The Primarch did not react… There was something. He thought of something. Eventually he sighed.
"You always knew I was a monster…" He said as he sat on the bed. It buckled under his weight, the metalic frame groaning for a few seconds. He looked so much like a child struggling to speak, struggling to process his own self, but he was trying. "Why then? I am a monster… I chose to be one."
With the Nighthaunter on the bed, Melkor could gaze into his eyes, without looking up. They were eye to eye, yet this was no confrontation.
"I knew," Melkor repeated. "I knew much about you then, enough to gamble my life that you would change. I was going to die so I took the chance and put my faith that you could change with some help. I did not judge you, because before meeting you face to face I had made up my mind about you and I agree with your father in this."
Melkor rarely spoke of the Emperor. He kept mostly quiet about his father, like something he would rather avoid at all cost. That had not gone unnoticed by the Primarch before, and him speaking about the Master of Mankind did not go unnoticed now either.
"You had chosen to believe in an immutable fate. And from that your worst decision came. You saw the worst, in your visions, and you believed it was always going to happen. You believed you had been forced to be a monster, but you are questioning that now." He tried to put a hand on the Primarch´s shoulder but instinctively his body tried to avoid it, as if getting close to the Nigthhaunter was to invite dread itself upon your every cell.
"That is good," he finished.
"Is it good that I chose to be a monster?" Curze said just quietly enough for Melkor to hear with his mortal senses. "Is it good that there is no hope for me? That I killed Karzen and doomed myself to this. That I doomed myself to have my own father order my death?"
Melkor sighed. He looked up at the ceiling. The light bulb flickered barely in its customarily blueish nostraman hue.
"All men are monsters." He said and Curze´s barely furrowed his brow. Just enough for him to feel, yet not enough for Melkor to notice.
"Mankind always had the ability for great good, and terrible evil…" He looked up, as if thinking of the past. "Since the ancient empires of the bronze age to now, we have always defended injustices, committed unspeakable crimes, turning noble men into murderers by forcing circumstance upon them." He stopped for a moment, as if unsure of what to say next. "The sins of our race, the sins of our past do not matter. What matters is what we do in spite of those sins. If we fall to the abyss of despair, or become at peace with ourselves."
"I cannot judge you Konrad, nor will I judge you. Because I am no judge. I knew enough about you to understand, or to think I understand why you ended up how you did. Why you let yourself die. That is all I can do. No one can judge you. No one, except yourself."
"The Emperor," Curze whispered, his voice so soft it was almost lost in the silence. "He judged me. He praised me. He…"
"Fuck the Emperor," Melkor cut in, a small tinge of laughter in it. As if he was saying something that did not matter, but both knew it did in fact matter.
Curze's head snapped toward him in a single, blurring motion too swift for Melkor's eyes to follow. The inky black of the Nighthaunter's eyes fixed on him, glinting with an intensity that made Melkor instinctively draw back. There was a curiosity in Curze's gaze, but also something darker. Something like thinly veiled outrage.
Why did he still feel that way? Why did a slight against his father's name awaken something within him? He couldn't answer the question, and that stirred a quiet frustration in him.
Melkor flinches as he perceives that the Primarch is now eying him intently, but he did not stop. "He came to your world, he saw your gruesome work, and praised it. He came to your world, took witness to your emotional wounds, when you tried to claw your eyes out, and still he simply did a quick fix. By, and this is me presuming without proof, taking the pain away from you in that moment, without fixing the biggest issue. He praised a god that became a monster on Nostramo, and then condemned you to death without trying to be what he allowed you all to call him. Without trying to be a father, to help his son, to say what is right and wrong. You may have all been adults in stature, but not all of you, Konrad, were adults."
The mortal words, even seemingly raw and unfiltered, were spoken in an even tone. As if he was speaking more of a fact rather than a condemnation.
"Out of you all. Only Guilliman, Dorn, Perturabo, and Jaghatai had actual good father figures. It shows how they turned out compared to the rest of your brothers. Unlike the rest of them, who had either a communal upbringing or just had a shitty parent. You had nothing. No wonder you became a monster on Nostramo. Hell, even Perturabo in his bitterness skewed perception did have a good childhood, as far as I know."
Curze's gaze narrowed, his expression hardening as he considered the implications of Melkor's knowledge. "You always knew about us…" His voice was low, laced with suspicion.
Melkor inclined his head, a slight nod, his face unreadable. "About you. About the Emperor. Yes. That's why I didn't want to meet him or Magnus. Some things… some things are better left unknown."
