What was certain was that he had been as good as dead. Most of his fleet had been destroyed, and the moons of Thessala were blighted wastelands to this day. He did not know what had become of those of his sons who had fought alongside him. In most cases, their names had been lost to time. Aeonid Thiel, for example – Guilliman could not discern what had happened to him. Back on Macragge, he had discovered the second captain’s name on worn honour plaques in a chapel buried deep under the gothic accretions that had smothered the Fortress of Hera’s original form. These suggested that Thiel had survived the battle, but Guilliman did not know for how long. He did not know how he had borne the loss of his primarch. Did he rise above it, or was his life one tormented by guilt?

Guilliman did not know which Apothecary had saved him, or who was in command of the Chapter when the Gauntlet of Power broke free of Fulgrim’s trap. In the archives of the Aurora Chapter and the Novamarines there were fragmentary accounts of what had happened to their lords and captains at Thessala, but little concerning the Ultramarines.

It was certain that he had been saved, just as it was certain that his sons had paid a heavy price for his blundering into Fulgrim’s web. He had woken nearly ten thousand years later to another battle in the same war.

He had been given a chance to put things right.

He ran through those first moments of awakening again.

He had come to in the Temple of Correction, clad in unfamiliar armour, surrounded on all sides by his sons battling the servants of the Great Enemy. Wrenched from one conflict to another ninety centuries apart, there had been a moment when he could have fallen, when his confusion threatened to leave him vulnerable to the Heretic Astartes of the Black Legion.

The Black Legion – even the names of the enemy were unfamiliar in these terrible times.

Everything had changed, and war was everywhere. Yet war he knew, so war was what he prosecuted with greater zeal than ever before. It was a constant in a universe thrown out of true. In his darkest moments, Guilliman thought he could well have died and been condemned to the hell of some primitive cult. But he did not believe such things, and he did not believe he deserved such punishment.

In a sense of heightened awareness, serene within his own expansive mind, Roboute Guilliman took stock. Today, the hammer blow would fall. The war was far from done, but after one hundred and twelve years of hard campaigning, the Indomitus Crusade neared its logical conclusion. He had battled to reach Terra. He had spoken with his father. He had made his decision as to what must be done.