V3 Chapter 101: Loving Father, Filial Son (Extended Chapter)
Guilliman, led by several black-cloaked Custodians, walked deeper toward the Throne Room. The Eternity Gate closed behind him, its rumble carrying far along the walls, sealing Duvette and the others away on the other side.
He first entered the Hall of Widows, its dome lost in darkness, only the low lights lining the path providing any illumination, tracing a thin outline of the central road.
No pilgrims or Imperial officials could be seen here. The only ones who occasionally passed by were Mechanicus priests responsible for maintaining the Golden Throne, and servants who had been granted permission to be present. At the sight of Guilliman, they stepped back to the sides of the road, heads bowed, waiting for the Primarch to pass.
Guilliman had been here before. Many of the passages had changed from what he remembered, but he could still find familiar traces on certain stone pillars.
Back then, the Emperor could still walk among mortals, and would sit upon an actual throne used for council, listening to reports. Now, He was imprisoned within a machine that sustained the Imperium's continued existence.
Guilliman reined in his wandering thoughts. Whatever waited for him beyond the door, he had to see his father with his own eyes, and get an answer from him.
The Custodians led him onto a heavy lift platform, the armoured doors around its edge slowly closing, gears beginning to turn, and amid continuous vibration, the whole platform began descending toward the depths beneath the Imperial Sanctum.
The journey lasted several dozen minutes. Through a narrow observation window, Guilliman saw a massive mechanical shaft, thousands of cables running down its walls, maintenance platforms and servitor rigs positioned at different depths.
The temperature in the air was climbing; the roar of the cooling systems stayed clearly audible even through heavy armour plating. The platform's own cooling systems were already running at full capacity, yet Guilliman could still feel heat radiating off the surface of his armour.
At last, the lift platform settled with a shudder. Guilliman stepped off, entering the area deep within the Imperial dungeons occupied by the Golden Throne's machinery.
The walls nearby were covered in interface ports, coffin-like containers moving along rails toward their designated positions. Dense cabling pierced into the skulls and spines of the psykers held within, the vital signs on the monitoring devices steadily falling.
Guilliman needed only a glance to understand what these people were meant for. His steps faltered briefly, the grief surfacing in his eyes pressed back down quickly, and he continued on, following the Custodians.
At the end of the passage stood one final door. The Silver Gate's surface was carved with a scene from the Unification Wars: a warlord surrendering to the Emperor, the Emperor in the image holding his sword aloft, accepting the sceptre offered up to him.
Two Contemptor-Galatus Dreadnoughts stood guard before the door. They held perfectly still, but their shields and blades could activate in an instant, and the veteran Custodians within turned their attention to Guilliman as well.
Guilliman raised his head, looking at the three ancient words carved above the Silver Gate.
Conservus. Restituere. Revivicarem.
"Preserve. Restore. Resurrect." Guilliman read their meaning silently to himself. Ten thousand years had passed, and these words remained nothing more than a wish carved into a door.
The Custodians escorting him stopped there. The one leading them bowed his head to Guilliman, then gestured for him to continue alone.
Guilliman gave them a nod, and the Silver Gate began to open slowly, driven by the mechanisms within.
***
Outside the Eternity Gate, Duvette sat inside the ceremonial grav-vehicle, watching the great door recede into the distance. Both Lord Inquisitors and the thirteen Shadow Wolves of Luna sat in the vehicle with him; Italeo would lead them to wherever they were meant to wait.
[Soul's Adaptation, Basic] was still in effect, the steady fluctuations coming through it proof that Guilliman was under enormous strain.
Duvette shut off the notification, muttering to himself. Needing someone else's help just to quiet the psychic noise while talking with your own father. That was a rare kind of family relationship, even across the whole galaxy.
Beyond the Silver Gate lay a hall six kilometres long and nearly a kilometre high. Guilliman walked forward along the central passage, three hundred of the Hetaeron Guard spread out along the way and around the throne, some of their gold armour already blackened by the Emperor's power.
At first, Guilliman could still make out the shapes of the mechanical structures on either side. As the distance closed, the Emperor's psychic power gradually overwhelmed his senses, and every step forward demanded more of his will.
He kept going, until the Golden Throne filled his entire field of vision. Layered platforms ringed the central area, suspended machinery moving along rails, an astonishing number of cables converging from every part of the hall.
Guilliman looked toward the centre of the mechanical structure, and among the countless wires and metal supports, he saw only a small remnant of flesh: a few patches of hairless grey skin clinging to withered bone, part of it perhaps once scalp, another part perhaps once a face.
