Mellow wrote:Well the spaceship quote is in chapter 2
How The Emperor was when He came out the Chaos gate in in chapter 22
This is the only bit in Chapter 22 that says anything about the Emperors travels:
Alivia led the Ultramarines and her five soldiers ever downwards along a twisting series of switchback
stairs beneath the Sanctuary. The walls were glassy and smooth, cut down through the geomantic roots of
Mount Torger by the colossal power of the galaxy’s most singular mind.
No light shone this deep, and only the Ultramarines suit lights pierced the darkness. If felt like nobody
came here precisely because nobody ever came here.
‘How much deeper is this gate, mamzel?’ asked Castor Alcade. The smell of plasmic fire still clung to
his armour, and his breath had the hot flavour of burned stone to it.
‘It’s not far,’ she said, though distance would become a somewhat subjective quantity the deeper they
went.
‘And how is it that you know of it?’
Alivia struggled to think of a way to answer that without sounding like a lunatic.
‘I came here a very long time ago,’ she said.
‘You’re being evasive,’ said Alcade.
‘Yes.’
‘So why should I put my trust you?’
‘You already have, legate,’ said Alivia, turning and giving him her most winning smile. ‘You wouldn’t
be here if you hadn’t.’
She’d told them of what lay beneath the Sanctuary, a gate closed in ages past by the Emperor and which
Horus planned to open. She told them that beyond the gate lay a source of monstrously dangerous power,
and thankfully that was enough for them.
She’d not relished the prospect of trying to exert her empathic influences over the legionaries of the XIII
Legion, but as things turned out there hadn’t been any need to apply pressure to the legate’s psyche.
It wasn’t hard to see why.
She’d offered him a last lifeline to achieve something worthwhile, and he’d seized it with both hands.
‘Thirty men facing the might of two Legions sounds grand in the honour rolls,’ he’d said after she’d told
him what she wanted of him and his men. ‘But last stands are just the sorts of theoreticals we’ve trained
our entire lives to avoid.’
‘This isn’t a fight we’ll walk away from either,’ she’d warned.
‘Better to fight for something than die for nothing.’
He’d said it with such a straight face too. She hadn’t the heart to tell him that sentiments like that were
what had kept men fighting one another for millennia.
They’d found the citadel filled with refugees. Most had ignored them, but some begged for protection
until Didacus Theron fired a warning shot over their heads.
The Sanctuary and its secret levels, the really interesting levels that not even the Sacristans or
Mechanicum knew about, were beneath the deserted Vault Transcendent. Alivia took every confounding
turn through the catacombs and located every hidden door as though she’d walked here only yesterday.
The last time Alivia had climbed these particular steps, her legs were like rubber and fear sweat coated
her back like a layer of frost. She’d helped him come back to the world; her arm around his waist, his
across her shoulder. She’d tried to keep his thoughts – normally so impenetrable – from reaching into her,
but he was too powerful, too
raw and too damaged from what lay beyond the gate to keep everything
inside.
She’d seen things she wished she hadn’t. Futures she’d seen in her nightmares ever since or inked in the
pages of a forgotten storybook. Abominable things that were now intruding on the waking world, invited
in by those who hadn’t the faintest clue of what a terrible mistake they were making.
‘Do these steps ever bloody end?’ asked Theron.
‘They do, but it’ll seem like they won’t,’ answered Alivia. ‘It’s kind of a side effect of being so close
to a scar in the space-time fabric of the world. Or part of the gate’s defence mechanisms, I forget which.
It’s amazing how many people just give up, thinking they’re getting nowhere.’
‘I’ve been mapping our route,’ said a Techmarine called Kyro with a superior tone that suggested he
was equal to anything this place could throw at him.
‘You haven’t,’ said Alivia, tapping a finger to the side of her head. ‘Trust me.’
Kyro flipped up a portion of his gauntlet and a rotating holographic appeared. A three-dimensional
mapping tool. Right away, Kyro frowned in consternation as multiple routes and divergent pathways that
didn’t exist filled the grainy image.
‘Told you,’ said Alivia.
‘But do they ever end?’ asked Alcade.
Alivia didn’t answer, but stepped out onto a wide hallway that she knew every one of the Ultramarines
would swear hadn’t been there moments ago. Like everything else here it had a smooth, volcanic quality,
but light shone here, glittering within the rock like moonlight on the surface of an ocean.
Wide enough for six legionaries to walk comfortably abreast, the hallway was long and opened into a
rough-hewn chamber of chiselled umber brick. The Emperor never told her how this chamber had come to
be or how He’d known of it, save that it had been here before geological forces of an earlier epoch raised
the mountain above.
Ancient hands had cut the stone bricks here, but Alivia never liked looking too closely at the
proportions of the blocks or their subtly wrong arrangement. It always left her strangely unsettled and
feeling that those hands had not belonged to any species known by the galaxy’s current inhabitants.
The Ultramarines spread out, muscle memory and ingrained practical pushing them into a workable
defensive pattern. Alivia’s human allies, Valance especially, kept close to her like a bodyguard.
