Chapter 15

Bucephelus slowly descended through Terra's atmosphere.

The atmosphere which was previously very polluted and toxic was now clean and the sky was blue and clear.

Despite the clear skies, Terra itself still didn't have enough oceans, the project to rebuild Terra's oceans hadn't started yet due to the lack of water, but that would change when the Great Crisis War began.

When Bucephelus landed on one of the smaller hives, the crowd greeted him with loud cheers.

The large doors of the spaceship opened, and the Emperor stepped out first, followed by the Custodes.

Pictograms of the emperor's speech announcing the Treaty of Mars are displayed in each settlement. From sprawling hives to desolate cities of garbage, the words of the Lord of Mankind have brought joy to the people.

The Emperor was accompanied by tens of thousands of Tech Priests and other high-ranking Mechanicus officials.

The emperor stopped for just a moment and clenched his fist, and on the clenched fist a golden light came out from the Lord of mankind, and those who saw the light were immediately cured of everything, their bodies were rejuvenated and healed.

A golden aura appeared upon the Emperor and then the true purpose of the clenched fist was seen as the very fabric of reality bent and twisted as the angels appeared in the form of light and golden fire until they took on a more humanoid form, the very faces of the angels underwent constant changes as if they were fighting for what they want to be.

Angels joining the procession caused even louder cheers from the audience.

The procession continued its way towards the Imperial Palace and at every place it passed the procession grew even larger as more and more people joined it.

The procession arrived at the Imperial Palace as the Emperor met his sons again, hugged them and presented them with the souvenirs they had bought, and then they moved to the dining room where they discussed their separate activities over lunch.

At the same time, festivals were held across Terra in honor of the Emperor's return. The new news was the first appearance of the Angels, which caused even greater faith in their ruler.

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(MC POV)

The Vaults of Rython were one of many prisons I created that held countless abominations imprisoned during the Wars of Unification.

I've gone through dozens of stasis crypts, Tesseract vaults, and paradox machines. Each contains some horror that should never see the light of day. The Spartan vaults tended by Custodes Warders were in stark contrast to my destination. Located at the very bottom of the Vaults of Rython and protected by layers of arcane and archeological security was a unique Dark Cell. Lavishly and furnished like an apartment belonging to the lord of Terra, an independent dormitory equipped with luxury. It maintains a large library and living quarters for its two tenants.

It took me four hours to go through all the checks to get to my destination and get inside.

Upon entering, I was greeted by a Transhuman who at first glance could be mistaken for an Astartes. He wore a simple gray tunic and was unarmed and unarmoured.

It was Leetu, my and Erda's creation, my son.

"Hello, son," I answer with a slight smile.

Lettu just growled at my words "Why are you here, Second Creator."

"I came to talk to you and Lady Erda, I see you don't want me to address you as son, do you like it better that I call you a creation" I answer.

On my river, Leet just cut harder.

"Then I will still call you son, you still share my blood." I answer with a smile.

Leet slashed again.

"Do you know anything but cutting, son. I'm fine there, one of your creators has already declared his allegiance to Amar Astarte. She was old and on the brink of death, but I brought her back to the prime of her youth very easily and quickly," I reply to his cutting.

"We just merged with Mars, and what were you doing usefully here other than rotting here like a museum piece in some warehouse or a failed prototype that didn't try to fix its situation," I add.

Leet stopped cutting my words and just looked at me in confusion.

"Neoth, what do you want," a distant voice replied in an angry tone.

In front of me came a woman dressed in gray silk who radiated a sense of eternity mixed with ancient strength and beauty.

She finally came.

"Hello Erda, I've come to make you an offer," I replied with the biggest and kindest smile on my face.

"To become your slave, bound to your soul and to serve you forever, Far from my children and I can't even talk to them, is that so," answered Erda angrily.

"No, I'm offering you to join me again," I replied.

"And my children?" she asked a little worried.

