He was taunting me again, trying to belittle me. It was petty and Curze knew it, but he did it anyway because it amused him and somehow reduced me in his eyes.

‘No, this prison is not mine,’ he admitted at last. ‘I’ve neither the patience nor the inclination. I had another build it for me.’ He looked around the chamber, and I followed his gaze, noticing the ornate flourishes, the way that function met artistry. Engraved upon the eight walls was a gruesome display, celebrating torture and pain. Agonies described in metal greeted my eyes and I looked away.

‘Beautiful,’ said Curze. ‘I can’t say I appreciate art, but I know what I like. And this… this, I like. Our brother was never really given enough credit for his aesthetic eye.’

It was a pantomime, all of this, a dark performance more in keeping with Fulgrim than the self-proclaimed Night Haunter. I suspected Curze was doing it deliberately, savouring every moment.

Then Curze turned his cold eyes back upon me. ‘It was always you that was hailed as the craftsman, Vulkan. But Perturabo is just as skilled. Maybe even more so.’

‘What do you want with me, Konrad?’

‘You intrigue me. When I said you’d shown strength, I wasn’t referring to you killing that serf…’

He let it hang like that, waiting for a response. I had none to give, so kept my silence.

Curze’s eyes narrowed, like little slivers of jet. ‘Are you really thatignorant? Did our father create you to be blind as well as blunt?’

‘I have sight enough to see what you are.’

My brother laughed, unimpressed at my attempted goading. ‘Indeed. But then, I already know what I am. I am at peace with it. I’ve accepted it. You, on the other hand…’ He gave a slight shake of the head, pursing his pale lips, ‘I don’t think you’ve ever been wholly comfortable in your armour.’

He was right, but I wasn’t about to give my gaoler the satisfaction of knowing that.

‘I am my father’s son.’

‘Which father?’

I gritted my teeth, tired of Curze’s obvious mind games. ‘Both of them.’

‘Tell me, brother,’ he said, changing tack, ‘how well do you remember One-Five-Four Six? I believe you called it Kharaatan.’

I didn’t know what Curze’s purpose was in asking me this, but my eyes locked to his and didn’t waver.

‘I remember it very well, as I know you must do also.’

‘Was it when we fought together during the Crusade? Yes, I believe it was.’

‘Thankfully.’

The dagger smile returned to Curze’s face. ‘You didn’t enjoy that war, did you?’

‘What is there to enjoy about war?’

‘Death? You are a bringer of death, a warrior, a merciless killer that–’

‘No, Curze. You are mistaken. You’re the merciless one, you’re the sadist. I never realised it before Kharaatan. Fear and terror are not a warrior’s weapons, they are a coward’s. And I pity you, Curze. I pity you because you have spent so long languishing in the gutter amongst the filth that you’ve forgotten what it’s like to be in the light. I doubt you can even see it through all that self-loathing.’

‘You’re still blind, Vulkan. It’s you who has forgotten, and don’t realise you’re down here in the gutter with the rest of us, murdering and killing. It’s in your blood. The pedestal you have built for yourself is not so lofty. I know what lies beneath that noble veneer. I’ve seen the monster inside, the one you tried so hard to hide from that remembrancer. What was her name again?’

My jaw tensed.

Curze betrayed no emotion. ‘Seriph.’ He smiled indulgently. ‘Yes, that was it.’

‘So what now?’ I asked, tiring of his game. ‘More torture? More pain?’

‘Yes,’ Curze answered frankly, ‘much more. You have yet to feel the extent of it, of what I have planned. You are, in many ways, the perfect victim.’

‘So kill me, then, and be done with it, or is part of my torture listening to you?’

‘I do not think I will kill you this time,’ said Curze. ‘We’ve tried ice.’ He stepped back, coalescing with the darkness. ‘Now let’s try fire.’

From below, I heard a low rumbling. It trembled the metal platform I was standing on. In seconds it grew into a deafening roar, and brought with it a terrible heat.

I realised then the nature of the prison I was in.

It was a furnace.

Curze was gone, and I was left alone with only the shattered memory of my grim brother for company.

I could hear the fire rising, feel it prickling my skin. Soon those needles would become knives, scraping back my flesh. I was born from fire on a brutal, volcanic world. Magma was my blood, onyx was my skin. But I was not impervious to flame. Not like this. Smoke billowed upwards in a vast and dirty cloud, engulfing me. Through it, as the conflagration followed and turned the air into a vibrating haze, as my screams rang out with the scorching of my body, I saw Ferrus.

He was burning too. The skin of his ghoulish face melted to reveal iron beneath. The silver of his arms, so miraculous, so magnificent and enigmatic, ran like mercury and merged with the soup of his flesh and blood. Bone blackened and cracked, until only a rictus skull mask remained. And as the fire took me, I saw the skull’s mouth move in a last silent condemnation.

Weak, said the fire-wreathed skull of Ferrus Manus.

And then it was laughing as we burned, laughing to our ending and damnation.

CHAPTER SEVEN

We are not alone…

‘In this age of darkness, only one thing is certain. Each of us, without exception, must choose a side.’

– Malcador the Sigillite

Haruk had been dead several minutes. Almost twenty by Narek’s reckoning. He was lying on his side, one arm flung out, still clutching his ritual knife, the other pinned beneath the dead weight of his body. His partially helmeted head lay askew. It had almost been forcibly removed.

He had received two fatal wounds. The first, a bolt-round through the neck, had ripped open Haruk’s jugular and exposed his carotid artery. It had also removed a portion of his lower jaw and vox-grille with it, but had not killed him immediately. The second, to the torso, had caved in most of his chest and destroyed eighty per cent of his internal organs when the mass-reactive shell had exploded on impact. From this, Haruk had died instantly.

Narek had found the wreckage of the body on the upper floor of a warehouse, slowly growing cold in a pool of blood. Kneeling down by his dead brother, he felt no grief for Haruk. The Word Bearer was a true bastard amongst bastards, who liked to make sport of his prey. His predilection had been his undoing this time. Kill quietly, kill quickly – this was Narek’s way. A toy was a thing to be played with, and toys were best left to children. An enemy was not a toy, he was a threat to your life until his was ended. But Haruk was a sadist. So many of Narek’s kin were turning this way. A change had come upon them, and it was not just manifest in the vestigial horns that were more than mere affectation for a war-helm, it was soul-deep and irreversible. This did not sit well with Narek, for he had once believed that the Emperor was a god and served this deity with a true zealot’s fervour. When the Legion erected the cathedrals on Monarchia, he had wept. It was beautiful, glorious. All of that was gone now and an older Pantheon had resurfaced to usurp the supposed pretender.

Narek discovers Haruk’s body

So, the sight of his slain brother did not hurt him. But, as Haruk was of the Word, Narek would perform the rites over the corpse as required.

Swathed in darkness, he muttered the necessary incantations that would put Haruk’s soul in service to the Pantheon. Now he would become the sport, a plaything of the Neverborn. Narek almost felt them in his veins, pulsing beneath his skin, and in the staccato beating of his twin hearts. They clung to this place, and their grip was ever tightening as Lorgar wrote his song of murder.