"Hahahaha!" Lorgar's laughter broke the awkward silence in the corridor.
"Don't do that again!" Lorgar stopped laughing, though a smile still lingered on his lips. He looked at Guilliman's bruised, multicoloured face and shook his head.
"Who does something like that? Roboute Guilliman, Archon of Ultramar, sneaking up to his brother's door like an assassin in the middle of the night? In this darkness, at this hour?"
He pointed at Angron and Curze nearby, then continued, "You can hardly blame Angron and Curze for 'overreacting.' They were just... er, doing their duty."
Holding a hand over his eye, Guilliman followed Lorgar's pointing finger. With his one eye that could still see, he glanced at his two other "dutiful" brothers, his gaze seven parts pain and three parts resentment.
Angron answered with an undisguised snort of contempt.
He did not even bother looking at Guilliman. His crimson lenses turned aside, as though the reliefs on the corridor walls were far more interesting than the battered Primarch of the Ultramarines before him.
His thick arms were folded across his chest, his muscles bulging. The force of those heavy punches seemed to linger in his knuckles, silently declaring that if there were a next time, he would do it again.
As for Curze...
Guilliman's gaze swept over the shadows.
There was nothing there, only the cold floor and the seams between the walls.
Yet the hairs on the back of his neck rose slightly.
He could not sense any specific gaze, but he felt as though cold eyes were licking over him from everywhere at once.
It was as if the shadows themselves had come alive and were silently mocking his sorry state.
He knew perfectly well that Konrad Curze was nearby, perhaps within arm's reach, yet his eyes could not pinpoint his