Fulgrim

ELEVEN The Seer The Perdus Anomaly The Book of Urizen

Amid the empty reaches of space, a pinprick of light shone like a jewel upon a pall of velvet, a mournful glow lost in the wilderness it travelled through. It was a ship, though not a ship that would be recognised by any but the most diligent remembrancer who had scoured the depths of the Emperor's Librarium Sanctus on Terra for references to the lost eldar civilisation.

The mighty ship was a craftworld, and it possessed a grace that human shipwrights could only dream of. Its colossal length was fashioned from a substance that resembled yellowed bone, and its form was more akin to something that had grown rather than been built. Gemlike domes reflected the weak starlight, and an inner radiance glistened like phosphorus through their semi-transparent surfaces.

Graceful minarets rose in scattered ivory clusters, their tapered tops shining gold and silver, and wide spires of bone swept from the vessel's flanks where a fleet of elegant ships like ancient sea galleons was docked. Vast conglomerations of wondrously designed habitations clung to the surface of the mighty craftworld, and a host of twinkling lights described beautiful traceries through the cities.

A great sail of gold and black soared above the mighty vessel's body, rippling in the stellar wind as it plied its lonely course. The craftworld travelled alone, its stately progress through the stars like the last peregrination of an elderly thespian before his final curtain.

Lost in the vastness of space, the craftworld floated in utter isolation. No star-shine illuminated its sleek towers, and distant from the warmth of sun or planet, its domes stared into the darkness of empty space.

Few outside of those who lived long and melancholy lives aboard the graceful space-city could know that it was home to the few survivors of planets abandoned aeons ago amidst terrifying destruction. Upon this craftworld dwelled the eldar, a race all but extinct, the last remnants of a people that had once ruled the galaxy and whose mere dreams had overturned worlds and quenched suns.

The interior of the greatest dome upon the craft-world's surface shimmered with a pallid glow, its translucency enclosing a multitude of crystal trees that stood beneath the light of long dead stars. Smooth pathways wove through the glittering forest, their courses unknown to even those who trod them. A silent song echoed through the dome, unheard and invisible, but achingly yearned for upon its absence. The ghosts of ages past and ages yet to come filled the dome, for it was a place of death and, perversely, a place of immortality.

A lonely figure sat cross-legged in the centre of the forest, a spot of darkness amongst the glowing crystal trees.

Eldrad Ulthran, Farseer of Craftworld Ulthwe smiled wistfully as the songs of long dead seers filled his heart with joy and sadness in equal measure. His smooth features were long and angular, his bright eyes narrow and oval. Dark hair swept over his tapered, graceful ears, gathered at the nape of his neck in a long scalp lock.

He wore a long, cream-coloured cloak and a tunic of flowing black cloth, gathered at the waist by a golden belt studded with gems and fashioned with complex runes.

Eldrad's right hand rested on the trunk of a crystal tree, its structure veined with darting lights, the suggestion of peaceful faces swimming in its depths. His other hand held a long seer staff of the same material as the ship, its gem encrusted surface redolent with dangerous power.

The visions were coming again, stronger than before, and his dreams were troubled with their meaning. Since the horror of the Fall, a dark, bloody age when the eldar had paid the price for their complacency and wild indulgences, Eldrad had guided his race through times of great crisis and desperation, but none had come close to the great calamity he felt as a gathering storm at the edge of his vision.

A time of chaos was set to descend on the galaxy, as calamitous as the Fall and just as momentous.

Yet he could not see it clearly.

Yes, his journey along the Path of the Seer had seen his race saved from danger a hundred times and more over the centuries, but his sight had faded in recent days, the gift gone from him as he sought to penetrate the veil that had been drawn over the warp. He had begun to fear that his gift had deserted him, but the song of the ancient seers had called him to the dome, calming his spirit and showing him the true path, as they had led him through the forest to this place.

Eldrad let his mind float free of his body, feeling the shackles of flesh left behind as he rose higher and faster. He passed through the pulsing wraithbone of the dome and out into the cold darkness of space, though his spirit felt neither warmth nor cold. Stars flashed past him as he travelled the great void of the warp, seeing the echoes of ancient races lost to legend, the seeds of future empires and the great vigour of the latest race to forge a destiny among the stars.

Humanity they called themselves, though Eldrad knew them as the mon-keigh, a brutal, short-lived race that was spreading across the heavens like a virus. From the cradle of their birth they had conquered their solar system, and then exploded across the galaxy in a vast crusade that absorbed the lost fragments of their earlier empire and destroyed those that stood in their way without mercy. The sheer bellicosity and hubris of this endeavour astounded Eldrad, and he could already see the seeds of humanity's destruction lodged in their hearts.

How such a primitive species could achieve so much and not be driven insane by their sheer insignificance in the grand scheme of the cosmos defied understanding, but they were possessed of such rampant self-belief that their own mortality and insignificance did not penetrate their conscious minds until it was too late.

Already, Eldrad had seen the death of their race, the blood soaked fields of the world named for the end of days, and the final victory of the dark saviour.

Would their course be altered by the knowledge of their inevitable doom? Of course it would not, for a race such as the mon-keigh would never accept the inevitable, and would always seek to change that which could not be changed.

He saw the rise of warriors, the treachery of kings, and the great eye opening to release the mighty heroes of legend trapped there to return to their warriors' sides for the final battle. Their future was war and death, blood and horror, yet still they would push ever onwards, convinced of their own superiority and immortality.

And yet… perhaps their doom was not inevitable.

Despite the bloodshed and despair, there was still hope. The flickering ember of an unwritten future guttered in the darkness, its light surrounded by amorphous warp-spawned monsters with great, yellowed fangs and talons. Eldrad saw that they hoped to extinguish this light by their very presence, and as he looked into the fading dream of the future, he saw what might yet come to pass.

He saw a great warrior of regal countenance, a towering giant in sea-green armour with a great amber eye at the centre of his breastplate. This mighty figure fought through a host of the dead on a sickly planet of decay, his sword cleaving a score of corpses with every blow. Warp light filled the rotted eye sockets of the dead, and the energies of the Lord of Pestilence gave their limbs fierce animation. The calamitous doom of his race hung around this warrior like a shroud, though he knew it not.

Eldrad's spirit flew close to the light, trying to discern the identity of the warrior. The warp beasts roared and gnashed their teeth, flailing in idiot blindness at his spirit form. The warp seethed around him, and Eldrad knew that the monstrous gods of the warp would not stand for his presence, as the currents of the warp sought to cast his spirit back to his body.

Eldrad fought to hold onto the vision, extending his warp sight as far as he dared. Images flooded his mind: a cavernous throne room, a great god-like figure in gleaming armour of gold and silver, a sterile chamber deep beneath a mountain, and a betrayal of such magnitude that his soul burned with the enormity of it.

Cries of anguish echoed all around him, and he fought to hold on to some sense of them as the power of the warp hurled him away from this jealously guarded secret. Words formed from the cries, but few offered any meaning or understanding, their essence burning in his mind with a fierce light.

Crusade… Hero… Saviour… Destroyer.

But above them all, blazing brighter than all others… Warmaster.

From the stillness and darkness, came light. A rippling plume of fire like the tip of a comet appeared in the darkness of the system's edge, growing steadily bigger as it increased in brightness and intensity. Without warning, the light suddenly expanded with the speed and violence of an explosion, and where once there had been nothing but empty space, there was now a mighty starship, its purple and gold hull still battle scarred.

Glistening streamers of fading energy, like fronds of seaweed caught on the hull of an ocean-going vessel, trailed behind the Pride of the Emperor, and her hull groaned with the suddenness of the translation from warp space to real space. A host of smaller vessels appeared in the wake of the mighty warship, winking into existence with bright flashes and whorls of strangely coloured light flaring around them.

Over the course of the next six hours, the remainder of the 28th Expedition completed the translation to real space and formed up around the Pride of the Emperor. One vessel amongst the fleet, the Proudheart, bore no scars earned at the Battle of the Carollis Star. The vessel was the flagship of Lord Commander Eidolon. It had recently returned from a peace keeping tour of the Satyr Lanxus Belt, and unexpected war alongside the Warmaster's 63rd Expedition on a world known as Murder.

The 28th Expedition had taken its leave of the Iron Hands following the great victory over the Diasporex with much sadness, for old brotherhoods had been renewed and new ones forged in the crucible of combat in ways that could not be achieved in times of peace.

The human prisoners of the Diasporex had been transported to the nearest compliant world and handed over to the Imperial governor to be employed as slave labour. The aliens had been exterminated and their vessels pounded to destruction by close range broadsides from the Fist of Iron and the Pride of the Emperor. A detachment of the Mechanicum had remained behind to study what remained of the ancient human technologies of the Diasporex, and Fulgrim had given them leave to rejoin the 28th Expedition upon the completion of their researches.

Thus, with duty and honour to the 52nd Expedition discharged, Fulgrim had led his expedition to a region of space known to Imperial Cartographae as the Perdus Anomaly, their original objective following the defeat of the Laer.

Little was known of this area of the galaxy. Its reputation amongst starfarers was one of dark legend, for vessels that sailed this region of space were never seen again. Navigators shunned the Perdus Region, as dangerous currents and freak tides within the immaterium made it an incredibly hazardous region to traverse, and astropaths spoke of an impenetrable veil that shielded it from their warp sight.

All that was known had come from a single surviving probe that had been launched at the outset of the Great Crusade, and which had returned a faint signal that indicated that the local systems of the Perdus region contained many habitable worlds ripe for compliance.

Most other expeditions had chosen not to venture into this ill-fated region, but Fulgrim had long ago declared that no region of space would remain unknown to the forces of the Emperor.

That the Perdus Anomaly was uncharted was simply another way for the Emperor's Children to once again prove their superiority and perfection.

The training halls of the First Company echoed to the clash of weapons and the grunts of fighting Astartes. The six-week journey to the Perdus region had allowed Julius time to grieve for Lycaon and the honoured dead of the First as well as train a great many of the warriors elevated from the novitiates and Scout Auxilia to the status of full Astartes. Though they were yet to be blooded, he had instructed them in the ways of the Emperor's Children, passing down his experience and newly awakened sense of pleasure in the fury of combat. Eager to learn from their commander, all the warriors of the First had embraced his new teachings with an enthusiasm that pleased him greatly.

The time had also allowed him to reacquaint himself with his reading, and the hours he had not spent with the warriors of his company, he had passed in the Archive Chambers. He had devoured the works of Cornelius Blayke, and though he had found much that illuminated him, he was certain that there was yet more still to learn.

Stripped to the waist, he stood in one of the training cages with a trio of mechanised fighting armatures, their armed limbs inert as he savoured the anticipation of the coming fight.

Without warning, all three machines leapt into life, ball joints and rotating gimbals on their ceiling mounts allowing them a full range of motion around him. A sword blade licked out, and Julius swayed aside, ducking as a spiked ball slashed towards his head and a pistoning spike thrust towards his belly.

The nearest armature launched a savage series of clubbing blows, but Julius laughed as he blocked them with his forearms, the pain making him grin as he kicked out behind him and sent the armature that had been coming in to attack spinning back. The third machine sent a hooking blow towards his head. He rolled with the impact as it snapped his head around.

He tasted blood and laughed, spitting it at the first machine as it darted in to deliver a killing blow. Its blade slashed out and caught him a glancing blow to his side. He welcomed the pain, stepping in to deliver a thunderous series of hammer blows to the machine.

Metal split and the armature was wrenched from its mount on the ceiling. Even as he savoured its destruction, a powerful blow smashed into the side of his head, and he dropped to one knee, feeling the new chemicals in his blood pumping fresh strength into his body in response.

He leapt to his feet as a blade scythed towards him, and slammed his palm down hard onto the flat of the blade, snapping it from the machine. With the weapon gone, Julius stepped in close and enveloped the machine in a crushing bear hug, hauling it round to face the final armature as it let rip with a volley of iron spikes.

All three pierced the body of the armature he held, and it sputtered with sparks as it died. He pushed it aside and rounded on the final machine, feeling more alive than ever before. His body sang with the pleasure of destruction, and even the pain of his wounds was like a tonic flowing in his veins.

The machine circled him warily, as though appreciating on some mechanical level that it was on its own. Julius feinted a blow to it with his fist. The armature darted to the side, and Julius delivered a powerful roundhouse kick that crumpled the machine's side and rendered it motionless.

He shook his head, dancing back and forth on the balls of his feet as he waited for the machine to restart, but it remained inert and he realised that he had destroyed it.

Suddenly disappointed, he opened the sphere of the training cage and stepped back down into the hall. He had not even broken sweat, and the excitement he'd felt as he'd faced the three machines seemed like a distant memory.

Julius closed the training cage, knowing a servitor would already have been despatched to repair the damaged armatures, and made his way back to his personal arming chamber. Scores of Astartes warriors trained in the halls, either in feats of arms or simple physical exercise to maintain the perfection of their physiques. A strict regime of chemical enhancers and genetic superiority kept an Astartes body in peak physical condition, but many of the new drugs being introduced to the dispensers in Mark IV plate required physical stimulation to begin the reaction in the recipient's metabolism.

He opened the door of his arming chamber, the smell of oil and his armour's lapping powder filling his nostrils. The walls were of bare iron, and a simple cot bed ran the length of one wall. His armour hung on a rack next to a small sink, his sword and bolter in a footlocker at the end of the bed.

The blood drawn by the training machines had already clotted, and he picked up a towel from a rail beside the sink to wipe it from his body before slumping on the bed and wondering what to do next.

A metal-framed shelf unit beside his bed held Ignace Karkasy's Reflections and Odes, Meditations on the Elegiac Hero and Fanfare to Unity, books that had, until recently, filled him with joy whenever he read them. Now they seemed hollow and empty. Beside Karkasy's works were three volumes of Cornelius Blayke that he had borrowed from Evander Tobias. He reached up to read more of the fallen priest's words.

This particular volume was entitled The Book of Urizen and was the least impenetrable of Blayke's books he had read thus far. In addition, it was prefaced by an anonymously written biography of the man, the reading of which greatly illuminated the text that followed.

Julius now knew that Cornelius Blayke had been many things in his life, an artist, a poet, a thinker and a soldier, before finally deciding to enter the priesthood. A visionary from childhood, Blayke had, it appeared, been afflicted with visions of an ideal world where every dream and desire could be realised, though he struggled to reproduce them in paintings, prose and hand coloured etchings with poetic text.

Blayke's younger brother had died while fighting in the many wars that raged in the Nordafrik Conclaves, an event the biographer credited with driving him into the priesthood. In later life, Blayke attributed his revolutionary techniques of illuminated printing to his long dead brother, claiming that he had been shown the technique in a dream.

Even as a priest, a life Julius suspected he had chosen as a means of refuge, the visions of forbidden desires and his powers as a mystic returned to haunt him. Indeed, it was said that when the high priest of another order first laid eyes upon Blayke, the sight of him caused the man to drop dead on the spot.

Cloistered in a church within one of the nameless cities of Ursh, Blayke became convinced that mankind would profit from his efforts, and bent his will to perfecting the means by which he could best convey his beliefs.

Julius had read much of Blayke's poetry and, while he was no scholar, even he knew that much of it had no clear plot, rhyme or meter. What did make sense to Julius was Blayke's belief in the futility of denying any desire, no matter how fantastical. One of his chief revelations had been the understanding that the power of sensual experience was necessary for creativity and spiritual progress. No experience was to be denied, no passion was to be restrained, no horror to be turned from and no vice to remain unexplored. Without such experience there could be no progression towards perfection.

