'What do you bring me, Mai?' asked Horus.
'A communication, my lord,' replied his equerry.
'From whom?'
Maloghurst smiled. 'It's from Magnus the Red.'
La Venice was a ruin. The daemon that had claimed Fulgrim's body strode through the wreckage of Bequa Kynska's last and greatest performance, smiling as it remembered the scenes of destruction and wanton lust enacted here. The glow of a handful of dim footlights flickered in the gloom. The air stank of blood and lust, and the parquet was sticky with fluid and strewn with bone.
The power of its dark prince had poured through the mighty theatre and entered every living thing within it, breaking down the barriers of inhibition between desire and action.
Truly it had been a great performance, and the lesser avatars of its master had feasted well on the excess of sensation unleashed, before discarding their borrowed flesh and returning to the warp.
All around it were the signs that its master's power had been unleashed: the remains of a defiled carcass, a gaudy masterpiece of blood and ordure daubed on the wall or a sculpture of flesh formed from a multitude of body parts.
Outwardly, the daemon still resembled the body it had stolen, but already there were hints that the flesh was soon to be reshaped in an image more pleasing to it. An aura of power vibrated the air around it and its skin held a soft shimmer of inner luminosity.
The daemon hummed the opening bars of the Maraviglia's overture and drew the sword sheathed at its waist, the golden hilt shimmering in the fading glow of the wavering footlights. It had retrieved the anathame from Ostian Delafour's studio, surprised and amused to find another body impaled on its lethal point. The shrivelled husk of flesh was barely recognisable as Serena d'Angelus, but the daemon had honoured her corpse with the most sublime rain before making its way to La Venice.
It held the sword up to its face and laughed as it saw the tortured soul of Fulgrim behind its eyes reflected in the shimmering depths of the blade. The daemon could hear his pitiful cries echoing within his skull, the torment in every desperate shriek the sweetest music.
Such things pleased the daemon, and it stood for a moment to savour the fruits of its influence on Fulgrim. The fools who served in the III Legion had no idea that their beloved leader was clawing ineffectually at the bondage in which he was held.
Only the swordsman, Lucius, had appeared to realise that something was amiss, but even he had said nothing. The daemon had sensed the burgeoning warp touch upon the warrior and had presented him with the silver blade within which the Laer had bound a fragment of its essence. Though the weapon was now bereft of its spirit, there was still power within the blade, power that would empower Lucius in the years of death to come.
The thought of the coming slaughters made the daemon smile as it imagined what it might accomplish with this stolen flesh. Sensations that could only be imagined in the warp would be made real in this mortal realm, and a galaxy's worth of blood, lust, anger, fear, rapture and despair awaited it on the march to Terra. A billion souls were at the mercy of the Warmaster, and with the power of a Legion at its command, what heights of sensation might it experience?
The daemon made its way to the front of the stage and looked up towards the great portrait that hung above the smashed wreckage of the proscenium. Even in the dying light, the portrait's magnificence was palpable.
A glorious golden frame held the canvas trapped within its embrace, and the daemon smiled as it took in the wondrous perfection of the painting. Where before the image had been a garish riot of colours with a terrible aspect that horrified those mortals who dared to look upon it, it was now a thing of beauty.
Clad in his wondrous armour of purple and gold, Fulgrim was portrayed before the great gates of the Heliopolis, the flaming wings of a great phoenix sweeping up behind him. The firelight of the legendary bird shone upon his armour, each polished plate seeming to shimmer with the heat of the fire, his hair a cascade of gold.
The Primarch of the Emperor's Children was lovingly portrayed in perfect detail, every nuance of his grandeur and the life that made Fulgrim such a vision of beauty captured in the exquisite brushwork. The daemon knew that no finer figure of a warrior had ever existed or ever would again, and to even glimpse such a flawless example of the painter's art was to know that wonder still existed in the galaxy.
The painted Fulgrim stared down upon the ruin of the theatre and the monster that had claimed his mortal shell. The daemon smiled as it saw the horror within his eyes, a horror that had not been rendered by any skill of the painter. Perfect, exquisite agony burned in the portrait's gaze, and as the daemon sheathed the anathame and bowed to the silent stage, the dark pools of its painted eyes seemed to follow its every movement.
The daemon turned from the portrait and made its way from the theatre as the last of the footlights guttered and died, leaving the last phoenix forever shrouded in darkness.
~ TIMELINE ~
Millennia ~ Age
Humanity dominates Earth. Civilisations come and go. The Solar system is colonised. Mankind lives on Mars and the moons of Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune.
Mankind begins to colonise the stars using sub-light spacecraft. At first only nearby systems can be reached and the colonies established on them must survive as independent states since they are separated from Earth by up to ten generations of travel.
Invention of the warp-drive accelerates the colonising of the galaxy. Federations and empires are founded. First aliens encountered and first Alien Wars are fought. First human psykers scientifically proved to exist. Psykers begin to appear throughout human worlds.
First Navigators are born allowing human spaceships to make even longer, quicker warp-jumps. Mankind enters a golden age of enlightenment as scientific and technological progress accelerates. Human worlds unite and non-aggression pacts are secured with dozens of alien races.
Terrible warp-storms interrupt interstellar travel. Sporadic at first, the storms eventually prevent any warp-jumps being made. The incidence of human mutation increases rapidly. Mankind enters a dark period of anarchy and despair.
Human worlds ripped apart by civil wars, revolts, alien predation and invasion. Human psykers and other mutants dominate some worlds and these rapidly fall prey to warp-creatures. Humanity is on the brink of destruction.
Earth is conquered by the Emperor and enters an alliance with the Mechanicum of Mars. Finally the warp-storms abate and interstellar travel is possible again. The Emperor builds the Astronomican and creates the Space Marine Legions. Human worlds reunited by the Emperor in a Great Crusade that lasts for two hundred years.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hailing from Scotland, Graham McNeill narrowly escaped a career in Surveying to join Games Workshop, where he worked for six years as a games developer. As well as nine novels, Graham has written a host of sf and fantasy short stories. He lives in Nottingham, UK. Join the ranks of the 4th Company at www.graham-mcneill.com