Parmenio's surface was no longer a world fit for human habitation.
Whatever natural landscape had once existed was now buried beneath viscous, foul-smelling yellow-green sludge, forests of enormous writhing fungi, and mountains of rotting corpses.
The sky was shrouded in polluted green clouds, and deadly spore rain pattered down, corroding steel and stone.
This was the slaughterhouse Mortarion had meticulously prepared. Death Guard Plague Marines, bloated Nurglings, swarms of buzzing plague flies, and even larger daemonic entities filled the area around Guilliman's landing site like a tide of filth.
Yet the expected barrage of fire did not come.
The Death Guard ranks stood silent, like a rotting forest, radiating suffocating malice without opening fire.
Guilliman's massive body stepped from the assault craft, his heavy power boots sinking deep into the foul mud.
He looked around, his cold blue eyes sweeping over the twisted, mutated enemies before settling on a towering "throne" piled from white bones, rotten flesh, and rusted metal not far away.
Seated upon that throne was the master of the Death Guard—Mortarion.
His once-magnificent Primarch body had become bloated and distorted by Nurgle's "blessings," covered in moss, pustules, and metal plate armour dripping with corrupt fluids.
A huge, buzzing plague sprayer hung on his back like a pair of rotten wings.
A pair of murky eyes, filled with venomous intelligence, stared fixedly through the holes in his mask at the newly landed Guilliman.
"Welcome home, my brother." Mortarion's voice carried thick, viscous mockery. "Look at the welcome ceremony I prepared for you... How grand." His rotting fingers swept across the endless filthy army around him.
Guilliman did not respond to his "greeting." His gaze was sharp as a blade as he assessed Mortarion and the deployment of forces around him.
Behind him, the elite Primaris Space Marines filed