Attraction and repulsion, love and hate: all were necessary to further human existence. From these conflicting energies sprang what the priests of his order called good and evil, words that Blayke had quickly realised were meaningless concepts when set beside the promise for advancement that could be achieved by indulging every human desire.

Julius chuckled as he read this, knowing that Blayke had later been cast from his religious order for practising his beliefs vigorously in the back streets and bordellos of the city. No vice was beneath him and no virtue beyond him.

Blayke believed that the inner world of his visions was of a higher order than that of physical reality, and that mankind should fashion its ideals from that inner world rather than from the crude world of matter. His work spoke over and over of how reason and authority constrained and inhibited mankind's spiritual growth, though Julius suspected that this was a reflection of his feelings towards the ruler of the client state of Ursh, a warrior king named Shang Khal, who sought to dominate the nations of the Earth through brutal oppression.

To have openly espoused such philosophies in such a time reeked of madness, but Julius was reluctant to dismiss Blayke as a madman: after all, his pronouncements had attracted a great many followers who hailed him as a great mystic, set to usher in a new age of passion and liberty.

Julius remembered reading the aphorisms of Pandoras Zheng, a philosopher who had served in the court of one of the Autarchs of the Yndonesic Bloc. He had spoken in support of mystics and how they exaggerated truths that truly existed. By Zheng's definition, the mystic could not exaggerate a truth that was imperfect. He had further defended such men by saying, 'To call a man mad because he has seen ghosts and visions denies him his full dignity, since he cannot be neatly categorised into a rational theory of the cosmos.'

Julius had always enjoyed the works of Zheng and his teaching that the mystic did not bring doubts or riddles, for the doubts and riddles existed already. The mystic was not the man who made mysteries, but the man who destroyed them through his works.

The mysteries Blayke sought to destroy were those that held mankind back from achieving its full potential and the understanding of the hope for a better future. All of which placed him in opposition to the despairing philosophies of men like Shang Khal and the despot, Kalagann, tyrants who preached an inevitable descent into Chaos, a terrifying realm that had once been the womb of creation, and which would inevitably be its grave.

Blayke used beauty as a window to this wondrously imagined future, and from contemporary thinkers, he had been drawn to ideas of alchemical symbolism, coming to believe, as the Hermetists did, that mankind was the microcosm of the Divine. His reading became voracious, and he became well versed in the Orphic and Pythagorean tradition, Neo-Platonism, the Hermetic, Kabbalistic, and the alchemical writings of scholars such as Erigena, Paracelsus and Boehme. Julius knew none of these names, but felt sure that Evander Tobias could help him find their works should he desire it.

Armed with such weighty knowledge, the gigantic framework of Blayke's mythology took shape in his greatest poem, The Book of Urizen.

This epic work began the narrative of the Fall of the Heavenly Man into the maelstrom of experience, what Blayke called, ''the dark valleys of self-hood''. Over the course of the book, mankind struggled with the task of transmuting his worldly passions into the purity of what Blayke called the Eternal. To help this cosmic process along, Blayke personified the essence of revolution and renewal in a fiery awakener, a being he named ork, and Julius laughed at the aptness of the name, wondering if Blayke had foreseen the scourge of the greenskin that infested the galaxy.

According to the poem, mankind's fall from grace had divided him from his divinity, and through the ages he was forced to struggle to reunite himself with the Divine. In the poem, mankind's soul was disintegrated and had to reconcile every element of its being on the road back to the Eternal, echoing a myth he had read of the Gyptian tombs. This legend spoke of the dismemberment of an ancient god known as Osiris at the beginning of time, and man's obligation to gather together the dismembered parts in order to arrive once more at spiritual wholeness.

In the works of Blayke, Julius recognised an original voice in a conventional age unsuited for such libertarian philosophies. Pitted against forces of oppression that could not be swayed by reason, he had resorted to violent imagery and the force of his powers as a mystic.

He had become what forces of order do not welcome, a disturbing spiritual force that urged men to awaken their passions in order to change and grow.

'Knowledge is merely sense perception,' said Julius, smiling as he read aloud from the book. 'Indulgence is the wellspring of all things in Man, and reason the only curb upon nature. The attainment of ultimate pleasure and the experience of pain are the end and aim of all life.'

TWELVE No Purity in Pride Paradise Never be Finished

Once again every seat around the round table in the Heliopolis was occupied. The tiered chamber was lit only by the flames burning in the brazier at the centre of the table and torches that hung from the golden plinths of the statues. This was only the second time Saul Tarvitz had set foot in the Heliopolis, though he knew he had changed a great deal since the first time he had sat in this brotherhood.

Lord Fulgrim stood by the Phoenix Gate, dressed in a purple toga embroidered with gold thread and emblazoned with a phoenix motif. His long hair was crowned in a wreath of golden leaves, and a new sword with a silver hilt was belted at his side. The primarch personally welcomed his captains back to the quiet order, and the effect on each warrior as Fulgrim offered his greeting was incredible. Tarvitz still felt the tangible excitement and pleasure that came from being personally acknowledged by such a beautifully perfect warrior.

Solomon Demeter of the Second sat opposite him and had given him a quiet nod of acknowledgement when he, Lucius and Lord Commander Eidolon had passed through the Phoenix Gate. Marius Vairosean sat sullenly beside Captain Demeter, and Julius Kaesoron laughed and told wild tales of his exploits in fighting the xenos creatures of the Diasporex, complete with gestures and hand motions to demonstrate a particularly delicious blow.

Tarvitz caught the glint of annoyance in Solomon Demeter's eyes as Captain Kaesoron described how he and the primarch had fought their way to the bridge of the hybrid command ship, though Tarvitz had already heard that it had been Captain Demeter's warriors who had the honour of first reaching the bridge.

Lord Commander Vespasian sat in the seat next to the primarch's, and his eyes sparkled with good humour at seeing their safe return from their mission. Tarvitz returned the lord commander's smile, though in truth he was weary and glad to be back amongst his brothers, for the experience on Murder had been a draining one. The megarachnid had been a terrible foe and the raw vigour of the Luna Wolves was, in its own way, exhausting.

He glanced over at Eidolon, remembering the tense standoff between the lord commander and Captain Torgaddon on the surface of Murder after the Luna Wolves speartip had arrived. Though Tarvitz was honour bound to serve Eidolon, he couldn't deny the satisfaction he had taken from seeing the lord commander put in his place by the irrepressible Tarik Torgaddon. Although Eidolon had later managed to work his way back into the good graces of the Warmaster, he still smarted from his mistakes on Murder and the insolence Torgaddon had shown him.

Nor had Lucius come back from the time spent with the Luna Wolves without scars. A duel in the training cages with Garviel Loken had given him a much-needed lesson in humility and seen his nose broken. Despite the ministrations of the Apothecaries, the bone had not set properly, and Lucius's perfect profile was, in his eyes, ruined forever.

At last the Phoenix Gate closed and Fulgrim took his seat at the table, extending his hand towards the brazier.

'Brothers,' he said, 'in the fire I welcome you all back to the Brotherhood of the Phoenix.'

The assembled warriors mirrored the primarch's gesture and said, 'In the fire we return.'

'Ah, it is good to see you all again, my sons,' said Fulgrim, favouring each of them with a radiant smile that lit up each warrior's soul. 'It has been some time since our order met to tell tales of courage and honour, but we are once again whole and set upon the discovery of new wonders in an unknown region of space. Our astropaths can tell us little of the region of space we find ourselves in, but we are not cowed by such mysteries, rather we welcome them as a chance to further our pursuit of perfection.'

Tarvitz saw the fierce excitement in Fulgrim's eyes, and felt it transmitted to him like a fire in his blood. Even in his most eloquent moments, the primarch had never seemed this energised, his entire body looking as though charged with the enjoyment of every word.

'Our beloved brothers are returned from their peacekeeping duties, and though I know they feared for the glory they would miss while we fought with our brothers in the Iron Hands, they have won laurels of their own, and were fortunate enough to fight alongside the Warmaster's warriors against a vile alien foe.'

Tarvitz recalled the war on Murder, how there had been little honour in the initial drop to the planet's surface, and the death and frantic nature of the combat against the loathsomely quick megarachnid warriors. It had been brutal, intense and bloody work, and many good warriors had met their end beneath its raging, bruised skies. Thanks to Eidolon's mistakes, there had been precious little glory won until the Luna Wolves had arrived and brought their strength to bear.

Then Sanguinius had come, and Tarvitz smiled as he once again pictured the awesome sight of the Warmaster and the Lord of the Angels fighting side by side, bestriding the horrific battlefields of Murder like gods of war unbound. That had been glorious, and the victories they had gone on to win had redeemed their honour.

'Perhaps Lord Commander Eidolon will favour us with a tale of battle,' said Vespasian.

Tarvitz looked over to his lord commander as he stood with a curt bow. 'I shall, if you desire to hear it.'

A chorus of cheers responded in the affirmative, and Eidolon smiled. 'As Lord Fulgrim said, we won great glories upon Murder, and I humbly thank you, my lord, for allowing us to go to the rescue of our brothers of the Blood Angels.'

Tarvitz blinked in surprise at Eidolon's words, for he remembered well the fact that no one had dared use the word "rescue" at the time, for it had been deemed improper to openly suggest that the BloodAngels had needed rescuing. ''Reinforcement'' was the word they had been encouraged to use.

'Upon arrival at One-Forty Twenty, it was clear that the master of the 140th Expedition, a man named Mathanual August, had not the vision to command the action. Upon learning of the imminent arrival of the Warmaster, I led our forces to the surface of Murder to secure landing sites and begin the rescue of the Blood Angels forces, August had unwisely committed in piecemeal actions.'

Tarvitz had been surprised at Eidolon's earlier words, but was shocked rigid at this blatant twisting of the facts. Yes, Mathanual August had drip-fed his expeditionary forces into a danger zone until they were all gone, but it had been no notion of nobility that had motivated Eidolon's decision to drop onto Murder before the arrival of the Luna Wolves, rather a desire not to share the glory with the Warmaster's elite.

Eidolon went on to tell of the initial battles and the subsequent destruction of the megarachnid, taking great pains to emphasise the Emperor's Children's role in the final victory, while minimising the parts played by the Luna Wolves and the Blood Angels.

When he had finished it was to rapturous applause and pounding of the table as the assembled warriors lauded the honourable victory and feats of arms of Eidolon's command. Tarvitz looked over to Lucius to try and discern some reaction to Eidolon's blatant reinvention, but the cool features of his friend were unreadable.

'A fine tale,' acknowledged Vespasian. 'Perhaps later we might hear of the heroism of your warriors?'

'Perhaps,' said Eidolon grudgingly, but Tarvitz already knew that such tales would never be heard in this company. The lord commander would never allow anything that might contradict his version of the events on Murder.

Fulgrim said, 'You do our Legion proud, Eidolon, and all your warriors will be lauded for the part they played. The names of your dead will be engraved upon the walls of the processional way beyond the Phoenix Gate.'

'You honour us, Lord Fulgrim,' said Eidolon, once again taking his seat.

Fulgrim nodded in agreement and said, 'Lord Commander Eidolon's courage in the face of adversity is an example to us all, and I urge you to pass on his words to your warriors. However, we are here to plan future glories, for a Legion must never rest on its laurels and live off past glories. We must always push onwards towards new challenges and new foes against which we may once again prove our superiority.

'We find ourselves in a region of space where little is known, and we pierce the darkness with the light of the Emperor. There are worlds here that crave the illumination of Imperial Truth and it is our manifest destiny to provide it. We draw near to one such world, and I hereby designate it Twenty-Eight Four in honour of the conquest to come. We will talk more of what I expect from every one of you later, but for now, enjoy the victory wine!'

With those words, the Phoenix Gate was flung open and an army of menials in simple chitons of pale cream entered the Heliopolis bearing amphorae of rich wine and heaped trays of exotic meats, fresh fruits, soft bread, sweetmeats and extravagant pastries.

Tarvitz watched in amazement as the procession of exquisite food and wine was set out on trestles around the edge of the Heliopolis. It was traditional for the Emperor's Children to toast a victory before it was won, such was the surety of their way of war, but such a lavish feast seemed an excessive display of hubris.

He joined the other captains as they made their way over to the trestles and poured a goblet of wine, keeping his gaze averted from Eidolon for fear of revealing his misgivings at his retelling of the War on Murder. Lucius moved alongside him, a sly grin creasing his handsome features.

'Trust the lord commander to put a spin on Murder, eh, Saul?'

Tarvitz nodded and checked to make sure that no one could overhear his reply. 'It was certainly an… interesting take on events.'

'Ah, who cares anyway?' said Lucius. 'If there's glory to be had, better it comes to us than the damned Luna Wolves.'

'You're just bitter after Loken beat you in the training cages.'

Lucius's face darkened and he snapped. 'He did not beat me.'

'Seems like I remember you flat on your back at the end of it,' pointed out Tarvitz.

'He cheated when he punched me,' said Lucius. 'It was supposed to be an honourable duel of swords, but the next time we cross blades I will have the best of him.'

'Assuming he doesn't learn any new tricks along the way.'

'He won't,' sneered Lucius. Tarvitz was again struck by the sheer arrogance of the swordsman, feeling the balance of their friendship tipping further away from him. 'After all, Loken's a base born cur, just like the rest of the Luna Wolves.'

'Even the Warmaster?'

'Well, no, of course not,' said Lucius hurriedly, 'but the rest of them are little better than Russ's barbarians, uncouth and without the poise and perfection of our Legion. If anything, Murder proved our superiority to the Luna Wolves.'

'Our superiority?' said a voice. Tarvitz turned to see Captain Solomon Demeter standing behind them.

'Captain Demeter,' said Tarvitz, bowing his head. 'It is an honour to see you again. My congratulations on capturing the bridge of the Diasporex command ship.'

Solomon smiled and leaned in close. 'My thanks, but I'd keep such sentiments quiet if I were you. I don't think Lord Fulgrim was too pleased the Second stole his thunder, but that's by the by, I didn't come over here to hear how wonderful I am.'

'Then why did you?' asked Lucius.

Solomon ignored the insulting tone of Lucius's question and said, 'I was watching you, Captain Tarvitz, as Eidolon told the tale of Murder, and I get the feeling there might be more to it than we heard. I think I'd like to hear your version of what happened, if you take my meaning.'

'Lord Eidolon described our campaign as he perceived it,' said Tarvitz neutrally.

'Come on, Saul, you don't mind if I call you Saul do you?' asked Solomon. 'You can be honest with me.'

'I'd be honoured,' said Tarvitz honestly.

'You and I both know Eidolon's a blowhard,' said Solomon, and Tarvitz was taken aback by his fellow captain's bluntness.

'Lord Commander Eidolon,' said Lucius, 'is your superior officer. You would do well to remember that.'

'I know the chain of command,' snapped Solomon, 'and as ranking captain, I am your superior officer. You would do well to remember that.'

Lucius nodded hurriedly as Solomon continued. 'So what really happened on Murder?'

'Exactly what Lord Commander Eidolon said happened,' said Lucius.

'Is that true, Captain Tarvitz?' asked Solomon.

'You dare call me a liar?' demanded Lucius, his hand twitching towards his sword, a weapon forged in the Urals by the Terrawatt Clan during the Unification Wars.

Solomon saw the gesture and turned to face Lucius, squaring his shoulders as though in expectation of a fight. Where Captain Demeter was taller than Lucius, broader in the beam and undoubtedly stronger, Lucius was the more slender of the pair and was certainly faster. Tarvitz briefly wondered who would prevail in such a conflict, but was thankful that such a thing would never be tested.

