Lord of the Night

One saw a child throw a stone at the Preafect column, and watched the youth's village burn in retribution.

One saw the kutroaches pick the flesh clean from a rioting mob, gassed in their dozens when they turned on the armoured aggressors torching their homes.

One saw blood ru

And one... one saw the Preafects regroup and confer, and finally — gore-drenched, exhausted, spent — turn back for the hive above.

The Shadowkin shuddered with relief at this last mercy, embracing one another and praising the God-Emperor, and when the final scout had hurried from the circle of firelight before Sahaal's throne he stepped down from his platform and addressed the crowd. The opportunity was too good to ignore.

'You see?' he told them, claws splayed. 'You see now? You see how the hive is corrupted? How the Preafects themselves are hungry for murder and blood? It is the taint, I tell you!' A shiver raced across the crowd, like a breeze rippling through withered trees. They reach out to crush the i

You see now? You see?

And oh, they praised him so hard that it all but cut through the bleakness, the loss, the aggression, and for one fraction of one moment Zso Sahaal remembered what it had been to be adored without fear.

And then he asked the scouts if they brought word of the Slake Collective, and that ancient terror came back into their eyes, and the adoration was buried beneath a dozen layers of fear.

None of them brought news.

The crowd dispersed after that, when long moments of silence had passed, when it was clear finally that the lord's displeasure would not over-boil with violence — and there was hidden relief on their faces as they returned to their homes to hunt and cook.

Silence settled in the swamplands.

Sahaal sat and brooded, and beside him Chia

His patience for her unspoken anxiety did not last long.

'You are troubled, sister,' he said, grateful — grudgingly — for the distraction. 'And yet we are spared. Explain.'

She struggled to find the right words, crippled by awe at the closeness of his attention. 'The Preafects, my lord... Their... their anger is so mighty. They must hate you a great deal.'

He sensed the curiosity behind her words and sighed, anticipating yet more ugly lies and false devotions in the Emperor's name. The falsehood that had secured the Shadowkin's loyalty had grown to a yoke around his neck, and his gorge rose at the thought of strengthening it further.

'It has ever been thus,' he said, dismissive. 'The unjust have always despised the righteous. Their loathing for me is no greater than my disgust for them.'

That, at least, was truth. He was the righteous one. Was it not their ''glorious'' Emperor that had betrayed his master so cruelly? Was it not they who worshipped a weakling, a coward, a traitor?

It was not enough to sate Chia

'My lord,' she quailed, fingers curling together. 'How can we hope to... to prevail in the face of such anger?'

'With focus,' he said, and realised as he said it that it was advice for his own sake, as much as hers. 'With conviction in the cause.' He twisted to stare down at her, hearing his master's words echoed across the gulf of time. 'Doubt breeds fear, child. And fear is our weapon, not our flaw.'

'But—'

'We strive towards our goals. We strive with every ounce of our flesh, with every bloody tear, every bead of sweat. And though we may fall in the trying, we are undertaking the work of the righteous!'

Fine words. Stirring words. He felt a glimmer of fire return to his belly.

'And... our goals, my lord? The goals we must strive to meet...' she glanced up at him, eyes brimming with hunger. 'W-what are they?'

'I have told you. To find the Slake Collective.'

'Y-yes lord...' Again a glance — first up then away, a sliver of eye contact — and this time Sahaal could see a dangerous recklessness, a desire to comprehend at any cost, that underpi

He considered killing her, briefly.

Should I be angry? his mind mused. Should I suffer this curiosity — this impetuosity — in a creature so frail as this woman?

Should I cut her in two?

His claws began, so slowly that he barely even felt it, to slip from their sheaths. He had not consciously triggered them.

But then... but then...

The priestess's importance could not be understated: to lose her would be to risk losing once more the control of his tribe — and that at this most critical of junctures. For all his might and power he was no diplomat, no empathetic figurehead to safeguard the hopes and fears of a population. His was a diplomacy of terror and carnage, not of words and assurances.

He needed her.

A demonstration, then?

Some painful reprimand, perhaps, to punish her undue curiosity, to teach her — and through her the tribe — that his plans were his alone, that he would not tolerate the prying of peasants.

Chia

Yes. Yes, teach her a lesson. Make her bleed. Just a small cut...

It was a voice that came from somewhere deep in his subconscious, and as he focused on it, he saw that it was the same voice that had pushed forth his claws, the same voice that had overwhelmed him as he slew the astropath, the same voice that had brought red haze down across his vision time and time again since his arrival on this blighted world.

Cut her. Cut her, you fool!

Was he mad, then? Was he succumbing to that same random insanity — a thing of brilliance and bitterness — that had consumed his master?

He had long ago forsaken the trust of any other creature... could he now no longer trust his own mind?

He snarled in the silence of his helmet and drowned the voice in his mind, and retracted his claws with a silky rasp, feeling foolish. The priestess swam before his eyes, pale with incomprehension, and it was with a sensation like relief, like a clear water scouring the filth of his psyche, that he broke the silence, focused upon her question, and spoke.

'Why?... Because through them I may find something that was stolen from me. My inheritance.'

'I-inheritance? Something that will help you? Something that will help us?'

He smiled, although of course she could not see it.

'Yes. Something that will aid me.'

'A... forgive me, my lord... a weapon?'

He settled back upon the throne and wet his lips, and was no longer irked by her questions. It felt good to speak of such things, finally. It felt good to leave the vacuum of solitude — however momentary, however falsely. — and remember the glories of his past. What harm could it do? What harm in telling the truth to this eager creature — or at least those parts that would strengthen her loyalty?

What harm in leaving the shadows, for an instant?

'What do you know,' he asked, 'of the primarchs? Of the Emperor's own sons?'

Her bulging eyes were all the answer he needed. He waved away her astonishment and went on.

'There were twenty. Twenty warrior infants, twenty child-gods. Perhaps they were whelped, like human sons. Perhaps he made them, as an artist fashions a masterpiece. Perhaps he simply willed them to life — who knows? What is known is that they were scattered, cast out into the stars like seeds on tilled earth. And in their absence from their father they grew to manhood — each in reflection of the world that had claimed them, each shaped by the people who took them in. The kindness and cruelty of strangers.'