In the chamber of Tuchulcha, the servitor was waiting for him. It had degenerated noticeably since the arrival at Episimos. The resonance had sunk into its flesh like rot. It had lashed at the body with a whip. Mottled skin hung from its legs. The musculature was spongy. The stench was thick. The Lion tasted its viscous quality at the back of his throat. The meat puppet’s scalp was splitting. It oozed yellow and green pus. Its eyes were filmed, but the will of Tuchulcha focused them on the Lion as if they were las sights. Blistered lips moved.

‘Do you wish to travel again?’ Tuchulcha asked through its proxy.

‘Can we?’

‘We can. You did what was necessary.’

So simple? the Lion thought. He caught himself. He must not trivialise the destruction of an entire world. ‘We did not damage the constructs,’ he said.

The servitor shrugged. ‘You altered the configuration of the system. The alteration is sufficient. They cannot hold me here now.’

‘And where will you take us this time? What nightmarish impossibility awaits us now?’

Tuchulcha did not respond to his sarcasm. ‘Where do you wish to go?’

‘Davin.’

‘As you will, it shall be done.’

The old formulation again. The words Tuchulcha had last spoken when the Lion had thought to travel to Caliban.

The Lion walked slowly back to the bridge. He was barely aware of Holguin’s presence. He hadn’t realised the Deathbringer had followed him to the entrance of the chamber. Holguin kept his peace until they were in the hall leading to the bridge. ‘Is the way clear, then?’ he asked.

‘So it seems.’

‘How?’

‘One of Guilliman’s Librarians believes it was the arrangement of shapes in the system that created the resonance. We removed a shape.’

‘That was…’ Holguin stopped.

‘Easy?’ the Lion asked.

‘I did not mean to suggest that.’

‘But you thought it.’

Holguin nodded once, visibly uneasy.

‘Our sense of scale has been affected,’ said the Lion. ‘Inevitably.’ The hall through which they walked was high-ceilinged. Marble columns formed its vaults. Monumental statues commemorated the extermination of the Beasts of Caliban. The light from the wall sconces could not pierce the dimensions of the hall, and deep shadows draped the walls. The architecture was designed for awe. The Lion felt the presence of the constructs pressing in, invisibly, through the hull. They made the hall insignificant. They made everything the Lion knew insignificant.

Yet he had defeated the trap. The fleets were about to leave the daemonic constructs behind. It did not matter how vast they were. They were the things that had lost their significance, and the Lion had taken it from them.

‘There is a lesson here.’

‘What lesson, my lord?’ Holguin asked.

The Lion shook his head. He hadn’t meant to speak aloud. ‘Ignore my incomplete thoughts,’ he said.