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ship the size of a city. Flames were captured in vivid oranges and reds. In each subsequent interpretation, the

ship was slowly being swallowed up by the earth as ash and rock buried it. Beasts came next, the visual

history of the colony spreading down the massive walls. First were the chitin, easy to discern with their

bulky carapace bodies and claws; then came something else — brutish, broad-backed figures, with dark

skins and tusks. The humans were depicted fleeing from them as the metal giants protected them.

“How did you survive down here for so long, Illiad?” Dak’ir’s voice echoed, breaking the silence.

Illiad paused in his unearthing of the colony’s ancient lore.

“Scoria has deep veins of ore. Fyron, it is called.” He wiped the sweat of his labours from his brow. “We are

miners, generations old. Our ancestors, in their wisdom, realised the ore was combustible. It could be used to

keep the reactor running, to charge our weapons and maintain our way of life, such as it is.” His face

darkened. “It was this way for many centuries, so our legends tell us.”

Dak’ir indicated the wall paintings. “And these are your legends?”

“At first,” Illiad conceded, changing tack. “Scoria is a hostile place. Our colony is few. One in a generation

has the duty to record that generation’s history in a log, though much of its formative years are drawn upon

these walls. Long ago that task fell to my grandfather, who then passed it on to me after his son, my father,

was killed in a cave-in.”

Illiad paused, as if weighing up what to say next.

“Millennia ago, my ancestors came to Scoria, crash landed in a ship that had come from the stars,” he said.

“We were not alone. Giants, armoured in green plate, came with us. Most who now live don’t remember

who they were. They call them the Fire Angels, for it was said that they were born from the heart of the

mountain. This is why Val’in addressed your warrior in this way.”

Dak’ir exchanged a look with Pyriel and the Librarian responded with a slight widening of his eyes.

Fire-born, he thought.

Illiad went on.

“After my ancestors crashed, the Fire Angels tried to return to the stars. Our history does not say why. But

their ship was destroyed and terrible storms engulfed the planet. Those that ventured into it, taking the ship’s

smaller vessels, did not return. The rest remained with us.”

“What happened to these other Fire Angels?” asked Dak’ir.

Illiad’s face became grave.

“They were our protectors,” he began simply. “Until the black rock came, and everything changed. It was

thousands of years before I was born. Brutish creatures, like tusked swine and who revelled in war,

descended upon Scoria in ramshackle vessels, expelled from the black rock. It eclipsed our sun and in the

darkness that followed, the swine made landfall. The stories hold that the Fire Angels fought them off, but at

a cost. Every few years, the swine would come back but with greater and greater hordes. Each time the Fire

Angels would march out to meet them, and each time they were victorious but less and less of them returned.

Inevitably, they dwindled, falling one by one until the last of them retreated underground with my ancestors

and sealed themselves in. The last Fire Angel took an oath, to protect my ancestors and pass on the tale of

him and his warriors if others like them ever returned to Scoria.

“The years passed and the fate of that last Fire Angel was lost to history, the warriors from beyond the stars

committed to mere memory… until now. We didn’t venture above the earth after that, and the surface of

Scoria became lifeless, inhabited only by ghosts. The swine did not return. Some reckon it was because there

was no further sport to be had.”

Dak’ir’s brow furrowed as he listened intently to Illiad’s story.

“You stayed like this… for millennia then?”

“Until several years ago, yes,” Illiad replied. “The storms that blighted our planet lifted for no reason other

than they had run their course. Soon after, the Iron Men came.” Illiad’s expression darkened at this memory.

“‘Iron Men’?” asked Dak’ir, though he thought he already knew to whom Illiad referred.

“They came from the stars, like you. Thinking they were akin to the Fire Angels, I led a delegation to meet

them.” Illiad paused to take a steadying breath and marshal his thoughts. “Sadly, I was wrong. They laughed

at our entreaties, turning their guns upon us. Akuma’s wife and son were slain in the massacre. That is why

he is so distrustful of you. He cannot see the difference.”

“You say you led the delegation, Illiad. How did you escape from the Iron Men?” asked Dak’ir, keen to

learn all that Illiad knew of the Iron Warriors and their forces, for there could be no doubt that it was the

sons of Perturabo who had perpetrated the massacre.

Illiad bowed his head. “I am shamed to say that I fled, just like the rest. They didn’t give chase and those

who eluded their guns stayed alive. We watched them after that from hidden scopes bored deep beneath the

earth.”

