Horus watched as the daemon ran its hands along the sand-blown walls of the chamber, its eyes closing as it enjoyed the rough texture of the stone surface.
‘Steering his course of action?’ prompted Horus.
‘Oh, yes!’ exclaimed the warp creature. ‘I made him believe that he should not doubt your course of action. Of course, he resisted, but I can be very persuasive.’
‘You made Fulgrim join with me?’
‘Of course! Did you really think you were that good an orator?’ chuckled the daemon. ‘You have me to thank for clouding his perceptions and adding his strength to yours. But for me, he would have run to his Emperor screaming of your imminent betrayal.’
‘And you think I owe you something, is that it?’ asked Horus.
‘Not at all, for in the end, Fulgrim was weak, too weak to finish what his own desire had begun,’ explained the creature. ‘His obsession led him to launch the deathblow at his brother, but his weakness would not allow him to land it without my help. I merely gave him the strength to do what he wanted to do.’
‘But where is he now?’
‘I have already told you, Horus,’ cautioned the daemon. ‘Fulgrim’s anguish at what he had done proved too great for him to bear. He begged me to help him extinguish his life, but I could not destroy him, that would have been far too prosaic. Instead, I gave him eternal peace, though not, I think, in the way he actually desired it.’
‘Is Fulgrim dead?’ asked Horus. ‘Answer me, damn you!’
‘Oh no,’ smiled the daemon, tapping an elongated finger with a sharpened nail against his temple. ‘He is here inside me, utterly aware of all that transpires, though I do not suppose that he is happy pressed into the furthest reaches of his soul.’
‘You have already claimed his flesh,’ snarled Horus, taking a thunderous step towards the daemon-Fulgrim. ‘If he is of no more use to you then let him die.’
The daemon shook his head with an amused sneer. ‘No, Horus, I shan’t be doing that, for his cries of horror are a great comfort to me. I am unwilling to let him fade away, since our discussions offer me much amusement and I do not suppose I shall ever tire of them.’
Horus felt nothing but revulsion at the fate his brother suffered, but forced his disgust to one side. After all, had not the daemon already pledged its allegiance to him? It was patently a creature of great power, and to allow the knowledge that their primarch was as good as dead, would certainly cost him the loyalty of Emperor’s Children Legion.
‘You may have Fulgrim for now,’ said Horus, ‘but keep your identity a secret from all others, or I swear I will see you destroyed.’
‘As you wish, mighty Warmaster,’ said the daemon-Fulgrim, nodding and giving an unnecessarily ostentatious bow. ‘I have no particular desire to reveal myself to others anyway. It will be our secret.’
Horus nodded, though he made a silent vow to free his brother as soon as he was able, for no one deserved to endure such a terrible fate.
But what power could unmake a daemon?
ORBITAL SPACE AROUND Isstvan V was as busy as any fleet docking facility around the lunar bases, with the vessels of eight Legions assuming formation prior to transit to the system jump point. Over three thousand vessels jostled for position above the darkened fifth planet, their holds bursting with warriors sworn to the Warmaster.
Tanks and monstrous war machines had been lifted from the planet with incredible efficiency and an armada greater than any in the history of the Great Crusade assembled to take the fire of war into the very heart of the Imperium.
The fleets of Angron, Fulgrim, Mortarion, Lorgar and the Warmaster’s own Legion would rendezvous at Mars, now that word had come from Regulus of the planet’s fall to Horus’s supporters within the Mechanicum. With the manufacturing facilities of Mondus Gamma and Mondus Occullum wrested from the control of the Emperor’s forces, the forges of Mars were free to supply the Warmaster’s army.
The eager warriors of the Alpha Legion were singled out by Horus for a vital mission, one upon which the success of the entire venture could depend. Following the Warmaster’s misdirection of Leman Russ, the Space Wolves were known to be operating in the region of Prospero after their attack on Magnus’s Thousand Sons. In the nearby system of Chondax, the White Scars of Jaghatai Khan were sure to have received word of Horus’s rebellion and would no doubt attempt to link with the Space Wolves. Horus could not allow such a grave threat to appear, and so the warriors of Alpharius were to seek out and attack these Legions before they could join forces.
Night Haunter’s fleet had already departed, bound for the planet of Tsagualsa, a remote world in the Eastern Fringes that lay shrouded in the shadow of a great asteroid belt. From here, the Night Lords’ terror troops would begin a campaign of genocide against the Imperial strongholds of Heroldar and Thramas, systems that, if not taken, would leave the flanks of the Warmaster’s strike on Terra vulnerable to attack. The Thramas system was of particular importance, as it comprised a number of Mechanicum forge worlds whose loyalty was still to the Emperor.
The ships of the Iron Warriors prepared to make the journey to the Phall system where a large fleet of Imperial Fists vessels were known to be regrouping after a failed attempt to reach Isstvan V. Though Rogal Dorn’s warriors had played no part in the massacre, the Warmaster could not allow such a powerful force to remain unmolested. The enmity between bitter Perturabo and proud Dorn was well known, and it was with great relish that the Iron Warriors set off to do battle.
