As the light grew, the constant, hollow pain in Guilliman’s chest intensified, as if the two were inextricably linked. He gritted his teeth as the gnawing in his gut outdid the pressure in his head. The muscle twitches in the tanks became a frenzy of gurning. The heads jerked and jiggled, mouths gaping in silent, drowned screams. Bubbles streamed over clay flesh, agitating the surface of the fluids that nourished them. Eyelids fluttered over eyes that appeared, just for a second, to contain some shred of native intelligence, and they looked out from their watery prisons with absolute horror.

Pressure built at the back of Guilliman’s mind until his eyes throbbed. The air smelled of hot steel, and his saliva took on a metallic flavour. The emptiness his soul contained expanded beyond the physical confines of his body.

There was a definite pop, not generated by the machines he was certain, and suddenly all was still. The thumping of the hidden devices levelled out to a quiet whir. The faces ceased their pained contortions. Their eyes went blank and closed. The bubbling ceased.

Guilliman waited. The pains the machine brought did not decrease, but familiarity made them bearable. There was a clunk, a hiss, then the eyes opened again, and a fresh machine voice spoke: the emotionless coppery burr of Archmagos Belisarius Cawl.

‘Greetings Lord Primarch, Lord Commander, Lord Imperial Regent. The Lord Guilliman of the High Twelve.’

The mouths of the heads gaped clumsily, silently parroting the machine voice’s words.

‘That last title has no meaning,’ said Guilliman.

‘For a millennium, your name was an honorific for weaker men. By the conventions of those times, you are the Lord Guilliman,’ said the Cawl Inferior. Guilliman had no idea whether the machine was mocking him or working its way down some dead-end logical path. ‘Redundant repetition. Your resumption of the original title is illogical. The position of Lord Militant was banned in the wake of the great War of the Beast.’

Guilliman knew little of that conflict or of the infamous Beheading that followed. The near destruction of the Imperium had passed Cawl by. The archmagos had been deep in his studies of the Emperor’s fragmentary research notes, and therefore his records of it were maddeningly brief. Most of the histories appertaining to it had been deliberately destroyed.

‘Your recreation of the position lacks wisdom. The position of Lord Commander is similar in title to that of Lord Commander Militant of the Astra Militarum. It has a fifty per cent match with that of Lord Commander of the Segmentum Solar. Inefficiency can arise by duplication of titles. Confusion is inevitable. I prefer Imperial Regent. No other can lay claim to the wording of this honour.’

‘I am more than a title,’ said Guilliman. ‘Every time we speak, Cawl, you bring this up.’