'I remember the first time you came here, Lucius,' said Solomon. 'I thought you had the makings of a great officer and a fine warrior.'

Lucius beamed at being so remembered until Solomon said, 'But I see now that I was wrong. You're nothing but a lickspittle and a sycophant who has failed to grasp the difference between perfection and superiority.'

Tarvitz could see Lucius's face turn purple with anger, but Solomon wasn't done yet. 'Our Legion strives for purity of purpose by modelling itself on the Emperor, beloved by all, but we should not strive to be like unto him, for he is singular and above all others. Its true our doctrines sometimes make us seem aloof and haughty to others, but there is no purity in pride. Never forget that, Lucius. Lesson over.'

Lucius nodded curtly, and Tarvitz could see that it was taking all of his self-control not to let his temper get the better of him. The colour drained from his face and Lucius said, 'Thank you for the lesson, captain. I only hope I can give you a similar lesson someday.'

Solomon smiled as Lucius bowed curtly, and turned on his heel to join Eidolon.

Tarvitz tried to hide a smile.

'He won't forget this, you know,' he warned.

'Good,' said Solomon. 'Perhaps he might learn from it.'

'I wouldn't count on it,' said Tarvitz. 'He's not a fast learner.'

'But you are, eh?'

'I serve to the best of my abilities.'

Solomon laughed. 'You're a tactful one, Saul, I'll give you that. You know, I had you down as a career line officer when I first saw you, but now I think you may go on to do great things.'

'Thank you, Captain Demeter.'

'Solomon. And once this meeting is over, I think you and I should have a talk.'

The surface of Twenty-Eight Four was the most beautiful sight Solomon had ever seen. From orbit, the planet's surface appeared peaceful: the land plentiful, the oceans a clear blue and the atmosphere flecked with spiral patterns of clouds. Atmospheric readings showed the planet had a breathable atmosphere, untouched by the pollution that choked so many Imperial worlds, turning them into nightmarish visions of an industrial hell, and electromagnetic surveyors reported no signs of intelligent life.

Detailed surveys would need to wait for the planet's official compliance, but aside from what looked like the ruins of a long vanished civilisation, the planet appeared to be completely deserted.

In short, it was perfect.

Four Stormbirds had touched down high on the rocky cliffs at the mouth of a wide valley. A majestic range of mountains towered above them, their soaring peaks capped with snow despite the temperate climate. As the gritty dust of their landing dispersed, Fulgrim had led his warriors onto the surface of the next world to be brought into the fold of the Imperium.

Solomon stepped down from his Stormbird and looked around this new world with great hope as Julius and Marius disembarked from their aircraft. Lord Fulgrim marched alongside Julius, and Saul Tarvitz followed behind Marius. Astartes spread out to secure the perimeter of the position, but Solomon already knew that such measures weren't necessary. There was no enemy to fight here, no threat to overcome. This world was as good as theirs already.

As soon as his auto-senses confirmed that the atmosphere was breathable, he removed his helmet and took a deep breath, closing his eyes at the simple pleasure of breathing air that hadn't been through a multitude of filters and air scrubbers.

'You should keep your helmet on,' said Marius. 'We don't know for certain that the air is breathable.'

'According to my armour's sensors it's fine.'

'The Lord Fulgrim hasn't taken his helmet off yet.'

'So?'

'So you should wait until he does.'

'I don't need Lord Fulgrim to tell me the air's breathable, Marius,' said Solomon, 'and since when did you become such a worrier?'

Marius did not reply, but turned away as the rest of the warriors disembarked from the growling Stormbirds. Solomon shook his head and tucked his helmet into the crook of his arm, as he strode over the rocks to stand at the edge of the cliffs that overlooked the land far below.

Beyond the mountains, the landscape swept out before him in a vast swathe of green. Thick forests blanketed the lower slopes of the mountains, and a startlingly blue river flowed lazily along the bottom of the valley towards a far distant coast. Across the valley, he could see one of the tall ruins the orbital cartographer had indicated rising from a cluster of overgrown ferns. From here, it looked like one half of a great archway, but there was no sign of the structure it had once been part of.

From his vantage point, Solomon could see for hundreds of kilometres, the glitter of far-away lakes rippling on the horizon and wild beasts grazing on the plains far below. The wondrously fertile land of Twenty-Eight Four undulated into the mist shrouded distance and birds circled in the clear sky above.

How long had it been since they had seen a world as unspoiled as this?

Like many of the Emperor's Children, Solomon had grown to manhood on Chemos, a world that knew neither day nor night, thanks to a nebular dust cloud that isolated the planet from its distant suns. A perpetual grey twilight through which the stars never shone was all he had known, and his heart leapt to see such a beautiful, cloudless sky.

It was a shame that the coming of the Imperium would forever change this world, but such change was inevitable, for it was a matter of record that it had been claimed by the 28th Expedition in the name of the Emperor. Within days, Mechanicum pioneer teams and prospecting rigs would descend to the surface to begin the colonisation process, and exploitation of its natural resources. Solomon knew he was just a simple warrior, but as he looked into the eye of the world, he dearly wished there was some way for mankind to avoid such wanton destruction of the landscape.

With the light of science and reason they brought with them, could the Mechanicum not find some way to harness the resources of a planet without bringing the inevitable fallout of such industry: pollution, overcrowding and the rape of a world's beauty?

Such concerns were beyond Solomon and made no difference to him, for if this planet was as deserted as it appeared then they would move on soon, leaving a garrison of Lord Commander Fayle's Archite Palatines to protect the soon to be developed world of the Imperium.

'Solomon,' shouted Julius from the side of the Stormbirds.

He turned away from the stunning vista and made his way back to the assault craft.

'What's up?'

'Get your men ready,' said Julius. 'We're going down to take a look at that ruin.'

The interior of La Venice had changed markedly over the last two months, reflected Ostian as he nursed another glass of cheap wine. Where once the place had possessed a faded bohemian chic, it now resembled some monstrously overblown theatre from a more decadent age. Gold leaf covered the walls and every sculptor on board had been commissioned to produce dozens of pieces for the multitude of newly erected plinths… almost every sculptor.

Artists painted frenziedly, colouring mighty frescoes on the walls and ceiling, and an army of seamstresses worked on the creation of a mighty embroidered theatre curtain. A vast space above the stage had been left for a great work that Serena d'Angelus was supposedly working on, but Ostian had seen nothing of his friend for weeks to verify this fact.

The last time he had seen Serena had been over a month ago and she had looked terrible, a far cry from the fastidious woman he had, if he was honest, begun to fall a little in love with. They had exchanged only a few words of greeting, before Serena had hurriedly and clumsily excused herself.

'I have to go and see her,' he said to himself, as though the act of saying the words aloud would make their realisation more likely.

A troupe of dancers and singers cavorted on the stage to a cacophonous racket that Ostian hoped wasn't supposed to be music. Coraline Aseneca, the beautiful remembrancer and actress who had denied him the chance to visit the surface of Laeran, stood centre stage. The true architect of that misfortune strutted like a martinet before the stage, screaming and yelling at the dancers and choral singers. Bequa Kynska's blue hair waved around her head like alien seaweed, and her dress flailed as she raged at the incompetence of those around her.

To Ostian's eye, the effect of what was being done to La Venice was grotesque, the excess of the design rendering the overall aesthetic into a confused jumble of sensations. At least the bar area was still intact, the crazed interior designers not yet having the courage to try and shift several hundred surly remembrancers from their perches for fear of inciting a full scale riot.

A great many of those remembrancers gathered around the huge figure of an Astartes named Lucius. The pale-faced warrior regaled his audience with tales of a planet he called Murder, telling improbable tales of the Warmaster and Sanguinius, and of his own mighty deeds. Ostian thought it rather wretched that a mighty warrior such as an Astartes should seek so obviously to impress the likes of those that filled La Venice, but he kept such thoughts to himself.

In the past, La Venice had served as a place of relaxation, but the constant hammering, blaring ''music'' and caterwauling from the stage had transformed it into a place where people simply came to complain and curse the fates that had seen them excluded from the process of its renovation.

'You notice it's all the folks that went down to Laeran that got to work on this place?' said a voice at his elbow. The speaker was a bad poet by the name of Leopold Cadmus. Ostian had spoken to him on a few occasions, but he had, thankfully, managed to avoid reading any of his poetry.

'I had, yes,' said Ostian as a shouting team of labourers tried to guide a lifter servitor in the placement of a libidinous statue of a naked cherub.

'Bloody disgrace is what it is,' said Leopold.

'That it is,' agreed Ostian, though he wondered what part someone like Leopold had expected to play in the work going on.

'I'd have thought someone like you would have been a definite to do something,' said Leopold, and Ostian couldn't miss the jealous edge to his statement.

He shook his head and said, 'I'd have thought so too, but looking at what they're doing to the place, I think I'm well out of it.'

'What do you mean?' slurred Leopold and Ostian realised the man was drank.

'Well I mean, look at it,' he said, pointing towards the paintings along the nearest wall. 'The colours look as though a blind man has chosen them, and as for their subject matter, well, I'd expect some nudes in a theatre, but most of these are virtually pornographic.'

'I know,' smiled Leopold. 'It's wonderful isn't it?'

Ostian ignored the remark and said, 'Listen to that bloody music. I loved Bequa Kynska's work when I first heard it, but this is like a cat hung up by its tail outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws. As for the sculptures, I don't know where to start? They're crude, obscene and there's not one of them I'd consider finished.'

'Well, you are the expert,' said Leopold.

'Yes,' said Ostian, shivering as he remembered hearing that same sentiment recently.

It had been an ordinary day, the high-pitched tapping of his hammer and chisel filling the studio as he sought to render his vision into the stone. The statue was slowly coming to life, the armoured body of the warrior taking shape within the marble as Ostian had chipped away all that wasn't part of the form he had seen in his mind. His silver hands roamed the marble, the metriculators within his fingertips reading the stone to unlock the secret fault lines and stress points hidden within its mass.

Each stroke of the hammer was finely judged, delivered with an instinctive feel for the shape he was creating and a love and respect for the marble he worked with. From a slow beginning, where anger had been motivating his hammer blows, a new calmness and respect for his vision had softened his attacks on the marble, and he found the serenity that came with the satisfaction of seeing something beautiful emerge.

As he stepped back from the marble, he became aware of a presence within his chaotic studio. He turned to see a giant warrior in purple and gold plate armour, carrying a great, golden-bladed halberd. His armour was ornate, much more so than was common for an Astartes. The warrior's helm was winged and the frontal visor had been fashioned to resemble the countenance of a great bird of prey.

Ostian pulled down his dust-mask as another five identical warriors entered his shuttered studio, followed by a lifter servitor bearing a wide pallet upon which were three irregularly shaped objects draped in white cloth. Ostian immediately recognised the warriors as belonging to the Phoenix Guard, the elite praetorians of…

Fulgrim entered his studio and Ostian was stunned rigid at the towering presence of the primarch. The master of the Emperor's Children wore a simple robe of deepest red, woven with subtle purple and silver threads. His pale features were powdered, his eyes rimmed with copper ink and his silver hair was pulled back in an elaborate pattern of plaits.

Ostian had dropped to his knees and bowed his head. To be in such close proximity to a being of perfect beauty was like nothing Ostian had ever experienced. Yes, he had seen the Primarch of the Emperor's Children before, but to be in a confined space and have his dark eyes fixed upon him was akin to being rendered dumb and idiotic in the space of a moment.

'My lord, I…' began Ostian.

'Please stand, Master Delafour,' said Fulgrim, walking towards him. Ostian could smell the pungent aroma of the scented oils that had been rubbed into his skin. 'Genius such as yours need never kneel before me.'

Ostian slowly rose to his feet and tried to raise his head to look the primarch in the eye, but found his body unwilling to obey.

'You may look upon me,' said Fulgrim. Ostian suddenly felt as though his muscles were under the control of the primarch, and his head came up without any apparent command from his brain. Fulgrim's voice was like music, each syllable pronounced with perfect pitch and tone as though no other sound could have filled the air so appropriately.

'I see your work progresses,' said Fulgrim, walking around the shorn block of marble and admiring his work. 'I look forward to its completion. Tell me, will it be a representation of any particular warrior?'

Ostian nodded, trying and failing to find the right words to express his thoughts to this magnificent being.

'Who?' asked Fulgrim.

'It is to be the Emperor, beloved of all,' said Ostian.

'The Emperor,' said Fulgrim, 'a fine subject.'

'I thought it fitting,' said Ostian, 'given the perfection of the marble.'

Fulgrim nodded as he circled the statue with his eyes closed, running his hands over the marble much as Ostian had done only moments before. 'You have a rare gift, Master Delafour. You bring such life to the stone. Would that I could do similar.'

'I am told that you have a great gift for sculpture, my lord.'

Fulgrim smiled and shook his head fractionally. 'I can craft pleasing shapes, yes, but to bring it to life… that is something that frustrates me and with which I would ask your help.'

'My help?' gasped Ostian. 'I don't understand.'

Fulgrim waved his hand towards the lifter servitor, and one of the Phoenix Guard pulled back the cloths covering the objects on the pallet to reveal three statues carved in pale marble.

Fulgrim took him by the shoulder and guided him towards the three statues. All were of armoured warriors, and, by the markings carved on their shoulder guards, each was a company captain.

'I set out to sculpt the likeness of each of my captains,' explained Fulgrim, 'but as I finished the Captain of the Third, I began to feel that something was wrong, as though some essential truth was missing.'

Ostian looked at the sculptures, seeing the clean lines and exquisite detailing, even down to the perfectly captured expressions of the three captains. Every line of carving was immaculate and not a single trace of the sculptor's chisel was left upon the marble, as though each image had been pressed from a mould.

Even as he appreciated the perfection of the statues, Ostian felt no passion stirring within him as he would expect to feel from great art. Yes, the sculptures were perfect, but therein lay their flaw, for something of such technical splendour had nothing of the creator in it, no humanity that spoke to the viewer and allowed him a rare glimpse inside the artist's soul.

'They are wonderful,' he said at last.

'Do not lie to me, remembrancer,' said Fulgrim, and Ostian heard a curtness in the words that caused him to look up into the primarch's icy features. Fulgrim stared down at Ostian, and the expression the sculptor saw there chilled him to the bone.

'What would you have me say my lord?' he asked. 'They are perfect.'

'I would have the truth,' said Fulgrim. 'Truth, like surgery, may hurt, but it cures.'

Ostian struggled to think of words that would not offend the primarch, for to do so seemed like the basest behaviour imaginable. Who could conceive of giving insult to someone of such beauty?

Seeing Ostian's dilemma, Fulgrim placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder and said, 'A good friend who points out mistakes and imperfections, and rebukes evil is to be respected as if he reveals a secret of hidden treasure. I give you leave to speak freely.'

The primarch's words were spoken softly but they acted like a key to a locked room within Ostian, opening the door to thoughts that he would not have dared give voice to before.

'It's as if… they are too perfect,' he said, 'as though they have been carved with the head rather than the heart.'

'Can it be possible for a thing be too perfect?' asked Fulgrim. 'Surely everything that is beautiful and noble is the product of reason and calculation.'

'Great art isn't about reason, it's about what comes from the heart,' said Ostian. 'You can work with all the technical perfection in the galaxy, but if there's no passion, then it is wasted effort.'

'There is such a thing as perfection,' snapped Fulgrim, 'and our purpose for living is to find that perfection and show it forth. Everything that limits us we have to put aside.'

