(Anna-Murza Jek POV)
It was unimaginable. To stand among these men and women, these giants of either stature or power. Standing among Space Marines as they moved was unlike anything I ever thought I would feel when I observed the Imperial Fists on Terra as a neophyte.
I had looked down on them. No, "looked down" is the wrong word. But I hadn't seen how impressive they were after years of taking them for granted. Naturally, we heard and read about the wars across the galaxy and their exploits throughout the millennia, but after a while, it lost its taste.
And yet, here I was. A human, and with it, the weakest being on Luna.
When I came into the employ of Tieron, the Chancellor, I never would have pictured following him through his madness and Warp storms, only to then come face to face with a living Primarch.
Lord Roboute Guilliman, son of the Emperor of Mankind.
He was here, on Luna, in the Sol System.
I don't know how long it had taken him to reach us. I probably wouldn't find out either, but I heard snatches from those who would become the great powers in our new Imperium. Mostly from him, that one anomaly, that would cause great upheaval.
In future years, our scholars might piece together the sequence of events and assign official dates. Tieron suspected that Cadia fell months before we became aware of it on Terra, and that the Great Rift opened long before its effects reached us.
I was always a good judge of character. It was essential for someone in my position, and the position I would come to hold. With this, I could tell the Imperials' journey to Terra had been arduous to the extreme.
A crusade, the Terran Crusade, that had taken them halfway across the galaxy, even as it tore itself apart.
He didn't speak of what had transpired, of course. None of his captains and advisers did, not even he... They had fought a terrible battle, or multiple battles, and then finally one on Luna, yet they were still wary. The 'man' turned to the Lord Primarch after doing... whatever he was doing.
"We need to speed this up, Roboute. There's not much time," he said.
"What is it, Gerhard?" the Lord asked.
"An attack."
"On Terra, Lord?" one of the Grey Knights asked.
Grey Knights. It is hard to believe there was another type of Space Marine without me ever hearing about them. All Tieron told me was that they were, or rather had been, one of the Imperium's best-guarded secrets. They dealt with the 'Archenemy'. From what I could tell, or what it seemed, they behaved strangely around this 'Gerhard'.
In fact, even the Custodes behaved strangely around him. The Space Marines looked at him the way they did the Primarch; then the Saint basically stuck to his side like a fly to dead flesh. Even the Primarch seemed strange; he talked to him like he was someone of equal standing. No one was like that.
What were they talking about? What attack? And who would dare attack Terra? Who did they fight here, for that matter?
No one would tell me anything.
Tieron exchanged a few words with Lord Guilliman. He told him who the Lords of Terra were and what had transpired to bring such turmoil to the Throneworld which he had, in a sense, shaped. Tieron started to speak without realising it, I think. He told him about his plan to have the Adeptus Custodes enter the war effort as well, to reform our armies into something that might oppose the Despoiler more effectively.
I doubt Lord Guilliman, the Primarch, found such scant musings comical or particularly interesting.
It was hard to look him directly in the eye. I don't know why, but I know Tieron felt the same way. It was as if the light reflecting from his face came from a source denied to us, a sun that none who beheld him could see. Lord Gerhard was the same way, only different and to a greater degree.
I thought I'd die when he looked at us the first time. And then he touched our heads, and we were perfectly fine again. Who was he, and where had he come from?
Lord Guilliman and Lord Gerhard spoke softly with each other. Respect was there; that much was clear, but it seemed like something else. The Primarch was reasonable, even solicitous. He issued every command in the same calm, authoritative manner. All obeyed him instantly, not just the Space Marines who shared his lineage, but the Mechanicus constructs, and even the Custodians who had arrived from Terra.
The saints didn't really listen to the Primarch that much, as they did to Lord Gerhard. He was an enigma I most definitely couldn't understand, and I shouldn't. What I've done until now has taught me that some information is too dangerous to possess, and it's better to stay clueless. It was a hard balance to walk, since keeping the High Lords' peace and interests was more Tieron's job than mine.
"You may find Terra... different to how you remember it, Lord," Tieron said as they boarded the ship that would take them to Terra.
Of course he would find it different. He had already seen enough of the Imperium to know that, but of course Tieron was extrapolating into a past he only knew from half-understood historical records. He most likely envisioned the world the Primarch came from as a paradise of achievement. I did too. And of course we may have been wrong about that.
"Haha."
I turned around when I heard someone laugh at Tieron. It was Lord Gerhard, who was busy tinkering with something in his hand. Next to him, floating in the air, was the figure of what seemed to have once been a Custodian, and on the other side sat the saint.
"My-my lord?" Tieron asked.
He didn't know how to approach or address any of them. It was uncharted territory for all of us 'mortals'.
"Gerhard," Lord Guilliman said.
It sounded almost like a warning. But it didn't seem to deter Lord Gerhard; he just shrugged.
"What? It was funny."
"Funny?... uh, Lord?" Tieron asked again.
"Yes. Hilarious, amusing, quaint, a belly laugh or knee-slapper."
Tieron tried to say something, but didn't seem to know what he wanted to say.
"Calling Terra 'different' from what it was ten millennia ago is like calling a corpse that has been flayed, hollowed out, stuffed with machinery, and paraded around in its own skin 'a little worse for wear."
Then, he pointed at Tieron.
"It is funny that you still possess such arrogance, even now."
"I..." he gulped. "I beg y-your pardon?"
Lord Gerhard tapped his head.
"-... perhaps I misinterpreted him entirely. After all, who was I to judge a Primarch's mind? He is as far above me as I am above the spine-roaches that we have allowed to infest the Throneworld's sewers...-"
Tieron's eyes widened, and I feared that they would drop out of his head. I looked around the hull and realised that multiple individuals were listening, even if they hadn't moved.
