As Julius entered the cavern, he felt as though a smothering blanket he had not known existed was suddenly pulled from his skull, and he clapped his hands to his ears as a cacophonous flood of sensations assaulted him with a surge of light and noise.

Blazing light filled the immense space within the temple, leaping from wall to wall, and riotous noise echoed in a deafening thunder of sounds. Fantastical colours wheeled in the air, as though the light were somehow caught in the humid, aromatic smoke that snaked through the chamber. Monstrous statues of what Julius assumed were the gods of the Laer ran around the circumference of the temple, massive bull-headed creatures with multiple arms and great horns curling from their skulls. Numerous barbed rings pierced their stone flesh and each god's chest was sheathed in layered armour plate that left the right breast bare.

Wild murals covered every centimetre of the walls, and Julius stiffened as he saw that hundreds of the Laer writhing on the chamber's floor, the horrid, dry susurration of their bodies the most hideous sound imaginable. He made to shout a warning, but saw there was no need, for the serpentine bodies were hideously intertwined in what looked like some form of grotesque sexual congress.

Clearly, whatever power had driven the Laer defending the temple into a manic frenzy did not extend to those within it. They sprawled in languorous repose, their glistening, multi-hued bodies pierced in the same manner as the statues, and their sluggish movements suggesting the effects of a powerful narcotic.

'What are they doing?' asked Julius over the din. 'Are they dying?'

'If they are, then it seems to be a very pleasurable death,' said Fulgrim, his eyes fixed hungrily on something in the centre of the chamber. Julius followed his gaze, seeing that the slithering Laer surrounded a circular block of veined black stone, embedded within which was a tall sword with a gently curved blade.

The handle was long and silver, its surface patterned like the scales of a snake, and its pommel was set with a winking purple stone that threw off dazzling reflections.

'They were protecting this,' said Fulgrim, his voice sounding distant and faint to Julius. His eyes stung with the smoke, and he could feel the beginnings of a powerful headache as the noise and light continued to batter at his senses.

'No,' whispered Julius, knowing, but not knowing how he knew, that the Laer had not offered praise in this temple, but had been in thrall to it. 'This is not a place of worship, it is a place of dominance.'

Still holding the eagle-topped banner pole, Fulgrim walked into the mass of writhing Laer. His Phoenix Guard moved to follow him, but Fulgrim held them back. Julius tried to cry out to his primarch that something was very wrong here, but the perfumed smoke seemed to rush to fill his lungs and he could not draw breath to shout as a strident whisperer hissed in his ear.

Let him take me, Julius.

The words slipped from his mind as soon as they were spoken and he felt a strange numbness suffuse him, the tips of his fingers tingling pleasantly as he watched Fulgrim march through the sprawled Laer.

With every step the primarch took, the Laer parted before him, clearing a pathway towards the block of stone, and as he reached the sword, Julius recalled Fulgrim's words as they had entered the temple: There is power here.

He could feel a charge in the air, a breath on the wind that howled around the temple's interior, a pulse in the living walls and… and… the cry of release as a blade slices open an eyeball, the caress of silk across bare skin, the scream torn from the mouth of violated flesh and the bliss of agony as it takes pleasure in its own mutilation.

Julius cried out as sensations of horror and ecstasy filled his head, a delirious laughter echoing through the chamber, though none but he appeared to hear it. He looked up from his agony to see Fulgrim's fingers slip easily around the sword's handle. A sigh, like the ancient winds of the emptiest deserts, filled the chamber. Julius felt a tremor run through the temple, a shudder of release and fulfilment, as he watched Fulgrim draw the blade from the block of stone.

The Primarch of the Emperor's Children admired the sword blade, a spectral glow thrown across his pale features by the dancing lights that filled the chamber. The Laer still writhed on the ground, their bodies undulating obscenely as the primarch raised the burned banner pole high and drove it into the stone he had just drawn the sword from.

The eagle caught the light and threw off hundreds of fractured reflections from its wings, and to Julius the sight was hideous, the light making the eagle appear to twist and writhe in pain.

Fulgrim spun the sword in his grip, testing it for balance, and he smiled as he cast his gaze out over the hundreds of Laer sprawled around him.

'Destroy them all,' he said. 'Leave none alive.'

PART TWO

THE PHOENIX & THE GORGON

SIX

Diasporex

The Molten Heart

Young Gods

As much as he hated what they had become, Captain Balhaan of the Iron Hands couldn't help but admire the skill of the fleet masters of the Diasporex. For nearly five months they had managed to evade the ships of the X Legion around the Carollis system of the Lesser Bifold Cluster with an efficacy that was beyond even the longest serving captains of the Iron Hands.

That was set to change now that the Ferrum and her small company of escort ships had managed to calve a pair of vessels from the larger mass of the enemy fleet and drive them towards the gaseous rings of the Carollis Star from whence this endeavour had begun.

Ferrus Manus, Primarch of the Iron Hands, had noted bitterly that it was a tragedy of their own making that would see the Diasporex destroyed. They had come to the attention of the 52nd Expedition quite by accident when forward reconnaissance vessels had traversed the western reaches of the cluster and detected some unusual vox transmissions.

This region of space comprised three systems, two of which contained a number of habitable worlds that had been brought back into the Imperial fold with a minimum of resistance. Remote probe ships had revealed the existence of other systems deeper in the cluster with the potential to support life and, at first, it had been surmised that the signals had come from this unconquered region of space. Prior to the order for the mass advance, the unusual transmissions had once again been detected, this time in Imperial space around the Carollis Star.

The Primarch of the Iron Hands had immediately ordered the expedition's surveyor officers to locate the source of the transmissions, whereupon it was quickly deduced that an unknown fleet of some magnitude was at large in Imperial space. No other expeditions were authorised to be operating close by, and none of the newly compliant worlds had fleets of any significance, thus Ferrus Manus had declared that these interlopers must be found and eliminated before any advance could begin.

And so the hunt had begun.

Balhaan stood behind the iron lectern that served as his command post on the Ferrum, a mid-size strike cruiser that had served faithfully in the 52nd Expedition's forces for almost a century and a half. For sixty of those years it had been under Balhaan's command and he prided himself that it was the best ship and crew in the fleet, for anything less than the best was weakness that he would not tolerate.

Named for the X Legion's primarch, Ferrus Manus, the bridge of the Ferrum was stark and spartan, its every surface gleaming and pristine. Though there was ornamentation, it was kept to a bare minimum, and the ship looked much as it had when it first launched from its moorings in the Martian shipyards. She was fast, deadly and the perfect ship to serve as a hunter of this unknown fleet.