‘Is that it?’ asked Alcade, unable to keep the disappointment from his voice. ‘This is the Hellgate you
spoke of?’
‘That’s it,’ agreed Alivia with a smirk. ‘What did you expect? The Eternity Gate?’
She’d told them something of what lay beyond the gate, but Alivia had to agree it didn’t exactly look
like the most secure means of keeping something so hideously dangerous out. Irregular chunks of dark
stone veined with white formed a tall archway in the darker red of the mountain’s foundations.
The space between the arch was mirror-smooth black stone, like a slab of obsidian cut from a perfectly
flat lava bed. Nothing within the chamber was reflected in its surface.
‘We expected something that looked like it would take more than a rock drill or a demo charge to
breach,’ said Kyro.
‘Trust me,’ said Alivia. ‘There’s nothing you or the Mechanicum could bring that would get that open.’
‘So how does Horus plan to open it?’
‘He’s blood of the Emperor’s blood,’ she said. ‘That’ll be enough unless I can seal it.’
‘You said the Emperor sealed it,’ said Theron.
‘No, I said He closed it,’ said Alivia. ‘That’s not same thing.’
Alcade looked at her strangely, as though now seeing something of the truth of what she was.
‘And how is it you know how to seal it?’ he asked.
‘He showed me how.’
Kyro tapped the black wall with one of his servo-arms. It made no sound whatsoever. At least in this
world. ‘If what’s beyond here is so terrible, why didn’t the Emperor seal it Himself?’
‘Because He couldn’t, not then, maybe not ever,’ said Alivia, remembering the gaunt, aged face she’d
seen beyond the glamours. He’d been gone no more than a heartbeat to her, but she saw centuries carved
into the face she’d watched go into the gate.
‘The Emperor couldn’t seal it, but you can?’ said Kyro. ‘You’ll forgive me, Mamzel Sureka, if I find
that hard to believe.’
‘I don’t give a damn what you find hard to believe,’ snapped Alivia. ‘There are things a god can do and
things He can’t. That’s why sometimes they need mortals to do their dirty work. The Emperor left armies
to guard against obvious intruders, but He needed someone to keep out the lone madmen, the seekers of
dark knowledge or anyone who accidentally stumbled on the truth. Since I’ve been on Molech, I’ve killed
one hundred and thirteen people who’ve been drawn here by the whispered poisons that seep from
beyond this gate. So don’t you dare doubt what I can do!’
She took a calming breath and shrugged off her coat, tucking the loaded Ferlach serpenta into the
waistband of her fatigues. She felt foolish for losing her temper, but every emotion was heightened in this
place.
‘How old are you, Mamzel Sureka?’ asked Alcade.
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ said Alivia, though she knew exactly where he was going with
this.
‘The Emperor was last on Molech over a century ago,’ said Alcade. ‘And even with juvenat treatments,
you’re nowhere near old enough to have been at His side.’
Alivia laughed, a bitter, desperate sound. ‘You don’t know how old I am, Castor Alcade. And, right
now, I wish I didn’t either
In Chapter 2 the only mention of it is by Horus who wasn't there, the rest of chapter 2 is all Malcador and the Primarchs:
‘So you came to Dwell to see if you could fill the void in your memory?’ said Fulgrim.
‘After a fashion,’ agreed Horus, circling back to where he had begun his circuit of the cylinders. ‘Every
man and woman interred here over the millennia has become part of a shared consciousness, a world
memory containing everything each individual had learned, from the first great diaspora to the present
day.’
‘Impressive,’ agreed Mortarion.
‘Hardly,’ said Fulgrim. ‘We all have eidetic memories. What is there here of value I do not already
know?’
‘Do you remember all your battles, Fulgrim?’ asked Horus.
‘Of course. Every sword swing, every manoeuvre, every shot. Every kill.’
‘Squad names, warriors? Places, people?’
‘All of it,’ insisted Fulgrim.
‘Then tell me of Molech,’ said Horus. ‘Tell me what you remember of that compliance.’
Fulgrim opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. His expression was that of a blank-faced
novitiate as he sought the answer to a drill sergeant’s rhetorical question.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Fulgrim. ‘I remember Molech, I do, its wilds and its high castles and its
Knights, but…’
His words trailed off, putting Aximand in the mind of a warrior suffering severe head trauma. ‘We were
both there, you and I, before the Third Legion had numbers to operate alone. And the Lion? Wait, was
Jaghatai there too?’
Horus nodded. ‘So the logs say,’ he said. ‘We four and the Emperor travelled to Molech. It complied,
of course. What planet would offer resistance to Legion forces led by the Emperor?’
‘An overwhelming force,’ said Mortarion. ‘Was heavy resistance expected?’
‘Far from it,’ said Horus. ‘Molech’s rulers were inveterate record keepers, and they remembered
Terra. Its people had weathered Old Night, and when the Emperor descended to the surface it was
inevitable they would accept compliance.’
