How such a primitive species could achieve so much and not be driven insane by their sheer insignificance in the grand scheme of the cosmos defied understanding, but they were possessed of such rampant self-belief that their own mortality and insignificance did not penetrate their conscious minds until it was too late.

Already, Eldrad had seen the death of their race, the blood soaked fields of the world named for the end of days, and the final victory of the dark saviour.

Would their course be altered by the knowledge of their inevitable doom? Of course it would not, for a race such as the mon-keigh would never accept the inevitable, and would always seek to change that which could not be changed.

He saw the rise of warriors, the treachery of kings, and the great eye opening to release the mighty heroes of legend trapped there to return to their warriors' sides for the final battle. Their future was war and death, blood and horror, yet still they would push ever onwards, convinced of their own superiority and immortality.

And yet… perhaps their doom was not inevitable.

Despite the bloodshed and despair, there was still hope. The flickering ember of an unwritten future guttered in the darkness, its light surrounded by amorphous warp-spawned monsters with great, yellowed fangs and talons. Eldrad saw that they hoped to extinguish this light by their very presence, and as he looked into the fading dream of the future, he saw what might yet come to pass.

He saw a great warrior of regal countenance, a towering giant in sea-green armour with a great amber eye at the centre of his breastplate. This mighty figure fought through a host of the dead on a sickly planet of decay, his sword cleaving a score of corpses with every blow. Warp light filled the rotted eye sockets of the dead, and the energies of the Lord of Pestilence gave their limbs fierce animation. The calamitous doom of his race hung around this warrior like a shroud, though he knew it not.

Eldrad's spirit flew close to the light, trying to discern the identity of the warrior. The warp beasts roared and gnashed their teeth, flailing in idiot blindness at his spirit form. The warp seethed around him, and Eldrad knew that the monstrous gods of the warp would not stand for his presence, as the currents of the warp sought to cast his spirit back to his body.

Eldrad fought to hold onto the vision, extending his warp sight as far as he dared. Images flooded his mind: a cavernous throne room, a great god-like figure in gleaming armour of gold and silver, a sterile chamber deep beneath a mountain, and a betrayal of such magnitude that his soul burned with the enormity of it.

Cries of anguish echoed all around him, and he fought to hold on to some sense of them as the power of the warp hurled him away from this jealously guarded secret. Words formed from the cries, but few offered any meaning or understanding, their essence burning in his mind with a fierce light.

Crusade… Hero… Saviour… Destroyer.

But above them all, blazing brighter than all others… Warmaster.

From the stillness and darkness, came light. A rippling plume of fire like the tip of a comet appeared in the darkness of the system's edge, growing steadily bigger as it increased in brightness and intensity. Without warning, the light suddenly expanded with the speed and violence of an explosion, and where once there had been nothing but empty space, there was now a mighty starship, its purple and gold hull still battle scarred.

Glistening streamers of fading energy, like fronds of seaweed caught on the hull of an ocean-going vessel, trailed behind the Pride of the Emperor, and her hull groaned with the suddenness of the translation from warp space to real space. A host of smaller vessels appeared in the wake of the mighty warship, winking into existence with bright flashes and whorls of strangely coloured light flaring around them.

Over the course of the next six hours, the remainder of the 28th Expedition completed the translation to real space and formed up around the Pride of the Emperor. One vessel amongst the fleet, the Proudheart, bore no scars earned at the Battle of the Carollis Star. The vessel was the flagship of Lord Commander Eidolon. It had recently returned from a peace keeping tour of the Satyr Lanxus Belt, and unexpected war alongside the Warmaster's 63rd Expedition on a world known as Murder.

The 28th Expedition had taken its leave of the Iron Hands following the great victory over the Diasporex with much sadness, for old brotherhoods had been renewed and new ones forged in the crucible of combat in ways that could not be achieved in times of peace.

The human prisoners of the Diasporex had been transported to the nearest compliant world and handed over to the Imperial governor to be employed as slave labour. The aliens had been exterminated and their vessels pounded to destruction by close range broadsides from the Fist of Iron and the Pride of the Emperor. A detachment of the Mechanicum had remained behind to study what remained of the ancient human technologies of the Diasporex, and Fulgrim had given them leave to rejoin the 28th Expedition upon the completion of their researches.

Thus, with duty and honour to the 52nd Expedition discharged, Fulgrim had led his expedition to a region of space known to Imperial Cartographae as the Perdus Anomaly, their original objective following the defeat of the Laer.

Little was known of this area of the galaxy. Its reputation amongst starfarers was one of dark legend, for vessels that sailed this region of space were never seen again. Navigators shunned the Perdus Region, as dangerous currents and freak tides within the immaterium made it an incredibly hazardous region to traverse, and astropaths spoke of an impenetrable veil that shielded it from their warp sight.

All that was known had come from a single surviving probe that had been launched at the outset of the Great Crusade, and which had returned a faint signal that indicated that the local systems of the Perdus region contained many habitable worlds ripe for compliance.

Most other expeditions had chosen not to venture into this ill-fated region, but Fulgrim had long ago declared that no region of space would remain unknown to the forces of the Emperor.

That the Perdus Anomaly was uncharted was simply another way for the Emperor's Children to once again prove their superiority and perfection.

The training halls of the First Company echoed to the clash of weapons and the grunts of fighting Astartes. The six-week journey to the Perdus region had allowed Julius time to grieve for Lycaon and the honoured dead of the First as well as train a great many of the warriors elevated from the novitiates and Scout Auxilia to the status of full Astartes. Though they were yet to be blooded, he had instructed them in the ways of the Emperor's Children, passing down his experience and newly awakened sense of pleasure in the fury of combat. Eager to learn from their commander, all the warriors of the First had embraced his new teachings with an enthusiasm that pleased him greatly.

The time had also allowed him to reacquaint himself with his reading, and the hours he had not spent with the warriors of his company, he had passed in the Archive Chambers. He had devoured the works of Cornelius Blayke, and though he had found much that illuminated him, he was certain that there was yet more still to learn.

Stripped to the waist, he stood in one of the training cages with a trio of mechanised fighting armatures, their armed limbs inert as he savoured the anticipation of the coming fight.

Without warning, all three machines leapt into life, ball joints and rotating gimbals on their ceiling mounts allowing them a full range of motion around him. A sword blade licked out, and Julius swayed aside, ducking as a spiked ball slashed towards his head and a pistoning spike thrust towards his belly.