Night Lord in Equestria part 5

>Migraine white light fades and your stunned eyes take several moments to adjust.

>Your insides burn with the same prickling sensation as Twilight’s teleport. Your body relishes being under the influence of warp-magic as much as your psyche does.

>Blindness fades and you find yourself doubled over on the floor, unhelmeted.

 >Your hands are no longer bound.

>Your enhanced, naked senses drink in the throne room once more.

>Slick, polished marble under your gauntlets.

>The salty scent of sweat on equine bodies mixed with heady perfumes fit for royalty clash with the diminishing tang of weapon propellant.

>The sound of a single heart beating, th-thump, th-thump, th-thump. Slow, like distant, wet thunder.

>You see the white pony, winged, gilded and utterly monarchical staring down at you, a shimmering golden haze surrounding her. A gray tint paints the room, muting all color.

>You grunt as you rise to your feet, your armor joints purring their powered response.

>”My apologies for the discomfort I caused you, Chosen, but there is always a little pain when I stop time.  Now, please tell me about your-

>”What makes you think I will tell you anything, witch?” You hiss through bared, clenched teeth. Honed to razor sharpness, they look more at home in the mouth of some feral world carnosaur.

>The princess remains unintimidated. “You honestly want me to just take the answers from your mind?”

>Though the answer is rhetorical, you feel the need to answer. “No.”

> “Good. I want to let you explain yourself. Why did you attack the Apothecary and Scout? Do you serve Chaos?”

>”No, that is not the reason. They are servants of the False Emperor,” You reply flatly.

>”Oh? THEY did not seem to think he was so false.”

>You laugh mirthlessly. “THEY did not fight with him, ten thousand years ago. THEY did not see the atrocities we were ordered to commit in the Emperor’s name. THEY did not see my father murdered for crimes he was ordered to instigate. THEY are ignorant, blinded by millennia of history turned to superstition mutated to works of religion by men who did not live through it. They drew their weapons the moment they saw me. Why should I have acted any different?”

>Celestia’s expression does not change, despite the anger and contempt in your voice. “Forgiveness does not come to the minds of humans often, does it?”

>”Forgiveness is not a luxury we can afford to give.”

>”A shame.”

>”Perhaps.”

>Silence settles over the warp-stilled room. You step over to the loyalists and look them over.

>An Ultramarine Apothecary, clad in blue and white, bearing the crest of Ultramar and the helix of his speciality. He is aged, bearing the scars of his veterancy.

>The younger of the two bears the pinioned blood drop on his crimson scout armor. Even with his gene-enhancements, you can tell the scout is no older than 16.

>Still a child.

>You could kill them now.

>Celestia, seemingly reading your thoughts, breaks the silence. “Tell me about yourself, Chosen. Tell me about your father, your brothers and your homeworld. I’m curious to hear why you believe differently than the other marines.”

>You stride back to her. “I am not here to sate your curiosity, your highness. I will, however, answer your question about Chaos. I do not serve the darker powers. I have not even heard a whisper of their foul voices since I came to this world. Now YOU will answer me a question.”

>”I’m sure you have more than one.”

>”Why did the Loyalists not try to kill you? They would have attacked you the instant they saw you, yet here you stand.”

>”I took months, but they finally realized that I meant no harm to them. That and they finally accepted that there is no going back.”

>”No going back? What do you mean?” You hope that your assumptions are wrong.

>”To your former lives. There is no way to send you back to Milky Way galaxy, in any way, shape, or form.”

>The words, though expected, still cut like a knife. “What?! Why?!”

>”This world was made by the Old Ones, the ancient masters of the galaxy. It was tucked into a dead end of the Webway, hidden to virtually all those who seek it. After the Old Ones died out and the Eldar Empire fell, the Webway fell into decay. I suspect that the connection linking this world to it has decayed, allowing the webway to flicker and warp, sometimes allowing objects or persons in realspace to be transported here through the warp by sheer luck. You three are far from the first visitors, but you ARE the only ones who survived the trip.”

>A planet tucked in the impossible warp-routes of the Eldar Webway. A place no Imperial or Traitor vessel has sailed, to your knowledge. Trapped without a ship where no one can find you, except by sheer gods-damned luck.

>NO. It has to be a lie!

