"But I am still a clone," Horus said.
The Emperor drew a breath, seeming about to persuade him of something, but in the end, he appeared to swallow those words back down.
In the end, he merely stared at Horus and said sternly, "I do not wish to debate whether you are still Horus. The Imperium needs you. You need to shoulder the duties you ought to shoulder."
"That sounds like a recruitment pitch," Horus said, lowering his head. "Even Tyran Army recruitment advertisements would not so blandly say Talon needs you, the Lord of Tyran needs you, or humanity needs you."
The Emperor fell silent for a moment and lowered his head as well. Slowly, he said, "Very well. I do not know what you think yourself, but I believe you are Horus. At least functionally, you are the same, because you now possess the essence your original self abandoned. By my standards for Primarchs, you are Horus."
"Essence?" Horus looked up, his eyes full of confusion.
"Yes." The Emperor swept his gaze across all the clone Primarchs present. "I gave all Primarchs their flesh. Their essence is still of the Warp."
Horus considered this briefly, then asked, "Were the true Primarchs who rebelled predisposed toward one of the gods because their essences already leaned that way? For example, Magnus toward Tzeentch?"
"Not so," the Emperor explained. "Those Primarchs who ascended have already become part of the gods, just like the daemons you saw. It has nothing to do with what their essences were like."
"Then they..." Horus turned to look at Mortarion, Magnus, and the other clones whose originals had rebelled. "Can they also possess the same essence as their originals?"
The Emperor looked at Mortarion and the others as well. "It is not a matter of possessing