The Whisper of the Maddened Son

"So…" I dropped the data slate on the table. "What do they call you on your homeworld?"

I asked the man in front of me. He was shaking, strapped to a chair on the other side of the metal table, sweat falling from his brow. He was shaking in fear, yet he did not answer. Even having seen his comrades die slowly, excruciatingly painful, at the hands of the legionnaires he refused to answer.

I got up, the chair sliding on the metal floor, and untied him to the chair. He looked confused, slowly realizing what I had done, his pale hands moving calmly to his face, feeling his skin for the first time since he had become a legion prisoner.

He looked at me with eyes as wide as a human could make them be, pleading something he would not speak.

"Come." I said calmly, motioning him to follow me with my hand. He himself slowly got up.

I turned towards the door, there was a marine there, staring at the prisoner through the red lenses of his helm. I turned towards him. "Talos please, would you follow us?" I asked, and he nodded slowly in understanding.

We three left the interrogation room, auto translator in hand. We walked towards the gallery of skulls. A place where the scions of the 8th Son displayed their artistic flares. Their pieces, painted in flesh, blood and bone. Some in a traditional canvas, most of these made by the most philosophical of sons, the others made upon the victim's bones. These statues, half alive, half dead, their faces half devoid of skin crying silently for release, shedding tears of crimson blood.

It was honestly such a gruesome sight that I did not know how I did not throw up my previous meal anytime I had to pass through here.

I pointed to the one on the left. "That one was made by Talos, our dear companion." It was a flesh statue, one of the more tame in the gallery, faceless and emotionless, its tears of blood flowing from nothing but skinned bones.

The prisoner shuddered, behind him was the author.

"That one" I pointed to one further up ahead. "I believe, was one of your companions. He was named" the foreign word sounded strange in my mouth, but the prisoner understood nonetheless, seeing the horrid pain his companion went through in the making of the piece.

"Who… made that one?" he asked quietly, almost afraid of the answer. "That was the first captain, I believe." I replied back, not knowing truly if that was the case or not.

"How could they?" he whispered, looking at the ground, trying to avoid the eyeless stares of the flesh sculptures, and there was only a single answer to that question.

"Fear is the road to civilization." His eyes shot up to me. "It is paved with bone and washed in blood, but the destination forgives the sin of the journey."

There was confusion in his eyes. Yet it swiftly changed to nothingness as he saw more and more of his companion broken, torn in half, used as paint or as simple canvas for a legion far to undeserving of it. His eyes, pleading before slowly emptying themselves of emotions. This was the ideal point, where he understood resistance was futile and only led to pain.

I led us back towards the interrogation room. Which in truth was not far, for the gallery had been made in the form of a circle. A path which prisoners would walk to understand that their defiance was futile, before they were either sent to the legion artists or to their world after compliance had been achieved, depending on their answers.

We both sat down in our respective places, the dim blue light too weak to illuminate the Space Marine. He melted in the shadow, where he was and what he was doing anyone's guess, but we both knew he was in the room.

"So," I looked at the data slate again, reading his foreign name with an accent that must have been atrocious. "How will it be?"

Defiance flashed in the prisoner's eyes, I could see he wished to say not, to defy the Imperium till his last breath, but it vanished as soon as it came into view. The memory of his supposed comrades, and the death brought unto them due to their defiance, killing all resistance in his mind.

He answered all I asked, without fail or detail. He would go home, he would live as an Imperial Citizen who saw the darkest of the Emperor's Angels and lived to tell the tale. He would be a living icon of what their defiance could cost them, for no night in his future could erase the memory that was carved into him today. He saw what the Night Lords truly were, and he would know it till the end of his days.

To say a mortal could witness the artistic expressions of the 8th legion as if it was normal. As if humanity thrived as painmakers, as a creature of cold emotionless reason. No, that was not humanity, no matter how much we died. Emotion, empathy and care are within any mortal, and also see one´s life treated as no more than paint or paper. It hurt to the core, it was a knife to the heart, the death of humanity´s glory, the death of what makes a man, a man.

Yes, man, a creature so steeped in sin, so driven by hate, and spite. That creature died slowly as they gave themselves to their failings. Man is a creature of darkness and light, of hate and love, a creature that slowly turned into an animal as it lost its light. And this is what the Night Lords were so close to becoming. Even if greater than men in many things, gifts of their ascension into the Legiones Astartes, they lost much of what made them human. They lost much of that, in Nostramo, and much more in the Emperor´s Crusade.

