by Nick Kyme
Walking across hot coals, lifting massive boiling cauldrons, enduring the searing pain of the Proving Rod or bearing red-hot iron bars were just some of the labours expected of the sons of Vulkan to show their faith and will. There were dormitories and relic halls, too, though again relatively few in number. The most prestigious of these was the Hall of the Firedrakes, a vast and vaulted gallery hung with the pelts of the great salamanders slain by the warriors as a rite of passage, and from which the hall took its name.
The Firedrakes, of which Tu'Shan was captain as well as regent, were barracked on Prometheus along with the Chapter Master himself. These venerable warriors were almost a breed apart; the transition they made to the vaunted ranks of the 1st Company changing them in myriad ways as they embraced the full evolution of their genetic encoding. Unlike their fellow battle-brothers, the Firedrakes were seldom seen on the surface of Nocturne where the other Salamanders would readily cohabit with the human populace, albeit often as part of a solitary lifestyle. Their rites were ancient and clandestine, conducted by the Chapter Master himself. Only those who had undergone the most heinous of trials and endured hardship beyond imagining could ever hope to aspire to become a Fire-drake.
Akin to that sacred and revered order, access to the Pantheon was also restricted. Dak'ir for one had never seen it, though he knew it was a small deliberation chamber located at the heart of Prometheus.
Only matters of dire import or of profound spiritual significance were ever discussed in the Pantheon. It had eighteen seats, representing their original Legion number - a fact that remained unchanged during the Second Founding, an act in which, due to their debilitated strength, the Salamanders had been unable to participate.
The head seat was reserved for the Chapter Master, an honour that had been Tu'Shan's these last fifty years or so. Thirteen were for the other masters: six to the captains of the remaining companies; one each for the Apothecarion, Librarius, Chaplaincy and Fleet; with a further three devoted to the Armoury and the Masters of the Forge, an unusual triumvirate but necessary given the Salamanders' predilection for weaponscraft.
Three of the seats were for honoured guests sequestered by the Chapter Master himself and by dint of the rest of the council's assent. Praetor, the Firedrake's most senior sergeant, often assumed one of these seats. Dak'ir knew that Pyriel now occupied another. He wondered if the Librarian would be unflinching before the Chapter's hierarchy, particular under Master Vel'cona's gaze. The last position had remained empty for many years, since before Tu'Shan had even assumed the mantle of Regent of Prometheus. Its incumbent was a figure of much veneration.
Here the Masters of the Salamanders would sit and consult the Tome of Fire. This artefact was written by the hand of the primarch himself in ages past. Though Dak'ir had never seen it, let alone perused its pages, he knew that it was full of riddles and prophecies. Rumours purported that the words themselves were inked partly in Vulkan's blood and shimmered like captured fire if brought up to the light. It was not merely one volume, as the name suggested, but rather dozens arrayed in the stacks around the circular walls of the Pantheon. Deciphering the script of the Tome of Fire was not easy. There were secrets within, left by the primarch for his sons to unlock. It foretold of great events and upheavals for those with the wit to perceive them. But perhaps most pointedly, it contained the history, form and location of the nine artefacts Vulkan had hidden throughout the galaxy for the Salamanders to unearth. Five of these holiest of relics had been discovered over the centuries through the travails of the Forgefathers; the locations of the remaining four were embedded cryptically within the tome's arcane pages.
So Chapter Master Tu'Shan and those masters still on Prometheus had convened and would pore over the Tome of Fire in the hope of unearthing some inkling that pertained to the discovery of the chest. The artefact's origin stamp had already ignited something of a fire within the Chapter. Some proposed that it meant the return of Vulkan after so many millennia in unknown isolation; others refuted this, claiming that the primarch was not lost on Isstvan at all, but had returned already at the breaking of the Legions and whatever the chest contained it could not relate to that; more still remained silent and merely watched and waited, unwilling to hope, not daring to suggest what apocalypse might be about to befall the Salamanders if their progenitor had fated a reunion. Patience, wisdom and insight were the only true keys to unlocking the Tome of Fire, and with it the chest's mystery. Like tempering iron or folding steel at the foot of the forge's anvil, any attempt to try and unravel its enigmas had to be approached slowly and methodically. It was, after all, the Salamanders' way.
