'My lord, Fulgrim,' said Ostian through tears that spilled freely down his cheeks, 'I do not understand.'

'No,' said Fulgrim, advancing towards him and forcing him, step by step, towards the statue. 'You don't do you? Like the Emperor, you have been too enraptured by your own selfish desires to pay any mind to that which goes on around you: remembrancers vanished and friends betrayed. When all you once held dear is crumbling around you, what do you do? You abandon those closest to you and forsake them in the quest for something of supposedly higher purpose.'

Ostian's terror reached new heights as he bumped into the marble of the statue, and Fulgrim leaned down so that his painted face was level with his own. Yet even amid the flood of horror at what had become of the primarch, Ostian pitied him too, for there was great pain in his every tortured word.

'If you had bothered to take note of your surroundings and the great events in motion, you would have dashed this sculpture to ruins and begged me to become the subject of your latest work. A new order is rising in the galaxy and the Emperor is no longer its master.'

'What?' gasped Ostian in surprise. Fulgrim laughed, the sound bitter and desperate.

'Horus will be the new master of the Imperium,' cried Fulgrim, drawing the sword from beneath his toga with a flourish. The golden hilt shimmered in the brightness of the studio, and Ostian felt warm wetness run down his thighs at the loathsome sight of the soulless blade.

Fulgrim drew himself up to his full height, and Ostian sobbed in relief as the primarch's haunted eyes broke contact with his own.

'Yes, Ostian,' said Fulgrim, matter-of-factly. 'For the past week, the Pride of the Emperor has been in orbit over Isstvan V, a bleak and blackened world of no particular note, but one which will go down in history as a place of glorious legend.'

Ostian fought to control his breathing as Fulgrim circled behind the statue, and he sagged against the cool marble.

'For on this dusty, unremarkable world, the Warmaster will utterly destroy the might of the Emperor's most loyal Legions in preparation for our march to Terra,' continued Fulgrim. 'You see, Ostian, Horus is the rightful master of mankind. He is the one who has led us to triumphs undreamt of. He is the one who has conquered ten thousand worlds, and he is the one who will lead us in conquest of ten thousand more. Together we will cast down the false Emperor!'

Ostian's thoughts tumbled over one another as he struggled to come to grips with the enormity of what Fulgrim was suggesting. Betrayal dripped from every word, and Ostian was suddenly and horribly confronted with the fact that he was paying the price for his isolation. Shutting himself off from events simply because he did not care for them had led to this, and he wished he had taken the time to…

'Your work is not yet perfect, Ostian,' said Fulgrim from behind the statue.

Ostian tried to frame a reply when he heard a horrific scraping sound of metal on stone, and the tip of the primarch's alien sword burst through the marble plinth to spear between his shoulder blades.

The glittering grey blade emerged from his chest with a crack of bone. Ostian tried to scream in pain, but his mouth filled with blood as the blade pierced his heart. The primarch's strength drove the blade deeper into the statue, until the gold quillons clanged against the marble and the tip of the sword projected a full foot from Ostian's chest.

Blood flowed from his mouth in thick red runnels of saliva and his eyes dimmed. Ostian's life flowed from his body as though clawed out by some voracious predator.

Ostian looked up with the last of his strength as he dimly perceived Fulgrim standing before him once more.

The primarch looked at him with a mixture of contempt and regret, pointing at the blood-spattered statue he hung from.

'Now it's perfect,' said Fulgrim.

The Gallery of Swords on the Andronius had changed a great deal since Lucius had last walked its length. Where once an avenue of monolithic statues of great heroes had stared down and judged the worth of a warrior as he walked between them, now those same statues had been crudely altered with hammers and chisels to resemble strange, bull-headed monsters with gem studded armour and curling horns of bone. Brightly coloured paints had been daubed over the statues, and the overall effect was like that of some garish carnival parade.

Eidolon marched ahead of him, and Lucius could feel the lord commander's dislike of him as an almost physical resentment. His killing of Chaplain Char-mosian still sat ill with Eidolon, and he had called him a traitor twice over, but that seemed an age ago, when the loyalist fools on Isstvan HI had still resisted the inevitable.

Lucius had given the lord commander the opportunity to win a great victory on a silver platter and, like the fool he was, Eidolon had squandered his chance for glory. When Lucius had slaughtered his warriors, the eastern approaches to the palace were wide open and Eidolon had led the Emperor's Children into the palace to outflank the defenders and roll up their pathetic defiance in a tide of fire and blood. But he had overreached himself and left his forces exposed to a counter-attack. It was an unforgivable oversight, and one that Saul Tarvitz had punished him for, flanking the flankers.

Lucius still smarted at his last confrontation with Tarvitz, remembering the duel they had fought in the ruined dome where he had killed Solomon Demeter. Like Loken before him, Tarvitz had not fought honourably, and Lucius had been lucky to escape with his life.

Still, it didn't matter anymore. After he had rejoined his Legion, the Warmaster's forces had withdrawn from Isstvan III, and commenced an orbital bombardment that had pulverised the surface of the planet until not a single structure remained standing. The Precentor's Palace was a rain of vitrified stone, and the force of the bombardment had levelled even the might of the Sirenhold. Nothing lived on Isstvan III, and Lucius felt a thrill of delicious excitement as he considered the future the fates had opened up to him.

He paused to savour the heights of glory he would rise to, and the new sensations awaiting him as he marched at the side of his primarch once more. The statue before him had once been Lord Commander Teliosa, hero of the Madrivane campaign, and Lucius remembered Tarvitz telling him that he had especially honoured it.

He chuckled as he imagined what Saul Tarvitz would make of the carved horns and exposed breast that had been added to it by enthusiastic, if questionably skilled, sculptors.

'Apothecary Fabius is waiting,' snapped Eidolon from up ahead, his impatience obvious.

Lucius grinned and spun on his heel to join Eidolon at his leisure. 'I know, but he can wait a little longer. I was admiring the changes you've made to the ship.'

Eidolon scowled and said, 'If it were up to me, I'd have left you to die down there.'

'Then I'm grateful it wasn't up to you,' smirked Lucius. 'Still, after your defeat at Saul's hands, I'm surprised you retained your command.'

'Tarvitz…' growled Eidolon. 'A thorn in my side from the day he made captain.'

'Well, he's a thorn no longer, lord commander,' said Lucius, thinking back to his last sight of Isstvan III, the swirling, cloud streaked glow of its atmosphere flickering with the mushroom clouds of high yield atomics and incendiaries.

'You saw him die?' asked Eidolon.

Lucius shook his head. 'No, but I saw what was left of the palace. Nothing could have lived through that. Tarvitz is dead and so are Loken and that smug bastard, Torgaddon.'

Eidolon at least had the good grace to smile at the news of Torgaddon's death and he nodded reluctantly. 'That at least is good news. What of the others? Solomon Demeter, Ancient Rylanor?'