‘We remained there for some months, did we not?’ asked Fulgrim.
Aximand glanced at Abaddon and saw the same look on the First Captain’s face he felt he wore. He too
remembered Molech, but like the primarchs was having difficulty in recalling specific details. Aximand
had almost certainly visited the planet’s surface, but found it hard to form a coherent picture of its
environs.
‘According to the Vengeful Spirit’s horologs, we were there for a hundred and eleven standard Terran
days, one hundred and nine local. After we left nearly a hundred regiments of Army, three Titanicus
cohorts and garrison detachments from two Legions were left in place.’
‘For a planet that embraced compliance?’ said Mortarion. ‘A waste of resources if ever I heard it.
What need did the Emperor have to fortify Molech with such strength?’
Horus snapped his fingers and said, ‘Exactly.’
‘I’m guessing you have an answer for that question,’ said Fulgrim. ‘Otherwise why summon us here?’
‘I have an answer of sorts,’ said Horus, tapping the cryo-cylinder containing Arthis Varfell. ‘A
specialty of this particular iterator was the early history of the Emperor, the wars of Unity and the various
myths and legends surrounding His assumption of Old Earth’s throne. The memories of Dwell are
untainted, and many of its earliest settlers were driven here by the raging tides of Old Night. What they
remember goes back a very long way, and Varfell assimilated it all.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Fulgrim.
‘I mean that some of the oldest Dwellers came from Molech, and they remember the Emperor’s first
appearance on their world.’
‘First?’ said Fulgrim.
Mortarion gripped Silence tightly. ‘He had been there before? When?’
‘If I’m interpreting the dreams of the dead right, then our father first set foot on Molech many centuries,
or even millennia before the wars of Unity. He came in a starship that never returned to Earth, a starship I
believe now forms the heart of the Dawn Citadel.’
‘The Dawn Citadel… I remember that,’ said Fulgrim. ‘Yes, there was an ugly, cannibalised structure of
ship parts at the end of a mountain valley! The Lion built one of his sombre castles around it did he not?’
‘He did indeed,’ said Horus. ‘The Emperor needed a starship to reach Molech, but didn’t need it to get
back. Whatever He found there made Him into a god, or as near as makes no difference.’
‘And you think whatever that was is still there?’ said Fulgrim with heady anticipation. ‘Even after all
this time?’
‘Why else leave the planet so heavily defended?’ said Mortarion. ‘It’s the only explanation.’
Horus nodded. ‘Through Arthis Varfell, I learned a great deal of Molech’s early years, together with
what the four of us did there. Some of it I even remembered.’
‘The Emperor erased your memories of Molech?’ said Abaddon, forgetting himself for a moment.
‘Ezekyle!’ hissed Aximand.
Abaddon’s outrage eclipsed his decorum, his choler roused as he sought to vent his anger. Beyond him,
the stars were out, casting a glittering light over Tyjun. Stablights from patrolling aircraft swept the city.
Some close, some far away, but none came near the skeletal structure of the dome.
‘No, not erased,’ said Horus, overlooking his First Captain’s outburst. ‘Something so drastic would
quickly result in a form of cognitive dissonance that would draw attention to its very existence. This was
more a… manipulation, the lessening of some memories and the strengthening others to overshadow the
gaps.’
‘But to alter the memories of three entire Legions,’ breathed Fulgrim. ‘The power that would require…’
‘So, it’s to Molech then?’ said Mortarion.
‘Yes, brothers,’ said Horus, spreading his arms. ‘We are to follow in the footsteps of a god and become
gods ourselves.’
‘Our Legions stand ready,’ said Fulgrim, febrile anticipation making his body shimmer with corposant.
‘No, brother, I require only Mortarion’s Legion for this war-making,’ said Horus.
‘Then why summon me at all?’ snapped Fulgrim. ‘Why insult my warriors by excluding them from your
designs?’
‘Because it’s not your Legion I need, it’s you,’ said Horus, spearing to the heart of Fulgrim’s vanity.
‘My Phoenician brother, I need you most of all.’
Aximand’s ocular filters dimmed as a stablight swept through the buckled struts of the dome. Stark
shadows bowed and twisted.
Everyone looked up.
The dark outline of an aircraft rose up beyond the dome, its engines bellowing with downdraft. A
blizzard of broken glass took to the air. Glittering reflections dazzled like snow.
‘Who the hell’s flying so close?’ said Abaddon, shielding his eyes from the blinding glare. More noise,
fresh stablights from the other side of the dome.
Another two aircraft.
Fire Raptors. Horde killers that had made their name at Ullanor. Coated in non-reflective black.
Hovering, circling the dome. Icons on their glacis shone proudly after months of being obscured.
Silver gauntlets on a black field.
‘It’s Meduson!’ shouted Aximand. ‘It’s Shadrak bloody Meduson!’
Three centreline Avenger cannons roared in unison. Braying quad guns on waist turrets followed an
instant later.
And the Dome of Revivification vanished in a sheeting inferno of orange flame
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