Juilus Kaesoron had been reading Ignace Karkasky's latest poems when they appeared.

It was a tangible itch at first, one the First Captain of the Emperor's Children, lord of the self-proclaimed "Lions of Chemos" First Company, didn't fully understand, especially as he felt it so often around the ship. Then a disembodied pink claw swung out at air from the room's center. Kaesoron dodged, then grabbed his powersword and disintegrated it.

Only when a red, bear-like beast began to appear in the chamber did Kaesoron truly recognize the threat.

"Gellar field breach!" he screamed over the vox.

Kaesoron always had his helmet on now. Lord Commander Fabius had said that his implants to the First Captain's trachea made a helmet's filtration systems obsolete; thus, Kaesoron had upgraded his helmet. His preference was probably sliding into paranoia, a compulsion to isolate himself from the outside world; after Laeran, however, he would prefer that to ever having to face an airborne poison again.

Kaesoron swung at the bloody bear, cutting off half of its head. Even now, however, he was hearing whispers in the air, whispers of a malignant power still waiting to claim him.

"You think you can escape us so easily, Space Marine?"

It was a soft voice, one that tried to pull Kaesoron into its embrace, to once more -

"No!"

The First Captain of the Emperor's Children ran from his room without looking back.

It had begun on Laeran. After fighting in the xenos' temple complex, Kaesoron had discovered his favorite poems and other works of art no longer induced any joy or awe in him, replaced by a deep thirst. He had gone to the Phoenician with the question of what was happening, of what Laeran had done, to him and to the Legion; Fulgrim, for his part, had contacted the Emperor.

The days without a response had been agony. Kaesoron could remember it, days of utter ennui, days without Karkasky or Xantelle or Pserio, days when he doubted he would ever feel pleasure again. But the reply had come, and Fulgrim had gathered his Lord Commanders, with then-Apothecary Fabius and the first three Captains, to explain the situation.

The thing on Laeran, he'd explained, had been a Warp toxin. It was cleansable, and so Apothecary Fabius cleansed it from Kaesoron; but it was not malevolent, merely a token of the god Slaanesh. It was simultaneously with that response that the Third Legion had been summoned to Terra, and only weeks later that the Great Crusade had changed forever.

Kaesoron believed in the Emperor - he truly did, though his floodlight paled next to the suns of certain Word Bearers' fervor. But he could not bring himself to trust this other deity. Thus, when a week ago Fulgrim began to crack down on some of Laeran's more extreme effects and the Legion's resultant disorganization, Kaesoron had backed him even more than Vairosean.

Demeter was… well, Kaesoron wasn't sure if there was anything Fulgrim could do to get Demeter back.

So as voices without bodies whispered to the First Captain, Kaesoron automatically shut them out. They were the speech of daemons, the speech of Slaanesh. They were lies.

"Get to the engineering deck," he voxed as he ran to the Company armoury. "Gellar breach plan 2-Alpha."

Few ships survived a Gellar field breach; fortunately, Kaesoron knew a quick path to the generators. He'd planned it out specifically for this sort of emergency. Slaanesh dwelled in the Warp, and a Gellar field breach was precisely the moment to fear the god most.

Within the armoury, Kaesoron clipped his powersword and took up a plasma cannon, which the inconveniently limited operational reports suggested was effective against Warp-spawn.

As he sprinted away from the armoury, the cannon's heavy weight trying to pull him down, Warp-spawn - "daemons" - swarmed in front and behind. The First Captain shot again and again. He was alone - the rest of his Company was, it seemed, delayed somehow.

Then he saw the door to Sergeant Perio Wascero's room. He knocked it open, almost crushing it with gauntleted hands. Inside, the Sergeant stood, approaching a singing female daemon. She turned to beckon Kaesoron, her beautiful face -

Kaesoron shook his head, dispelling the illusion, and pulled the trigger on his plasma cannon.

Her face became a flaming mess, and her image faded.

"Wascero!" Keasoron called.

The Sergeant blinked the glamours away and turned to his Captain. "Brother-Captain, I'm-"

"We need to get to the generators. Go!"

They ran together now. As they did, three more Marines joined them from a side passageway- Sergeant (formerly Epistolary) Saul Jasnian, Battle-Brother Venitro Eseter of Squad Jasnian, and Battle-Brother Quartus Nitran of Squad Renaekarn. They battered their way towards the generators with swords and bolters; Kaesoron's cannon was ripped apart by a large, rotting daemon which the Astartes squeezed by without killing by the passageway's side. It crushed Jasnian as the Emperor's Children made their escape.

"Brother-Sergeant!" Eseter turned a begging eye towards his Captain. Kaesoron felt for the young Marine's loss, but there was no reasonable way to save Jasnian.

"Eseter, you are promoted to Sergeant in his replacement. Just keep running. Children of the Emperor!"

"Death to his foes!" the Astartes cried in response, though their breath was already all but spent on the endless combat.

Their eight hearts pumping in unison, the Emperor's Children crushed their way to the Gellar field generators through overwhelming opposition in seven point five minutes, though it felt like a lifetime to all involved. They fought as one, even though they had never fought together before, because they were fighting by the precepts of the Emperor's Children.

They fought as one, because each of them fought with equal desperation.

