'Why does it need such ornamentation? Can I kill my enemies better because of it?' There was a smirk upon his face that in retrospect Ferrus was not proud of.

Vulkan had taken it in his stride. 'It's a master weapon with a master's pride lavished upon it,' he admitted. 'When I draw my blade, I want my enemies to know it is a warrior-king's weapon they face, wielded by a warrior-king's hand.'

'Even though you would rather wield a hammer to create than a blade to destroy?'

Vulkan had smiled then and the gesture was warm as a lava glow.

'Nocturneans are pragmatists, my brother. While war is necessary, I will fight, but I hope that one day I can put down my sword.' His eyes flashed with fire. 'Until then I'll keep my killing edge sharp.'

Ferrus had nodded and sheathed the blade, attaching it to his weapons belt. 'I might have need of a knife,' he had said lightly, and touched a silver hand to his glabrous skull, 'for when the serfs don't scrape close enough to the skin.'

They laughed, the Gorgon raucous and ribald, the Drake booming and hearty as they shared a rare moment of levity until the Crusade forced them onto different paths. Until One-Five-Four Four.

The memory of that day vanished in the reflected metal of the blade.

Ferrus had named it Draken in honour of his brother. He needed its bite now and was glad of the spatha's presence in his hand.

Much like in the mausoleum gallery, the walls in the abattoir were polished obsidian. Their mirrored black stretched into infinity. The heads were reflected there, but in the doppelganger world they were sheathed in flesh. Severed arteries pulsed, spewing blood. It spattered his brow, still warm, still living. The wound was fresh cut and it blazed against the neck of the real Ferrus, who fought his revulsion at the spectacle rendered in the darkling glass. They were laughing, the severed bloody heads, all of them. They were laughing at him.

Idiot!

Weakling!

Unwanted son!

This last barb stuck in his throat. Ferrus was remarkable and on Medusa he was a king of kings. None could match him. But when his father came and brought him to seventeen remarkable brothers, he realised his place. Unlike Vulkan who had accepted his position gladly and humbly, Ferrus railed. Was he not the equal of his siblings? When faced with the glory of Horus, the majesty of Sanguinius or even Rogal Dorn's dogged solidity, it was easy to believe that some sons would wait in the wings while the chosen few enacted their father's grand plan for the galaxy.

Ferrus wanted that light for himself, to be equal. He wasn't vain; he merely wanted to be acknowledged. His entire existence until that point had been spent in the pursuit of strength. He could not believe that all of that had been done in an ancillary role. Ferrus could not believe his father had brought him from one shadow to merely consign him to another.

I will make you proud, father. I will prove my worth.

'Come then!' he bellowed, but the challenge was unmet. The creature would snap at him from the shadows and lay him low with a thousand cuts.

An inglorious death.

Ferrus would not submit to that.

But the creature was fast. He had yet to land a blow and striking at flashes would not yield victory. It wanted to goad him, make him lower his guard and open up to a mortal wound.

He caught sudden movement in the corner of his eye and followed it, holding out the spatha defensively, its blade flat and angled away from his body.

It was hard to refrain from violence; his entire existence was violence.

Fury was hammering in his ears like a pealing bell. He focused and the clamour lessened to a dull roar. The creature was close, though it betrayed no sign of its presence. It felt as though Ferrus was somehow bonded to it, possibly through the bite and the taint of its venom. He wanted to hurt it for that, to redress the balance then destroy it. A font of inner rage was lapping at the edges of his consciousness, close to spilling over from thought into action.

He remembered the forge and the solace of working metal. The only salve to his wrath, the one thing that could placate his volcanic anger. In spite of such anger, Ferrus knew patience even if it sometimes felt like he was grasping at smoke. Unlike Vulkan, patience did not come easily to him. It was an early lesson for all forge smiths. Tempering could not be rushed, metal needed time, it needed to wait until it was ready; so would he.

He saw Forgebreaker lying on the ground, but resisted the urge to take it. The creature wanted him to. It waited for him to reach for his hammer.

Vulkan's blade would more than suffice. He trusted his brother's craft.

