Melkor is in the sanctum. He is in the sanctum and before him lying on the ground is the Nighthaunter. His body limp and almost lifeless as only a Primarch could be. Besides Konrad a few meters from the mortal is another giant, another Primarch. He knows it is Magnus the Red, the Cyclops. The single eye and the reddish skin mark him as unique amongst all the Emperor's sons, much in the same way the great white feathered wings mark Sanguinius apart from them.
Around the Crimson King stand Astartes, clad in tactical dreadnought plate. They are the Atramentar, the Primarch's own honor guard and the legion´s terminator elite. They had been brought to this room to restrain their own lord, in his vision fit. Yet apart from them all is Shang, the Equerry. He stands in midnight clad just like his brothers, but he stands in regular Astartes plate. In his posture anxiousness is clear.
Melkor sees all of this, and sees almost nothing. His mind goes into overdrive. A Primarch lies at his feet unconscious. Magnus the Red is there, and above all, they all heard about the Prophecy of the Dark King.
He does not know what to do. Every plan he made, every scenario he thought of, for he dreams in plans, dreams in scenario making. They never took in the possibility of Curze being knocked out. It was such an impossibility, it was so unaccountable, for who could ever think a Primarch could ever be knocked out.
"He should wake up in a few hours." The Crimson King says. In his voice there is wisdom, an inkling of knowledge impossible to refute. Even if it could be refuted, who would? He is a Primarch, only he amongst those here would know how long the eighth son would remain down.
Melkor hears it, Melkor looks around. Shang is giving orders to his brothers, Magnus is grabbing his brother, as if he was a sleeping beauty. He thinks, like he did so long ago, when this life was but an impossible scenario. He thinks and then a plan forms in his head.
Should he go for it? What about the repercussions? Should he be betting on the Nighthaunter´s reaction? His favor? His life?
Should he hope? Should he bet his hope against the incarnation of Terror?
Melkor was many things, too cautious, but prone to recklessness, wise but prone to stupidity. But he was not a good gambler. He never managed to analyze people truly. People are fluid, ever changing. Melkor´s predictions always failed to account for that. He never managed to account for randomness. Sometimes he did, by thinking of multiple scenarios and one of those landed on reality, but those were few and far between.
Then again Melkor was not betting against a normal mortal, he was betting on a Primarch, an immortal, and that perhaps will change things.
Anticipation filled his skin, he was going forward. There was no better time to die than now. He whispered a few words and turned to seek the ones he needed for this plan of madness. He would take a page out of a book belonging to the Prince of Crows, a page yet to be written even.
He turned to Shang, who by then had sent his brothers away as the situation was effectively over, and with his most authoritative voice he said. "What happened here will be kept here." It wasn't a loud voice, but there was seriousness behind it.
How much Shang cared about the words of this mortal he truly didn't care. Shang would do it because it was the logical choice, he just needed to say it out loud to prevent it from being missed at all.
He turned to Magnus, who is no longer in the main hall of the sanctum. He turned to look for him, a door closed at the edge of his sight. He had grabbed his brother from the cold metallic floor and left the room. If he left the room, what he said to Shang wouldn't be followed. There was only one single place Magnus would put his brother, the medicae.
Melkor sprinted there. He needed to speak with Curze, perhaps he could finally change his path. He had to have faith, faith it could be done. Faith in the Bringer of Terror.
When he reached the medicae chamber, Magnus was there carefully observing his brother. Melkor´s breath was ragged, uneven. His lungs ached with the effort for a few moments. He took a moment to catch his breath and then he looked more carefully into the chamber. Until now, no one had stopped him, no one. He had managed to avoid Fulgrim´s suspicions, to survive Curze´s early madness and due to it live relatively comfortably in the Nighthaunter´s flagship. His room is one of the closest to the Primarch, for no reason other than his will. He still possessed the coin given to him by Sineater, Curze´s coin, and he was clothed in the midnight blue overcoat he had been with when he last spoke with Fulgrim. It still had the stains of his blood from the wound Magnus had healed.
He breathed, and after the ache passed, after his breath returned to him he analyzed the medicae again. Shang was there, in a corner seemingly waiting, he was now the most senior legion officer yet he waited for his lord. Melkor did not know how he remained so unmoving in his corner. Unlike Shang, Magnus and eighth legion apothecaries shared their post besides the Nighthaunter´s table seemingly monitoring every single thing. As if they were looking for the source of such a vision fit, almost as if it had been the first one like this. It had not, but they did not know. No one here knew for no one here was there when the Sun had come to Nostramo. No one knew, save Melkor.