Ostian shook his head, too caught up in his words to notice the primarch's growing anger. 'No, my lord, for the artist who aims at perfection in everything achieves it in nothing. It is the essence of being human that one does not seek perfection.'

'And what of your own work?' asked Fulgrim. 'Do you not seek perfection in it?'

'People throw away what they could have by insisting on perfection, which they cannot have, and looking for it where they will never find it,' replied Ostian. 'Were I to await perfection, my work would never be finished.'

'Well, you are the expert,' growled Fulgrim. Ostian suddenly, horribly, became aware of the primarch's displeasure. Fulgrim's eyes were like gleaming black pearls, the veins on his cheeks pulsing with suppressed anger, and Ostian was filled with terror at the depths of yearning he saw within them.

He saw past the primarch's desire to render beauty in marble or painting to the obsessive compulsion to achieve the impossibility of perfection, a desire that would allow nothing to stand in its way. Too late, Ostian saw that despite asking for honesty, Fulgrim had not wanted honesty, he had wanted validation of his work and honeyed lies to prop up his towering ego.

'My lord…' he whispered.

'It is of no matter,' said Fulgrim acidly. 'I see that I was right to have spoken to you. I shall never lay chisel to marble again, for I am clearly wasting my time.'

'No, my lord, that's not what—'

Fulgrim raised a hand to cut him off and said, 'I thank you for your time, Master Delafour, and I will leave you to continue your imperfect work.'

Surrounded by his Phoenix Guard, the Primarch of the Emperor's Children had left his studio, leaving Ostian trembling with the horror of seeing inside Fulgrim's head.

Ostian shook off the memory of Fulgrim's visit to his studio as he realised that he was being spoken to. He looked up and saw the pale-skinned Astartes looking down at him.

'I am Lucius,' said the warrior.

Ostian nodded and drained his glass. 'I know who you are.'

Lucius smiled, pleased at the recognition. 'I'm told that you are a friend of Serena d'Angelus. Is that true?'

'I suppose so,' said Ostian.

'Then might you direct me to her studio?' asked Lucius.

'Why?'

'I wish her to paint me, of course,' smiled Lucius.

THIRTEEN New Model Maiden World Mama Juana

Dressed only in his surgical robes, Apothecary Fabius loomed over the operating slab where his subject lay and nodded to the apothecarion servitors. They lifted the chirurgeon device so that it slotted neatly into the interface unit mounted at his waist, and plugged in the connectors that meshed his own senses with the workings of the chirurgeon.

In effect, the device would give him multiple, independent arms that would all work in concert with his own thoughts, responding to his needs far quicker and more skilfully than any orderly or nurse could ever hope to. In any case, the surgery he was about to perform was best kept from the eyes of those who might baulk at what he must do for it to succeed.

'Are you comfortable, my lord?' asked Fabius.

'Never mind about my comfort, damn you,' snapped Eidolon, clearly ill at ease and feeling vulnerable on the surgical table. The lord commander was stripped out of his armour and fatigues, lying naked upon the cold metal slab as he prepared to go under the Apothecary's knife.

Hissing, gurgling machines surrounded him, and the flesh of his neck and throat was covered in coun-terseptic gel. A cold blue fluorescence bathed his skin in a dead light, and the glass jars around the apothe-carion were filled with all manner of abominable, fleshy growths, the purpose of which defied understanding.

'Very well,' nodded Fabius. 'I take it you have spoken to the captains under your command regarding their volunteering for augmentative surgery?'

'I have,' confirmed Eidolon. 'I expect most of them to report to you within the next few weeks.'

'Excellent,' hissed Fabius. 'I have such things to offer them.'

'Never mind about them,' said Eidolon, the powerful soporifics rendering his voice quiet and a little slurred. Fabius checked the machine monitoring the speed of the lord commander's metabolism and adjusted the flow of drugs into his system, mixing the composition with some chemicals of his own devising.

Eidolon's eyes darted nervously over to the spiking lines on the monitor's screen, and Fabius could see a light sheen of sweat on his subject's brow.

'I am sensing a certain reluctance on your part to relax, my lord,' said Fabius, the cold light gleaming from the multiple scalpel blades he held poised above Eidolon.

Eidolon's face twisted in anger. 'Are you surprised, Apothecary? You are about to cut my throat open and implant an organ the purpose of which you still haven't told me.'

'It is a modified tracheal implant that will bond with your vocal chords and should allow you to produce a nerve paralysing shriek similar to that employed by certain warrior breeds of the Laer.'

'You are implanting me with xenos organs?' asked Eidolon, horrified.

'Not as such,' said Fabius with a toothy grin, 'though there are strands taken from the alien genome I chose to mesh with Astartes gene-seed mutated under controlled conditions. Essentially, I will be adding a new organ to your makeup, one that you will be able to trigger at will in battle.'

'No!' cried Eidolon. 'I do not wish this, not if it requires xenos filth to be implanted in me.'

Fabius shook his head. 'I am afraid it is too late to back out now, my lord. Fulgrim has authorised my work and you demanded that I work on you upon your return. What was it you wanted? Oh, yes, to be my greatest success, faster, stronger and more deadly than ever before.'

'Not like this, Apothecary!' shouted Eidolon. 'Cease what you are doing now!'

'I can't do that, Eidolon,' said Fabius, matter-of-factly. 'The soporifics are rendering you immobile and the samples I am to implant will not survive if they are not grafted to a host body. Why struggle? You'll feel so much better when I'm finished.'

'I will kill you!' snapped Eidolon. Fabius smiled as he saw the lord commander attempt to free himself. Such efforts were wasted, for the drugs being pumped around his system, and the metal restraints, held him fast to the table.

'No, Eidolon,' said Fabius. 'You won't kill me, for I will deliver on my promise to you. You will be more deadly than ever before. You should also remember that a warrior's life is a dangerous life, and that you will be under my knife many more times before this crusade reaches its climax, so do you really want to threaten me? Let the drugs take you, and when you wake you will be the model for how our beloved Legion is to take the next evolutionary leap forward!' Fabius smiled and the scalpels descended.

Even before they reached the ruin on the other side of the valley, Solomon could tell that it was not a ruin after all, its structure intact and showing no signs of having been part of a larger building. However, having no better idea of what the unusual structure was, Solomon decided that ''ruin'' was as good a word for it as any.

Shaped like the upper half of a bow stave, the curving structure reached to around twelve metres in height, its base set into an oval platform formed from the same smooth, porcelain-like substance as the ruin itself. The arch it described was graceful and alien, though it displayed none of the disturbingly excessive qualities of the Laer architecture.

In fact, thought Solomon, it was beautiful in its own way.

Once again, the Astartes spread out to surround their leaders as they approached the alien ruin. Solomon felt a curious apprehension at the sight of the structure, for it did not look like a building that had been abandoned for millennia.

For one thing, its surface was unblemished by so much as a single stain, moss or weathering, and the smooth stones that dotted its surface gleamed as though freshly polished.

'What is it?' asked Marius.

'I don't know,' replied Solomon, 'a marker perhaps?'

'A marker for what?'

'A boundary, maybe?' suggested Saul Tarvitz to general nods. 'But between whom?'

Solomon turned to see what Fulgrim made of it, and was shocked to see tears running down his primarch's face. Julius stood next to the primarch, his own face also streaked with tears. He looked around to see what his fellow captain's made of this, seeing that they were similarly stunned to see such a sight.

'My lord?' said Solomon. 'Is… is something the matter?'

Fulgrim shook his head and said, 'No, my son. Do not be alarmed, for I do not weep out of pain or anguish, but for beauty.'

'For beauty?'

'Yes, for beauty,' said Fulgrim, turning and extending his arms to encompass the wondrous landscape around them. 'This world is incomparable to anything we have thus far seen in our travels, is it not? Where else have we seen marvels laid out before us with such perfection? Nothing of this world is wanting and, were such things possible, I would believe that such a place could not come about by accident.'

Solomon followed his primarch's gaze, seeing the same natural marvels laid out before him, but unable to feel as moved as his commander. Julius nodded in time with Fulgrim's words, but of the four captains present, he alone appeared to have been affected in the same manner as the primarch.

Perhaps Marius had been correct to insist on the wearing of helmets, for surely there must be some undetected agent within the planet's atmosphere that had affected them so. But any agent capable of affecting a primarch would have long since affected him.

'My lord, perhaps we should return to the Pride of the Emperor,' he suggested.

'In time,' nodded Fulgrim. 'I wish to remain a little longer, for we shall not return here. We will enter the planet in our records and move on, leaving it untouched, for to despoil a place such as this would be a crime.'

'My lord,' said Solomon. 'Move on?'

'Indeed, my son,' smiled Fulgrim. 'We shall take our leave of this place and never return.'

'But you have already designated this world as Twenty-Eight Four,' Solomon pointed out. 'It is a world of the Emperor and is subject to Imperial laws given to us by him to uphold without equivocation. To abandon it without leaving armed forces to impose compliance and defend it against enemies is contrary to our mission amongst the stars.'

Fulgrim rounded on Solomon and said, 'I know our mission, Captain Demeter. You should not presume that I do not.'

'No, my lord, but the fact remains that to leave this world unoccupied would be contrary to the word of the Emperor.'

'And you have spoken with the Emperor on this?' snapped Fulgrim, and Solomon felt his objections withering under the intensity of the primarch's gaze. 'You claim to know his will better than one of his sons? I stood with the Emperor and Horus on the surface of Altaneum as its inhabitants destroyed the planet's ice caps and flooded their world beneath the oceans to destroy natural beauty that had taken billions of years to form, rather than allow us to take it from them. The Emperor told me that we must not make such mistakes again, for the galaxy will be worthless if we win it as a wasteland.'

'The Lord Fulgrim is correct,' said Julius. 'We should leave this place.'

Solomon felt his resolve harden in the face of Julius's support of the primarch, for he heard the tone of the sycophant in his friend's words.

'I agree with Captain Demeter,' added Saul Tarvitz, and Solomon had never been so glad to hear another's voice. 'A planet's beauty should have no bearing on whether or not we render it compliant.'

'Whether you agree or not is irrelevant,' growled Marius. 'Lord Fulgrim has spoken and we must obey his will. That is our chain of command.'

Julius nodded, but Solomon couldn't believe how easily they were going along with what was tantamount to disobeying the word of the Emperor.

Over the course of the next two weeks, the 28th Expedition came upon another five worlds of a similar nature to Twenty-Eight Four, but each time, the fleet moved on without claiming it in the name of the Emperor. Solomon Demeter's frustration grew daily at the expedition's apparent unwillingness to enforce the Emperor's will upon these empty worlds, and no one other than he and Saul Tarvitz appeared to find it unusual to find such paradisiacal worlds unoccupied.

Indeed, the longer the expedition spent in the Perdus Region, the greater Solomon's conviction became that these worlds had not been abandoned but were, in fact awaiting their inhabitants. He had no facts upon which to base this supposition, save a feeling that the worlds they had seen thus far were too perfect, as though they had been deliberately fashioned rather than allowed to develop on a natural path.

He spoke less and less to Julius over the course of their travels through the Perdus Region, the Captain of the First spending much of his time either in the archive chambers or with the primarch. Marius appeared to have earned back his favour in the eyes of Fulgrim, for more and more, it was the warriors of the First and Third who accompanied him to the surface of each newly discovered world.

Saul Tarvitz had become a newfound ally, and Solomon had spent a great deal of time in the training halls with him. The man believed himself to be a line officer through and through, but Solomon could see the seed of greatness within him, even if he could not. Throughout their training sessions, he would encourage him to see his potential and stoke the fires of his ambition. Saul Tarvitz could be a great leader of men, given the chance, but Eidolon was his lord commander, and it was for him to say whether Tarvitz would advance beyond his current station. Solomon had despatched numerous communications to Eidolon on Tarvitz's behalf, but thus far the lord commander had replied to none of his messages.

After the fourth world had been passed by without an Imperial presence despatched or a planetary governor put in place, Solomon had sought out Lord Commander Vespasian. They had met in the Gallery of Swords, a mighty processional hallway where marble likenesses of long dead heroes of the Legion looked down upon their successors.

The Gallery formed part of the central spine of the Andronius, a strike cruiser that Fulgrim favoured as his second flagship, and was a place where a warrior could find solitude and inspiration from the presence of the dead heroes of his Legion.

Vespasian stood before the graven image of Lord Commander Illios, a warrior who had fought with Fulgrim against rival tribes of Chemos, and who helped in the transformation of their home from a hellish world of death and misery to one of culture and learning.

The two warriors clasped hands, and Solomon said, 'It is good to see a friendly face.'

Vespasian nodded and said, 'You've been making waves, my friend.'

'I've been honest,' countered Solomon.

'Not always the best way these days,' said Vespasian.

'What do you mean?'

'You know what I mean,' said Vespasian, 'so let us not fence with words, but simply share the truth, eh?'

'Suits me,' said Solomon. 'I never did have much time for fancy words.'

'Then I will speak plainly and believe that you are a warrior I can trust, for I fear that something terrible has happened to our Legion. It has become decadent and arrogant.'

Solomon nodded and said, 'I agree. There's a new superiority come over the Legion. It's a word I've heard from too many throats not to notice. I've already heard some of what happened on Murder from Saul Tarvitz, and if what he tells me is even half true, then we are already earning enmity among the other Legions for our high handedness.'

'Do you have any idea what might have begun this?'

Solomon shrugged. 'I'm not sure, but it was after the Laeran campaign that things changed.'

'Yes,' agreed Vespasian, turning and walking along the length of the gallery and passing a grand staircase that led to one of the ship's apothecarions. 'I believe that to be the case, though I do not know what could have engendered such a dramatic transformation.'

'I've heard a lot of talk about that temple Lord Fulgrim captured,' said Solomon. 'Perhaps there was something inside that affected those who entered, some sickness or weapon that altered their minds. What if the Laer had some unknown power in that temple, some collective corruption in their consciousness that was passed to the Legion?'

'That sounds farfetched to me, Solomon.'

'Maybe it is and maybe it isn't, but have you seen the renovations Lord Fulgrim has ordered to be carried out in La Venice.'

'No.'

'Well, I never saw the inside of the Laer temple, but from what I've heard, it sounds as though La Venice is being turned into a replica of it.'

'Why would Lord Fulgrim replicate an alien temple on board the Pride of the Emperor.'

'Why don't you ask him?' said Solomon. 'You are a lord commander, it is your right to speak to Fulgrim.'

'I will indeed, Solomon, though I still don't understand what relevance the Laer temple has.'

'Perhaps that it's a temple is what's relevant.'

Vespasian looked sceptical. 'Are you suggesting that the power of their gods somehow affected our warriors? I won't suffer any talk of unclean spirits in this place of heroes.'

'No,' said Solomon hurriedly, 'not gods as such, but we know that there are foul things that can pour through the gates of the empyrean from the warp, do we not? Perhaps the temple was a place where such things could more easily pass between worlds. 'What if the power that filled the Laer came with us when we left?'

The two warriors stared at one another for long seconds before Vespasian said, 'If you are right then what can we do about it?'

'I don't know,' admitted Solomon. 'You should talk to Lord Fulgrim.'

'I will try to,' replied Vespasian. 'What will you do?'

Solomon chuckled and said, 'Stand firm and act with honour in all things'

'That isn't much of a plan'

'It's all I have,' said Solomon.

Serena d'Angelus watched with amazement as the work on La Venice continued with wondrous speed and boundless creativity. Colours leapt off the walls, and music that felt as though it knew her very heart filled the once drab and seedy theatre. Artists of all description had worked on the decor, and the splendour all but took her breath away.