Curze's dark eyes widened, flickering with a volatile mix of anger and dawning understanding. "And yet here you are, knowing what you shouldn't. Forbidden knowledge," he spat, "just like you said when we first met."
"Yes." Melkor's voice was calm, steady. "But that doesn't change anything."
"DOESN´T CHANGE!" Curze's voice exploded, reverberating against the cell walls with a force that made Melkor flinch as the walls themselves seemed to tremble. "You knew everything about me. About my brothers. About my father. What's to say you haven't been manipulating me from the start?"
Melkor brought his hand to his head, as if trying to steady himself, to steady his mind. Yet still his words wavered before the Nighthaunter´s declaration and deafening tone. "How would I manipulate you? Im just a regular fucking mortal Konrad. The only way for me to change anything with you is for you to listen to me blindly. Which you never did."
"Still I did think about your words. What's to say-"
"You did, and don't you feel better for it?" Melkor cut in, his words unsure, wavering slightly, yet they were still spoken. Those words were spoken and they silenced the room
Konrad had no words to argue on that. If Melkor had had any luck on which Primarch he had landed on, even as terrible the Nighthaunter was, another thing that he was, was that amongst all of his brothers, he was one of if not the most conscious and critical about himself and his actions.
Neither spoke for a moment. A still silence permeating the warped metallic walls of the cell. The light of the dim blue light bulb flickering as if the Primarch´s own internal emotions, the Primarch´s own darkness tried to snuff out the little light he had found.
Konrad Curze was the first to speak.
"There is nothing regular about the mortal that you are." He said, an impossibly thin smile touching his lips.
Melkor could not see this, but he did indeed smile at those words. "I will take that a compliment." Even if neither looked at each other.
Curze plucked a dark raven feather from his cloak, he put it on the bed beside him, where Melkor had sat earlier. The gesture was awkward, permeating with uncertainty, but he left the feathers there. Melkor picked it up, it was rigid as steel and sharp as a scalpel, much like he imagined the Angel's feathers to be. If they came from a Nostraman bird Melkor did not know. Melkor cut himself on it, as his finger passed softly over the feather´s plumes. A drop of his blood mixed itself with the blackness of the plume, tinging a fraction of it with the coppery scent of blood and the crimson tone of the vitae in a man´s vein.
Even then, Melkor smiled. "I don't have anything to give you back." He said, extending his hand. "But I think I could be a friend to you."
He blinked for a moment and then a most curious question left the Primarch´s lips. "What is a friend?"
Melkor stopped for a moment thinking… Searching for the words to explain it. "By definition." he started speaking, but Curze interrupted him.
"I know the definition."
"He was a Primarch, of course he knew the definition." Melkor thought to himself.
"I don't know how to explain it well. But I guess it's someone whom you trust and he trusts in return, but on equal terms. The relation is not one of Lord and servant but more like equals. I don't know how to translate it well for you." He used his hand to imply he was talking about the fact that he was a Primarch. "You are both a lot human and at the same time far more than human that this stuff is hard to explain."
"But you are not my equal." Curze said absentmindedly "No one is."
Melkor laughed. "Thank God I'm not. I prefer being human more." It was a smile laden with small anxiety. Such a conversation with a Primarch was as stressful the first time as the twentieth.
Silence returned, but this time it did not last long enough to become oppressive. The Primarch stood up and with a movement of his hand he indicated to Melkor to follow him. They would end up back on his Sanctum, in that same chamber where Melkor had first appeared, the chamber where the Kyroptera, the advisory body of the Primarch met. It was an advisory body, much like the Mournival on the sixteenth legion. The Lord of Terror brough the hololithic screen to life with a simple touch on the table. His smooth snow pale skin sliding perfectly on the metallic frame.
The green light illuminated the chamber far more than the dim customary nostraman light bulb. It showed graphs and tables, the nostraman runes barely flickering in the darkness. Curze´s hand passed over the light. It flickered in answer, menus opened, he selected some things far too quickly for Melkor to notice and then he turned to the mortal.
"I noticed you tried to draw maps in your writings," he said, referencing the information Melkor had penned into parchment or stacks of data through the use of the cogitator provided by the legion when he took on his first job as interrogator. "I uploaded those writings to the table. The section you marked as forbidden, protected by a custom made security protocol."
Melkor eyed the hololithic screen with the wonder of a child looking at a working hologram turned real. This was the first time he was interacting with one. "Did you read it?" He asked, referencing that same section while circling the table like a man analyzing something extremely important. In truth what was on the hololithic display was a Galactic map, which Melkor gradually reduced to simply the easter fringe. With Ultramar as its southern limit and the ghoul stars at its northern edge.
