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invariably meet their end in war or, if death is not forthcoming and age arrives first, by wandering out into

the Scorian Plain or setting sail on the Acerbian Sea to find peace. It is the way of the Promethean Creed.”

Pyriel shone the corona of psychic fire around his hand a little closer so they could get a better look at the

old Salamander. The light reflected off the warrior’s eyes, turning them a cerulean blue.

The old Salamander blinked.

Dak’ir almost took an involuntary step back, but marshalled his sudden shock as the old Salamander spoke.

“Brothers…” he croaked in a voice like cracking leather that suggested he hadn’t spoken in some time.

Dak’ir approached the old Salamander.

“I am Brother-Sergeant Hazon Dak’ir of the Salamanders’ 3rd Company,” he said, before introducing the

Librarian. “You have been on watch duty for a long time, brother.”

Dak’ir knew he needed to be careful. If this ancient warrior before them really did hark back to a time before

the Heresy, if he was a survivor of the Dropsite Massacre, then much had changed that he would be unaware

of. They needed answers but any unnecessary information might only serve to confuse him at this point.

“Brother Gravius…” The ancient Salamander tailed off, his precise disposition within the old Legion

deserting him. “And yes,” he started anew, seeming to recall that he had been asked a question. “I have been

sitting here for many years.”

“How did you come to be here on Scoria, Brother Gravius?”

The venerable Salamander paused, frowning as he dredged through old memories. “A storm…” he began,

the words starting to come easier as he remembered how to articulate himself. “We… withdrew from battle,

our enemies in pursuit…” Gravius’ face hardened and drew back into an angry snarl. “Betrayers…” he spat,

before lucidity failed him again and his features slackened.

“Was it Isstvan V, brother?” said Pyriel. “Is that where you journeyed from?”

Gravius screwed up his face again, trying to remember.

“I… see fragments,” he said. “Impressions only… disjointed in my mind.” He seemed to look past the two

Salamanders in front of him.

Dak’ir thought Gravius was gazing into space, when the old Salamander slowly raised his arm from the side

of the throne and pointed a finger. Dak’ir turned to see what Gravius was gesturing at. It looked like an old

pict-viewer, some kind of ancient data-recording device half smothered by millennia of dirt.

Exchanging a glance with Pyriel, the brother-sergeant descended the stairs and went over to the pict-viewer.

Dak’ir knew that many ships kept visual logs as the basis for battle simulations or to chart the progress of a

campaign for future reference. Gravius had indicated that this device might contain the log of his ship and

with it some clue as to its provenance.

Though it had been broken apart, Illiad and his men had fed power to some areas of the vessel. Dak’ir hoped

that this was one of them. Even so, he expected nothing as he activated the pict-viewer and lines of snowdrift

interference appeared on the dust-swathed screen.

Using his gauntlet, Dak’ir smeared the worst of the grime away just as an image was resolving in the small

square frame. There was no sound; perhaps the vox-emitters no longer functioned, or perhaps the audio was

not recorded along with the visuals. The point was moot.

Though the image was grainy and badly marred by constant static, Dak’ir recognised the bridge, as it must

have been before the crash. The scene was frantic. Fire had taken hold of some of the operational consoles

— Dak’ir looked over to them as they were now and saw a hint of heat-blackening underneath their grey

veneer — and several crewmen were lying on the deck, presumably dead. They wore grey uniforms that

bore an uncanny resemblance to the attire of Illiad and the settlers. Most were shouting — their voiceless

panic, the half-realised terror in their faces, was disturbing.

Dak’ir saw Salamanders, too. The throne was shrouded in shadows, but the bulk of the armour was clear, the

flash of fire and warning lights illuminating it just long enough for the brother-sergeant to make the

connection. Several of the Astartes were injured too. The image was shaking badly, as if the bridge itself was

being subjected to a fierce ordeal. No one addressed the recording, and Dak’ir assumed, with a fist of lead in

his stomach, that the captain of the ship had ordered it switched on to capture the last moments of him and

his crew. He had not expected to survive the crash.

There was a particularly violent tremor and the screen went blank. Dak’ir waited to see if there was any

more, but there the recording ended.

A grim mood had settled over the ruined bridge, quashing the earlier excitement and optimism that Dak’ir

had felt. Another tremor rocked the chamber, sending a pauldron crashing nosily to the ground and shaking

the brother-sergeant out of his dark introspection.

He exchanged a look with Pyriel.

If the quakes did indeed presage a cataclysm that threatened the planet itself, as the Librarian had predicted,

then Brother Gravius and the battle-suits needed to be moved, and quickly. Perhaps, upon returning to

Nocturne and under the Chapter Master’s guidance on Prometheus, the secrets within Gravius’ shattered

mind could be unlocked. If this was what the Salamanders had been sent to find — their prize — then all

efforts must be made to recover them intact. Not only that, but Illiad and his settlers would need to be

rescued too. The pict-recording of the ship’s final log had cemented in Dak’ir’s mind that the ancestors Illiad

had spoken of were in fact the ship’s original crew and he and his people their descendants.

The revelation was remarkable. Against all the odds, they had endured, creating for themselves a microcosm

of Nocturnean society here on ill-fated Scoria.

The visions Dak’ir had experienced earlier, just before the tectonic shift had revealed the chasm into the

subterranean realm, came back to him. On a strange, almost instinctual level, it confirmed to Dak’ir that

Scoria was doomed and that its demise was soon to be at hand.

Yes, all would need to be delivered from the fires of the planet’s inevitable destruction. There was just the

small matter of the Vulkan’s Wrath half-buried in the ash desert, and without the means to break free of it. If

this was the primarch’s will, a part of his prophecy etched in the Tome of Fire, then Dak’ir hoped that

salvation would present itself soon.

The brother-sergeant’s gaze flicked over to Gravius.

“Can you arise, brother? Are you able to walk?” he asked.

“I cannot,” Gravius answered with regret.

Pyriel touched a hand to the venerable brother’s greave and shut his eyes. He opened them a moment later,

the cerulean glow still fading.

“His armour is completely seized,” said the Librarian. “Fused to the throne. His muscles have likely

atrophied by now, too.”

“Can we move him?”

“Not unless you want his limbs to break off as we attempt it,” Pyriel replied grimly.

“This is my post,” Gravius rasped. His breath reeked of slow decay and stale air. “My duty. I should have

died long ago, brothers. If Scoria is to expire, become dust in the vastness of the universe, then so must I.”

Dak’ir paused, as he tried in vain to think of some other solution. In the end he clenched his fist in

frustration, Pyriel looking on patiently. His tone betrayed his anger and frustration to the Librarian.

“We return for the armour, and report back our findings to Brother-Sergeant Agatone. We must be ready

when we have a way to leave this accursed rock.”

Tsu’gan returned to the battlements of the iron fortress just in time to see the first explosions tear into the

orks.

A series of fiery, grey blooms rippled in a line before the greenskins’ advance, chewing up footsoldiers and

wrecking their ramshackle vehicles. Implacably, the orks marched over the debris of bodies and twisted

metal, the carnage only seeming to increase their lust for battle.

Through the magnoculars, Tsu’gan saw several of the greenskins pause to kill off their wounded brethren

and remove their tusks or strip them of wargear or boots. “Filthy scavengers,” he snarled, regarding the

massive horde of green.

Inwardly, he cursed the fact their forces were divided before such a massive host. Consolidation was needed

now, not division. Yet, they could not simply abandon the Vulkan’s Wrath, nor her crew. At any account,

there could be no envoys sent to the rest of their brothers — nothing could get through the green tide arrayed

against them and live.

The creatures mobbed in indistinct groups that the brother-sergeant likened to rough approximations of

battalions or platoons. Each mob was led by a massive chieftain, usually riding a battered wagon, buggy or

truck; all bolted metal, hammered plate and the bastardised components of enemy vehicle salvage. Tsu’gan

assumed the beasts’ ships, the ones that had brought them to the surface, had landed farther off in the ash

dunes and were beyond the reach of the magnoculars.

At least the falling slivers, peeling off the black rock like bullet-nosed hail, had abated.

Fights broke out intermittently amongst the orks. Their diminutive cousins— cruel, rangy creatures known

as gretchin — lingered at the periphery of such brawls, hoping for scraps, an opportunity to defile the loser

or simply to hoot and bray for more carnage. Often these lesser greenskins would be seized during the

indiscriminate and seemingly random affrays and used in lieu of a club to bludgeon an opponent with bloody

consequences for both.

