Ostian had been called many things in his career: a perfectionist, an obsessive, but to his way of thinking, it took obsession and a quest for the truth of the details for an artist to be worthy of the name.
Since receiving the block, the carving had taken him the best part of two years, his every waking moment spent working on the marble or thinking about the marble. Quick work by any method of measurement, but when placed against the final outcome, it was miraculous. Ordinarily, such a masterpiece would have taken much longer, but the changing character of the 28th Expedition had troubled Ostian greatly, and he had not ventured beyond his studio for many months.
He realised that he needed to reacquaint himself with events in the Great Crusade.
What new cultures had been met? What great deeds had recently been accomplished?
The thought of leaving his studio filled him with trepidation and excitement, for with the unveiling of his statue, he would be able to once again bask in the adulation of admirers; something he normally detested, but which, at moments like these, he craved.
No false modesty blinded Ostian to his talents, nay, his genius, in the moment following the completion of a piece of work. It would be in the days, weeks and months to come that flaws only he could see would become apparent, and he would curse his useless hands and begin thinking of how to improve on his next work.
If an artist should ever feel that he could no longer better himself then what was the point of being an artist? Each work should be like unto a stepping-stone that led to greater and greater heights of artistry, where a man could look back at his life’s works and be satisfied that he had made the most of his allotted span.
Ostian removed his smock and neatly folded it before placing it upon the stool, taking exaggerated care to flatten the dulled fabric before stepping back. To admire his own work so avidly, now that it was finished, was unseemly, but when it was made public it would no longer be his and his alone. It would belong to everyone who saw it, and a million critical eyes would judge its worth or lack thereof. At moments like this he could begin to understand the self-destructive kernel of doubt that lurked in Serena d’Angelus’s heart, or indeed any artist’s, be they painter, sculptor, writer or composer. Within the artist’s work was a portion of his soul, and the fear of rejection or ridicule was potent indeed.
A cold gust made him shiver and a lilting voice said, ‘You have certainly captured him.’
Ostian jumped and spun around to see the terrifying, beautiful form of the Primarch of the Emperor’s Children standing before him. Unusually, the Phoenix Guard was absent, and Ostian found himself beginning to sweat despite the coolness of his studio.
‘My lord,’ he said, dropping to one knee. ‘Forgive me, I did not hear you enter.’
Fulgrim nodded and swept past him, swathed in a long purple toga embroidered with dazzling silver wrapped around his powerful physique. The golden hilt of a sword protruded from beneath the toga and a crown of barbed laurels sat upon his noble brow. The primarch’s face was rendered doll-like by the application of thick, white greasepaint and brightly coloured, overpoweringly scented inks around his eyes and lips.
What the primarch hoped to achieve with his facial embellishments, Ostian did not know, but unless it was to appear vulgar and grotesque, it had failed completely. Like one of the theatrical performers of Old Earth, Fulgrim carried himself with regal authority. He waved Ostian to his feet as he stopped before the statue, his expression unreadable beneath the layers of paint.
‘I remember him like this,’ said Fulgrim. Ostian heard a note of sadness in the primarch’s voice. ‘That was many years ago, of course. He looked like this at Ullanor, but that’s not how I remember him on that day. He was cold then, aloof even.’
Ostian rose to his feet, but kept his eyes averted from the primarch, lest he see his disquiet at his appearance. His earlier pride in the statue vanished the instant Fulgrim looked upon it and he held his breath as he awaited the primarch’s critical opinion.
Fulgrim turned to face him, his grotesque mask of greasepaint and oil cracking in a smile. Ostian relaxed a fraction, and even though the flat, gemlike eyes of utter darkness remained unmoved, he saw a hostility there that terrified him.
The smile fell from the primarch’s face and he said, ‘That you carve a statue of the Emperor at a time like this shows either wilful stupidity on your part or reprehensible ignorance, Ostian.’
Ostian felt his composure crack at Fulgrim’s pronouncement and he tried in vain to think of something to say in response.
Fulgrim walked towards him, and a suffocating fear rose in Ostian’s fragile body, his terror at the primarch’s displeasure rooting him to the spot. The commander of the Emperor’s Children circled him, the towering presence of the primarch threatening to overwhelm what remained of Ostian’s resolve.
