167. Those Who Consider Themselves Pious

Corax remembered that familiar scent.

He remembered it, remembered it deeply. He knew it as well as he knew how a blade ought to be swung.

An unspeakable fury began to boil in his heart, twisting his flesh and overturning his form, turning his entire being into a monster lurking in the shadows. It took him several full minutes to recover and become human again—to become the shape he knew.

"I found you—!" the Lord of the Ravens roared, almost deranged. "I found you—! Lor—gar!"

Beneath the light of sickly stars, he turned into an amorphous cloud of smoke and vanished at speed. Unlike most of his brothers, Corax had fully mastered his own nature, and so he could move swiftly within the Warp. For the past ten thousand years, he had used that ability to search for Lorgar. And now, he had found him.

He had found him—and so, though Lorgar did not yet know it, he was about to face the most terrifying calamity of his life and daemonic existence to date.

Lorgar walked up onto the altar, the hem of his robe lifted by the windblown sand, and paid it no mind. Behind him came horrible shrieks and the sounds of flesh exploding, and he paid them little mind as well.

For now, he cared about only one thing.

Lorgar half knelt on the ground. The motion that had once been so familiar now felt so strange, but he soon grew used to the posture again. Raising a hand, he swept aside the sand and bones that had buried the altar, fully exposing the array beneath. The moment he saw the intact pattern, he let out a breath of relief.

"Thank goodness."

Lorgar smiled, dragged over the remains of a dead daemon beside him, and began