The Night Lords maintained pressure from the rear, and Guilliman’s ships were lit by the throbbing aura of flaring energy. The World Eaters squadron was altering the course of its run, having overshot the Ultramarines. The ships were making their turns, slow as continents. Quor Vondor pictured the fury of the captains aboard. Their cannons lashed out in anger, lines of fire cutting across the spirals of the Ruinstorm.

The torpedoes hit. Toc Derenoth shouted with two voices. A daemon laughed in triumph, and a human exulted in the joy of revelation.

The De Profundis had no shields. It welcomed the impacts. They completed the ritual. Explosions blossomed on its bow and across the face of its superstructure. The bridge took a direct hit. The fissures blazed, ignited by the blast. Toc Derenoth reached forwards with both arms, his claws spread, lunging for prey. The fissures yawned wide.

Quor Vondor roared, his voice drowned in the screaming thunder of the sundering of the De Profundis. The illusion of hull integrity vanished. The battle-barge shrieked its last. Adamantium tore apart. Conduits split and split again, filling disintegrating halls with streams of burning plasma. The engines raged, then fell silent in a blinding flare that incinerated the light cruiser Levana, which had strayed too close to destiny.

The De Profundis screamed, and it screamed in victory. It streaked towards the Samothrace, its course as unalterable as prophecy. Its crew was dead, but the splinters were not mere shrapnel. They had coherent form. They were daggers. Inside scores of them, Word Bearers­ crouched, hurtling towards their prey.

The physical self of the battle-barge disintegrated, but its soul and its purpose did not. The one of the ship ceased to be. It transformed into legion.

It became the undivided swarm.

The Lion confronts his brother, Konrad Curze

Three

Three

Dark Unities

‘Where are we?’ the Lion demanded.

‘Still unknown,’ said Holguin, voted lieutenant of the Deathwing. He observed the fury in his primarch’s eyes. There was far more than frustration there. The Lion had truly expected to reach Terra. He was reacting to the failure and confusion with anger reserved for betrayal. Holguin could guess why. He wished he could not. He felt the urge to speak, to sound a warning. He knew how it would be received. He said nothing. The right moment might never come. This, though, was the worst.

The Invincible Reason shuddered, straining to keep to its course. Roiling gravitational forces battered the Dark Angels fleet almost as violently as the tempest in the empyrean. The vessels had translated into the materium on the edge of a system caught in a maelstrom. The boundary of the system was marked by a barrier of furious warp flame. Ahead and to port, billions of miles of madness exploded and stormed.