Behind his desk was an iron door. It was embossed in blue and gold. The aquila embraced a gleaming sword with its wings. Guilliman pulled the door open and entered his private armorium. The weapons before him were the opposite in every way of the athames. The daggers of ruin were crude, ugly things. They would pass beneath notice were it not for the dull, light-killing menace of their blades. The weapons of Guilliman’s rule were works of majesty. They were the summits of the weaponsmith’s art. They were tools of war, of death, of destruction, but in the service of reason and light, and their intent was as clear as that of the athames. They brought purity to the battlefield. Their means were war, but their ends were peace and order. Gazing at the intricacy of the engravings on the barrel of the Arbitrator and the hilt of the Gladius Incandor, Guilliman felt clarity. His path was clear now.

We all walk the assigned path.

No. He walked according to his duty, but his will was his own.

Guilliman reached for the Hand of Dominion. The power gauntlet was the purest expression right now of his will, and of the action he knew he must take. He pulled the gauntlet on and made a fist. A blue nimbus of lightning crackled around the fingers. It was the light of purity, the power of duty.

The equation before him was simple. Theoretical – the athames are a poison. Practical – destroy them.

Guilliman knelt over the athames. He raised the Hand of Dominion…

And the thought occurred that his action was predictable. It would be the simplest thing to manipulate him into taking precisely this action. In the name of purity, he was about to deny himself, his Legion and the Imperium insight into what they fought, and weapons that were as dangerous to the daemonic as any he knew.

Strike a blow, and you harm yourself.

His fist was suspended. Caught by a web of doubt.

Beware of yourself. Do not trust your impulses.

What impulse had been more forceful than the urge to destroy the athames?

He thought of the Lion, poised on the brink of committing the unthinkable, convinced that he was acting to save the Imperium, preparing to kill his brother and open a new front of the war between the Legions. If he had not pulled back in that moment, three Legions would have burned inside the sphere of bones.

The Hand of Dominion wavered.