"Leet is your only child and he is with you. No Primarch is your child, your memory doesn't seem to serve you as well as it used to, and you she forgot they were only made of my blood. You have not given a drop of blood, you are not genetic related to any of them, you did not participate in any phase of their upbringing, so you are not their mother either," I answer brutally honestly and add "and if you really were their mother, she you lost the right to call yourself that when you tried to send them away from me to the Warp even though you knew they might die."

"YOU'RE LYING" Erda she exclaimed and added "You're trying to manipulate me!!!".

Alas, her condition is worse than I thought.

"Erda, Perpetuals are supposed to have a photographic memory, I believe you are a rare anomaly. You don't have the ability to store so many years of experience and your brain has started erasing your memories," I reply dead serious.

"You're lying… you killed and ate my past children, poor Zeus, poor Poseidon, poor Hera and many of my other children… you want to take this from me too," Erda she quickly replied with wide eyes as he shivered.

"Please remember, your normal children died of natural causes. Remember how she you cried a lot and how you didn't want all your children to outlive you, you asked for my help and I gave you some knowledge to create artificial children. You performed the necessary rituals and created more children. The children were semi-divine with immortality and some inhuman powers. The Homunculus they created were a pest to humanity lustful, petty, power hungry and cruel they treated people like cattle and I had to kill them, I didn't devour them, I absorbed them myself to prevent their existence as Warp Gods, all of humanity remembers the events that your children caused as Greek Mythology" I answer her and extend my hand "Give me your hand if you want to know the truth".

"No...no...no...no...that...can't...be...true" Erda started sobbing and her words were interrupted and everything she could say were stuttering sounds. Hot tears streamed down her face, and she squeezed her eyelids shut, hoping the tears would stop. Her ragged breathing and watery eyes continued for some time and she sat motionless.

Poor Erda.

"Give me your hand, Erda" I answer in a soothing voice and Erda approaches me giving me her hand. As I hug her, golden light comes out of my hand and illuminates her, healing her and repairing her physically, genetically and mentally.

"The truth...is...I have...absolutely no one,...alone...alone" Erda stammered out of sadness before she hugged me even tighter and started crying again.

"Okay, everything is fine, you have me" I replied as I continued to hug her and soothe her with comforting words.

We hugged like that for a few minutes until I decided it was time "Erda, do you want to join me again".

A few more minutes passed in silence until she let me go and answered "You want power for the sake of power, you don't care about humanity, you only care about yourself, you don't care about the upliftment of humanity but about increasing your control, why would I join you".

"Erda, I had hundreds of thousands of years to conquer humanity at any time. I could have done it in Prehistory, in the Neolithic, in the age of the first cities, during the death of over 80% of humanity at the hands of the Tyranid invasion in M6, during the First Rangdan invasion in M18, during the gene wars in M20-M21, during the Great Orc War in M22 I could even conquer humanity during my heyday during the Golden Age of Technology. If I wanted to at any time I could become the God-Emperor and rule over humanity turning them into fanatics I answer her completely honestly.

"If you didn't want power, then what made you allow your cults to spread, except for the desire for power. You just want everything to go quickly," Erda she asked insightfully.

"We have to spread quickly because our many enemies are getting stronger every moment. The slower the crusade is, the stronger the enemies is and the more people will die. Everything I do is necessary for humanity," I answer and send several visions of enemie to Erda.

*The Milky Way surrounded by swarms of locusts as big as galaxy superclusters and our galaxy is a meal.*

*On more than a billion planets sleep close to countless legions of beings that were once mortal and changed their weak and fragile bodies to mechanical and strong ones.*

* Countless tides of green warriors armed with technology that shouldn't work are slowly evolving into a higher evolutionary stage than all combat.*

*Rangdan horrors that reduce entire sectors to breeding farms for harvesting human and xenos biomass.*

* Planets caught in a Warp Storm turning them into Daemon worlds where Daemons torment the inhabitants for eternity*

Erda's eyes widened with shock at the visions.

