"In his eyes," Hathor's tone suddenly sharpened, carrying a hint of uncontrollable sarcasm, "those people! Had they ever shed a drop of blood for the Imperium? Had they ever faced the claws of xenos or traitors on a burning battlefield? No!"
"Yet they complacently and greedily enjoyed every drop of sweat and blood earned by the warriors' lives and sacrifices!" Her words were like cold blades.
"Especially… when Father left the front lines and assigned those so-called 'Executors'—those tax vampires in their lavish robes—to collect the tithe…" Her voice deepened, containing the suppression before a storm: "This dissatisfaction, this feeling of betrayal, reached its peak!"
Hathor recounted the history, her tone no longer a report, but a chilling re-enactment of the scene.
She relayed what he had said to his confidant, Gaviel Loken, with a hint of icy mockery in her voice: "'If I had my choice, Loken, I'd kill every Executor in the Imperium. But I suppose… we'd still get a tax bill from hell when we had breakfast the next day.'"
Hathor then emphasized, her tone suddenly turning cold: "Loken laughed then, until he saw the cold, murderous intent in his eyes, which was clearly no joke."
This sentence was a mixture of dark humor and bone-chilling coldness.
Hathor let that historical chill permeate, her voice containing restrained excitement, like a suppressed volcano: "This is his truest thought! Naked and unmasked!"
The core of that belief was the conqueror's right of ownership: "The galaxy was conquered inch by inch by him and his brothers, leading the Space Marines with blood and fire! Therefore, the right to rule should rightfully belong only to the Primarchs and Astartes!"
Finally, she almost spat out her sharp questioning of the mortal bureaucrats through gritted teeth, her deep-seated contempt bursting forth: "Those people… what right do they have to dictate!"
Horus's paranoia and arrogance from back then were still clearly discernible through her voice, like unextinguished embers.
Governor Chen Xi held his breath, the core of the storm was revealing itself.
Hathor's chest rose and fell slightly, as if she was forcibly suppressing the old anger that had been ignited. Her voice became deep again, but more taut, like a fully drawn bowstring, poised to strike: "And all of this… the ultimate ignition point for all this dissatisfaction and prejudice… was Malcador."
This name was uttered by her with a heavy, almost suffocating weight, as if speaking a curse.
Hathor's voice carried a barely perceptible tremor: "After the Second and Eleventh Legions… along with their Primarchs… encountered that unspeakable… 'incident'…"
She suppressed the impact of blurred memories, her voice suddenly rising, filled with incredible anger and pain: "Malcador—that mortal sitting under the throne of Terra! He dared to take such extreme measures—erasure! Thorough and complete erasure!"
"Erasing all traces of the two Primarchs' existence! From cold archival records… to the memories in the minds of us brothers!" She clenched her fists, her knuckles white from the immense force.
Continuing to recount that deadly conflict, every word seemed to burn: "When Horus, as Warmaster! As their elder brother! Went to question Malcador with the fury of betrayal and heart-wrenching confusion… that mortal…"
"He actually used dirty psychic powers! Forcibly! Like wiping away a stain! He cleansed everything about those two brothers from Horus's mind!"
"Even their names! Were erased along with them! As if they had never existed!" Hathor's voice was hoarse from anger suppressed to its limit.
After a brief pause, her voice was tempered like steel, declaring the complete death of something: "It was at that moment… the last shred of respect for mortal authority, even the faintest… was completely crushed! Vanished without a trace!"
"In that confrontation filled with psychic pressure and angry roars, he shouted to Malcador, and to that entire damned Imperial system, the words deeply buried in his heart: 'Since we conquered the galaxy! Then the right to rule should belong to the Primarchs and Space Marines! Mortals—have no right—to dictate to us!'" Hathor's gaze was sharp as an eagle, locked onto Alex, stating it unequivocally.
"Governor Chen Xi, you must understand this! This 'conqueror's rule' viewpoint is by no means a poison that Chaos simply injected into his mind!" Hathor's tone was decisive and unquestionable.
"It was Horus's own deeply rooted understanding! It was a conclusion he naturally drew from personally observing the Imperium's operations, and personally experiencing those mortals usurping high positions and enjoying the fruits of others' labor!" Her tone was heavy, as if peeling back layers of ornate skin wrapped around a rotten core, revealing a deeper, internal truth.
"The Four Chaos Gods? They merely… precisely found this seed deeply buried in the fertile soil of his soul—" She paused for a moment, as if gazing at the invisible, deadly root system.
"—that poisonous seed nourished by anger, arrogance, and the pain of his brothers' erasure!" Every word carried a heavy weight.
"Then they spared no effort to water it! Amplify it! Twist it! Until it swelled into a vine of destruction that devoured reason, devoured loyalty, devoured everything!" The scene of destruction seemed to materialize in her eyes.
Hathor took a deep breath, her voice filled with immense fatigue and profound remorse, as if bearing a cross of ten thousand years: "Those mortal nobles… in his eyes, they usurped high positions, enjoyed the fruits of others' labor… and even dared to so cruelly erase the existence and memory of his brothers…"
Her voice was low and hoarse, filled with the pain of self-analysis, as if scraping bone with a blade: "This deep-seated disdain… this complete negation of 'mortal rule'… this was the most fatal, most primitive crack in his soul…"
This was the sheer cliff face that the vine of destruction could cling to.
Finally, her voice was left with only cold resolve, as if pronouncing judgment: "Erebus… that scum who deserves to be cut into a thousand pieces… he merely found this crack, and then firmly hammered that poisonous wedge… into it." Simple, direct, deadly.
With the narration finished, Hathor seemed to have exhausted all the strength that sustained her, her tired gaze falling back onto the mountain of documents, the cold reality pulling her back from the scorching flames of history.
Her fingers unconsciously, heavily, tapped the hard tabletop, making dull, rhythmic thuds.
As if to nail that past, led to the abyss of destruction by prejudice, anger, and folly, firmly onto the pillar of historical shame.
Each tap was like a heavy hammer blow.
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