The Titan swung its weapons towards Lucius. The engine was wasting its strength coming for a single warrior, but it had seen him atop its fallen twin and had marked him for death.
Lucius knew he could not fight such a powerful enemy, and turned to run, but before he had taken a single step, the angelic outline of a warrior on wings of gold dropped from the smoke. He bore a flint-knapped blade in one hand and a long-barrelled pistol worked in silver and onyx in the other. His stark white hair flew around his glorious features as the heat bleeding from the Titan?s reactor washed over him.
?One for me, I think, Lucius,? said Fulgrim, levelling his pistol at the battle engine.
Fulgrim shot with the calm poise of a duellist on a misty heath. A shining spear of incandescent light imbued with the heat of a newborn star spat from the gun and struck dead centre on the Titan?s shields. A shrieking flare of overload banged like a host of shattering mirrors and a powerful sphere of energy pulsed out like a solar flare.
Lucius was hurled from his feet and hit hard against one of the towering crystal spires at the edge of the facility. Pain sawed up and down his back, and he grinned as he tasted blood.
Even through a haze of smoke and pain he saw what happened next with complete clarity.
Fulgrim stood alone before the war machine, his pistol cast aside and his sword held loosely at his side. The Titan?s auto-loaders ratcheted canisters of shells around from its rear hoppers, and the breeches snapped shut on a fresh load. Fulgrim?s free hand reached up to the battle engine, as though demanding it halt its march.
Lucius laughed at the absurdity of the gesture.
But Fulgrim intended more than simple defiance.
A shimmering nimbus of misty light gathered around the Phoenician, its substance shot with threads of barely visible lightning. Fulgrim?s splayed fingers closed into a fist and he twisted his grip as though tearing at unseen ropes.
The battle engine halted in its rampage, the cockpit snapping up and its weapon arms jerking spasmodically as though the machine was suffering a hideous seizure. Fulgrim?s outstretched hand continued pulling and twisting at the air, and the Titan?s war horn brayed with plaintive horror. The cockpit panes shattered, spraying glass tears to the ground as it slumped back onto its hissing legs.
Lucius watched with horrified fascination as bulging wads of oozing flesh pushed their way out of the cockpit, swelling and pulsating with grotesque life. The gelatinous mass of expanding meat obscured the mastiff head, drooling from the armoured carapace in raw pink tendrils of mutant flesh.
Lucius rose to his feet, awed and wondrously horrified at the death of the battle engine. Amniotic fluid fell in a drizzle from the Titan?s ruptured body, its every orifice and exhaust port choked with monstrous growths of rampant flesh culled from its mortal crew. The stench was appalling, and Lucius breathed deeply, savouring the reek of burned meat that was already beginning to decay.
He approached Fulgrim as the primarch gathered up his fallen pistol.
?What did you do?? asked Lucius.
Fulgrim turned his dead black eyes upon him and said, ?A little something I learned from the forces that empower me. A trifle, nothing more.?[/spoiler]
