‘I knew you were no different,’ Curze hissed, still trying to laugh. ‘A killer. We’re all killers, Vulkan.’

Vulkan released him. He sat back, still straddling Curze, and gasped for air, for sanity. He would have killed him if he hadn’t stopped. He would have murdered his brother.

A little unsteady still, Vulkan rose to his feet and stepped across Curze’s supine body.

‘Stay away from me,’ he warned, out of breath, and strode from the hold to where his transport was waiting.

Curze stayed down, but turned his head to watch Vulkan go, knowing it was far from over between them.

I knew I was lost. I suspected it the moment I stepped through the Iron Labyrinth’s gates. This was not a challenge I could overcome, not something I could unravel. Here was a place seemingly infinite and of Firenzian complexity, wrought by a mind equal to my own.

No, that wasn’t entirely truthful. My mind was compromised, and so the featureless corridors of brass and iron that stretched before me were beyond my intellect to navigate.

Standing at the hundredth crossroad, each avenue I had chosen on the ninety-nine before it taking me deeper into the labyrinth and yet, at the same time, farther from my goal, I wondered what Curze had promised my brother in return for this gift.

Perhaps Perturabo hated me as much as he did the rest of us, and he had simply decided that hurting one of his brothers was as good as hurting any? Maybe he resented the fact that I had survived his glorious barrage on Isstvan V, and refused to yield to his lines of armour? Whatever the reason, he had crafted this place with one purpose in mind; that whoever entered it would never leave. It suited Perturabo’s mindset, I think, to imagine me wandering these halls forever, although he could not have known about my immortality. I believed that Curze needed more immediate closure, however. Patience was not his virtue, nor restraint. In the hammer he had provided me with hope. I suspected that he meant to drive me further into madness with that hope. He did not realise that he had actually provided a realistic means of escaping his dungeon.

Deciding that it mattered little if I couldn’t find the heart of the labyrinth, I took the left fork and wandered on.

Unlike my previous trials at my brother’s tender claws, there were no traps, no enemies, no obstacles of any kind. I reasoned the labyrinth itself was the trap, the ultimate snare in fact, fashioned by an arch-trapsmith. Once again, I felt the pulse of the abyss nearby, the black and the red, its savage teeth closing around me. It called to a feral part of my psyche, the monster Curze had spoken of.

I shook the sensation off. Somewhere in this accursed place were my sons. I had to find them, and hoped that I would not come across them in the many bodies I had seen so far. Most of the remains were skeletal, though some yet retained their withered flesh. They were Curze’s rats, the poor wretches who had tried to conquer the labyrinth before me. All of them had died still clinging to hope, desperate and out of their minds.

I think that was what Curze wanted for me, to be emaciated, brought low and desperate, a plaything to mock and punish when his own loathsome presence became too much for him to bear.

Ferrus was with me still. He didn’t speak any more, he just followed like my shadow. I could hear his armoured footsteps dogging my tread, slow and cumbersome.

‘I think we are getting closer, brother,’ I said to the spectre lurking a few metres away.

His teeth clacked together in what I took to be mocking laughter.

‘Ye of little faith,’ I muttered.

I wandered like this for days, possibly even weeks. I did not sleep, nor did I rest and I couldn’t eat. Vigour left me and I began to waste and atrophy. Soon I would not be so different from Ferrus, no more than an angry shadow doomed to walk these halls forever.

And then I heard the talons.

It began as the light tapping of metal on metal, a sharp tip rapped against the walls, echoing through the labyrinth towards me. I stopped and listened, sensing a change in Curze’s game, a desire to see it ended. The tapping grew louder and transformed into the scraping of claws. I was no longer alone with my slow, creeping madness.

‘Curze,’ I called out, challenging.

Only the scraping metal answered. I thought it might be coming closer. I began to move, trying to locate the source of the sound, walking at first, then breaking into a run.

‘ Vulkan…’ hissed the air in my brother’s goading voice.

I ran after it, all the while the scraping and the tapping clawing its way into my skull, setting my teeth on edge.

I rounded a corner, chasing my instincts, but found only another corridor as gloomy and unremarkable as all the others.

‘ Vulkan…’

It came from behind me and I whirled around as something dark and fast slipped by me. I winced, clutching my side. Taking my hand away I saw blood and the shallow cut my brother had delivered.

‘Come out!’ I bawled, fist clenched and a feral hunch to my shoulders. I barely recognised my own voice, it had grown so animalistic.

Only the scraping answered.

I chased it, a bloodhound on the hunt, but could find no trace of Curze. The line between predator and prey was blurring: at times I gave pursuit; at others, my brother. I reached another junction, another crossroads and tried to get my bearings, but the throbbing in my skull wouldn’t allow it.

‘ Vulkan…’ The voice returned, taunting me.

I roared, thundering my fist into the nearest wall. It barely made a dent. I roared again, arching back my neck, calling ferally into the darkness. The monster within was unleashed and it craved blood.

Curze cut me again, unseen in the dark, and drew a line of glittering rubies across my bicep. It drove me on, fuelled my rage. A third cut opened in my chest, the blood flowing in red tears across my pectoral muscle. A fourth slashed my thigh. I almost caught him that time, but it was like grasping smoke.

‘ Vulkan…’ he whispered, ever scraping, ever goading.

I was bleeding from at least a dozen wounds, my vitae running down my legs and pooling between the gaps in my toes so that I left bloody footprints in my wake. It was only when I looked down at the path I was about to take that I stopped and saw the mark of my passage, the smeared but unmistakable impression of my feet.

I sagged, defeated, nothing to do with my anger but turn it inwards. Closing my eyes, I saw the abyss. I was perched on the very edge, staring down.

A sudden lance of pain in my side drew me back snarling.

‘Don’t worry,’ Curze hissed, claws pinching my shoulder as he thrust his knife into my right side, ‘this won’t kill you.’

I spun around, spitting fury, ready to wrench my brother’s head from his shoulders, but Curze was gone, and I was left grasping at air.

Laughter trailed in his wake, together with the by-now ubiquitous scraping of his talons.

A red film laid over my vision, the filter of my wrath. I was about to go after him, sensing subconsciously that this was what he had planned all along, when I stopped.

Barring my path, I saw him. He was standing right in front of me, as clear and real as my own hand before my face.

Verace, the remembrancer.

‘I have seen you before,’ I whispered, holding my hand out towards him as if to gauge how real or spectral the unassuming man was.

Verace nodded. ‘On Ibsen, now Caldera,’ he said.

‘No, not there.’ I frowned, trying to remember, but my thoughts were muddled with anger. ‘Here…’

‘Where?’ asked Verace.

He was barely a few metres away when I stopped moving towards him.

‘Here,’ I repeated, my memory clearing as he stepped towards me instead. ‘You were with them, the prisoners Curze had me murder.’