Dak'ir exercised these credos in the swelter of one of the workshops deep in the undercroft of Hesiod's Chapter Bastion.
The Vulkan's Wrath had returned to Nocturne several days earlier. Of the seven Mechanicus adepts in the cryo-caskets salvaged from the Archimedes Rex, none had survived the journey. Their bodies had been incinerated within the pyreum. It rubbed salt into already bitter wounds as more questions were raised about the viability of the mission into the Hadron Belt and Captain N'keln's decision to undertake it. Such objections were spoken in whispers only, but Dak'ir knew of them all the same. He saw it in the looks of discontent, the agitated postures of sergeants and heard it in the rumours of clandestine meetings to which he was not invited. Ever since 3rd Company had made landfall, Tsu'gan had been waging a campaign of no confidence against N'keln. Or at least, that was how it appeared to Dak'ir.
Promethean lore preached self-sacrifice and loyalty above all else - it seemed that the loyalty felt by some of the sergeants towards their captain was being stretched to its limit.
The only shred of exculpation for N'keln was the chest discovered in the storage room. 3rd Company's strike cruiser had barely landed on Prometheus when Librarian Pyriel stalked down the embarkation ramp, eschewing all docking protocols as he went in search of his Master Vel'cona who could press for an audience with the Chapter Master. The council in the Pantheon had been arraigned in short order. Their verdict and the announcement of it would not be so forthcoming. The rest of the Salamanders aboard the Vulkan's Wrath had disbanded, waiting to be recalled by their liege-lords at the appropriate time.
Dak'ir, like many others, had returned to the surface of Nocturne.
Classified a death world by Imperial planetary taxonomers, Nocturne was a volatile place. Fraught with crags and towering basalt mountains, its harsh environment made life hard for its tribal inhabitants. Burning winds scorched its naked plains, turning them into barren deserts. Rough oceans churned, spitting geysers of scalding steam when they met spilled lava.
Nocturne's settlements were few and transient. Only the seven Sanctuary Cities were strong enough to serve as permanent havens to a dispersed populace eking out an existence amongst rock and ash.
However arduous, it was nothing compared to the Time of Trial. Being one half of a binary planetary system, Nocturne shared an erratic orbit with its oversized moon of Prometheus and great strife befell the planet every fifteen Terran years whenever these two celestial bodies came into proximity. Molten lava would spew from the earth, and entire cities would be swallowed by deep pits of magma; tidal waves, like foaming giants, would smite fishing boats and crush drilling rigs; clouds of ash, belched from the necks of angry mountains, would eclipse the pale sun. Massive earthquakes shook the very bedrock of the world below whilst above, the skies would crack and fire would rain. Yet, in the aftermath rare metals and gems could be reaped from the ash. And it was this which promoted Nocturne's culture of forgesmithing.
After a few short hours since their arrival in-system, Dak'ir alighted from the Fire-wyvern on the Cindara Plateau. Several of his brothers went immediately to their training regimen or summoned brander-priests for excoriation in the solitoriums; others made for their respective townships or settlements. Dak'ir chose the workshops and spent his time at the forge. The events aboard the Archimedes Rex, in particular his discovery of Vulkan's c
hest, had disturbed him greatly. Only in solitude and through the purging heat of the forge would he find equilibrium again.
The crafting hammer pounded a steady rhythm that matched the beat of Dak'ir's heart. The Salamander was in total synchronicity with his labours. He wore leather smithing breeches and was naked from the waist up, his branded torso marred by ash and soot. Sweat dappled his ebon body, rivulets following the grooves of his muscles. It came from exertion, not from the heat.
The forges of the undercroft were excavated down to Nocturne's very core and ponds of lava gathered in the cavernous depths providing liquid fire to fuel the foundries and scalding steam to impel bellows. There was a strange anachronism about the sweltering forges, the way they blended the ancient traditions of the first Nocturnean blacksmiths and the technologies of the Imperium.
Adamantium blast doors, strengthened by reinforced ceramite, marked the entrance to the chamber where he toiled. Bulkhead columns, the foundations of the Chapter Bastion, plunged down from a stalactite ceiling and bored deep into the rocky earth below. Mechanised tools - rotary blades, bench-mounted plasma-cutters, belt grinders, radial drill presses - stood side by side with stout anvils and iron-bellied furnaces. Intricate servo-arrays and ballistic components were racked with swages, fullers and other smithing hammers.
