He looked down as he realised he squatted atop another, living, breathing figure.
A giant in torn golden robes, his bone-white hair spattered with gleaming ruby droplets.
A mantle of red velvet trimmed with golden weave spread out beneath him like a bloodstain.
Tanned, iron flesh. Opened and bleeding.
He took in the destruction wrought on the body beneath him, raising his hands, balled into fists. Blood dripped from his fingertips and he could taste the warm richness of the genetic mastery encoded into every molecule upon his teeth.
He knew this giant.
His name was legendary, his stony heart and mastery of war unmatched.
His name was Rogal Dorn.
He looked up again as he heard his own name, given voice by a warrior in the golden plate armour of the Imperial Fists who bore the black and white heraldry of its First Captain.
He knew this warrior too…
'Curze!' cried Sigismund. 'What have you done?'
The emptiness of space shimmered in the glow of distant suns beyond the armoured glass, faraway planets and unknown systems turning in their prescribed arcs without thought for the dramas being played out on the stage of human endeavour. What did those who lived beneath these suns know of the Cheraut system and the blood that had been shed to pacify it in the name of the emergent Imperium of Mankind?
Curze stifled the anger such questions provoked, staring into his reflection with cold, obsidian eyes that resembled empty sockets in his pallid, sunken features. Lank hair hung to his neck like black ropes and spilled across his wide, powerful shoulders, he turned from his reflection, uncomfortable with the dreadful disappointment he saw there.
Glinting metal caught his sullen gaze: his armour, standing in a shadowed alcove on the far wall. He crossed the chamber and placed his hand on the skull-faced helmet. The gem-like facets of its lenses winked in the low light and the sweeping dark wings rose from its sides like the pinions of some avenging angel of night. The burnished plates were dark, as befitted the Primarch of the Night Lords, each one contoured perfectly to his form and worked with gold edging that caught the starlight.
Turning from his battle armour, he paced the hard, metallic floor of the gloomy, cavernous chamber that confined him. Thick steel columns supported a great vaulted ceiling, its upper reaches lost in shadow, and the hum of the mighty starfort's reactor beat like a pulse in the metal.
This aesthetic of functional austerity was typical of the Imperial Fists, whose artifice had constructed this mighty orbital fortress as a base of operations with which to begin the compliance of the Cheraut system.
The Emperor's Children had held their traditional victory feast before the first shot had been fired and together with Fulgrim's Legion and the Night Lords, Rogal Dorn's Imperial Fists had broken open the defences of the belligerent human coalition that resisted the coming of the Imperium. Within eight months of hard, bloody fighting, the eagle flew above the smoking ruins of the last bastion, but where Dorn lauded Fulgrim's Legion, the conduct of the Night Lords had earned only his ire.
Matters had finally come to a head amid the silver ruins of Osmium.
Pyres of the dead stained the skies black and Curze had watched his chaplains orchestrating the executions of defeated prisoners when Dorn marched into his camp, his lean face thunderous. 'Curze!'
Never once had Rogal Dorn called him by his forename.
'Brother?' he had replied.
'Throne! What are you doing here?' demanded Dorn, his normal, affable tone swallowed in the depths of his outrage. A phalanx of gold-armoured warriors followed their lord and Curze had immediately sensed the tension in the air.
'Punishing the guilty,' he had answered coolly. 'Restoring order.'
The Primarch of the Imperial Fists shook his head. 'This not order, Curze, it is murder. Order your warriors to stand down. My Imperial Fists will take over this sector.'
'Stand down?' said Curze. 'Are they not the enemy?'
'Not any more,' said Dorn. 'They are prisoners now, but soon they will be a compliant population and part of the Imperium. Have you forgotten the Emperor's purpose in declaring the Great Crusade?'
'To conquer,' said Curze.
'No,' said Dorn, placing a golden gauntlet on his shoulder guard. 'We are liberators, not destroyers, brother. We bring the light of illumination, not death. We must govern with benevolence if these people are ever to recognise our authority in this galaxy.'
Curze flinched at the touch, resenting the easy friendship Dorn pretended. Bilious anger bubbled invisibly beneath his skin, but if Dorn was aware of it, he gave no sign.
'These people resisted us and must pay the penalty for that crime,' said Curze. 'Obedience to the Imperium will come from the fear of punishment, you know that as well as anyone, Dorn. Kill those that resisted and the others will learn the lesson that to oppose us is to die.'
Dorn shook his head, taking his aim to lead him away from the curious stares their healed discussion was attracting. 'You are wrong, but we should speak of this in private.'
'No,' said Curze, angrily shrugging off Dorn's grip. 'You think these people will bend the knee meekly to us because we show compassion? Mercy is for the weak and foolish. It will only breed corruption and eventual betrayal. Fear of reprisals will keep the rest of this planet in check, not benevolence.'
Dorn sighed. 'And the hatred planted in those you leave alive will pass from one generation to the next until this world is engulfed in a war the cause of which none of those fighting will remember. It will never end, don't you see that? Hate only breeds hate and the Imperium cannot be built upon such bloody foundations.'
'All empires are forged in blood,' said Curze. 'To pretend otherwise is naïve. The rule of law cannot be maintained by the blind hope that human nature is inherently good. Haven't we seen enough to know that ultimately the mass of humanity must be forced to into compliance?'
'I cannot believe I am hearing this,' said Dorn. 'What has got into you, Curze?'
'Nothing that has not always been there, Dorn,' said Curze, striding away from the mighty golden figure and hauling one of the few remaining prisoners upright In the front of his tunic. He scooped up a fallen bolter and thrust the heavy gun into the prisoner's trembling hands.
Curze leaned down and said, 'Go ahead. Kill me.'
The terrified man shook his head, the oversized weapon shaking in his hands as though his limbs were palsied.
'No?' said Curze. 'Why not?'
The prisoner tried to speak, but so awed by the terrifying proximity of the primarch that his words were unintelligible.
'Are you afraid you will be killed?'
The man nodded and Curze addressed his warriors, 'No one harms this man. No matter what happens, he is not to be punished.'
Curze had turned and walked back towards Dorn with his arms stretched out to either side of him and presenting his back to the prisoner.
No sooner had he turned away from the armed man than the gun had been raised and the hard crack of a bolter shot split the air. Sparks flew as the explosive shell ricocheted from Curze's armour and he spun on his heel to smash the prisoner's skull to splinters with his fist.
The headless corpse swayed for a moment before dropping slowly to its knees and pitching onto its chest.
'You see,' said Curze, his fingers dripping blood and bone fragments.
'And what was that supposed to prove?' asked Dorn, his features curled in distaste.
'That any chance mortals get they will choose the path of dissent. When he thought he would be punished, he dared not shoot, but the moment he believed himself free from consequence, he acted.'
'That was an unworthy deed,' said Dorn and Curze had turned away from him before he could elaborate, but the Imperial Fists' primarch caught his arm. 'Your warriors will stand down and withdraw, Curze. That is an order, not a request. Leave this planet. Now.'