Salamander

I Unto the Anvil

'Is Pyriel certain?' asked Ba'ken as they waited for the cryo-caskets to be secured aboard the Spear of Prometheus. The Thunderhawk had been waiting for them upon their return to the fighter bay. So too was the Fire-wyvern, together with its capable guardian, Brother Amadeus. The Dreadnought was now secured in his grav-scaffold as the Salamanders made ready to depart the Archimedes Rex. They could not linger in-system, especially given Dak'ir's discovery. A beacon had been set on the stricken forge-ship matched to Mechanicus frequencies and numerous astropathic hails sent out in the hope that a Martian carrier or Imperial reclamator crews would hear it. Other than that, there was little else that could be done. The ship might never be found or left to drift for centuries, colliding with other crippled vessels until the conglomeration of ruined metal became a hulk and was inhabited by such creatures who found succour in the cold and dark.

Several kilometres distant, the Vulkan's Wrath loitered having laid anchor, small bursts of its hull engines preventing it from drifting in the gulf of space. The materiel cache from the storage room next to the cryo-vault was already aboard and being catalogued by serfs. Though the cryo-caskets and their inert cargo were too precious to risk, the arms and armour were not and so were teleported to the strike cruiser's storage bay in short order.

'Yes, he is certain,' answered Dak'ir, his attention only half on the skeleton crew from the Spear of Prometheus. The servitors were part of Brother Argos's retinue and assisted in transporting the suspensor-lofted cryo-caskets up the embarkation ramp into the gunship's otherwise barren hold. The Master of the Forge kept a watchful eye over proceedings. In order to ensure the Chamber Sanctuarine, where the caskets would be housed, was as empty as possible he had shed his servo-harness and wore only a basic Techmarine's rig. He still looked formidable - Argos had lost the left side of his face whilst fighting alongside the 2nd Company on Ymgarl. He had only been a Techmarine then, a mere novice of the Cult Mechanicus and recently returned from a long internship on Mars where he had learned the liturgies of maintenance and engineering, and mastered communion with the machine-spirits.

Fighting side by side with the now Brother-Sergeant Lok of the 3rd Company Devastators, an encounter with a broodlord had robbed him of his face but not his life, Argos severing the creature in half with his plasma-cutter whilst Lok had applied the kill shot to its bulbous cranium with his bolter.

A steel plate concealed his injuries now, augmented by a bionic replacement for the eye that he'd lost. The image of a snarling firedrake was burned into it, tail coiled around the optical implant, as an emblem of honour. The numerous branding marks that swathed his skin in concentric vortices of scarification came much later - proud sigils of his many deeds.

Like many devoted to the Omnissiah, Argos had forked plugs punching from the flesh of his bald head, with a nest of wires and cables that wormed around the back of his neck and into his nose. His armour was old, an artificer suit but not in the same respect as that worn by another veteran of the Chapter. Festooned with mechanical interfaces, tools and power arrays, it was utterly unlike any power armour, relic or otherwise. It carried the cog symbol to show his allegiance to the Mechanicus, but this was married up with the icon of his Chapter displayed proudly on his right pauldron. A device on his gorget translated his hollow, metallic speech into binaric as he directed the servitors.

'The origin stamp was very clear,' stated Dak'ir as the first of the cryo-caskets was brought aboard the Spear of Prometheus. 'It came from Isstvan.'

Ba'ken exhaled deeply as if trying to mitigate a heavy burden.

'Now that is an old name, gratefully forgotten.'

Dak'ir said nothing. The fell legend of Isstvan need not be spoken aloud. All of the old XVIII Legion knew of it.

The Isstvan system was notorious in the historical annals of the Astartes. It held perhaps no greater resonance than that felt by the Salamanders Chapter. Though now the substance of myth and ancient remembrance, it was during the Great Betrayal when the Warmaster Horus lured Vulkan and his sons into a terrible trap and almost destroyed them. The Salamanders had been a Legion then, one of the Emperor's original progenitors. Turned upon by those who they thought were their brothers, the Salamanders, together with two other loyal Legions, were devastated on the planet of Isstvan V. In what was later recorded as the Dropsite Massacre, thousands were slain and the sons of Vulkan pushed almost to extinction.

What miracle transpired, allowing them to avoid that doom, was a mystery some ten thousand years old, as was the fate of their beloved primarch who, some believed, never returned from the battle. Verses were still sung of Vulkan's heroism that day, but they were the stuff of conjecture and halcyon supposition. The truth of what happened during that disaster was lost forever. Yet the pain of it remained, like an old wound that would not heal. Even replenishing fire could not burn it from the Salamanders' hearts.

'So the mission into the Hadron Belt is over?' asked Ba'ken as the last of the caskets was brought aboard the gunship and the Salamanders started making ready for their final departure from the Archimedes Rex.

'For now,' Dak'ir replied.

The two Salamanders were apart from the rest of their battle-brothers who stood in discreet groups of two and three, dispersed across the fighter bay, watching proceedings, staying vigilant and awaiting the order to embark.

'And we are going back?'

'Yes, brother. To Nocturne.'

Dak'ir felt ambivalent about a return to their home world. Like all Salamanders, his planet was part of him and to be reunited with it was cause to rejoice, despite its volatile nature. But to come back so soon… it smacked of failure and only made Dak'ir's concerns about Captain N'keln's leadership deepen. 'Pyriel wants to bring the chest before Tu'Shan and have him consult the Tome of Fire.'

