Terran Crusade - Throneworld: After the Battle of Luna, matters moved swiftly. Fresh waves of craft descended to scour away the Traitor corpses that littered the region. Inquisitorial agents and teams of Mechanicus Magi Xenotechnologis swarmed the battlefield, the former seeing to matters of containment and secrecy while the latter fell upon the deactivated Webway gate like vultures. Guilliman ignored them all. He allowed the senior Apothecary amongst the Imperial Fists to tend to his most immediate hurts, and then insisted that he and his companions be allowed to press on. None was foolish enough to gainsay a living Primarch -- indeed, few save the Custodes could stop staring in wonderment long enough to communicate with him -- and so Guilliman's demands were soon met.Down from on high came an enormous lander of remarkable design. Glimmering gold in the harsh light of Sol, the craft resembled the two-headed Imperial Aquila writ large. Gouts of flame leapt from its wings, slowing its descent, and it landed on heavy, taloned struts just beyond the field of battle. More warriors of the Adeptus Custodes strode down the ship's boarding ramp, joining with their battle-scarred comrades and lining the route on board. Guilliman and his surviving warriors passed between them with their heads held high, Space Marines, Grey Knights, and the once-leaders of the Celestinian Crusade marching into the capacious hold of the Aquila craft.Only once the ramp had whined shut behind them, and oxygen flowed back into the chamber, did the Custodes remove their helms and bow low to Guilliman. As the craft shuddered and lifted off, the Shield-Captain who led them introduced himself as Ty Adronitus, and explained that Guilliman and his warriors would be borne to Terra with all haste. They were to put down at the Eternity Wall spaceport, and from there would travel as part of a triumphant parade to the Imperial Palace. The High Lords of Terra had anticipated the Primarch's desire to stand before the Golden Throne, explained Shield-Captain Adronitus. They would do everything they could to facilitate it, and to fete the living Primarch's return to the Throneworld.Guilliman approved the arrangements that had been made for him. Though they would have fought on stubbornly until their dying breaths if the situation had demanded it, Guilliman and his warriors were wearied by the constant hardships they had endured since setting out from Macragge. Thus, as the Aquila craft swept up from Luna's surface and away towards Terra, Guilliman and his comrades settled back in flight thrones and simply watched the external picters. Many reflected upon the astronomical losses the Terran Crusade had taken to get the Primarch here, but none could be altogether distracted from the breathtaking sights that slid past.As the ship rose up away from Luna, the orbital docks and shipyards of the Moon spread out in all their industrial grandeur. Hundreds of voidships, thousands of forges, weapons platforms, grav habs and docking spindles sprawled through the void above the Moon's chalky white surface, while swathes of the Moon itself were carpeted in macrohives and sprawling junk yards like the one the Terran Crusade had so recently fought amidst.Further out, the void teemed with spacecraft and defences of every sort. Dense minefields filled hundreds of Terran miles of space, every charge crafted to resemble a brushed steel skull. Vast battle stations and deep space weapons platforms hung menacingly, each one a gun-studded cathedrum the size of a city. Immense spacecraft of the Adeptus Ministorum plied the darkness, penitence arks and solar reliquaries dozens of Terran miles long; within those cold, dark halls, the faithful wailed prayers and self-flagellated for the Emperor's glory. System monitors prowled the heavens in vast numbers, swarming like stinging insects around their hive. All were eclipsed in size by the immense, mobile star fort that hung halfway between Terra and Luna, engulfed in repair cradles and servo-armatures. The Imperial Fists' mobile base of operations, the star fort Phalanx, undergoing much-needed repairs, had returned from the Cadia System to watch over the Throneworld like an eagle over its nest.Far distant, further out towards the Sol System's edge, could be seen the angry red glint of Mars and its attendant orbital platforms, the so-called Ring of Iron. Closer to Terra, Guilliman was disquieted to see the drifting wrecks of warships both Imperial and Traitor being picked over by heavy Adeptus Mechanicus dredgers and scavenger-factorums. The war, it seemed, had reached Humanity's star system of origin before them, and would surely only become worse in the solar days to come.As they began their final descent, Terra swelled in the picters. It was a bloated giant, its natural resources expended, oceans long boiled away and landmasses covered entirely in never-ending cityscapes. Lights beyond count burned all across the planet's surface, while macrostructures and super-statues pierced the Throneworld's pollution-choked atmosphere. Spaceport spires rose into the darkness amidst swarming masses of cherub-satellites, electro-sermon beacons, Servitor defence platforms and millions of Administratum transport