Gianfranco Mancini’s Reviews > Ashes of the Imperium > Status Update

Now, looking at the stars again, a part of him remembered how it had been before, when the galaxy was laid out before them, largely unknown, a haunt of xenos and the forgotten treasures of the past. That was where he belonged. That was where they, the Astartes, had always belonged. To be confined was to slowly kill them, and so much of the withering of his soul, he realised suddenly, was down to that alone.

Guilliman spoke once more, detailing more of his long-gestated plans. There would be no delay now – the ships were already waiting, and as soon as they were provisioned the assault would begin. For the first time since the days of the Crusade itself, the Imperium would be launching a true offensive. The long retreat was over, and the reconquest would soon begin.

Prayto had been at Ullanor. That already felt like more than a lifetime ago, in a galaxy that had now become foreign and unknowable. The grandeur of it had been entirely deliberate, a show of force to inspire the Imperium to even greater heights and to daunt the xenos dregs who still lurked on the margins of a dominated galaxy.

A Legion was a fractious, violent thing – a horde of gene-bred monsters, only disciplined and moulded by the superhuman presence at its head. Dark stories abounded of the Revenant Legion, the predecessor to the Blood Angels. Maybe they would revert to that. If so, it would be a poor reward for their loyalty. That fate had to be prevented, if it could be.

Thus was the curse transmitted from the Palace to all the realms below it, like some hex placed on generations to come. That mortal slurry carried every foulness the gods had devised. It was their legacy. Their noxious libation, poured over mortal lands to stew and bubble and cultivate fresh misery until the end of days.

Sometimes, just for short moments, the sky would fall back into its natural darkness. Those were the hours that they ran, breaking out of whatever miserable hole they’d buried themselves in, sprinting towards the next potential sanctuary, expecting at any moment to hear the whine of a lascannon powering up or a gunship roaring after them.

This was a fleet that had come right out of combat, bloody and weakened but still driven and desperate to reassert itself. Some of the First Legion craft were of an unusual profile, the product of their access to ancient and powerful technology. The Wolves had their own flavour of belligerence, of course – somehow they made everything they travelled in look ragged and obnoxious.

‘You were a magister,’ Thalis said, looking up at her hopefully. ‘You spoke the words. My troops need that now. They doubt. I had to shoot one myself, just to keep order. You need to speak to them.’
But what could she say? Her dreams, the ones that had told her so much, had ceased. The certainty that had fuelled her had been replaced by a dreadful emptiness. She was alive, just, but that was all.