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A city of blank screens. That was what Kayliss Thal was, now.
Some -- many, in fact -- had been broken in the fighting that had ravaged the planetary capital. Spiderweb patterns of sparks and glassy cracks ran down their tower-tall lengths, the permanent butterfly fractures of explosives and munitions that told a tale of fierce street-to-street fighting. Under their light, their changing light that cast pictures of frightened men and women in rumpled clothing trying to project a sense of calm they did not feel, the Imperium had taken the city.
The screens had cycled as each broadcast centre had been taken. New faces appeared who wore their fear more plainly, who concealed their losses less professionally, and each had been replaced in their return, until - darkness. Silence.
Those left unbroken had, briefly, played pre-recorded emergency messages, though nobody had been left to heed them. The dead solemnly, carefully warned the dead until even those simulacra had spooled out. Now the unshattered screens carried only the truth, not propaganda and lies. They reflected unchecked flames, charred wreckage, and the sweeping march of armour-clad warriors.
They reflected the countenance of Roboute Guilliman.
Stern. Unyielding. His brow stark above the ultramarine of his panoply, a dark, distant vista above the deep blue sea. It was a face familiar to the inhabitants of the planet, for it had been held by these vid-projectors more than once before, his noble speeches cast for all to hear. Certainly, it had been familiar to the planetary elite, who had been in more private contact and for far longer than common knowledge would have it.
He stared into his own eyes, cast through the dim lens of the screen, as though searching for insight, revelation - answers.
Failure had a way of making a man consider his own soul, stripped of all the obfuscations and pleasant lies that shield it from hard judgements. Guilliman would not shy from the truth of this moment. He had come at the head of an army of diplomats and counsellors and advisors as well as soldiers, had come to a world that had not only survived Old Night but reached once more for the distant stars. A world of intelligence and culture, technology and understanding.
And now that world burned.
He had failed.
‘It should not have come to this,’ Guilliman said, aloud, though he intended the words only for himself. And, he supposed, the shadow-self with such accusation in its eyes.
‘No, Roboute,’ came the unlooked-for reply, deep, melodious, and tinged with regret. ‘It should not.’
Magnus the Red was the opposite of his brother in nearly every respect. He wore a powerful mantle of red mail, inlaid with black scales and blood rubies that winked in the ruinous light. He stood taller than the Ultramarine Primarch, his scarlet hair tamed only by a simple warrior’s knot where Guilliman’s was dark and close-cropped.
Roboute Guilliman was a general, a commander, a warrior. He wore those titles like armour, played the roles as though he had been born to them. His presence commanded. He exuded authority.
The Crimson King eclipsed that, naturally, without notice. He had no need for the honours and titles of lesser men, though he accepted them with good grace as a master artist might accept the accolades of a first-year student. Time and time again, in the twin crucibles of war and politics, Guilliman had earned his superiority. But Magnus simply was. In a lesser being, that may have translated as arrogance, as smugness.
Yet the self-aware grief upon those bronzed features, the sorrow in that one eye, the set of its wounded twin belayed that.
Here stood two of the most powerful and capable creatures in the Imperium.
And they had failed.
‘How stand the Archives?’ Guilliman asked, turning to face his brother, mastering himself. ‘I trust you met with more success than I.’
‘Less resistance, but only because they saw no need to deploy a defence there.’
‘Intact, then.’
‘Useless.’ Magnus’ eye flashed with anger. ‘They voided the entire system hours before we arrived. The Mechanicum cannot find a trace. I cannot understand it, Roboute. Their culture, their history - everything - erased. Even if the City of Light was overtaken, I could not bear to destroy Tizca’s libraries. No more than you would purge Ptolmey.’
‘There must be logic to their action. Theoretical: weapons or devices that could not fall into enemy hands.’
‘Perhaps it was shame.’
‘Shame?’
Magnus’ gaze drifted over the shattered screens, tracing some pattern visible only to him, some sense within the destruction. He took a moment before nodding. ‘Something they do not wish to be remembered for, perhaps, some act in their past that they could not bear to be found out.’
‘An advanced culture with such embedded propaganda and civic control would not be caught out in such a manner.’
Again, Magnus fell silent. Then a rueful smile moved across his face. ‘I’m being melodramatic.’
‘Maudlin,’ the confession elicited an answering expression from the Ultramarine Primarch. ‘Melancholic. We could have learned much here. Now it is lost to us. A culture that survived Old Night, destroying itself in totality rather than accepting a place in the Imperium.’
‘A lesser place, granted, with restrictions, alterations.’
‘Largely intact.’
Magnus stepped away from his brother, closer to the ruined technological that adorned all the walls and towers of Kayliss Thal. He leaned in, almost touching, as though he could divine some secret from the darkness. Like an ancient astronomer charting the passage of stars, looking for their meaning.
‘When I visited the Fortress of Hera, I was taken by the shar-bear pelt in your chambers, Roboute.’
‘A valuable lesson,’ a note of pride. ‘A gift from Lord Konor.’
Magnus arched one unruly brow, but let the deliberate title pass. ‘I have read the works of your adoptive father. They are insightful. What did he mean by the gift?’
A note of discomfort entered the atmosphere. The lives of the Primarchs before the Emperor were formative experiences - and intensely private. Some had joined the Crusade with nothing but eagerness to assume the duty their true father had intended for them -- others were less enraptured by the idea. For a man like Guilliman or Dorn who had already become statesmen, this was a natural evolution, a simple extension of what they were to what they would have become regardless.
For others…
Well.
‘I should not have-’ Magnus began, but Guilliman forestalled him with a shake of his head.
‘No, Magnus, I was collecting my thoughts. This compliance has been…’
‘Wearying.’
‘That, certainly.’ It was Guilliman’s turn to offer his brother a wry, conciliatory smile. ‘Konor was wise. His lessons had many meanings. The pelt was, at first, a symbol of authority - a trophy. Something great that had been felled by his hand. That is usually the purpose of such things. But as I…’ again, the lapse.
‘Grew?’ suggested Magnus.
‘Matured.’
‘That is a word.’
Guilliman ignored the jibe, deep now in his memories. ‘I began to see it as something more. The pelt of this great beast lay in our innermost chambers. Ambassadors and dignitaries and commanders trod upon it. It was privy to all the affairs of state. It had been taken to a world far more powerful - and dangerous - than its natural habitat.’
‘You believe Konor was preparing you in some way for our father’s arrival? He knew you were different, of course. But did he perceive that?’
‘He may have.’
Magnus leaned forward, fascinated. ‘That is not all you gleaned.’
‘I began to… wonder. What would the shar-bear itself wish for? To be dead beneath the feet of great men in their bastion, or alive in the cave networks tending her cubs?’
The cracked screens canted back the reflection of two demigods standing in the ruin of a city that had chosen immediate annihilation over the slow, creeping death of cultural and traditional decline. That had purged its collective memory forever rather than be an Imperial puppet. That being a slave chained to the seat of power was nothing compared to freedom.
The brothers stood in silence for long minutes, but the discomfort was gone. It was a companionable silence, of siblings who knew the other’s thoughts, where no words needed to be spoken.
Even in failure, there was much to learn.