To be surrounded by such an embarrassment of talent made her realise just how much she still had to work on her own paintings, and how worthless her pathetic skills were. The mighty portraits of the Lord Fulgrim and Lucius still sat mockingly unfinished in her studio, both canvases torturing her with their incompleteness. To have beings of such wondrous, unimaginable beauty sitting before her, and yet be unable to blend the precise tones she needed had driven her to fresh heights of self-loathing and mutilation. The flesh of her arms and legs was scarred with cuts from a sharpened palette knife, her blood mixing with her paints to enrich the colours.

But it hadn't been enough.

Each droplet of blood held its vibrancy for only a short time, and Serena's mind had filled with dark terrors of what would befall her if she didn't finish her work or if it was ridiculed for being found wanting or somehow lacking in sensation.

She closed her eyes as she tried to picture the light and colour that had filled the temple on the floating atoll, but the memory flitted beyond her, elusive and forever out of sight. Her blood had enhanced the colours of her paints, and she had turned to ever more esoteric fluids and substances of her own flesh to improve it yet further.

Her tears rendered her whites luminous, her blood, the reds to fire, while her waste gave her shades of deep darkness she had not previously imagined possible. Each colour had awakened new sensations and passions she had, until now, been unaware of. That such things would have repulsed her only a few months previously never entered her head, for her all-consuming passion was in reaching the next high, the next level of sensation, for as each one was experienced it was soon forgotten like an ephemeral dream.

Weeping with frustration, Serena had smashed yet another painting, the crack of timber, the tear of the canvas and the pain of the jarring impact giving her a moment's pleasure, but even that had faded within seconds.

She had nothing more to give, her flesh was spent and had exhausted the limit of sensation it could give, but even as the realisation came to her, so too did the solution.

Serena made her way through La Venice towards the bar area, which, though it was late, was still home to a great many remembrancers without the wit to retire for the night. She recognised a few souls, but avoided them, seeking out one who would be least likely to object to her attentions.

Serena ran a hand through her long hair, unkempt compared to its normal shine, but she had at least brushed it and tied it back in an effort to look halfway presentable. Her eyes scanned the patrons of the bar, smiling as she saw Leopold Cadmus sitting alone in a booth nursing a bottle of dark spirit.

She made her way through the bar towards his table and slid into the booth next to him. He looked up suspiciously, but brightened up as he saw a woman joining him. Serena had worn her most revealing dress and a low pendant that drew the eye to her breasts. Leopold did not disappoint her, his red-rimmed eyes immediately darting to her cleavage.

'Hello, Leopold,' she said. 'My name's Serena d'Angelus.'

'I know,' said Leopold. 'You're Delafour's friend.'

'That's right,' she said brightly, 'but let's not talk about him. Let's talk about you.'

'Me?' he asked. 'Why?'

'Because I've read some of your poetry,' she said.

'Oh,' said Leopold, suddenly crestfallen. 'Well, if you've come to be a critic, save your breath. I don't have the energy for another bloody review.'

'I'm not a critic,' she said, placing her hand over his. 'I liked it.'

'Really?'

'Really.'

His eyes lit up and his expression changed from that of a mean-spirited drunk to one of pathetic desperation, where suspicion is suddenly ousted at the faint hope of praise.

'I'd like you to read some to me,' she said.

He took a drink from the bottle and said, 'I don't have any of my books with me, but—'

'That's all right,' interrupted Serena. 'I have one in my studio.'

'You like to work in a mess,' said Leopold, wrinkling his nose at the aroma that filled her studio. 'How do you find anything?'

He ambled around the edges of her workspace, warily stepping over discarded pots of paint and smashed pieces of timber and canvas. He examined the few pictures that still hung on the wall with a critical eye, though she could tell that the images there meant nothing to him.

'I imagine all artistic types work in such disarray,' said Serena. 'Don't you?'

'Me? No,' replied Leopold, 'I work in a small cubicle with a data-slate and a stylus that only works half the time. Only the important remembrancers get to work in studios.'

She heard the bitterness in his voice and it thrilled her.

The blood was singing in her skull and she had to fight to control her breathing. She poured a deep red liquid into a pair of glasses from a bottle she had obtained from a sutler on the lower decks of the ship for just this occasion.

'I suppose I am lucky,' she said, picking her way through the detritus of her work. 'Although I know I really should do something about this mess. I hadn't known I was going to have company tonight, but when I saw you in La Fenice, I knew I just had to talk to you.'

He smiled at the flattery and took the offered glass, looking inquisitively at the viscous liquid within it.

'I… I hadn't expected anyone to want to hear my work,' he said. 'I was only able to come out to the 28th Expedition when the shuttle carrying the poets selected from the Merican Hive crashed.'

'Don't be foolish,' said Serena, raising her glass. 'A toast.'

'What are we drinking to?'

'To a fortuitous crash,' smiled Serena. 'Without which we might never have met.'

Leopold nodded and took a cautious mouthful of his drink, smiling in return as he found the taste to his liking. 'What is this?' he asked.

'It's called Mama Juana,' explained Serena. 'It's a mix of rum, red wine and honey combined with the soaked bark of the Eurycoma tree.'

'Exotic,' said Leopold.

'They say it's a powerful aphrodisiac,' she purred, draining her glass in one long swallow and hurling it across the room. He jumped as the glass shattered, leaving a red stain on the wall as the dregs of the liquid dribbled down.

Emboldened by the directness of her desire, Leopold drained his own glass and dropped it to the floor with the nervous laugh of one who cannot believe his luck.

Serena leaned forwards and wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him in for a passionate kiss. He was stiff in her arms for a moment, startled by the sudden move, but slowly relaxed into the kiss. He put his hands on her hips as she eased herself into the curve of his body.

They stood locked together for as long as she could bear it, before she dragged him to the floor, where she tore at his clothes in a frenzy, scattering paint and overturning her easels. The sensation of Leopold's hands on her body was repulsive, but even that made her want to cry with pleasure.

At one point he broke the kiss, blood dripping from his lip where she had bitten it, a look of bemused concern plastered across his idiot features. She pulled him tight to her body and rolled on top of him as they coupled like wild animals in the wreckage of her studio.

At last his eyes widened and his hips spasmed. She reached down to the floor to snatch up her sharpened palette knife.

'What…?' was all he managed before she slashed the blade across his throat. His blood sprayed in an arcing jet as he thrashed in his death throes.

Sticky red fluid covered her as Leopold convulsed, and this time she laughed at the wash of sensation that flooded her body He gurgled beneath her as his lifeblood pumped out of him and his hands clawed at her in desperation. Blood pooled in a vast lake beneath Leopold, and Serena stabbed her knife into his neck again and again. His struggles grew weaker and weaker, while her pleasure heightened to an explosive climax.

Serena remained on top of Leopold's body until his convulsions ceased and his flailing arms fell to the floor. She rolled away, her flesh heaving and her heart thudding against the inside of her chest in a wild drumbeat.

She heard a last rattle of breath escape his ruined throat, and smiled to herself as she smelled his bowels and bladder voiding in death. Serena lay still for some moments, savouring the sensation of the kill, and taking pleasure in the thunder of her blood and the warmth within her.

What wonders might she work upon the canvas with such materials?

On the thirtieth day after the 28th Expedition's arrival in the Perdus Region, a great many of the questions that had arisen following the discovery of the uninhabited paradise worlds were finally answered. Travelling in the vanguard of the expedition, the Proudheart was the first to pick up signs of the intruders.

Word flashed back to the fleet, and within moments, every ship was at battle readiness, gun ports unmasked and torpedoes loaded into their tubes. The alien vessel made no overtly hostile moves, and the Pride of the Emperor surged forward to join the Proudheart over the objections of Captain Lemuel Aizel.

At last the flagship of the Emperor's Children detected the presence of the enemy vessel, though its surveyor officers fought to keep the signal constant, for it kept fading in and out of the display.

Repeated hails were met with walls of static, though the fleet's astropaths reported a curious deadening of their warp vision, similar to that which had long shielded the region from the sight of Navigators and telepaths.

At last the forward elements of the fleet came into visual range of the lone vessel and it appeared on screen as a faint, slightly blurred outline.

Its true size was impossible to determine with any accuracy, but ship logisters estimated its length at between nine and fourteen kilometres. A vast triangular slice curved above the hull like a billowing sail, and even as the image resolved in the centre of the viewing bay, a voice sounded over the ship's vox system, crystal clear and speaking in perfect Imperial Gothic.

'My name is Eldrad Ulthran,' said the voice. 'In the name of Craftworld Ulthwe, I bid you welcome.'

FOURTEEN To Tarsus The Nature of Genius Warning

Solomon kept a close eye on the assault warriors of the eldar delegation, their movements fluidly lethal in a way his could never be. A curving sword was sheathed across each of their backs, and they all carried delicate pistols holstered at their waists. Pale helmets of fearsome warrior aspects and scarlet plumes obscured their faces, and their smooth, segmented armour was formed of the same substance as the ruin they had seen on Twenty-Eight Four.

'They don't look much,' whispered Marius. 'A strong wind would break them in two.'

'Don't underestimate them,' warned Solomon. 'They are deadly warriors and their weapons are lethal.'

Marius looked unconvinced, but nodded in response to his fellow captain's wisdom for Solomon had faced the warriors of the eldar before.

He remembered fighting through the wind-lashed forests of Tza-Chao, where the Luna Wolves and the Emperor's Children had battled side by side against a piratical force of eldar reavers. What had started as a fairly straight up and down fight had degenerated into a bloody brawl in the depths of a storm, with weapons useless and brute strength and ferocity the only tools of destruction. He remembered the shrieking horror of blades that had charged from the trees with howls that chilled the blood, and he remembered watching as one Luna Wolf had garrotted a nameless eldar champion with a length of dirty, rusted wire in the rain.

Solomon remembered the walking monstrosities, taller than a Dreadnought, which had stalked the dark forest, like giants of legend, crushing Astartes in their mighty fists and destroying armoured vehicles with shoulder mounted cannons of unimaginable power.

No, thought Solomon, the eldar were not to be underestimated.

The encounter with the craftworld had come as a great surprise to the 28th Expedition, and had been greeted with guarded hostility until it became clear that the eldar had no apparent aggressive intent. Fulgrim himself had spoken to this Eldrad Ulthran, an individual who claimed to guide the craftworld, though he had fallen short of claiming to be its leader.

Thus began an elaborate ballet of proposal and counterproposal, with neither side willing to allow the other upon its ships. The calls for war were strident, with Solomon's loudest of all as he, Julius, Marius, Vespasian and Eidolon gathered in the primarch's staterooms to hear why they had not yet attacked the eldar, as their mandate of conquest demanded.

Fulgrim's quarters were a riot of paintings and sculpture, and Solomon had been quietly disconcerted to see a statue bearing his own features at the far end of the stateroom, standing next to ones of Julius and Marius.

'They are aliens!' he had said. 'What more reason do we need to make war upon them?'

'You heard what Lord Fulgrim said, Solomon,' said Julius. 'There is much we can learn from the eldar.'

'I know you don't believe that, Julius. I fought alongside you on Tza-Chao and you know exactly what they're capable of.'

'Enough!' Fulgrim had shouted. 'I have made my decision. I do not believe the eldar come with hostile intent, for they are but one vessel and we are many. They offer us friendship and I will honour that friendship as honest, unless proven otherwise.'

'When a sinister person means to be your enemy, they always start by trying to become your friend,' said Solomon. 'This is a sham and they mean us ill, I know it.'

'My son,' said Fulgrim, taking him by the arm, 'there is no man, however wise, who has not at some time in his youth said or done things that are so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly expunge them from his memory if he could. In years to come, I will not be haunted by the guilt of all the good I didn't do.'

The discussion, such as it was, had ended, and all but Eidolon and Julius had been dismissed to return to their companies. Further communication with the eldar had yielded no further unlocking of the impasse to a conference, until Eldrad Ulthran had offered a meeting on a world named Tarsus.

Such a solution had been deemed acceptable, and the ships of the 28th Expedition had followed the craftworld on a stately voyage through the Perdus Region towards yet another verdant world of beauty that was as empty of life as all the others had been before it. Co-ordinates had been transmitted to the Pride of the Emperor, and after yet more wrangling, the size of both group's deputations were agreed upon.

A Thunderhawk had brought them to the surface of Tarsus as the sun dropped towards the horizon. They had landed atop a rounded hillock, on the edge of a large forest, amid the ruins of what must at one time have been a stately dwelling of some description. As the clouds of their landing had dissipated, Solomon saw the eldar were already waiting for them, though the expedition fleet had detected no shuttles or landers detaching from the craftworld.

Solomon felt nothing but apprehension as he stared down at the eldar deputation. Lord Commanders Vespasian and Eidolon flanked Fulgrim, with Solomon, Julius, Marius, Saul Tarvkz and Lucius bringing up the rear.

The eldar gathered around an arched structure identical to the one they had seen on Twenty-Eight Four. A group of warriors in bone-coloured armour and high crests stood around the arch, each of them carrying a pair of long-bladed swords across their backs. Behind them, tall figures in dark plate stood sentinel with long barrelled weapons, while a pair of hovering tanks with jutting prows circled the perimeter. The air shimmered beneath the gracefully skimming vehicles and clouds of dust were kicked up by the mechanism that kept them in the air.

At the centre of the group of eldar, a slender figure robed in a dark tunic and wearing a high helm of bronze sat cross-legged at a low table of polished dark wood. He carried a long staff and beside him stood one of the giant walking war machines that Solomon had dreaded ever since the battle on Tza-Chao. It carried a sword as long as an Astartes warrior was tall, and its graceful limbs belied the fearsome power and strength within it. Though the golden sweep of its curved head was completely featureless, Solomon felt sure that it was looking right at him with nothing but scorn.

'Quite a gathering,' whispered Julius, and Solomon heard an eager edge to his voice.

Solomon said nothing, too intent on watching for the slightest hint of danger.

You believe he is the one?

'I do not know,' said Eldrad as the voice of Khiraen Goldhelm echoed in his mind, 'and that troubles me.'

The fates are not clear?

Eldrad shook his head, knowing the mighty wraithlord was uneasy at this meeting Eldrad had urged with the mon-keigh. The long dead warrior's counsel had been to attack the humans as soon as they had violated eldar space, destroying them before they even knew the eldar were there, but Eldrad had sensed there would be something different in this encounter.

'I know that this one will be a great player in the bloody drama set to unfold, but I cannot see whether it will be for good or ill. His thoughts and future are hidden from me.'

Hidden? How is such a thing possible?

'I do not know for sure, but I believe that whatever dark forces his Emperor employed in the creation of these primarchs renders many of them as little more than spectres in the warp. I cannot read this one, nor sense anything of his future.'

He is mon-keigh! he has no future but war and death.

Eldrad could sense the contempt the dead warrior had for the humans, for it had been a human blade that had ended his life and left him a ghost in the shell of a mighty war machine. He tried not to let the wraithlord's anger cloud his judgement of the humans, but it was difficult not to agree with him, given the evidence of their blood-soaked history.

Yes, the mon-keigh were a brutal race that lived for conquest, but these humans had behaved in a manner unlike any he had witnessed before, and he fervently hoped that this Fulgrim might be the one with the wit to bear his warning to the ruler of his race.

You know I speak true, urged Khiraen. You have seen it haven't you, the great war that set them at one another's throats?

'I have seen it, great one,' nodded Eldrad.

Then why seek to prevent it? Why should we care whether the mon-keigh destroy one another in fire and blood? I say let them, for the life of one eldar is worth ten thousand of theirs!