'What do you make of it?' asked Ba'ken as Dak'ir's thoughts were steered back towards that moment in the storage room when he'd found the chest with Vulkan's icon upon it.

'The chest? I don't know. Pyriel was certainly unsettled when he ascertained its provenance.'

'It seems strange to have been amongst weapons and armour,' said Ba'ken. 'How did you even find it amidst all of that?'

'I don't know that either.' Dak'ir paused, as if admitting the next part would confirm the reality of it, one that he was unwilling to face. The fact that the two Salamanders were engaged in private conversation and that he trusted Ba'ken like no other was the only reason he spoke up at all. 'I thought the artefact was in plain sight. It was as if I homed in on it, as if a beacon was attached to the chest and I had locked in to its signal.'

Dak'ir looked at Ba'ken for a reaction but the bulky Salamander gave none. He just stared ahead and listened.

'When Pyriel found me, I wasn't even aware I had picked it up. Nor did I remember ransacking the munitions crates to unearth it,' Dak'ir continued.

Ba'ken remained pensive, but his body language suggested he wanted to say something.

'Tell me what you are thinking, brother. In this I am not your commanding officer and you my trooper - we are friends.'

There was no sense of accusation in his posture as Ba'ken faced him, no distrust or even wariness - only a question. 'Are you saying that the chest was meant to be found, and by you alone?'

Dak'ir nodded almost imperceptibly. His voice came out as a rasp. 'Am I somehow cursed, brother?'

Ba'ken didn't reply. He merely clasped his battle-brother's pauldron.

It would be several days before Tu'Shan and his council emerged from the Pantheon. The chamber was one of few in the Salamanders fortress-monastery on Prometheus. Though, in truth, the bastion was not much more than a space port linked to an orbital dock where the Chapter's modest armada of vessels could be refitted and repaired. An Apothecarion saw to the outfitting of new recruits and their genetic enhancement as they became battle-brothers. Trial arenas were sunk into the basement level. It was here in these pits that initiate and veteran together could undergo tests of endurance and self-reliance, as was in keeping with the tenets of the Promethean Cult.

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 chest, 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 knew 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.

Tsu'gan awaited them in the half-dark of the chamber, its halogen lanterns dulled, with just the ambient light to illuminate the bare room. One by one, they entered: Agatone and Ek'Bar were the first, dour and long-serving; quiet and pensive respectively. Both were Tactical squad sergeants like Tsu'gan. Then there came Vargo from one of the Assault squads, a campaign veteran. De'mas, Clovius and Typhos followed a short time after. Last of all was Naveem, who seemed the most reluctant to have been summoned. These Astartes, great Salamanders all, encompassed five Tactical squads and both Assault squads of 3rd Company. Only the sergeants of the Devastators were not present, those that had fought alongside N'keln on Stratos. Of course, Dak'ir was also absent. He had made his feelings very clear on the subject of the captain's recent ascension.

The brother-sergeants present had each removed their battle-helms - in fact Clovius and Typhos generally did not wear one - and the lustre of their eyes glowed deeply in the gloom. Tsu'gan waited until they were all settled, until the mutual greetings and respectful acknowledgements were done, before he began.

'Do not think me disloyal,' Tsu'gan said, 'for I am not.' He regarded each of the assembled sergeants intently as he panned his gaze around the room.

'Why are we here then, if not to speak of disloyalty, to renege on the vows we all made before the Chapter Master himself?' Naveem's anger was evident in his tone, but he kept his voice down all the same.

Tsu'gan raised a placatory hand, both to mollify Naveem and arrest any reprisals from Brother Iagon, who watched from behind his sergeant in the darkness.

'I seek only what is best for the company and the Chapter, brothers,' he assured them.

'If that is true, Tsu'gan, then why have us skulk in the shadows like conspirators?' asked Agatone, his hard face wrinkled with discontent. 'I came to this meeting to discuss the discord in our ranks, and the way we might mend it. All the talk I have heard prior to this gathering has been of dissension and of N'keln's unsuitability for the role of captain. Tell me now why I shouldn't just turn on my heel and go to Tu'Shan?'

Tsu'gan met his fellow sergeant's intense glare with honest contrition. 'Because you know as well as I that N'keln is not fit for this post.'

Agatone opened his mouth to respond, but clamped it shut in the face of indisputable fact.

Turning his attention back to the assembly as a whole, Tsu'gan spread his arms in a conciliatory gesture.

'N'keln is a fine warrior, one of the best amongst the Inferno Guard, but he is not Kadai and—'

'No one is,' scoffed Sergeant Clovius, shaking his head. His squat body, thick-shouldered and broad of back, made him seem as intractable as an armoured rock. The sergeant continued, 'You cannot hold a man to account by another's memory.'

'I speak only of his legacy,' Tsu'gan returned, 'and of his ability to lead us. N'keln needs a steadying hand, the support of a captain himself. He is like one component of an alloy; strong when bonded with another, but left alone—' Tsu'gan shook his head. 'He will surely break.'

Muttering from around the room intimated his audience was less than convinced. Tsu'gan merely pushed harder.

'N'keln inherits a fractured company, one requiring strength to rebuild. It is strength he does not possess. How else would you describe the folly of returning to the Hadron Belt?'

'Had we not, we would never had discovered the chest,' countered Vargo, his deep voice reluctant.

Tsu'gan faced him, his own voice an impassioned rasp.

