[h2][i]Reflection[/i][/h2] [i][sub][right]Written with the ever-so-gracious [@Culluket][/right][/sub][/i] [b]Location[/b]: Byzanthrian, Ikarian sector, Segmentum Obscurus. [b]Date[/b]: Late 986.M30. [b]Parties Involved[/b]: Gorseval the Dark Star, Primarch of the XXth Legion, and Lydia Magaera, Lady of Victory, Primarch of the XIIIth Legion. --- The Remembrancers were calling it the Liberation of Byzanthrian. A mighty and proud Forge-world had been brought back into the fold and was going to significantly contribute to the Crusade's industrial needs; cause for celebration across the width of the Imperium, surely. The official story was that rogue elements within the world's governing bodies had performed a coup d'etat, overthrowing the authority of the Great Smith, and the valiant efforts of the Void Stalkers had reinstated the rightful ruler to the throne. Grateful, the Great Smith had enthusiastically joined the Imperium and pledged his world's services to the Emperor. That is what the citizenry of the Imperium would be told. It was a lie. Gorseval stood at the edge of an enormous crater, so large that its far edge was hidden behind the curvature of Byzanthrian itself. Its depth was so vast that clouds had formed inside the bowl-shaped dent in the earth, something that would undoubtedly change the local ecosystem for millions of years to come. The earth beneath Gorseval was black, rough and made a sharp [i]cracking[/i] sound every time he shifted his weight. The sand had turned to glass. It was night. There was no artificial light source left in a 1,500-mile radius, and the stars reflected tenderly in Gorseval's pearlescent power armor. Many of his fellow Primarchs had their suits of armor heavily modified with engravings and sculpted shapes, but not Gorseval -- his armor was as smooth as a pool of still water. Upon arriving at the crater's edge, Gorseval had stabbed [i]Darkness[/i] into the ground. There he stood, still and unmoving for hours, his gauntlets grabbing the hilt tightly, head bowed and long black hair hanging like curtains down the sides of his pale, graven face, staring out into the crater. He was almost completely alone, save for one other. Lydia stood some distance behind her brother, spear planted in the brittle ground, her armored hand resting on the rim of her shield. Of course she did. The sun to his shadow. He didn't need to look to know she was there, nor have heard the sound of the shuttle which brought her, but such was the depth of the abyss into which he now stared that nothing else could reach him. She stood impervious in the dark night, a low, cold wind tugging at her braids, her mind as silent as her body. Gradually, her hand moved to lift her helm, tilting it back against her hair, and she took in the black magnitude of the desolation laid out before her with her own eyes. The wind blew again, colder and harder with nothing left to stop it. Dark fragments drifted and swirled from squat, twisted stalagmites that could once have been anything at all, barely visible in the deepening night. It was less than a wasteland. She turned her head aside, outwardly as impassive as ever, hesitating to reach out more directly, a mental hand pausing midway to her brother's shoulder. And after enough time had passed in silence, she announced herself, a sound ringing in the Silent King's mind like the single toll of a bronze bell. There was no immediate reaction. Like a great, abyssal leviathan slowly resurfacing, Gorseval's mind returned to the here-and-now, and he acknowledged Lydia's presence with a short telepathic ping after another minute had passed. He didn't turn to face her but that was unnecessary. Their communication didn't require it. Instead, Gorseval took a deep breath, cleared his throat and started speaking. His voice was as cold and emotionless as always, and yet it managed to sound even more distant now. "When we came upon Byzanthrian, I initially expected the Great Smith to surrender immediately. We blacked out the sun with our fleet and my message was very clear -- embrace the Imperial Truth or suffer the consequences. They had some ships, but it was a pitiful affair. I admired him when he said 'no'. It was the exact same thing I would have done... the exact same thing I [i]have[/i] done. Father sent me a message of peace and reconciliation after driving away my enemies. I'm sure he, too, expected me to surrender immediately." Gorseval fell silent again. The wind had picked up speed and brushed against his hair, and the ground shattered beneath his armored boot when he moved an inch to the right. The stars shone quietly, eternal, perfect and uncaring. "I had to destroy the Great Smith, of course, and the people; they stood squarely behind their leader. I think their long isolation made them xenophobic, paranoid and fiercely independent. The idea of being ruled by another must have repulsed them. These are all things I understand very well. And yet... I cannot allow them to exist. Father commands that we conquer every world, and so we must. This