'I agree,' said Eldrad, 'but I see a time in the grim darkness of the far future when our failure to art will be our undoing.'

I hope you are right, farseer and that this is not simply arrogance.

Eldrad looked up at the armoured warriors gathered on the hillside and felt a shiver within his soul as he hoped the same thing.

Fulgrim led the way down the hillside without preamble, resplendent in his battle armour and a cloak of bright gold that shone dazzlingly in the fading light. His silver hair was pulled into a number of elaborate plaits and he wore a glittering golden wreath about his brow. Powder had been applied to his skin, rendering it even paler than normal and coloured inks had then been applied to his cheeks and eyes in elegant swirls.

Fulgrim had come armed, the silver sword belted at his waist, and to Solomon's eyes his master was dressed in a manner more akin to some theatrical impresario's vision of a primarch rather than the reality.

He kept his own counsel, however, as the Emperor's Children reached the bottom of the hill, and the eldar robed in black rose smoothly from the ground and bowed before Fulgrim. The faint hint of a smile ghosted across the alien's features, and Solomon tensed as he removed his bronze helmet.

'Welcome to Tarsus,' said the eldar, bending at the waist in a formal bow.

'You are Eldrad Ulthran?' asked Fulgrim, returning the bow.

'I am,' said Eldrad, turning to face the towering war machine. 'And this is Wraithlord Khiraen Gold-helm, one of Craftworld Ulthwe's most revered ancients.'

Solomon shivered as the towering war machine inclined its head curtly, the gesture of welcome rendered as one of hostility.

Fulgrim looked up at the giant wraithlord and returned the gesture, a nod of respect between warriors, as Eldrad spoke again, 'And from your stature you must be Fulgrim.'

'Lord Fulgrim of the Emperor's Children,' put in Eidolon.

Again Solomon saw the ghost of a smile, and his jaw clenched at the insult he felt sure was implicit in such a gesture.

'I apologise,' said Eldrad. 'No disrespect or offence was intended. I simply sought to establish a dialogue based on virtue rather than rank.'

'No offence is taken,' assured Fulgrim. 'Your point is well made, for it is not birth or rank, but virtue that makes the difference between men. My lord commanders are simply anxious that my station be recognised. Although it will make no difference to our parlay, it is still unclear to me what rank you hold among your people.'

'I am what is called a farseer,' said Eldrad. 'I guide my people through the challenges of whatever the future might hold and offer guidance as to how best to meet those challenges.'

'Farseer… ' said Fulgrim. 'You are a witch?'

Solomon's hand itched to reach for his sword, but he fought the impulse. The primarch had expressly forbidden them to draw their weapons unless he did so first.

Eldrad appeared unmoved by Fulgrim's provocative word, but shook his head slightly.

'It is an ancient term, one that perhaps does not translate well into your language.'

'I understand,' said Fulgrim, 'and I apologise for speaking without thought.'

Solomon knew his primarch better than that, and saw that Fulgrim had very deliberately chosen the word to gauge Eldrad's reaction to it.

Against a human counterpart such a ploy might have worked, but the farseer's features gave nothing away.

'So as a farseer, you are the craftworld's leader?'

'Craftworld Ulthwe has no formal leader as such, more a… council I suppose you would call it.'

'Then do you and Khiraen Goldhelm represent that council?' pressed Fulgrim. 'I desire very much to know with whom I deal.'

'Deal with me,' promised Eldrad, 'and you deal with Ulthwe.'

Once again Ostian rapped on the shuttered door to Serena's studio, telling himself he would give her five more minutes to answer before heading back to his own studio. The statue of the Emperor was coming on in leaps and bounds, as though some inner muse guided his hands, though there was still much to be done and this visit to Serena's was taking up much needed time.

He sighed as he realised that Serena wasn't going to answer. Then he heard shuffling behind the shutter and the faint, but unmistakable smell of an unwashed body.

'Serena? Is that you?' he asked.

'Who's that?' said a ragged and hoarse voice.

'It's me, Ostian. Open the shutter.'

Silence was his only answer and he feared that whoever the voice belonged to was simply going to ignore him. He raised his hand to knock once more when the shutter began to rattle upwards. Ostian stood back, suddenly nervous about who he might come face to face with.

Eventually the shutter rose enough for him to see who had opened it.

It was a woman, but one he would have expected to see hawking for loose change from the gutters of a downhive sump. Her long hair was greasy and unkempt, her features gaunt and wasted, and her clothes ragged and stained.

'Who are…?' he began, but the words died in his throat as he realised that this decrepit excuse for a human being was Serena d'Angelus.

'Throne alive!' cried Ostian, rushing forward to take her by the shoulders. 'What's happened to you, Serena?'

He looked down at her arms, seeing scores of cuts and scars crisscrossing her flesh. Dried blood was still crusted on the more recent wounds, and even he could tell that many were infected.

She looked at him with dull eyes, and he all but dragged her back into the studio, shocked at the disaster area it had become. What had happened to the meticulously neat artist who had kept every part of her life organised and compartmentalised? Paint pots were strewn all over the floor, and broken canvases lay around like so much garbage. A pair of easels still stood in the middle of the studio, but he could not see what had been painted on them for they were facing away from him.

Red stains streaked the walls and a large plastic barrel sat in one corner of the room. Even from here, Ostian could smell the rotten, acidic reek from it.

'Serena, what in the name of all that's sane has happened here?'

She looked up at him, as though seeing him for the first time and said, 'Nothing.'

'Well clearly something has happened,' he said, his anger growing in proportion to her indifference. 'I mean, look at this place: paint everywhere, smashed paintings… and that stench? Throne, what is that? It smells like something died in here.'

Serena shrugged and said, 'I've been too busy to clean.'

'Well that's just nonsense,' he said. 'I was always far messier than you and my studio's not this bad. Really, what's been going on here?'

He wandered through the smashed wreckage that filled Serena's studio, avoiding a large pool of reddish brown paint in the middle of the floor, and making his way towards the large barrel in the corner of her studio.

Before he reached it he felt a presence behind him and turned to see Serena right behind him, one hand held poised to reach out to him, the other tucked in the folds of her dress as though holding something.

'Don't,' said Serena. 'Please, I don't want to…'

'Don't want to what?' asked Ostian.

'Just don't,' she said, and he could see the tears welling up in her eyes.

'What have you got in that barrel?' asked Ostian.

'It's engraver's acid,' she said. 'I'm… I'm trying something new.'

'Something new?' repeated Ostian. 'Switching from acrylics to oils is something new. This is… well, I don't know what this is, but it's something insane if you ask me.'

'Please, Ostian,' she sobbed. 'Please go.'

'Go? Not until I find out what's been happening with you.'

'Ostian, you have to go,' begged Serena. 'I don't know what I might do.'

'What are you talking about, Serena?' asked Ostian, grabbing her by the shoulders. 'I don't know what's the matter with you, but I want you to know that I'm here for you. I'm an idiot and should have said something before now, but I didn't know how to. I knew you were hurting yourself because you didn't think your talent was worth anything, but you're wrong, it is. It so is. You have a rare gift and you have to realise it, because this… this is not healthy.'

She sagged into his arms, and he felt tears pricking his eyes as her body was convulsed by wracking sobs. His heart went out to her, though the wiring of his male brain could not understand the strangeness of her affliction. Serena d'Angelus was one of the most talented artists he had ever seen and yet she was tormented by delusions of her own inadequacy.

He pulled her tight and kissed the top of her head. 'It's all right, Serena.'

Without warning she pushed him away with a shriek of rage and shouted, 'No! No, it's not alright! Nothing lasts! No matter what I do it won't last. I think it was because he was inferior, no good. His talent wasn't able to sustain it.'

Ostian recoiled from her rage, not knowing who or what she was talking about, or what she meant. 'Serena, please, I'm trying to help.'

'I don't want your help,' she cried. 'I don't want anyone's help. I want to be left alone!'

Utterly confused, he backed away from her, sensing on some instinctive level that he was in danger just by being there. 'I don't know what's wrong with you, Serena, but it's not too late to come back from whatever's eating away at you inside. Please let me help you.'

'You don't know what you're talking about, Ostian. It's always been so easy for you, hasn't it? You're a genius and inspiration comes naturally to you. I've seen you do great things without even thinking about it, but what about the rest of us? What about those of us that aren't geniuses? What do we do?'

'Is that what you think?' he asked, outraged at her dismissal of his skill, as if it was the inevitable result of some intangible force within him spilling from him in a torrent. 'You think it's easy for me? Let me tell you this, Serena, inspiration comes of working every day. People think that my talent rises each morning, rested and refreshed like the sun, but what they don't appreciate is that, like everything else, it waxes and wanes. It always seems so easy for those without talent to look on those who have it and say that it's easy for us, but it isn't. I work every day to be as good as I am, and it annoys the hell out of me when mediocre people assume an air of knowing better than I do what makes good art. Appreciation of others work is a wonderful thing, Serena, it makes what is excellent in others belong to you as well.'

She backed away from him as he spoke, and he realised that he'd let his anger get the better of him.

Disgusted with himself, he stormed away as she reached for him, passing through the shutter and into the corridor beyond.

'Please, Ostian!' wailed Serena as he walked away. 'Come back! I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I need your help. Please!'

But he walked on.

Throughout the jockeying exchanges of greeting, Solomon had watched the motionless wraithlord behind the farseer. Its slender limbs seemed incapable of supporting its body and elongated golden head and curving crest. Solomon felt his skin crawl just looking at it, for though he knew such things could move with fearsome speed and agility, he felt no sense of life from the machine, as he did from a Dreadnought.

Even though nothing remained of the Old One within a Dreadnought's sarcophagus, save a ruined body hung in amniotic suspension, there was still a beating heart and living brain at its core. All he could sense from this monstrous creation was death, as though whatever dwelled within was little more than a ghost somehow bound to a lifeless shell.

Fulgrim nodded towards Eldrad and said, 'Very well, Eldrad Ulthran of Craftworld Ulthwe, you may deal with me as a representative of the Emperor of Mankind.'

Eldrad nodded graciously and gestured towards the low table. 'Sit, please, and let us talk and eat as travellers who find themselves on the same road.'

'That would be pleasant,' said Fulgrim, gracefully lowering himself to the ground and indicating that his captains should do the same, introducing each of them as they sat. Solomon adjusted his sword and sat at the table as the skimming tanks pivoted smoothly in the air and a ramp lowered gently to the ground from their rears.

Solomon sensed the tension in his fellow Astartes. He could almost feel the Phoenix Guard tighten their grips on their halberds. But no assault came from the interior of the vehicles, only a group of white-robed eldar bearing platters of food. They moved with such amazing poise and grace that their feet seemed to glide across the grass towards the table.

The platters were deposited, and Solomon saw that a feast had been laid before them: choice cuts of the most tender meat, fresh fruit and pungent cheese.

'Eat,' said Eldrad.

Fulgrim helped himself to meat and fruit as did Lord Commander Vespasian, but Eidolon refrained from eating. Julius and Marius likewise helped themselves, but for once, Solomon found himself in accordance with Eidolon and took nothing from the platters.

He noticed that Eldrad did not touch the meat, but ate only sparingly from a bowl of fruit.

'Does your kind not eat meat?' asked Solomon.

Eldrad turned his large oval eyes upon him, and Solomon felt as though he were a butterfly pinned to a wall. He saw great sadness in the farseer's eyes and, reflected in their ageless depths, he saw echoes of the great deeds he might yet achieve.

'I do not eat meat, Captain Demeter,' said Eldrad. 'It is too rich for my palate, but you should try some, I am told it is very good.'

Solomon shook his head. 'No. What interests me more is why you choose now to reveal yourself to us. It is my belief that you have been shadowing us ever since we arrived here.'

Fulgrim shot him an irritated glance, but Eldrad pretended not to see it.

'Since you ask, Captain Demeter, yes, we have been shadowing you, for it is a curious thing to see your ships abroad in this region of space,' said Eldrad. 'We had thought that it was shrouded from your kind. How is it that you managed to reach it?'

Fulgrim put down his food and said, 'You have been shadowing us?'

'Merely a precaution,' said Eldrad, 'for the worlds you have encountered in your travels belong to the eldar race.'

'They do?'

'Indeed,' confirmed Eldrad. 'When first we realised you were traversing our territory, we thought to attack, but when we saw that you simply passed onwards without attempting to settle worlds that were not yours, I desired to know why.'

'I knew that to despoil such beautiful worlds would be wrong,' said Fulgrim.

'It would have been wrong,' agreed Eldrad. 'These maiden worlds have been awaiting the coming of my people for aeons. To try and take them from us would have been a grave mistake.'

'Is that a threat?' asked Fulgrim.

'A promise,' warned Eldrad. 'You have displayed a restraint we have not come to expect from your race, Lord Fulgrim. After all, you are led by a warrior known as the Warmaster and your aim is to conquer the galaxy for your own kind, regardless of the sovereignty or desires of the races with which you share it. I do not mean to antagonise you when I say that this is monstrously arrogant.'

Solomon expected Fulgrim's anger to be incandescent, but the primarch merely smiled and said, 'I am no expert on history, but did your race not once claim to have ruled the galaxy?'

'Claim? We did rule it once, and it was thanks to our arrogance and complacence that we lost it. But do not ask of such things again, for I will speak no more of those lost days.'

'Fair enough,' said Fulgrim, 'Empires rise and fall, civilisations come and go. For each it is tragic, but it is the way of things. One dynasty must die for another to rise and take its place. You cannot deny the human race its manifest destiny to rule the stars as you once did.'

'Manifest destiny,' laughed Eldrad. 'What does your race know of destiny? When things transpire in your favour you believe it to be destiny, but when you suffer disaster is that not also destiny? Who says destiny must be a good thing? I have seen sights that would make you curse destiny, and I know secrets that would shred your sanity were you to know but a fraction of them.'

Solomon felt the rising tension between the two leaders and knew that sooner or later this must end in blood. Clearly the Phoenix Guard were readying themselves for battle, and Solomon could see in the minute movements of the sword-armed eldar that they too sensed the escalation of words.

Instead of violence, Fulgrim simply laughed at Eldrad's words, as though he were enjoying the confrontation.

'We are a pair are we not? Needling at one another and fencing around the real issue.'

'And what is the real issue?' asked Eldrad.

'Why we are even speaking at all. You claim the worlds in this region are yours, but you have not settled them. Why? Your race fades, yet you cling to life aboard a starship when there are paradises awaiting you. You want more from us than simply to shepherd us away from your territories, so let us be honest with one another, Eldrad Ulthran of Craft-world Ulthwe. Why are we sitting opposite one another?'

'Very well, Fulgrim of the Emperor's Children, but I tell you now that you will not want to hear the real reason I desired to speak with you.'

'No?'

Eldrad shook his head sadly. 'No, for it will anger you greatly.'

'You know this do you?' asked Fulgrim. 'I thought you said you were no witch.'

'I need no powers of foresight to know my warning will anger you.'

'Tell me your warning and I will consider it objectively,' promised Fulgrim.

'Very well,' said Eldrad. 'At this very moment, the one you call Warmaster lies in death's shadow and there are forces beyond your comprehension battling for his soul.'

'Horus?' cried Fulgrim. 'He is injured?'

'He is dying,' nodded Eldrad.

'How? Where?' demanded Fulgrim.

'On the world of Davin,' said Eldrad. 'A trusted counsellor betrayed him, and now the powers of Chaos whisper lies wrapped in truth into his ears. They feed his vanity and ambition with a distorted vision of things yet to come.'

'Will he live?' cried Fulgrim, and Solomon heard anguish like nothing he had heard before.

