Fulgrim by Graham McNeill Page B

cried Fulgrim. ‘You are late.’
    ‘I apologise, my lord,’ said Kaesoron contritely. ‘Finding a path through the coral proved to be more difficult than we imagined.’
    ‘Difficulty is no excuse,’ warned Fulgrim. ‘Perfection must overcome difficulty.’
    ‘It must, my lord,’ agreed Kaesoron. ‘It will never happen again.’
    Fulgrim nodded and said, ‘Where are Captain Demeter’s Second?’
    ‘I do not know, my lord. He has not answered any of my vox hails.’
    Fulgrim turned from Kaesoron and returned his attention to the battle. ‘I shall need you and your warriors to break open that temple. Follow me in.’
    Without waiting for acknowledgement, Fulgrim set off at a brisk jog through his Phoenix Guard, who formed up around him as he took the eagle once more into the fight. Missiles and shells slammed into the temple and massive chunks of coral smashed down into the valley, crushing the Laer that gathered around its base.
    With Fulgrim at their head, the Emperor’s Children formed a fighting wedge that speared through the Laer. Closer to the temple, the aliens fought with a violence that bordered on the insane, the pink musk wreathing their bodies in a filmy gauze, and their screeching cries like those of the banshees of ancient myth. They attacked with no thought to their own defence, and Fulgrim swore that some were simply hurling themselves onto his blade. Dark blood and howls of what he would later swear were pleasure ripped from their bodies with every stroke.
    The gnarled spires of the screaming temple towered above him, the wide arched entrance like the mouth of an undersea cave. Huge chunks of blasted coral lay scattered around, and scores of snaking Laer bodies slithered around them, their multiple arms bearing curved blades, which crackled with blue flames that shone brightly in the mist that poured from the shattered temple.
    The Emperor’s Children hammered into them, and the battle was as bloody as it was brief, the Laer fighting with inhumanly quick strikes of their lethal blades. Even the armour of the Terminators was not proof against such weapons, and more than one of Kaesoron’s First lost a limb or his life to their unnatural energies.
    With more and more Emperor’s Children pushing into the valley, there could be no stopping their advance, and they slashed through the alien warriors that stood between them and the yawning cave mouth of the temple.
    ‘We have them now, my children!’ shouted Fulgrim.
    Holding the shining eagle banner in one hand and his golden sword in the other, Fulgrim fought his way into the temple of the Laer.
    J ULIUS K AESORON HAD killed with the fury of one of Angron’s warriors, the shame of the primarch’s rebuke driving him to undreamt of heights of reckless courage to once again prove his mettle. He had lost count of the Laer he had killed, and now the darkness of the temple enfolded him as he followed the golden eagle borne by his primarch into the heart of the black coral structure.
    The darkness was like a living thing, swallowing light and sound as though jealously guarding it. Beyond the temple, Julius could still hear the cramp of explosions, the rattle of gunfire, the clash of blades and the nerve shredding screams of the towers, but with each step he took, the sounds diminished as though he were descending into an infinitely deep pit.
    Ahead of him, Fulgrim strode onwards, unaware or uncaring of the effect the darkness of the temple was having on his warriors. Julius could see that even the normally implacable Phoenix Guard were uneasy in this place, and no wonder, for the primarch himself had declared that it was a place of worship.
    The idea of such things was as repugnant to Julius as the idea of failure, and the thought that he stood in a fane where loathsome aliens had offered praise to false gods stoked the fires of his hatred. The warriors who had fought their way into the temple spread out as they followed their leader, swords raised or