He rushed to the Nighthaunter, his body moving without thinking, trying to shove Astartes and even Magnus aside.
They did not move.
They did not move, yet they did not care about him, they did not care, save Magnus.
The Crimson King turned slowly to the struggling mortal. His stare, even without being met, made Melkor´s blood run faster, adrenaline rushing through his veins.
"The mortal?" The Crimson King asked in gothic to the Astartes present there. "Why is he not restrained?"
None answered, none seemed to dare answer. None save Curze´s own Equerry and only after a few seconds of deafening silence.
"The mortal is under our father´s protection, Lord Magnus. He bears the proof of that on his finger, the copy of our father´s signet ring."
"Who is he to bear my brother´s signet ring, even as a copy?" Magnus asked.
Melkor turned away from Curze and turned to the Crimson King. "The mortal has a name, and he has acted as your brother´s representative to the Phoenician before."
"Restrain him." Magnus ordered. There was unmistakable surety in his voice. Shang tried to protest again, but Magnus shut him down.
"Until your father countermands it himself you will lock the mortal. He is under investigation for causing disruption to my brother´s state of mind and possible manipulation of a Primarch."
The Equerry couldn't do more than this. He was a simple Astartes arguing with a Primarch. Even from a different legion there was hardly any point. He sighed. "As you wish Lord Magnus."
"YOU CANNOT DO THIS TO ME." Melkor shouted as he was grabbed by a Night Lord. "Your brother decided to take me in when I was thrown into a different life than the one I was supposed to have. You are a fool if you believe I did anything but try to help your brother as he descended to madness."
Magnus ignored him.
"Go on Magnus, go fool. You think yourself too smart to be deceived. Well you already were, by your own ego." He freed himself from the Astartes´ grasp. He wasn't really being held with strength. "I know where the cells are." He said to him. "I am still the chief legion interrogator, remember. I will go there myself."
Magnus turned to Shang, but before he said anything the equerry spoke. "Do as you will, Lord Magnus. You will find no cooperation from me." If Magnus was going to speak to him, he certainly was not now. Clearly the Night Lords were far more different than the Crimson King had expected, even after campaigning with them. Too insular, too isolated, it was no wonder they were called murders. Well they were, but that wasn't the point. These were murderers, his sons were seekers of wisdom. Without Curze they might as well not exist.
The Crimson King turned back to his brother, using his arcane gifts to perceive any disturbance, any thing out of the ordinary that may have influenced his brother, that may have caused such a big breakdown with this vision.
He gazed, and as he gazed he went closer and closer to the Nighthaunter. He started to perceive an endless shadow. A shadow seeping from his brother´s snow white skin, but it felt normal. It felt like Curze, but stronger, distilled into a purer form.
He perceived nothing wrong the longer he remained on Curze. Yet the closer he checked Curze, the closer he sought to ensure his brother's spirit and mind were his; he started hearing an unmistakable voice. A voice infinitely wise and infinitely older than him.
"Magnus."
"Father." the Crimson King said, there was surprise in his tone, yet in truth he spoke no word.
"What have you done?!" It said, there was anger, rage, in its voice. In the Emperor´s voice, but most of all. There was disappointment.
"Father." His voice was uneven, tense. "I am sorry father." In truth Magnus had no idea what the Emperor may be talking about, but he could only say sorry.
"Yes father. What have you done?" He knew that voice, it was the voice of a dead son. His dead son. A long dead son.
He looked behind him. What greeted him was a grotesque vision. An amalgamation of flesh changed irreparably. It was grotesque, mutated, bulbous and unnatural, with a third arm, his head scraped over the chest like butter on toast.
"No." Magnus took a step back. "I fixed it." His pupils were enlarging with every minute. He felt something in his veins.
"These are nothing but lies," he said in disbelief. "I cured the flesh change. I fixed the flesh change." He took another step back.
Before he could say another word he was thrown back by a psychic blast. He crashed into the medicae´s walls, the force of the impact warping the steel.
When he got back up everyone was staring at him, every apothecary, every marine and mortal. What could have thrown the Crimson King with such force as to warp the Nightfall adamantium walls?
"Any changes?" He asked the apothecaries. They denied with a gesture, too stunned to speak. "Warn me if something changes. My legion needs me."
