"Today's weather: clear; surrounding Psychic Power concentration: high; no Karn within ten miles. Suitable for travel."
My only failure was living long enough...
Ezekiel Abaddon could not stop sighing inwardly. Now that he was middle-aged, the wars that had once set his blood boiling were long gone. Only wreckage remained, with the ashes of The Deceased flickering faintly, offering what little comfort they could.
Had he died ten thousand years ago, he would not have had to face the destruction of his Legion. Had he died several thousand years ago, he could have retired at the height of his glory—but the root of it all was that he had lived too long.
He had witnessed the fall of the Imperium, the retreat of the primarchs, and then lived to witness the Imperium's resurgence and the primarchs' return.
Abaddon's gaze went vacant as the eerie sea of light in the Warp shone through the window. Recently, the Warp's radiance had grown increasingly dim.
In truth, they had not left the Warp for quite some time. With the establishment of the Reborn System, the Imperium was returning in an entirely new form—the reach of its senses had extended far too far.
Even, even, Abaddon thought, Huron of the Red Corsairs had openly entered the Warp and begun recruiting Space Marines who had fled into it because of their crimes.
Huron's pitch was: "Before the Imperium restores the Warp, wash away your sins!"
Then Huron would send the Space Marines he had duped to the most dangerous and filthiest battlefields. Those who survived ten full battles would have their grave crimes reduced to lesser ones, their lesser crimes cleared entirely, and then he would try to register them in the Imperium's Reborn System.
It was said that the Underking had tacitly approved of