The generators were largely undamaged when Kaesoron arrived, though a lilac-hued blob of Warp-stuff was beginning to rip one apart as the Space Marines entered. A bolter round from the now-Sergeant Eseter took it down, and Kaesoron rushed to fix it. It was quick, as the damage was mostly superficial; the other generators were completely uninjured, merely turned off for some incomprehensible reason.

The other Astartes surrounded the generators with a storm of fire and steel. Bolter shells exploded and chainswords flashed as, bit by bit, invading daemons were torn apart. But that could only buy time; from the corner of his eye, Kaesoron saw Nitran get torn apart by a putrescent Warp-creature similar to the previous one - perhaps it was, in fact, the same daemon.

Daemon. It was odd how quickly Kaesoron had managed to settle into using the name; but this was no time for introspection.

"We're not here to hurt you," a creature said, even as the repairs were completed.

Julius Kaesoron turned on the Gellar field.

The effect was immediate. Slime and body fluids began to disappear. The daemons disintegrated, one by one. A large, winged one tried to rush Kaesoron as the field's effect took place, but it was too slow.

Within twenty seconds, the Pride of the Emperor was clear of daemons. It was then that Tenth Captain Saul Tarvitz shambled in, flanked by one of his Sergeants - Marius Xaerus, according to the armor.

"Thank you, Julius," he said. "The Warp-spawn almost killed me." His armor was crumpled, apparently from impact with a wall.

"You're welcome. Do you know what happened?"

"I do," the Phoenician said.

Fulgrim came in flanked by Captains Lucius and Demeter. He had no armor on, only a robe; this did not lessen his intimidating visage. The Captains looked exhausted, but Fulgrim was as tranquil as he ever was.

"My Primarch." Kaesoron knelt, simultaneously with Tarvitz and the Sergeants.

"Rise," Fulgrim said. "Now. Captain Lucius, of the Thirteenth, why did you execute Serena d'Angelus in such a way as to let these Warp creatures in?"

"I… I was informed of a ritual. I believe I misunderstood its purpose."

"And," Fulgrim said, his tranquility fading, "how many of my children died because of your misunderstanding?"

"I - " Lucius faltered under the unrelenting gaze of the Primarch. Kaesoron had an uncomfortable moment of déjà vu; Fulgrim's incandescent anger was the equal of that he had felt at Lord Commander Verona.

"The daemons weren't aggressive," Lucius finally mumbled.

"Aye," Fulgrim said, "they didn't attack us before we attacked them. I have few enough qualified senior officers as is, so I will not execute you - Battle-Brother Lucius."

Kaesoron watched the spectacle with increasing amazement. Demeter's feelings appeared to be similar. Tarvitz glanced at Lucius with regret - Kaesoron knew of the Captains' friendship.

"Lord Father," Tarvitz asked, "is there any way - I know Lucius meant the best for the Legion on its new path - "

"The Legion," Fulgrim said with a deep power, "is on the same path it has always been on - the path to perfection. Lucius unforgivably deviated from this path, and he must be punished. He will be censured along with Captain Demeter and Lord Commander Eidolon, and then stripped of his captaincy and assigned to a squad. I do not tolerate failure!"

Lucius nodded and went to one knee.

"Dismissed," Fulgrim said. "The new Captain of the Thirteenth will be announced tomorrow, once Lord Commander Vespasian has reviewed the options. All but Captain Kaesoron, dismissed. Julius, come with me."

They walked through the engineering deck with Fulgrim. "You did well in the Gellar fields' restoration," the Primarch noted.

Kaesoron beamed with pride. Given how little preparation he could reasonably have had, he did consider it a rather successful mission.

"However," Fulgrim continued, "Lucius was right - the Warp beings were not aggressive. How many of your party died before they could reach the generators?"

"Two."

"Two of my children, and surely there were others attempting to restore the Gellar fields. If you had reasoned with them, as you should have, the Warp beings would not have killed you."

"They would simply have let us restore the Gellar fields?" Kaesoron asked with some skepticism.

"No. But you should not have risked your life and the lives of others to restore the fields a minute before I arrived there."

Inside, Kaesoron felt gravely offended, but he did his best not to let it show - after all, he reminded himself, this was Fulgrim. "That minute saved Tarvitz."

"That was circumstantial. Your companions' deaths, however, were not. Again, in the situation you acted correctly and splendidly for your knowledge; but the forces of the Warp are our enemy no longer. I will accept they make for unreliable allies. But this is the path the Emperor himself set us on."

"The Emperor and Lorgar."

"Yes - Lorgar played a role as well. But this is the Emperor's work we are doing. You do not doubt our assault on Ultramar, after all, and indeed no one in the Legion does. Why do you doubt this decision?"

"I believe in the Emperor," Kaesoron said. "I believe in the golden road he has put humanity on. I believe in the Imperium of Man, too, and the new Imperial truth. But I believe in perfection, in sanctity, in art, as well; and I cannot look at post-Laeran works without weeping of disgust. Where are we going, father?"

"Where the Emperor wills," Fulgrim said. "Is that not enough?"

And thinking of the daemonic assault, of Nitran's last cry, but also of Terra and the many-faced glory that was humanity's leader, Kaesoron knew - as he often knew things after a battle - that he only had one answer.

"Yes," Kaesoron said, looking down in the vague direction of his Primarch's feet. "Yes, it is."