by Nick Kyme
He bowed his head by way of mute apology.
‘Why this one?’ a voice asked softly from the shadows.
Vulkan didn’t turn, but he raised his head.
‘What are you still doing here?’ he asked, suddenly stern.
‘I came looking for you, brother,’ said Curze, coming to stand alongside Vulkan.
‘You have found me.’
‘I sense a little choler in you.’ Curze almost sounded wounded by it. ‘Aren’t you pleased to see me?’
Now Vulkan looked at him. His eyes were brimming with undisguised vitriol.
‘Say what it is you came to say and leave me.’
Curze sniffed, as if amused by it all.
‘You didn’t answer my question. Of all the mortals who died to make this world compliant for our Imperium, why does this one matter so much?’
Vulkan turned his gaze forwards again.
‘I preserve life. I am a protector of humanity.’
‘Of course you are, brother. But how you threw yourself in harm’s way for her. It was… inspiring.’ Curze smiled, then the smile became a grin, and unable to maintain the pretence, he began to laugh. ‘No, I’m sorry.’ He stopped laughing, grew serious. ‘I am baffled by it. Yours is a bleeding heart, Vulkan. I know how you care for these weaklings, but what made this one so special that you would mourn her passing so?’
Vulkan turned and was about to answer when the vox-bead in his ear crackled. Neither primarch was wearing his battle-helm, but they were still connected to the battle group.
As one primarch’s eyes widened, the other’s narrowed, and Vulkan knew that Curze was hearing the self-same message.
Vulkan reached out for his brother, seizing him by his gorget and dragging him close. Curze smiled and did not resist.
‘Did you do this?’ Vulkan asked. ‘Did you do this?’ he bellowed when Curze didn’t answer straight away.
The smile thinned and became the dark line of Curze’s pale lips.
‘Yes,’ he hissed, cold eyes staring.
Vulkan let him go, thrusting him back from his sight as he turned away.
‘You killed… all of them.’
Curze feigned confusion. ‘They were our enemies, brother. They took up arms against us, tried to kill us.’
Vulkan faced him again, enraged, almost pleading, abhorred at what Curze had done.
‘Not all, Konrad. You murdered the innocent, the weak. How does that serve anything but a sadistic desire for bloodshed?’
Curze seemed genuinely to muse on that. He frowned. ‘I’m not sure it does, brother. But how is that any different to what you did to that xenos? She was only a child, no threat to you. The rebels of Kharaatan were afforded a quick death. At least I didn’t burn them alive.’
Vulkan had no answer. He had killed the child in anger, out of grief for Seriph and retribution for the damage the rampaging xenos had caused. Perhaps it was also because he hated them, the eldar, for their raiding and the pain they had inflicted on Nocturne.
Curze saw his brother’s doubt.
‘See,’ he said quietly, coming in close to whisper. ‘Our humours are similar enough, are they not, brother?’
Vulkan roared and seized the other primarch, throwing him across the hold.
Curze slid, his armour shrieking as it scored the metal deck beneath. He was already on his feet when Vulkan came at him, and succeeded in blocking a wild punch aimed at his face. He jabbed, catching Vulkan in the chest and jarring his ribs even through his armour. Vulkan grunted, pained, but grabbed Curze’s head and thrust it down into his rising knee.
Curze rocked back, bloody spittle expelled from his mouth. Vulkan tackled him around the waist, giving his brother no time to recover, and brought him down on his back. A savage punch turned Curze’s head and cut open his cheek. He was laughing through blood-rimed teeth. Vulkan hit him again, shuddering his jaw. Curze only laughed louder, but choked a little when his windpipe was being crushed. Vulkan clamped his hands, his iron-hard blacksmiter’s hands, around his brother’s throat.
‘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.’
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 tolerate you, 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.