Vulkan was standing over the lifeless body of Seriph. A stray bolt-round had grazed her side. It had been enough to kill her. There was a lot of blood – her robes were sodden with it; so, too, were the robes of the other remembrancers who had tried to save her.

Despite the primarch’s presence, his obvious threat, the other remembrancers did not shrink away from Seriph’s side.

An elderly man with rheumy eyes and wizened features gazed up at the Lord of the Drakes.

‘We’ll see her back to the ships,’ he said.

Vulkan opened his mouth to say something, but could find no words to express his feelings. Instead, he nodded before replacing his helmet, but found it could not hide his shame as well as it could his face. Turning, he became aware of his warriors gathering next to him.

‘The Legion awaits you, my lord,’ said Varrun humbly, and gave a slight bow of his head.

About to respond, Vulkan stopped short when he felt someone watching him from afar. Looking around, he caught sight of a dark and distant shadow out on the dunes. A second later and his helmet vox crackled to life.

‘ See brother, I knew you had it in you. A cold-hearted killer, just like me.’

Vulkan replied, ‘I am nothing like you’, and severed the link, yet the stench of burning alien flesh remained.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Mortal pillars

‘To be more than human is; at the same time, to be less than human. Within us is the capacity for greatness. We are warriors, but we must also be saviours. Our ultimate goal is self-obsoletion, for when our task is successful and peace, not war, reigns in the galaxy, our usefulness will be ended and with it us too.’

– Vulkan, from the Trials of Fire

The dream ended and I shuddered myself awake.

Curze’s last words on the outskirts of Khartor had unsettled me and forced me to look within myself for evidence of the monster he claimed me to be. They echoed in my skull like old bones, unearthed from an old grave thought long forgotten.

The past will always come back. It never truly stays dead.

The first thing I realised upon opening my eyes was that this was not my cell.

The chamber was small, and yet expansive at the same time. Its walls were white, glowing, smooth like bone. I heard voices within them, and as I strained my eyes saw tiny circuits of light rushing like shoals of minnows with the river’s flow.

There was no smell, no taste. As I moved, rising to my feet, I made no sound. I could detect no air and yet I still breathed, my lungs functioning as they always had. Evidence of my previous tortures could not be seen, my body as unblemished and bereft of scars as when I had first arrived on Nocturne.

‘What is this place?’ My voice echoed as I asked the question of the figure standing opposite me.

Its face was hooded, and the rest of its body draped in robes, but I could tell immediately that it wasn’t human. Too tall, too slight. I knew an eldar when I saw one. This one was a farseer.

‘Nowhere of consequence, a meeting place is all,’ he said in a low, mellifluous voice.

‘You speak Gothic?’ I asked, though he had just given me the answer to that question.

The eldar nodded.

He wore black, with strange sigils and eldritch runes stitched into the slightly iridescent cloth. A weeping eye, a pyramid, a pair of bisected squares rendered into an angular figure of eight – I could not read them but suspected they were symbols of the farseer’s power and even origin. Though his face was concealed by the hood, and perhaps an even more effective and unnatural concealment, the edges of his aquiline features were suggested where the shadows lessened.

In his right hand, which was hidden beneath a black glove, he clutched a staff. Like the runes described on his robes, the figure’s staff was fashioned from the same strange bone-like material forming the chamber. Its peak was a simple eye and teardrop design.

I believed that this too was a glamour, in the same way that the eldar had masked his true appearance from me.

‘You are dreaming, Vulkan,’ he said, not stepping towards me, not moving at all, not even breathing. ‘That isn’t air you are taking into your lungs. That isn’t light making your pupils retract. You are not really here.’

‘Who are you?’ I demand, angry at being manipulated by this psychic passenger.

‘It doesn’t matter. None of this is real, but what is very real is what I am about to impart to you. The very fact you have not chosen to attack me suggests I chose wisely.’

‘You make it sound like you’ve tried this before,’ I said.

‘Not I, one of my kindred. Despite my warning not to, he proceeded anyway.’ There was resignation in the eldar’s voice, changing its melodic tone into something approaching regret. ‘It went poorly, I’m afraid, and so we are here. You and I.’

My eyes narrowed, the words of the alien coiling in my mind, unfathomable and deliberately obscure.

‘Are you a spirit, a wraith followed me from Kharaatan?’

I sensed the ghost of a smile in my strange companion’s reply.

‘Something like that, but not from Kharaatan. Ulthwé.’

‘What? Why am I here?’

‘It’s not important, Vulkan. What is important are my words, and the matter of earth.’

‘The matter of earth?’

‘Yes. It is tied inextricably to your fate. You see, I needed to speak to you. While you were still able to heed me, before you were lost.’

‘Lost? I am already lost. A prisoner aboard my brother’s ship, at least…’ I looked down at my bare feet, ‘I thinkI am.’

‘Are your thoughts so confused already?’

Looking up again, the eldar had drawn closer to me. His eyes, oval and lambent with power, bored into me.

‘I saw you, didn’t I?’ I asked. ‘On the ship, before I realised where I was.’

‘I tried to make contact before, but your mind was reeling, overcome with rage and a desire for freedom. You were also not long recovered.’

‘Recovered from what?’

‘As I say, it is the matter of earth upon which I must speak to you.’

‘You’re making no sense, creature.’

‘This might be the only chance I get to contact you. After this, I may not be able to return. You must live, Vulkan,’ the alien told me, ‘you must live, but stand alone as a gatekeeper. You are the only one who can perform this duty. You alone are the hope.’

I frowned as the words spilling from this alien’s lips made less and less sense to me. I shook my head, believing it to be another trick of my gaoler, albeit an extremely elaborate one.

‘My duty? A gatekeeper? This is meaningless.’ As a cloud creeps over the sun, my face darkened and I made fists of my hands.

Sensing anger, the farseer retreated back into the light.

‘It is not a trick. I speak the truth, Vulkan.’

I grabbed for him, trying to snatch the edge of his robes and shake this illusion to dust, but there was nothing to hold on to.

‘When the time comes…’ uttered the eldar, his voice and form becoming one with the light as the entire chamber brightened like a sun, ‘you will know what you must do.’

Falling to my knees, I roared, ‘Get out of my head!’

Pressing the palms of my hands against my temples, I tried in vain to push the interloper out and return myself to reality.

‘No more,’ I cried, shutting my eyes to the light as it burned them. ‘No more!’

‘No more…’ I whispered.

The light had gone. The chamber, the alien, everything. Gone.

Reality reasserted itself, and, as I opened my eyes again, for real this time, I saw it was made of dirty stone and dark iron.

I was standing, the chains around my wrists taut as they took my weight. On my forearm a fresh mark was branded into my flesh. Like the others I had noticed, I couldn’t place its origin. The mystery of it would have to wait. Cruciform, I stared out into a different prison. Not the bottomless oubliette from before or even the furnace where Curze had tried to burn me to ash as I had burned the eldar on Kharaatan. This place was new, and yet entirely old.