V3 Chapter 21: What Do You Mean My Father Has Become a God?
After his inspection of the Fortress of Hera, Guilliman spent an entire day alone in his quarters.
The room was not so different from what it had been ten thousand years before. The position of the bookshelves, the height of the tactical table, the layout of the Ultramar star charts on the walls — all of it had been maintained carefully by those who came after him. For Guilliman, this was perhaps the one place in the entire Imperium that still felt familiar.
The armour of fate was connected to a maintenance cradle in the corner of the room. Several Apothecaries and Tech-Marines stood watch in the outer chamber, and the monitoring apparatus Cawl had left behind gave off a low sound at intervals, reminding everyone present that the Primarch's recovery still needed time to stabilise.
Guilliman sat in the wide chair with one hand pressed against his temple and the other supporting his head.
Throughout the day, he had spoken with Calgar, Tigurius, and a number of senior officers at the Fortress of Hera. Every word, every report, every date had been sorted and re-sorted in his mind.
The Imperium had changed enormously. Enormously enough that even he, a Primarch, had felt a cold prickling of unease, something close to disorientation.
His father was being worshipped as a god by humanity ten thousand years later.
The Imperial Truth had become an old phrase in the archives. What passed for a state religion now had its creed written into the laws of countless worlds. Mortals prayed in the Emperor's name. Priests burned heretics in the Emperor's name. Tribunals purged dissidents in the Emperor's name. The High Lords ruled Terra in the Emperor's name.
What exactly were those High Lords doing?
Where had the reason and order that had been rebuilt — with such difficulty — after the Great Heresy gone?
He had tried to understand one period of history and discovered that the same campaign existed with contradictory dates across different departments' records. The same name appeared in three separate archives with three different outcomes. Even the compiled texts sent from the Macragge Library required chronological reconciliation before they could be used.
Guilliman closed his eyes. A trace of grief, pain, and bitter sorrow crossed his face. The wound at his throat, the one his brother had left there, still ached distantly. That pain was nothing beside what the current state of the Imperium was doing to him.
Nearly ten thousand years had passed. How had the empire his father had built with his own hands become this?
There was even a moment — just one — when he could not stop the thought from rising.
Perhaps he was still in stasis. Perhaps he was still lying on the throne, the poison still working through the wound at his throat, and this entire absurd reality was a Chaos-woven illusion, crafted to rot his mind from within.
He pressed the thought down quickly.
His sons were real. The emotions they had shown were real. Cawl's apparatus was real, and the armour of fate's sustaining effect on his body could not be explained by any illusion.
Guilliman drew a slow breath and opened his eyes.
The situation had not yet reached its worst point.
The Imperium still maintained a certain degree of order.
Humanity still had a chance.
At least it did now.
He was silent for a moment. Then he reached over and pressed the vox unit on the side of the desk.
"Notify Calgar."
His voice had steadied.
"Have the Marshal-Commissar, Duvette Erdmann, come to see me."
The knock came while Duvette was surfacing from sleep.
He could sustain himself without rest for extended periods, particularly on campaign or aboard ship, where that habit had long since become second nature. But in a place like the Fortress of Hera, temporarily secure and stable, brief sleep was still worth taking.
He sat up and spent a few seconds confirming where he was.
Then he pulled on his greatcoat, walked to the door, and opened it.
The figure outside surprised him, if only slightly.
"Chapter Master Calgar."
Duvette rendered a salute immediately.
Calgar looked at the mortal Commissar in front of him without speaking. His power armour was still immaculate, and little showed on his face. But Duvette could feel it, this was not a visit from someone who had come purely to relay an order.
After a moment, Calgar spoke.
"Duvette. The Primarch wishes to see you."
His voice was low.
"Now."
Duvette gave a nod.
"Understood."
The two of them left the room quickly and moved through the Fortress of Hera in the dark. Ultramarine sentries along the route rendered salutes to Calgar, and more than a few eyes followed Duvette. What had happened in the shrine would not be spoken of openly, but everyone here knew this mortal Commissar had played some role in the Primarch's awakening.
After a stretch of corridor, Duvette spoke first.
"Chapter Master Calgar."
Calgar did not slow his pace.
"I am not going to ask your forgiveness. What I did in the shrine was a deception — that is a fact."
Calgar still said nothing.
"But if it came to it again, I would make the same choice." Duvette continued. "As long as the Primarch woke, everything was worth it."
This time, Calgar stopped.
He turned and looked at Duvette.
"And if our father had not woken?"
His voice had gone heavier than before.
"If those two xenos had come with the true intention of killing our father?"
The air in the corridor seemed to go still.
Duvette looked at him. He was quiet for just a beat, and then the faintest trace of something settled crossed his face.
"If it had failed, I would have died in the shrine." He said it plainly. "If they had betrayed us, I would have been the first thing standing between them and the Primarch."
Calgar's gaze did not move.
Duvette went on. "But the facts are what they are, Chapter Master. The Primarch is awake."
Calgar held his gaze for a long moment.
That look held anger. It held wariness. It held something else beneath both of those, something that resisted easy naming.
Finally, he turned and kept walking.
"Those words will not earn you my forgiveness."
"I know."
"Nor will Ultramar forget what you did here."
"I know that as well."
Calgar said nothing more.
They arrived before a set of heavy wooden doors. Two Honour Guard stood outside; at the sight of Calgar, they stepped aside without a word.
Calgar moved to the side and gave Duvette room to pass.
"Go in."
Duvette looked at him for a moment, then stepped forward to the door and knocked three times, quietly.
A voice of authority came from inside.
"Enter."
Duvette pushed the door open and walked in.
The candles in the room were still burning. The maintenance cradle along the wall gave off a faint reflected light, and several thick connection cables ran from the cradle into the armour of fate at Guilliman's back.
Guilliman was seated behind the writing desk, turning the pages of a heavy volume.
The paper would have been durable enough by any mortal standard, but against the armoured gauntlet of a Primarch it was still fragile. To make the pages easier to manage, Cawl and the Tech-Marines had fitted several small attachments to the fingertips of the gauntlet, designed to improve grip without applying the kind of pressure that would tear the pages.
Duvette paused for half a second at the sight of it.
The gene-sire of a Primarch, freshly returned to the world, sitting alone in his quarters in the small hours, reading through volumes of history with a gauntlet modified for the purpose.
"Sit."
Guilliman did not look up.
Duvette had barely completed his salute, but the Primarch seemed unconcerned with formalities. He walked to the wooden chair in front of the desk and sat down. It was only when the chair legs gave a small scrape against the floor that Guilliman raised his head.
Those eyes settled on Duvette, appraising, carrying a pressure that was entirely lucid.
"Duvette Erdmann. Marshal-Commissar."
"That is correct."
"If you have no objection, I would like to hear everything you have experienced."
Guilliman closed the book in his hands.
"I want to know who you are. And I want to know why you came to be standing in my shrine."
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