"His luck really is something."

The Eye of Terror. A daemon world.

Dark Apostle Erebus stood at the edge of a pit.

The pit was filled with dark red liquid, the drained blood of two hundred slaves taken from realspace.

The surface had been smooth. Now it rippled with faint disturbance, Warp energies stirring beneath.

Reflected in those shifting depths: images of the space near Armageddon.

A garrison meeting room reduced to rubble. The dagger carved with Chaos runes snapped into several pieces.

"What a shame about that dagger. I went to some effort to obtain that power from the Gods."

"Don't forget, Erebus — the galaxy is hardly a barren place. Drama plays out here every single moment."

The voice came from across the pit. Its owner was none other than the notorious Fabius Bile.

"Your assassination attempt was doomed to fail. You didn't prepare the way you used to. And your target was a Primarch."

"I know, Bile."

Erebus smiled. His tone was ice-cold.

"A true Primarch."

"When I first heard the news that worthless Abaddon passed along, I was genuinely astonished. Horus Lupercal had actually returned."

"The once-great Wolf God. The Warmaster of the Imperium." His voice carried a note of theatrical curiosity. "Word is the False Emperor on the Throne has pardoned him?"

"Who knows."

Fabius had wandered away from the conversation entirely. The Apothecary idly picked up one of the Dark Apostle's belongings and turned it over in his hands.

This irritated Erebus. A cold glint moved through his eyes.

"Perhaps it's Imperial propaganda. Besides, the man who holds power over the Imperium now — the Lord of Five Hundred Worlds, Roboute Guilliman — he would pardon the Wolf God based purely on present considerations."

"You want to corrupt him again?"

A smirk pulled at the corner of Fabius's mouth. All mockery.

"I believe the Gods would love to see it. Horus, forgiven, only to betray again. A far heavier blow to the Imperium, to humanity, to the other Primarchs." Erebus's twisted features were alive with relish. "And of course to the False Emperor on his Throne."

"What a tragedy that would be. Heh."

"You were despicable ten thousand years ago and you're still despicable now. I have little interest in your schemes, your ideas, or the Gods you keep talking about."

Fabius set the object down and looked directly at the man who had invited him here.

"So. What can you offer me?"

"New knowledge." Erebus said. "I made a point of paying Ahriman a special little 'visit.' From him I obtained a body of genetic science from an ancient xenos civilization."

A tempting offer.

Fabius thought so. He kept his face blank.

"That's it?"

"Don't be greedy, Bile."

"You're still clinging to that long-outdated Imperial Truth, trying to deconstruct everything with science in a Warp where no physical laws hold any meaning. You want to retrace the steps of that dried-out corpse on its throne."

Erebus paused. His eyes fixed on Fabius.

"All for the evolution of all humanity. And for that poor daughter of yours."

Two short laughs. Clipped, almost cheerful.

Fabius said nothing.

A scalpel slid from his sleeve into his palm. One not made in Commorragh.

The tip stopped less than a foot from Erebus's throat.

One flick of the wrist. That was all it would take.

A few seconds passed.

Fabius's fingers loosened. The scalpel slid back up into his sleeve. He adjusted his stance.

"You piece of filth."

He ground the words out through his teeth.

"But I am the Gods' favored."

Erebus said it without looking up, offhand, like commenting on the weather. Then he made his demand.

"I know you have blood samples from several Primarchs. Clone 4 Horus Lupercals for me."

He produced a scroll covered in Chaos runes and placed it in Fabius's hands.

"A few minor specifications for the clones. I hope you won't mind."

"Rest assured, Bile, your compensation will be generous. I'll pay a portion upfront." A beat. "At the very least, I'm not as shameless as the False Emperor on the Golden Throne."

Even Erebus couldn't help a short laugh at that.

Fabius took the parchment and said nothing further.

The client is always master.

No.

He had his own ideas about this dog Erebus.

"A pleasure doing business."

The Apothecary turned and left.

Erebus watched him go.

Then he lowered his head over the blood pool's edge.

The ripples stilled. The image sharpened and locked onto a single figure, the mortal who stood at Horus's side.

Erebus turned over what he knew. Magnus's defeat. The daemon Primarch driven back from Luna. The Changer of Ways apparently striking some manner of deal with this same mortal. Guilliman and the returning loyalist Primarchs, all of them somehow connected to this one man.

A mortal doing all of that. It made no sense.

Erebus stroked his chin.

He needed more reliable cards. More allies. Other forms of help entirely.

Then a name surfaced.

"Lorgar." He spoke it aloud over the blood.

The Primarch of the Word Bearers.

Sealed away in his tower on Sicarus. Lost in his own world. Writing those endless manuscripts.

Nearly 10,000 years of it.

"The Gods have need of you."

Erebus murmured the words to no one.

He plunged both hands into the blood pool. The thick liquid crept past his wrists. Beneath the surface, he swept his arms wide in a slow, deliberate circle.

A small gesture. Nothing more.

But the power held within that blood carried it straight down into the depths of the Warp.

Into the core of the Eye of Terror.

To the outer reaches of the daemon world Sicarus.

The Warp currents that had been drifting there sluggishly, they surged. Countless eddies of energy collided, compressed, and erupted into a violent psychic storm. The storm swelled fast, expanding into a wall of energy hundreds of billions of kilometers high, swallowing Sicarus and a dozen surrounding worlds whole.

Erebus withdrew his hands.

Blood droplets flew free and spattered the bank.

Corax's great black raven had been prowling near Sicarus for a long time now, that restless, far-ranging thing. The Primarch of the Raven Guard had become something woven from Warp-shadow, hunting his traitorous brothers across the stars.

This storm couldn't stop Corax forever.

But it would keep him outside Sicarus for a good long while.

"The raven circles outside, and you have sat in your fortress far too long, my Primarch."

"It is time to come out. Take some air. Meet a few of your other brothers."

➤ Next: On Lorgar