He should have told him that.

Ferrus closed his eyes and listened. He heard a faint and rasping refrain, almost masked by the ambient noise. The reptilian hiss of the serpent.

Now I'll bait the hook...

Blind, he was vulnerable.

So he lowered his sword, let his arm fall by his side.

He listened harder, allowed his heart to still.

The cacophony of the dead lessened, the serpent's voice intensified and Ferrus perceived two words.

Angel...

It hurt just to think it, as if it carried potency beyond its literal meaning.

Exterminatus...

It was hidden within the multiple susurrations of the creature, enfolded within pitch and cadence like a secret note in a virtuoso's perfect symphony.

It meant nothing to him, yet he felt the weight of its importance like it was a physical thing.

'And the heavens burned with its refulgent beauty...' The words came to Ferrus's lips unbidden, as if belonging to another speaker without the power to articulate them.

Something dark was at work here, something evil that intruded upon the nether realm Ferrus was bound to. He wondered if his captors realised.

There was no time to consider it further, doing so would serve no purpose anyway.

Breath held in his chest, Ferrus heard the scrape of metal that presaged the creature's attack, its whickering tongue. Trusting to instinct, he waited until the creature was almost upon him before cutting. Scaled flesh parted against his sword.

His eyes snapped open like armoured visors and Ferrus thrust again. A snarl of pain rewarded him. As he withdrew Draken from the shadows its edge was coated in gore. It was not blood but an ichorous fluid, heliotrope purple in colour, gripping viscously to the blade.

He had hurt the creature. Its susurrus grew in pitch, a collision of anger and pain. Metal scale scratching against stone faded as the monster retreated into the darkness. Ferrus did not move for several minutes, listening for signs of its return. The wound in his forearm pulsed with foetid vigour, and the silver lustre had almost burned away completely, leaving it raw and agonised. Sheathing the spatha, he reached down and his fingers curled around the haft of Forgebreaker, as if weapon and wielder had sought each other out. Never had his hammer felt so heavy and cumbersome in his grasp.

'Flesh is weak...' he muttered and cursed his impotence in bringing to heel the forces that conspired against him.

The memory of the phrase hidden in the serpent's voice returned to him.

Angel Exterminatus.

As did the sense of malfeasance it carried. Some other sentience had pushed the words into his mind. It didn't feel like a warning, as so much of this crystalline labyrinth did. It was a promise, a prophecy.

Ferrus was too weak to unravel it. A febrile sweat lathered his forehead as he staggered the last few steps through the abattoir and into whatever further horrors awaited him. With the absence of the serpent, the hanging skulls had ceased to chatter and were truly dead once more. The breeze ebbed to nothing and they stopped swinging too, making it easier to avoid touching them. Even their features seemed less like his own, their aspects less daunting. A singular thought drove Ferrus now. Like a Medusan land-shark, he had to keep moving. To stop was to die.

He managed three steps before he fell and darkness took him.

The cool aura of the bone sanctuary was charged with indignant energy.

'It is affecting you,' said the Diviner.

'It should not have been able to breach the ossuary road,' answered the other.

'Careful, I see Khaine manifesting in your mood. Step back upon the path.'

The other was not ready to relent just yet. 'My anger is well-founded. He was not meant to die. Not in here. Not from this.'

The Diviner peered at the other intently. His gaze was contemplative and unfathomable.

'And yet his life is threatened. You lace the waters of fate with enough blood and sooner or later sharks will circle.'

'It should not be here at all.'

'The bone roads we travel are far from secure. Ever since the Fall, you know that. Are you so surprised that something malicious has come?'

About to object, the other's humour changed from choler to melancholy.

'What can be done?'

'Release him and accept failure.'

'We are too close for that.'

The Diviner leaned back against a spur of arching bone and folded his hands upon his lap.

'Then you have to let fate run its course and hope he can defeat that which you have allowed into your cage.'

There was a pause that the Diviner did not choose to fill. He merely watched. The other was displeased, ruled by emotion and thwarted ambition. The Diviner did not need prescience to know what his companion was about to ask.

