Horus Lupercal has a minion!

Sanguinius the Phor

He was Horus Lupercal, Warmaster of the Adeptus Astartes Legions, Primarch of the Luna Wolves – or the Sons Of Horus, as they would become - and most favoured son of the Immortal Emperor of Mankind.

Designed for war and glory, he and his brothers embodied the peak of humanity. Geniuses in the art of war one and all, not to mention in all other arts, and charismatic leaders who commanded devoted loyalty from those who served them. Not only did their minds dwarf those of ordinary humans, they also towered over them physically; not one Primarch was below eight feet in height and all were strong enough to rip through metal, not to mention people, as if it were made out of paper. (This was not to say, of course, that they were not flawed – or envious, or petty or sometimes even downright hateful. They were human, after all.)

He was not Horus Lupercal.

That man had been dead for over ten thousand years, struck down at the height of his power by his own father after leading half of his brothers in a rebellion against him. A rebellion which had left the crippled Emperor confined to the Golden Throne, most of the Primarchs dead or missing (or worse), and the Imperium in a shambled ruin. Even now it had not recovered, becoming a totalitarian religious dictatorship that stood as a monstrous mockery of all its founders had hoped for.

A monstrous mockery, just like him – a hidden, forbidden clone locked away in a lab somewhere in the wild fringes of the galaxy. A crude and defective copy shamefully aware that he lacked the spark of the original, that he was not a Primarch but merely an unnaturally large man. Given life by a blasphemous mixture of chaos magic and advanced science, he sustained his existence with a battery of pills swallowed one by one every day; shots and chemicals taken so that his various patchwork organs didn't reject each other and his whole body painfully shut down. His father - his creator - reassured him each time that this pill, or this surgery, would cure all of his woes once and for all. So far none of these treatments had come to much at all, but it was in his nature to trust and remain hopeful.

In the end, though, hope has a tendency to run out, even for the most hopeful. The doctor noticed that his creation was becoming sullen and withdrawn, sometimes communicating to him in monosyllables or ignoring him outright. After his lessons Horus would often take long breaks out in the attached greenhouse, staring up at the eternally midnight sky as if hoping to find the answers to everything written in the stars. He took his pills with an air of disgust and badgered his creator for more permanent cures. And though his condition came on leaps and bounds, he was still not satisfied; he wanted to be perfect, like his gene-father was.

The air in the laboratory became rife with low-level tension that sometimes erupted into vicious arguments that would send the doctor’s assistants running for cover, lest he take his frustration out on him. But even those, it seemed, did not clear the air and the tension continued.

Then, one day during Horus’ twenty-second year, everything came to a head.

The doctor had become concerned when he noticed that his 'son' wasn't asleep in his bed, even though it was three hours before dawn. He wasn't in the Training Room, either, nor in his favourite spot in the greenhouse tending his plants. He eventually found him in his lab, his hunched-over figure illuminated by the light of a single angle-poise lamp. Machine parts were scattered over the bench in front of him. The clone looked up when the doctor approached, quickly shutting the book of blueprints that he had been pouring over.

"Father." he said, nodding a silent 'good morning'. His father sighed, noting the number of his tools that had been whole last time he saw them but were now either bent or snapped; they lay around like sad little corpses, telling of a night of activity.

"Did you sleep at all tonight, or were you too busy breaking my tools?"

Horus didn't rise to the bait, merely turned a brass cog over and over between his forefinger and thumb. "It's not my fault; you're the one who keeps increasing my strength. As soon as I get used to it, it changes." he said mildly, the annoyance he obviously felt barely audible, as he placed the cog onto the bench and picked up a tin of metal polish. It said something of his sheer mass that something the size of the good doctor's fist seemed small when held by him; he was almost ten foot tall without his boots and weighed over seventy stone, though most of that was muscle.

"If you're awake, though, we may as well go ahead and download the Siege of Terra... And carry on with your sword training."

The other ran a hand over his bald head and pulled a reluctant face. His fingers paused over the ports in back of his head, each the size of a walnut, that his father used to download his 'lessons' directly into his brain. Though the ports had been there since he could remember the skin around the gleaming metal and black plastic still looked red and sore. "Do we have to? I'm not recovered from the Massacre at Istvaan V yet... My head's still pounding! And I really do hate seeing those people just… die like that. Betrayed. Alone…"

The doctor crossed his arms. "Yes, you do have to. How are you supposed to fight the Imperium if you don't know its history? How are you supposed to avenge my dishonour, and the way they dishonoured you? This is vital!" he snapped, then paused and seemed to calm down. "You are the Warmaster Horus reborn. His blood is the same as yours- his face, his body... Even his voice. You owe it to him, your real father, to fight the forces of the False Emperor. It's quite literally what you were made for!"

The clone looked down at the bench's pitted surface, eyes flickering as if searching for answers in the wood grain. He looked grim and the doctor could only guess as to what he was thinking. After a minute, Horus spoke. "But what if I don't want to?"

The doctor's blood turned to ice. He'd been so wrapped up in the success of his pet project that he'd missed the warning signs that now seemed so obvious: the increasing grim moods, the reluctance to learn, the way he spent more and more time staring at the sky. The once obedient clone he'd spent so long creating had become independent- it had found the power of free will. He was still frozen with shock when Horus spoke again.

"I can't fight them, Father... I can't kill innocent people. That wasn't what my gene-father was created to do, and it's only thanks to Chaos he did it all. But I'm not him. I'm not being corrupted like he was! Everyone makes their own path- I'm not living someone else's life again... Not for you, not for anyone." He paused, taking a deep breath.

"I am Horus Lupercal, and I serve the Emperor of Mankind."

Overlay and story by MagnusTheRed
Viva La Vida lyrics by Coldplay
Image by Aerion-The-Faithful
Character of Horus Lupercal and world of Warhammer 40k belongs to Games Workshop
Profile by sonata