'A fluke: one that very nearly added to the tally of ignominious dead and indebted us to mercenaries.' He spat the last word as the memory of the Marines Malevolent loomed in his mind. To deal with such honourless curs left a bitter canker in Tsu'gan's mouth.

'Another of N'keln's failings,' Tsu'gan went on, 'allowing Vinyar and his dogs to steal weapons and armour destined for another Chapter. No better than thieves, these Astartes in name only. Yet N'keln lets them go without pursuit or so much as a harsh word.' He paused, letting his damning rhetoric sink in.

'Do not think me disloyal,' he repeated, experiencing no small measure of satisfaction from the realisation dawning on the sergeants faces. Even Naveem seemed to thaw. 'For I am not. I serve only the will of the Chapter. I always have. I am proud to be Fire-born and I will follow my brothers unto death. But what I will not do is stand idle as a company is brought into ruination. Nor will I participate in baseless missions where a reckless death is the only reward. I cannot do that.'

Agatone articulated what the rest were already thinking.

'So what would you have us do?'

Tsu'gan nodded as if in approval of the decision he had garnered here.

'Ally with me,' he said simply, 'Ally with me in going to the Chapter Master and suing for the removal of N'keln as captain.'

After a few moments, Naveem spoke up.

'This is madness. None of these acts you've mentioned are charges enough for the captain's dismissal. Tu'Shan will punish us all for this conspiracy. We'll be up before Elysius and his chirurgeon-interrogators, our purity in question.'

'It is not conspiracy!' Tsu'gan snapped, then, composing his frustration, lowered his voice. 'I will bring our concerns to the Chapter Master, as is our right. He is wise. He will see the rifts in this company and have no choice but to act for its betterment.'

'And who will he install as N'keln's successor?' asked Agatone, meeting Tsu'gan's gaze. 'You?'

'If the Chapter Masters sees fit to appoint me, I will not reject the responsibility. But I don't seek to usurp N'keln, I want only what is right for this company.'

Agatone looked around the room, evidently undecided.

'What of Dak'ir and Omkar, Lok and Ul'shan? Why are they not at this meeting to relay their grievances?'

Tsu'gan maintained his imperious air, despite his fellow sergeant's pertinent questioning.

'I did not summon them,' he admitted.

Naveem leapt on the confession.

'Why, because you knew they would never agree to this, that they could not be trusted to keep their silence?' He waved away Tsu'gan's imminent protest. 'Save your answers, brother. I am not interested. Out of loyalty to my fellow sergeants I will keep my silence, but I cannot be a party to this. I know you think you act out of genuine concern for the company, but you are misguided, Tsu'gan,' Naveem added sadly and left the room.

'Nor can I, brother,' said Agatone. 'Don't speak to me of this again, or I will have no choice but to go to Chaplain Elysius.'

In the end, Sergeants Clovius and Ek'Bar went the way of Naveem and Agatone. The others pledged their allegiance to Tsu'gan's cause but without a majority, it stood little chance of succeeding. They left soon after their disgruntled counterparts, leaving Tsu'gan alone with Iagon.

'Why can't they see it, Iagon? Why can't they acknowledge N'keln's weakness?' He slumped down on one of the austere pallet beds that hadn't been used in decades.

Iagon moved slowly from behind Tsu'gan and into his sergeant's eye line.

'I do not think we have failed, sergeant.'

Tsu'gan looked up. His gaze was questioning. 'True, we have only three brother-sergeants allied to our cause, but that is all we really need.'

'Explain yourself.'

Iagon smiled, a thin empty curling of his down-turned mouth bereft of warmth or mirth. Here, in the shadows of the empty dormitory, his true nature could express itself. 'Take your grievance to Elysius. Ensure that N'keln is within earshot when you do, or at least hears of it soon after.' Iagon paused deliberately, inwardly applauding his own cunning. 'N'keln is a warrior of profound conscience. Once he knows about such a vote of no confidence amongst his own sergeants—' his narrow eyes flashed '—he will stand down of his own volition.'

Tsu'gan was suddenly torn. He sighed deeply, trying to exhale his doubts.

'Is this right, Iagon? Am I doing what is best for the company and the Chapter?'

'You are taking the hard road, my lord. The one you must travel if we are ever to be whole again.'

'Even still—'

Iagon stepped forward to emphasise his point.

'If N'keln were worthy, would he not have taken up Kadai's thunder hammer? It gathers dust even now in the Hall of Relics, forgotten and dishonoured by one who is wary of the mantle he assumes by claiming it.'

Tsu'gan shook his head uncertainly. 'No. N'keln rejected it out of respect.' He didn't sound convinced.

Iagon adopted a look of absolute innocent neutrality. 'Did he?'

Tsu'gan had left the dormitory in silence, a slave to his own thoughts. Pain would settle his troubled mind. He had made for the solitoriums at once. And there in the darkness, with the eyes of his secret voyeur looking on, he had indulged in his addiction again and again, hoping, in vain, that with the next strike of the rod his conscience would be eased. It had not, and the guilt gnawed at him stid as he trod the long passageways of the Hall of Relics, dressed only in a simple green robe.

