warning, his voice grating with a neurotic rasp that set the teeth on edge.
Loken stared straight ahead and said nothing.
"That old liar played you." Curze pressed half a step closer. "He seized on Horus's guilt toward you. Used your face as a boning knife and stabbed it straight through Horus's mental defenses. A filthy, low trick like that — and you don't have any fire simmering in your gut over it?"
Loken's footsteps finally stopped.
He turned his head, his gaze meeting the towering Primarch's.
"Lord Konrad Curze." Loken's tone was completely flat.
"Don't call me 'Lord' anything." Curze reached up to scratch the lump on his head and hissed sharply at the pain. "I washed my hands of the Legion's mess long ago. That's all Sevatar's work now. He's the true master of the Legion."
Then the Night Haunter moved like a bloodhound catching a scent. He lunged close to the hollow of Loken's neck and sniffed.
"I smell the panic deep in your bones." Curze bared his teeth, stark white against that pallid face. "You're terrified to go see that liar on the chair, aren't you?"
Loken exhaled heavily into the corridor's cool air.
If the gap in combat strength weren't so overwhelming, his first choice right now would absolutely be to follow the Great Angel's example and hammer an identical lump onto the other side of Curze's skull.
"Please maintain at least a modicum of decorum." Loken's voice was cold. "This conduct of yours makes a mockery of the Primarch bloodline. And he is not a liar. He is the Master of Mankind."
The curve of Curze's mouth collapsed instantly.
Gloom and savagery crawled across that pallid face.
"He is a complete and utter liar. And you dying on the Vengeful Spirit was the height of stupidity!"
Curze brandished the weapon he had tormented himself with for ten thousand years.
Prophecy.
"Malcador could have sent you to Titan. You could have been the first Supreme Grand Master of the Grey Knights, living well! But no — you just had to run straight to Horus and throw your life away!"
The face beneath Loken's helmet frosted over.
"I am a Luna Wolf." Loken's voice spiked, stirring echoes down the corridor. "I am not a Grey Knight hiding in the shadows. I am not a coward who only knows how to run. Start over ten thousand times, and I would still board that flagship!"
"What a fine speech." Curze sneered, lurching forward. "But you died once. What did it change? In the future, you're still a dead man! Want to hear your next prophecy? Abaddon will personally hack you to pieces with his sword!"
Using death to manufacture fear?
Not even a ripple stirred in Loken's chest.
He already knew the truth of Curze's psychic prophecies. Back in the medicae bay, his gene-father and Lord Kaelen had laid it all out for him. So had the Sigillite, Malcador.
Curze had seen the future of the rebellion, run off to tell Fulgrim, and Fulgrim had turned around and sold it to Dorn. Two sentences that didn't match, and it devolved straight into brothers turning on each other.
"The Lord Sigillite taught me one phrase." Loken stepped forward, plunging fearlessly into those pure-black eyes.
"What?"
"Prophecy is the poison the Warp feeds to mortals."
Curze's breath caught.
"You are the perfect proof of that truth, Lord Konrad." Loken's words cut like a chainsword. "You saw the future, and with your own hands you pushed yourself into the very outcome you feared. The more you stare at that vision, the more it drags you along. In the end, every move you made to change the future only served to make the prophecy come true."
"Shut up! Garviel!" Curze roared, his massive frame whipping up a gale that could crush mortal bones.
The two Custodians ahead halted, reversing their halberds. They made no move to intervene.
Loken did not retreat half a step.
"I don't give a damn how I die!" He pushed back at full volume. "If Abaddon really comes for my life, I'll tear his heart out before he even draws his sword!"
He raised his armored right arm, index finger jabbing toward Curze's chest.
"You treat prophecy as truth? Fine. Answer me one question, Lord!"
He pointed at his own chest. Then toward the landing pad behind them.
"Me. My gene-father Lupercal. Lord Sanguinius."
"In your prophecies, we've all been dead for ten thousand years!"
"So open your eyes and look. What exactly is standing in front of you right now?!"
The corridor went dead silent.
The muscles of Curze's pallid face convulsed wildly, like a wetware host short-circuiting.
Dead men cannot resurrect. That was simply true.
If prophecy were an iron track of preordained fate, then everything he had just seen on the landing pad was a ghost?
This completely overturned the logic he had clung to for ten thousand years.
"That... freak..."
Curze rasped the words out.
In his mind, the cramped dark alley from his dreams flashed sudden and vivid. That mortal who had straddled his chest and smashed his face into a pulp with bare fists.
A variable whose future left no trajectory to trace.
"His name is Kaelen. My father's closest friend." Loken took control of the conversation.
"He's a breach that smashed straight through the game board!" Curze clawed neurotically at his hair, yanking out several greasy strands. "I have seen through the deaths of a thousand men. I have even glimpsed the truth of that liar on the Throne. But this Kaelen — the moment my eyes touch him, I see nothing but dead-black fog!"
This was the first time in ten thousand years he had felt this. The loss of control that came with the truly unknown.
"Kaelen has brought a variable." Loken's tone settled back to calm. "And I, my father, Lord Guilliman, Lord Sanguinius, and the billions of loyalists across the Imperium, we will all seize hold of that variable and keep fighting. For the Imperium. For the civilization of mankind."
"And most importantly." Loken paused. "The Emperor is ready to forgive you. Lord Konrad, you will join us."
Curze's entire body went rigid.
Forgiveness. For him, the Nostraman midnight wraith, steeped in countless evils.
Even the image of the Emperor he had constructed in his own mind all those years ago, even words spoken by that fabricated flesh-and-blood figure, still stirred disgust in Curze. And yet, buried beneath the disgust, wound through it like a thread he couldn't cut loose, was the faintest splinter of hope.
Neither of them spoke again. The Custodians led them forward.
They arrived before the gate of the Golden Throne. The heavy adamantium doors slid open to either side.
Blinding golden light poured out like a waterfall and swallowed them whole.
➤ Next: Let Guilliman Punish You
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