"Fire-place-theory..."
Guilliman murmured the name.
Behind those three simple words, he could smell that familiar, nauseating stench of corruption from the Warp. That ruthless exploitation and incitement of human emotion, that fanaticism which treated sacrifice and destruction themselves as glory and the ultimate goal...
How closely it resembled the doctrines of those Chaos Cults.
And yet...
It was founded on the most absolute, purest loyalty to the Emperor.
It was a contradictory, twisted hybrid, yet... terrifyingly powerful.
"...Turning despair into fuel."
"...Channeling hatred into a weapon."
"...Forging the collective into a god."
"...An extremely dangerous yet extremely effective union of contradictions."
Guilliman's gaze settled on the postscript the Krieg Commissar had added at the end of the report.
For the first time, he agreed with those words.
But he needed more of this "magma."
The unprecedented Indomitus Crusade he was waging to pull the Imperium back from the brink of destruction needed more madmen like this, men who defied convention and could work miracles.
At the same time, however, he had to ensure that this "magma" would not eventually burn through the Imperium's crust, triggering an internal collapse of faith more terrible than any Chaos invasion.
He needed... to meet this "madman" in person.
He needed to judge for himself whether the flames in this "fireplace" were embers that could be controlled.
Or a wildfire already raging out of control, capable of burning the entire galaxy to ashes.
Guilliman raised his head, and his godlike voice, devoid of all emotion, echoed through the empty hall.
"Cawl."
At his summons, a figure slowly emerged from the shadows of the hall.
He was a strange creation, half flesh and half machine, standing over three meters tall. Countless mechanical tendrils writhed behind him like a nest of snakes, each tipped with a different precision instrument or tool.
He was the Imperium's greatest-and most unorthodox-Archmagos, Belisarius Cawl.
"...Lord Primarch." Cawl's voice was pieced together from countless different synthesized voices, laden with a mechanical timbre. "Did you summon me regarding that interesting report on the 'fireworks display'? I am very interested in the technique of producing an Exterminatus-level explosion using only rudimentary physics. If I could obtain a section of that little Commissar's brain..."
"Not for that, Cawl." Guilliman cut off his irreverent outpouring of technological fervor.
"I need you to help me get him out of the Inquisition's hands."
The countless optical lenses that formed Cawl's "eyes" flickered in unison.
"Go. Tell those Inquisitors that the Imperial Regent wishes to meet this man, Alexander von Lawrence, in person."
"Right this instant."
Having received the data, Cawl's honeycomb-like mechanical compound eyes glimmered with delight.
"...As you command, my Lord Regent."
His strange figure merged into the shadows once more and vanished.
A deathly silence settled over the great hall again.
Guilliman slowly rose from his throne. He walked to the edge of the hall and gazed through an enormous viewport fashioned from a single polished diamond, looking down upon humanity's last capital, bathed in golden radiance yet steeped in endless decay and stagnation.
A flicker of weariness crossed his eyes.
"...I hope..." he murmured to himself.
"...You won't disappoint me, Alexander von Lawrence."
When the Inquisition's black cruiser, the Word of Truth, finally emerged from a long and agonizing voyage through the Warp into Holy Terra's heavily guarded orbit, Inquisitor Valerius had not yet had time to breathe a sigh of relief at having brought this "dangerous suspected heretic" back to the Inquisition's headquarters.
A magnificent Ark Mechanicus Temple, more than ten times the size of his cruiser and emblazoned with the striking red-and-black cog insignia of the Adeptus Mechanicus, appeared before him like a ghost, blocking every path forward.
Immediately afterward, a communication request carrying the highest level of encryption-one he had no power to refuse-connected directly to the communicator implanted in his modified skull.
The voice that came through belonged to the last person he wanted to hear: the Archmagos, filled with a mad thirst for knowledge and utterly devoid of reverence for anything sacred.
"...Inquisitor Valerius, I trust you've been well. I hear you've caught a very interesting little fellow who knows how to set off some 'fireworks'?"
Valerius felt his temples throbbing.
When Alexander set foot on solid ground again, the sight before him left him utterly awestruck.
He stood on the landing pad of an immense spaceport that seemed to pierce the clouds. Above him stretched Terra's sky, obscured by countless orbital defense platforms and space stations, where the stars could never be seen. Around him, magnificent complexes bristling with Gothic spires and colossal statues stretched endlessly like mountain ranges.
This was Holy Terra.
The heart of the Imperium of Man.
And he, a lowly office drone from the twenty-first century, a soul who had lived through three cycles in the world of Warhammer 40K, had finally reached this legendary place he had only ever seen in lore books and games.
Two towering figures in azure Terminator power armor stood on either side of him. They were veterans of the First Company, the finest warriors of the Ultramarines Chapter.
They had not come to escort him as a prisoner.
They had come... to welcome him.
Under their guidance, Alexander passed through countless fortified defensive lines that would have deterred any rebel army, finally arriving before an enormous hall whose magnificence he could not describe in any language.
The hall's doors stood hundreds of meters high, carved with every stirring heroic epic since the founding of the Imperium of Man.
With a deep rumble like the sigh of a god, the enormous doors slowly opened.
Alexan...der slowly raised his head.
He saw him.
Below the throne, a towering, godlike figure was slowly walking toward him.
Roboute Guilliman.
When this living legend, this living demigod, came to stand before him and looked down at him with eyes as deep as the stars.
Alexander felt as though he had become a tiny ant, trembling at a giant's feet.
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