That was the master of mankind. He was sustained and bound by the Throne, still holding the Astronomican alight through will alone, still suppressing the breach that led into the Webway.
The next instant, psychic power erupted fully into Guilliman's mind.
A column of white-gold light, impossible to look at directly, filled his entire perception. A tall figure in golden war-plate appeared briefly within the glow, before splitting apart into an aged man, a sword-wielding warrior, and countless unrecognisable faces.
Voices pressed in from every direction, memory and emotion flooding into his mind.
Guilliman's thoughts began to come apart. He could barely confirm why he had even come here, when a familiar voice flickered up from somewhere deep inside his own mind: "Wake up."
That was the power Duvette had left in him, turning, at the most critical instant, into a warning Guilliman could actually understand. His spirit jolted sharply, and [Soul's Adaptation] began its true work.
The psychic pressure filling the throne hall didn't lift, but the voices that had nearly swallowed him grew gradually clearer. Guilliman could finally make out the meaning carried within each thread of emotion and will, and his vision steadied along with it.
The column of white-gold light still burned in his perception, and the shattered flesh upon the throne stayed just as clear within reality. Both sights occupied his vision together, yet neither could pull him under any longer.
Guilliman slowly knelt, looking toward the father buried beneath countless mechanical structures. "Father. I'm here."
The stillness lasted only an instant before countless voices rose within him at once. They differed wildly from one another, age and coldness woven together, laced through with something close to uncontrolled fury.
Roboute Guilliman. Master of the Thirteenth Legion. Then, Lord of Ultramar. My son. The most perfect tool. The proudest creation. The late child, and my hope. The last voice demanded he cast out the traitors, drive off the thieves.
These names overlapped one another, some even contradicting each other outright. But with Duvette's power behind him, Guilliman understood precisely what they all pointed toward together: you have finally come.
"Father..." Guilliman lowered his head, silent for a long while, before finally asking the question that had troubled him since ten thousand years past. "In your eyes, are we truly your sons? Or are we weapons?"
The body upon the throne gave no response, but the vast consciousness stirred violently. Gestation tanks, star-charts from the Great Crusade, and memories of scattered Primarchs returning flickered past Guilliman's sight, one after another.
At their birth, the Primarchs had truly been weapons meant to conquer the galaxy. But the long years that followed had given the Emperor something closer to a father's feeling. Still, He was accustomed to measuring everything by purpose, and in the end, duty had always outweighed that feeling.
"I made weapons, and called them by the name of sons. Later, I needed sons, and still treated them as weapons." This was the answer that countless broken fragments of speech finally gathered themselves into.
Guilliman closed his eyes. He had already braced himself for a colder answer than this. But hearing the Emperor confirm it Himself still left the disappointment he'd carried buried inside weighing heavier than before.
Latecomer. Usurper. Traitor. A few faint voices rose from the edge of that vast consciousness, accusing Guilliman of missing the Siege of Terra, of founding a Second Imperium, and finally of seizing the power to rule mankind.
But more voices quickly overwhelmed those accusations. A consciousness carrying something like human feeling reached out and touched Guilliman, telling him he didn't need to carry every failure on his own shoulders.
You and I have both failed. The responsibility belongs to all of us. Continuing to lay blame now serves no purpose.
"Father, but..." Guilliman raised his head again, looking toward the figure at the centre of the Golden Throne. "Why did you allow the Imperium to decay into what it is now?" Every voice fell briefly silent.
A moment later, a weary sigh sounded through Guilliman's mind, carrying with it, for the first time, something that let him truly understand what the Emperor's situation had been for the past ten thousand years.
The Emperor could no longer govern the Imperium the way a living man once had. His strength was needed to sustain the Astronomican and seal the breach into the Webway, and to hold back attacks from within the Warp, and any order sent out into reality would be distorted through layer after layer of relay before it arrived.
The Imperium of the past ten thousand years had been cruel, sluggish, its institutions riddled through with rot, yet it had, in the end, carried humanity through to the present day.
Those systems still kept the movement of armies running, the collection of tithes, the flow of astropathic communication. Tear it all down at once, and the whole Imperium would fracture apart before any new order could be built to take its place.
A vast wave of information poured into Guilliman's mind along with this: the Emperor wanted him to purge the corrupt who held the old institutions in their grip, preserve whatever administrative structure still functioned, rebuild a single, unified command over both military and civil authority, and gradually restore the knowledge and reason that had been suppressed for so long.
Guilliman absorbed the information even as he offered his own views in return. He pointed out the resistance the High Lords and regional rulers might mount, and argued that reform pushed too fast could spark civil war.
