He spun on his heel, daring his reflections to show anything less than his true beauty.

A hundred or more Fulgrims stared at him with expressions of equal anger, though only now, still and enraged, did he see the pain and terror in the depths of those oh-so-black eyes.

'Where are you?' demanded Fulgrim.

I am here, one reflection answered him.

I am where you abandoned me and left me to rot, said another.

Fulgrim's anger vanished like a droplet of water vaporising on a hot engine cowl. This was new, this was unexpected, and was therefore to be savoured. He walked a slow circuit of the clearing, meeting the gaze of one reflection while trying to keep an eye on the others. Were these reflections his or were they animated by a will of their own and simply mimicking his movements? How such a thing could be possible, he did not know, but it was a fascinating diversion.

'Who are you?' he asked.

You know who I am. You stole what was mine by right.

'No,' said Fulgrim. 'It was always mine.'

Not so, you only borrow the flesh you walk in. It has always been mine and always will be.

Fulgrim smiled, now recognising the sentience behind the myriad voices and broken-glass reflections. He had been expecting this, and to know with whom he conversed gave him a welcome feeling of brotherhood. Fulgrim sheathed the anathame, now certain it was not the source of the voices.

'I wondered when you would manage to reach out beyond the golden frame of your prison,' he said. 'It took you longer than I expected.'

His reflection returned his smile.

Being confined is a new experience for me. It took time to adjust. Freedom such as I once possessed is hard to forget.

Fulgrim laughed at the petulance in the reflection's voice.

'So why show me Ferrus Manus?' he asked the myriad reflections.

What better mirror is there than the face of an old friend? Only those we love have the power to show us our true selves.

'Was it guilt?' asked Fulgrim. 'Do you think you can shame me into surrendering this body to you?'

Shame? No, you and I have long since outgrown shame.

'Then why the Gorgon?' pressed Fulgrim. 'This body is mine, and no power in the universe will compel me to relinquish it.'

But there is so much we could achieve were I to command it again.

'I will achieve more,' promised Fulgrim.

Keep telling yourself that, laughed his reflection. You cannot know the things I know.

'I know everything you knew,' said Fulgrim, lifting his arms and flexing his hands like a virtuoso pianist preparing to play. 'You should see what I can do now.'

Parlour tricks, scoffed his reflection, his eyes darting to another mirror image.

'You make a poor liar,' laughed Fulgrim. 'But I should expect no less. You once ensnared the weak minded with offers of empowerment, but what you really offered was slavery.'

All things that live are enslaved to something; be it lust for wealth and power or the desire for possessions and new experiences. Or the desire to be part of something greater...

'I am no man's slave,' said Fulgrim, and his reflections laughed, a hundred peals of mockery that cut him more deeply than any blade ever could.

You are more a slave now than ever you were, hissed his reflection. You exist trapped in a body of meat and bone, caught in a broken machine that will grind you to ash. You cannot know what true freedom is until you have embraced power beyond imagining. That is to know the power of a god. Release me and I can show you how we can ascend together.

Fulgrim shook his head. 'Better yet to subdue that power and bend it to your will.'

We can experience such wonders together, you and I, said a reflection to his left.

A universe of sensation, said another.

Ours for the taking, added a third.

'Say what you will,' countered Fulgrim. 'You have nothing to offer.'

Think you so? Then you have no understanding of that body you claim as your own.

'I grow tired of your games,' said Fulgrim, turning away, but finding himself face to face with yet more mirror images. 'You will remain where you are and we will speak no more.'

Please, begged a reflection, suddenly contrite. I cannot exist like this. It is cold in here, and dark. The darkness presses in on me and I fear I shall be gone soon.

Fulgrim leaned in close to the mirrored surface of a crystal spire and grinned.

'Have no fear of that, brother,' he said. 'I will be keeping you around for a very, very long time indeed.'

6.

The fleet remained in orbit around Prismatica for six days, gathering the crystal forests from the Mechanicum silos and packing the hold of five captured bulk carriers with glittering cargo. Fulgrim demanded every shard, every powdered fragment and every spire that could be taken from the world, though he gave no clue as to what purpose he intended to turn this haul of captured minerals.

In those six days, the Emperor's Children made sport of those few prisoners they had taken, using them in ways too terrible to describe before passing them on to the next company. Lucius fought solitary duels in the last remnants of the crystal forests, dancing with his reflection and matching its every thrust, cut and parry with another dazzling move. He was as close to being the perfect swordsman as it was possible to be, possessing the ideal balance between attack and defence, flawless footwork and a pathological need to feel pain.

