The waves of the warp maelstrom withdrew. Sanguinius was in the materium again, inside a reality that was losing the war for its sanity. He and Madail were in the middle of a miles-wide deck. Its stones were smouldering skulls. It was surrounded by scores of levels of galleries, rising a thousand feet high and more. Their railings were brass, encrusted with red and black growths, tumours of metal. Banners of sanded skin hung from the railings. Each bore a single rune daubed in dried blood. Four different symbols repeated hundreds of times around the enginarium: a twisted, waving tear; a triangular assemblage of arrows and circles, like the face of an insect; a diagonal intersection of lines like a closed fist; a pendulum embraced by a scything curve. The banners were flags of allegiance, acts of fealty to murderous gods. There was a fifth rune. It dominated all the others. It was carved into the deck, taking up its entire width. It formed the dome of the enginarium. It was an eight-pointed star. The spears of its arms extended from a spiked circle. Its radiant lines came to embrace the eye and gather the universe within its shredding embrace.

Far to Sanguinius’ right, to port, near a wall so distant it should not have been part of a single vessel, a line of white and red light rose from deck to dome.

Hordes of daemons crowded the galleries, chanting, jabbering, snarling. Thousands more had gathered on the deck. An army surrounded Sanguinius. Monsters lithe and corpulent, armoured in brass and rotting with disease raised a chorus of damnation as Madail pressed its advantage, its huge staff forcing the Blade Encarmine back.

There was a rush of movement behind Sanguinius, the slithering of reptiles over stone. Clawed hands and talons seized his arms and legs and wings. The sheer mass of daemons toppled him onto his back. He fell against a struggling mass. The abominations pulled him up a slope of their own bodies until his boots were off the deck. A four-legged behemoth whose hide was brass armour pressed a paw onto his chest. It snarled, and the breath of a blast furnace washed over Sanguinius. It lowered its head. Dual horns in the shape of axe blades scraped against his gorget. A female creature stabbed one of its pincers into the side of his neck. The daemon smiled. It whispered to him. He did not understand the words. They felt like barbed wire slicing through the inside of his skull. And they sounded like a welcome.

Immobilised, Sanguinius held fast to the Blade Encarmine and the Spear of Telesto. The weapons felt as if they were stuck in a quagmire of scaled and pustulent bodies. He had no leverage. He could move his head, and that was all. But he held the weapons. He was not disarmed. He strained against the grip of the abominations, testing their strength, searching for the weakness.