"When all threats disappear, you will still dominate humanity, humanity will never find freedom," Erda replied.

"Yes, I will be the God-Emperor of all humans and Xenos in the galaxy, I will rule all wisely and justly and I will bring peace and prosperity to the galaxy and to my life in the galaxy," I answer with a smile and add "Humanity does not have millions of years to evolve into a psyker race . Under my guidance it only needs 15-25 thousand years to complete its evolutionary development. Don't look at me like that, I will not hold humanity for its current development because development is inevitable."

"Most Perpetuals are arrogant fools of such a level and convinced that they are somehow the next stage of human evolution that they don't really care about humanity in any form. As I saved humanity from countless abonomination during the Long Night and roamed the galaxy most Perpetuals retreated and let humanity die en masse because it's not your fight and you didn't care about the suffering of mere mortals" I reply with a hint of anger and disappointment in my voice.

I stare at Erda, and she looks at me and doesn't answer anything.

He seems to think it's time to speed up his thinking process.

Despite everything, she is still among my friends and I want her to be happy.

"I want more power and that's true, but you have to understand that for the rest of my life I didn't want power, I wanted peace and resources for my research, but I realized that power is good because it allows the protection of those I care about, like you and humanity. Maybe I crave power and do everything to get it, but at least I'm not like the bloody cardinals and tyrants of Old Terra who wanted to do good but were reduced from good people to fanatical tyrants who killed millions and billions in the name of the gods or some utopian goal in purges, massacres and genocides. You claim that I am arrogant, I am, but these are all Pepetuals and they hate me because I am stronger than them and I am aware of my arrogance and they hate it," I answer.

"Do you accept my offer?" I ask Erda.

"I accept, you are right in everything you say" answered Erda and was no longer tearful or sad.

"You two follow me to your new rooms," I happily reply.

Everything according to plan.

I close their former quarters and take them both, Erda and my son to their new rooms.

Everything according to plan.

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AN: My thoughts on Erda and Pepetuals.

Personally, I consider Erda a very unreliable narrator. This is a woman whose claim is that it was absolutely necessary to send her young sons to the hellish dimension. Of course, she claims it was so the Emperor wouldn't turn the Primarchs into brainwashed puppets, but then again, it's the Warp, and the Emperor didn't do that with Horus despite being perfectly capable of it. She also claims that the Emperor always was trying to win over humanity to worship him, which makes no sense. Sure, the Emperor being a warlord in the early days of human civilization works well, but if he actually intended to forcibly subjugate humanity, he could have turned Earth into his own theocratic empire at literally any time before 40,000 of humanity left for the stars.

The basic problem with Perptuals that I have seen is. Everyone is angry that the emperor is so arrogant and domineering. When in fact they were arrogant. Erda seems to think that the Emperor is trying to hasten human evolution into eternity for no reason. Well this shows that she is not included in the whole picture. its impermanence which the Emperor tries to produce in mankind. And the acceleration is not without reason. The Perpetuals wanted humanity to evolve into them over millions of years. Well, the universe doesn't have millions of years if Chaos continues to fester and grow. And becoming an eternal species would honestly hurt humanity. True immortality in mass numbers is never good.

And Erda's pathetic whining about how the Emperor is 'eeeeeeviiiiill!!111!!' and 'want to take over humanity' is the epitome of bad writing. Hell, if the Emperor wanted to rule humanity with an iron fist, he literally had 33,000 years in which to set himself up as a superpowered tyrant. He didn't, so Erda's fears are completely unfounded. The only reason he revealed himself and became emperor was so he could protect and unite humanity and stop them from becoming extinct or enslaved at the hands of the xenos/chaos. Hell, even calling his position 'Emperor' wasn't his idea, it was Malcador's!

Erda's position can only be explained by the fact that Erda is fucking crazy.

Tell me your thoughts on Erda and the other Perpetuals if you want. In my opinion, they are more unpleasant and more asshole people than the Emperor.