Such was the weakness of most opponents, they feared to feel pain.

Lucius had no such fear, and only the warrior capable of the most berserk fury would stand any chance against him. Such a warrior cared nothing for his own life and would only stop fighting when he was dead. Lucius remembered the sight of a battle captain of the World Eaters on Isstvan III, watching as he tore through his own warriors like a man possessed.

To fight such a warrior would be the true test of Lucius's skills, for, as much as he liked to believe himself to be unbeatable, he knew that was not the case. There was no such thing as an unbeatable warrior, there would always be someone faster or stronger or luckier, but instead of fearing to meet such an opponent, Lucius ached for it.

His reflection advanced and retreated with him, matching him movement for movement, and no matter how fast his attacks, how lightning quick his ripostes, he could never breach his mirrored defences. His swords moved with greater and greater speed, each attack faster than the last. He moved quicker than any other living swordsman, his blades forming a shimmering sphere of silver around his body, an intricate sword dance that would have been madness to interrupt.

'So self-involved, swordsman,' said Julius Kaesoron, emerging from behind a jagged stump of crystal. 'You would be left behind here?'

Lucius stumbled, his swords clanging together with a resonant clang of lethal edges. His Terran blade squealed in protest as the Laeran edge notched it with a gleeful shriek of metal on metal. Lucius turned his stumble into a spin and both blades whistled as they cut the air and came to rest on the First Captain's throat.

'That was not wise,' he said.

Kaesoron batted the blades away, and laughed with a gurgle of frothed fluids in his throat. He turned his back on Lucius and gestured towards the ruined Mechanicum facility, where the last of the container shuttles hauled its heavily laden bulk from the blasted rock of the planet's surface.

Almost nothing remained of the crystal forests, the horizon stripped bare and the silos torn down as they were emptied. Marius Vairosean's screaming squads blasted what little was left standing to shredded atoms with jangling blasts of interlocking blast waves of disharmonious sonics. Soon it would be as though this place had never existed.

Lucius jogged after the First Captain. 'You think I wouldn't kill you, Kaesoron?' he asked, angered at the warrior's casual dismissal of his threat.

'You are a viper, Lucius, but even you're not that stupid.'

Lucius wanted to snap at Kaesoron, but he knew it would be pointless to antagonise the man. The First Captain would leave him behind without a second thought, and barely a glimmer of emotion.

'The primarch has been thorough,' said Lucius, sheathing his swords and watching the last container shuttle ascend on a rippling haze of struggling engines. 'What does he want with it all?'

'The crystals?'

'Of course, the crystals,' said Lucius.

Kaesoron shrugged, the matter of no consequence to him. 'The primarch desired them, so we took them. What he intends to do with them is of no interest to me.'

'Really?' said Lucius. 'And you call me self-involved.'

'And you do care?' countered Kaesoron. 'I think not. Your world begins and ends with you, Lucius. Just as mine concerns only what will allow me to taste the greatest bliss and darkest raptures. We exist to gratify all our desires to the extreme edges of sensation, but we do it in service to a power greater than any of us, greater even than any primarch.'

'Even the Phoenician or the Warmaster?'

'Luminous beings they are, but they are mere vessels for a power older than you or I can imagine.'

'How do you know this?' asked Lucius.

'There is wisdom in suffering, swordsman,' said Kaesoron. 'Isstvan V showed me that. The bliss of pain and the ecstasy of agony are how we offer our devotions. You have not known true suffering, because you are weak. You still cling to notions of what we were, not what we have become.'

Lucius bristled with anger at Kaesoron's casual dismissal of his own pain and talents, but said nothing, eager to learn more of what the First Captain had to say.

'The Lord Fulgrim has known the greatest pain this galaxy has to offer and he knows the truths at its heart,' said Kaesoron, and Lucius detected a change in his rasping tones, a tremor of doubt. 'Since... Isstvan he has shown me such sights as I would never have dreamed, pain and wonder, rapture and despair.'

Was it possible?

Did Kaesoron suspect the same as he?

Lucius risked a sidelong glance at Kaesoron, but the warrior's skull had been so thoroughly mangled and rebuilt that it was impossible to read his features. A thunderous crash of atomising metal washed over them as the last silo toppled to the ground, and its destroyers shrieked as the deafening noise drove spikes of pleasure through their brains.