Honours and memories of heroes long-past filled the austere gallery of black marble. The hue of the rock, its smoothness and density, promoted a sombre mood, one entirely apt given the reverence felt for this hallowed place. There were shrines to Xavier, Kesare, and even ancient Tkell, chambered in anterooms or deep alcoves regressed into the rock. Artefacts, too precious to be burned, too venerated to be bequeathed, rested within them along with purity seals, medals and other tributes to their legacies. Reliquaries were made of the leg bones Brother Amadeus had lost in the Siege of Cluth'nir. If the mighty warrior should ever fall, they would be burned to ash with what was left animated with his sarcophagus and offered to Mount Deathfire. Tsu'gan passed them all, every step a painful reminder of the damage he had self-inflicted. It paled to the anguish in his mind and failed utterly, despite his sternest efforts, to assuage it. He wondered briefly whether he had urged the brander-priest too far this time. Tsu'gan crushed the thought.

Bowing his head, he stepped into one of the hall's anterooms and was swallowed by darkness. The stygian surroundings lasted only seconds as a votive flame erupted into incandescent life on one of the walls and threw a warm, orange glare across a sombre altar. It was shaped like an anvil, a pall of salamander hide draped across the flat head. Resting on the hide were the shattered remains of an ornate thunder hammer.

Tsu'gan was gripped by a profound sense of loss as he approached the altar and knelt before it in supplication.

'My captain…' The words were barely whispered, but conveyed his longing. He went to speak again, but found he could not, and closed his half-open mouth without further sound. Silence followed, deafening and final. Tsu'gan remembered anew the sight of Kadai's destruction. He recalled gathering up the remains of the beloved captain with N'keln. Warring with a sense of sudden grief and impotent rage, Tsu'gan had looked into the veteran sergeant's eyes and seen clearly what was held there.

What now? Who will lead us? I cannot assume his mantle. Not yet. I'm not ready.

Even then, through a fog of despair, Tsu'gan had witnessed the truth in N'keln's heart. Duty would not allow the veteran sergeant to refuse; prudence should have made him refuse. But it had not, and the lingering memory stung like a barb.

The brother-sergeant could bear it no longer and, averting his gaze from the solemn tribute to Ko'tan Kadai, he hurried from the shrine-chamber.

So consumed was Tsu'gan with his own troubled thoughts that he didn't notice Fugis coming the opposite way, and collided with him.

'Apologies, brother,' Tsu'gan rasped, wincing beneath the cowl of his robe as he made to move on.

Fugis held out an arm to stall him. Like the brother-sergeant, the Apothecary wore robes.

'Are you all right, Brother Tsu'gan? You seem… troubled.' Fugis's hood was down and his eyes were penetrating as he regarded the sergeant, some of his old sagacity returned.

'It's nothing. I only seek to honour the dead.' Tsu'gan couldn't keep his voice steady enough as the jabs of pain from the branding wracked him. He went to move on again, and this time Fugis stood in his path.

'And yet you sound as if you've recently been in battle.' His thin face accentuated a stern and probing expression.

'Step aside, Apothecary,' Tsu'gan snapped, gasping through his sudden anger. 'You have no cause to detain me.'

Fugis's cold eyes helped formed a scowl.

'I have every cause.' The Apothecary's hand lashed out. Debilitated as he was, Tsu'gan was too slow to stop it. Fugis pulled back the sergeant's robes and cowl to expose the hot, angry scars upon the lower part of his chest.

'Those are fresh,' he said, accusingly. 'You have been having yourself rebranded.'

Tsu'gan was about to protest, but denial by this point was beneath him.

'And what of it?' he snarled, teeth gritted both in anger and to ward off his slowly ebbing agony.

The Apothecary's expression hardened.

'What are you doing, brother?'

'What I must to function!' Tsu'gan's rancour swiftly waned, replaced by resignation. 'He was slain, Fugis. Slain in cold blood, no better than the wretches that lured us to Aura Hieron.'

'We all feel his loss, Tsu'gan.' Now it was Fugis's turn to change, though rather than soften, his eyes seemed to grow cold and faraway as if reliving his own bereavement.

'But you were not there at his end, brother. You did not gather the remains of his body and armour, wasted away and beyond even your skill to revivify in another,' Tsu'gan referred to the destruction of Kadai's progenoid glands. These elements of a Space Marine's physiology existed in the neck and chest. Harvested through the skill only an Apothecary was schooled in, they could be used to create another Salamander. But in the case of Kadai's tragic demise, even that small consolation was denied.

Fugis paused, deciding what to do.

'Youmust come to the Apothecarion. There I will tend your wounds,' he said. 'I can mend the superficial, brother, but the depth of the hurt you feel is beyond my skill to heal.' For a moment, the Apothecary's eyes softened. 'Your spirit is in turmoil, Tsu'gan. That cannot be allowed to continue.'

Tsu'gan tugged his robe back across his body and exhaled raggedly. A tic of discomfort registered below his left eye as he did it.

'What should I do, brother?' he asked.

Fugis's answer was simple.

'I should go to Chaplain Elysius, make you confess to him what you have been doing, and leave you to await his judgement.'

'I…' began the sergeant then relented. 'Yes, you are right. But let me do it, let me go to him myself.'

The Apothecary seemed uncertain. His searching gaze was back, as his eyes narrowed. 'Very well,' he said at last. 'But do it soon, or you'll give me no choice but to act in your stead.'

'I will, brother.'

Fugis lingered a moment longer, before turning his back and heading towards the anteroom where Kadai awaited him.

Tsu'gan went the other way, unaware of another figure tracking him in the darkened corridors of the Hall of Relics, the very same that had watched him break down at the foot of the anvil shrine and followed him from the isolation chamber.

