The Fires of Truth

[Dammeron]

Just bashed this out in response to a thread in the Horus Heresy section. I was attempting to provide an example of how a potential Horus Heresy novel might handle a character-analysis of Lorgar's fall and corruption. It's pretty rough. Let me know what you think!

 

What was that stink?

Why did he torture himself with questions to which he already knew the answers?; It was the stink of abjection, of failure and despair. He had tried, hadn't he? He had fought so hard to please the one he called Father and Saviour, yet what had his efforts earned him?

 

Censure and rejection!

 

He shook his head, clawing at the ritually scarred flesh of his cheeks as the memories resurfaced:

 

"You purpose is to fight, Lorgar. You are my weapon, my sword; not my holy writ. Humanity has...evolved, my son. It is no longer slave to faith and superstition. Though it will pain you, it is time that you too threw off these shackles."

 

Shackles? What was humanity, what was any species without faith? Was it not faith that drove his Father's endeavours throughout the galaxy, that was the very foundation of his expanding empire?

 

No, regardless of what his Father proclaimed, faith could not be so blithely thrown aside.

 

Rising, Lorgar cast sunken, haunted eyes about his personal chambers. The room had once been his refuge; a private temple personally raised in honour of His Father. Now it was a ruin, the icons torn down and shattered, the altar smashed by a single blow of his own fist. Walls that could withstand mortar rounds were buckled and dented from the violence he'd inflicted upon them, and stained with his blood. Though he had difficulty recalling it clearly, there'd been fire at one point, an evil flame into which he'd stared unblinking, inviting it to rise and lick out his eyes, to burn this shadow of shame and confusion from his mind. The fire had not obliged.

 

Striding to the pile of ashes that were all that remained of the many hundreds of psalms and epistles he had personally penned in reflection upon his Father's might, he knelt and scooped up a handful of the refuse. Watching trails of it seep between his massive fingers, he reflected upon the score of worlds his legion had reduced to much the same, civilisations that spanned star systems put to the torch for the heresy of refusing to accept The Emperor's sovreignty. And he'd never doubted, not for a second, the ineffable rightness of it.

 

But he did now.

 

His wounds, self inflicted during the long hours of his rage, stung as he ground the ashes into them. His supernatural metabolism had begun healing the hurts almost as soon as they were inflicted. It'd taken a great deal of effort on his part to ensure that they remained open, and bleeding.

 

"Help me..." He whispered, tears coming as his Father's face rose in the dark behind his eyes. There'd been such love from that face at one time, such adoration that Lorgar felt he might burst with the surfeit of it. Now he felt nothing but the cold slime of contempt seeping into him, polluting him from skin to soul.

 

"Help me!"

 

As if in answer, the face's beauty, its sculpted, statuesque perfection, began to wither, cheeks shrinking and splitting, eyes sinking, raven hair slithering out in filth matted clumps. Soon what was left was little more than a corpse, its filth-caked grin seeming to mock him for his theatrics.

 

"Is this what you call a God?" It was the voice of his own thoughts, the voice of his faith, distorted as if filtered through a malfunctioning comm-link.

"Would you offer up your prayers to a corpse?"

 

"No!" He roared, rising from his squat and driving his head into a nearby pillar, again and again and again, until the vile vision shattered. A red, liquid curtain closed over his field of vision, his faith's ruins stained the colour of slaughter.

 

"Look to the ashes and the flames, Lorgar. There is more truth there than He has ever conceived of..."

 

What was that? A flicker of flame amidst the ashes, an ember of his rage not yet completely darkened? Sweeping the blood from his eyes, Lorgar stumbled towards the rising column of smoke, casting about at the faint whispers that seemed to echo in the chamber's shadows....

[Duodecimo]

This is very, very good. However, please stay away from cliches (how do you do an accent?) such as 'raven hair', please.

[Jarulek]

I like it :) Though it was Kor Phaeron who whispered words of the Gods into Lorgar's ear. I always wondered how Kor Phaeron knew about Chaos lore. I always figured he must have stumbled on an ancient tome during the conquest of some planet by the legion, much like the Laeran Sword and Fulgrim. It would make a great story imo.