That is why I hated the sight of that gallery, of what stood in there. It was the living evidence of their loss, of their slow descent into the animalistic. It was the darkness of their existence made incarnate.

I rested myself upon the dim lit walls of the Nightfall, just as the hydraulic door of the interrogation closed behind me. I rested on the wall, tired and spent. A mortal mind can only take so much without indifference in a day.

"Are you well, Melkor?" Talos asked, his voice sounding far deeper than it truly was through the voice emitters of his helm.

I nodded tiredly, my breath ragged.

"Apologies. I have a lot on my mind."

He removed his helmet with a small metallic click."As you usually do," he said.

I could only nod. "Will your brothers be there?"

"A few will be, though I do not understand why you requested the Primarch for this."

I breathed deep and then got myself back up. "First thing to think then, Talos. What makes a man a man?"

He would speak, but this was not the time for words. Not those words and not now. This was something his brothers needed to witness and hear. This question, this thought, this hypothesis, this belief had to be heard by more than a single legionnaire. In a legion of murderers, of sinners, there was something different. All legions had a task other than war, a task derived from their Primarch´s tallents, their father´s strengths. And to the midnight clad, to the sons of the Night Haunter, that was justice. Judge, jury, executioner, that had been what the Nighthaunter had been on Nostramo. Judge, that was his gift, the gift he imparted to his sons.

And yet, this gift could be twisted by darkness, by impunity. A judge in pursuit of absolute justice, could become a tyrant. In pursuit of punishment of the guilty one could become a sadist… One would become a sadist, one would become a tyrant. One would become a Night Lord.

As I passed through the corridors and hallways of the Nightfall, going deeper and deeper into what was in truth Space Marine territory and not the halls of command, I noticed more and more Astartes, wearing battleplate or not, some sweating, having come from the training fights they held, some simply playing whatever game they knew. Talos´ presence behind me, in full plate made the stares his brothers sent fewer and for that i was thankful, I hated to be the center of attention, but when a mortal walks into these halls without the meek look of legion serf, stares are the least of our concerns. Everything was larger in these decks, a simple necessity for the trans-human warriors of the Legiones Astartes, they were not as large as the Primarhc´s sanctum, for he was unique in the galaxy, a man in the trappings of a god. No, these halls were larger, simply scaled up to their size instead of the unique standart a Primarch held.

I took a turn and then entered the fifth door in that hallway. The hydraulic door opened with a click, silent and quick, as I was met with five legionnaires. Half stood seated on metal chairs, half leaned against the wall, yet all were deadly in their own right. The only of them I had met before, besides Talos whom I requested personally to the Primarch to assist with my duties as interrogator of the legion, was Sevetarion, the legion First Captain who stood directly to the door´s right, armed and armored. His presence was mostly due to my value in the Primarch´s eyes, and not for the event.

As I sat in an oversized metallic chair, from right to left of me, was the first captain, sergeant Vandred of 10th company, who would become the possessed Exalted in an age I wished to prevent, the War Sage Captain of the Same company. Talos was to my left, and to his side was Xarl.

"Thank you for taking a bit of your time to come. I know you all have duties to attend to and I am thankful for your presence."

"Just get on with it" Xarl hissed. Sevatar reacted by tightening his grip upon his nostraman chainglaive, something that both Malcharion and Vandred Anrathi noticed.

"I will ask the same question to you, as I asked Talos a few minutes ago. What makes a man, a man? and are you a man, or not? Is your Primarch and the Emperor for that matter, men or something else?"

They all remained silent for a few seconds, unsure what was the answer I was looking for. Until again Xarl spoke, this time not out of turn.

"What sort of question is that, mortal? We are Astartes, post-Human, we are not men."

I clapped, smiling. "That is exactly what is in question, gentlemen.What are you, beneath the physicality of your ascension?"

There was a silence after that, a silence deeper and purer than before. Some were thinking of an answer, some were carefully observing each other, and others simply stood silent, not caring at all for the answer.

"Men are sheep," Talos spoke first. "Unaware of their purpose and needed to be herded by its better. A beast without order, incapable of it without enforcement."

