'You hear that, my brothers!' shouted Ferrus Manus. 'The Warmaster honours us! Glory to the Tenth Legion!'

'Glory to the Tenth Legion!' bellowed the Iron Hands, and Fulgrim felt like laughing at such primitive displays of pleasure. He could show these dull warriors the true meaning of pleasure, but that would come later.

Ferrus clapped his silver hand on Fulgrim's shoulder and said, 'But come, brother. Aside from passing on the Warmaster's honour, what brings you here?'

Fulgrim smiled and placed his hand on Fireblade's golden pommel. He had deemed it impolitic to come before Ferrus without the sword his brother had forged beneath Mount Narodnya over two centuries ago, but he felt the absence of his silver blade keenly. Ferrus saw the gesture and reached behind him to lift Forgebreaker, the great hammer that Fulgrim had crafted.

The two primarchs smiled, and once again their brotherhood was obvious to all.

'You are right, Ferrus, there is more that I would speak of, but it is for your ears alone,' said Fulgrim. 'It concerns the very future of the Great Crusade.'

Suddenly serious, Ferrus nodded and said, 'Then we shall talk in the Iron Forge.'

Marius stood rigidly to attention on the bridge of the Pride of the Emperor, his flesh alive with sensation as he watched the drifting slab of steel and bronze that was the Fist of Iron through the viewing bay. The ship was an ugly beast, decided Marius, its hull still scarred and unpainted after the damage done to it during the battle of the Carollis Star. What kind of Legion would travel in a vessel so unfitted to the glory of the warriors it carried? What manner of leader did not have the pride to embellish his fleet so that it displayed the perfection of the Legion it represented?

Marius felt his choler rise and straggled to control it as he found himself crushing the brass rails around the command pulpit. His anger stimulated the newly rewired pleasure centres of his brain, and it was only with a supreme effort of will that he forced himself to be calm.

He had explicit orders from his primarch, orders that might be the difference between life and death for all those aboard the Fist of Iron, and it would be the death of them all were he to fail when called upon. Fulgrim had specifically selected him for this role, for he knew there was no warrior more reliable than Marius in the Emperor's Children, who would not hesitate or suffer any conflict of conscience at doing what might have to be done.

Ever since going under the knives of Apothecary Fabius, Marius had felt as though his skin were a prison for the universe of sensation that seethed in the meat and bone of his body. Every emotion brought an ecstasy of joy, and every hurt a spasm of pleasure. Julius had instructed him on the teachings of Cornelius Blayke, and he had passed that knowledge throughout his company. Every one of his officers and many of the fighting Astartes had been sent to the Andronius for chemical and surgical enhancement. The demands on Apothecary Fabius had been so great that he had even established an entirely new corps of augmentative chirurgeons to meet the Legion's requirements for enhancements.

With the Legion's surprise attack on Deep Orbital DS191, the Iron Hands had welcomed them with open arms, renewing the oaths of brotherhood that had been sworn amid the corpses of the Diasporex fleet. The piquet vessels of the Iron Hands had stood down, and, discreetly and without provocation, the Pride of the Emperor and her escorts drifted amongst the ships of the 52nd Expedition.

With one command, he could visit unimaginable destruction upon the Iron Hands. The thought made him sweat, and his every nerve ending leapt to the surface of his skin, singing with sensation.

If Fulgrim's mission was successful, such drastic action would not be necessary.

Despite himself, Marius realised that he hoped his primarch's mission would fail.

Ferrus Manus kept his most prized relics and personal creations within the Iron Forge. Its gleaming walls were fashioned from smooth, glassy basalt and hung with all manner of wondrous weapons, armour and machinery crafted by the primarch's silver hands. A vast anvil of iron and gold sat in the centre of the forge, and Ferrus Manus had long ago declared that none save his brother primarchs were permitted to enter this most private sanctum. Fulgrim himself had only set foot in it once before.

Vulkan of the XVIII Legion had once declared it a magical place, using the language of the ancients to describe the magnificence it contained. To honour Ferrus's skill, Vulkan had presented him with a Firedrake banner, which hving next to a wondrously crafted gun with a top loading magazine and perforated barrel formed in the shape of a snarling dragon. Its brass and silver body conxprised the finest workmanship Fulgrim had ever seen, and he paused before it, its lines and curves so beautiful that to simply label it a weapon was to deny that it was in fact a work of art.

'I made that for Vulkan two hundred years ago,' said Ferrus, 'before he led his Legion into the Mordant Stars.'

'So why is it still here?'

'You know what Vulkan's like, he loves to work the metal and doesn't trust anything that hasn't had the beat of a hammer laid upon it or the fire of the forge in its heart.'

Ferrus held up his shimmering, mercurial hands and said, 'I don't think he liked the fact that I could shape metal without heat or hammer. He returned it to me a century ago, saying that it should remain here with its creator. I think Nocturne's superstitions aren't as forgotten as our brother would have us believe.'

Fulgrim reached up to touch the weapon, but curled his fingers into a fist before they touched the warm metal. To touch such a perfect weapon without firing it would be wrong.

'I understand that there is a certain attraction in a handsomely made weapon, but to apply such artistry to a thing designed to kill seems… extravagant,' said Fulgrim.

'Really?' chuckled Ferrus, hefting Forgebreaker and pointing it at Fireblade sheathed at Fulgrim's hip. 'Then what were we doing in the Urals?'

Fulgrim drew his sword and turned it in his hands so that it caught the light and threw dazzling red reflections around the forge.

'That was a contest,' smiled Fulgrim. 'I didn't know you then, and I wasn't going to have you outdo me, was I?'

Ferrus circled the Iron Forge, pointing his warhammer at the magnificent creations he had wrought, and which hung upon the wall. 'There is nothing in weapons, machinery, or engineering devices that obliges them to be ugly,' said Ferrus. 'Ugliness is a measure of imperfection. You of all people should appreciate that.'

'Then you must be perfectly imperfect,' said Fulgrim, his smile robbing the comment of malice.

'I'll leave being pretty to you and Sanguinius, my brother. I'll stick to fighting. Now come on, what's this all about? You speak of the future of the Great Crusade and then want to talk of weapons and old times? What's going on?'

Fulgrim tensed, suddenly anxious at what he was to ask of his brother. He had hoped to approach the matter circuitously, feeling out his brother's position and the likelihood of him joining them willingly, but with typical Medusan directness, Ferrus Manus had come right out and demanded to know his purpose.

How artless and blunt.

'When did you last see the Emperor?' asked Fulgrim.

'The Emperor? What has that to do with anything?'

'Indulge me. When was it?'

'A long time ago,' admitted Ferrus. 'Orina Septimus. On the crystal headlands above the acid oceans.'

'I last saw him on Ullanor at the Warmaster's coronation,' said Fulgrim, moving towards the great anvil and trailing his fingers along the cold metal. 'I wept when he told us that he believed the time had come for him to leave the crusading work to his sons, and that he was returning to Terra to undertake a still higher calling.'