'What do you see?'

It smacked of desperation.

'Nothing. Everything. I see a billion, billion futures and possible outcomes, some so infinitesimally different you could spend aeons looking for the variation and still not find it.'

'That is not an answer.'

'I advise you to propose a narrower question then.'

'Will he die? Am I undone?'

'Yes and no.'

'Your meaning is needlessly cryptic.'

'We are fighting a war of fate. We two are merely agents in this conflict. Through hubris you allowed the Primordial Annihilator' the other touched the spirit stone around his neck at mention of the name 'a piece of its essence, at least, into your cage and now it is trapped with your intended prey. Chaos has a way of clouding the path of fate.'

The other sagged in his seat of bone. His hand trembled as he felt the protection and anonymity of their sanctuary start to fragment.

A haggard face looked up at the Diviner through hollowed eyes. 'How long before it finds us?'

'Soon.'

Santar knew the warriors bleeding through the shimmering energy shield.

A wake of eldar bodies, the smashed detritus of what had come before together with the remains of their weapon platforms, lay scattered behind the Iron Hands. With Santar leading them, they had driven deep in the enemy defences and were on the cusp of assaulting the shield directly. It blazed before the Morlocks like an azure sun. Santar could almost taste the electric tang on his tongue. Its heat made him want to shade his eyes but he resisted the urge. One last obstacle was left to overcome.

Still wraith-like, they did not appear as incorporeal as they had in the desert basin. Bone-armoured, clutching their curved singing swords, the eldar had sent their best warriors through the shield for them. Their hell-scream hit the Morlocks like a wrecking ball.

Santar yelled through a barricade of teeth, 'Take it!'

His every bone vibrated. The teeth in his skull cracked with the effort of clenching them. Much more punishment and they would shatter.

'I can shout louder,' he promised the warrior bearing down on him.

Santar advanced and turned his forward step into an attacking lunge.

His lightning claw cut through the warrior's blade and carried on into its sternum. Stepping over the eviscerated alien's corpse, he found another.

It leapt his diagonal swipe, weaved inside the counter-thrust and pirouetted alongside the first captain's unprotected flank.

Santar winced as a power-charged blade cut into his battle-plate but there it stuck, unable to penetrate further. An elbow smash, delivered without finesse, broke the eldar's collarbone. An overhead slash would cleave the alien open, but Santar staggered when a second attacker mounted his back. He turned his ear from its hell-scream, reaching up to throw it off, when it jolted and fell.

Half its head and helm were missing, ruptured by an explosive round.

Tarkan's icon winked once on the retinal tac-display.

The sniper's voice issued over the feed. 'Glory to the Gorgon.'

Santar finished the one with the broken collarbone, stamping on its prone form with his armoured boot. Then he wiped the blood leaking from his nose and gave a clipped salute he knew Tarkan would see. Unable to feint and attack as they had in the desert basin, the wraith-like warriors were finding the Morlocks a tougher prospect out in the open. There, the cohesion of the Iron Hands counted for more than agility.

To his left, Santar saw Desaan shoulder-barge an alien into the air then swing up his bolter in his remaining hand to perforate it before it landed a ragged corpse. Santar thought he detected the trace of a smile when their eyes met briefly across the field.

Desaan laughed. 'Like shooting discus.'

'Theatrics will avail you nothing, brother-captain... except perhaps an early grave. Kill them quickly. Give no quarter.'

'Reparation will have to wait,' Desaan replied. 'It appears my enemies are all dead.'

Alien corpses littered the ground, where the casualties amongst the Iron Hands were minimal. They had bloodied the eldar, but more were coming, leaping through the energy shield with athletic and deadly grace.

'Here is your chance,' said Santar, before leaning towards the vocal amplifier in his gorget and grating an order that resounded across the battlefront. 'Consolidate. Iron as one.'

Underfoot, the buried echoes of Ruuman's payload could be felt. Seismic spikes registering on Santar's retinal display confirmed it. A synchronised chrono flashed up in one corner of his vision at the same time.

He cried, 'Advancing!'