It took an entire hour of walking until Melkor finally reached the cells. He knew them all well enough. He had worked here. He stopped before the first cell, the one closest to the upper decks, the best cell. The never used cell. He put the code in, the heavy bulky door slid open. He walked in.
Inside the cell was a luxurious bed with midnight blue sheet, a table, an office chair, paper and quill. It was more like a luxurious room than truly a cell. He laid on the bed. His chest felt hot with rage, with indignation. He was proud.
He always tried to temper his pride. To be humble as he could be, to be reasonable, but in this moment his pride born rage burned. The tempered rationality of his mind seemed gone, taken up by the irrationality of anger. Magnus… He always thought of Magnus as at least reasonable. Not the arrogant fool he had seen him there.
"How does he dare to throw him to his own cells, in a vessel that is not even his." He thought to himself.
He grabbed the office chair and he threw it at the walls of the cell and he screamed in rage.
It hardly did anything to his heart. It beated with fiery life, with fiery rage. "FUCK THIS GALAXY." He shouted more to himself than anyone. "FUCK THIS LIFE." An almost maddened laugh interweaved with his screams. "COME MAGNUS. COME. I WAIT FOR YOU DUMBASS. YOU TRULY DID NOTHING WRONG." His hand obscuring his eyes as he laughed. "I TRY TO FIX THINGS AND LIFE FUCKS WITH ME. WHAT A BEAUTIFUL THING."
His laughter slowly died. "Death is nothing compared to vindication." he muttered as he threw himself to the bed. An echo of Konrad´s future words, "Fuck the Emperor. Fuck Chaos. If I cannot do anything, then let the galaxy burn." he said with a maddened smile.
Yet all of that was tiresome. All of that cursing, all of that rage, all madness quickly tired him, and Melkor found himself with his eyes heavy. His breath shallow, his vocal chords aching with the effort of his screams. His eyes were heavy, and he fell asleep.
"Any change?" the Crimson King asked the apothecaries on the next day, back where he had left his brother. Yesterday he had gone back to the Photep, he needed to be alone, and to check if the flesh change, the one thing he believed he had fixed, had returned. It was always one of his fears, to see the sword of purgation sent to his sons for a problem derived from the genetic material they received during their ascension to the Legiones Astartes.
His brother should have woken up already. He should have woken up half a day ago or more. A Primarch´s physiology was so masterfully crafted that this shouldn't have gone for so long.
"Brain activity has resumed half an hour after your departure, yesterday, Lord Magnus." Orrin Valzen spoke to the Crimson King. He was the Night Lords chief apothecary.
That was more in line to what he had thought, but then why had his brother remained like he was? There was no wound, nothing in the multiple scans they performed nor the psychic check up Magnus did, though truthfully unlike the previous one he did not peer deeply this time.
Then something came to Magnus. He perhaps does not want to wake up. Perhaps his brother´s mind wishes to remain like this. Something was happening to his brother.
Nostramo was lightless as it always had been. Pollution clouds obscuring all the light from the heavens, be it void born vessels going up into the distant void to deliver the so prized blue Nostraman adamantium to neighboring systems, or simply the pale distant stars that illuminated the dark night sky on other worlds. Even the single natural satellite that orbited Nostramo, one where atop it sat a fortress monetary belonging to the eighth legion, the moon that cast a shadow over the hive cities of Nostramo if there was a shadow to be cast over, a moon called Tenebor.
Nostramo was lightless. It was lightless but it wasn't cold, not colder than any regular inhabited world would be, but it was infinitely more depressing. From the black clouds that perpetually covered the sky rain poured down, like a soft but sad embrace. It poured down but it never reached the floor.
Motionless beneath the unseen shadow of the hive spire of Nostramo Quintos stood in neatly ordered parade formation of four different colored Astartes legion detachments. They were frozen in time, a golden distant light reflecting from their impeccable clean battleplate.
Curze was not frozen in time. His father was. His brothers were. He was not.
The frozen downpour barely touched him as he slowly moved around the scene. He was back on Nostramo, witnessing a frozen golden lit moment in its dark depressing history.
His face was stern, his thoughts heavy. He remembered this day. He remembered this day as clearly as any other in his life, but this was not any other day.
This was the day he was taken up to the void, to the crusade where he would become the worst monster in existence. To turn away from his purpose of ensuring justice and prosperity in his sunless kingdom and become a murderer of countless people who simply wished to live their lives beneath their own lords and not under the Raptor banner of Terra´s Imperium.