With his flanks covered and the forces that could potentially reinforce the heart of the Imperium soon to be embroiled in war, the gates of Terra were wide open.
One by one, the fleets of the Warmaster’s rebellion began the long journey to the planet from which they had begun the Great Crusade, each Legion’s ships diminishing to silver specks in the darkness before vanishing utterly.
Soon, only the Sons of Horus remained in orbit over Isstvan V.
From the strategium of the Vengeful Spirit, the Warmaster looked down upon the dark orb through the circular viewing bay above his throne, his expression unreadable as he watched the elliptical curve of the fifth planet recede.
He turned as he heard the sound of footfalls behind him and saw Maloghurst limping towards him with a data-slate in his hand.
‘What do you bring me, Mal?’ asked Horus.
‘A communication, my lord,’ replied his equerry.
‘From whom?’
Maloghurst smiled. ‘It’s from Magnus the Red.’
LA FENICE WAS a ruin. The daemon that had claimed Fulgrim’s body strode through the wreckage of Bequa Kynska’s last and greatest performance, smiling as it remembered the scenes of destruction and wanton lust enacted here. The glow of a handful of dim footlights flickered in the gloom. The air stank of blood and lust, and the parquet was sticky with fluid and strewn with bone.
The power of its dark prince had poured through the mighty theatre and entered every living thing within it, breaking down the barriers of inhibition between desire and action.
Truly it had been a great performance, and the lesser avatars of its master had feasted well on the excess of sensation unleashed, before discarding their borrowed flesh and returning to the warp.
All around it were the signs that its master’s power had been unleashed: the remains of a defiled carcass, a gaudy masterpiece of blood and ordure daubed on the wall or a sculpture of flesh formed from a multitude of body parts.
Outwardly, the daemon still resembled the body it had stolen, but already there were hints that the flesh was soon to be reshaped in an image more pleasing to it. An aura of power vibrated the air around it and its skin held a soft shimmer of inner luminosity.
The daemon hummed the opening bars of the Maraviglia’s overture and drew the sword sheathed at its waist, the golden hilt shimmering in the fading glow of the wavering footlights. It had retrieved the anathame from Ostian Delafour’s studio, surprised and amused to find another body impaled on
its lethal point. The shrivelled husk of flesh was barely recognisable as Serena d’Angelus, but the daemon had honoured her corpse with the most sublime ruin before making its way to La Fenice.
It held the sword up to its face and laughed as it saw the tortured soul of Fulgrim behind its eyes reflected in the shimmering depths of the blade. The daemon could hear his pitiful cries echoing within his skull, the torment in every desperate shriek the sweetest music.
Such things pleased the daemon, and it stood for a moment to savour the fruits of its influence on Fulgrim. The fools who served in the III Legion had no idea that their beloved leader was clawing ineffectually at the bondage in which he was held.
Only the swordsman, Lucius, had appeared to realise that something was amiss, but even he had said nothing. The daemon had sensed the burgeoning warp touch upon the warrior and had presented him with the silver blade within which the Laer had bound a fragment of its essence. Though the weapon was now bereft of its spirit, there was still power within the blade, power that would empower Lucius in the years of death to come.
The thought of the coming slaughters made the daemon smile as it imagined what it might accomplish with this stolen flesh. Sensations that could only be imagined in the warp would be made real in this mortal realm, and a galaxy’s worth of blood, lust, anger, fear, rapture and despair awaited it on the march to Terra. A billion souls were at the mercy of the Warmaster, and with the power of a Legion at its command, what heights of sensation might it experience?
The daemon made its way to the front of the stage and looked up towards the great portrait that hung above the smashed wreckage of the proscenium. Even in the dying light, the portrait’s magnificence was palpable.
A glorious golden frame held the canvas trapped within its embrace, and the daemon smiled as it took in the wondrous perfection of the painting. Where before the image had been a garish riot of colours with a terrible aspect that horrified those mortals who dared to look upon it, it was now a thing of beauty.
Clad in his wondrous armour of purple and gold, Fulgrim was portrayed before the great gates of the Heliopolis, the flaming wings of a great phoenix sweeping up behind him. The firelight of the legendary bird shone upon his armour, each polished plate seeming to shimmer with the heat of the fire, his hair a cascade of gold.
The Primarch of the Emperor’s Children was lovingly portrayed in perfect detail, every nuance of his grandeur and the life that made Fulgrim such a vision of beauty captured in the exquisite brushwork. The daemon knew that no finer figure of a warrior had ever existed or ever would again, and to even glimpse such a flawless example of the painter’s art was to know that wonder still existed in the galaxy.
The painted Fulgrim stared down upon the ruin of the theatre and the monster that had claimed his mortal shell. The daemon smiled as it saw the horror within his eyes, a horror that had not been rendered by any skill of the painter. Perfect, exquisite agony burned in the portrait’s gaze, and as the daemon sheathed the anathame and bowed to the silent stage, the dark pools of its painted eyes seemed to follow its every movement.
The daemon turned from the portrait and made its way from the theatre as the last of the footlights guttered and died, leaving the last phoenix forever shrouded in darkness.
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