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  ‘Stay back,’ he warned those that still advanced upon him, ‘and heed my words. That wretch, that thing, is not our brother.’

  ‘Peace, Lorgar.’ Horus approached, his own armour joints purring with low snarls. In times past, the merest threat of a confrontation had been enough to quell Lorgar from any rash action. He’d scarcely ever spoken a harsh word to any of his brothers, nor had he ever relished the many times they’d rebuked him for his perceived flaws. Unnecessary conflict was anathema to him.

  As they faced him now, even Horus was wide-eyed in the changes wrought since Isstvan. The Word Bearer primarch clutched his maul in both red gauntlets, defying his brothers with narrowed eye. In the voice of a poet turned to hate, he warned ‘Stay back,’ a second time.

  ‘Lorgar,’ Horus lowered his voice, softening it to match his brother’s. ‘Peace, Lorgar. Peace.’

  ‘You already knew.’ Lorgar almost laughed. ‘I see it in your eyes, brother. What have you done?’

  Horus gave a brittle smile. This had to end now. ‘Magnus,’ he said.

  The psychic projection of Magnus the Red shook its crested head. ‘I am on the other side of the galaxy, Horus. Do not ask me to contain our brother. Keep order on your own flagship.’

  Fulgrim moaned as he began to rise from the decking. Blood made lightning trails down his face from the edges of his lips. Lorgar rested an armoured boot on the prone primarch’s chest-plate.

  ‘Stay down,’ he said, without looking at Fulgrim.

  Fulgrim’s pale, androgynous features twisted in false amusement. ‘You think you—’

  ‘If you speak,’ Lorgar kept his boot on the fallen primarch, ‘I will destroy you.’

  ‘Lorgar,’ Horus growled now. ‘You are speaking madness.’

  ‘Only because I have seen madness.’ He met his brothers’ eyes in turn, looking from one to the other. The kindest among them looked upon him with pity. Most were merely disgusted. ‘I alone know what the truth looks like.’ He pushed down with his boot, pressing on Fulgrim’s shattered ribcage, driving ceramite armour shards into the broken body. Fulgrim choked on blood. Lorgar paid it no mind.

  Horus turned to the others with a melodramatic sigh. Indulgence was plainly writ across his handsome features, as if sharing some old jest between the rest of his family.

  ‘I will deal with this. Leave us for now. We will reconvene shortly.’

  The hololithics flickered off immediately, but for Alpharius, who stood watching Lorgar for several moments longer. Magnus the Red was the last to fade, his projected self nodding to Horus at last, and dispersing like mist in the wind. For several moments, his sourceless voice hung in the empty air. To manifest here requires a significant effort of will, Horus. Bear that in mind next time.

  ‘The Cyclops is right,’ one of the others objected. ‘We delay over nothing. Let the fanatic claim what he wishes. We will restrain him and be done with it. We have a war to plan.’

  Horus sighed. ‘Just go, Angron. I will summon you back from the Conqueror when we are ready.’

  In the clash of irritation and amusement that coloured most of their discussions, Perturabo and Angron trudged from the war room; one speaking, the other listening.

  With the chamber sealed again, Lorgar aimed the immense maul at Horus’s bare head.

  ‘So you send them away to protect a secret that should never be kept. Do you think they will suspect nothing? If you believe I will allow you to concoct a tale of my insanity to aid in your deception, you are misleading yourself.’

  Horus wouldn’t be baited. ‘That was incautious, Lorgar. Explain your actions.’

  ‘I can see the truth, Horus.’ Lorgar risked a glance down at whatever was wearing his brother’s skin and armour. ‘His soul is hollowed through. Something nestles within this body, like eggs lain inside a host.’ Lorgar raised his eyes again. ‘Magnus would have sensed it also, had he not been drained from sending his image such a great distance. This is not Fulgrim.’

  Horus released a breath. ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘It is not.’

  ‘I know what this is.’ Lorgar rested the mace’s spiked head against Fulgrim’s temple. ‘What I cannot understand is how this happened. How have you allowed it to come to pass?’

  ‘Is it so different from your own Gal Vorbak?’ the Warmaster countered.