He was a monster. There was no doubt in his mind about that. Perhaps he had always been a monster. Melkor certainly thought so. He certainly thought his approach was far too brutal to endure. He thought the hand of judgment clutched Nostramo too tightly to bring true stability.
Curze jumped to his balcony on the hive spire. A balcony a hundred meters above, he landed on it with an impossibly soft touch. He looked down, he saw Fulgrim with a soft genuine smile, he saw Ferrus´s stern face, he saw Dorn´s unmoving honorable gaze and Lorgar´s almost soft gaze.
His father, the Emperor, surrounded by his custodians was illuminating his entire home. Even from the distance he was in, more than a kilometer out, it was impossible not to notice him, not to be drawn to him.
His light burned his people, it blinded them. It made them suffer for no purpose other than to show his glory. Did he even care about that? He didn't think so.
He moved into the building, into his throne room and sat on his dark obsidian throne. There was one like it aboard the Nightfall, a smaller replica of his original throne.
"I am a monster," Curze said to himself. He did not deny it, he said it as a simple statement. "I am a monster."
"I am a monster." As he repeated these words there was a bubbling sensation building up in him. "I should have been dead. Where is the justice in my existence?" He felt something cold, watery starting to fill his eyes. "I am a monster. I am cursed. I am an abomination."
Even alone in his throne, he couldn't help but hear the oppressive words repeating in his mind, he couldn't help but feel the pain in his eyes that he got whenever he received a vision. He couldn't help but remember the unseen pain that coursed through his old wounds and scar tissue upon his body.
He didn't need to touch those wounds to feel it. He lived with them, it was always there. From the first bullet wound he received when he was a few months old, which in truth made him to be around the height of a 5 year old child. He still remembered that one, it was a stub round, he had to remove it himself, he had to remove all of the bullets when he was hit. He had no one.
"I took this world from despotic tyrants. I raised the innocent children and saved them from a life of crime, by instilling in them the fear of my coming should they take that step. I killed, flayed, tortured, and mutilated to bring that about. The screams of the guilty were cast over the planetary vox. And the moment I turn my back on this world… No. The moment I am taken from this world, things crack. I am a king, but a kingdom should remain even with its king absent." He smashed his hand against the armrest of his throne.
"I was made to be an instrument of fear. Damn you father. I was made to be the night, but not even that I can be… DAMN YOU FATHER. WHY DID YOU MAKE ME LIKE THIS." A single tear of anguish fell on his pale face, clearing soot and grime.
He grabbed his crown, it always sat besides the throne, he only used it when others were present. The Corona Nox, a simple band of blue Nostraman adamantium, encrusted with blood red rubies and a single diamond as centerpiece. He grabbed it and threw it against the wall. The jewels broke away, rubies fell to the floor and the smooth diamond landed at his feet.
"This world forsook me," he said sadly. "The Emperor abandoned me. He will sentence me to death…" His face was fierce with pain.
"Be at peace, Konrad Curze. I have arrived, and I intend to take you home." The words his father had spoken all those years ago sounded impossibly hollow when he repeated them.
He had no home. Not anymore.
He should die. He should throw himself into the burning inferno of a star´s corona. He doubted his father created them to survive such a thing.
The room fell quiet soon after. An oppressive darkness fell on the room. Konrad closed his eyes. He was a monster. There was no doubt about it. He became a monster when he tried to raise his people from beasts. He became a monster when his father threw him into the void. He became a monster because he tried to do something good.
Something came to him… A name came to him. The name Karzen. He was a boy that he had killed. There had been two boys that night, two boys above a young female, about to do what young males did to women a thousand times an hour in those grim days in the confines of the hive. Karzen and the boy were street dregs, parentless and killers. She had been better dressed than them. The syndicate that sheltered her would come and murder them once they found their actions out. He did not allow it to come to that.
The boys had been so busy cutting the clothes from the girl that they did not notice him dropping to the roof behind them. The girl was weeping, softly and quietly, and they were loudly laughing. He remembered that, just as he remembered this day. No one would come to her aid, they had thought.
A single word of his had sent one of the boys running in fear, leaving the girl in peace. Karzen wasn't as fast. His blow broke four of his ribs and sent him down. The boy had been quick though, he rolled over before Curze was on him again, yet still the Nighthaunter snatched him by the arm, his knife falling to the ground. His other had pinned him to the roof.