Dak’ir remembered the sense of being watched he’d felt outside the wreck of the Vulkan’s Wrath, and

assumed this must have been Illiad or one of his men.

“They built a fortress,” Illiad continued.

“Our brothers have seen it,” Dak’ir told him, “out in the ash dunes.”

Illiad licked his lips, as if slicking them so the words wouldn’t stick in his throat.

“We kept a vigil on it at first, as the walls and towers went up,” he said. “But the men keeping watch began

to act erratically. Two of them committed suicide, so I put a stop to it after that.”

“Your men succumbed to the taint of Chaos,” said Pyriel sternly.

Illiad seemed nonplussed.

“Do you know what the Iron Men are doing in the fortress?” Dak’ir asked in the lull.

“No,” Illiad answered flatly. “But we encountered them again, this time at the mine where we used to extract

the fyron ore. We never got further than their sentries and though they must have known we were there, they

seemed disinterested in slaying us.”

Pyriel’s silken voice interrupted.

“They come for the ore, and are drilling deep to get it,” he said. The Librarian turned his cold gaze onto the

human. Illiad, despite his obvious presence and courage, shrank back before it.

“Where is this mine?” Pyriel asked. “Our brothers must be told.”

“I can take you there,” Illiad answered, “but that is not why I brought you here. The legends of the Fire

Angels are just tales to protect our young and placate the ignorant. I alone, know the truth.” Illiad turned to

Dak’ir. “You are not the first Fire Angel I have seen. There is another living among us.”

That got the Salamanders’ attention. All thoughts of the mine and the Iron Warriors faded into sudden

insignificance.

“The duty of recording our history was not the only thing my grandfather passed on to me,” Illiad told them.

He moved to the back of the chamber. Dak’ir glanced over at Pyriel but the Librarian’s gaze was fixed on

the human. “Wait there,” Illiad called back to them, working at a dust-dogged panel in the far wall.

Dak’ir saw the faint glow of illuminated icons as Illiad pushed them in sequence. A deep rumbling gripped

the chamber, and for a moment the Salamander sergeant thought it was another tremor. It was, but not one

caused by Scoria’s fragile core; instead, it came from the flanking wall.

Stepping back, the Salamanders saw a recessed line emerge in the encrusted metal, spilling out tracts of dirt

as a portal formed within it and opened with a hiss of pressure. Old, stale air gusted out from a darkened

chamber beyond.

“Until my grandfather showed me this place, I thought the Fire Angels were just a myth. I know now they

are very real and lived by a different name,” said Illiad upon reaching them. “Now, I am the old man and I’m

passing on the legacy of my ancestors to you, Salamanders of Vulkan.”

Chaplain Elysius never got his gauntlets dirty during an interrogation. He was fastidious about this, to the

point of obsession. This was an Astartes who knew how to inflict pain; agony so invasive and consuming so

as to leave no mark, save the one in the victim’s psyche.

Watching the partly dismantled Warsmith in the flickering half-light of the cell, Tsu’gan fancied that Elysius

could even wrest a confession from one of the tainted.

After the brief battle in the torture chamber-cum-workshop — for Tsu’gan was convinced it was a union of

both — the half-conscious Warsmith had been dragged above ground and taken to an abandoned cell in the

upper level. There he lay now, as Tsu’gan watched, chained to an iron bench and bleeding from the wounds

the Salamander sergeant had given him.

The tools the Chaplain had requested included a pair of chirurgeon-interrogators that he’d had stored in the

Fire Anvil’s equipment lockers. The creatures, servitor-torturers, had unfolded from their metal slumber like

the jagged blades of knives extending. Wiry and grotesque, the interrogators’ mechadendrites were

fashioned into an array of unpleasant devices, excrutiators, designed to inflict maximum pain. Elysius had

constructed the servitors in part himself — at least, he had taken the Mechanicus stock and modified them

for his own purposes.

“Is this butchery strictly necessary?” asked N’keln, looking on from the shadows.

Since the battle to take the fortress and Tsu’gan’s squad’s near miss in the catacombs, the brother-captain’s

stock had depleted further. Though no one spoke of it openly, his disastrous command at the gates of the iron

fortress was viewed with ever more critical eyes. Tsu’gan could feel the discontent building like a wave,

whilst his own standing had been greatly increased, especially in the eyes of Veteran Sergeant Praetor. The

Firedrake had commended the brother-sergeant several times for his valour and strategy. Undoubtedly, it

was Tsu’gan that had prevented further deaths and restored parity in the battle.