Crusade cannot end until every human in existence is rallied behind a single banner." The clouds in the crater moved slowly, morphing and billowing into new shapes. It was impossible to see them move, and yet their form had changed slightly every time Gorseval looked away and back again. "Do you know how it was possible I held out so long against Father? It took him, Mon-Kal and Erron a long time to force me to submit. They had to kill almost my entire army before they got to me. Do you know why, Lydia?" There was a vague, insubstantial flow of visions: pearlescent hands arranging a gameboard, setting pieces along a tactical map, determining the battlefield before the first move had been made, but the answer was thin and practical. A factor, not the heart of it all. The wavering images parted and fell like mist, and there was only the Emperor, and Gorseval: each of them facing away from the other, each staring off into a distance the other could not see. The Emperor was the Emperor. And Gorseval was Gorseval. So alike, and yet so very different. "Yes," Gorseval said. There was a hint of relief in his voice. "Father cannot do the things I can do. You understand." Words fell short and Gorseval decided to show her instead. Void Stalkers huddled close to the walls of a great factorium in the darkness as they moved towards the entrance, storm bolters at the ready. The towering Marines kicked down the doors and blew open the shutters. Their guns spit fiery death and hundreds of factory workers were cut down; those that knelt in surrender and raised their heads received a single round to the forehead. The factorium floor was slick with blood and covered in gore. The corpses were gathered and impaled on spikes throughout the city. When the sun rose, the cries of the mourning lasted for hours. Soldiers were ambushed in their beds by shifting mountains of shadow, wielding long, silver daggers. Children were dragged through the street. Virulent clouds carrying a horrible plague were released into the air; rivers and lakes were poisoned. Lydia suddenly saw something from the perspective of a mortal man, the Great Smith, his muscular arms covered in geometric tattoos. His fist slammed down on a map, denting the table. Someone had brought him news, another man, and they were both weeping with rage and sorrow. Horthrodus, the capital city, burned. Earthquakes wracked the entire continent as the [i]Eclipse's[/i] Lance batteries fired salvo after salvo. "The Great Smith's resistance failed because his people abandoned his cause in the face of such cruel punishment," Gorseval said. "My Stalkers found him less than three days after I unmade Byzanthrian's crowning jewel." He showed her a few flashes of what he'd done to the man; the proud, defiant, and screaming face of the Great Smith, an impression of oppressive darkness and the same face again, bleached white and quivering. Gorseval waited for Lydia's response. If she was shocked or unsettled by the dark revelations, she gave no sign. Her mind was opaque and unmoved, only palpably, inescapably [i]there.[/i] The wind keened, the blades at the ends of her braided hair clinked against the back of her armor, and there was no other sound. Only her silent presence. "Either way," Gorseval said eventually, "Byzanthrian is ours now. The Great Smith has seen the error of his ways." He paused again to gather his thoughts and raised a hand, gesturing at the wide expanse of nothing in front of them. "I came down here to look at the abyss I created. We have the power to [i]destroy worlds,[/i] sister, and I used that power to bring a world back into the fold. Millions died, but billions of others will serve us now. Some would call that just. Others would not... but it's what I will tell Father, should he ever ask; that I thought this was necessary to get Byzanthrian to cooperate as fast as possible. That it was for the Crusade." He laughed, but it was a high, cold and mirthless sound. "The truth is that I did it because it felt [i]good[/i]. To crush, conquer and destroy. And yet, now that it is done, I only feel so [i]empty[/i] again. All I can do is... move to the next planet. Crush the next enemy. Human, Ork, Eldar... it is all the same." The wind died down again and dissipated entirely. Gorseval's cape hung down his back like a death shroud, still and depthless. From nowhere the great bronze bell sounded again in Gorseval's mind, but now it was deafening; no longer rung in gentle announcement but in a terrible peal of command. His own words sounded in the afterecho, ringing back to him from the vast depths of the pit he had created: [i]"You understand."