  Lorgar’s gold-inked features, ruthlessly similar to their father’s, broke into patient sympathy. ‘You do not know of what you speak, Horus. One of the Neverborn, puppeteering the soulless body of our own brother? There is no balance of human and divine elements here. No graceful alignment of two souls in harmony. This is desecration, blasphemy, not ascension.’

  Horus smiled. Lorgar could always be relied upon to seethe with such theatrics. ‘Consider this another unpleasant truth. I did not orchestrate Fulgrim’s demise. I am merely containing the aftermath.’

  Lorgar exhaled slowly. ‘So he is dead, then. Another sentience rides within his body. This husk is all that remains of Fulgrim?’

  Horus’s reply was preceded by a grunt of annoyance. ‘Why does it matter to you? You and he were never close.’

  ‘It matters because this is a perversion against the natural order, fool.’ Lorgar spoke through perfect, clenched teeth. ‘Where is the harmony in this joining? A living soul annihilated for its mortal shell to house a greedy, unborn wretch? I have walked in the warp, Horus. I have stood where gods and mortals meet. This is weakness and corruption – a perversion of what the gods wish for us. They want allies and followers, not soulless husks ridden by daemons.’

  Horus said nothing. He didn’t even respond to Lorgar’s insult, though his lip curled.

  Lorgar cast his eyes down to the fallen primarch. Fulgrim, whatever was within him, stared back with blood flecking the pale skin around his eyes.

  Get off me, the voice ghosted through Lorgar’s mind. It wasn’t Fulgrim’s voice. It wasn’t even a close approximation.

  + Be silent + he psychically pulsed back, with enough force to make Fulgrim tremble.

  Lorgar… the creature’s voice was weaker, raspier, a tremulous breath of wind. You know my kind. We are kin, you and I.

  The primarch of the Word Bearers moved away, his sneer painted plain. The desperation in the creature’s silent voice made his skin itch.

  ‘How did this happen?’ he asked Horus.

  The Warmaster watched Fulgrim rise. Lorgar did not – he spat onto the decking and tossed his crozius onto the table. Its ornate spiked head sent cracks lightning-bolting across the table’s surface.

  On his feet, Fulgrim was a slender, willowy figure – svelte even in his contoured war plate. Lorgar saw none of the grace when he turned: he saw only the sickening unlight behind his brother’s eyes, and the intelligence of another being at the body’s core.

  Fulgrim smiled someone else’s smile.

  ‘Lorgar,’ he began, using Fulgrim’s curiously tender voice.

  + I will learn your true name and banish you back into the warp. Perhaps in its tides, you will relearn restraint. +

  He held back as he forced the speech into the other’s mind, but it was still harsh enough to make Fulgrim snort blood onto his lips.

  Lorgar… I—

  + You have desecrated the flesh in which you ride. Nothing more. This is not the holy union of humanity and Chaos. You violate the purity of the gods’ Primordial Truth. +

  Fulgrim sagged back against the wall. Blood was running from his eyes.

  ‘Lorgar,’ Horus rested his unclawed hand on his brother’s shoulder. ‘You are killing him.’

  ‘It is not ‘‘him’’. It is an it. And if I wished to kill it, then it would already be destroyed.’ Lorgar narrowed his eyes at Horus’s restraining grip on his shoulder.

  + Remove your hand, Horus + he sent.

  Horus obeyed, though he tried not to. The Warmaster’s fingers shivered as they withdrew, and his grey eyes flickered with unhidden tension.

  ‘You have changed,’ he said, ‘since crossi
ng blades with Corax.’

  Lorgar gathered his crozius and rested the immense maul on his shoulder guard. ‘Everything changed that night. I am returning to my ship, brother. I must think upon this… this foulness.’

  THREE

  MAGNUS AND LORGAR

  HE DID NOT wait long, nor had he expected to. Indeed, his brother awaited him in his chamber.

  We must speak, you and I.

  The phantasm’s form rippled, bright with witchfire, beaming myriad reflections across the angled walls of Lorgar’s inner sanctum. The chamber was cold, always too cold, and the air was forever moist as it ran through the filtration system. The primarch missed the dry climes of Colchis.

  He rested llluminarium, the immense crozius maul, against the wall.

  ‘Magnus,’ he said to the wraith. The figure formed of silver fire gave a graceful bow.

  It has been a long while since we spoke anything of substance.