Pain, grief, shame - they all dulled the brother-sergeant's senses as he came to a fork in the corridor. The light of the brazier-lamps seemed to cast it in an eldritch glow that Tsu'gan failed to notice. East led eventually to the Reclusium, where he would await the Chaplain and purge his heavy soul; west took him back to a small armoury where his battle-plate rested. He was about to turn east when he felt a light touch on his shoulder.

'Where are you going, my lord?' asked the voice of Iagon, 'Your armour is the other way.'

Tsu'gan faced him. Iagon was enrobed too. The hood was pulled far over his face so that only his sharp, angular nose and down-turned mouth were visible. The Salamander's slight form was exaggerated without his armour. It made him look small in comparison to his sergeant.

'I cannot, Iagon,' Tsu'gan told him. 'I must seek Elysius's counsel.' He tried to continue on his way, but Iagon reasserted his grip, stronger this time.

Tsu'gan winced with the pain of his earlier injuries.

'Release me, trooper. I am your sergeant.'

Iagon's face was a dispassionate mask.

'I cannot, my lord,' he said, and increased his grip.

Tsu'gan scowled and seized the trooper's wrist. Despite his wounds, he was still incredibly strong and now it was Iagon's turn to betray his discomfort.

'I am not strong enough to hold you, sergeant, but let me appeal to your better judgement…' Iagon pleaded, letting his brother go.

Tsu'gan released him, the scowl reduced to a displeased frown. It bade Iagon continue.

'Go to Elysius if you must,' he whispered quickly, 'but know that if you do, you will be stripped of rank and made to suffer penitence for what you've done. The chirurgeon-interrogators will probe and incise until they lay you bare. Our Brother-Chaplain will learn of your deceit—'

'I have deceived no one, save myself,' Tsu'gan snapped, about to turn away again, before Iagon stopped him.

'He will learn of your deceit,' he pressed, 'and act against all of your brothers who were in that room. Any chance of replacing N'keln will be gone, and the prospect of healing our divided company with it.'

'I don't want to replace him, Iagon,' Tsu'gan insisted. 'That is not my purpose.'

'If not you, then who else will do it?' Iagon implored. 'It is your destiny, brother.'

Tsu'gan was shaking his head. 'I am broken. When battle calls, it is easier. The cry of my bolter, the thunder of war in my heart, it smothers the pain. But when the enemy are dead and the battlefield is silent, it returns to me, Iagon.'

'It is just grief,' the trooper replied, leaning forward. 'It will pass. And what better way to expedite that process than in the crucible of battle, at the head of your company?'

Tsu'gan's mind wondered at that. The recently slumbering coals of ambition in his heart started to rekindle. He would heal the rift between his brothers, and in so doing make himself whole again.

The words of Nihilan, spoken to him on Stratos before he had leapt down into the temple to witness Kadai's death, came back to him unbidden.

A great destiny awaits you, but another overshadows it.

A traitor's testimony was not to be trusted, but there was a germ of recognition in that statement for Tsu'gan. He told himself that this was his own conclusion, that reasoning would have brought him to a similar epiphany given time. The image of Dak'ir arose in his mind, going to his captain's aid just before the end. The Ignean was something of an outcast, but a strange destiny surrounded him too. Tsu'gan could feel it whenever he was in his presence. The sensation was dulled by his loathing, but it was there. If he did not assume the mantle of captain, then Dak'ir would surely do it. No Ignean was fit to lead an Astartes battle company. Tsu'gan could not allow that to stand.

His eyes and posture hardened as he returned Iagon's attendant gaze.

'Very well,' Tsu'gan growled. 'But what of Fugis? The Apothecary has sworn me to go to Elysius.'

'Forestall him,' Iagon answered simply. 'Our brother is so caught up in his own grief that he will not press this at first. By the time he does, N'keln will step down with respect and you will ascend.' Iagon's eyes flashed with unbridled ambition. At Tsu'gan's right hand, as he was, he would cling to the trappings of his lord, a beneficiary of his newfound power and influence, and ascend with him. 'By then, Fugis will not speak out. He will see you are master of your feelings once again.'

Tsu'gan stared at something in the distance: a glorious vision conjured in his mind's eye.

'Yes,' he breathed, though the words did not sound like his own. 'That is what I will do.'

He looked again at Iagon, fresh fire burning in his blood-red eyes. 'Come,' he said, 'I must don my armour.'

Iagon bowed, smiling thinly as his face was eclipsed by shadow.

Together, they took the west corridor. The east remained the path untrodden.

Iagon was pleased. He had managed to restore his sergeant's mettle and conviction. Ever since they had returned from Stratos, he had been carefully shadowing him. Every dark desire, every tortured secret was his to know and exploit. He came to realise, as he looked on from the darkness, he would eventually need to act. Iagon merely had to wait for the opportune moment. The intervention in the corridor of the Hall of Relics was indeed timely. A moment's hesitation and Tsu'gan would have gone to Elysius, undoing all of Iagon's careful planning and torpedoing any chance he had for borrowed power.

Though still an Astartes, with all the boons and potency that brought, Iagon was not gifted with brawn like Ba'ken. Nor did he possess the psychic might of Pyriel or the religious fervour of Elysius. But cunning, yes, he had that. And determination, the unbendable will that Tsu'gan would be captain and that he, Cerbius Iagon, would bask in the reflected glory of his lord. Nothing must stand in the way of that. Despite his rhetoric to the contrary, Fugis presented a problem.