"Am I, Talos?" I asked softly. "A beast who needs your guidance? Since the time I have been here, I have had no guidance but my own. I may have started at the worst possible position, but never have I been a beast who needed guidance." I countered. If they thought mortals to be beasts then someone had to prove them wrong.

"You are not a good example of the common man, Melkor." Sevetar added softly from my side. "You're a schemer."

My head shot up to Sevetar, half questioning his words half insulted by them.

"You are a schemer. You may scheme with "good" intent, but you are still a schemer. You only live because the Primarch wants you alive."

It took me a second before I answered him. "All men scheme. whether for power, love, or something else. All men scheme. You all scheme, I do know many in the legion desire greater power in the chain of command. Wouldn't that make them and you, men in a way?"

I glanced at everyone before continuing. "In any case, going back to the sheep. Man is not a peaceful creature, but it can be one. Man is not a wise creature, but it can be one. Man does not thrive in absolute control nor in absolute freedom. When the hand of control is too tight, man chafes under it, and will fight against it. Like power, the more hungry you are for it, the more it slips away, like clenching a handful of sand. It will slip from your fingers if you clench it too hard. And with absolute freedom, it is chaos… a chaos I am sure you all are familiar with to some degree."

They all looked at each other. They understood the subtlety behind the last sentence. They understood I was talking about Nostramo.

"Perturabo of Olympia, the brother of your Primarch, would tell you that Iron is strong. Pure in its strength, unblemished in its reliability and unyielding in its fortitude. But Iron breaks before it bends. It will fail catastrophically before it adapts. That is the weakness of the Iron 4th and its Lord." I continued, and I could see in their facial expressions, the slightest hint of confusion. "Fear, much like Iron will break before it bends. Fear shatters as time goes on, It is normalized by the population. At first they may cry at 10, then at 100 but it will always go up, for fear alone cannot, and I repeat cannot alone hold a world´s peace."

"So you say what our Primarch achieved will not last." Malcharion said accusingly, and I nodded in answer. But I did not need to do it, for this time it was not me that answered an Astartes, but it was another Astartes. It was Talos

"No… He is right, Captain." he said, turning to the War Sage. Malcharion furrowed his eyebrow questioningly. "It has been a decade since Xarl and I left Nostramo. But our first kill was not in the crusade. It was in an alley, we used a knife, almost dull. My birth father belonged to a gang before he died. I had thought that we would join it before joining the Legion."

"Nostramo´s serenity is breaking while we stand here crusading." Vandred concluded. "This is what you want to tell us. That the Nighthaunter´s methods are insufficient?" He hissed, threateningly.

"From man to fear, control and freedom." Sevatar quickly spoke, shutting all activity in the room "What is your point, Melkor? Speak it or we will be done here."

"Only that, you are still men, susceptible to man´s sins and virtues, in the same manner as your father. That your legion is slowly dying, the venom coming from your home. That your father hates the legion. For it has blinded itself to the point and focused simply on the method. That the method is flawed, but you can be better."

Sevetar sneered. "Useless words. We do what the Night haunter commands and that's all. There will be no second session of this… thing" He declared, but Malcharion disagreed, yet he would not speak against his Sevetar in the mortal´s presence. Malcharion was not a fool, whatever truth laid in the mortal´s words it was best left to be spoken in private with his fellow brother-captain, and if need be taken to their father, the dreaded Nighthaunter.

"Talos," Sergeant Vraded said, "take the mortal back to his quarters. His time here is done."

I got up and let Talos escort me as we took our time leaving the section designated for the legionnaires. Yet my quarters were not to be the destination of my walk. At about the midway point, someone grabbed me by the back of the throat and brought me above the corridors and hallways, their roofs an illusion born of the ship's lightless nature. There was only one who walked amongst here, one who traversed the ship like the palm of its hand who knew the entirety of its layout, even maddened as he was,there was only one.

We moved faster than I could perceive, everything was a blur, even if there was not much light to perceive things in the first place. Although I had been on the vessel for about 4 months, the sunless nature of Nostramo, a nature that was brought upon every legion vessel, still impeded me, but not to a large enough degree that I was blind.

I hobbled around, like a string puppet being used in a play before we stopped. I had to breathe for a moment, and then I looked at him. Or to be more accurate he changed his grip to me, and by the Emperor he was even more terrifying than before. Light flickered behind him like a thunderbolt in a raining night perhaps awakening for but a millisecond lights that had never been used in the vessel.