"That's what you thought, isn't it? You know, right about now, you are no better or worse than those 'spine-roaches' as you put it. In fact, they are better off, since they at least know how to defend themselves and survive.
You, on the other hand, after merely 20 days of red clouds, went mad enough to take a ship and fly it toward an active, massive battlefield just to finally 'get information'."
"That's enough, Gerhard," Lord Guilliman said.
Lord Gerhard shrugged and went back to tinkering. I couldn't say for sure, but I felt like he wasn't the only one who thought like that. And while I wanted to get angry at the accusation and tell him how we had endured hell, nightmares and whispers in the dark... I didn't dare.
What did he know about being 'mortal'? What did he know about the struggles of waking up and knowing that you could have your food poisoned, or an assassin cut your throat? What did he know about the perils of keeping the Imperium running?
He turned towards me and grinned.
'Throne! He could read minds! He just did it with Tieron; how could I forget?!'
My nerves were going blank. I can only hope that this nightmare ends now that the Primarch is finally here.
I was honoured to travel with them, one of the very few mortals who did so. I was surrounded by figures I found daunting to look at, let alone talk to. Space Marine lords, Mechanicus magi, Grey Knight commanders. I took my place among them, ignored by all, and watched silently as it unfolded.
I didn't let Lord Gerhard's words get to me any more than they already had.
Before we set off from Luna, I thought of the unrest on Terra, the terror in the skies and the visions in the night, and assumed we would finally see it all quelled. We passed swiftly out of Luna's orbit, escorted by many ships from the hastily sent task force.
We passed tidings in the strictest confidence to the Sanctum Imperialis, and landing permits were arranged for the Eternity Wall void port. Even being there felt surreal.
It felt surreal that any of it was happening at all.
Crowds gathered against our intentions because, somehow, the rumour managed to reach Terra ahead of us. We came down inside the Outer Palace perimeter, far from the worst of the unrest, so the Primarch's first sight of his subjects was the most favourable it could have been: the scholiasts, the Palace guards, the priests, and the ministers of state.
And yet, Tieron and I could barely look at him during that terrible time.
We could not hide just how desperate things had become. He could see the unnatural storms raging in the atmosphere and the darkened profile of the defunct Astronomican fortress. He could see the walls packed with defenders and the smouldering, half-derelict stretches of the city beyond them.
Worst of all, even when we got him inside the intact precincts, to the holiest and most immaculate of our citadels, he looked at them as if they were some insult.
However, Lord Gerhard almost lost his composure. He looked like he had been punched in the gut and felt immense pain. He held his head and had to be stabilised by the saint to prevent him from falling over.
I watched from a distance, my stomach churning at the sight of a great soul dragged into such a disgraceful situation. I looked around me at the grime-covered aquilae, the racks of guns tarnishing the angel-crowned parapets, the massive defensive structures, and the squalor that enveloped it all. The shame of it made me nearly sick.
This was the world we had made. This was the world he had fought for and preserved, and we had made it diseased.
.
.
(Tieron POV)
By the time I was reunited with Jek, I could not hide my concern. She looked at me with unease, and we retired alone to my chambers.
"Did you speak to him again?" she asked, desperate for news despite her anxiety on my behalf.
"A little. Not much. He was more concerned with Lord Gerhard and all the other things than to bother with me."
"Then you were right to go."
She grew animated, trying to cheer me up.
"This is the start of something new. You're placed well to benefit. He'll need counsellors, ones who understand how things work now."
But that was the problem. I had done more than just understand it. I had played a role in all this. I was part of the decay that disgusted him and Lord Gerhard... and so was everyone else.
"He doesn't need counsellors," I said, sinking miserably onto my fine couch. "Really, truly, he doesn't need any of us at all."
...
I must have fallen asleep, because my eyes opened suddenly to find Jek shaking me. It couldn't have been long, just a few hours, or maybe much longer.
As per usual, I had awful dreams, even worse than I had had over the past weeks and months, and I could feel myself thrashing in my sleep.
In the most vivid of them, I felt the chamber around me burning, flames streaking up the drapes and crashing into the high ceiling. I saw faces in those flames, inhuman faces with stretched jaws and long fangs.
"Only a dream," I mumbled, slowly coming to my senses.
I could see the intact outline of my bedchamber, and the walls were not burning. That at least was a relief.
"No," she said, her expression terrible. "...Not any more."
She pulled me off the couch. My robes were sticky with sweat, but I had no time to change.
As we rushed through the corridors, I noticed that the light outside was even redder than before, flashing wildly with an unnatural intensity. The air was hotter than I had ever experienced, thick and hard to breathe.
"W-What is this?" I blurted, still disoriented. "How long was I out?"
She didn't answer, but dragged me to a high balcony. We stumbled out, and the curtains flapped wildly around us.
...
I could see the Lion's Gate void port laid out far below. It was far away, filtered by shifting veils of ash and dust, but I could make out just enough.
I staggered, grabbing the railing for support. Jek reached for me, holding me up, but she was already trembling herself; her whole body went rigid as she shuddered in fear.
I had no words. I had no thoughts.
I felt the urge to scream, but no sound escaped my lips. Deep down, an old instinct lingered, prompting me to ask about Guilliman, Valoris, and the High Lords.
I wanted to know if we could position our forces and take the necessary actions. Yet my lips remained shut, refusing to move. I just stood there, paralysed, rooted with fear, and said nothing.
We no longer needed to worry about Cadia. We no longer needed to worry about anything. At last, everything the prophets had foretold, and we had ignored, had happened.
The Eye had come.
The Eye had come to Terra.
BOOOOOOMMM--!!
A sudden explosion pulled my attention to the front. A small figure stood there, looking down on the hell that had appeared.
"OI, you damn Warp Spawn!"