As Iagon and Tsu'gan arrived at the armoury, a final thought occurred to him.

The threat of the Apothecary must be dealt with.

Ba'ken and Master Argos stood at the foot of the Cindara Plateau, their heavy booted feet sinking slightly into the sands of the Pyre Desert. They were watching a distant procession of Nocturnean civilians making their way to the gates of Hesiod.

Sanctuary City - the name was apt.

During the Time of Trial, the Sanctuary Cities threw open their gates and offered shelter to the people of Nocturne. A primarily nomadic race, much of the planet's populace dwelt in disparate villages or even transient encampments ill-suited to resist the devastation wrought by the earthquakes and volcanoes. Vast pilgrimages were undertaken that trailed the length and breadth of the planet, as Nocturneans travelled great distances seeking succour.

Stout walls and robust gates wrought to be strong and resilient by Nocturne's master artisans were the Sanctuary Cities' bulwark of defence in the earliest years of colonisation. Tribal shamans, latent psykers - before such genetic mutations were demystified and regulated - had been the first to establish the safest locations for these settlements to be founded. They did so via communion with the earth, a bond that the people of Nocturne still recognised and respected. Later, there came the geological pioneers who advised on the construction and development of the nascent townships that would eventually become cities. But as the ages passed so too did these cities evolve. Technologies brought by the Master of Mankind, He who was known only as the Outlander, provided stauncher aegis against the capricious will of the earth. Void shields stood in the path of lava flows or pyroclastic clouds; adamantium and reinforced ceramite repelled the seismic tremors or sweeping floods of fire.

These havens and their defences were all that stood between a race and its eradication by the elements.

Ba'ken hailed Dak'ir, his voice deep and strong. 'Brother-sergeant.'

Dak'ir nodded in return as he approached, Emek alongside him.

'The exodus has begun, it seems,' said Brother Emek.

'The Time of Trial is imminent,' Dak'ir replied. He caught Argos surveying the long, trailing lines of pilgrims through a pair of magnoculars.

'Aye,' said Ba'ken, resuming watch with a brief nod to acknowledge Emek. 'The nomadic tribes are gathering in their droves, and the Sanctuary Cities fill, just as they do every long year.'

Emek went unhooded, and appeared wistful as he regarded the long line of refugees.

'There are always so many.'

The civilians came from all across Nocturne: tradesmen, merchants, hunters and families. Some walked, others traversed the sands in stripped-down buggies or fat-wheeled trikes, dragging trailers of belongings or racks of tools. Rock harvesters and drovers wrangled herds of sauroch and other saurian beasts of burden, the cattle-creatures pulling flat-bedded carts and wide-sided wagons. The pilgrims carried what they could, their meagre possessions wrapped in oiled cloth to keep out the dust and grit of the dunes. They wore hardy clothing: smocks, ponchos and sand-cloaks with their hoods drawn up. No one ventured forth without a hat. Some even had thin scarves wound around their heads and faces to ward off the solar glare.

Across the final kilometre approach to the open gates of Hesiod, Dak'ir picked out the green battle-plate of Salamanders dispersed along the snaking line of civilians. It was the task of 5th Company, the only other besides 3rd and 7th still on the planet, to aid the civilians and usher them safely within the city walls.

Bolters trained on the heat-hazed distance, the Salamanders were ever vigilant. They watched for predators like sa'hrk or the winged shadows of dactylids as they circled above in search of easy meat.

'The lines of refugees are thin,' said Argos, mildly refuting Emek in his metallic timbre. Assessing the groups of civilians through the magnoculars, he had extrapolated a brief calculation. 'Many will suffer outside the walls of our Sanctuary Cities.'

Tremors rumbled like thunder in the far distance, coming from the direction of Themis, one of Hesiod's neighbours. There had been minor volcanic eruptions already. En route to Cindara Plateau, Dak'ir had heard that three outlying villages had been destroyed, claimed by earthquakes, vanishing without trace. On the horizon, Mount Deathfire loomed. The great edifice of rock and fury spat gouts of flame and lava in preparation for a much larger and more devastating eruption.

Argos lowered the magnoculars, his face dark.

'Ours is a stubborn race, brother-sergeant,' he said to Dak'ir by way of greeting.

'And proud,' Dak'ir replied. 'It's what makes us who we are.'

'Justly spoken,' said Argos, but his grim expression didn't lift as he went back to looking at the long train of civilians. For most, life expectancy was short on Nocturne. That statistic would only worsen with the coming season of upheaval.

Dak'ir turned to Ba'ken.

'I see you have been busy, brother.' He indicated the heavy flamer rig attached to the bulky Salamander's back.

'To replace the one I lost on Stratos.' Ba'ken's rejoinder came with a feral smile as he showed off the weapon proudly. The flamer's previous incarnation had been destroyed when its promethium fuel supply had reacted with a volatile chemical amalgam released by the cultists on the world of loft-cities. Ba'ken had been injured into the bargain, but the hardy Salamander had brushed it off as a flesh wound. The heavy weapon rig he had so fastidiously constructed did not survive. 'Blessed by Brother Argos himself,' he added, gesturing in the Techmarine's direction. Argos was walking towards the edge of the circular plateau, outside of the metal disc in its centre.

'Are you not accompanying us, brother?' Dak'ir asked of him.

'I will join you later, after inspection of Hesiod's void shield array is complete.'

