![]() 'I… know,' Jaghatai said, his voice a liquid slur. 'I… absorbed,' Jaghatai rasped, 'the… pain.' Only slowly, as he trudged back, did Mortarion realise that the sound was bitter laughter. His shattered gauntlet still clutched the hilt of his blade, but the arm must have been broken in many places. “Jaghatai started to cough, sending more bloody spurts out over the ripped-apart ground. Fabius ignored the newcomer, even as Igori stiffened. Behind them, the entrance to the laboratorium whined open, and someone entered. ‘There will be no place for me in the paradise to come.’ He laughed. ‘I imagine I will be first among the foundations, my dear.’ He smiled thinly. ‘And where will you be?’ she asked softly.įabius stepped back. You will hunt angels, in the days to come, and make a new kingdom from their bones". And in that moment, you and yours shall assert yourselves, for the first time and the last. Those who remain, after that final hour, will fight one another for the right to rule the ashes. For my brothers will not surrender to fate with dignity. You and your kin are to be my hand on the throat of the future. As mankind dies, so it nurtures its own replacement, all unknowing. Generation upon generation, their strength breeding true. They, and their children, carry on my teachings into the dark. The rest are scattered across the galaxy, burrowed into the flesh of a dying empire, so that they might best guide it to its well-deserved and long overdue grave. Of them all, I kept only you and your closest siblings. In your generation, there were five hundred. But first, you - we - must teach them how to survive, until that moment. “The day will come, my dear, when your children's children stride the galactic rim as the kings and queens of all they survey. Intentionally or not, we are all meat for the beast. But the gods care for nothing save filling their bellies with our sorrows. The Word Bearers believe the gods crave worship. A merciful strategist devises a plan for bloodless victory, and Tzeentch is content. A woman strikes her crying child, and that awful moment of elation she feels feeds Khorne. A man pets a stray, and his small pleasure in the kindness of the act feeds Slaanesh. Win or lose, the gods feast on our deeds. What is there for the gods to feed on? Where is the desire for victory, the savagery, the hope and despair? Where is the entertainment? War as you describe it would be little more than pest control. I figured that out the day of my culling, when my family forced my cousins and me to fight for the honour of joining the Third. Perhaps we are little more than psychopathic apes, driven to fashion clubs and smash out the brains of our closest neighbours.Īnd here I thought you were the clever one. Perhaps I overestimate the intelligence of our species. Saboteurs, chemical weapons - there are hundreds of ways of dismantling a world and its population that do not involve orbital insertions and glorious advances into the teeth of enemy fire. Pound the earth flat and build over the ashes. It always seemed to me more efficient to simply eradicate our foes from orbit. “I have never really understood our gene-father's obsession with martial glory.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |