Born of Flame

by Nick Kyme

  I screamed. He roared.

  The end was near, my immortal duty almost dispensed at last. I saw my breacher shield, smashed apart and discarded on the deck. Other shields and the bodies of my brothers had joined it.

  We should never have broken our ranks, given in to hate and fury. Ours was a colder creed, one of reason and the inviolability of tactical logic. We had erred, and now our atonement was due.

  Head bowed, I felt a chill progress through me. It matched the cold disembodied sensation of my cybernetics.

  But the blow did not fall. My neck and head remained attached.

  Instead, I heard the klaxon drone of emergency sirens as the arena was flushed with red urgent light.

  Azoth had fought his way from the pit. He was wounded, and his thunder hammer was bloody, but he still stood. He was venting the chamber, releasing everything into the void.

  The World Eaters had not cleansed the pit before. They had purged it in the vacuum of space. My brother had found the mechanism and did so again, only with us and our enemies present.

  In the few seconds I had left, I saw the grim resignation on Azoth’s face. This wasn’t how he had wanted it to end.

  Then I was yanked out by the venting pressure. I felt light and not just because of the absence of air and gravity. Rath’s last defiant roar was stolen in that rushed exhalation, pitched into silence in dark and starless space. He swung for me, out of compulsion from whatever fuelled his rage rather than petty impotence, but the slow cut of his falax missed its mark.

  Las flashes cut through the darkness, spearing us on their incandescent beams. Rath was shredded, so too were my brothers. I saw Azoth impaled through the chest before I was struck a glancing blow.

  I spun, fading in the endless void, just another piece of debris.

  The vista of the battling starships expanded before me, terrible and beautiful at once. Broadsides carved through kilometres of space. Explosions bloomed, abject in their quietude. The Gorgonesque was listing, her engines dead, her shields and armour stripped bare.

  Her warp drives going critical was like the dawning of a miniature sun, a silent flash of awesome light that seared my retinas. I rode the resulting bow wave of pressure, my armour crystallising with hoarfrost even as I felt the explosive burn of the Gorgonesque’s dramatic last breath.

  ‘I remember little more after that,’ I told my accusers, the Obstinate’s black deck resolving before me as I left the memory of the Retiarius behind, ‘save waking in your apothecarion and being marched to this hangar bay for summary judgement.’ I could not keep the bitterness from my voice.

  ‘You believe you are being treated harshly, Legionary Gallikus?’

  I declined to reply, my head bowed with the cold weight of the axe blade upon my neck. The dead stares of my decapitated brothers frozen on the deck seemed mocking. And I was about to join them.

  ‘Before you kill me,’ I said at length, ‘tell me, did we break the blockade?’

  My accuser came forwards into the light. I heard some gesture he made, the whirring of old servos in a wrist or elbow, and felt the pressure against my neck ease. I looked up into the face of an Iron Father, but not one that I recognised.

  He was badly scarred and his left cheek and part of his skull shone dully in the half-light. A tight grey beard like wire wool was shaved into a speartip on a jutting, imperious chin. The venerable Iron Father looked down upon me like I was the dirty oil he had to scrape from his weapons.

  ‘We failed,’ he replied. ‘We were weak.’

  There were two others with him, a Salamander and one of the Raven Guard.

  ‘This is barbaric…’ I heard the son of Vulkan mutter, despite the low hum of the Obstinate’s impulse engines partly masking his voice. His eyes flared like burning coals.

  The Raven Guard gently raised his hand, warning the Salamander to silence, and they stepped back as one. This was Iron Hands business, conducted in the Medusan way as our father had taught us.

  I was finding it hard to process the situation, the incongruous presence of the other Legion warriors, the mood of fatalism emanating from the Iron Father. Then there was the last figure in the room with me, my would-be executioner, one I felt I recognized and that stirred a disquiet in me that I could not explain at the time.

  ‘Then what are our primarch’s commands? Is Horus defeated? Is Isstvan still contested?’ I had so many questions. ‘What of the Retiarius?’

  The Iron Father shook his head, sadly. ‘It’s over, Legionary Gallikus. You were the sole survivor of the attack on the Retiarius. The war for Isstvan is done. We lost…’ He paused, as if to telegraph the blow that was coming so I could be ready for it. ‘Ferrus Manus is dead.’

  ‘Dead?’ I tried to rise from my knees but a strong hand held me down. ‘Release me!’ I snapped, turning to meet the haunted eyes of an old friend. For a moment, I let slip my other concerns. ‘Azoth?’

  He gave no recognition of the fact I had just spoken his name. I thought he had died and yet here he was, aboard the Obstinate. But something was very wrong. His flesh looked cold, gelid, like the severed heads in front of me. Azoth’s fire had been extinguished. Ice filled his veins and countenance. A dead man stood before me with the axe, dead and yet animate, bereft of any sense of cognition that would mark him out as the warrior I once knew.

  ‘What have you done?’

  ‘What was necessary. Horus defeated us, scattered us. Shattered our Legions.’

  Looking back at the Iron Father, I saw he held my breacher shield. It had been reforged, made whole, even as we ourselves had fractured.

  ‘You have erred,’ he said, ‘and so you must atone…’

  I took the proffered shield, stunned into silence by the revelations I had just heard.

  The Iron Father met my gaze and I saw the determination in his eyes, the bitterness and soul-shriving desire for revenge.

  ‘Such is the fate of all Immortals…’ uttered a voice behind me. The voice of Azoth, the echo of our damnation.

  SONS OF THE FORGE

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  The XVIII Legion, ‘Salamanders’

  VULKAN, The Lord of Drakes, Primarch of the Salamanders

  T’KELL, Forgemaster, now named Forgefather of Nocturne

  ZAU’ULL, ‘Firefather’, Igniax Chaplain

  RAHZ OBEK, ‘Firebearer’, Firedrakes captain

  ZANDU, ‘Firefist’, Firedrakes sergeant

  AK’NUN XEN, ‘Flamesmote’, Firedrake

  GOR’OG KRASK, ‘Wyvern’, Firedrake

  ZEB’DU VARR, ‘Pyrus’, Firedrake

  ASHAX, Firedrakes sergeant

  PHOKAN, Firedrake

  GAIRON, Firedrake

  RAIOS, Firedrake

  BA’DURAK, Firedrake

  RATH, Firedrake

  VOTAN, Firedrake

  FAI’SHO, Firedrake, Apothecary

  REYNE, Shipmaster of the Chalice of Fire

  The Shattered Legions

  KASTIGAN ULOK, Iron Father of the X Legion, commander of the Obstinate

  AHREM GALLIKUS AZOTH, Medusan Immortal

  SAURIAN, Apothecary of the XVIII Legion

  MORIKAN, The Silent’, warrior of the XIX Legion

  The XVI Legion, ‘Sons of Horus’

  VOSTO KURNAN, Captain

  RAYKO SOLOMUS, Legionary torturer

  MENATUS

  NEVOK

  UZIEL

  HAJUK

  MORVEK

  EZRIAH

  KREDE

  EZREMAS

  GHODAK

  HARKUS

  RENK, Apothecary

  The Dark Mechanicum

  REGULUS, Adept, appointed envoy to the Warmaster

  KRONUS VI, Castellax battle automata

  THE VOW

  ‘What is the meaning of the sacrifice?’

  Firefather’s words echoed around a hollow chamber, the deep bass of his voice rebounding off the walls of dark obsidian.

  ‘To live when others died,’
his supplicants replied as one. Solemnly, speaking with reverence... and anger. ‘To never know the pain of our greatest betrayal. To never feel the bite of our reflected shame in the traitor’s knife. To have never bled upon the black sands of Isstvan Five.’

  Silence fell as their voices faded into a dull murmur of half-echoes.

  ‘What is our purpose?’ Firefather gripped the haft of a weapon and watched his brothers do the same.

  ‘To remain stoic and eschew all pride. To be the wardens and protectors.’

  Firefather stood. His armoured form was reflected in obsidian and his kneeling brothers mirrored him also.

  ‘And what is our curse?’ he put to them, his voice rising as the mace head of his crozius burst into flame. Fifty warriors stood coldly in its burning aura, their drake scale seemingly alive in the snapping flames.

  ‘To never know glory. To be denied vengeance.’

