Iron blades clashed against his armour from behind. Sanguinius ignored the attacks, and in the next instant, the daemons turned away from him to confront the advance of the Sanguinary Guard through their ranks. Sanguinius marched forwards, destroying abominations with sword and spear, cutting short the obscene chants.

‘We destroyed worse than you on Signus Prime,’ he shouted at the daemons. ‘You insult us with your presence.’ His anger was mixed with contempt as he slashed the monsters apart. Even so, he did not lose himself in the battle. Be cautious, he thought. He had not seen these daemons before. They were distinct in kind from the ones the Blood Angels had fought on Signus Prime. The difference was important. It spoke to the very nature of these beings. They were embodiments. Sanguinius had a vision of disease itself become sentient, become divine. He wanted to deny the vision and the horrors it implied. He knew better than to give in to the impulse. Gods were real, and they were malign.

The Sanguinary Guard reached him. ‘My lord,’ Azkaellon began, an edge to his voice stopping just short of chiding.

‘I know,’ said Sanguinius. ‘I make your task difficult.’ He loosed another blast from the Spear of Telesto, turning a rush of daemons to ash. ‘You are at my side now, Azkaellon. Destroy the foe with me. These things are fit only to be trampled.’

‘They are still dangerous.’

Blood Angels were containing the plague daemons in the vicinity of the warp breach. But the traces of their foulness were reaching the wider area of the bridge. Officers had collapsed at their stations. Some vomited and shook with bone-wracking fever. One man was still, his face a mass of overlapping boils. Servitors were slumped, liquefying flesh drooping from their machinic parts. Illness marched ahead of the battle, laying claim to the Red Tear.

‘Hurl them back!’ Sanguinius shouted as two squads of Blood Angels thundered onto the bridge to join the Sanguinary Guard. ‘Their taint goes not one step further. Tear them from reality.’ Send them back to the darkness of myth, he was about to say. But there was no going back to that state of history. Daemons walked the galaxy. The myths had flesh and drew blood.

We should have known, Sanguinius thought. We should always have known. My sons and I most of all. How could we believe there could be angels without daemons?

He thought of the inner monsters his Legion had long fought, and how the horrors of the warp had brought them to the surface, almost destroying him and all the Blood Angels.

My father told us there were no such things, and because we believed this to be true, we were vulnerable to them.