Curze lifted his finger and pointed at his sunless world. "Nostramo," he softly said, painfully.
Melkor zoomed in the sector, the green orbs turned from small spheres to sickly green balls of light, their names becoming clear and visible as they enlarged. The Hive worlds of Cairn, Flent, Okki, and Rebus would eventually replace the sunless world once it was destroyed in providing the Nostraman Damnatii, a Solar Auxilia regiment, before the Heresy it was a regiment directly bound to the eighth legion and raised from the Legion´s fiefs. Of which the Sector already was, with the exception of the Forge World of Ulan Hûda, all of them were part of the Night Lord´s fief.
The eighth also possessed other fiefs, in the surrounding Sectors. He looked at this. He didn't know this. Tsugualsa and the tithe road seemingly was already a Night Lord´s fief. Curze already had a mini empire in the Imperium. It was just never as notable as Ultramar because it hardly extended beyond his home sector. Tsugualsa seemed to be the only one, beyond the sector of the sunless world. It honestly made sense. The Legiones Astartes were hard to keep in the numbers they waged war with in the crusade, and Primarchs were more than capable to manage multiple sectors, much less a single one, even if they were not Roboute Guilliman or Rogal Dorn, who had their penchant for organization.
"You have doubts about it don't you?" Melkor said, not needing to look at him to understand it was a world that filled him with pain. Perhaps that had been why it hadn't been a hard decision to bring Exterminatus to his home when it finally stepped out of line. When it proved to his skewed eyes, beyond redemption, much like he had been in another time.
"I sent Sevetar to monitor how it is…" He said softly.
"But you know how it is right?" Curze nodded at Melkor´s words.
The mortal sighed, his pale caucasian skin glowed slightly with the green hue of the hololithic light. He didn't turn towards the Primarch, instead he continued to analyze the map of the eastern fringe, silently studying it. Melkor did love maps, and this one was by far the most detailed map he had seen of the galaxy he was now in. "What will you do about it?" He asked, keeping his gaze on the screen. He would rather not look at the Primarch at this moment.
Nostramo was ridden with disease. Nostramo was dying. The fear that had once so thoroughly permeated its very walls had slowly evaporated as its King´s absence became longer and longer. Once when the crown sat upon its Lord´s head it was a silent world, a peaceful world, an ordered world. Now. Now it looked like a world holding back its breath till the right time to unleash all the pent up fury of its cancer.
Gang lords waited with their breath held for the right time for them to do what they planned all along. To rid themselves of the weak government that had been appointed by the Primarch in his stead. It was ineffective. It did not have the power or the will to hold them back. Nostramo was their home, their birthright and not even a demigod would deny them that. At the right moment, at the right time they would sweep in into the chamber of representatives, take the government prisoner as others negotiated a settlement with the bureaucrats on Terra. After all they wouldn't care who held this single world if the tithe arrived on time. It was a simple transaction, from a small cartel to a large one. All gang lords knew and understood this well and accepted their small domain in the galactic polity that was the Imperium.
The underhive was already under their control, the forgotten crooks and crannies of each of the five equatorial hives that made the largest population centers had already been claimed by the Gang nobility, who lived in the great spires free from the turmoil their minions created in their name. Curze´s government didn't have the strength to keep them down, even the Astartes garrison only performed a token effort. They had poisoned the legion already and they knew it. Sending the dregs of Nostramo. The strong dregs, the cruel dregs, the psychopathic dregs to murder and kill in the Emperor's name instead of the bright and young minds the King of Terror had wanted.
They had poisoned it, and like a cancer once a cell was infected it started to spread unchecked as its host was either unaware or unwilling to face it, and now even Legion captains helped and fueled this poison coursing through the legion´s veins.
Skraivok knew that and smiled. As all high lords of Nostramo, he was also a gang lord, a noble each day whose foot crushed the order of the king his father had hailed. They had once been the kings in all but name of Quintos, and then the son of the Emperor had landed on this world and turned their family from kings to mere lords.
He wouldn't allow that. He would reclaim what was rightfully his, and his cousin had provided such a help he couldn't be more happy. After all he had his own contacts in the Legion, after all his cousin was in the Legion. His cousin was an Astartes, an Astartes Captain. What better to poison such an entity than have the cancer inside before you turned those cells hyperactive?
He took a sip from his pure crystalline cup, filled with crimson liquid, wine, one native to Nostramo, made from the excellent harvest of the people´s marrow. A delicacy as old as the gang syndicates. Made of bone crushed, marrow turned into a liquid and then fermented with the tears of those they damned under their boots. It tasted of despair, the sweetness of lives crushed into a single crimson drop. He sipped it and turned to his mistress, that most noble lady with long black hair and slender form and he raised his goblet high in celebration.