ships.Their craft swung down through the organised bedlam, its route given the highest priority clearance, and descended into a haze of chem-smog and glaring, artifcial light. Towering structures of grey, gold and brass rose on every side, encrusted with grime-streaked gothic architecture and studded with cold electrical lights. Servo-skulls and Cyber Cherubs, gunships and bulk haulers, transporters and prison barges, patrol ships of the Adeptus Arbites and bell-skiffs of the Ministorum, all whirled around the Aquila craft in a storm. Downward it flew, until the towering, gargoyle-topped spires that rose on every side completely obscured the fading darkness of space.Finally, Guilliman's transport swung in to dock on a dedicated platform set into the flanks of the Eternity Wall spaceport. It put down upon a dais of age-worn marble, surrounded on all sides by verdigrised and heavily weaponised statues, from which hung burning braziers of incense. Robed figures were gathered on every side to witness and honour the Primarch's arrival. Servo-choirs sung out hymns to the Emperor while autoscribes scribbled with eagle-feather quills in iron tomes borne by chained slaves. Dignitaries of the Administratum and the Adeptus Terra flocked close, mingling with bombastic priests of the Ministorum and Terran nobles garbed in outrageous finery. All bowed to Guilliman as he emerged from the transport, forming the sign of the Aquila with their hands and vying to cry out their devotion the loudest.The Primarch did his best to smile, and to acknowledge the clamouring masses with dignity and respect. His mind was a whirl -- the last time Guilliman had seen Terra was many thousands of standard years before, and where once there had been industrious, high-technology glory, now all was buried in grotesque layers of gothic over-construction, industrial sprawl and macabre religious ornamentation.The Primarch's sense of dislocation and sorrow only increased as he and his followers were led through the masses, and descended in mag-lifts to what passed for ground level. They passed through a cavernous space of gloomy Administratum offices, where queues of petitioners stretched away into the hazy middle distance. Men and women, young and old, called out their devotion and wept for joy to see the Primarch pass, yet even his presence could not draw them from their places in queues that their ancestors had first joined, and that their progeny one day aspired to reach the front of.Guilliman and his warriors, still accompanied by their Custodes guards, emerged from that impossibly vast structure to find themselves in a plaza packed out with droning, shuffling, downtrodden crowds. On every side rose mile-high stained glass windows, each depicting a different Primarch. Guilliman saw Sanguinius, wings spread atop a mountain of mutant corpses. He saw Jaghatai Khan, riding upon a skull-faced comet that sped between the stars. There was brave Vulkan, grasping an impossibly huge hammer as he used a world for his anvil. And there, Guilliman stared up at a distorted image of himself, haloed in light with his Codex Astartes in one hand and the severed head of a horned daemon in the other. He was depicted as a giant amongst worshipping crowds of angelic figures, and for a moment Fulgrim's words to him at the parade on Macragge echoed in Guilliman's mind. All of Humanity would worship him as a living god. Guilliman must never come to believe it himself.Mounting up in ornate, super-heavy transporters, Guilliman and his companions were borne through endless streets and transit-ways, boulevards and processionals. They passed tribes of itinerant petitioners and clans of indigenous priests, faceless masses of Administratum drones and ragged shanties in which the poor and the maimed crawled like maggots in a wound. Billions watched the procession's progress as they passed through the dark heart of the Emperor's realm. The mountainous structures of the Imperial Palace loomed ever larger upon the horizon, a vast structure from which could be seen the cloud-piercing light of the Astronomican itself. For two solar days, Guilliman and his followers travelled through endless crowds and places of grandeur and grim horror.They passed beneath an arch-city hung with pain-frames, and beneath the gaze of a dozen statues of Imperial Saints, each as large as an Imperator-class Titan.They crossed a vast bridge that spanned for fifty Terran miles over a smog-laden trench, whose walls were formed from manufactoria and smelteries beyond count.They travelled beneath the titanic guns of orbital defence silos that dwarfed any weapon even Guilliman had ever seen.At last they passed into the palace proper, by way of a dizzyingly tall gate graven with warring angels and daemons. There they dismounted their lumbering transports, and Guilliman was glad to proceed on foot through the precincts of the Inner Palace. More gates and splendour flowed past, so much that it all blurred into an impossible assault upon the senses. At last, feeling more exhausted by his homecoming than he ever had by any battle, Guilliman came before the final gate. Beyond that expansive arch lay the Emperor's throne room, and there, the Golden Throne of the Master of Mankind.