>Faster than lightning, your left hand is around Celestia’s throat, pulling her face down to your level

>You lightning claws are an inch from her eye

>”No! You WILL send me back! The Long War must be fought!”

>Celestia’s expression does not change, but her golden aura intensifies. You fingers are pried from her throat and your claws retract against your will.

>She sits back in her throne, her magic holding your arms and shoulders like a parent holding a child in the middle of a tantrum.

>”I’m sorry Chosen. There is no way back. In time, though, you may come to see this as a blessing in disguise,” Celestia says with all the tenderness of a mother.

>You continue to struggle against your bonds, but it is useless. Slowly, you relax, the truth dawning on you, unwelcome and cold.

>Your entire reason for existing, everything you know, is gone, save for two Loyalists, a servo skull, and the armor and weapons you carry.

>Celestia speaks up, breaking your dumbfounded silence, “It’s hard news, I know. The others  refused to believe me at first. I’ll give you a room and as much time as you need.”

>You don’t respond. The implosion of your life is complete. Your homeworld turned to fragments under the guns of your legion’s ships, your gene-father assassinated on a forgotten world, your brothers fallen to the machinations of dark gods, and now, here you stand, on a world cut off from the galaxy with no way to leave. Everything you have fought for, everything you were made to do is gone.

>Celestia returns you both to time’s normal flow, eliciting a shooting pain through your body once more. You hear voices, but they barely register. Celestia motions you to follow a guard. The Apothecary and Scout watch you go. You steal a glimpse as you pass. The Ultramarine’s face does not move from its contemptuous scowl, but the Blood Angel’s flickers to something resembling pity, if just for a moment. The small ponies part at your passing, asking questions you do not hear. The guard takes you through the castle, past numerous doors and down endless halls until you reach your room.

>The guard opens the door for you, mentioning something about dinner being brought to your room.

>After you fail to respond, the gilded pony closes the door without a word.

>You ignore the king-size bed, shuffling to the balcony that overlooks the city and green world below you.

>The sun is setting, seemingly lighting the sky ablaze. You do not know when the last time you saw a sunset.

>You sigh as you rest against the stone railing, hanging your head.  

>Your plans, the war, your life, is up in smoke.

>You cannot fulfil your father’s wishes. You cannot tear down the Imperium from an isolated planet tucked in a place that theoretically shouldn’t exist.

>You cannot prove to the Emperor the rightness of what you do. “Death is nothing compared to vindication,” Konrad Curze, your father once said. That was the reason he died. To prove to a tyrant that he did what was right. That justice was to be done. To him and for him.

>Justice.

>The destruction of the legion homeworld Nostramo was to punish a planet corrupted to the core, that had poisoned Curze’s legion with rapists and thugs, that had ignored his firm but fair legacy, and had turned back to darkness.

>Then, we were called to Terra, summoned by the Emperor to answer for our “crimes”. To pay for our deviancy. The same deviancy that the legion had been made for, by the Emperor’s own hand: for sowing terror, fear and rapacious bloodshed on all those who refused Imperial law or rebelled against the Imperium.

>Anger gave way to bitterness. We were being punished for something we had been made to do, the ultimate injustice!

>So the slaughter began.

>For decades, you and your Night Lords brothers ran rampant across countless worlds, burning, killing, and tearing down an Imperium you helped make.

>That ended with Kurze’s death.

>He had welcomed it.

>“I am no better than the millions I burned on Nostramo,” he had said. “I am the murderous, corrupt villain the Imperial declarations name me to be. I punished those who wronged. Now I will be punished in kind. A delicious and balanced justice.”

>”And in this murder, the Emperor will once again prove me right. I was right to do as I did, just as he is right to do as he does.”

>Now, ten thousand years since that night on Tsagualsa, where the legion had spread like chaff to wind after your father’s death, to tear down an empire founded on corruption and hypocrisy, here you stand.

>Unable to continue.

>There is no Imperium here to tear down.

>The loyalists are now no more a part of the Imperium as you are. They openly allied themselves with xenos. The Imperium would never take them back.

>Hot tears stung at your onyx black eyes.

>For several moments you stood there weeping. Your hands cracked the stone railing in your silent anger.

>For the first time in your long life, you are lost.

>Directionless.

>Truly without reason to live.

>You look back up at the now black sky. Twinkling stars stretch out farther than you can see. A full moon shines in the night.

>Quiet

>Beutiful

>At peace.

