Where once was a mighty chorus of the greatest souls known to have been men, now ascended as a Man beyond even those of Gold, a Man not of Flesh, nor Stone, nor Iron, but a Man of Spirit, a coagulated being of Human Essence, now stood a senatorium of arguing, withering, dying bureaucrats. Guilliman knelt before the skeletal structure which had once been his Father, his Creator, his Master.
Now, it was merely a decadent and decaying hall of madness, imprisoning ten thousand souls where they had once revelled in power, in strength, in omniscience.
What is a God? Guilliman wondered, his eyes and his mind equally blinded by the radiance of his Father. Where once that light had been warming, wholesome, and life-giving, now it was toxic, penetrating, and harsh. What once had been sunlight on a warm spring morning was now solar winds whipping at a dead world whose magnetic field had faded long ago after its iron core ground to a halt, and its atmosphere had been stripped away by the ravages of time.
Guilliman could feel them arguing, screaming, tearing away at each other, these terrible and mighty voices. What had once been his Father had dissolved. It had become a bickering herd of dying goats, each of which held the capacity to destroy the solar system a dozen times over.
Can Gods die? He thought, surrounded by his Father’s essence, what little was left of that psychic song, still echoing, however faintly, through the halls of the mind, despite its forcible disbandment upon the Emperor’s interment on the Golden Throne.
Am I a God? He asked, his memories being flooded, bolstered, manipulated, repainted to serve as a canvas for the Emperor’s designs, what ickle portions of combined mindfulness the gestalt being had left frantically playing charades with the Lord Commander’s thoughts, feelings, and recollections in a desperate attempt to communicate something, anything of value.
Can I die? He pondered, as his mind was torn asunder, remade, destroyed, and reforged again and again, completely broken down into the combi-consciousness of his Father, only to be carefully, precisely, and painfully reconstructed without a single care for the suffering it caused him.
We do not worship the Fell Powers, yet we know them as Gods… He stumbled, he faltered, his mind struggling to keep up with the floundering gasps for air, the scrambling, shaking hand of 10,000 prisoners reaching for a file, left carelessly on the ground in front of their cell, close enough to brush with their million-digit appendage, yet just far enough away that they were unable to grasp it.
If I am a God, ought I be worshipped? Memories of a billion lives being crushed, snuffed, shot, burned, blasted, shredded, ripped, torn, broken, and destroyed by his hands, by the hands of his sons, yet none of these memories were his.
What is a God?
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