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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 t he

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 plasmacutters,

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