'He will, but it would be better for the galaxy were he to perish,' said Eldrad.

Fulgrim slammed his fist down on the table, smashing it in two, and surged to his feet. His pale features blazed with anger. The Phoenix Guard lowered their halberds as the armoured eldar warriors flinched at his sudden rage.

'You dare wish the death of my dearest friend?' roared Fulgrim. 'Why?'

'Because he will betray you all and lead his armies against your Emperor!' said Eldrad. 'In one fell swoop, he will condemn the galaxy to thousands of years of war and suffering.'

FIFTEEN The Worm at the Heart of the Apple War Calls Kaela Mensha Khaine

At first, Fulgrim thought he'd misheard. Surely this alien could not be suggesting that Horus, most loyal son of the Emperor, would betray their father and lead his armies into civil war? The very idea was ludicrous, for the Emperor would never have appointed Horus to the position of Warmaster if he had not been utterly sure of his loyalty.

He searched Eldrad Ulthran's face for any sign of a jest or that this was all some hideous mistake, for there was no way such an insult could stand unchallenged. Even as he sought to find reason in this exchange, the voice in his head roared in anger.

This xeno filth means to sow the seeds of dissent among you!

'This is madness!' roared Fulgrim, his anger flaring. 'Why would Horus do such a thing?'

Eldrad rose from the ground as the giant wraithlord behind him widened its stance, and the bone-armoured warriors reached for their swords. Eldrad held up his staff to halt their warlike motions. 'His soul is being tempted with visions of power and glory by the gods of Chaos. It is a battle he will not win.'

Lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies!

'Gods of Chaos?' cried Fulgrim, as a red mist of hate fuelled power raced throughout his body. 'What in the name of Terra are you talking about?'

Eldrad's implacable mask slipped and his face was transformed in horror. 'You travel the warp and yet you know not of Chaos? Khaine's blood! I see now why they chose your race to strike at.'

'You speak in riddles, xenos,' said Fulgrim. 'I won't stand for this.'

'You must listen,' pleaded Eldrad. 'The warp, as you call it, is home to the most malign beings imaginable, terrible energies that are elemental and ferocious. They are gods that have existed since the dawn of time and will outlast this guttering flame of a universe. Chaos is the worm at the heart of the apple and the canker in the soul that devours from within. It is the mortal enemy of all living things.'

'Then Horus will turn from such evil,' said Fulgrim, his hand drawn towards his silver-hilted sword, the purple crystal on the pommel winking with an alluring shimmer. The voice of his unspoken will screamed at him.

Kill him! He will infect you with lies! Kill him!

'No,' said Eldrad, 'Horus will not turn from it, for it promises him exactly what he wants to hear. He will believe he does what is best for humanity, but he has been blinded to the realities of what he is doing. The gods of Chaos have woven falsehoods around him, but these are mere fripperies that lesser minds will use to explain his betrayal. The truth is more prosaic. The fire of the Warmaster's ambition has been stoked from a steady flame to a roaring inferno, and it will damn the galaxy to an age of war and blood.'

'I should kill you for these words,' snarled Fulgrim.

'I am not trying to anger you, I am trying to warn you,' cried Eldrad. 'You have to listen to me. It is not too late to stop this, but you must act now. Warn your Emperor that he is betrayed and you will save billions of lives! The future of the galaxy is in your hands!'

'I will not listen to you!' roared Fulgrim, drawing his sword. Eldrad staggered as though a sudden force assailed him. The farseer's dark eyes flashed to the blade and his features twisted in an expression of horror and anguish.

'No!' cried Eldrad, as a great wind that seemed to rise from nowhere howled around the stunned observers. Fulgrim's blade swept out towards Eldrad's neck, cleaving the air in a sweeping, silver arc.

A fraction of a second before the sword took the farseer's head an enormous blade flashed and intercepted its deadly edge. An explosion of sparks burst before Eldrad and he staggered away from Fulgrim as the wraithlord stood erect, its huge sword drawing back to strike at the primarch.

Eldrad shouted, 'They are corrupted! Kill them!'

Fulgrim felt a massive swell of power fill him as he drew the sword, its blade rippling with after-images of vibrant purple energy. His Phoenix Guard and captains surged to their feet as he struck his blow against the farseer, and guns blazed as a vicious, short range firefight erupted.

The bone-armoured warriors charged with an ear-splitting shriek that tore at the nerves, and a hail of bolter fire cut down a handful before they hit home. Fulgrim left the warriors to his captains, as the Phoenix Guard charged the mighty, golden-helmed wraithlord.

You must kill him! The farseer must die before he ruins everything!

Fulgrim roared as he leapt after the farseer, the wraithlord's monstrous sword arcing towards him as the Phoenix Guard slashed at it with their golden blades. He rolled beneath the blow, rising to pursue the architect of this bloodshed. Eldrad Ulthran and the grim-faced warriors in black armour backed away from him towards the curving structure, as a pale nimbus of light began to gather at its base.

'I tried to save you,' said Eldrad, 'but you are already the unwitting tool of Chaos.'

The Primarch of the Emperor's Children swung his sword at the farseer, but his enemy vanished in a flare of light and his weapon clove only air. He roared in frustration as he realised that the structures were in fact teleportation devices.

He turned back to the battle raging behind him as a hail of energised bolts spat from the barrels of the nearest skimmer tank's guns. Its first shots had been hesitantly aimed, thanks to the presence of the farseer, but Fulgrim saw that no such caution restrained them now. The prow of the tank skimmed the grass as its pilot brought it around in a tight turn, expecting his quarry to flee, but Fulgrim had never run from an enemy in his life and wasn't about to start now.

Fulgrim leapt into the air just as the eldar pilot saw the danger and tried to gain height. It was already too late. The primarch's sword hacked through the side of the vehicle and tore downwards, ripping through its hull as he gave a bellow of hatred.

The tank's pronged front section dropped to the ground and the vehicle slewed around, the bevelled edge carving into the ground, flipping the vehicle over onto its side with a terrific crack of what sounded like splintering bone.

Bright energy exploded from the wreck in a huge plume of light, and Fulgrim laughed in triumph. He spun his sword and returned his attention to the clash of weapons, watching as the terrifying wraithlord reached down and crushed one of the Phoenix Guard in a massive fist. Armour cracked asunder and blood fell in a crimson rain as the warrior died. Fulgrim snarled in anger as he saw three of his elite praetorians lying twisted and broken at the machine's feet.

His captains fought with the warriors in bone armour, their swords a blur as shrieking war shouts filled the air over the ring of steel on bone. Fulgrim moved away from the blazing wreckage of the tank, his sword aimed at the gold-helmed war machine.

As if sensing his presence, the wraithlord turned its head towards him and hurled aside the dead warrior in its grip. Fulgrim could sense the ghost within the machine as a blazing hunger for vengeance and knew this thing wanted him dead as much as he desired to see it destroyed.

With a speed that shocked him, the wraithlord loped towards him, its agility terrifying. He stepped to meet it and ducked beneath a scything blow of its crackling blade, rising again to hack his sword into its slender arm. The blade bit a fingerbreadth before sliding clear, and Fulgrim felt the jarring vibration of the impact along the entire length of his body. The wraithlord's fist slammed into his chest and punched him from his feet, the eagle stamped breastplate cracking under the thunderous blow. Fulgrim granted in pain, tasting blood on his lips.

The pain was enormous, but instead of laying him low it energised him, and he leapt to his feet with a wild cry of exultation. His wreath hung broken over his face and he ripped it clear, tearing out his plaits and smearing the powder and oils across his face.

Looking more like a feral savage than the Primarch of the Emperor's Children, Fulgrim once again launched himself at the wraithlord. Its huge sword slashed towards him, but he raised his own blade and the two met in a ferocious thunder of metal and fire. The purple gem in the pommel of Fulgrim's sword flared, and the wraithlord's blade exploded in a shower of bone fragments.

Fulgrim pressed his attack as the wraithlord reeled, and swung his sword in a murderous, two-handed swing at its legs. He roared as the blade smashed into its knee and tore through the joint with a shrieking howl of pleasure. Rippling coils of energy whipped from the wound as the great war machine swayed for the briefest moment before crashing to the ground.

Now finish it! Destroy what lies within its head and it will suffer a fate beyond death!

Fulgrim leapt on top of the straggling machine, smashing his fist into the smooth sheen of its golden face with a deafening war cry. The surface cracked and split under the force of his blow and he felt blood spring from his hand. He ignored the pain and hammered his fist against its head again and again, feeling the surface of the machine's carapace-like skull yield to his furious assault. It tried to reach up and hurl him from its body, but he lashed out with his sword, the blade hacking off its huge fist with an ease that had seemed impossible only moments before.

At last the golden helm cracked and Fulgrim tore the wraithlord's head open, revealing a smooth ceramic faceplate, pierced and woven with gold wire and engraved with silver runes. Its surface was studded with gleaming gems, and at the centre of this arrangement sat a pulsing red stone. Fulgrim could sense the fear emanating from this stone and reached down to pluck it from its mounting, a rising shriek of panic felt in the soul rather than heard. The stone was hot to the touch, and fiery lines danced within its depths, haunted shapes and alien features writhing within it.

He felt its anger and hatred towards him, but most of all he felt its dreadful, all-consuming fear of oblivion.

Fulgrim laughed as he crushed the stone in his fist, hearing a shrieking howl of anguish flee its destruction. He felt his sword grow warm, and looked down to see the gem at its pommel burn like an amethyst star, as though feeding on the spirit released from the stone.

How he knew this he did not know, but next to the elation he felt in victory, it seemed a minor mystery, and no sooner had the realisation surfaced than it was gone.

As the wondrous feeling of power faded, Fulgrim turned his face towards the battle being fought by his captains. They struggled against the shrieking warriors in bone armour, their swords fencing in a deadly ballet with these supremely skilled warriors. Behind them, the remaining enemy tank waited to support its fellow eldar, its guns useless while the combat raged.

Fulgrim raised his sword and charged.

Eldrad cried out as he felt the soul of Khiraen Gold-helm torn from its spirit stone and cast into the void, alone and unprotected. He felt the great and terrible hunger of the Great Enemy devour the mighty soul of the warrior, and wept bitter tears of recrimination at his folly in attempting to parlay with the barbarous mon-keigh. Never again would he trust that their intentions could be anything other than hostile, and he vowed to remember forever the lesson Khiraen Goldhelm's loss had taught him.

The air still shimmered around him after his transit through the webway portal from the surface of Tarsus, and he could feel the psychic roar of violence running through the naked ribs of the craftworld's wraithbone skeleton. Fie could feel the lust for aggression from every eldar aboard and the racing, molten heartbeat of the Avatar of the Bloody-Handed God as it roused itself from the sealed wraithbone chamber at the heart of the craftworld.

How could he not have seen this? Fulgrim was already on a dark path, his soul embroiled in a secret war he did not even realise it was fighting. A dark and terrible force sought to dominate him, and though Fulgrim was resisting, Eldrad knew there was only one way such a battle could end. He knew now that this dark presence had been what shielded Fulgrim from his sight, jealously keeping its victim veiled so that none might unmask its designs.

The sword… he should have felt it the moment he laid eyes upon it, but the deceits of the Great Enemy had ensnared him with subtle illusions and rendered him blind to its presence. Eldrad knew that the essence of a powerful creature from beyond the gates of the empyrean lay bound within the sword, and that its influence was inexorably tainting the consciousness of the Primarch of the Emperor's Children.

Eldrad knew there was only one path open to him, and shouted, 'To battle!'

Fulgrim had to be destroyed before he could escape Tarsus.

An answering roar of war lust pulsed along the very bones of the craftworld.

Blood runs… anger rises… death wakes… war calls!

The last of the shrieking eldar were dead, hacked down by mighty sweeps of Fulgrim's sword, and Lucius felt the exhilaration of the fight still pounding within him like music. His sword hissed with alien blood and his muscles were alive with the skill it had taken to best them. The megarachnid had been terri-fyingly swift, lethal killers who fought with blind, instinctual skill, but these howling warriors, many of whom Lucius now saw were female, were almost as skilful as he.

Their bladework had been exquisite. One of them, a female who had fought with axe and sword had actually managed to land several blows upon him. His armour was cut open in several places and but for his inhuman speed, he knew that he would be lying as dead as the warrior woman at his feet.

He reached down and lifted one of their swords, testing it for balance and weight. It was lighter than he'd expected and its grip was too small, but its edge was true and it was exquisitely made.

'Didn't you learn anything on Murder?' asked Saul Tarvitz. 'Get rid of that weapon before Eidolon sees you with it.'

Lucius turned and said, 'I was just looking at it, Saul. I'm not going to start using it.'

'Just as well,' said Tarvitz. Lucius saw that his fellow captain was almost spent, his breath ragged and his armour stained with his own and alien blood, but despite Saul's words, he held onto the alien woman's sword.

'Everyone still alive?' asked Fulgrim with a laugh. Blood caked the primarch's breastplate, where the wraithlord had struck him, and his appearance was a far cry from the regal splendour Lucius was used to seeing. Though ragged and filthy, Fulgrim had never looked more alive, his dark eyes shining with the excitement of the battle, his sword still clutched firmly in his fist.

Lucius looked around the battlefield, only now checking to see who else had survived. Both lord commanders were still alive, as were Julius Kaesoron, Marius Vairosean and that smug bastard, Solomon Demeter. Of the Phoenix Guard there were no survivors, their skill and strength no match for the power of the wraithlord.

'Looks like it,' said Vespasian, cleaning his sword on the helmet crest of one of the fallen eldar. 'We should get out of here before they return in greater numbers. That tank's keeping its distance after what happened to the other one, but it won't be long before the pilot finds his courage again.'

'Leave?' said Julius Kaesoron. 'I say we take the fight to that tank and destroy it! These aliens have betrayed the truce of a parlay, and honour demands we make them pay in blood!'

'You're not thinking, Julius,' said Solomon. 'We have no weapons to take out a tank and, after what happened to his friend, this one's unlikely to let us get close. We have to go.'

Lucius sneered. How like Solomon Demeter to run from a fight! He could see Eidolon was itching to stay and fight, but Marius Vairosean kept his counsel, awaiting the primarch's decision before undoubtedly supporting it. Silently he urged Fulgrim to order them to attack the tank.

Fulgrim's eyes homed in on him, as though sensing his need to inflict more violence. He smiled, his teeth bright against the smudged inks on his face.

'I think the decision has been taken out of our hands,' said Solomon as a bright light once again built at the base of the curved structure where the farseer had vanished.

'This can't be good,' said Tarvitz.

'Stormbird One!' shouted Vespasian into the vox. 'Spool up the engines, we're coming to you right now. My lord, we have to go.'

'Go,' said Fulgrim, his voice sounding as though he had just woken from a deep slumber. 'Go where?'

'Off this planet, my lord,' urged Vespasian. 'The eldar are returning and they would not do so unless they had overwhelming force.'

Fulgrim shook his head as if in pain and put a hand to his temple. The first eldar warriors emerged from a blazing ripple of light held suspended beneath the apex of the alien portal. The primarch looked up and saw the eldar sprint from the light, first in ones and twos, then in squads. Like the dead aliens at their feet, these eldar wore form-fitting armour of overlapping plates, though these warriors,' armour was clear blue, and they sported yellow crests on their helms. Each carried a short-barrelled rifle, and they advanced with cautious grace towards the Astartes. Behind them came a pair of the dark armoured eldar with long barrelled weapons aimed at the Stormbird above them.

