Angron narrowed his eyes, as if fighting to remember. He nodded agreement a moment later. ‘True. Lorgar refused to come. He was praying.’

Horus, his handsome features lit from the low glow of his gorget, offered a smile. ‘He was meditating on his place in our great plan. There is a difference, brother.’

Angron nodded again without really committing to agreement. He seemed to care for nothing but shrugging the conversation from his shoulders and moving on to other matters.

Horus spoke up again. ‘We all know the costs of the coming campaign, and our destinies within it. Our fleets are underway. But after the, shall we say, unpleasantness of Isstvan, this is the first time we have gathered as a full fraternity.’ Horus gestured with an open palm to his golden-skinned brother. Intentionally or not, the movement was threatening when made with the massive clawed Mechanicum talon sheathing his right hand. ‘I hope your meditations were worthwhile, Lorgar.’

Lorgar was still staring at his final brother. He’d not taken his eyes off the last figure since he’d looked away from Perturabo.

‘Lorgar?’ Horus almost growled now. ‘I am growing ever more weary of your inability to adhere to established planning.’

Curze’s chuckle was a vulture’s caw. Even Angron smiled, his scarred lips peeling back from several replacement iron teeth.

Lorgar slowly, slowly, reached for the ornate crozius mace on his back. As he drew the weapon in the company of his closest kin, his eyes remained locked on one of them, and all physically present felt the deepening chill of psychic frost riming along their armour.

The Word Bearer’s voice left his lips in an awed, vicious whisper.

‘You. You are not Fulgrim.’

TWO

BLOOD AT THE COUNCIL TABLE

TIME CHANGES ALL things.

The son that had never found a place in his father’s empire was not the same soul that drew his weapon now. Lorgar was already moving before even the keenest of his warrior brothers knew what was happening.

Fulgrim had a scarce moment to draw a breath, to instinctively reach for his own weapon in a futile attempt to ward the coming blow.

Lorgar’s crozius mace struck with a bell’s toll, echoing around the war room. Fulgrim crashed into the back wall – a porcelain doll in shattered ceramite – and crumpled to the ground.

The golden primarch turned his fierce eyes upon his other brothers. ‘That is not Fulgrim.’

The others were already advancing, drawing their own weapons. Lorgar’s crimson armour, painted in honour of his Legion’s treachery against the Throne, reflected the stuttering hololithic avatars of the four brothers present only in spirit.

‘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 Conquerorwhen 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.’