Chapter 58 Are you?
Horus wrote down the newly appeared names, and at the same time mobilized his senses to look for the mysterious flyer nearby. His search was undoubtedly a failure.
What particularly puzzled him was that the first person the emperor looked at after hearing this question was him.
Is the man named Morse related to him?
+I know him. + The Emperor said that the great golden man was in a low mood, and that Horus would pay any price to wipe away even the smallest sorrow from the Emperor.
The Emperor spoke then, using his perhaps more authentic voice, which made his appeal all the more touching,
"I cannot bring him back if he does not want to appear. My son," he paused After a pause, "You have a great destiny. I need you, you are Perturabo."
"I am."
"I am the Emperor. The Emperor of Terra , and the Lord of Mankind." The Emperor said calmly, and he took a step forward, crossing the snowy tops of the mountain peaks, and more details of Olympia were reflected in his bright golden irises.
From Lokos onward, he observed the entire planet, searching for the character and achievements of his offspring in an unusually deep construction.
After a while, a happy smile appeared on his face.
“You have accomplished so much, despite your young age. I see true peace spreading in this world, and magnificent castles and farmers’ tools are miraculously renewed simultaneously. When you come here At this time, Olympia has achieved all the basic conditions for its own progress. I can see your pursuit of construction and intelligence, and we can have many discussions on this."
"I..." The young man's eyebrows raised slightly. He frowned, looking slightly suspicious.
Horus tried to give him a confident nod of affirmation, not allowing himself to interfere further with his father's conversations and decisions before the Emperor concluded his opening remarks.
His attempts had little success. Horus was not discouraged. He would love each of his brothers, especially a noble and serious leader who cared so much about the people of his home planet. But now, they just don't know each other well enough.
The Emperor's invitation was not over yet, and he stretched out his hand to Perturabo, "Morse has molded you very successfully, my child. Will you come to me and swear to serve the future of mankind?"
Hearing this sentence, especially the first half of it, Perturabo's hesitation almost disappeared, and more of his wavering was lost in the wind along with the snowflakes falling on the mountain top.
His gauntlet-covered fingers flicked a little, and Horus had a small idea to take this brother's hand and place it in his father's palm. What is Perturabo waiting for?
Perturabo asked: "What else do you need me to do? I have experienced your power, in that field..."
He swallowed the second half of the sentence and said, Eye contact reached a certain tacit understanding with the Emperor, and Horus was eagerly curious.
"I have many tasks," the Emperor said, "and I need you and your brothers to take part in them. This will be a difficult road, full of dangers and temptations, and thorns of danger will stand in your way. But you Able to overcome all this, you deserve to lead humanity forward."
"I heard this, the Emperor," Perturabo said, looking at the Emperor suddenly and intently, not as a child. The way he looked at his father was as if he had finally realized his awakening at the end of an infinitely long dream.
His combat boots drew a forward trace on the snow cover. Through the radiance of the Emperor, he calmly looked directly at the specific image within the radiance.
“Ten years ago, I said to myself that I was born with a great destiny. I will play my own role illuminated by the light in a grand play. I will follow a more eternal the Creator, to contribute my strength and potential to a realm far greater than Olympia."
"I was then told that my strength and intelligence were not my own, and that I had nothing but them. At the time I thought he was just humiliating me, but later I thought about whether he was using this to promote my growth.”
Perturabo's tone seemed unstable compared to his stern face. A layer of gloomy sorrow and the low-temperature wind condensed into ice crystals on his black hair. He looked at the emperor, but the focus of his eyes was Not there.
"Then one day, when he was injured and people died, I saw you. To this day I still don't know if it was my mistake that caused that disaster." The Emperor listened to his son's words in silence.
Perturabo continued: "But then I understood one thing. Even if I regained my lost talent, I still had nothing to do with the greater destiny. I was just like me since ancient times. Like all leaders since then, some mistakes can be undone, and some cannot. Horus and Perturabo thought together, and his brother interpreted them from a new perspective. existence, he had never thought about this in the past.
He himself told himself that Perturabo's analogy was not entirely correct, after all they were many times better than any mortal leader since ancient times; but thanks to the speed of the primarch's brain, another voice immediately told him that what they had committed Mistakes may also be many times more terrible than those of any mortal leader. The thought made Horus shudder.
No problem, he thought. Follow the Emperor, he is not wrong.
“Now, looking back on my past, I finally hear in his every word and deed the question he never said. What he is really asking is, am I really ready to put my talents, Have I devoted my strength, spirit, and even life to the cause I am talking about?”
“What he asked is, am I really willing to devote myself to a path that may be right or wrong? Everything, even though I may get nothing."
"He hopes that I will not be like a child, relying on my unnecessary self-sacrifice and asking for too much praise and love; but like an adult, To be fair about the risks and rewards, to be true to my heart, and to do whatever my gifts allow me to do."
A shadow of sorrow passed over the Emperor's face, brief enough that Horus was ashamed of his mistake and misunderstanding.
The Emperor said: "Where is your answer?"
The center of Perturabo's gaze returned to the Emperor, and the seriousness of his young wise man melted away at this moment and turned into Soft sincerity.
He took the Emperor's hand in his.
"I am ready," said Perturabo, "and he is ready, though he never says it. He has always been here, never appeared, never left."
< br>
The Emperor's gaze moved to Perturabo's side. On the top of the pale snow that reflected the sunlight, a piece of charred black emerged.
Subsequently, Horus saw a mortal wearing a black robe with his hands folded on his chest, floating calmly in the air. As soon as he saw him, Horus immediately realized who Perturabo had learned the slightly mocking look from.
At the same time, his uneasy premonition began to grow stronger, because after this mortal appeared, he neither paid attention to Perturabo nor burst into tears under the Emperor's glory, but stared at him expressionlessly. Look at him.
"Are you?" Horus couldn't hold back his words. He shook his hand.
Then, the corners of the hanging black-robed man's mouth turned up slightly, an extremely subtle movement that made Horus feel like needles.
"You can call me Morse." He said softly, elongating the end of each consonant. "I am a craftsman. And you are Horus Luperkar, right?" br>
He turned to the Emperor and asked again: "Really?"
"We will go back to the ship to talk." The Emperor made a decisive decision.
And Horus remembered that before they arrived, Malcador seemed to have arranged an internal dinner on the flagship at the emperor's request.
(End of this chapter)