[/i] There was a powerful sense of diamond-hard affirmation. Lydia understood only too well. In their shared sight, as though each eye looked upon a different scene, the lifeless obsidian desert was overlaid with a long garden, walled in cracked marble and overgrown with ivy and weeds. Gorseval's words, his justifications and rationalizations, carved as statues lining its cobbled path. The sculptures were detailed and horribly real, and somehow the Void Stalker Primarch knew that they had not been carved at all, but transformed from living flesh by some hideous and unearthly power, as surely as the black mass upon which they now stood. A flicker, and he saw himself sat at a table in a black void, playing Regicide against the Smith. At once the figment-Gorseval rose and drew his blade like a man possessed, slamming it into the board, cleaving the table in two and sending pieces both black and white scattering into the impenetrable shadows before running his opponent through like a lamb upon a spit. The Smith's dead body rolled over at the victor's feet, and the face Gorseval saw was his own. The titaness released her armaments, which remained suspended in their positions as surely as if she still held them, and stode, firmly and inevitably, toward her brother. Her greaves smashed tinkling footfalls through crystalized slag as she walked, and with each sound, Gorseval's inner eye saw one after another of the statues shatter and collapse at her approach, her wake lined with the broken rubble of half-truths and distractions that she gave not the barest glance. Split-second visions assailed him in fragmentary bursts: Nightmarish creatures of the Warped places of Asphodel, a pillared black cavern that radiated fear; a nation put into chains and made to strip their forests bare to bring a world beneath her heel; blood raining from barbed whips, the ecstatic shrieking of priestesses turned to the howling drone of the Lady's terminators, rebel theocrats and half their families dragged into the bellies of their golden idols and roasted alive by white-and-black armored astartes; the tripartate whip; bladed hair stained red; a litany of blood-curdling tortures; and through it all she drew nearer, burning with a light as clear and pitiless as any darkness. He felt her will, like her hand beneah his chin, urging, [i]insisting[/i] that he turn and look at her, that he turn from his barathrum and look her in the eyes and unbar the gate which held the hidden, wordless truth. Compelled, Gorseval tore [i]Darkness[/i] out of the earth and turned to face his sister. He met her sapphire eyes with his own empty black gaze, his face frozen in a look of despair so great it seemed to encompass the suffering of all of mankind. She was right; what he'd said wasn't entirely true. Inflicting such devastating and cruel punishments on the world of Byzanthrian hadn't felt [i]good,[/i] it had simply temporarily satisfied something monstrous and unrelenting inside of him. And that was almost the same thing. "Very well," he said quietly. The world seemed to fall away around them as a veil of utter darkness rose up from beneath Gorseval's feet, smothering the land and the sky and the stars. Gorseval and Lydia floated weightlessly in a featureless black void that went on forever and ever. It was not empty. Two points of light materialized before them like a pair of eyes, so bright, and yet darker and filthier than the void surrounding it. The screamlight hungered, growling and roaring in deafening silence. It was a primal instinct, the very same that had driven the first human to dominate another, so overwhelming and dense it was almost sentient. This was what lurked in the blackness of Gorseval's mind, circling around the edges, always demanding tribute. More and more and [i]more.[/i] No matter what he threw into this bottomless pit, no matter how many victories he won, worlds he conquered, enemies he destroyed, this ravenous hunger would consume it all and leave him with nothing. Gorseval was unable to look away. "This is my curse," he whispered. Magaera looked. She stood rigid before the faceless, empty heart of the black whirlpool, face held high, staring it down and never changing expression as the void screamed wordlessly around her like an unseen gale. The light of the formless eyes burned like acid, pinprick punctures in reality, funneling everything into themselves with a mindless thirst that was not even true hunger but like some terrible wound in space and time. This was what she had demanded to see, and now she would see it. Lydia stared into the abyss, and relentlessly the abyss stared back. They remained there in the vast darkness, in the presence of that unbearable black thing, for what seemed an eternity, time itself losing all meaning in the endless night, and still she looked, her mind walled and silent, her face grave. For how many hours, none could say, but at some point, as the howling vortex continued to drain the universe around them, Gorseval became aware that Lydia had taken his hand in hers. And still she stared into the throat of death, refusing to look away. After a lifetime of forevers, the baleful lights receded, the silent gate slowly closed, and they stood again upon the rim of the wide, black crater that had once shone with a million lives. The wind moaned forlornly beneath cold, fragile stars, and they stood, hand in hand, staring endlessly down into the shapeless darkness. Without a word.