Amused at the human’s pointless heroism, the witch closed on N’bel but Breughar’s sacrifice had bought Vulkan the time he needed. Mountainous and filled with righteous anger, the Nocturnean was upon his enemy.
“Face me!”
She recoiled like a snake as Vulkan came at her, fists swinging. The witch was hard-pressed to avoid the blows and could fashion no riposte. She back-flipped and wove and twisted until there was enough distance between them to taunt him and then flee. The rest of the witches were dead or dying. She alone escaped the massacre.
Outside the shattered walls of Hesiod, a tear opened in the fabric of reality. Endless darkness beckoned from inside the tear and the screams of the damned echoed in the breeze, promising hell and torment for all who entered. It swallowed the witch last of all before shuddering closed behind her, leaving only the scent of blood and the chill of near-death.
It was over.
Hell-dawn ended and the Nocturnean sun rose to its zenith.
N’bel met Vulkan at the gates. The black-smiter was still shaking but he lived.
“Breughar is dead.”
An unnecessary fact. Vulkan had seen the man die.
“But you live, father, and for that I will be eternally grateful.”
His voice still trembled with an undercurrent of the rage that had consumed him during the fight. His chest heaved like a bellows, drenched in alien blood.
“We live, son.” He put his hand on Vulkan’s arm and something about the feel of those old and calloused fingers calmed the Nocturnean, siphoning the tension away.
“Such hate. I felt it, father. It touched me as sure as I can feel your hand upon me now.”
He turned to face the old man, his eyes ablaze like balefires.
“I am a monster…”
N’bel didn’t recoil, but held Vulkan’s cheek.
“You are a true Promethean son.”
“But the fury…” he looked down. “The way I killed them with my bare hands…” before meeting his father’s gaze again. “I am not a black-smiter, am I?”
The people of the town were gathering. Despite all the death that muddied their streets, the mood was exultant. Vulkan was being hailed as a hero.
N’bel sighed and in it, all of his latent fears about losing his only son were borne away. “You are not. You are from up there.”
Vulkan followed his father’s outstretched hand to the hot sky above.
The sun burned down like a single glowering eye, wreathed in smoky cloud. Vulkan closed his eyes and allowed the heat to warm him, N’bel’s voice distant in his mind.
“You came from the stars…”
THE EDIFICE RESEMBLED a stone menhir Vulkan had seen worshipped by debased and primitive cultures. Such backward religions were beyond compliance, and the Salamanders had burned entire worlds corrupted by graven beliefs. Here, on One-Five-Four Four, it represented a nexus of the enemy’s power, but would be torn down just the same. Something about its presence unsettled the Phaerians who were lashed into obedience by the discipline-masters and driven on into the cracking guns of the eldar.
On the orders of the primarch, the Legion had burned the jungle all the way to the psychic node. Like wildlife facing a natural forest fire, the eldar and their beasts had fled before the blaze. Vulkan’s edict was absolute, his advance pitiless. Even when confronted by the human refugees caught between the hammer and anvil of the war, he didn’t relent. All he saw were pale echoes of the noble people of his own beloved world, the hardships of the jungle-dwellers as nothing compared to the harsh plight of Nocturne. In his darker moments, he wondered if he actually despised these sorry humans for allowing themselves to be conquered and wondered if his supposed compassion had evaporated. As the land burned and the sky choked with smoke, he acknowledged it was the presence of the aliens that had affected his mood. That and the remembrances of their ravages from his old life before the starships had come.
War was unmaking; it went against everything his old father had taught him in the forge. Vulkan valued craft, the sense of transition beforehand and permanence afterwards. It brought quietude to his troubled and lonely soul. His true father, he who had crafted Vulkan to be a general, needed a warrior, not a black-smiter. A warrior was what Vulkan would be.
Standing on a vast ridge that jutted clear of the jungle expanse, Vulkan took consolation from the fact that with the destruction of the node the need to linger on One-Five-Four Four would pass and he could put thoughts of his homeworld behind him more easily.
Ibsen. That was its name. If it had a name and not a number, it had a heart. Did that also mean it was worth saving? Vulkan pushed the question aside as if it were a piece of clinker from the furnace.
Though he was surrounded by his Pyre Guard and the two Legion companies looking down on the unfolding battle, Vulkan was very much alone in his troubled mind.
Numeon spoke up, interrupting the primarch’s thoughts. “They breach the outer threshold of the aliens’ domain. I expected a more concerted defence, I must admit.”
Several of the Pyre Guard muttered in agreement. Varrun nodded, the servo-grinding of his armour joints articulating his response.
There were other Salamander captains nearby, and they too felt as the Pyre Guard did. Either the eldar were a spent force or they were holding out for another reason.
Pensively, Vulkan watched.
Unlike the ambush in the jungle, here the aliens were arrayed in number. Beneath their verdant cloaks that blended with the foliage around them, they carried fierce repeating bow-casters and long rifles. Vulkan watched as a discipline-master was shot through the eye and a reddish plume of brain matter vacated the back of his skull. Another quickly took his place and the Phaerians’ heavy-handed push continued.
The eldar used heavy weapon batteries too, more manoeuvrable than those employed by the Army cohorts on account of their anti-gravity platforms. Stuttering las-beams and incandescent plasma bursts reduced the men rushing from the jungle fringes into a grimy red paste. Two-man Rapier turrets and tracked Tarantula guns replied with a harsh staccato of solid shells as the heavy weapons exchange continued.
The overseers and discipline-masters had formed the feral Phaerians into their Army cohorts. Thick blocks of muscular and tattooed men advanced in formation, scatter-locks and auto-carbines tearing up the gloom with their combined muzzle flare.
On the opposite side, crouched behind clumps of ruined alabaster, the eldar unleashed an equally fierce response and the air was stitched with further las-beams and solid shot. Bodies fell on both sides, spun by heavy impacts or simply dropped by kill-shots only to be crushed underfoot by the troops behind them, and the death rate increased as the firing lines closed.
A temple surrounded the menhir. It was an aberrant thing engraved with alien sigils that mimicked the one Ferrus Manus had shown Vulkan via the hololith. The desert node was the only one the Imperium had managed to get a look at before their augurs were permanently disabled. But this one was slightly varied. The runic elements on the flat sides of the menhir were in different configurations. It was language in some form. With time and proximity to the sigils, a dedicated study would unlock its secrets. Vulkan harboured no such desires. He only wanted to destroy it.
He turned to Numeon.
“When the Army cohorts are fully engaged and the bulk of the eldar drawn off, be ready to launch our assault on the node. If we attack decisively and quickly we can destroy it before too many lives are surrendered to the meatgrinder.”