‘Good day, father,’ he said. The primarch’s voice was ghostly. A deep, sighing whisper.

For a thousand years, Mortarion had pursued the soul of his adoptive father through the warp with packs of baying beasts. Over the landscapes of insanity and through the kingdoms of dreams, the pursuit had gone on. Mortarion had turned his face entirely from the mortal realm in those years, so bent was he on having his final vengeance upon the xenos creature that had adopted him, used him and had been slain by the Emperor when Mortarion had failed to kill him.

Imprisoning his alien father’s soul had brought Mortarion a modicum of peace the Emperor had denied him.

The hunt was long ago, and the novelty of the prisoner had worn off. The lord of death paid no heed to his foster father’s glowering and went to the clock’s pendulum. He caught the scythe by the handle at the apex of its swing, and unhooked it from the chain. Without the scythe, the clock continued to tick, defying the logic of real mechanisms.

Mortarion weighed the scythe in his hand. ‘Silence,’ he said, naming the weapon. He ran his hand along the head. His dry hands rasped on the steel. Unlike most other things aboard the Endurance, the scythe was free of decay, and sharp as a dying woman’s curse.

The fourth and final thing of note in the room was not visible to mortal sight. It had to be summoned. Mortarion stood under the centre of the clock, extended his right arm and opened his hand. He closed his eyes a moment.

‘I call upon you, loyal servants of the Great Father. Commune with me, in the name of the sevenfold path.’

The vapours in the room thickened about the spot directly below the clock’s centre. Mortarion stepped back. He rested his hand atop Silence’s head, his robes stirring in the stinking wind, and waited. The fog whirled faster and faster until it formed a small vortex of black light. The vortex thickened, taking on the shape of a tall fungus. The flesh of it was ethereal to begin with, but grew more solid with every passing moment. Once solid, the fungus grew unnaturally fast, its rounded tip questing upward towards the base of the clock. From the bottom of his prison, Mortarion’s father watched it approach, recoiling as it wormed its way within the clock and bumped the base of the glass, smearing it with poison. Black mycelium spread across the floor from the fungus’ bulbous volva. They threaded themselves across the floor, swift as serpents and gossamer fine, rising up and engulfing the clocks of the room in a stringy, slimy mat. Where they encountered Mortarion, they engulfed him to his waist. The daemon primarch closed his eyes, shuddering at their touch in a combination of ecstasy and abhorrence.

Mortarion had never lost his disgust of warpcraft.