They retired to private chambers warded by every technological and arcane art known to man. Silent Adeptus Custodes set a guard on the outside. Within, Sanguinius told his tale. He did not tell them everything. He could not. How could an angel put into words the temptations of Chaos? Twice he had been enticed to betray his father. Twice it had been intimated to him that it was he, not Horus, who was the favoured vessel for Chaos' power. In the eyes of others he was an angel; in his own mind his wings were the surest sign of Chaos' touch.

But he would not fall.

So he glossed over the temptations of Ka'Bandha and Kyriss at Signus Prime, and the attempts of Madail at Davin to make him into something more terrible than the Warmaster. The existence of Imperium Secundus he kept to himself. Guilliman's motives in establishing the second realm were pure, but they could so easily be read as treachery, and his own role of Emperor of that short-lived empire he wished to forget. He had too many secrets, and though he would have gladly unburdened himself to his father, he was not willing to take the same risk with his brothers and Malcador, He felt the old psyker's powerful mind probing at his own as he spoke, scratching at the veracity of his words to see if falsehood lay beneath. Sanguinius had enough psychic might of his own to deflect the regent, though resistance alone would be more than enough to rouse the old man's suspicion.

He told them everything else. In a quiet voice he revealed to them the true might of the Neverborn and the sorceries they deployed. He spoke of rains of blood and planets caged in bone. He disbelieved half of what he said, though he had seen it all with his own eyes.

'Such things they can do,' he said, 'as make Magnus' mightiest works seem parlour tricks.'

He told them of the Shadow Crusade, where Lorgar and the transformed Angron had laid waste to dozens of worlds, of Konrad Curze's reign of terror on Macragge, of his own conversations with their tormented brother. He let his sympathy show for the Night Haunter, for that was genuine. He told them of the assault on the Pharos, of the mission to Davin and the hellish transformation wrought upon that world. And finally of how he, the Lion and Guilliman had destroyed the site of Horus' corruption, and how in doing so they had brought about the calming of the Ruinstorm, and the horrors that travelling through the warp presented in this strange new age. To all but Malcador, Sanguinius looked distracted, as if he had larger matters to ponder. Only the Imperial Regent could fathom how large the secrets were that he kept, and his shrewd eyes stayed fixed on the primarch's face the entire time that he spoke.