Karzen had screamed and punched at his capture, without realizing who it was. The boy punched, Curze didn't even care to flinch. He punched and punched and punched until his knuckles had split.
When Karzen had finally the thought to look at him, he had whispered a single word.
"Perfect."
He hadn't yet bathed a single time in his life, yet the boy whispered that word. His word had intrigued him.
In that moment of simple patience he had received two visions. Both where he had spared the boy. Both with widely different endings.
One where the boy would come looking for him. He would find him. One where he would question why the dreaded Nighthaunter had spared him. One where the boy Karzen would seek to understand the motives of the eighth primarch, to understand his purpose. One where he would be taught his ideals and with him Nostramo would change for the better, as both he and the people would wage a war against the criminal gang syndicates and break them forever, and in that sunless world a new sunless dawn would have risen.
That had been the first vision. The second was far worse.
The boy would reach for the knife and stab him, and that staggering back for a moment, a moment that would allow him to escape. He would become "the man who survived the Nighthaunter" a legend in Nostramo´s criminal underclass. A legend that would rise to such heights to lead his own gang, and reach such power that no other had held in their history.
Curze would eventually find him, and kill him, but by that point so much suffering, so much injustice had been committed by him and those under him that his mark would never leave Nostramo´s society, even after he was crowned as its Dark King.
He had chosen neither. There could only be a single future, he killed the boy then and there, without remorse. It had been only after that, he had noticed the knife had been too far away. Too far for him to grab and stab the Primarch. He hadn't been willing to risk the worst. He had chosen neither vision, he chose the third path.
"How would this world have changed if I dared to think about the possibility of hope in this world where despair permeates everything." He muttered looking up. Even here the golden light of the Emperor tried to shine through, reaching the ceiling and illuminating the candelabra. How he hated that light.
"Karzen…"He thought of that boy. The boy who would have changed everything. "I am a monster…" Then a realization hit him. "I have always been a monster." Another tear fell from his inky nostraman eyes. "I choose to be a monster." Another tear, and another. He cried.
Karzen, a Nostraman boy who would have sought him out, who would have believed in him, in his methods. A boy who would have helped him bring justice to this accursed world. He killed.
He was a fool. He is a monster and he was a fool.
He cried, resigned to his monstrosity, lying on the throne like a child crying on a chair alone from everything.
He cried and cried and cried. When the tears stopped he didn't know how much time had passed. In truth not a single second had, this was his mind, and he stood in the projection of his memory. The rain was frozen in time, his father and his brothers' legions stood unmoving.
He wiped the tears from his face, and he simply stared at the broken crown. His face was cleaners paler, more beautiful. "I chose that fate. I became a monster because I chose to be one. To elevate them… Elevate them through fear. Fear that is breaking before it is bending." The words he muttered carried a sense of wisdom, almost as if he heard them being said before…
"Melkor," he whispered angrily. "The fool. So that was what he wanted to say to me. He is a fool that even gazing into despair betted on me realizing this truth." He started to laugh.
"What a fool. What would he have said if he had been awake? That there is still hope for me?!" He laughed as he spoke those words, but for some reason they didn't sound at all displeasing to him. They should have. Where would be the justice if there was hope for a monster like him?
The longer he thought about the mortal who had shown up to his chamber out of nowhere, the longer he saw how much those simple conversations and words he wrote put a different spin on him. Melkor had always known he was a monster, he had always known his methods or at least had a general idea of them, yet that did not turn him away. He could have resigned himself to the death Curze had ordered, but no. He tried to survive and even change Curze…
"What a damned fool," he repeated, but there was no hate. Hope was a dangerous thing. He never dared put his faith in it but if a mortal dared to put his faith and hope in him… To believe a monster could change. What an irony. The mortal gives hope to the one who should have inspired it, brought it. A faithless mortal had faith in the monster who should have inspired faith.
He breathed deeply. His old wounds seemed dull, parting away from him. There was no pain in his eyes, the eternal aching pain in them caused by his visions slowly disappearing.
He breathed once more and slowly got up, picking up the broken crown in his hands. The adamantium circlet warped. He sighed and reached down for the broken jewels.
In the medicare chamber, the Night Lords Chief Apothecary was looking at the instrument readings. Brain activity had spiked immensely and his scars had disappeared, his skin becoming of even unblemished snow. He turned to check on his lord, on his gene-father, and as if Curze was frozen in time. His dark inky nostraman eyes suddenly opened in a single motion.