Dak'ir looked to the turbulent fiery orange sky and his eyes narrowed, searching. 'Ba'ken, where is the Fire-wyvern to take us up to Prometheus?' he asked, noting that Argos was consulting a small palm-reader.

'Bad news about that, sir,' said the heavy weapons trooper. 'The Thunderhawks are being prepped for imminent departure. We are to be teleported to the fortress-monastery instead.'

Dak'ir recalled his all too recent experience aboard the Archimedes Rex and the subsequent translation to the Marines Malevolent ship, Purgatory. Inwardly, he groaned at the prospect, realising now that Argos was setting coordinates for a homing beacon.

A huge tremor shook the desert plain, seizing Dak'ir's attention. Pyroclastic thunder boomed in the depths of the earth, deep and resonant. It came from Mount Deathfire. A vast cloud of smoke and ash exuded from the craterous mouth at its tip, boiling down the giant volcano's rocky flanks in a grey-black wave. Civilians were already screaming as a gush of expelled magma plumed into the darkening air. Streams of syrupy lava carrying archipelagos of cinder issued down the mountainside in a sudden flood.

The thunder deepened further as a huge quake rippled across the dunes, setting civilians wailing in terror as they hurried faster in their lines. Draught animals bayed and mewled in despair, struggling against their panicked handlers and added to the chaos. The rising tumult beneath the earth became a cacophony as an immense beam of crimson light tore from the bowels of the mountain. It reached into the heavens, a coruscation of radiant fire, spearing the gathering clouds and tainting them with its passage until it was lost from sight.

The manifestation of natural fury lasted only seconds. In its wake the cries of the populace strung out across the still trembling dunes intensified. The lava flow ebbed and pooled, the clouds of ash rolled away and dissipated into thin veils. The volcano was dormant again, for now.

'Have you ever seen anything like that?' Dak'ir's primary heart was racing as he watched the Salamanders stationed down the line quickly restoring order.

Ba'ken shook his head in awe and wonder.

'An omen,' breathed Emek, 'it has to be. First the chest and now this… It doesn't bode well.'

Dak'ir's face hardened; he was not about to submit to hysteria just yet. 'Brother Argos,' he said. The sergeant's tone invited the Techmarine's opinion.

Argos was using the magnoculars to survey the emergence point of the beam.

'A phenomenon the likes of which I have never seen.'

'What could have caused it?' asked Ba'ken.

'Whatever it was,' offered Emek, 'it portends ill.' He pointed up to the sky. The fiery orange hue had turned the colour of blood, bathing the lightning-wreathed heavens in an ugly red glow.

Despite the apocalyptic respite, the civilians were moving faster. Dumbstruck and gesturing towards the sky in fear, some Nocturneans had to be goaded forwards. The battle-brothers encouraged the line to pick up the pace, their movements urgent but still controlled. The refugees were streaming through the gates of Hesiod now. But many, those whose wagons had floundered during the tremor or who were too afraid to move, were beyond the reach of the Salamanders and at the mercy of the harsh elements.

Moved by the plight of the civilians, Dak'ir stepped out of the portal disc. 'We must help them.'

'Return to the circle, brother-sergeant.' The hollow voice of Argos reined the other Salamander in. 'Your brothers have their task, so too do you, sergeant. There is nothing more we can ascertain here. Tu'Shan will have answers.'

Reluctantly, Dak'ir resumed his position within the teleporter.

'Let us hope the news from the Pantheon is good,' he muttered, gritting his teeth as Argos initiated teleport. The metal conductor plate under the Salamanders glowed like magnesium and filled the sergeant's world with light.

Teleportation was instantaneous, and the confines of the receiver pad resolved around them. It was one of ten such translation points within the teleportarium in the fortress-monastery on Prometheus. Ethereal warp vapours rolled off the hexagonal plate, which was large enough to accommodate an entire squad of Terminators, let alone three battle-brothers in power armour.

Crackling energy sparked then dissipated across three conductor prongs that arched over the pad like crooked fingers. Warp dampeners, psychic buffers and other safeguards were in place on the remote chance that anything should go wrong.

Dak'ir adjusted to translation quickly this time. Forewarned, he had steeled himself, and with Nocturne's stable teleporter array the process was smooth. Automated servo-gun systems powered down, having not detected a threat, as he stepped off the teleporter pad and headed for the docking bay where Salamanders were already assembling.

The docking bay was vast, and accessed through an open blast door. The Salamanders who had already made the translation to Prometheus, or perhaps had never left, mingled in small groups, discussing the ramifications of what the Pantheon had uncovered in excited murmurs. Some readied weapons, checking and loading with methodical precision. Others knelt in solitude as they took oaths of moment, an icon of Vulkan's hammer pressed to their lips. The primarch's name was spoken everywhere.

In a large hangar section, eight Thunderhawks idled with landing stanchions extended. Directed by Techmarine overseers, crews of servitors and human engineers readied them for take-off. Huge pipes that chugged fuel into the gunships' tanks were trailed across the deck; operational scenarios were run on the fusion reactors; tons of munitions were trolleyed on massive tracked lifters, heavy drum mags slammed into ammo cavities or the vast power batteries of the nose guns charged to capacity. Techmarines incanted liturgies to the machine-spirits, flocks of votive servitors and cyber-skulls assisting them with their pious labours; troop holds were cleared and inspected by human deck teams; the instrumentation panels that ran the cockpits were assessed and put through exhaustive activation protocols; turbofans were ignited on low-burn to test performance; and every square centimetre of the gunships' structural integrity was checked and secured.