‘My lord…’ he whispered.
‘You spoke,’ snapped Fulgrim, reaching down to turn him around so that his back was to the statue. ‘A worm like you does not deserve to speak to me! You, who told me that my work was too perfect creates a work such as this, perfect in every detail. Perfect in every detail but one…’
Ostian looked up into the black pools of the primarch’s eyes, but even through his terror, he saw a tortured anguish that transcended his own fear, a conflicted soul at war with itself. He saw the lust to do him harm and the desire to beg his forgiveness in the depths of the primarch’s eyes.
‘My lord, Fulgrim,’ said Ostian through tears that spilled freely down his cheeks, ‘I do not understand.’
‘No,’ said Fulgrim, advancing towards him and forcing him, step by step, towards the statue. ‘You don’t do you? Like the Emperor, you have been too enraptured by your own selfish desires to pay any mind to that which goes on around you; remembrancers vanished and friends betrayed. When all you once held dear is crumbling around you, what do you do? You abandon those closest to you and forsake them in the quest for something of supposedly higher purpose.’
Ostian’s terror reached new heights as he bumped into the marble of the statue, and Fulgrim leaned down so that his painted face was level with his own. Yet even amid the flood of horror at what had become of the primarch, Ostian pitied him too, for there was great pain in his every tortured word.
‘If you had bothered to take note of your surroundings and the great events in motion, you would have dashed this sculpture to ruins and begged me to become the subject of your latest work. A new order is rising in the galaxy and the Emperor is no longer its master.’
‘What?’ gasped Ostian in surprise. Fulgrim laughed, the sound bitter and desperate.
‘Horus will be the new master of the Imperium,’ cried Fulgrim, drawing the sword from beneath his toga with a flourish. The golden hilt shimmered in the brightness of the studio, and Ostian felt warm wetness run down his thighs at the loathsome sight of the soulless blade.
Fulgrim drew himself up to his full height, and Ostian sobbed in relief as the primarch’s haunted eyes broke contact with his own.
‘Yes, Ostian,’ said Fulgrim, matter-of-factly. ‘For the past week, the Pride of the Emperor has been in orbit over Isstvan V, a bleak and blackened world of no particular note, but one which will go down in history as a place of glorious legend.’
Ostian fought to control his breathing as Fulgrim circled behind the statue, and he sagged against the cool marble.
‘For on this dusty, unremarkable world, the Warmaster will utterly destroy the might of the Emperor’s most loyal Legions in preparation for our march to Terra,’ continued Fulgrim. ‘You see, Ostian, Horus is the rightful master of mankind. He is the one who has led us to triumphs undreamt of. He is the one who has conquered ten thousand worlds, and he is the one who will lead us in conquest of ten thousand more. Together we will cast down the false Emperor!’
Ostian’s thoughts tumbled over one another as he struggled to come to grips with the enormity of what Fulgrim was suggesting. Betrayal dripped from every word, and Ostian was suddenly and
horribly confronted with the fact that he was paying the price for his isolation. Shutting himself off from events simply because he did not care for them had led to this, and he wished he had taken the time to…
‘Your work is not yet perfect, Ostian,’ said Fulgrim from behind the statue.
Ostian tried to frame a reply when he heard a horrific scraping sound of metal on stone, and the tip of the primarch’s alien sword burst through the marble plinth to spear between his shoulder blades.
The glittering grey blade emerged from his chest with a crack of bone. Ostian tried to scream in pain, but his mouth filled with blood as the blade pierced his heart. The primarch’s strength drove the blade deeper into the statue, until the gold quillons clanged against the marble and the tip of the sword projected a full foot from Ostian’s chest.
Blood flowed from his mouth in thick red runnels of saliva and his eyes dimmed. Ostian’s life flowed from his body as though clawed out by some voracious predator.
Ostian looked up with the last of his strength as he dimly perceived Fulgrim standing before him once more.
The primarch looked at him with a mixture of contempt and regret, pointing at the blood-spattered statue he hung from.
