A sense of pressure building before a storm pressed the air in the room to an uncomfortable thickness. From out of this rolled a thunder of words that Curze had yearned for, yet in the last sane pockets of his mind had never expected.
+You are not weak, my son.+
The voice drove Curze to his knees with its power. His head rang withsudden, white pain. A roaring hurricane of might blasted from the figure, now surrounded with actinic light, tossing the remains of his last victims around, and burning out the wall, exposing Curze to the light of the hateful stars.
‘Father?’ he said. His voice was fractured, small, a child’s voice. Pitiful.
+I am beyond your accusations. Beyond speech. Beyond anything. Why do you think that I speak? Your madness is finally complete.+
Again the words rang Curze’s skull with the force of a clapper striking a bell. Still he managed to grin and raise his head to stare at the meat-thing’s glory, though he was forced to squint against the blazing light.
‘No, no! You are here. I hear you. You have come to face my judgement, drawn by this offering I have made. You ever were a bloody god.’
+I am no god, nor shall ever be.+
Curze got back up, his feathered cloak whipping in the psychic gale, his book clutched protectively to his chest.
‘You are here. You understand your guilt. You have come to face my judgement.’
+You cannot condemn me. I am punished enough.+
‘There is not enough punishment for what you have done! Not in this life, or in the next,’ shouted Curze.
+How dare you presume to understand what I have done, and what sacrifices I have made, and what I now must suffer?+ The force of the voice battered Curze back. +You will never know the depths of my pain, for which I am grateful.+
Curze opened his eyes to peer sidelong at the figure. ‘Why such hollow words?’
The voice took a moment before it returned, again with thunderous force that made Curze howl.
+No father wishes his sons to suffer, no matter what burdens he is forced to place upon them.+
Curze laughed. ‘An apology? What next, you will forgive me? Sanguinius warned me you might,’ he scoffed.
+There was never anything to forgive. You acted as you were made to, but my plan was interfered with. Your insanity was not your fault, nor was it mine.+
Curze snarled like an animal.
‘Lies! Everything was as you intended!’
+There is nothing you have done wrong. If only you and I could have met one more time, I could have shown you back to the light.+
‘How marvellous!’ Curze fell into a minute of wild, howling laughter. ‘I am the Night Haunter! Light is anathema to me!’
+Light is within you all. You are my sons. You are born of light. None of you are beyond redemption.+
‘Tell that to those who died.’
+Nothing ever dies. Death is a state of transition. You have my forgiveness, Konrad, whether you want it or not.+
‘Never!’
The voice in his head would not relent, but pounded mercilessly on. Moremasonry fell from the outside wall. The floor collapsed behind him, frittering into its constituent atoms.
+You made but one mistake, my son. From it, all the evil you have perpetrated springs. You chose to believe in immutable fate. Without choice, there is nothing. These gods that taunt us rely upon choice. The functioning of this universe depends upon choice. A single fate is one book in a library of illimitable futures. You read only one. Do you not see that you chose this? You chose to be fate’s prisoner. Had you believed in your own agency, none of this would have come to pass. You made this happen. You chose to be the way you are, trapped, manipulated. Insane.+
Curze’s smile froze, seeming to become detached from the face that wore it, hovering menacingly about his lips as a thing unique to itself, before it collapsed with all the violence of a dying star, and his mouth became a screaming hole.
‘No! You sent the Assassins to kill me. You want me dead!’
+You determined what fate you trod. Your belief, my son, is nothing but an excuse for your own failings.+
‘No!’
Wailing, Curze threw aside his book and hurled himself into the dreadful light, though it burned his eyes, and beat at the effigy, rending and tearing at it with his broken black nails, peeling long curls of frozen flesh from the stitched carcasses, ripping it to bloody shreds.
The light went out.
Shaking, sobbing, he collapsed to the floor. The last remnants of his sculpture rolled wetly from the throne.
‘I cannot be forgiven,’ he whispered. Tears coursed down his face, dripping from his nose and chin, insufficient in their profusion to dilute the blood spilled upon the floor. ‘After all I have done, where would be the justice in that? I had no choice! I had no choice!’
The pressure dissipated. Curze hunched down to the floor and wrapped his arms around the ruin of his substitute father. Frozen in a half embrace, he waited for a voice that he would never hear again.