>Strange. You never seemed to let any kind of peace into your life. You always were fighting, or preparing for a fight.

>There was never a time since your ascension to the Astartes that you felt this quiet calm. Nothing on this world, save for the loyalists and those diamond dogs, seemed evil.

>The ponies all forgave you so readily. The pink one did not even seem to care that you could have easily killed her. The princess did not try to obliterate you when you tried to choke her and stab her into telling you what you wanted to hear.

>” Forgiveness does not come to the minds of humans often, does it?” She had said.

>Forgiveness. The merest thought of it makes you snort in contempt.

>Your father never-

>Your father is dead.

>For the first time, you really understand that. He is gone forever. Never will he direct your hatred or give you purpose or tell you how to do something. He will never again sneer with contempt at the worshippers of Chaos in your Legion or voice his contempt for his own sons.

>That was it. That was why so many fell to Chaos. They didn’t care what a dead primarch thought. They didn’t care who they made deals with, so long as the Imperium fell.

>For so long you had done nothing but try to please Kurze, despite the fact that he was ten thousand years in the grave. Every degenerate act you committed had been taught to you by his legion and done in his name. Ultimately, you were a monster created by him. So much more than human, yet far less. Bred to kill. Nothing else.

>You had whored your humanity for lies.

>You already knew this, but had always blamed the Emperor for it.

>Kurze was as much to blame for it as the Emperor was. You lived under his rule as a child. The gang wars were a distant memory, as was virtually all crime under Kurze’s gaze. Then the Emperor came and took you all. Kurze molded you into the truest image of terror, and you were HAPPY to serve. To murder and torture and kill and destroy at your primarch’s behest. For his twisted sense of justice. You carried out the Great Crusade, then the Long War and destroyed the innocent and the guilty alike. That was not justice. That was MURDER.

>All through the 300 years your body has been breathing, you were callous to the horrors you had committed in Curze’s name. How many worlds did you put to the torch for no other crime than wanting to be left alone? How many innocent men, women and children did you butcher with your bare hands?

>Like fire meeting ice, the callous hatred of your heart begins to melt.

>YOU did those things.

>You ENJOYED the slaughter, seeing the fear in those eyes.

>Truly, there can be no forgiveness for what you have done.

>Tears once more streak down your face, not in anger that you cannot fight and kill, but that you are sorry you ever wanted to.

>Memories flash in your mind’s eye. So much death. Skinning people alive. Impaling pregnant mothers and cutting out their squirming foetuses. Tearing apart those who cowered in fear in front of you.

>Your hold your head in your hands, desperately trying to force the images from your mind. You could do it before, why can’t you do it now?!

>Another screaming woman fed her own eyes.

>” Forgiveness does not come to the minds of humans often, does it?”

>A man with his ribcage cut open, you rip out his still-beating heart.

>”Forgiveness is not a luxury we can afford to give.”

>You tear off a woman’s leg and proceed to beat her to death with her own severed limb.

>”A shame.”

>A child, screaming over the bodies of her mutilated parents is torn in half under your chainblade.

>”Perhaps.”

>You sink to your knees. Centuries of mindless slaughter and sadistic murder flood you over in an instant.

>”I’m sor-r-ry...” Your voice comes out in a ragged whisper between sobs

>Another murder paints your mind.

>”Ple-ee-ease...” You tremulously plead to the thousands of souls who gather around you.

>Dead eyes watch you, silently condemning you of your every sin.

>”N-no mo-o-ore! Please! I’m sorry!” You scream into the night, pleading to the lost souls for forgiveness.

>You bury your head in your hands, sobbing uncontrollably as your sins are bared before you in every grim detail.

>You feel a hoof on your shoulder.

>”Chosen? Shh.. It’s allright. Come here.” Celestia tenderly wraps a snow white wing around you.

>You sob on her shoulder.

>”I-I killed s-so ma-a-any...” You whisper through shivering sobs.

>”Shh... it’s alright. We’ve all done things we don’t deserve to be forgiven of.”

>Celestia stayed with you that long night, not letting you go, even when you wanted her. You felt like she should be repulsed by you and what you’d done, that she should kill you to make things right. But she didn’t. She stayed with you, silently crying herself, her own demons demanding blood for her own sins. You did not know why she cried, but it didn’t matter.

>You were forgiven.