  Firefather held his burning crozius aloft before plunging it into an iron cradle of oil. Ignition was instant and violent. It sent shuddering firelight throughout the chamber, revealing the statues of fallen heroes, carved from onyx and silently judging.

  ‘And who are we?’ he asked, bellowing.

  ‘We are the Unscarred!’ they declared in a roar. ‘Sons of Nocturne. Salamanders and Firedrakes. Vulkan’s blood, and we shall never fail in our duty!’

  An iron lid was closed over the cradle and the flame doused, so too the crozius in Firefather’s hand.

  Darkness returned and the mood became sombre again.

  ‘That is the meaning of sacrifice...’ uttered Firefather quietly, turning as he left the chamber through its only archway. ‘Dismissed.’

  PROLOGUE

  An artefact

  They called him an artisan, though Vulkan knew the truth of it. He was a warsmith, no different to his brothers Ferrus and Perturabo. Inside the vault, he had wrought terrible wonders all in the name of that calling, wonders which he now wanted T’kell to destroy.

  ‘You are the first and only one of my sons to see this vault,’ Vulkan said to his Forgemaster. ‘Held safe within its walls is every artefact I have ever forged.’

  Muttering the name of the first drake, Vulkan lit the torches around the chamber, and between the shadows the miracles he had created were revealed in wan light. Despite the darkness, his eyes saw everything, every weapon he had ever made.

  He alone knew all of their names, for he had chosen each one.

  Song of Entropy.

  Igneous Hammer.

  Anvil of Desolation.

  Poetic, perhaps. Indulgent, certainly. Names had power, Vulkan knew. To name a thing was to give it identity, resonance. To name a thing was to make it real, tangible and to breathe life into the lifeless. No mere things of steel or adamantium these – they were Vulkan’s legacy to his sons and more revealing of his character than any tome or memoir.

  And even if he should return from Isstvan V, they all had to be destroyed. The galaxy had changed. It was no longer a safe place for miracles, for evil had a way of twisting the miraculous into something terrible.

  ‘Such wonders…’ breathed T’kell, and Vulkan saw a kind of fear in his son’s eyes as well as awe.

  Vulkan was going to war, for he too was an instrument of destruction, only one that had been forged by his father’s hammer upon an anvil of science and apotheosis. He wondered then if the Emperor ever had the same doubts about His creations. If He were to be given a choice, would He too destroy what He had created? Vulkan supposed it was too late for that now, or perhaps that was what he, Ferrus, Corax, Perturabo and the others were doing by bringing Horus to heel? How Konrad must be laughing now…

  Vulkan had not realised his thoughts had made him pause, his gauntleted fingers poised to touch the haft of his spear, until T’kell spoke again.

  ‘I hope your indecision represents a change of heart, primarch,’ said the Forgemaster.

  If only he knew the primarch’s inner turmoil in that moment; but then, Vulkan supposed, it was better that he did not.

  ‘It does not. The artefacts must be destroyed. I am bound for Isstvan, so cannot do it myself, which is why you must, T’kell.’

  ‘Then what is wrong, primarch?’

  Instead of the truth, Vulkan settled on a lie. He did not like lying to his sons, but it was small compared to the lies that had begun to unfold across the nascent Imperium, lies of false gods and brothers killing brothers. Surely these were greater lies, for to consider them anything else was beyond countenance.

  ‘I believed I had chosen poorly, although this feels right,’ he said, gripping the hammer Dawnbringer. ‘Fitting. Perhaps its epithet will see my brother illuminated after all.’

  It felt like a hollow thing to say. Ever since his last meeting with Horus, Vulkan knew deep down that another encounter between them would end in blood. The greater lies, he reminded himself, within which were woven a thread of truth.

  ‘Primarch, I beseech you,’ said T’kell, with something like desperation in his voice as he bowed on one knee. ‘Please do not ask me to do this. At least save something.’

  Vulkan would have remonstrated with his Forgemaster for such weakness had he not seen T’kell’s actions for what they truly were: hope. He still believed that his father’s creations could be used for good, to end war.

  ‘There are weapons here that can destroy worlds, my son,’ he said, regarding the inside of the vault.

