The wind dropped. The fungus cap, a pale and narrow thing clasped close to the stalk, pulsed horribly. A wet, musty smell suffused the fog. At once, the clocks went off together, rippling the vapours with a violent carillon, and then they all stopped.

‘Mortarion,’ said a voice.

The daemon primarch opened his eyes. They were shot through with the root systems of the fungus, the whites veined with black threads that extended into the yellow of his irises.

Beneath the clock was an image of Ku’gath: the Plaguefather, Great Unclean One and favoured of Nurgle. It wavered as if seen through a jet of forge heat. There were similarities with an Imperial hololith, but they were entirely superficial. The head looked real behind its curtain of heat, severed as if it had been carved from the body, so that the veins and ways of the organism could be seen around the edges, as if in an anatomical cross section.

‘Plaguefather,’ said Mortarion. He bowed his cadaverous head. Ku’gath respectfully returned the gesture. The ragged skin and exposed fats of his chins creased under his jaw.

‘Where is the third? Where is your wayward son?’ said the greater daemon.

‘I am here, summoned by the Mycota Profundis as is our bargain,’ said a surly voice. A second image materialised, this one of helmeted Plague Marine, one horn jutting from the brow of his malformed Cataphractii Terminator plate. Layers of diseased flesh, fat and bone, part merged with the being’s armour, were visible, again as if cut away. Osseous tubes rose behind his head, and an infernal buzzing accompanied his words that threatened to drown them out.

For all the racket of Typhus’ manifestation, his contempt was clear when he spoke.

‘Gene-father,’ he said.

‘My son,’ said Mortarion. His tone was coolly indifferent, whereas his son’s was provocative. ‘We are gathered then, the three champions, followers of the seventh path, masters of life and death.’

‘Not yet masters,’ said Ku’gath with a sorrowful shake of his great horned head. ‘Unworthy acolytes.’

‘The time of your redemption is at hand,’ said Mortarion. ‘The sevenfold way opens. The seven campaigns of this invasion bear fruit ready to rot. Roboute Guilliman has returned to Ultramar.’

Ku’gath gave a sly look of delight, almost a smile. Typhus laughed.

‘You are foolish, my lord father, if you think this will end well,’ said the first captain. ‘We should have finished his realm while he was absent.’

‘Typhus, Typhus,’ said Mortarion. ‘So long you have lived, and so little you have learnt. What use is the destruction of a kingdom without the death of the king?’