Khârn led the World Eaters down from the Three Sacred Litany. Following the spaceport superintendent, they boarded an airship.
Nuceria's strange state made him abandon the idea of a Dreadclaw orbital drop.
When his feet felt the soil of Nuceria, Khârn's heart gradually calmed.
His enhanced lungs drew in the familiar air, and his mind returned to the first time he had seen Angron.
Back then, Angron had been preparing to die alongside his brothers and sisters when the arriving Emperor had used a teleportation beam to bring him aboard the Emperor's Dream, before sending him to the Conqueror, flagship of the War Hounds Legion.
Angron had killed one Legion officer after another who came to meet their father, until Khârn finally soothed his rage.
Khârn could feel the anger and grief of his gene-father. The one aboard the Conqueror had merely been a corpse; Angron's soul had remained on Nuceria, in that dawn which would never come.
As the son who understood Angron best, Khârn could sense his father's shattered nature. Rage and bloodlust were merely his outward shell; within, he was utterly hollow and broken.
Batch after batch of World Eaters descended from the airships. As their numbers grew, Khârn could hear the mortal superintendent's heartbeat becoming increasingly frantic.
That heartbeat was so clear, so prominent, that Khârn could even picture the beauty of the blood spraying forth when it was torn open.
A rare, narrow smile appeared on his face. Under the stimulation of the Butcher's Nails, his spasming facial muscles gave it a twisted, grotesque quality.
"Why are you so nervous?"
"Are you afraid of the Ultramarines?"
The superintendent's body abruptly tensed. Khârn's blade-like gaze swept over him, and the skin beneath his clothes immediately prickled with gooseflesh. Yet he forced himself to appear at ease,