The answer.
‘I can feel His love for humanity,’ said Mathieu. ‘I can feel it all around me!’ He hesitated in his rapture. ‘Tell me, oh lord regent, truthfully – does the Emperor love us, my lord? Do not say I am wrong!’ The Emperor loves no one man, thought Guilliman. He cannot afford affection – that is the honest practical for the impossible task that faces the Master of Mankind. He did not love His sons, He does not love men, but He does love mankind. Yet I find it hard to forgive Him. Did His solution have to be built on lies? Lies upon lies?
……
‘My lord,’ said Mathieu into the primarch’s silence. ‘Please tell me, does the Emperor love us?’ We are so much more like you than you ever intended, thought Guilliman. You gave too much of yourself to us. Without realising, in your arrogance, you made yourself a father in truth. We are your sons, in every way. Did you see that? ‘My lord?’ said Mathieu ‘The Emperor loves us all,’ lied Roboute Guilliman. He looked over the broken statue and the few remains of the clock. ‘Now leave me be, Mathieu. I must consult with the tribune and the tetrarch. ’
—— Dark Imperium
Leodegarius, Pasanius and Cheiron left, leaving Uriel and the Lord of the Unfleshed alone in the ward. The creature he had attempted to rescue from a hideous life of death and misery knelt before the bed of the man who had enslaved him and his tribe and wept. Uriel could not begin to imagine the horror the memory of what it had been forced to do would be like, and did not intrude on the Lord of the Unfleshed’s grief with mere words. At last, the creature looked up and his gaze fastened on Uriel. “Unfleshed did very bad things,” he said. “No,” said Uriel. “All that hatred and killing, it was not you.” “Yes, it was. We did it. My hand bloody. Tribe’s hands bloody. I saw blood and I tasted blood. Unfleshed bad.” “No,” repeated Uriel. “Unfleshed not bad. You were used. It wasn’t your fault.” “Emperor must hate us even more now.” “He does not hate you,” said Uriel. “The Emperor loves you. Look.” Uriel pointed to an aquila fashioned from beaten steel hanging on the wall, the earliest dawn light from a window opposite shining upon it and making it gleam like silver. The Lord of the Unfleshed looked up at the gleaming eagle, his reflection thrown back at him. As Uriel looked at the distorted image, it appeared to ripple like the surface of a lake, and he found himself looking at the reflection of a handsome young boy, his face alight with youthful mischief. The Lord of the Unfleshed gave a cry as he too saw the image. “Emperor loves me!” Uriel moved to stand behind the Lord of the Unfleshed and raised the psycannon Leodegarius had given him. “Yes, the Emperor loves you,” said Uriel, and pulled the trigger.
————The Killing Ground
