'How does that make it a misunderstood word?' asked Julius.

'Come, my dear boy, I thought I had taught you better than that,' said Tobias. 'By following the logic of Irenaeus, you must surely perceive that heresy has no purely objective meaning. The category exists only from the point of view of a position within any society that has previously defined itself as orthodox. Anyone who espouses views or actions that do not conform to that point of view can be perceived as heretics by others within those societies who are convinced that their view is orthodox. In other words, heresy is a value judgment, the expression of a view from within an established belief system. For instance, during the Wars of Unification, the Pan-Europan Adventists held the secular belief of the Emperor as a heresy, while the ancestor worshippers of the Yndonesic Bloc considered the rise to power of the despot Kalagann as a great apostasy.

'So you see, Julius, for a heresy to exist there must be an authoritative system of dogma or belief designated as orthodox.'

'So you're saying there can never be heresy now, since the Emperor has shown the lie in the belief in false gods and corpse worshipers?'

'Not at all: dogma and belief are not reliant on the predisposed belief in a godhead or the cloak of religion. They might simply be a regime or set of social values, such as we are bringing to the galaxy even now. To resist or rebel against that could easily be considered heresy, I suppose.'

'Then why should I wish to read this man's books? They sound dangerous.'

Tobias waved his hands dismissively. 'Not at all: as I often told my pupils at the School of Iterators, a truth that is told with bad intent will triumph over all the lies that can be invented, so it behoves us to know all truths and separate the good from the bad. When an iterator speaks the truth, it is not only for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but also to defend those that do.'

Julius was about to ask more when the vox-bead crackled at his ear and he heard Lycaon's excited voice.

'Captain,' said Lycaon, 'you need to get back here'.

Julius raised the vox-cuff to his mouth and said, 'I'm on my way. What's happened?'

'We've found them,' said Lycaon, 'the Diasporex. You need to get back here right now.'

'I will,' said Julius, sensing something amiss in Lycaon's words, even over the distortion of the vox. 'Is there anything I should know?'

'Best you come and see for yourself,' replied Lycaon.

Fulgrim angrily paced the length of his stateroom to the deafening sound of a dozen phonocasters. Each broadcast a different tune: booming orchestral scores, the thumping music of the low hive cavern tribes and, greater than them all, the music of the Laer temple.

Each tune screamed in discord with the others, the sound filling his senses with wild imaginings and the promise of undreamt of possibilities.

His temper simmered just below the surface at his brother's actions, but there was nothing to do but wait to catch up with the 52nd Expedition. For Ferrus to have acted alone displayed a lack of respect that infuriated Fulgrim and threw his carefully laid plans for the Diasporex into disarray.

The plan had been perfect and Ferrus was ruining everything.

The thought surfaced swiftly and with such venom behind it that Fulgrim was shocked at its intensity. Yes, his beloved brother had acted impetuously, but he should have suspected that Ferrus would be unable to contain the Medusan rage that lay at his core.

No, you did all you could to contain his rage. His impetuosity will be his undoing.

Fulgrim felt a chill travel the length of his spine as the thought, one surely dragged from the darkest reaches of his being, surfaced in his head. Ferrus Manus was his brother primarch and, while there were those amongst their number that Fulgrim counted as close friends, there was no closer brotherhood than the bond between him and Ferrus.

Ever since the victory on Laeran, Fulgrim's thoughts had turned inwards to claw the furthest depths of his consciousness, dragging out an acid resentment he had not known existed. Each night as he lay on his silk bed, a voice whispered in his ear and ensnared him with dreams he never recalled and nightmares he could not forget. At first he had thought he was going mad, that some last, deceitful trick of the Laer had begun to unravel his sanity, but he had discounted such a notion as preposterous, for what could lay a perfect being such as a primarch low?

Then he had wondered if he was receiving some astrotelepathic message from afar, though he knew of no psychic potential he possessed. Magnus of Prospero had inherited their father's gift of foresight and psychic potential, though it was a gift that had distanced him from his brothers, for none truly trusted that such a power was without price or consequence.

At last he had come to accept that the voice was in fact a manifestation of his subconscious, a facet of his own mindscape that articulated the things he could not, and stripped away deceits the conscious mind created to protect it from the barriers society placed upon it.

How many others could lay claim to such an honest counsellor as their own mind?

Fulgrim knew he should make his way to the bridge, that his captains needed his direction and wisdom to guide them, for they looked to him in all things, and from him would come the direction and character of his Legion.

Which is as it should be: what is this Legion but a manifestation of your will?

Fulgrim smiled at the thought, reaching over to increase the volume on the phonocaster that played the music recorded within the Laer temple. The music reached deep inside him, its sound without tune or melody, but primal in its intensity. It awoke a longing for better things, for newer things, for greater things.

He remembered returning to the surface of Laeran and seeing Bequa Kynska in the temple with her hands raised to the roof, her face wet with tears as she recorded the music of the temple. She had turned to face him as he entered, falling to her knees as the passion of the alien music washed through her.

'I shall write this for you!' she shouted. 'I shall compose something marvellous. It will be the Maraviglia in your honour!'

He smiled at the memory, knowing the marvels she would compose for him were sure to be wondrous beyond belief. La Venice was already undergoing great renovations, with exquisite paintings and mighty sculptures already commissioned from those who had also visited the surface of Laeran.

If there had been any conscious thought as to why only they should receive commissions, he had since forgotten it, but the appropriateness of the decision still pleased him.

The greatest of these works would be a mighty picture of him, a magnificently ambitious piece he had commissioned from Serena d'Angelus after seeing the work she had begun to produce in the wake of the victory on Laeran: work so full of vibrancy and emotion that it made his heart ache to see such beauty.

He had sat for Serena d'Angelus several times since then, but he would need to find the time to engage with her properly when the Diasporex were annihilated.

Yes, he thought, soon the Pride of the Emperor will echo to the music of creation, and his warriors will carry it to every corner of the galaxy so that all might have a chance to hear such beauty.

His mood soured as he cast his gaze towards the end of his staterooms and the pile of smashed marble that had been his attempt to create a thing of beauty. Each stroke of the chisel had been delivered with precise skill. The lines of the figure's anatomy were perfect, and yet… there was something indefinably wrong with the sculpture, something that eluded his understanding. The frustration of it had driven him to inflict violence upon his work, and he had reduced it to rubble with three blows from his silver sword.