At the forefront of the Emperor's Children, Lord Commander Eidolon and the swordsman Lucius led a contingent of their warriors into the heart of the enemy, killing with wondrous displays of bladework and howling shrieks of raw sonic power. The swordsman danced through the battle, his Terran blade carving a screaming, bloody path as he laughed in time with music only he could hear.
Marius Vairosean and his orchestra of damnation ploughed the bloody sand with their terrifying harmonics, ripping open flesh and metal with shrieking chords and howling scales. In contrast, Julius Kaesoron took little part in the fighting, expending his energies in the mutilation and defilement of the corpses left in his brother's wake. Trophies of flesh hung from his armour, each violation he wreaked on the flesh of the enemy more extreme than the last.
Apothecary Fabius picked his way through the carnage like a vulture, pausing here and there at fallen Astartes to perform some gruesome extraction. A coterie of warriors protected him and hideous homunculi assisted him in his loathsome labours, the fruits of which were borne behind them in a vile procession of bloodstained organ bearers.
Fulgrim was nowhere to be seen, the magnificent primarch lost amid the destruction of the Iron Hands' Morlocks, but even without him, his warriors fought with savage and exquisite glee.
With victory in his grasp, the Warmaster took to the field of battle, surrounded by Falkus Kibre and his Justaerin Terminators. The remnants of Horus's Mournival fought alongside him, the Warmaster's magnificent black armour and amber chest adornment gleaming bloody in the firelight.
The killing fields of Isstvan V ran red with the blood of the loyalists, their brave attempt to halt the rebellion of Horus little more than ragged flesh and blood that fought for the last shreds of honour left to them.
Here and there, fierce resistance overcame the traitorous forces and desperate bands of heroes fought their way clear of the trap, dragging their wounded with them towards the few surviving drop-ships.
A band of Raven Guard smashed through a cordon of Emperor's Children who shrieked in orgasmic pleasure as they were cut down, too immersed in the sensations of their own pain and death to fight back. A black-armoured captain led the breakout, fighting his way towards a miraculously undamaged Thunderhawk as his warriors bore the grievously wounded body of their primarch towards escape.
Of Vulkan there was no sign, his warriors cut off and surrounded by the Night Lords and Alpha Legion. Gales of bolter fire hammered the brave warriors of Nocturne and obliterated them. Not all the Salamanders were so cruelly slaughtered, others following the Raven Guard's example and battling their way to their aircraft and the hope of escape.
The few remaining Iron Hands, bereft of their primarch's leadership, banded together with the Salamanders and a brave few managed to break out of the hideous massacre, but such successes were the merest fraction of the battle.
Within hours the slaughter was complete and almost the entire strength of three complete Legions lay silent and dead on the tortured sands of Isstvan V.
The once-grey skies of the planet burned orange with the reflected glow of a thousand pyres. The firelight bathed the rippling, glassy sands in a warm radiance, and towering pillars of black smoke from the burning corpses filled the air. Lucius watched the blizzard of ash fall like snow from the skies and stuck out his tongue to taste the greasy, ashen tang of the dead.
Beside him, Lord Commander Eidolon, the skin of his face stretched and waxen over his bones, watched the cremation of the dead with dull, glassy eyes.
'We need to be moving again soon,' said Eidolon. 'We have no time to waste with pointless ritual.'
Privately, Lucius agreed, but he kept his counsel as the thousands of Astartes loyal to Horus filled the broken desert of the Urgall Depression. They gathered before a great reviewing stand, constructed by the dark priests of the Mechanicum with astonishing speed. As the sun began to sink beyond the horizon, the smooth black planes of the stand shone with a blood red glow.
The stand was erected as a series of cylinders of ever decreasing diameter, one standing atop another. The base was perhaps a thousand metres in width, constructed as a great grandstand upon which the Sons of Horus stood, their pre-eminent position as the elite of the Warmaster in no doubt after this great victory. Each warrior bore a flaming brand, and the firelight cast brilliant reflections from their armour.
Atop this pedestal of flame was another platform, occupied by the senior officers of the Legion. Lucius could see the familiar, hulking form of Abaddon together with Horus Aximand. The others he didn't recognise, but his attention was drawn higher before he could linger on their identities.
Above the senior officers of the Sons of Horus stood the primarchs.
Even rendered miniscule by distance, the sheer magnificence of such a gathering of might was breathtaking. Seven beings of monumental power stood on the penultimate tier of the reviewing stand, their armour still stained with the blood of their foes, their cloaks billowing in the winds that swept the Urgall Depression.
He had known Angron and Mortarion since the bloody days of Isstvan III. Their might had been demonstrated to him time and time again during that campaign. His own primarch had been a source of inspiration to Lucius for decades, though Fulgrim stood curiously apart from his brothers on the podium, as though disdainful of them.
But the others… the others had been unknown to him until now, their power and presence filling the plain before the stand with a hushed awe.
Lorgar of the Word Bearers, who had only recently arrived, stood proud and tall with his red cloak wrapped around his granite grey armour like a shroud. Alpharius, resplendent in purple and green held himself erect, as though attempting to match the beings around him in stature. Grim-faced Perturabo stood apart from his brothers, the firelight reflecting red from the burnished plates of his armour and mighty hammer. The lightning-streaked armour of Night Haunter seemed darker even than the black podium, his skull-faced helmet a spot of white amid the shadows that wreathed him.
Finally, the uppermost tier of the reviewing stand was a tall cylinder of crimson that stood a hundred metres above the primarchs. The Warmaster stood on top of it, his clawed gauntlets raised in salute. A furred cloak of some great beast hung from his shoulders, and the light of the pyres reflected from the amber eye upon his breastplate.
The Warmaster was illuminated from below by a hidden light source, bathing him in a red glow that gave him the appearance of the statue of a legendary hero, as he stood looking down on the endless sea of his followers from the towering platform.
As the sun finally dipped below the horizon, a flight of assault craft roared over the Urgall Hills, their wings dipping in salute to the mighty warrior below. Solid waves of cheering crashed against the reviewing stand, howls of adulation torn from tens of thousands of throats.
Lucius found himself swept up in the glory and added his voice to the din, his enhanced senses screaming in pleasure at the sheer, deafening volume of the cries. High, screaming voices from the Emperor's Children echoed weirdly over the plain, ecstatic shrieks of pleasure and debasement like nothing that should ever have been given voice by a mortal throat.
No sooner had the aircraft passed overhead than the massed Astartes began to march around the reviewing stand, their arms snapping out and hammering their breastplates in salute of the Warmaster. At some unseen signal a flame ignited on the northern slopes of the Urgall Depression and a blazing line of phosphor leapt across the ground in a snaking arc that described the outline of an enormous blazing eye upon the hillside.