“And I have brothers?” he asked.
The Outlander nodded. “You have many. Several are already waiting for you, as eager as I am for your return.”
That pleased Vulkan. Despite the unconditional acceptance of the Nocturne people, he had always felt alone. To know there were others of his true flesh and blood in the galaxy, and that he’d soon be reunited with them, was comforting.
“What will happen to my father, N’bel, I mean?”
“You need have no fear. N’bel and all of your people will be safe.”
“How, if I am not here to protect them?”
The Outlander smiled, and the warmth of it chased away Vulkan’s anxiety.
“Your destiny is a great one, Vulkan. You are my son, and you will join me and your brothers on a crusade that will unite the galaxy and make it safe for all of mankind.” His face fell suddenly to melancholy, and Vulkan felt a sympathetic ache in his heart at the sight of it. “But you must leave Nocturne, and for that I am truly sorry. I need you, Vulkan, more than you know, more perhaps than you’ll ever know. Of all my sons, you are the most compassionate. Your nobility of spirit and humility will keep your disparate siblings grounded. You are the earth, Vulkan, its fire and solidity.”
“I don’t know what you’re asking me to do, father.” It was strange to call the Outlander that, a man, or being, he barely knew and yet felt an undeniable connection to.
“You will. It pains me, but I will have to leave you all when you need me the most, but I’ll try to watch over you when I can.”
“I wish I knew what this all meant and what I am supposed to become.” Vulkan raised his face to the sky and watched the burning sun as it scorched all of Nocturne beneath its pitiless rays.
“You will, Vulkan. I promise you, when the time comes, you will know.”
A golden light suffused the Outlander, radiating from under his skin, as he cast off his disguise and revealed the truth…
HARBOURED BENEATH THE plinth was a vast and echoing catacomb. Something drew Vulkan downwards as he descended the steps in a daze. What he found when he reached the bottom made his fiery Nocturnean blood run cold.
“What is this place?” hissed Numeon.
Strange sigils were daubed on the walls, alien in origin, and there were shrines sunk into alcoves dedicated to aberrant deities. A procession of crude statues, long-limbed and androgynous of gender, lined the edges of a subterranean passageway that fed deeper into the complex. At the end of the passageway shadows were moving in the reflected glow of ritual firelight.
“A temple.” Vulkan’s voice was deep and thick with anger. He drew a gladius.
A susurrus of scraping metal followed as the Pyre Guard each unsheathed their own short swords. None would muddy their chosen weapons on filthy, graven priests.
“Tread quietly and in my wake,” Vulkan told them and began to move towards the flickering light.
A sick feeling took hold in the primarch’s stomach, something that had been growing ever since the boy-child from the jungle had confronted him. Insidious talons had sunk deep into him and were twisting at his resolve. He remembered the thoughts he’d had earlier when he’d considered what must have transpired on Ibsen before the Imperium had arrived to enlighten it.
How far from the Emperor’s light had the natives had fallen?
Vulkan reached the edge of another chamber. It was roughly circular, crudely hewn from the earth and packed with clay. There sigils were drawn upon the wall like before and totems placed at specific cardinal points around the room. In the centre was a ring of fire. A cadre of robed figures cavorted around it, chanting. It was the same lyrical mantras as sung by the female seer. Within the ritual circle, partly hidden by the rising flames, was a figure tied to a wooden column that supported the chamber roof. Runic symbols, alien symbols, were notched upon its surface too.
As Vulkan stepped through into the light, one of the priests turned. He was wearing a mask of some wretched eldar deity and a rune was cut into the flesh of his bared chest. Upon seeing the primarch, a shadowed giant with the glowing eyes of a daemon, the priest cried out and the chanting stopped abruptly. Screaming took over, and the drawing of jagged blades. It would be like trying to fight a Terran bear with a pin. Realising their only escape route was blocked, the worshippers fled to the back of the cavern and cowered. Some spat curses, but kept their daggers low so as not to provoke.
Numeon stalked forwards, a thin snarl escaping his lips.
“Wait!” Vulkan stopped him. The praetorians looked ready to kill the humans out of hand, but stood down and simply glowered at them.
“They never wanted to be saved,” said Vulkan, partly to himself. “They were alreadysaved, but not by us—”
“Primarch, they are no better than the eldar,” snapped Numeon, still eager and in the slaying mood.
“I have been so blind.”
Sheathing his gladius, for there was no real danger here, Vulkan approached the ring of fire. What he saw tied up against the column within made him stagger.
There was a rattle of armour as the Pyre Guard went to their lord, but Vulkan’s upraised hand stilled them.
“I’m all right.” His voice was barely above a whisper. His gaze was drawn utterly to the figure, as the cavern seemed to shrink around him, pressing against the primarch with the weight of destiny.
It was the eyes that he recognised, for the body had long since shrivelled to desiccation and the vicissitudes of time had ravaged it.
He would remember those eyes, dagger-thin and filled with a sickening ennui.
A debilitating pain welled up in Vulkan’s chest as old memories came back like reopened wounds.
“Breughar…”
Thoughts of the dead metal-shaper brought tears of fire to the primarch’s eyes as he realised who he stood face-to-face with. She recognised him too, but her corpse-like face was incapable of expression.
“The slaver-witch.”
Suddenly the battle in front of the gates of Hesiod did not seem so long ago.
The dusk-wraiths had been here, to Ibsen, just as they had tormented Nocturne all those centuries before. The horrifying truth of it fell hard and pitilessly. The humans worshipped the eldar because theywere their saviours. They had saved them from the slavers, from their own dark cousins. And now they had tortured this one for some fell purpose, perhaps to ward off future incursions, or maybe it was to remove the terror from the myth. Either way, Vulkan’s rage rose to the surface like a volcano moments from eruption.
He turned his back on the witch for the last time.
“This world is lost.” He felt numb, almost stupefied. His breathing came quick and angry. His teeth clenched and so did his fists. He mumbled the command, “No one leaves this place alive,” before becoming loud enough to cause a panic in the priests. “Slay them all.”
Heart heavy, Vulkan walked away and left the sounds of slaughter behind him.
My eyes are open, father.
He knew what he must do.
ON THE HILLS overlooking the great runic arch, Vulkan watched the fires burn. Heavy landers were breaching the upper atmosphere in the distance, conveying the tens of thousands of Army divisions bound for the next warzone. Below, the conflagration was slowly consuming the entire jungle. Everything burned. This world would be razed to ash, its mineral seams mined to extinction and put to use for the furtherance of the Great Crusade. Ibsen had become a death world, it had become Nocturne.
“I sanctioned murder of unarmed men today,” Vulkan said to the heat haze rippling off the blaze. It was incandescent, beautiful, terrible.
Ferrus Manus answered. “Better to cleanse this place and begin anew than leave behind a canker to fester.” The Gorgon had come to bid him farewell until the next campaign. His Morlocks and the rest of his Iron Hands were embarked, only the primarch and Gabriel Santar remained.