"Mm... you still spoil Lorgar so much."
The voice rang out in the vast, empty, sweltering chamber, amid its low, reverberating hum. It carried an understanding honed through countless ages, and a barely perceptible trace of wistfulness.
The speaker was Malcador.
The Sigillite's withered body was wrapped in plain robes. He stood quietly at a safe distance, several paces from the furnace that pulsed like the heart of a colossal beast and radiated terrifying heat.
His weary eyes did not look toward the rolling waves of incandescent gold-white heat within the furnace, hot enough to melt the cores of stars. Instead, he turned his head and calmly regarded the figure beside him, who was gazing into the flames—the Emperor.
This place lay beneath the Imperial Palace, in a secret region deep within the planet's crust. Here, the Emperor performed certain specialized forging, experimental, and repair work.
The air was so hot it seemed ready to ignite, laden with the mingled scents of metal, ozone, and some ancient energy.
The furnace itself was no ordinary forge, but an incomprehensibly complex fusion of psychic energy and technology. At its core, churning Warp energy, tightly constrained and directed, mingled with the most extreme heat of the material universe. Its light was blinding, its heat formed visible ripples of distortion, and it bathed the surrounding adamantium walls and platforms in crimson.
The Emperor stood before the furnace's open feed port. Under that terrible thermal radiation, the Master of Mankind's simple golden armor suffered no damage. Instead, it seemed to absorb and transform some of the escaping energy, a more concentrated halo of pale gold flowing around him.
His back was straight as a mountain as he silently watched the spectacle of destruction and creation within the furnace.
At Malcador's words, he did not turn.