Horus said nothing. He didn’t even respond to Lorgar’s insult, though his lip curled.

Lorgar cast his eyes down to the fallen primarch. Fulgrim, whatever was within him, stared back with blood flecking the pale skin around his eyes.

Get off me,the voice ghosted through Lorgar’s mind. It wasn’t Fulgrim’s voice. It wasn’t even a close approximation.

+ Be silent + he psychically pulsed back, with enough force to make Fulgrim tremble.

Lorgar…the creature’s voice was weaker, raspier, a tremulous breath of wind. You know my kind. We are kin, you and I.

The primarch of the Word Bearers moved away, his sneer painted plain. The desperation in the creature’s silent voice made his skin itch.

‘How did this happen?’ he asked Horus.

The Warmaster watched Fulgrim rise. Lorgar did not – he spat onto the decking and tossed his crozius onto the table. Its ornate spiked head sent cracks lightning-bolting across the table’s surface.

On his feet, Fulgrim was a slender, willowy figure – svelte even in his contoured war plate. Lorgar saw none of the grace when he turned: he saw only the sickening unlight behind his brother’s eyes, and the intelligence of another being at the body’s core.

Fulgrim smiled someone else’s smile.

‘Lorgar,’ he began, using Fulgrim’s curiously tender voice.

+ I will learn your true name and banish you back into the warp. Perhaps in its tides, you will relearn restraint. +

He held back as he forced the speech into the other’s mind, but it was still harsh enough to make Fulgrim snort blood onto his lips.

Lorgar… I—

+ You have desecrated the flesh in which you ride. Nothing more. This is not the holy union of humanity and Chaos. You violate the purity of the gods’ Primordial Truth. +

Fulgrim sagged back against the wall. Blood was running from his eyes.

‘Lorgar,’ Horus rested his unclawed hand on his brother’s shoulder. ‘You are killing him.’

‘It is not ‘‘him’’. It is an it. And if I wished to kill it, then it would already be destroyed.’ Lorgar narrowed his eyes at Horus’s restraining grip on his shoulder.

+ Remove your hand, Horus + he sent.

Horus obeyed, though he tried not to. The Warmaster’s fingers shivered as they withdrew, and his grey eyes flickered with unhidden tension.

‘You have changed,’ he said, ‘since crossing blades with Corax.’

Lorgar gathered his crozius and rested the immense maul on his shoulder guard. ‘Everything changed that night. I am returning to my ship, brother. I must think upon this… this foulness.’

THREE

MAGNUS AND LORGAR

HE DID NOT wait long, nor had he expected to. Indeed, his brother awaited him in his chamber.

We must speak, you and I.

The phantasm’s form rippled, bright with witchfire, beaming myriad reflections across the angled walls of Lorgar’s inner sanctum. The chamber was cold, always too cold, and the air was forever moist as it ran through the filtration system. The primarch missed the dry climes of Colchis.

He rested llluminarium, the immense crozius maul, against the wall.

‘Magnus,’ he said to the wraith. The figure formed of silver fire gave a graceful bow.

It has been a long while since we spoke anything of substance.

Once, not so long ago, he would have smiled to see his wisest, most powerful brother. Now, the smile read false, and didn’t reach Lorgar’s eyes.

‘You exaggerate. We have spoken many times in recent years.’

Magnus’s remaining eye followed his brother’s steps as Lorgar moved over to his writing table.

Our last talk of any real worth was in your City of Grey Flowers, almost half a century before. Have anything beyond the shallowest pleasantries passed between us since then?

Lorgar met Magnus’s eye. The silvery form flickered as Lorgar’s voice resonated around it.

+ Times change, Magnus. +

The Cyclops visibly shuddered, though he kept smiling. I felt that, even here. You have grown strong.

+ I saw the truth on the very Pilgrimage you demanded I never make. And after Isstvan, a veil lifted from my eyes. There is no longer any need to hold back. If we restrain ourselves, we will lose this war, and humanity will lose its only chance at enlightenment. +

The distant primarch’s image wavered again. For a moment, Magnus looked pained.

You scream your strength into the warp without care. A vessel must sail with the aetheric tides, Lorgar, lest it break against them.

Lorgar laughed, a gentle, patient sound. ‘A lecture, from you? I have seen your past and future, Magnus. You stand with us only because our father exiled you. You stand as the crowned king of a Legion of the damned.’

My Legion? Of what do you speak?

Lorgar felt his brother’s questing probes, the softest psychic touch within his skull. It took the barest effort to hurl the insidious psi-touches aside.

+ If you ever seek to pry into my thoughts again, I will make sure you regret it. +

Magnus’s smile became forced. You truly have changed.

‘Yes,’ Lorgar nodded, writing upon a scroll. ‘Everything has changed.’

What did you mean about my Legion?

Lorgar was already distracted as he worked. ‘Watch for the greatest snarl in fate’s skeins, brother.’ He dipped the quill into an inkpot and resumed his scribing. ‘You are not free of the flesh-change your Legion once feared. Beware those among your sons that fail to embrace it as the gift it is.’

Magnus fell silent for some time. The only sound in the room was the scritch-scratch of Lorgar’s quill-tip, and the omnipresent bass murmur of the generators on the enginarium decks.

Fulgrim is dead.

‘So it seems.’ Lorgar stopped writing long enough to look up. ‘How long have you known?’

Magnus moved to the wall, reaching out as if his ethereal fingers could touch the paintings of Colchis hanging there.

I knew it as soon as I reached into Horus’s war room. He withdrew his fingers, curling them back with slow care. Like you, I am no stranger to the entities within the warp. One of them animates his body now.

+ Entities? Name them as they are, brother. Daemons. +

Magnus’s image wavered again, almost discorporated in the winds of Lorgar’s silent voice.

Control your strength, Lorgar.

Lorgar went back to his writing. ‘You should have told me the truth fifty years ago.’

Perhaps. The melancholy bleeding from Magnus was almost strong enough to caress the skin. Perhaps I should have. I sought only to protect you. You were so certain, so arrogant in your beliefs.

Lorgar spoke as he kept writing. ‘I stand at the right hand of the new Emperor, commanding the second-largest Legion in the Imperium. You are a broken soul, leading a shattered Legion. Perhaps I was never the one that needed protection, nor did my arrogance lead to my downfall. You cannot claim the same, Magnus. We both knew the truth, but only one of us faced it.’

And such a truth. Bitter amusement lapped at Lorgar’s senses. The galaxy is a foul place. We are only making it fouler. Have you considered that it might be better to die in ignorance than to live with the truth?

Lorgar repelled his brother’s creeping emotions with a burst of irritation. The spectre shimmered again, almost dissolving into the air.

+ Have you considered it, Magnus? If so, why do you yet live? Why did you not surrender to the howling death that came for you, when Russ broke your spine over his knee? +

Magnus’s ghost-image laughed, but it was a forced sound, barely reaching Lorgar’s mind. Is this what we have come to? Is this the bitterness you have hidden from all of us for half a century? What did you see at the end of your Pilgrimage, my brother? What did you see when you stared into the abyss?

+ You know what I saw. I saw the warp, and what swims within its tides. + He hesitated a moment, feeling his fingers curl, forming fists in his rising rage. + You are a coward, to know of the Primordial Truth yet fail to embrace it. Chaos Incarnate is only grotesque because we see it with mortal eyes. When we ascend, we will be the chosen children of the gods. When— +