quote:

The walls of the Imperial webway, where he’d emerged after running through the portal in the Throne Room, were rigid frames on circuit-threaded Martian metal fused to various alien trans-osseous materials and cultured psychoplastics. He recognised his father’s vision in this blend of human and alien technology: the distant past bolted and fused to the present, for the sake of an imperfectly understood future. It grieved him, to know it had all failed so utterly. Horus had much to answer for. As did Magnus.

Vulkan was a smith, a shaper, a maker. He knew the craft of creation. How to bring artistry to bear along seams of inspiration. Working with the materials, not against them. Creating through a process, a weave of exploration and imagination. Yet the amalgamation around him rang wrong to his senses. This was something jury-rigged, erected against the grain, woven outside the seams using half-wrong approximations of the right materials. It worked, but it worked poorly. There had been an end goal in mind, but only the most ragged ability to reach it.

Vulkan didn’t doubt his father’s ambition or the worthiness of the Emperor’s ultimate goal, but the craftsman in him felt ill at ease with the improvised genius of the webway’s Imperial portions. Human ingenuity was stark and flawed, almost tumorous, in this dimension. It made for an ugly union. Without the Emperor’s endless maintenance, without the constant flow of the Emperor’s psychic will, the Mechanicus’ sections were already crumbling, rotting, falling away into the abyss where metaphysics went to die. Even without the damage from Magnus’ treachery… It is all so forced, so rushed. It hurt him to admit, but that was the impression it imprinted upon his artisan’s heart. Necessity had surely played its part, but the result was undeniable. Vulkan ran his hand along the walls of Martian iron and inlaid suppressive circuitry. It penetrated his gauntlets, sending a weak tingle through his fingertips. I do not know if this would ever have worked. Not for long. Perhaps not even for long enough. Imperfect. That was the word. Imperfect, when nothing less than perfection would suffice.

And what if his father had come to him? Would he have been able to turn his mastery to this realm behind reality? Would his brother Ferrus have been able to help him? Would Magnus have joined them, forming a triumvirate of visionaries devoted to constructing the bridge to mankind’s destiny? No. There was nothing he could’ve done here – of that, he was certain. It wasn’t long before Vulkan left the Imperial portions behind. He felt no sorrow at seeing the back of them.