Chrono

        Casitus Orvo could count the weathered nicks arrayed on the bladed fingers of Horus' power-claw. The dried blood of loyalists still caked pits where it had eaten away at the ceramite under a frozen storm of electrical current that sheathed the weapon. It was immense, as large as half his body, and it hung motionless in the air. Where once it had been driven forth with distilled fury, and unnatural strength, it was still. A mere breath away from the lethal tip of those claws was the throat of the God-Emperor of Mankind; the most supreme being to have ever existed.

 

        Orvo often came here; this singular moment in the history of the universe. He could scarcely imagine what he stumbled upon the first time he had intruded into the darkened halls of the Vengeful Spirit. At times he would let the scene play out, watching with a voyeur’s anxiousness, hidden within the throng of super-human warriors. It was always slowed; the painful moments ticking away as the fatal blow crept closer. He had always left before it landed. It was something he could not bear to witness.

 

        A metronome enclosed in his Ordo Rosette ticked out a solemn tempo. The arcane sciences that allowed his explorations through time held open the portal he arrived in; the confluence of events being battered aside long enough to suspend eternity for a few moments. Before long, however, the cycle would begin to re-exert itself, and with the last tick of the device his time was up.

 

        He could feel the weighty heft of the bolt-pistol in his hands. It was an immaculate weapon, given to him upon his ascendance to the rank of full Inquisitor of the Ordo Chronos. Only a few times it had been fired, for it was more of a precision tool than a weapon of war. The few bolts it had unleashed had altered the course of history; a few spent lives to potentially secure man's future among the stars. No mission was under-taken by the Ordo without the most exhaustive research. Only a fool would tamper with Time blindly.

 

        This was not his mission. Orvo was uncertain about the efficacy of firing a bolt-pistol from point-blank range into the sneering face of the Arch-Traitor. He was uncertain of what effects his death would have. He was uncertain if anything he could possibly do could save the life of his God, standing firm before the culminated power of Chaos. The barrel was flush with Horus' pallid skin. A single pull of the trigger would scatter temporal events spiraling in every direction, to land in any number of unknowable patterns. Too many uncertainties.

 

        Moments, slower than ever before, ticked away. Lost to the inexorable stream of infinity. The metronome beat on, each passage shrinking from minutes to seconds. Orvo's stance faltered, and his arm fell to his side; bolt-pistol loose in his grip. He regarded the Emperor. Upon each visits he always looked different. Now he looked so unbearably tired.

 

        Casitus Orvo stepped through his gateway, deep in the seething possibilities of the cosmos, with tears in his eyes.