The currents of destruction swirled around Guilliman. The storm had him, he knew it, and he could not see his way out of the raging dark. The storm had rushed the Lion to a monstrous choice, and it had pushed him to take action on a gigantic scale. The tempest had caught Guilliman in a more intimate trap. Instead of forcing him to recklessness, it had him caught in doubt and indecision. The action he would take or not would have no immediate effect outside his quarters.

The range and skill of the attack took his breath away. The enemy moved against him and his brothers on the smallest and largest battlefields at once. Its precision was lethal. He could see the attack now, yet he did not know how to counter it, and the enemy was still invisible, untouchable.

Sanguinius, he thought. How has it attacked you? Are you aware it has? Have you already made your choice? Have you doomed us?

His thoughts wandered. He began to analyse the Angel’s actions from the end of the Imperium Secundus until now. He unclenched his fist. The Lion is right. Be sure of your decision before you make the wrong one.

He would return the athames to the vault.

His blood froze. He saw what he was doing. He saw himself falling to inaction and keeping these malevolent, corrupt knives. If he did not act now, he would never get rid of them.

A storm surge of doubts crashed against him, but his arm was moving. There was too much force in the blow to arrest it. In the fraction of a second before the Hand of Dominion struck the athames, he was torn between hope and dread. He tried to stop himself, and he fought that effort. He cried out, the roar of the self at war ­shaking the walls of his quarters.

Thunder boomed. Guilliman raised his fist. The hilts of the athames were flattened, twisted metal. Their blades had shattered into dozens of shards, all of them sharper than darkness.

Guilliman tore through the thoughts that tried to hold him back. Roaring still, hurling himself into the frenzy beyond reason, he smashed the blades again and again. He created another storm in his quarters, one of purging lightning and a thunder of desperate rage. He beat the deck, buckling it, sending tremors through the ship. The shards of the athames became dust, and then less than dust. The remains vanished. He kept going until the roar ended, and he fell back, exhausted.

He was numb. That was better than the acute edge of doubt.