Marius Vairosean marched towards them as a last Stormbird dropped through the streaked corona of a rainbow sky. Lucius wanted to find the sky beautiful, to be moved by the vivid colours and the rarefied blends of hues he had never seen.

He felt empty, and wanted nothing more than to leave this world. It had nothing left of interest, and anger touched him at the thought that he was bereft of stimulation.

'A grand finale,' said Marius, the words mangled by his overstretched jaws. Lucius wanted to ram his swords into Vairosean's chest, just to feel something. He resisted the urge only with difficulty.

'I despise this place,' said Lucius, wanting nothing more than to be gone from this mundane rock of a world.

'I have already forgotten it,' said Kaesoron.

7.

The dream still clung to the ragged edges of his consciousness, its lingering dread and burdensome suspicions hanging like an albatross from his neck. The corridors of the Pride of the Emperor were never silent, the echoes of screams drifting from one end of the ship to the other in a constant choir of debauched indulgences. The majority of these screams were of pain, but many were of delight.

It grew harder and harder to tell which was which with the grey passage of days.

Yet this area of the ship was abandoned and forgotten, like a dirty secret a man might hope will go away if only it can be ignored for long enough. No light or music or screams filled this wide hallway, no disjointed pavanes of misery, and no fleshy tributes to masterful excruciation. It felt like this place didn't exist, as though it was out of joint with the rest of the ship.

Lucius turned a corner and found himself before the great arched doors to La Fenice, and here the illusion of abandonment was dispelled. Six warriors stood before the doors, clad in scored armour of blues, pinks and purples. They wore tattered cloaks of gold weave that hung in asymmetrical waterfalls from the spikes worked into their shoulder guards, and crimson raptors surged from ruby flames on their breastplates.

All six carried golden-bladed halberds, the edges of which crackled with a faint haze of killing light. A flesh-masked warrior stepped towards him, the blade of his halberd spinning to face him. Lucius watched the warrior's movements, calm, assured and smooth. He was unafraid of Lucius, which marked him out as being particularly stupid.

'Phoenix Guard,' said Lucius with a grin of relish.

'Entering La Fenice is death,' said the warrior, his voice muffled by the skin mask.

'Yes, I'd heard,' replied Lucius amiably. 'Why is that, do you think?'

The Phoenix Guard ignored the question and said, 'Turn around, swordsman. Leave here and you will live.'

Lucius laughed, amused at the sincerity if not the seriousness of the threat.

'Really?' said Lucius, resting his palms on the pommels of his swords. 'Do you think you and your friends can stop me from getting inside?'

The rest of the Phoenix Guard spread out, forming an arc of killing steel around him.

'Leave now and you live,' said the warrior before him.

'Yes, you said that, but here's the thing,' said Lucius. 'I want in there, and you aren't going to stop me. Trust me, it will give me great pleasure to take the six of you on at once, but I think that might be a rather one-sided experience by the end.'

Lucius saw the attack coming in the Phoenix Guard's eyes.

Energised carbon steel clove the air, but Lucius was already moving.

Lucius ducked below the sweep of a halberd and the Terran blade leapt to his hand. Its tip plunged into the groin of the flesh-masked warrior. Lucius gave a savage twist and the blade cut up through his opponent's femur and hip to remove his leg. Blood gouted from the wound, and the warrior fell with a cry of mingled pain and surprise. Lucius darted to the side, his Laeran blade cutting into the flank of the warrior to his right. Armour parted before its alien metal and the warrior's guts looped out as though eager to be free of his flesh.

Altered organs heightened every sensation, and Lucius laughed with the vividness of his surroundings. The darkness became multi-faceted, the smell of blood a heady cocktail of unnatural chemicals and biological agents, the gleam of dim light from flashing weapons like the explosive fanfare that marked the end of the Great Triumph. His breath sounded impossibly loud, his blood like thundering rapids, and his opponents came at him with what seemed like deliberate slowness.

A halberd stroked his shoulder, and Lucius rolled with the arc of the blow. He sprang to his feet, blocked the return cut, and rolled his wrists around the weapon's haft, stabbing the blade through the Phoenix Guard's helmet. The warrior dropped without a sound and Lucius swayed aside from a scything halberd blow intended to cleave him from skull to pelvis.