Time lost any clear meaning before the Throne. The Emperor's will answered him from every direction, while [Soul's Adaptation] organised the broken, conflicting content into something Guilliman could actually follow.
Guilliman had no idea how much time had passed when he finally drew a deep breath of scorching air. He understood perfectly well that, without the power Duvette had placed on him beforehand, he would already have lost the ability to think clearly at all.
He turned the conversation to another question he couldn't avoid. "Father, how should I handle the Ecclesiarchy? They've already convinced the entire Imperium that you are a god."
The Emperor's fractured consciousness split again in answer. Guilliman first heard a firm denial of any divinity, then felt His disgust at the Ecclesiarchy's distortion of history, and then, from some still vaster part of that consciousness, an acknowledgment that a trillion humans' unbroken faith across ten thousand years had generated real power within the Warp regardless.
All of these contradictions existed at once. In the end, the clearest voice told Guilliman that faith was now both a chain, and a weapon capable of holding back Chaos.
Abolishing the Ecclesiarchy immediately would spark uncontrollable religious war; many worlds would sooner rebel against a Primarch than give up the god they had worshipped for generations.
"Don't destroy their faith yet." The last clear thread of the Emperor's will said. "First, give humanity the strength to survive without it."
Guilliman finally accepted the judgment. He would tolerate the Ecclesiarchy for the time being, but would need to limit the Church's interference in military and civil affairs, and stop those who would use the Emperor's name to drag the Imperium deeper into ignorance.
After that, they turned to the power Guilliman was about to receive. The Emperor handed him the authority of Imperial Regent, permitting him to reorganise the Council of High Lords, and requiring the Custodians to support his commands whenever necessary.
More images flooded into Guilliman's mind. Traitor fleets gathering around the Eye of Terror, the tides of the Warp churning, the Ruinous Powers making no effort to hide their malice.
Guilliman committed every image to memory. He saw his fallen brothers as well; the Emperor's feelings toward them burned with fury, though a few voices held that some among them might still be capable of redemption, and that the path to that redemption lay behind you.
Guilliman paused, confused. There was no one standing behind him. But he understood quickly enough what the Emperor meant: beyond the Silver Gate, past the long passage and the Eternity Gate, at the place where Duvette waited.
The Emperor sensed his thought, and told Guilliman He knew it was Duvette's power that had let him stay clear-headed, and let this exchange carry on as long as it had.
He said the man beyond the gate was someone He had come across by chance, someone whose power had no true limit. Even He could only bind him, partly and temporarily, while he had not yet "come of age," gradually loosening that binding over time; were he to suddenly seize the whole of his strength all at once, everything, all of it, would meet with utter ruin.
So: protect him. Watch him.
Judge him by his choices, not by where he came from.
Do not hand him over to those who, unable to understand him, would only want to destroy him.
He is the one key by which we, as humans, might still win. On this point, the Emperor's will carried not the slightest hesitation.
Guilliman didn't answer for a long while. That man who so often stood at his side, cracking jokes, carried within him, it seemed, a power even the Emperor Himself could only unlock little by little.
"I will protect him. And I will keep watching him." Guilliman said solemnly. "So long as his choices continue to stand with humanity, I will not let anyone take him away on some fabricated charge."
The Emperor accepted his answer, and information about the Xenos, the traitors, and the Imperium continued to pass between them, until the vast consciousness began to show signs of fatigue.
The scattered voices gradually receded, and the white-gold light began to withdraw from Guilliman's perception as well.
Just as the exchange was about to end, a faint presence surfaced from deep within the Emperor's vast, fractured personality, and briefly overpowered every other voice.
Guilliman heard the voice of a weary, middle-aged man, a voice that had lost all its earlier majesty, no longer carrying the power to crush a mortal mind, only a feeling buried for ten thousand years. "Robert. My son. I'm glad I could see you again."
Guilliman's body trembled faintly. He looked up toward the throne, but could still see nothing but the ruined body sustained by machinery.
"I once treated you all as weapons, and in doing so, forgot you were also my children. Forgive what I owed you." The voice grew fainter with every word. "Keep moving forward, Robert. Walk the path you believe is right. Don't repeat my mistakes."
"Father..." Guilliman began to answer, but that fragment of humanity had already sunk back down into the countless broken personalities beneath it. The vast psychic power filled his senses once more, and his father's voice vanished from within him.
Guilliman remained kneeling before the Golden Throne, unable to rise for a long while. He couldn't be certain whether what he had just heard was the Emperor's truest self, or only a memory ten thousand years old. But that final "my son," he had heard with absolute clarity.
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