"Who can answer me? How did these damned lackeys of the False Emperor break into the depths of the Blackstone Fortress?"
"Our warning systems are a ridiculous decoration. It is as if anyone can come and go as they please."
"Is this enormous Blackstone Fortress some kind of public venue?"
Inside the core control chamber, Maloghurst the Twisted leaned his hunched body against a Chaos banner. This loyal servant of the Warmaster was so frail and gaunt that one could not help wondering whether he might collapse dead on the spot.
Yet no one dared meet his eyes, nor did anyone dare answer the Twisted One's questions. Even the Dark Mechanicum priests, whose emotions were exceptionally faint, were no exception.
These oil-stinking adepts had remade themselves with cold programs and logic. They should have purged such inefficient emotional fluctuations as fear, leaving only an endless thirst for forbidden knowledge in their hearts.
Yet even these dark oil-stinkers sensed boundless malice within that aged, hunched body, and an emotion called fear arose within the engines of their cold, rational minds.
Maloghurst truly treated everyone equally. He had sacrificed every mortal captured from across the galaxy to the Warp, then used those offerings to barter with the Lord of the Soul Forge for Warp-daemon entities he could command.
His brutality was not reserved solely for mortals. Even toward battle-brothers from his own Legion, Maloghurst possessed not the slightest mercy or hesitation.
He had none of the brotherhood shared among Astartes. Within his entire soul, there was only infinite loyalty to the Warmaster.
To follow Horus, he could do anything—including betraying the Corpse Emperor, betraying his battle-brothers, and allowing them to be corrupted and tainted by Chaos's dark powers until they became Possessed Marines, like walking corpses.
Yet the silence, with no one