  Once, not so long ago, he would have smiled to see his wisest, most powerful brother. Now, the smile read false, and didn’t reach Lorgar’s eyes.

  ‘You exaggerate. We have spoken many times in recent years.’

  Magnus’s remaining eye followed his brother’s steps as Lorgar moved over to his writing table.

  Our last talk of any real worth was in your City of Grey Flowers, almost half a century before. Have anything beyond the shallowest pleasantries passed between us since then?

  Lorgar met Magnus’s eye. The silvery form flickered as Lorgar’s voice resonated around it.

  + Times change, Magnus. +

  The Cyclops visibly shuddered, though he kept smiling. I felt that, even here. You have grown strong.

  + I saw the truth on the very Pilgrimage you demanded I never make. And after Isstvan, a veil lifted from my eyes. There is no longer any need to hold back. If we restrain ourselves, we will lose this war, and humanity will lose its only chance at enlightenment. +

  The distant primarch’s image wavered again. For a moment, Magnus looked pained.

  You scream your strength into the warp without care. A vessel must sail with the aetheric tides, Lorgar, lest it break against them.

  Lorgar laughed, a gentle, patient sound. ‘A lecture, from you? I have seen your past and future, Magnus. You stand with us only because our father exiled you. You stand as the crowned king of a Legion of the damned.’

  My Legion? Of what do you speak?

  Lorgar felt his brother’s questing probes, the softest psychic touch within his skull. It took the barest effort to hurl the insidious psi-touches aside.

  + If you ever seek to pry into my thoughts again, I will make sure you regret it. +

  Magnus’s smile became forced. You truly have changed.

  ‘Yes,’ Lorgar nodded, writing upon a scroll. ‘Everything has changed.’

  What did you mean about my Legion?

  Lorgar was already distracted as he worked. ‘Watch for the greatest snarl in fate’s skeins, brother.’ He dipped the quill into an inkpot and resumed his scribing. ‘You are not free of the flesh-change your Legion once feared. Beware those among your sons that fail to embrace it as the gift it is.’

  Magnus fell silent for some time. The only sound in the room was the scritch-scratch of Lorgar’s quill-tip, and the omnipresent bass murmur of the generators on the enginarium decks.

  Fulgrim is dead.

  ‘So it seems.’ Lorgar stopped writing long enough to look up. ‘How long have you known?’

  Magnus moved to the wall, reaching out as if his ethereal fingers could touch the paintings of Colchis hanging there.

  I knew it as soon as I reached into Horus’s war room. He withdrew his fingers, curling them back with slow care. Like you, I am no stranger to the entities within the warp. One of them animates his body now.

  + Entities? Name them as they are, brother. Daemons. +

  Magnus’s image wavered again, almost discorporated in the winds of Lorgar’s silent voice.

  Control your strength, Lorgar.

  Lorgar went back to his writing. ‘You should have told me the truth fifty years ago.’

  Perhaps. The melancholy bleeding from Magnus was almost strong enough to caress the skin. Perhaps I should have. I sought only to protect you. You were so certain, so arrogant in your beliefs.

  Lorgar spoke as he kept writing. ‘I stand at the right hand of the new Emperor, commanding the second-largest Legion in the Imperium. You are a broken soul, leading a shattered Legion. Perhaps I was never the one that needed protection, nor did my arrogance lead to my downfall. You cannot claim the same, Magnus. We both knew the truth, but only one of us faced it.’

  And such a truth. Bitter amusement lapped at Lorgar’s senses. The galaxy is a foul place. We are only making it fouler. Have you considered that it might be better to die in ignorance than to live with the truth?

  Lorgar repelled his brother’s creeping emotions with a burst of irritation. The spectre shimmered again, almost dissolving into the air.

  + Have you considered it, Magnus? If so, why do you yet live? Why did you not surrender to the howling death that came for you, when Russ broke your spine over his knee? +

  Magnus’s ghost-image laughed, but it was a forced sound, barely reaching Lorgar’s mind. Is this what we have come to? Is this the bitterness you have hidden from all of us for half a century? What did you see at the end of your Pilgrimage, my brother? What did you see when you stared into the abyss?