"To our most profitable venture." The goblets touched one another like the ring of a bell, they sipped the red liquid, put the goblets to the side and then lunged at each other in a most passionate embrace. Soon, in a few years, they would rule this world. Everything had been prepared, all the groundwork had been done and so now, now they could relax. In the quick motion, they pushed the table back, the goblets fell to the floor, the pristine goblet shattered and the liquid covered the expertly woven carpet.
Melkor was content in analyzing the maps. It was such a peaceful thing. He overlaid the sector maps, with the known stable warp routes, to glean a more accurate picture of the would be Thramas Crusade. His mind worked like a clock. His eyes glanced at estimations of time to move between each system, which ranged around the stable two days to week long travel through the warp. Maps, lines, projections. All tools for mortals to grasp at order, to impose meaning where none existed in the cold uncaring void. Konrad was still silent observing what the mortal was doing as he had given him free reign of the hololithic display. He observed and brooded about Nostramo.
Nostramo. It was a monster much in the same way he was a monster. Almost as if Nostramo made him what he was and he in turn made it dependent on him. It was a cursed planet and his anger was thinly veiled behind the fact that even as it cracked in his absence it had not yet broken its order on the absolute. Even as it fractured in his absence, it hadn't yet shattered the iron grip of his shadow.
The Primarch´s mind whirled with thoughts, thoughts that which poisoned him. Unlike his brothers who all had attachments to their home, their true home. His attachment to Nostramo was like cancer. Macragge was a shiny beacon of civilization where Roboute was hailed in his time, Lyceus the home of Corvus Corax… He had many opinions about Corax. Lyceus hailed his counterpart as savior. Even the people of Barbarus who lived under the noxious fumes that Mortarion came from, hailed him as their leader. His home, his planet, Nostramo, hailed him, in his youth, before he had grown strong to defy them to haunt them, as a worm, as nothing. They were the worms, crawling in a world who hated them, but still lived under their shadow.
How he hated Nostramo. How he hated it, he wished he could sentence it to oblivion, but not all there were sinners. Some, most, had learned to live under his laws. It was only the syndicates. The syndicates that festered within, their grip winding through Nostramo's veins, choking out even the thinnest lifeblood of order. The syndicates who since before his gestation capsule landed, kept poisoning the adamantium industry the planet had lived by. They were cancerous, and he hated that.
In a sense, he was Nostramo's own reflection .It's dark and twisted image brought to life. Where Roboute mirrored Macragge's ordered civility and the Angel embodied the fierce resilience of Baal, he was Nostramo's shadow given form. Its suffering, its cruelty, its violence: they lived in him as they did in the spires and gutters of his home world, and he was painfully aware of that.
"Whatever fate you condemn Nostramo, it will be better than waiting for it to be irredeemably broken." The mortal said quietly, not daring to look at him. In the display the maps had vanished. They had been replaced by a chart. A chart with all his brother's names in it, all save the two.
Besides their names seemingly was what the mortal considered them to be in relation to the Emperor.
Lion - Strategic brilliance. His Exterminator.
All Primarchs were masters of war. They were crafted to wage it, to excel in it and his father hadn't been disappointed in their results. To be elevated as the first, the premiere general amongst the Primarchs was no small thing. Yet Curze could hardly deny the Lion such an honor. Fulgrim had drilled into him all of his brother´s achievements until he took independent command of his legion. The First even back then, without their Primarch, had a record of tally to envy any Legion Master. With their Lord at their helm, they would soon outpace every son of the Emperor in compliances. Until the Xenocides.
II - Unknown.
Fulgrim - Pride and Perfectionism.
The Lord of Nostramo smiled sadly. It was far too accurate that description of Fulgrim. Prideful in everything he did, seeking that idealized impossible thing that was perfection. Last time his pride had bled through his tone. Seemingly far too proud than usual.
Perturabo - Discipline and Precision. His Siege Master.
He hadn't much to say about the Lord of Iron. Besides that it was a waste of such collateral damage.
Jaghatai - Desire for freedom, his pragmatism.
He had hardly anything to say about him. He never spoke to the khan.
Russ - Loyalty and ferocity. His Executioner.
Leman's Mask had not gone unnoticed by the Nighthaunter. Out of them all Curze knew liars the best and Leman Russ was a man playing the part of a beast. A savage barbarian eying intelligently his surroundings. Some even called their father´s lap dog. He confessed he did find some amusement in that.
Rogal - Unyielding Determination. His Castellan.