A strange atmosphere pervaded the docking bay - part parade ground solemnity, part campaign assembly deck resolve. Due to their dispersal across Nocturne, aiding villages and minor townships in preparation for the Time of Trial, the Salamanders did not arrive together. They appeared sporadically, after venturing to whatever sacred teleportation site was nearest. Squads were forming quickly though, filling up the docking bay with their armoured bulk, getting ready to receive their Chapter Master.

Tsu'gan was already present with much of his squad. Others too had started to assemble in ranks.

As he panned his gaze around the room, Dak'ir saw N'keln's Inferno Guard, Kadai's former command squad, waiting for their captain. Fugis stood amongst them, his head low in remembrance. The others fixed their eyes ahead. N'keln had yet to appoint his Company Champion, the role which Dak'ir had rebutted. Nor had he replaced his own vacated post of veteran sergeant - Honoured Brother Shen'kar acted as the captain's second-in-command for now - so the Inferno Guard numbered only three, the last position filled by Banner Bearer Malicant. The Assault squads of Vargo and Naveem assembled on the flanks, strapped up with their bulky jump packs. It could have been Dak'ir's imagination, but he thought he detected some tension between them. Likely, it was just anticipation of whatever was about to be imparted from the Pantheon council. Brother-Sergeants Agatone and Clovius were also present, together with the Devastators of Lok and Omkar.

Watching his fellow sergeants reminded Dak'ir of something he had asked Ba'ken to do before he returned to Nocturne.

'Have you spoken to Agatone and Lok?' Ba'ken nodded darkly, as if reminded of a bad memory.

Tsu'gan has approached the sergeants, 'those of Tactical and Assault at least.'

Dak'ir slowly shook his head in disbelief.

'His arrogance is boundless. I can't believe he still persists with this.'

'Agatone says several of the other sergeants will support him.'

'So, he moves against N'keln blatantly.'

'There is nothing blatant about it, far from it. Iagon's ways are subtle and oblique. There is no actual proof that Tsu'gan wants the captaincy.'

'No, but he is pressing for N'keln's dismissal. At best it smacks of misconduct, at worst it is treason.' Dak'ir paused, marshalling his anger. 'However couched, this cannot stand. Something must be done.'

'But what?' Ba'ken asked a fair question. 'Bringing it to the attention of the Chaplain is not an option at this point. Agatone made an oath of silence.'

Dak'ir faced his heavy weapons trooper. His expression was severe.

'I am not Agatone, Ba'ken. Nor am I bound to his oath,' he said sternly. 'This dissension must stop.'

'There is no choice,' Emek decided, entering the exchange for the first time since it had begun. 'Brother Elysius must be told.'

Dak'ir shook his head.

'Discord and division are rife as it is. An investigation by the Chaplain and his interrogators will only exacerbate that. N'keln wants to heal the wounds in this company. He will need our backing, and the backing of others, to do it. Forcing the sergeants to comply, making examples of the disaffected, will only deepen any resentment that already exists. Only by earning the sergeants' respect will N'keln gain their confidence and establish his authority,' reasoned Dak'ir, feeling his desire to act ebbing. 'Though it pains me to admit it, Tsu'gan is not a discontent for the sake of it. I'm not even certain he wants to replace Kadai at all. He wants someone he feels is worthy of Ko'tan's mantle. Once he believes N'keln is that person, he will capitulate.'

'Are you certain of that, brother?' asked Ba'ken.

Dak'ir's answer was frank.

'No. The fires of battle will temper the captain. He will burn or be reborn, that is the Promethean way.'

'Spoken like a true philosopher, brother,' said Emek wryly.

Dak'ir turned to him - a massive gate set into the far end of the docking bay was opening. It led to the inner heart of the fortress-monastery and the Pantheon. Tu'Shan and the council were coming, so Dak'ir kept it brief.

'Spoken like your sergeant,' he corrected. What came next included Ba'ken, too, 'Whose order will be followed.'

Both Salamanders nodded their understanding. The rest of Dak'ir's squad had joined them. The time for talking was at an end. The gate ground open. The Chapter Master entered.

Tu'Shan strode at the head of the Pantheon council, arrayed in his full panoply of war. His voluminous drakescale cloak writhed like a living thing as he walked and his deep eyes burned with all the inner strength of Deathfire's core. 3rd Company was fully assembled. Even Veteran Brothers Amadeus and Ashamon were present amongst their fellow Salamanders. The pair of Dreadnoughts stood stern and unmoving alongside the foremost Tactical squad led by Agatone. Brother Ashamon was an Ironclad. His seismic hammer rippled with electrical discharge, a meltagun appended to its haft, and the igniter flame from the flamer affixed to his claw-like power fist flickered dormantly.

Flanked by a squad of Firedrakes, clanking loudly in Terminator armour, Tu'Shan led the council down a wide aisle. It divided the squads in the company into two equal hemispheres, and was afforded for the ten 1st Company veterans, who were accompanied by Praetor himself. Behind the Chapter Master was Vel'cona, Chief Librarian and Pyriel's direct superior. The Epistolary walked alongside Elysius and N'keln, falling into lock-step with the Firedrakes on either side of them. The other Masters were either occupied on Nocturne's surface or prosecuting missions in distant systems.

Dak'ir's attention was fixed on Elysius in particular as the retinue of warriors past him to alight in front of 3rd Company.

The chest of Vulkan was in the Chaplain's hands.