The Bridge of the Conqueror was less a command center than the mouth of a brooding volcano.
Angron sat on a specially made, massive chair of adamantium and obsidian, which looked like a toy beneath him.
His head was bowed, as though he were pondering something. Only his shoulders, broad as a mountain range, rose and fell slightly with each slow, heavy breath.
Dozens of warriors of the Primarch Guard, clad in blue-and-white armour covered in scars and marks of honour, stood in a semicircle around him like sentries at once utterly loyal and desperately tense.
They gripped their weapons, muscles taut, their gazes fixed not on the battlefield blazing with gunfire beyond the Bridge, but on their own Primarch.
Their task was not to protect their Primarch from outside enemies. They were living fences, an emotional dam holding him back, keeping the anger constantly building inside him, almost bursting through his chest, from driving him completely out of control and sending him charging out to "cut down everyone in sight."
At the innermost edge of this cordon, Skolzne, commander of the Primarch Guard, stood like a steel statue one step behind and to the side of Angron's chair.
Both hands rested on a massive Chainspear, its tip lightly touching the deck. He stood straight, his gaze beneath his faceplate monitoring every minute shift in the Primarch's emotions and every twitch of his muscles like the most precise scanner, never wavering for an instant.
In the shadows at Angron's feet, Khârn sat leaning back in an almost languid pose.
He wore no helmet, exposing a resolute, scar-crossed face steeped in indifference.
His crimson pupils reflected the cold blue glow of the Bridge's instruments, yet held no emotion, like two bottomless wells filled with congealed blood.
He merely watched: watched Angron,