"Saving the people of the Imperium from disaster is my responsibility, and one of the reasons the Word Bearers exist." Lorgar's voice was steady and certain, without a moment's hesitation.
For Lorgar, this was an instinctive answer that required no thought.
His bronze face was solemn, his eyes meeting Fulgrim's as he conveyed a wholly genuine promise.
Yet beneath that outward assent, a heavy sigh rose deep within him, audible to him alone.
That sigh was not directed at the rescue mission itself, but at the radiant brother before him, at the heartbreaking fate he knew of but which had yet to unfold.
Such a perfect phoenix... Lorgar's thoughts seemed to sink into icy water.
This perfect body, wrought by the Emperor himself, embodied the pinnacle of human beauty and strength. This proud, passionate, vibrant soul, almost obsessive in his pursuit of "perfection," would, in another possible future, degenerate into that horrifying half-human, half-serpent form, writhing and twisting, pursuing nothing but endless sensory stimulation and diseased pleasure.
And the Emperor's Children Legion, into which he had poured his heart and soul, which he had saved from the brink of extinction and taken such pride in, would fall with him, becoming monsters that wallowed in the mire of desire and fed on the suffering of others and their own madness.
From the utmost beauty to the utmost ugliness and evil—how bitterly ironic that fall was, and how tragic.
But...
That sigh was swiftly displaced by sharper doubts. Lorgar's attention was once again drawn to the strangely shaped sword at Fulgrim's waist.
The Laer Blade.
According to the "knowledge" he possessed, this accursed relic of a xenos civilization should have housed a Slaaneshi daemon, a tangible extension of a Warp Chaos God's corrupting power over the domains of "perfection" and "sensation."
His