How many priceless, irreplaceable tomes had been lost in the wake of the warp beast he and Euphrati had conjured from the pages of the Book of Lorgar?

It did not bear thinking about and he wondered how much the future would condemn them for the knowledge that had been lost there. He had already filled thousands of pages with those fragments he could remember from the books he had consulted. Most of it was fragmentary and disjointed. He knew that the task of recalling everything he had read was doomed to failure, but he could no more conceive of giving up than he could stop his heart from beating.

His gift and the gift of the Crusade to the ages yet to come was the accumulated wisdom of the

galaxy's greatest thinkers and warriors. With the broad shoulders of such knowledge to stand upon, who knew what dizzying heights of enlightenment the Imperium might reach?

His pen scratched across the page, recalling the philosophies of the Hellenic writers and their early debates on the nature of divinity. No doubt many would think it pointless to transcribe the writings of those long dead, but Sindermann knew that to ignore the past was to doom the future to repeat it.

The text he wrote spoke of the ineffable inscrutability of false gods, and he knew that such mysteries were closer to the surface than he cared to admit. The things he had seen and read since Sixty-Three Nineteen had stretched his scepticism to the point where he could no longer deny the truth of what was plainly before him and which Euphrati Keeler had been trying to tell them all.

Gods existed and, in the case of the Emperor, moved amongst them...

He paused for a moment as the full weight of that thought wrapped itself around him like a comforting blanket. The warmth and ease such simple acceptance gave him was like a panacea for all the ills that had troubled him this last year, and he smiled as his pen idly scratched across the page before him without his conscious thought.

Sindermann started as he realised that the pen was moving across the page of its own volition. He looked down to see what was being written.

She needs you.

Cold fear gripped him, but even as it rose, it was soothed and a comforting state of love and trust filled him. Images filled his head unbidden: the Warmaster strong and powerful in his newly forged suit of black plate armour, the amber eye glowing like a coal from the furnace. Claws slid from the Warmaster's gauntlets and an evil red glow built from his gorget, illuminating his face with a ghastly daemonic light.

'No...' breathed Sindermann, feeling a great and unspeakable horror fill him at this terrible vision, but no sooner had this image filled his head than it was replaced by one of Euphrati Keeler lying supine on her medicae bed. Terrified thoughts were banished at the sight of her and Sindermann felt his love for this beautiful woman fill him as a pure and wondrous light.

Even as he smiled in rapture, the vision darkened and yellowed talons slid into view, tearing at the image of Euphrati.

Sindermann screamed in sudden premonition.

Once again he looked at the words on the page, marvelling at their desperate simplicity.

She needs you.

Someone was sending him a message.

The saint was in danger.

COORDINATING A LEGION'S assets - its Astartes, its spacecraft, staff and accompanying Imperial Army units - was a truly Herculean task. Managing to coordinate the arrival of four Legions in

the same place at the same time was an impossible task: impossible for anyone but the Warmaster.

The Vengeful Spirit, its long flat prow like the tip of a spear, slid from the warp in a kaleidoscopic display of pyrotechnics, lightning raking along its sides as the powerful warp-integrity fields took the full force of re-entry. In the interstellar distance, the closest star of the Isstvan system glinted, cold and hard against the blackness. The Eye of Horus glared from the top of the ship's prow, the entire vessel having been refitted following the victory against the Technocracy, the bone-white of the Luna Wolves replaced by the metallic grey-green of the Sons of Horus.

Within moments, another ship broke through, tearing its way into real space with the brutal functionality of its Legion. Where the Vengeful Spirit had a deadly grace to it, the newcomer was brutish and ugly, its hull a drab gunmetal-grey, its only decoration, a single brazen skull on its prow. The vessel was the Endurance, capital ship of the Death Guard fleet accompanying the Warmaster, and a flotilla of smaller cruisers and escorts flew in its wake. AH were the same unembellished gunmetal, for nothing in Mortarion's Legion bore any more adornment than was necessary.

Several hours later the powerful, stabbing form of the Conqueror broke through to join the Warmaster. Shimmering with the white and blue colours of the World Eaters, the Conqueror was Angron's flagship,

and its blunt muscular form echoed the legendary ferocity of the World Eaters' primarch.

Finally, the Andronius, at the head of the Emperor's Children fleet, joined the growing Isst-van strike force. The vessel itself was resplendent in purple and gold, more like a flying palace than a ship of war. Its appearance was deceptive however, for the gun decks bristled with weapons manned by well-drilled menials who lived and died to serve Fulgrim's Legion. The Andronius, for all its decorative folly, was a compact, lethal weapon of war.

The Great Crusade had rarely seen a fleet of such power assembled in one place.

Until now, only the Emperor had commanded such a force, but his place was on distant Terra, and these Legions answered only to the Warmaster.

So it was that four Legions gathered and turned their eyes towards the Isstvan system.

THE KLAXONS ANNOUNCING the Vengeful Spirit's translation back to real space were the spur to action that Kyril Sindermann had been waiting for. Mopping his brow with an already moist handkerchief, he pushed himself to his feet and made his way to the shutter of his quarters.

He took a deep, calming breath as the shutter rose and he was confronted by the hostile stares of two army soldiers, their starched uniforms insignia free and anonymous.

'Can I help you, sir?' asked a tall man with a cold, unhelpful expression.

'Yes,’ said Sindermann, his voice perfectly modulated to convey his non-threatening affability. 'I need to travel to the medicae deck.' You don't look sick,’ said the second guard. Sindermann chuckled, reaching out to touch the man's arm like a kindly grandfather. 'No, it's not me, my boy, it's a friend of mine. She's rather ill and I promised that I would look in on her,’

'Sorry,’ said the first guard, in a tone that suggested he was anything but. 'We've got orders from the Astartes not to let anyone off this deck,’

'I see, I see,’ sighed Sindermann, letting a tear trickle from the corner of his eye. 'I don't want to be an inconvenience, my boys, but my friend, well, she's like a daughter to me, you see. She is very dear to me and you would be doing an old man a very real favour if you could just let me see her,’

'I don't think so, sir,’ said the guard, but Sindermann could already detect a softening in his tone and pushed a little harder.

'She has... she has... not long left to her, and I was told by Maloghurst himself that I would be allowed to see her before... before the end,’

Using Maloghurst's name was a gamble, but it was a calculated gamble. These men were unlikely to have any formal channel to contact the Warmas-ter's equerry,, but if they decided to check, he would be unmasked.

Sindermann kept his voice low and soft as he played the grandfatherly role, utilising every trick he had learned as an iterator - the precise timbre of

his voice, the frailty of his posture, keeping eye contact and empathy with his audience.