‘Now it’s perfect,’ said Fulgrim.
THE GALLERY OF Swords on the Andronius had changed a great deal since Lucius had last walked its length. Where once an avenue of monolithic statues of great heroes had stared down and judged the worth of a warrior as he walked between them, now those same statues had been crudely altered with hammers and chisels to resemble strange, bull-headed monsters with gem studded armour and curling horns of bone. Brightly coloured paints had been daubed over the statues, and the overall effect was like that of some garish carnival parade.
Eidolon marched ahead of him, and Lucius could feel the lord commander’s dislike of him as an almost physical resentment. His killing of Chaplain Charmosian still sat ill with Eidolon, and he had called him a traitor twice over, but that seemed an age ago, when the loyalist fools on Isstvan III had still resisted the inevitable.
Lucius had given the lord commander the opportunity to win a great victory on a silver platter and, like the fool he was, Eidolon had squandered his chance for glory. When Lucius had slaughtered his warriors, the eastern approaches to the palace were wide open and Eidolon had led the Emperor’s Children into the palace to outflank the defenders and roll up their pathetic defiance in a tide of fire and blood. But he had overreached himself and left his forces exposed to a counter-attack. It was an unforgivable oversight, and one that Saul Tarvitz had punished him for, flanking the flankers.
Lucius still smarted at his last confrontation with Tarvitz, remembering the duel they had fought in the ruined dome where he had killed Solomon Demeter. Like Loken before him, Tarvitz had not fought honourably, and Lucius had been lucky to escape with his life.
Still, it didn’t matter anymore. After he had rejoined his Legion, the Warmaster’s forces had withdrawn from Isstvan III, and commenced an orbital bombardment that had pulverised the surface of the planet until not a single structure remained standing. The Precentor’s Palace was a rain of vitrified stone, and the force of the bombardment had levelled even the might of the Sirenhold. Nothing lived on Isstvan III, and Lucius felt a thrill of delicious excitement as he considered the future the fates had opened up to him.
He paused to savour the heights of glory he would rise to, and the new sensations awaiting him as he marched at the side of his primarch once more. The statue before him had once been Lord Commander Teliosa, hero of the Madrivane campaign, and Lucius remembered Tarvitz telling him that he had especially honoured it.
He chuckled as he imagined what Saul Tarvitz would make of the carved horns and exposed breast that had been added to it by enthusiastic, if questionably skilled, sculptors.
‘Apothecary Fabius is waiting,’ snapped Eidolon from up ahead, his impatience obvious.
Lucius grinned and spun on his heel to join Eidolon at his leisure. ‘I know, but he can wait a little longer. I was admiring the changes you’ve made to the ship.’
Eidolon scowled and said, ‘If it were up to me, I’d have left you to die down there.’
‘Then I’m grateful it wasn’t up to you,’ smirked Lucius. ‘Still, after your defeat at Saul’s hands, I’m surprised you retained your command.’
‘Tarvitz…’ growled Eidolon. ‘A thorn in my side from the day he made captain.’
‘Well, he’s a thorn no longer, lord commander,’ said Lucius, thinking back to his last sight of Isstvan III, the swirling, cloud streaked glow of its atmosphere flickering with the mushroom clouds of high yield atomics and incendiaries.
‘You saw him die?’ asked Eidolon.
Lucius shook his head. ‘No, but I saw what was left of the palace. Nothing could have lived through that. Tarvitz is dead and so are Loken and that smug bastard, Torgaddon.’
Eidolon at least had the good grace to smile at the news of Torgaddon’s death and he nodded reluctantly. ‘That at least is good news. What of the others? Solomon Demeter, Ancient Rylanor?’
Lucius laughed as he remembered Solomon Demeter’s death. ‘Demeter is dead, of that I am certain.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Because I killed him,’ said Lucius. ‘He happened upon me when I was despatching the warriors assigned to defend the eastern ruins of the palace and happily joined in when I shouted to him that I was under attack.’
Eidolon smirked as he understood. ‘You mean Demeter killed his own men?’
‘Indeed he did,’ said Lucius, ‘with great gusto.’
