I feel like this could have been a perfect Horus Heresy story, but maybe because of that the faults were also more noticeable. The decision to focus on the Honour Guard of the Primarchs instead really worked in the stories favour, as did the somewhat minimal focus on the actual fight. And I loved Aaron Dembski-Bowden's descriptive work in scenes such as the fight scene and made them seem much more engaging compared to many of the action sequences in other Horus Heresy stories, but in other parts the descriptions really only distracted me from the main story, instead of being engaging and creating a feel of immersion it felt more like I was reading someone trying to be too fancy with his writing.

An intriguing teaser for a story yet to come, but it feels like it could have just been the epilogue or prologue of another story instead.

The prose is okay but the characters are caricatures at best and the plot itself is awfully simple. It surprised me that this was written by Gav Thorpe. One positive is that this is a short story so you don't have to endure the cartoonishly evil character for long.