Lord of the Night

'Hate? What did you have to hate? You fell from grace by choice, traitor, you were not pushed!'

For the first time real, honest emotion ignited behind his eyes. This was not a part of some elaborate game of words, she understood suddenly. This sentiment boiled from his guts and infected the air before him like a cloud of locusts, as heavy with conviction as it was with contempt.

'Hate for the accursed Emperor. Hate for your withered god.'

'I'll kill you! Speak one more word of this filth and I'll—'

'You ask what I hate? I hate a creature that speaks of pride and honour, that fosters the love of his sons, that smiles and scrapes at every obedient act, and then turns like a diseased dog and stabs his own child in the spine!'

'Shut up! Shut up, damn you!'

'I hate a being so sick, so certain of his own brilliance, so twisted by the call of glory, that he repays the greatest sacrifice of all with betrayal''

Mita seized at the flapping cords of the Night Lord's voice, struggling to pull herself free of the confusion gripping her.

'Sacrifice? Your master sacrificed nothing but his soul!'

The Night Lord's eyes bored into her.

'He sacrificed his humanity, child.'

And suddenly his voice was so melancholic, so deep and so calm, so bloated by sadness, that Mita found all her rage dissolved. The gun faltered in her grip and she lowered it, tears in her eyes.

'W-what?'

'He became a monster. He formed us, his Night Lords, in his own image: to spread terror and hate, to forge obedience through fear. He rescinded whatever purity he had, he cast off the humanity that was never intended for him... he risked insanity and damnation, and all to bring order to his father's Imperium.'

'He sacrificed his soul to the dark, and—'

'You aren't listening. You weren't there. I tell you, little witch: he sacrificed his soul at the Emperor's behest. He became the tame monster the Imperium needed. And how was he repaid? He was reined in. He was humiliated before his brothers. And then? The assassin's kiss.'

'He went too far! The histories do not lie! The excesses of the Night Lords are famed thr—'

'Excesses? We obeyed every order! We did what was asked of us! Listen to me, child! The "excesses" of the Night Haunter were sanctioned.'

'No...' her mind rebelled at the suggestion, lights flashing before her eyes. 'No, no, no... the Emperor would never countenance in—'

'He needed order, where only savagery could bring it. He sent in the Night Lords, and we gave him the order he yearned. And then he made us his scapegoats. He cried with false outrage, and the Imperium cried with him!'

'You're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong...'

'My master craved nothing but pride from his father. And all that he ever received was scorn. Little wonder he threw-in his lot with the Heretic rabble. Little wonder he marched to war beside them, sensing that they might weaken his father's grip. He was wrong!'

'...no no no no no...'

'Look at me, child. Look at me.'

Mita's head snapped up at the command, the empty mumblings falling away from her mouth. It was all too much to take, too much to absorb. Too much for a single mind to contain.

'My master was killed by an assassin. You know this, yes?'

She dredged details from long-gone lessons, struggling to recall histories that had seemed so unreal, so mired in the soup of myth.

'Y-yes... yes, she was sent to kill the fiend w-when the Heresy was over... The other Legions fled in... in disarray. Not the Night Lords. The High Lords of Terra, they... they thought if Curze was slain the Legion would dissolve...'

'Half truths. Half truths and lies!'

'I... I don't understand...'

'Do you know what the Night Haunter's final words to me were? Do you know what he said, as he seated himself and awaited the assassin?'

'N-n—'

'He said "See how the mighty are fallen."'

'W-why?'

'Because he had finally realised what nobody else had ever seen. That his father, his glorious Emperor, his Divine Creator, was just as vicious, just as terrible, just as merciless, as the Night Lords themselves. See how the mighty are fallen. See how divinity lowers itself to dispose of the monster it created!'

One final pulse of rebellion — alone and drowning in a sea of doubt — struggled to be heard in Mita's heart. 'L-lowers itself? By sending an assassin? After all that Konrad Curze had done? After the horrors of the Heresy? What else could the Emperor have done?'

For an instant the doubt seemed to retract. For an instant she felt she'd somehow scored a point, landed a blow.

The Night Lord remained resolutely unphased.

'What else? Nothing, to be sure — if, as you say, the killer was sent to avenge the terrors of the Horus Heresy.' He leaned forwards again, as far as his chains would allow, and his black eyes were pools of oil, sucking her soul down into their lightless depths. 'But, child, the assassin that killed the Night Haunter was not the first to seek him out.'

'W-what?'

'She was the last of a long line. A line that he had evaded at every stroke. A line whose endless attempts had exhausted him beyond his desire to retaliate. He had endured enough, do you understand? He was the hunter! He was the first, and the mightiest! He ruled the shadows! He reigned in the Dark! And then his father rescinded his sanction, and at the end of the Great Crusade, before the Heresy had even begun, he was brought before his lord and his brothers, humiliated, and held to account. Did he betray the Emperor's honour, then? Did he excuse his actions by telling the truth? By revealing to his kin their father's duplicity? No. Loyalty gripped him still, and he endured his father's derision with boundless humility.'

'I remember the tales...' Ancient texts swam through Mita's memories, the echoing spaces of dusty libraries vivid in her mind. 'He attacked his brother-primarch, Rogal Dorn. Where was his loyalty then, Night Lord?'