His figure was like death itself had come to the mortal plane, his face pale as snow already terrifying before was twisted into something unrecognizable, his mouth shaped in a dead man´s grin…

This was also the Primarch, fear made incarnate and yet there was still the aura that created the will to serve, even if it was diluted compared to our previous meeting.

I felt my heartbeat quickening, sweat falling from my forehead, my body heating as adrenaline was sent through my bloodstream, slowly numbing the sensation enough for me to try and speak, yet I was still at the Primarch´s mercy.

He caressed my face with something cold, metallic, like a dull blade sliding down a piece of meat with tender care. He was armed.

"You… You… You." he said to my ear, caressing me. His hand trembled as he held me. "You speak as if you know more than me." his blade rested on my skin. "As if you know my mind. You speak to my shadows as if you have gazed into my mind and understood it completely."

He threw me with a sudden, savage force. I crashed to the floor with a loud clang, the sound echoing through the darkened hall.

He Jumped in front of me, grabbing me again by the throat. He lifted me to the level of his eyes, making me stare into the deep dark orbs of black ink that they were.

"What… What do you see when you look at me? A monster, a thrice accursed king, or merely a walking lumbering corpse lord waiting for the end?" His words were ragged as if it was but a few of many things coursing through his mind, his tone deep and rumbling with a thicker Nostraman accent than I had heard before.

I couldn't speak. I saw his eyes, I felt his hand´s grip over my neck slowly tightening, they screamed of rage, his face twisting in wild savage uncertainty. They screamed of fear and I was too terrified to speak.

It was becoming hard to breathe, his hand squeezed me, evermore, ever slightly.

"Come on. Come on. COME ON. You claim to know me, to know of what I see, to know of what I suffered. Then speak, little mortal"

"Huh, huh huh." I tried to speak,but I could not. His hand was too tight, so effortlessly tight. He stared at me expectantly. His black eyes studied me, irritably, so much in fact that after a few moments of my unintended silence he threw me again.

This time I landed somewhere cushioned, a bed. We were in his quarters, apparently. It took a second for me to gather my wits, before I rolled away. His lunge hit nothing. I was on my feet, somehow (as there is no way I am faster than he), arm extended and palm of the hand up, in an instinctual sign to stop. The Primarch saw this and disappeared to the shadows, like an apex predator preparing itself for another strike.

I breathed deeply, my mind adrenaline charged, thinking where he would strike next, though such thoughts were useless. He was a Primarch, he could pick a pebble and throw it as one throws a paper plane and that would kill me. My eyes drifted to the lightless room, expectantly before I finally decided to leave it to fate, I closed my eyes, lowered my arms.

One second, nothing.

Two seconds, nothing.

Three seconds, nothing.

Four seconds, the scraping of fingernails on steel, behind me. I turned.

Five seconds later, I felt a gush of air punch just beside my ear with such strength it was as if stone hit steel in the wall behind me. I opened my eye, he was there, his fist halted just besides me, his eyes staring down at me, he looked frozen, as if he changed the trajectory of the punch at the last second, then i spoke, for words were the only thing i had before the might of Nostramo´s Dark King.

"I see you as a child." The black orbs of ink that formed his eyes twitched with incredulous confusion.

"A child forced to take the role of a man." I took a step forward. "A child who never knew love, who does not understand hate. A child that was forced into the very worst since the beginning, not understanding his place in this galaxy." I tried to sound as soft as I could, though in truth, I doubt I very much sounded coerent at all. I may be speaking, but his piercing black eyes made it hard.

He stared for a second at me, confused incredulously and then blinked.

"The Emperor made me as I am." His tone was raspy, even forced, laden with something I couldn't know. "I am what I will always be, nothing more nothing less. I am the Emperor´s weapon of Terror, a tool for compliance."

I put my hand on his fist besides me and slowly I pushed it down, facing barely any resistance. "You are also a king." I countered. "A just king, even if brutal. The Emperor did not make you a king. You made yourself a king, to help the people of your world. To raise them above the station of the beasts."

I could see his eyes tremble.

