The cyclops reared up again, his skin flushing a deeper red, veined with mutagenic power. ‘Never again will we apologise for what we are.’ His voice swelled to a roar and the hymn rose with it, blasting the translucid spheres of his throne room, spinning them on their axes, causing the assembled cults to reel and stagger. ‘We are the beginning of the beginning!’

As the hymn reached a crescendo, the throne room devolved into a maelstrom of colours. Lightning lashed against Zadkiel with such violence that he struggled to maintain physical form. He fell, blinded, gripping his crook staff like the mast of a listing ship. As always when threatened, his mind fell back on the old, habitual rites – the facile disciplines he learned before ascending to daemonhood. They called them enumerations, a millennium ago, back in the days of the Great Crusade. They were nothing more than psychological sleights of hand, designed to disguise the true scale of humankind’s potential. It had taken Magnus to show them the truth – that humanity must either sink, deep into the Great Ocean of the Empyrean, or be drowned by their own ignorance.

Zadkiel muttered the old mantra, the one he had learned in Tizca when he was still an acolyte – words to elevate his mind from the material plane. ‘We dream, dreaming, dreamed.’

The cyclops settled back in his throne and the spheres steadied, regaining physical form. The storm abated and the hymn dropped in volume. The Rubric Marines stood back to attention, gripping their bolters calmly as though nothing had happened, and the magisters resumed their conversations. They were all used to these impassioned speeches. Magnus argued constantly with an accuser who never answered.

Zadkiel pushed closer to the throne dais and saw Magnus clearly for the first time since entering the throne room. His chosen manner of appearance was still essentially humanoid. What made him choose such a façade? Was it nostalgia or irony? A daemon of such immense power was not bound by physics, nor any other rules of the materium. Magnus could assume whatever form he wished, but he chose this – a muscular, crimson-skinned warrior, clad in gilded armour. It was clearly not intended as a disguise. Magnus was not ashamed of his transformation. He made no attempt to hide the influence of the Great Ocean. Vast, iridescent wings shimmered behind him, wrought in turquoise and coral, the pigments so intense that no mortal could perceive them. His powerful legs ended in taloned claws and his brutal, noble, one-eyed head was crowned by enormous horns. Whatever future the Emperor had envisioned for Magnus had been surpassed. He was god-like. Magnificent. Wreathed in wisdom and light.