Guilliman was in poor shape. His strength felt hollow, and he barely managed to gather the pieces of the Armour of Hope scattered during the fierce battle.
Some sections had been damaged by psyker power, leaving the servo system unable to transmit energy to them. The Primarch had to drag parts of his armor along through his own strength.
Most of the Wings of Despair had been gathered up, though the miniature power systems in many of its feathers had overloaded and exploded under the psyker power. Guilliman wanted to find a bag for the fragments. He did not want anyone to know how his battle had gone.
In the end, he chose a very Leman Russ solution.
The Primarch slipped into a battlefield where the fighting had ended. He dragged away the body of a Purestrain Genestealer whose head had been blasted apart, cut off what remained of its head, and gutted it, piling the organs with the other corpses. Then he dropped the collected weapon fragments into the "skin bag" made from its carcass.
Titus searched for the Primarch as he fought. He and the Inquisitor cut their way through the fleeing Genestealers and forced their way to the Adeptus Custodes Squad, but still found no trace of him.
Genestealer corpses littered their entire route. The whole Genestealer Cult had been surrounded so tightly that nothing could escape. Reinforcements from the Victrix Guard reached the sewage discharge area-the place where the Primarch, the Inquisitor, and Titus had landed.
The troops discovered their visibly weakened Primarch "elegantly" raising a stemmed goblet and drinking deeply.
A very long stem. One still attached to a thigh.
Guilliman was clutching a Purestrain Genestealer's leg and had already drunk an unknown quantity of purple Genestealer blood. Then he tore off a slice of