  + You know what I saw. I saw the warp, and what swims within its tides. + He hesitated a moment, feeling his fingers curl, forming fists in his rising rage. + You are a coward, to know of the Primordial Truth yet fail to embrace it. Chaos Incarnate is only grotesque because we see it with mortal eyes. When we ascend, we will be the chosen children of the gods. When— +

  Enough!

  Three of the paintings burst into flame; the crystal sculpture of the Covenant’s tower palace shattered into worthless glass chips. Lorgar winced at his brother’s psychic release. He had to sniff blood back into his nose.

  I am finished with this petty banter. You believe you know the truths behind our reality? Then show me. Tell me what you saw at the end of your accursed Pilgrimage.

  Lorgar rose to his feet, extinguishing the small fires with a gentle gesture. Frost glinted on his fingernails as the flames hissed into nothingness, starved of air. For a moment he felt a twinge of regret, that he and his closest brother should be reduced to this.

  But time changed all things. He was no longer the lost one, the weak one, the one brother plagued by doubt.

  Lorgar nodded, his eyes thinned to dangerous slits.

  ‘Very well, Magnus.’

  PART TWO

  THE PILGRIM

  FOUR

  A DEAD WORLD

  Shanriatha

  Forty-three years before Isstvan V

  HE TOOK HIS first steps onto the world’s surface, hearing the soft percussion of his steady breathing within the enclosed suit of armour. Targeting cross hairs moved over the emptiness in a sedate drift, while the delicate electronics of his retinal display listed his own bio-data in ignorable streams.

  Slowly, he moved into the wind. Dust crunched underfoot, soil so absolutely dead and dry that it defied the possibility of life. His musings were accompanied by the rattle of grit in the breeze, clattering against his thrumming armour plating.

  For just a moment, he turned and looked back at his gunship. The racing winds were already painting it with a fine layer of the powdery red dust that existed in abundance on this world.

  This world. He supposed it had once possessed a name, though it had never been spoken by human lips. Its bleak, rusty desolation reminded him of Mars, though Terra’s sister world was a bastion of industry with few wild lands remaining. It also laid claim to calmer skies.

  He didn’t look up; he didn’t need to, for there was nothing new to see. From horizon to horizon, a blanket of tortured clouds bubbled and churned, thunderheads crashing together to make t
ides of white, violet, and a thousand reds.

  The warp. He’d seen it before, but never like this. Never around a world. Never in place of true weather. Never crashing through thousands of solar systems in a migraine tide, like a nebula rotting in the void.

  Lorgar, said a genderless, breathless voice behind him, from a place where no one had been a moment before.

  He didn’t spin to face it, nor did he bring his weapon to bear. Instead, the primarch turned slowly, his eyes laden with patience and a bright, too-human curiosity.

  ‘Ingethel,’ he greeted the aberration. ‘I have sailed into the mouth of madness. Now tell me why.’

  INGETHEL SLITHERED CLOSER. Its claim to a humanoid form ended at its waist, which became the thick, ridged tail of a deep-sea worm or serpent. Mucous membranes along its underside were already coated with dust. Even its torso was human in only the loosest sense: four skeletal arms reached from its shoulders, in divine mockery of some ancient Hindusian deity, and its skin was a grey, mottled spread of dry leather.

  Lorgar, it said again. Malformed teeth clacked together as the creature’s jaw chattered. What had once been the face of a human female was now a bestial ruin – all fangs and dusty fur, with a leonine mouth that couldn’t close around its deformed dental battlements. One eye stared, swollen and ripe with blood, bulging from its socket. The other was a sunken, useless nugget half-buried in the beast’s skull.

  Why did you choose this world? the creature asked.

  The primarch saw its throat quiver with the effort of speech, but no human words left the trembling jaws.

  ‘Does that matter?’ Lorgar wondered. His own voice emerged from the snarling vox-grille in the mouth of his helm. ‘I do not see why it would.’

  From orbit, you must have known several things: you cannot breathe the air of this world, nor is there any sign of life upon its surface. Yet you chose to land and journey across it.

  ‘I saw the ruins. A city drowned in the dust plains.’

  Very well, it said, as if expecting such an answer. The creature hunched its shoulders against the wind, turning its head to shield its swollen eye. From its spine and shoulder blades rose several black pinions of burned bone – an angel’s wings, with no muscles or feathers.