  ‘Or save them from destruction,’ T’kell replied, ‘in the right hands.’

  ‘Mine?’ asked Vulkan, looking down to meet T’kell’s gaze. He saw the plea in his eyes, but also the pride. It gave Vulkan hope.

  ‘Yes! Or Lord Dorn, or Guilliman. Even Russ!’

  ‘Rise, Forgemaster. I would not have one of my sons beg me on his knees,’ said Vulkan, and had to fight down his anger at seeing a Salamanders legionary so humbled. I am a teacher, he thought to himself, not a king to be paid fealty to. Leave that pomposity to Guilliman – I’ll have none of it.

  ‘I am driven to it, primarch,’ T’kell replied, but was back on his feet again.

  Yes, thought Vulkan, T’kell is the right choice. If there is even a chance that my craft can be put to good use in spite of what is to come, then T’kell is a worthy custodian of that charge.

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘My lord?’

  Vulkan faced him.

  ‘I said, very well. Something should remain. If I destroy everything, then I have given up on hope and on seeing loyalty and honour endure in my brothers. I won’t do that.’

  T’kell looked relieved, but Vulkan knew his mood would change as soon as he gave his next order.

  ‘You are to remain here, T’kell. You won’t come to the Isstvan System – your place is now on Nocturne and Prometheus.’

  ‘But, primarch–’

  ‘Do not defy me a second time,’ Vulkan warned. ‘I am not that tolerant.’ T’kell bowed his head.

  He had planned on taking the Forgemaster with him, but he was glad now that he had an excuse not to. Vulkan felt the task his father had appointed them on Isstvan ill-omened. It was not because Horus was an excellent military leader, or a greater warrior – there were both better leaders and greater warriors amongst his brothers – it was the change in the Warmaster’s spirit that bothered Vulkan the most, and all that it portended. If he could change, if the Crusade could alter his perception…

  Vulkan banished these thoughts. Nothing would change what was to come, but this – what he was about to ask T’kell to do – this he could still influence.

  ‘You shall become Forgefather, and keeper of the artefacts in this vault.’

  ‘Forgefather?’ said T’kell, confusion written upon his face. ‘Am I not your Forgemaster, my lord?’

  ‘Of course. A legionary can be more than one thing, T’kell. I am entrusting you with this duty, just as I entrusted you with the vault.’

  ‘What duty, primarch? Name it, and it shall be done.’

  ‘To a
ct as custodian. To swear you will protect these artefacts and should anything happen to me, ensure they are well hidden, far from those who would seek to use them poorly.’

  Again, Vulkan saw the pride in his son’s eyes, but also the pain. He had no desire to leave his primarch’s side, but would do it anyway. That’s how Vulkan knew he had chosen well.

  T’kell saluted fervently. ‘I swear it, Lord Vulkan.’

  ‘Good. Choose seven to remain, and only seven. One for each of our realms on Nocturne.’

  ‘There are thousands in here, primarch. How can I possibly–’

  ‘Indeed there are,’ said Vulkan. As he armoured himself for war, Vulkan found his mind drifting back to his last meeting with Horus. He would need to have words with Ferrus before this was begun. The Gorgon had a temper not unlike the volcanic peaks of Medusa, but he would need to channel that before entering into a confrontation with Horus and the other renegades. In his abstraction, he had almost forgotten T’kell, but as he was leaving, he reminded him again of what he would allow.

  ‘Seven, Forgefather, that is what your primarch decrees. I go to join with Ferrus’ fleet.’ He felt a deep sense of foreboding that he kept from his son, that this would be the last time he would see T’kell or the vault. ‘See it is done before I return.’

  ONE

  Mustering the garrison

  A conflagration raged across the dark landscape of the ship’s furnace. Thrust up from the ground the twisted silhouettes of the artefacts reminded T’kell of broken fingers. Tendrils of flame roamed the armourglass chamber like hungry scavengers, devouring everything and spitting forth smoke to obscure this grim vista of uncreation. It tasted acrid and bitter, rising up in all consuming fumes. Through the gaps in the smoke, snatches of structure and form were revealed. A blade blackened by fire, melting. A hull twisted by the immense temperature of the furnace.

  Everything burned, and he was the architect of it.