The air was filled with heady smoke, turned a deep, warm orange from the lambent glow of the lava pools. Dak'ir drank in the fuliginous atmosphere as if it were a panacea, soaking his every pore with it. And like the metal on the anvil before him, the impurity in his troubled soul was gradually beaten out with each successive hammer blow.
Dak'ir was gasping by the end, a reaction to the purging of emotional trauma rather than physical exertion. As the last ring of the anvil echoed into obscurity, he set down the forging hammer and took up a pair of long-handled tongs instead. He had tempered neither blade nor armour but something different entirely, its glow slowly fading. Gouts of steam rushed off the artefact when it breached the water's surface in the deep vat alongside the anvil. When Dak'ir withdrew it, pinched between the iron fingers of the tongs, it shimmered like molten silver. Captured light from the lava flows blazed over its contours like a fiery sea.
It was a mask - the simulacrum of a human face; his face, or at least half of it. Dak'ir took the newly forged item in his hands. The metal had cooled but it still seared his fingers. He barely felt it as he trod silently to a plane of hammered silver, around a metre wide and three metres high, resting against the wall of the forge. Dak'ir's image was reflected in it. Burning red eyes set into an ebon countenance stared back at him. Only the face was actually half black; the other half was bleached near-white. Its normally black pigmentation, the melanin defect that marked all Salamanders, had been burned away. Apothecary Fugis had told him the scar would not heal, that Dak'ir's defacement was damage caused at the cellular level.
Dak'ir touched the burnt skin and the memory of the melta-flare on Stratos rekindled in his mind's eye. Kadai's death pulled at his gut. As he raised the mask to his face, flashes of remembrance like slivers of ice on calm water floated to the surface of his mind: rock harvesting in the depths of Ignea, hunting sauroch over the Scorian Plain, dredging on the Acerbian Sea - all deadly pursuits, but the formative memories of Dak'ir's pre-adolescence. The images faded like smoke before a cool wind, leaving a pang of regret. Some part of Dak'ir felt sorrow the loss of his old life, the death of his former existence before he was battle-brother, when he was just Hazon and his father's son.
As the years passed, filled with war and glory in the Emperor's name, with cities burned and enemies slain, the vestiges held by Dak'ir of those old memories eroded replaced by battles, a baptism in blood.
The pull towards his old life - one, in truth, that had scarcely begun - confused him. Was it disloyal, even heretical to have such thoughts? Dak'ir couldn't help wonder why the memories plagued him.
'I am no longer human,' he admitted to his reflection.
'I am more. I am evolved. I am Astartes.'
The mask covered his ebon visage, leaving the burned side of his face, the flesh-pink tissue, exposed. For a moment he tried to imagine himself as human again. The attempt was a failure.
'But if I am not human, am I still capable of humanity?'
The bass retort of the blast doors opening intruded on Dak'ir's reverie. He hastily pulled the mask away and threw it into the open grate of a nearby furnace, immolating it in fire. The silver ran like tears down the half-face of the mask, which held its form only briefly before sagging against the intense heat and becoming little more than molten metal.
'A rejected blade, sergeant?' said Emek, from behind him.
Dak'ir shut the furnace grate and faced his battle-brother. 'No, it was just scrap.'
Emek seemed content to leave it at that. He was fully armoured, the green battle-plate turned a lurid violet in the reflected lustre of the lava ponds. He held his battle-helm in the crook of his arm and his eyes flashed suddenly with zeal and vigour.
'We've been summoned to Prometheus,' Emek said after a few moments. 'Our lords have consulted the Tome of Fire and have divined an answer regarding Vulkan's chest. Your armour is waiting for you in the next chamber, sir.'
Dak'ir wiped his sooty body down with a length of already blackened cloth and began putting away the tools he had been using.
'Where are we to meet?' he asked.
'The Cindara Plateau. Brother Ba'ken will join us there.'
Emek lingered in silence as Dak'ir finished securing his forging equipment.
'There is something else on your mind, brother?' asked the sergeant.
'Yes, but I do not wish to appear insubordinate.'
Dak'ir's tone suggested his impatience. 'Speak, brother.'
