He looked at me quizzically. ‘Did you murder them, Vulkan?’

‘I couldn’t save them. You were at the banquet, too. I remember your face.’

‘What else do you remember?’

Verace was scarcely a metre away. I knelt down so we were almost eye to eye. It was the Salamanders’ way.

‘I am a primarch.’ I felt calmer in his presence as the fractured pieces of my mind started to coalesce. ‘I am Vulkan.’

‘Yes, you are. Can you remember what I said to you once?’

‘On Ibsen?’

‘No, elsewhere. On Nocturne.’

Tears were welling in my eyes, as I fervently hoped this was not just another apparition, a cruel trick to send me further into madness.

‘You said,’ I began, my voice choking with emotion, ‘you would watch over us when you could.’

‘Close your eyes, Vulkan.’

I did, and lowered my head for him to put his hand upon it.

‘Be at peace, my son.’

I expected revelation, a flash of light, something. But all that followed was silence. Opening my eyes, I saw that Verace was gone. For a moment I wondered if he had been real, but I felt some strength returning to my limbs and fresh resolve filling me as I stood. The monster within was at bay, firmly shackled. For now at least, my mind was my own again. For how long, I didn’t know. Whatever peace I had been given would not endure in this place. I needed to act.

Curze was broken; I think I knew it back on Kharaatan. He had always been that way, without hope, anger turned within and without. I couldn’t imagine what it must be like to live with that, but then I thought of all the suffering he had caused, the lives he had taken needlessly to satisfy his sadistic appetites. I remembered Nemetor, and all the others he had tortured and killed all in the name of nothing greater than boredom.

My pity was short-lived, my resolve stiffening by the second.

‘You were right,’ I called out to the shadows where I knew my brother was listening. ‘I do think I am better than you. Only a weakling and a coward fights as you do, Konrad. Our father was right to ignore your mewling and discard you. I suspect it sickened him. Only you know true terror, isn’t that right, brother?’ I scowled. ‘So weak, so pathetic. Nostramo didn’t make you the worthless wretch you are, brother. You were languishing in the gutter with the rest of those deviants the moment our father erred in creating you.’ I laughed self-indulgently. ‘It was inevitable that one of us would be flawed, so rotten with human failing that he cannot bear his own presence or the presence of others. You can’t help it, can you? To measure yourself against each of us. How many times have you found yourself wanting after such observation? When was it you realised that blaming your upbringing and your brothers no longer rang true? When did you turn the mirror and see the worthless parody you’ve become?’

No answer came from the darkness, but I could feel my brother’s rising anger as palpably as the iron floor beneath my feet.

‘No one fears you, Konrad. A different name won’t change who you really are. I’ll let you in on a secret… We pity you. All of us. We tolerateyou, because you are our brother. But none of us are afraid of you. For what is there to fear but a petulant child raging at the dark?’

I expected him to come at me, claws bared, but instead I heard a great engine turning beneath me, under the labyrinth itself. With the grinding of heavy gears, a large portion of the wall retracted into the floor. Then another and another. In seconds, a path was laid before me and at the end of it another gate, etched in the same manner as the Iron Labyrinth’s entrance.

I knew I could not have found my way out alone. Once the fog of my feral rage had been lifted, I realised that there was only one way to reach the prize. Curze would have to show me. My brothers and I were made differently from the adopted sons of our Legions. In the process of creating progeny, our father had distilled a portion of his essence and will into all of us. In the Legiones Astartes he fashioned an army of warriors, bred for a single purpose, to unite Terra and then the galaxy. In my brothers and I, he desired generals but also something else; he wanted equals, he wanted sons. Into us he poured his matchless intelligence and peerless ability in bio-engineering. We became more than human; every trait, every chromosome was enhanced and brought to its genetic apex. Strength, speed, martial acumen, tactical ability, initiative, endurance, all of it was magnified by the Emperor’s miraculous science. But like a lens directed at an old painting, it was impossible to enhance one detail without enhancing all the others at the same time. We were more than human, greater than Space Marines, but while our assets were magnified, so too were our flaws.

It didn’t matter at first, not while the Crusade roared on brightly, a comet bringing light to the benighted heavens. Rivalry soon became jealousy, envy; confidence grew into arrogance; wrath turned into homicidal mania. All of us were flawed, because to be human, even enhanced as we were, is to be flawed. A perfect state cannot be rendered from an imperfect design.

Curze was more flawed than most of us. His shortcomings were obvious, his all too human weakness evident in his every word and action. Revenge was in his blood. It clawed at him, a nihilistic desire to turn upon others the hurt that was inflicted upon him. He hated himself and so reflected that hate outwards. But to have the mirror turned back by another, to have one of his hated siblings show to him the self-loathing creature that he already knew he was… that could not go unreckoned. My gaoler had revealed much to me of his inner self during my incarceration. I wondered, in those final days, who in fact was trapped with whom. I had preyed on Curze’s weakness and my brother had shown me the way out. He wanted to be released as much as I did.

As I started walking down the path towards it, the gate began to open. Within I saw the heart of the labyrinth and in the centre of the chamber, my hammer, Dawnbringer. Around it, I saw as I drew closer to the yawning gate, were my sons.

Here then, was where we would end it. Curze and I. One would be free, the other lost forever to damnation.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

No more running

Elias was lying on his back. He was also alone. Momentary concern turned into anger when he realised that it wasn’t only the huntsman he was missing. The fulgurite was gone. Through filth-smeared retinal lenses, he looked up at the roaring cataracts of sewage pouring from the many outflows. Somewhere up there was his enemy. They had the spear. That bastard Salamander, the centurion. He had taken it during the fight before Narek had tackled them both over the edge.

‘Narek.’

After a moment, a breathless-sounding huntsman replied over the vox. He was running.

‘ Our arrangement is concluded,’ he said.

‘I am lying down in a pool of filth, Narek. How is that a satisfactory conclusion?’

‘ You have always lain with filth, Dark Apostle. A life for a life, yours for mine. I now have mine back. Our alliance is null and void. I told you that by turning a blind eye our debt was settled. I’ve decided to conclude my mission alone. My business is with them now. Be glad I let you live,’ he added, before the link was swallowed by static.

Elias didn’t bother activating the warp-flask; he suspected Narek had destroyed it. The huntsman wasn’t coming back, at least not to him.

A cursory scan informed Elias his armour functions were as normal. Some minor damage had been incurred during the fall, but it was negligible. He got up, struggling with only one hand and one arm, the burned limb cradled close to his chest. It hurt like hell, but he used it to fuel his anger.

Narek’s abandonment of his duty would not go unpunished. If he saw him again, Elias would kill the huntsman. Amaresh was supposed to have done it during the attack on the manufactorum, but fate had turned that plan awry. The pleasure of Narek’s demise would have to wait. Regaining the spear was paramount. If the loyalists had it and the human then there was but one move left to them.