"NO. I am as the Emperor made me. I am nothing else. He made me his weapon of Terror and that was what I. Nostramo was just the first, I am as I always was meant to be. YOU cannot deny that." he spoke fast, quickly.

"I AM AS I WAS ALWAYS MEANT TO BE." he screamed in half sob clawing at his eyes, as he slowly fell to the floor.

There was a choice before me now. I could leave him, I answered his questions, I did what my duty to the legion demanded, I served him. Or…

I put my right hand on his shoulder. it was strange looking down at a Primarch, it was far too strange. I did not wish to repeat it.

With the softest tone I could muster, I spoke. "It is time you look to yourself, Konrad"

"That is not my name." he instinctually replied, stating it with a surety alien to his mood. I ignored it.

"And answer. Who are you, and what do you want?"

I felt pain, and then nothing.

When the senses came back to Melkor, it came first slowly, hazily, and then it came fast and suddenly like water slowly coursing through a floodgate, faster and faster.

He tried to breathe, but instead he only felt pain. "Dont breathe deeply. Half of your ribs have been broken. " He heard someone say, before it came into his sight. A woman, black hair, and black eyes as all Nostramans, yet she bore not the legion´s garb, instead she wore a white cloak over her.

"What happened?" He asked, only to now notice he was on the medicae. He slowly looked around, simple movements hurt him, but not as much as he imagined they would, but in truth painkillers were being pumped into my body.

"No one knows, but the First Captain says you did something that displeased Lord Nighthaunter." The figure said, pressuring a nerve. Melkor screamed in pain, before it subsided. He turned towards her, extremely displeased. He tried to sigh again, to calm himself, only to be met by the same sharp pain as before.

"That was for displeasing the Nighthaunter" He followed the inky black eyes with his own, strangely enamored by them.

She looked somewhere out of his sight and then with a small smirk, she said. "Calm your nerves down. You´ll have an extended stay. Your genetic lineage is not recorded in any database."

"Did I just become a guinea pig?" Hecould only think to himself with a mild mixture of amusement and despair.

"I want to speak with Konrad." He said, trying to prevent it. She replied by pressuring the nerve ending, again.

"You will address our lord with the proper respect." This time it didn't feel as sharp as before, this time Melkor only felt a small tingle in his skin.

"With all due respect. I don't answer to you." Melkor answered before trying to sit. He didn't want to be left staring at a dimly lit ceiling all day. But it hurt, it hurt immensely, as if a million microscopic knives had lodged up in his chest cavity, cutting, slashing and puncturing his body as Melkor moved.

She sternly grabbed him, stopping his foolishness. Yet Melkor could only be displeased in this moment, his lack of agency eating at his normally controlled sense of pride.

"For now you do." The man came out of a room´s corner, from a shadow far too small to hide the giant he was. For he was Astartes, one of the Nighthaunter´s so-called sons.

Melkor looked at him trying to identify who he was. Unfortunately he hadn't met him. He was neither of the tenth company´s first claw, nor one of the Kyroptera Sevatarion introduced to him on his true first day as legion interrogator.

The women moved slightly aside, seeming diminished before the Space Marine. She was awestruck by the Astartes´s presence, but yet managed to remain on her two feet and not lose herself in the trans-human mixture of admiration and fear he exuded. She held herself so well she even managed to speak, no, whisper a word. "Master."

"What happened? Where is the Primarch?" Melkor quickly interjected trying to assess his situation.

Last thing he remembered he was in the Primarch´s chambre, now he was in the medicae. He could put two and two together, yet he needed to hear it for himself

"The Primarch remains where he always has been outside the battlefield, lurking in the Nightfall. You, however, are in my company's ship."

"Why?"

The women removed the cables that had been strapped to him, and let the Astertes speak.

"You have been appointed as his representative amongst the other Legions." He said, not hiding what it truly was behind a false tone of cheer. It was an exile. "Your belongings have been taken, we are traveling to rendezvous with the Pride of the Emperor. Your first stay will be with the Phoenician."

Melkor froze. Many thoughts passed through his mind. What he had written should have remained with the Primarch, the Laer, Fulgrim himself, but above any of those was. How would he deal with this future? The Nighthaunter spared him and yet cursed him, cursed to play at his brother's empty games. To endure the Phoenician, to speak to him with his authority. It was a test, no, perhaps a gamble. A gamble on his part. His last gamble perhaps..