Emek waited while he marshalled his thoughts, as if choosing his next words with great care. 'Before we departed for the Hadron Belt, back in the Vault of Remembrance, I overheard Brother-Sergeant Tsu'gan say something about your complicity in Captain Kadai's death.' Emek paused to gauge the reaction of Dak'ir's, who gave none, before continuing. 'Most of us were not present when Kadai was slain. There are… unanswered questions.'
Dak'ir thought about admonishing his battle-brother - to question your superior officer, however delicately couched, was grounds for punishment. But he had asked for honesty from Emek, and that was what he had given. He could hardly take him to task over that.
'The truth is, brother, that we were all culpable when it came to the tragedy of Kadai's death. I, Tsu'gan, all who set foot in Aura Hieron had our parts to play, even the captain himself. There is no mystery, no dark secret. We were outmanoeuvred by a cunning and deadly foe.'
'The Dragon Warriors,' Emek asserted in the following silence.
'Yes,' Dak'ir replied. 'The renegades knew we were coming. They were ready for us, and laid their trap for us to fall into. Theirs is an old creed, Emek - an eye for an eye; a captain for a captain.'
'To plan such a snare… it borders on obsession.'
'Obsessive, paranoid, vindictive - Nihilan is all of these things and worse.'
'Did you know him?'
'No. I met him only at Moribar during my first mission as a scout in 7th Company. Nor did I know his captain, Ushorak, though he schooled his protege well in the arts of deception and malice.'
'And it was he who died on the sepulchre world.'
'In the crematoria forge at Moribar's heart, yes. Kadai thought Nihilan was dead also, but unless a shade confronted us on Stratos he survived well enough, driven on by hate and the prospect of revenge.'
'And he was once…'
'One of us, yes,' Dak'ir finished for him. 'Even the sons of Vulkan are not without stain. The capacity for betrayal exists in us all, Emek. It is why we must constantly test ourselves and our faith, so that we are girded against temptation and selfish ideals.'
'And Ushorak?'
Dak'ir's face darkened and he lowered his gaze as if in remembrance, though in truth he only kne
w of the deeds that had led to Ushorak's bloody defection; the act itself was many years old, he had not witnessed it first hand. 'No. He was of another Chapter, though the shame of it is no less galling.'
'Nihilan did all of this just to avenge his lord… He must be very embittered. Is there no way to rehabilitate him and the renegades in his charge? It's not unheard of for forgiveness to be given and penance granted. What about the Executioners?'
Dak'ir shook his head, sadly. 'This is not Badab, Emek. Nihilan and his followers have entered the Eye of Terror, there is no way back from that. His last chance, Ushorak's last chance, was on Moribar. They didn't take it, and now they are our enemies, no different to the nameless horrors of the warp. But I do not think there was only vengeance on Nihilan's mind when he ambushed us on Stratos. There was something more to his plan.'
'What makes you say that?'
Dak'ir looked his brother in the eye.
'It's just a feeling.'
II
Crossroads
Tsu'gan staggered as a spike of pain seared up his side, forcing him to reach out with a shaking hand. The black marble of the wall felt cool to the touch as he steadied himself. After a few moments he was able to continue. Through a haze of barely checked agony, Tsu'gan failed to notice the steaming handprint he left in his wake as he toured the Hall of Relics.
Like many of the sergeants, he had stayed on Prometheus to await news from the Pantheon. Speculation was rife as to what the chest discovered on the Archimedes Rex might mean. There was a thread of belief that, given the inauspicious times, it might pertain to the location where the primarch had sought solitude following the cessation of the Heresy. Tsu'gan doubted that greatly. He was a pragmatist, certainly too level-headed to indulge in such remote theories. He believed in what he could see, what he could touch. Tsu'gan knew of only one way to resolve a crisis: meet it head on with determination and resolve. With that in mind, while he awaited the Pantheon's findings, he had convened a meeting of his own. Several sergeants had been present, colluded by Iagon, impelled by Tsu'gan's shining Promethean example and the respect afforded to him by his contemporaries. They were there at his request, after all, to address a ''serious concern'' within the company. The subject of the secret assembly, conducted in one of the fortress monastery's few, and barely used, dormitories, was N'keln. Tsu'gan recalled it now, the guilt of the union merging with that he associated with Kadai's death, as he walked down the black marble corridors of the gallery.
