We have Konrad/Talos btw. if you even care.
Two lengthy excerpts of Talos’ interaction with the Night Haunter in the Night Lords trilogy.
‘Soul Hunter,’ the primarch had once said to Talos.
‘My lord?’ he had answered, unable as ever to meet his father’s direct gaze. He concentrated on the Night Haunter’s midnight war-plate, decorated by lightning bolts painted by the finest tech-artisans of Mars, and bearing the skulls of so many fallen foes on chains like hanging fruit.
‘Soon, Soul Hunter.’
The melancholic tone of his lord’s voice was not new. The whispered reverence was. Surprise made Talos raise his eyes to his father’s face, gaunt and nearly lipless, the pale, dull grey of sunrise on a dead world.
‘Lord?’
‘Soon. We run from the hounds my father set at our heels, and vindication must be bought with blood.’
‘Vindication is always bought with blood, lord.’
‘This time, the blood-price will be mine to pay. And willingly, my son. Death is nothing compared to vindication. Die with the truth on your lips, and your life’s echo will never fade.’
His father spoke on, but Talos heard none of it. The words were like a blade of cold fire in his gut.
‘You will die,’ he breathed. ‘I knew this would come, my lord.’
“Because you have seen it,’ the primarch grinned. As always, the smile was without any mirth. The Night Haunter had never, to Talos’s knowledge, displayed any human emotion approaching genuine humour. He was amused by nothing. He enjoyed nothing. Even the bloodiest moments of war set his features in a grim mask of concentration and infrequent disgust. Battle-lust seemed beyond him, or he had transcended its feverish joys.
This was the result of sacrificing one’s humanity for the good of the Imperium’s people. And he would be repaid for his great sacrifice – repaid by the Emperor’s assassins seeking his lifeblood.
‘Yes, lord,’ Talos replied, his mouth drying, his deep voice like a child’s compared to the throaty rumble of his father’s. ‘I have seen it. How did you know?’
‘I hear your dreams,’ the primarch replied. ‘We share a curse, you and I. The curse of foreknowledge. You are like me, Soul Hunter.’
It didn’t feel like an honour. Despite feeling no greater kinship with the primarch than in that moment, there was no honour, just a sense of vulnerability that threatened to eclipse even his awe at standing in the shadow of his godlike gene-sire. They would share words only once more before the Night Haunter greeted his death, and without it being spoken, Talos knew this, too.
Soul Hunter, Chapter X
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But the mood remained dark. Victory at such a savage cost was barely a victory at all. Talos recalled similar words written by the war-sage Malcharion, in the years after the Haunter’s assassination.
And with that thought, with that connection made, Talos’s roiling mind – already lost in the coldest, deepest and most furious pits of memory – turned blacker still.
Assassination. Murder. Blasphemy.
The last time he had wept was on that night, that night of wrenching agony, standing with thousands of his brothers and watching the traitorous whore leave the fortress-monastery, her gloved hands clutching their father’s head by its lank, black hair.
Hours before, Talos had shared his last words with his gene-sire.
‘My life,’ the primarch had said, head bowed before a gathering of his captains and chosen, ‘has meant nothing.’
The bowed god weathered the shouted denials of his favoured sons, who all fell silent as he spoke again.
“Nothing. Yet, I will amend that with my death.’
‘How, lord? What glory will your sacrifice bring to us?’ These words from the Talonmaster. Zso Sahaal. First Captain.
The same questions were uttered from a dozen lips.
‘We cannot prosecute the crusade against the Imperium without you,’ declared Vandred, not yet the Exalted, not yet Captain of the Tenth, but already considered so gifted by the Haunter in matters of void war.
The Night Haunter smiled, somehow without animating his face beyond warping the blue veins beneath his cheeks.
‘Our crusade of vengeance against the Imperium, against my father’s false ascension to godhood, spins upon a fulcrum. Every life we take, every soul that screams in our wake – the rightness of what we do hangs upon a single aspect of balance. Name that aspect. Name it, any of you, you who are my chosen.’
‘I will,’ said a voice from the loose crowd.
The Haunter nodded. ‘Speak, Captain of the Tenth.’ At those words, Talos glanced at his own captain. So did Vandred.
Brother-Captain Malcharion stepped forward, leaving the ranks of the company leaders, to stand one step closer to his primarch.”
‘The rightness of our crusade is justified because the Imperium is founded upon a lie. The Emperor is wrong in all He does, and the Imperial Truth His preachers propagate is flawed and blinding. He will never bring order and law to mankind. He will damn it through ignorance.
‘And,’ Malcharion nodded his head, mimicking the primarch’s earlier bow, ‘His hypocrisy must be answered with revenge. We are right because He wronged us. We bleed His flawed empire because we see the truth, the decay beneath the skin. Our vengeance is righteous. It is justice for His scorn of the Eighth Legion.’
Malcharion was taller than many Astartes, his bare head showing seven implanted silver rivets around his right eyebrow, each one a mark of honour meaning nothing to any outside the Legion. A ferocious fighter, an inspiring leader, and already composing works of great tactical and meditative value. It was all too easy to see why the Night Haunter favoured him with captaincy of the Tenth Company.”
‘All true,’ the father said to his sons. ‘But what is the Emperor learning by our defiance? What do the High Lords of Terra learn as we slaughter the citizens of their void-kingdom?’
‘Nothing,’ said a voice. Talos swallowed as he realised it was his own. Every unhelmed face turned to look at him, including the primarch’s.
‘Nothing,’ the Night Haunter said, closing his black eyes. ‘Nothing at all. Righteousness is useless, if we alone know we’re right.’
He had told them before. Told them his intent. Yet this cold, ironclad confession still undermined the inner preparations each one had made to deal with the death of their gene-sire. All the questions previously quelled broke loose, and the grim acceptances paved over doubts were shattered.
Here was the chance to argue. To defy. To challenge fate. Voices rose in protest.
‘It is written,’ the Night Haunter murmured. His whispered words were always enough to bring his sons to silence. ‘I feel your defiance, my Night Lords. But it is written. And more than that, even were this a destiny to be battled and resisted, it is right that I die.’
Talos watched the sire of the VIII Legion, his own black eyes narrowed.
‘Soul Hunter,’ the Night Haunter said suddenly, gesturing with a hand that resembled a marble claw. ‘I see understanding dawn in your eyes.’
‘No, lord,’ he said. Talos felt several of the captains and chosen eyeing him, hostile as ever at the way their primarch singled him out for the honour of such a deed name.
‘Speak, Soul Hunter. The others understand, but I hear your thoughts. You have framed it in words better than any other. Even our honourable and verbose Malcharion.’
Malcharion nodded in respect to Talos, and the gesture gave him impetus to speak.
‘This is not entirely about the Legion.’
‘Continue.’ Again, the marble claw invited more.”
‘This is a lesson from a son to his father. Just as you instruct us in the principles to continue this crusade, you will show your own father, who watches all from the Golden Throne, that you will die for your beliefs. Your sacrifice will echo in your father’s heart forever. You believe your martyrdom will set a fiercer example than your life.’
‘Because…?’ The Night Haunter smiled again, a fanged smirk that had nothing to do with delight.
Talos drew a breath to speak the words he’d seen in his dreams. The words his gene-sire would speak before the assassin’s blade fell.
‘Because death is nothing compared to vindication.”
Soul Hunter, Chapter XIII
