Guilliman was smiling at that moment.
His eyes, flickering with endless shades of strange blue, shifted as they occasionally reflected the more weary, weathered version of himself across from him. The sensation of confronting and conversing with himself was so wondrous and bizarre; every word already had an answer before it was spoken.
Yet there were still things he could not perceive.
Roboute Guilliman raised his glass and clinked it against the Lord of the Imperium's. Wine flowed within the cups, while undercurrents churned beneath the sea's surface—Horus, for instance, and then—
Hush. That name could not be spoken, could not be contemplated.
Its mechanisms were far stranger than the Warp—more coercive, more disorderly, more chaotic.
And the one opposite him clearly did not want him touching those dark, greedy, unspeakable things. They had hidden it away, along with those black crosses, three-headed hounds, and skulls streaming black tears.
But they could not truly hide it. Whether their methods were clever or clumsy, Guilliman had already seen it. He had seen it—so magnificent, so spectacular, so repulsive...
That was all it was: a hollow in the Warp. Did it wish to ascend to godhood?
Unfortunately, the laws of this universe decreed that "ascending to godhood" was no blessing. Guilliman recalled the brutal, pale Lord of Humanity before him that day. This was the so-called truth.
Guilliman could not stop himself from laughing inwardly.
"Godhood" was by no means the final answer in this galaxy. That path was destined to be a dead end. The true answer remained hazy, and it was precisely the truth Guilliman had always sought.
The master of the galaxy would never be something as simple as a god, nor merely a collection that held several concepts and laws. The true master of the galaxy would be