Mors tapped the cleaned and tidied surface of the round table with one finger. Psychic energy swept across it like wind raised by eagle wings, and a stable phantom image appeared at its center, showing Peturabo and Horus walking side by side.
"You have recovered two Primarchs," Mors said to the Emperor. "Then who was that man in golden armor just now?"
The Emperor pondered for a moment. The question had clearly troubled him, and his silence was itself part of the answer.
"If you refuse to tell me anything, how am I supposed to work for you?" Mors recovered his sarcasm. "Unless you are not at all worried that someone might, with the best of intentions, make a mistake and accidentally shatter your invisible, unknowable plans."
"Knowledge itself is dangerous," the Emperor said in a quiet, explanatory tone. "Humanity often cannot bear the price of facing the truth directly. You know this well, Mors. We have both crossed the veil."
"I am not human," Mors replied.
"You essentially fit the definition of a human." After that explanation, the Emperor chose to skip over this unanswerable subject. "In any case, I know you have already seen the answer."
"Of your twenty creations, the three who have appeared before me are all fundamentally different from humans, yet their minds do not transcend the bounds of humanity."
The golden halo around the Emperor's pupils silently radiated light.
"It sounds exactly like what you did when you once compiled doctrines and stories: fabricating figures possessed of divine power, yet still using a universal pattern of thought drawn from widespread behavior in human society," Mors said.
"I am not rebuilding a religious system."
"Then what is the Imperial Truth?"
The Emperor abandoned the argument once more.
He returned to the first question. "The last