Orks were a breed of xenos that lived solely to fight. Their behaviour was largely inscrutable to the

Imperium, for the creatures possessed no discernible method that any tacticus logi or adeptus strategio had

ever qualified. The aliens’ predisposition towards battle was obvious in their musculature and build,

however. Trunk-necked, their skin as tough as a flak jacket, they were hard beasts to kill. Broad shouldered

with thick bones and still thicker craniums, they stood as tall as an Astartes in power armour and were also

his match in strength and raw aggression. The ork’s only real weakness was in discipline, but nothing

focused a greenskin’s mind like the prospect of a fight against a hardy foe like the Space Marines.

Judging by the sheer mass of green approaching them, Tsu’gan knew this would be one battle not easily

won.

Discipline and loyalty, Tsu’gan reconsidered. The greenskins have no loyalty to speak of; they possess no

sense of duty to guide them. Yes, “loyalty” — that is our strength, that is our… His thoughts tailed off.

“How many?” asked Brother Tiberon.

Ever since they had fallen back in good order from the advancing greenskins, the horde’s numbers had

increased. Tsu’gan had related his best estimates to the forces in the iron fortress, but suspected they were

now wildly conservative.

Brother-sergeant and combat squad had rejoined the rest of their battle-brothers on the wall, two sections

down from where N’keln and his entourage were positioned. Iagon caught Tsu’gan’s errant gaze as he

looked away from the magnoculars to regard his brother-captain.

This battle will either forge or break him, was the unspoken exchange between them.

Brother Lazarus seemed to pick up on the vibrations between Iagon and his brother-sergeant. All in

Tsu’gan’s squad shared their leader’s desire to see N’keln no longer at the head of 3rd Company.

That is not disloyalty, Tsu’gan told himself, still unsettled by his previous thoughts, It is duty — for the good

of the company and the Chapter.

“If he falters,” said Lazarus in a low voice, “then Praetor will step in. You can be sure of that.”

Then the way will be clear for another…

It was almost as if Tsu’gan could read the thoughts in Iagon’s earlier expression.

Tsu’gan had his battle-helm mag-locked to his harness, preferring to feel the growing wind on his face and

hear the bestial roars of the greenskins without them being distorted through the resonance of his armour. He

narrowed his eyes as if trying to fathom his captain’s demeanour.

“Let the fires of war judge him,” he said in the end. “That is the Promethean way.”

Tsu’gan turned to Tiberon, the deep-throated bellows of the greenskins growing louder by the second.

“There are thousands, now, brother,” he uttered in answer to Tiberon’s earlier question. “More than my eye

could see.”

In the wake of the dissipating smoke from the hidden grenade line, the orks stopped. Night was falling

across the ash desert, just as Tsu’gan had predicted. The infighting amongst the greenskins ceased abruptly.

They were intent on the killing now, on the destruction of the Salamanders.

In the fading light, the orks began to posture, slowly stirring themselves up into a war frenzy.

Chieftains jutted out their chins, like slabs of greenish rock. Their skin was darker than the rest and swathed

in scars like that of their minders, who roamed protectively around them. The darker an ork’s skin, the

bigger it usually was and the older and more dominant. Irrespective of their brutish hierarchy, the orks began

to beat their armoured chests, clashing fat-bladed cleavers and axes against scale, chain and flak. They

hollered and roared, discharging their noisy guns into the air, creating a pall of rancid smoke from the cheap

powder.

Tsu’gan could feel the energy within the creatures building. He was no psyker like Pyriel, but he still

recognised the resonance of its effects. Orks generated this energy when in large groups and it was

magnified when they fought. It prickled at the Salamander’s skin, made his teeth itch and his head throb.

Tsu’gan put on his battle-helm. The time for soaking in the coming battle’s atmosphere was over.

The orks began to roar in unison, and Tsu’gan sensed an end to the savage ritual was near. Though their

brutish tongue was virtually unintelligible, the brother-sergeant could still discern the meaning in their crude,

bellowed words.

“DA BOSS! DA BOSS! DA BOSS!”

Flurries of ash came spilling down the ridge as if fleeing, disturbed by the passage of something large and

indomitable.

Through the ranks of green, a huge ork emerged. It battered its way to the front of the horde, clubbing any

greenskin that dared get in its way with a clenched power fist that rippled with black lightning. Unlike the

Astartes’ power fists, this orkish device was akin to a massive, plated claw and bore talons instead of fingers.