“I can break him, brother-captain,” Elysius replied. The Chaplain stood back, directing his chirurgeoninterrogators

expertly.

“Have you even asked him anything yet, Brother-Chaplain?” said N’keln.

The Warsmith’s bionic arm had been removed and dismantled, bloodily. His right arm had been severed and

the wound cauterised so that he wouldn’t fall unconscious from blood loss. Nor would he be able to morph a

weapon from his flesh. Stripped of his body armour, the injuries Tsu’gan had dealt him were visible as a

dense patch of welts and purple bruises. Elysius had allowed the Iron Warrior to keep his battle-helm on, for

it was his belief that none should look upon the face of a traitor. Let him hide it in shame.

“I am about to,” the Chaplain hissed, a little strained under his captain’s scrutiny. After Elysius had issued a

sub-vocal command, the chirurgeon-interrogators retreated, taking their blades, their wires and their torches

with them. The stench of burned flesh and old copper wafted over to Tsu’gan and the other onlookers, which

included Captain N’keln and Brother Iagon.

Tsu’gan’s second had requested he be allowed to observe the Chaplain’s techniques. Most within the

company, like N’keln for instance, found Elysius’ methods distasteful, at the same time acknowledging their

necessity. Iagon, it seemed, did not, and since Tsu’gan saw no reason to prevent him, he allowed the battlebrother

to bear audience with him.

The shadow of Chaplain Elysius fell across the traitor like a deathly veil.

“What precisely were you constructing in the vault?” he asked simply.

Burned copiously, the vault had been resealed again following Techmarine Draedius’ analysis. He had yet to

ascertain the exact nature of the weapon.

Something fell and evil lurked in the darkness below their feet. Tsu’gan had felt it all the while he was down

there and had no desire to reacquaint himself with it. More than once, he had fought the urge to take out his

combat knife and press it against his flesh. He knew whatever malign presence lurked in the fortress’ lower

levels was just preying on his inner guilt and the manifestation of that guilt in his addictive masochism.

The Iron Warrior laughed, breaking Tsu’gan’s reverie. It was a hollow, metallic sound that echoed around

the small cell like a discordant bell chime.

“What did it look like to you, lapdog of the False Emperor?”

It was a small gesture — like the twitch of one of Elysius’ fingers — that brought one of the chirurgeoninterrogators

forward. Something happened, hidden by the servitor’s body, and the Iron Warrior shuddered

and grunted.

“Again,” ordered the Chaplain in a low voice. There was a pause and the Iron Warrior shuddered for a

second time. Smoke issued from his flesh, though Tsu’gan couldn’t see its source. The Iron Warrior laughed

again.

But it was pained laughter this time and when he spoke, his voice was cracked and hissing.

“A weapon…” The breath wheezed in and out of his lungs.

“We know that.” Elysius went to order the chirurgeon-interrogator for a third time.

“A seismic cannon…” gasped the Iron Warrior.

Tsu’gan knew of no such weapon. Had this warband somehow acquired knowledge of an undiscovered

standard template construct? It seemed impossible. Still thinking on it, the brother-sergeant detected the

faintest tremor of movement in the Chaplain. The chirurgeon-interrogator retreated.

“How long have you been on this world?” Elysius asked, deliberately altering the course of his questioning

to try and disorientate the prisoner.

“Almost a decade,” the Iron Warrior rasped, as if his breath were raking against his throat.

“Why are your brothers dead?”

“Killed in battle, of course!” Sudden rage gave the Iron Warrior strength and for the first time he struggled

against his chains.

Bonds of loyalty and brotherhood were still strong, Tsu’gan considered, even in traitors.

Elysius struck the Iron Warrior’s ruined chest with the flat of his palm. It was a hard blow that pushed the air

from the traitor’s lungs and smashed him against the bench.

“By what or whom?” demanded the Chaplain, patience thinning.

The Iron Warrior took a few seconds to catch a ragged breath.

“They will come again, the ones that bested my brothers,” he said, his yellow lenses flashing maliciously.

“Very soon, much too soon for you to save yourselves…” A clicking sound scraped from his mouth,

growing steadily faster and louder. The Iron Warrior was laughing again.

Elysius was about to send the chirurgeon-interrogators forwards when Sergeant Lok interrupted them. The