Lucius twisted his neck and stretched his shoulder muscles in readiness for the fight, but Fulgrim shook his head once more and said, 'We go. Everyone back to the Stormbird. We will return for our dead when we destroy their craftworld and leave them nowhere to retreat to.'

Lucius swallowed his disappointment and followed his primarch as they fell back towards the screaming aircraft, its engines building to a shrieking howl. He kept hold of the alien sword as he jogged back up the hill towards the vehicle.

Blinding streaks flashed overhead and Lucius was slammed into the ground by the pressure wave of a terrific explosion. More hissing streaks followed in quick succession and secondary blasts filled the air with debris and smoke. He spat dirt and looked up to see the ruins at the hill's summit wreathed in fire. The blazing wreck of the Stormbird lay slumped like a downed bird, its wings smashed and a cluster of holes punched in its side.

'Run!' shouted Vespasian.

Once more the eldar were hurled back from the top of the hill, leaving their dead piled at the foot of the ruins. Whickering gunfire rattled from the cover of the ruins with musical clangs, and slashing beams of incandescent energy lit up the purpling sky in bright streaks. The wreckage of the Stormbird still blazed behind them, secondary explosions of onboard ammunition popping and crackling in the heat.

Marius took a deep breath as he slotted another magazine home into his bolter and waited for the next assault. So far every one of them had come through the violence of the eldar attacks alive, though they all sported wounds from the hails of razor sharp discs fired by the eldar weapons. One of the discs lay on the ground next to him and he picked it up, turning it over in his hands. It seemed ridiculous that such a thing could cause injury, but its edges were lethally sharp and could penetrate even Mark IV plate if it struck a weak area such as a joint.

It had been a bloody battle, one that had seen desperate heroics and incredible feats of arms. Marius had watched Lucius fend off three of the howling warrior women at once. Fighting with two weapons, his own sword and an eldar blade, the swordsman had killed them in a dazzling display of unimaginable skill.

Vespasian had fought like one of the heroes from the Gallery of Swords, his perfection and purity shining like a beacon as he hurled back green armoured eldar with bulbous helmets that spat blue fire. Solomon and Julius had fought back-to-back, killing with brutal vigour, while Saul Tarvitz fought with mechanical precision, lending his sword arm to a multitude of combats.

But Eidolon… how had he fought?

In the thick of the fighting, Marius had heard an ululating howl of nerve shredding ferocity and turned, expecting to see more of the warrior women charging him. Instead, he had seen Lord Commander Eidolon with a trio of shrieking enemies scattered before him. Two were on their knees, clutching their ruptured helmets, while a third staggered as though in the grip of a powerful seizure. Eidolon stepped in to finish them, and Marius had been left with the impossible, but unshakeable sensation that the scream had, in fact, come from Lord Commander Eidolon.

'How long before the damn Firebird gets here?' asked Julius, crawling through the smouldering wreckage towards him, and shaking Marius from his thoughts of the battle.

'I don't know,' he said. 'Lord Fulgrim has tried to call it down, but I think the eldar must be jamming our vox-system.'

'Filthy xenos bastards,' swore Julius. 'I knew we couldn't trust them.'

Marius didn't reply, remembering that Julius had been as vocal a supporter of the primarch's decision to come down to Tarsus as he had. Only Solomon had spoken in opposition, and it looked as though he might be proved right after all.

'We could all die down here,' said Marius sourly.

'Die?' said Julius. 'Don't be ridiculous. Even if we can't get through to the fleet, it won't be long before they send other ships. The eldar know that, it's why they're being so careless with their lives. A race on the edge of extinction are they? What say, you and I push them over that edge?'

Julius's enthusiasm was infectious, and it was hard not be inspired by his indefatigable confidence in victory. Marius smiled in return and said. 'All the way over.'

'Something's happening below!' shouted Saul Tarvitz. Marius scrambled to the edge of the ruins with Julius beside him and looked down at the strange alien gateway. Marius supposed it must lead onto the craftworld above, which explained why they had not detected any ships leaving the craftworld, and how the eldar had reached the surface of Tarsus first.

A gathering of warriors surrounded the light, which flickered and danced like a candle flame. Their weapons were upraised, and they chanted in a language that sounded more like song than communication.

'What do you suppose they're doing?' asked Tarvitz.

Julius shook his head. 'I don't know, but it can't be good for us.'

Suddenly the light flared and its edges erupted in flames, as though a mighty fire forced its way through it. A shape began to form in the light, massive and dark, its outline humanoid, but surely too large for an eldar warrior. Marius wondered if they would have to face another of the wraithlords.

A mighty speartip emerged first, blazing runic symbols writhing on its wide blade, followed by a brazen arm that bled molten light into the air. The limb groaned like hot iron as it flexed and the body it belonged to emerged from the gateway.

Solomon let out a breath at the primal horror of the giant warrior that stood at the base of the hill. Towering above the eldar warriors, the mighty creature's body was fashioned as if from dark iron, its veins rippling like rivers of lava across its surface. Curling horns of smoke and ash oozed from its skin and coiled about its head like a living crown of fire-pierced smoke.

Its head was a roaring, wailing terror, and its eyes blazed like ingots straight from the forge. The living avatar of bloody death bellowed its promise of carnage to the skies, and raised its mighty arms, a thick red gore oozing from between its fingers.

'Throne alive!' cried Lucius. 'What is it?'

Marius looked to Fulgrim for an answer, but the primarch simply watched the arrival of the monstrous being with apparent relish. Fulgrim unbuckled his golden cloak, which had been shredded by gunfire and blades, and drew his silver sword, the gem at its pommel winking in the twilight.

'My lord?' asked Vespasian.

'Yes, Vespasian?' replied Fulgrim, as though only half-hearing his lord commander.

'Do you know what that… thing is?'

'It is their heart and soul,' said Fulgrim, the words sounding as though they came from some distant place within him. 'Their lust for war and death beats within its chest.'

As the primarch spoke, Marius watched the brazen warrior take a thunderous step forward, the grass beneath its feet blackening and bursting into flame in its wake. The chanting of the eldar warriors grew more strident and they began a slow advance behind the blazing god, the rise and fall of their song in time with its every step. Dozens of the warrior women they had fought earlier ghosted through the night, and Marius could hear their piercing shrieks echoing from all around them.

'Stand ready,' warned Vespasian, silhouetted in the glow of the burning Stormbird.

Marius knew that, while ruins and the wreckage of the Stormbird were as good a defensive position as they could hope for, there was no way the eight of them could hold the eldar at bay for much longer, even if one of their number was a primarch.

The Bloody-Handed God picked up its pace. Marius looked at his fellow captains, seeing the same unreasoning dread of the monster across every face. The power of the dark, fiery idol spoke to their souls of the torments it would inflict and the blazing horror its wrath would unleash on those who defied it.

Fulgrim spun his sword and stepped from the cover of the ruins, a chorus of cries following him as he marched to meet the terrifying apparition. Though its features were of carved metal, Marius saw its mouth twist in a grimace of anticipation as the primarch came towards it.

Two mighty gods faced each other, and the world seemed to halt its progress, as though fearful of disturbing the drama being played out upon its surface.

With a mighty bellow of rage, the eldar god attacked.

Fulgrim saw the blazing spear hurtling towards him, and swayed aside as its fiery heat slashed past his head. He laughed as he saw that the eldar god had disarmed itself, but the laughter died in his throat as he heard the voice in his head scream a warning.

Fool! You think eldar trickery is so easily thwarted?

He turned to see the spear twisting in the air like a serpent, swooping back in a graceful arc towards him. It roared as it flew, the noise like the eruptions of a thousand volcanoes. He brought up his sword and deflected the flaming missile, the heat of its passing scorching the skin of his face and setting the plaits of his hair on fire.

Fulgrim beat his head with his free hand, extinguishing the flames in his hair, and raised his sword in challenge. 'Will you not fight me in honourable combat? Must you do your killing from afar?'

The monstrous iron creature plucked the flaming spear from the air, black smoke and spitting embers drifting from its eyes and mouth as it spun the weapon and aimed it at Fulgrim's heart.

Fulgrim grinned as he felt the thrill of combat pulsing through every fibre of his being. Here was a foe that would truly test his mettle, for what being had he ever fought that had truly challenged him? The Laer? The Diasporex? The greenskin?

No, this was a creature with a power to match his own, a terrible god-like being that bore the heart of its fading race within its iron breast. It would not be baited or riled with petty insults, it was a warrior creature with one purpose and one purpose alone: to kill.

Such a one-dimensional aspect made Fulgrim sick, for what was life and death but a series of sensations to be experienced one after another. Without sensation what was life?

A wild exultation filled him and his senses seemed to rise to the surface of his skin. He felt every tiny gust of wind as it wound past his body, the heat of the creature before him, the coolness of the planet's atmosphere and the softness of the grass beneath him.

He was truly alive and at the height of his powers!

'Come on then,' snarled Fulgrim. 'Come on and die.'

The two beings leapt towards each other, Fulgrim's sword slashing down to meet the mighty creature's blade, which he now saw resembled a great sword, where once it had been a spear. Both blades met with a tearing shriek that echoed in realms beyond those of the five senses and an explosion of unlight that left those who saw it blinded. The roaring eldar god recovered first and its molten sword arced for Fulgrim's head.

He ducked, and slammed his fist into its midriff, feeling the hard impact on iron and the blistering heat that seared the skin from his knuckles. Fulgrim laughed with the pain, and raised his sword to block a murderous slash towards his groin.

The eldar god attacked with wild, atavistic fury, its blows driven by racial hatred and the ferocious joy of unbound emotion. Flames wreathed its limbs, and dark tendrils of smoke enveloped the two combatants as they struggled. Silver sword and fiery blade sparked and clanged as they traded blows, neither able to penetrate the other's defences.

Fulgrim felt his anger at this blazing monstrosity surge in his veins, its inability to do more than simply fight and kill offending his refined sensibilities. Where was its appreciation of art and culture, beauty and grace? Such a thing did not deserve the boon of existence, and his limbs filled with renewed strength, as though a new-found power flowed from his sword arm and into his flesh.

He could hear the sounds of battle all around him: bolter fire, cries of pain, whickering razor-discs from alien weapons, and howling screams, like the cries of the banshees of legend. He paid them no heed, too focused on his own fight to the death. His sword pulsed with a silver glow, streamers of light and power rippling along its length as he swung it, every strike delivered with a roar of ecstasy. The gleam of purple light from the pommel stone was strong, and he could see that the fiery gaze of his foe's eyes was ever drawn to it.

A wild idea took root in his mind, and though a powerful surge of denial washed through him at the thought, he knew that it was the only way to defeat his enemy quickly. He stepped in close to the flaming eldar god and hurled his sword high into the air.

Instantly, its burning gaze snapped upwards, the coals of its eyes homing in on the spinning blade. It drew back its arm to hurl its spear at the sword, but before it could throw, Fulgrim leapt towards it and delivered a thunderous right hook to its face.

Every ounce of his power and rage powered the blow, and he let loose a bellowing cry of hate as he struck. Metal buckled and an eruption of red light exploded from the eldar monster's head. Fulgrim's fist hammered through its helmet and into the molten core of its skull, and he cried out in agony and pleasure as he felt the blow smash from the back of its head.

The wounded creature staggered, its head a twisted ruin of metal and flame. Spears of red light streamed from its helmet, and the molten rivers of its blood blazed like phosphor against its iron skin. Fulgrim felt the pain of his maimed hand, but savagely suppressed it as he stepped in again and wrapped his hands around its neck.

The heat of its molten skin seared his flesh, but Fulgrim was oblivious to the pain, too intent on his foe's destruction. Plumes of red light streamed from the eldar god's face, the sound like a manifestation of the combined rage and heart of its creators. An age of regret and lust flowed from the creature, and Fulgrim felt the aching sadness of the necessity of its existence pour into him even as it poured out of the dying monster.

His hands blackened as he crushed the life from his enemy, the metal cracking with the sound of a dying soul. Fulgrim forced the creature to its knees, laughing insanely as the pain of his wounds vied with the powerful elation he felt in crushing the life from another being with his own bare hands and watching as the life fled from its eyes.

The sound of a great and terrible thunder built, and Fulgrim looked up from his murder to see a graceful bird of fire carve its way across the heavens. He released his hold on the dying eldar creature and punched the heavens as the Firebird streaked overhead, followed by a host of Stormbirds and Thunderhawks.

Fulgrim returned his gaze to his defeated foe as whipping light and noise poured from it like the nuclear fire blazing at the heart of a star. The light of the creature's death flared, and its body exploded in a thunder of hot iron and molten metal. Fulgrim was hurled through the air by the screaming explosion, and he felt the touch of its power sear his armour and skin.

The released essence of a god surrounded him. He saw a whirling cosmos of stars, the death of a race and the birth of a bright new god, a dark prince of pleasure and pain.

A name formed from the raw sound of ages past, a bloody paean of birth and a wordless shout of unbound sensation building into a mighty roar that was a name and a concept all at once… Slaanesh!

Slaanesh! Slaanesh! Slaanesh! Slaanesh! Slaanesh! Slaanesh! Slaanesh! Slaanesh!

Even as the name formed, Fulgrim slammed into the ground and laughed as the Emperor's Children descended to Tarsus on wings of fire. He lay still, broken and burnt, but alive, oh, how he was alive! He felt hands upon him and heard voices begging him to speak, but he ignored them, suddenly feeling an aching longing seize him as he realised he was unarmed.

Fulgrim pushed himself unsteadily to his feet, knowing that his warriors surrounded him, but not seeing them or hearing their words. His hands throbbed and he could smell the scorched ruin of his flesh, but all his attention was fixed on the silver glow that split the night.

His sword stood upright in the grass, its blade having come down point first after he had hurled it into the air. It shimmered in the darkness, the silver blade reflecting the light of the Firebird and the descending assault craft. Fulgrim's hands itched to reach out and grip the sword once more, but a screaming portion of his mind begged him not to.

He took a faltering step towards the weapon, his hand outstretched, though he could not remember consciously ordering it to do so. His blackened fingers trembled and his muscles strained as though forcing their way through an invisible barrier. The siren song of the sword was strong, but so was his will, and what remained of his vision of the dark god's birth stayed his hand for the moment.

Only through me will you achieve perfection!

The words thundered in his head, and memories of the battle surged powerfully in his mind, the fire and the hunger to kill, and the wondrous elation of a god's death by his own hands.

In that moment, the last vestige of his resistance collapsed and he slid his fingers around the hilt of the sword. Power flowed through him, and the pain of his wounds vanished as though from the most powerful healing balms.

Fulgrim stood straighter, his momentary weakness forgotten as though a wash of power suffused every atom of his body. He saw the eldar fleeing through their shimmering gateway until only the treacherous seer, Eldrad Ulthran remained, standing forlornly beside the arching structure.

The seer shook his head and stepped into the light, which vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.

'My lord,' said Vespasian, his face smeared with blood. 'What are your orders?'

Fulgrim's anger at the aliens' perfidy reached new, undreamed of heights, and he sheathed his sword, turning to face his gathering warriors.

He knew that there was only one way to ensure that the treachery of the eldar was burnt out forever.

'We return to the Pride of the Emperor,' he said. 'Order every ship to make ready to fire a spread of virus bombs.'

'Virus bombs?' asked Vespasian. 'But surely only the Warmaster—'

'Do it!' shouted Fulgrim. 'Now!'

Vespasian looked uneasy with such an order, but nodded stiffly and turned away.

Fulgrim cast his gaze out over the night shrouded planet before him and whispered, 'By the fire, I swear that every one of the eldar worlds will burn.'