Leonid watched the Chaos warlord turn and march back through the earthworks, the lingering nausea in his gut fading to a dull ache as the Warsmith vanished from sight.

Night was falling as the Warsmith's champions gathered beneath his intricate pavilion. They knelt before the master of the Iron Warriors, in awe at the changes rippling through his form. Honsou watched as a darkening shadow ghosted behind the Warsmith's body, rippling the air with its passing, like mighty wings beating the air, or at least the suggestion of wings. The roiling souls spinning within his armour were silent, their cries drowned out by the unheard crescendo of change writhing within the Warsmith.

'A time of great moment is upon us, my champions' began the Warsmith.

He turned his gaze towards the hazily lit silhouette of the citadel, barely visible over the lip of the earthwork. Flashes of artillery fire lit the sky as Imperial mortars dropped shells on the Iron Warriors' camp, but it was undirected; and the vehicles and troops were protected from all but direct hits in their reinforced bunkers.

'The future is becoming less tangled now, its paths unravelling and revealing their ultimate destinations to me. It is a wonderful thing to see and to know that Perturabo chose the right path. To see the enemy's palaces in ruins, to see his warriors hung, broken and defeated from stakes lining the roadways from here to the gates of Terra vindicates everything we have done. I have seen this and more, victories and slaughters magnificent in their scale. It is pleasing, and the poor fools we must destroy will not accept this. Like most mortals, the true majesty of Chaos turns them into frightened children. Such limited understanding and vision is to blame for what their Emperor has brought them to.'

Honsou felt his pulse rising in time with the cadence of the Warsmith's voice. Each word dripped with potential. The battle here was almost at an end and the Warsmith was promising them victory. The human soldiers had fulfilled their appointed task and now the honour of taking the citadel would fall to the Iron Warriors. It would be soon, the Warsmith would not, could not, wait any longer.

Any fool could see that.

Even the faintly disturbing presence of Kroeger beside him could not dampen his enthusiasm for the coming fight. Kroeger had not spoken a single word to anyone for several days and while normally Honsou would have been grateful for such a reprieve, his suspicions were aroused. Though he could not see his face beneath his helmet, Honsou's warrior's eye could tell that there was something different about Kroeger. He moved with a confident, easy grace, rather than the bullish swagger he usually affected, more like a fighter than of a simple butcher and Honsou did not like the change one bit.

He glanced over at Forrix, the ancient veteran shifting painfully under the weight of his new bionics. The Chirumeks had worked wonders to reconstruct his body in so short a time, and daemonic sorceries had brought his life back from the brink of the void.

The Warsmith approached them again and Honsou steeled himself for the aching cramps and nausea.

'I now know the truth of the universe,' began the Warsmith. 'Only Chaos endures. The web of action and reaction, cause and effect that has brought us to Hydra Cordatus began many thousands of years ago, though in this universe nothing ever really begins or ends.'

The Warsmith turned and spread his arms before him, encompassing the extent of the citadel.

'Towards the end of the Great Crusade I helped build this citadel, working shoulder to shoulder with the great Perturabo himself. We raised its magnificence towards the heavens for the glory of the Emperor. But Perturabo knew, even then, that the Emperor would one day betray us, and fashioned it with great cunning. What I created, you will now put asunder.'

Honsou was amazed. The Warsmith had built the citadel? Now he began to understand the true genius behind its construction. Had this been any other fortress, it would have fallen much sooner. The finest siege engineers of the day had built it and it would take the finest warriors to tear it down.

'Billions upon billions of potential consequences spread out from the here and the now and each is capable of being massively shaped by the tiniest action,' continued the Warsmith. 'Each of you will play a part in that future and you will not fail me. You will not fail me or you will die, by my hand or the enemy's, it matters not. Some of you will die, and some of you have died already.'

Honsou's brow wrinkled as he pondered the Warsmith's words. Was he going to tell them the outcome of tomorrow's battle? As though hearing his thoughts the Warsmith answered Honsou directly.

'Only the Great Conspirator himself knows the infinite possibilities the future can bring, but I have seen tantalising glimpses of the shape of things to come. The myriad complexities of alternate histories yet to be written lie open to my sight.'

The Warsmith stood before each of his champions and bade them stand with a curt gesture.

'Honsou, you have proven yourself to be a worthy leader and though your blood is polluted beyond redemption with the seed of the very enemy we face, you are a true son of Chaos and I see worlds that will yet burn in your name. Your life hangs by the most slender of threads and it is probable you will die tomorrow. If it is to be so, die well.'

'Forrix, I have fought beside you many times and we have shed the blood of millions together. Whole sectors cursed our names, and legions of the dead await to walk with you on the road to hell. You will be a legend amongst the Iron Warriors.'

'Kroeger… Kroeger, for you I see nothing beyond the slaughter of these walls. You will go places I shall never see, but I do not know whose is the greater loss.'

Honsou could not understand all the Warsmith's words, but knew there was great significance in every one. He had barely heard the words directed at the other captains, so intent was he on fathoming the meaning of those directed at him. Was he to die tomorrow? Would he yet live to make more worlds of the False Emperor bleed?

Such concerns were beyond his ability to comprehend; yet he felt a terrible vindication as he received the Warsmith's acceptance.

His footsteps were loud against the smooth stone steps, but Magos Naicin knew there was no one to hear them. Even had there been, he could easily have explained away his presence here.

The dark tower was a black spear against a garnet sky and Naicin rubbed a gloved hand against the metal of his bronze mask, feeling its edge chafe against the tissue beneath. It would be pleasing to finally be rid of the augmentations enforced by his role and feel air against his true flesh again.

Naicin felt a thrill of anticipation course through his body at the thought of the task before him. Until now his greatest challenge had been to mislead and confuse an already disorientated, barely-human machine priest who grew easier to influence with each passing day. Since the day he had replaced the real Naicin, nearly a century ago on Nixaur Secundus, the threat of discovery had been negligible, and it was a testament to how blindly the dogmatic machine priests could be manipulated and fooled.

All it required was the correct symbols, a few ritualistic lines of doggerel and they would believe you were one of their own. It was galling to think that an organisation that could be so easily deceived was one of the foundations the cursed Imperium rested upon. The sooner his master destroyed it the better. United under the yoke of Chaos, humanity would be the stronger for its absence.

Naicin reached the top of the slope and looked back upon the wasteland of Hydra Cordatus. The Iron Warriors' attack would come with the dawn, and a storm of iron would engulf the citadel, against whose wrath none could stand. The men struggling on the walls below were fighting bravely, but he wondered if they would fight as hard knowing the truth of what had happened to this world, why it was such a desolate wilderness. Or, indeed, what was happening to their own bodies even now.