Sanguinius defied the paralysis and jerked his head up. The two horrors had held him in place long enough to make him the target of a flying daemon. Its sinuous tail sliced the air as if swimming. Talons lined the edges of its wings. Its maw was framed by horns as long as a man’s arm. Another daemon rode its back. It was the same revolting pink as the abomination Sanguinius had dispatched, but its limbs were longer, muscled. Its horned head was jewelled with necklaces of golden bones. Two of its three hands held a curved dagger and a flesh-bound book. The third was open. The daemon extended it towards Sanguinius, revealing an azure eye in its palm. The daemon cocked its head, as if in greeting, and psychic energy blasted from the eye.

Jittering lightning struck Sanguinius in the chest and wrapped itself around him. Change, hard and cold and inexorable, reached through his armour, into his marrow, into his mind. The daemon chanted, its voice twining around the scream of its mount. The words were beyond his understanding. No human tongue could make their shape. Yet they drove even deeper into the heart of the Angel’s being. They called up fate, like a stone, a cold yet molten stone, diamond and lava, the unalterable and the consuming. Horus’ blade pierced him once more, and beyond that pain was a darkness. It was not the abyss of his death. It was formed of the consequences of his death.

The attack, the words, the agony and the vision all took barely a second to transpire. Sanguinius shouted, defying the paralysis that pulled at his limbs and soul. If my fate is decreed, then I do not die here. The daemon’s attack meant nothing, and with his left hand he thrust the Spear of Telesto upwards, impaling the winged daemon through its maw. He arrested its flight with that single gesture, grounding himself against the impact of its mass. The head of the spear tore through the upper jaw and emerged through the top of the daemon’s flat head. Impaled, the abomination shrieked mindlessly. It lashed its body around Sanguinius, spines gouging the surface of his armour. The rider sank the talons of its feet into the back of the monster and kept its position. It ignored the flailing wings and tail. The eye in its hand unleashed jagged blue lightning. The daemon held the book higher, and it chanted the words of its pages with greater ferocity, and greater knowledge.

I know you, it seemed to be saying. I know everything you will say and do, and how you will end. I know how this battle will end. I know you, and you are the one who is impaled.