Eidolon let out a burst of laughter, and Lucius could feel the lord commander’s attitude thaw a fraction at the irony of Solomon Demeter’s final moments.
‘And Ancient Rylanor?’ asked Eidolon, leading him further along the Gallery of Swords to the entrance to the apothecarion.
‘I don’t know for sure about that,’ said Lucius. ‘After the bombing, he took himself off into the depths of the Precentor’s Palace. I never saw him again.’
‘Not like Rylanor to run from a fight,’ noted Eidolon, turning a corner and marching down a parchment lined corridor that led to the grand staircase of the ship’s central apothecarion.
‘No,’ agreed Lucius, ‘though Tarvitz did say something about him guarding something.’
‘Guarding what?’
‘He didn’t say. Rumour was he’d found some kind of underground hangar, but if that were the case, then why didn’t Praal use it to escape when the Legions arrived?’
‘True,’ agreed Eidolon. ‘It is the nature of the coward to flee rather than fight. Well, no matter, whatever Rylanor’s purpose, it is irrelevant, for he is buried beneath thousands of tonnes of radioactive slag.’
Lucius nodded and gestured down the stairs. ‘Apothecary Fabius… what exactly is he going to do to me?’
‘Is that fear I hear in your voice, Lucius?’ asked Eidolon.
‘No,’ said Lucius, ‘I just want to know what I am letting myself in for.’
‘Perfection,’ promised Eidolon.
THE CORRIDORS OF the Pride of the Emperor were never quiet now, hastily rigged mesh speakers blaring a constant cacophony of sound from La Fenice. After hearing a taster of the Maraviglia’s overture, Fulgrim had commanded that his vessels be filled with music, and the weirdly distorted recordings of Bequa Kynska’s symphonies echoed along every hallway, day and night.
Serena d’Angelus made her way along the dazzlingly bright corridors of Fulgrim’s flagship, lurching from side to side like a drunk, her clothes stained with blood and ordure. The remains of her long hair were greasy, and matted clumps of it had been torn out in her ravings.
With the completion of the paintings of Lucius and Fulgrim, she had found herself without inspiration, as though the fire that had driven her to undreamt of highs and lows had burnt itself out. Days passed without her moving from her studio, and the months since the expedition had arrived in the Iss
tvan system had passed in a blur of catatonia and horrified introspection.
Dreams and nightmares had played out in her head like badly cut pict-reels, images of horrors and degradation she hadn’t known she was capable of visualising, tormenting her with their intensity and hideousness. Scenes of murders, violations, desecrations and things so vile that surely a human being was incapable of indulging in them without losing their sanity, played out before her like some madman’s fever dreams laid out for her unwilling scrutiny.
Occasionally she remembered to eat, not recognising the wild, feral woman she saw in the mirror or the scarred flesh that greeted her every morning when she awoke, naked in the ruin of her studio. Over the weeks the suspicion grew in her mind that the repeated visions that plagued her in the night were not simply delusions… They were memories.
She remembered weeping bitter tears as her suspicions were terrifyingly confirmed the day she had opened the stinking barrel in the corner of the studio.
A reek of decomposing human meat and acidic chemicals hit her like a blow, and the lid clattered to the floor as she saw the gooey, partially dissolved remains of at least six corpses. Smashed skulls, sawn bones and a thick soup of liquefying flesh sloshed around the barrel, and Serena vomited uncontrollably for several minutes at the horror of the sight.
She dragged herself away from the barrel and wept piteously as the full abhorrence of what she had done threatened to overwhelm her already fraying sanity.
Her mind had teetered on the brink of madness until a name had surfaced in the miasma of her consciousness, a name that gave her an anchor to cling to: Ostian… Ostian… Ostian…
Like a drowning woman clutching at a branch, she had pulled herself to her feet, cleaned herself up as best she could and stumbled, weeping and bloody, towards Ostian’s studio. He had tried to help her and she had rejected him, seeing now the love that had motivated his altruism and cursing herself for not realising it sooner.
Ostian could save her. As she reached the shutter to his studio, she only hoped he had not forsaken her. The shutter was partially open and she slammed her palm against the corrugated metal.
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