"That is true," he thought to himself, using the words Dorn would most likely speak in that flat unemotional tone of his.
Konrad Curze - Sense of Justice. The Judge.
He froze. His heart skipped a beat. He struggled to find words. After all, what monster could be said to be just? How could a monster judge others?
Sanguinius - Idealism and Wrath.
Wrath was not something the Lord of Nostramo pictured alongside the Angel of Baal. All Primarch could feel rage, some more than others, but the charismatic Angel of Baal? Wrath would never be the first word he would think of for the angel. Idealism on the other hand wasn't too far away from his own preferred word.
Ferrus - Diligence.
Unlike the Phoenician he wasn't exactly close to the Lord of the Iron Tenth, but that word was an apt choice for him.
XI - Unknown.
Angron - Empathy.
Perhaps, if Nuceria had not been as bad as Nostramo. Just in another way. He couldn't say anything with certainty about the Red Angel.
Roboute - Organizational Capacity (The Ultimate Excel user).
Curze had simply transcribed from one medium to another. He hadn't noticed, well rather he purposely avoided remembering what he had seen in what was in the forbidden section. Out of some respect for the author? Perhaps. Perhaps it had been by the author´s words, that they concerned things, knowledge the Emperor had decried as forbidden and his sense of justice had prevented him, even then, with the loathing he felt on his father, to look at it. To defy it. Perhaps that was the reason why he had no idea what Melkor meant by "The Ultimate Excel user".
Mortarion -
There was nothing in him, as if Melkor did not know how to describe. It was good to know this mortal still had its limits. Even if they were bound by memory.
Magnus - Curiosity.
If anything, Melkor had landed square on this one. His experience with Magnus on the lightning tower, him almost begging him to allow him to go over the tomes of that defiant world, and now the last experience with the fifteenth only showed Melkor had been right. He had written this before he met the Lord of Prospero, still it was scarily accurate.
Horus - Ambition and Charisma.
Charisma did bleed through the first found like breath fills a man's lungs. Besides that he did not have a strong opinion on him. Horus Lupercal was that. The First Found, in a way the best of them all… Though in truth Konrad would say the Angel was that. Everyone knew how Horus Lupercal was, there was hardly anything to add.
Lorgar - Faith.
That was far too accurate. It annoyed him. He didn't understand. How could he believe the Emperor was a god, when he had his own flaws, even masked beneath his power.
Vulkan - Creativity.
Curze´s tipped his fingers on his arm. Vulkan was a renowned craftsman, but he did not agree with this choice for a word. His face turned to a silent snarl. If he was humanity´s monster, Vulkan was his opposite. And that annoyed him.
Corvus Corax - Sense of Fairness.
His first reaction was to clench his fist silently. Blood trickled slowly down in snow white palm as his own fingers punctured his skin. Corvus. There wasn't a single word that could encapsulate everything he felt towards him. It was like looking at a mirror, and knowing you were the flaw. He was everything he was not. Even if naive and blind Corvus was… A drop of Blood fell on the floor. Fairness… That word. Perhaps it was true, perhaps Melkor was mistaken. Either way there was no way he could deny that he was a monster and Corvus even as a hypocrite was not.
Alpharius and Omegon - Secrecy.
If there was anything more curious in his last brother´s part was that his name had been written as two instead of one. It was a funny allusion, that perhaps he had never had 20 but 21 brothers. It was obviously nonsense. He would have noticed if he had an extra brother. Then again who knows what Alpharius is doing. Secrecy more than encapsulates him and his legion. They exist and also do not. The Hydra of the twentieth is an apt description. Always another head spawning from somewhere unseen.
"You are all shades of your father, in a sense. Great in your own right, but collectively even better. That is why the crusade is a collective effort." Melkor said, finally turning towards the Lord of Nostramo. He saw the blood on the ground, gulped with what seemed to be understanding and continued. "Whatever you decide for Nostramo. I would recommend looking at the others as well. You and Corax are very similar. If you choose to try and change Nostramo again, perhaps write a draft of its new laws and ask him to review it. Guilliman is also not a bad choice. After all, his set of laws governs an entire subsector of Imperial space so he must be doing something right."
Curze said nothing. He simply gazed at the hololithic display.
"I´ll leave you to enjoy my notes on your brothers. Add how you see them to it if you want. After all, knowledge is power."
Melkor left Curze alone. To brood on his situation, on his conundrum. On his decision. Blood still dropped on the metallic floor, Primarch´s blood, the greenish light of the hololithic display lit his pale skin and contrasted against his raven black hair. He bled much like Nostramo bled in its absence, and its lord did not know what to do about it. He was very much conflicted.