The death of hope. That is what the XVII Legion tried to achieve, and they came close – so very close. The citizens of Calth were innocent bystanders in a war that they had no hope of understanding, and yet they suffered worst of all.


 	But hope did not die. In the shadowed caverns beneath the ravaged surface, those of us who were left regrouped and continued the fight. We all knew that as long as we held out, the XVII had failed in their primary goal: they did not break the people of Calth. Far from it, in fact.


 	Hope clung to life in the caverns like a beacon, and a beacon always burns most brightly in the darkest depths of night. That seems an appropriate analogy, given what was yet to come.
I shake the bolt round about the inside of my armoured fist. Like a die, it rattles. Like a die, it awaits an outcome. An outcome unknowable in the enclosed space of my gauntlet, a realisation it can find only in the breech of the pistol that sits brusque and empty upon my belt. I feel its inevitability, hot in my grasp, as though it might burn a hole through my ceramite palm. Heavy with the impending doom it carries, the round is a waiting demonstration of form and function – it aches perfection. Like the Ultramarines themselves, it was crafted for one purpose: to take life.

 	Who am I to deny such imminence? Who am I?

 	My name – for all that it matters – is Hylas Pelion. My brothers call me ‘Pelion the Lesser’, for there have been others of that name who have done more to earn their place in our Legion’s history. My achievements are many, but I stand pauldron to pauldron with champions and heroes every day, for Guilliman’s sons are blessed with many honours and a victorious tradition. My pistol has consigned many a xenos abomination to death; the edge of my blade is the world’s end to all who refuse the Emperor’s beneficent offer of unification. For my small part in the Imperium’s rebuilding, I have earned the Chapter rank of Honorarius.

 	My Chapter Master died in defence of noble Calth. Sergeant Arcadas leads those left of the 82nd Company as I forge ahead with my blade, cutting a path through new enemies. Brother Molossus bears the company’s tattered standard. There is little room to manoeuvre the mighty banner in the cragged confines of Calth’s labyrinthine arcologies, but this matters little to Molossus. The standard is a part of him, the most honourable part, it seems – like so many who carry such a burden, he would rather lose the arm that bears the banner than the banner itself.

 	Fighting from the front, we have taken the arcology known as Tantoraem. Arcology Magnesi had been our shelter from the solar storm – the cool darkness of the rocky enclave was a subterranean womb, where the indomitable people of Calth might begin again. The sunblind and the scarred, the scorched and the marked, they refused the let the blessed memory of their home world die.

 	Calth lived on. This tiny corner of Ultramar endured.

 	Over time, columned caverns became centres of basic industry and food production. Winding catacombs became thoroughfares, lined with improvised habs and grottos. Archways became sentry posts and vaulted caves housed the reverential masses, who gathered to give thanks to the Legiones Astartes – Guilliman’s sons, the Ultramarines who had stayed behind. It mattered not that we too had been left behind on ailing Calth. Our presence alone seemed to give the survivors hope and purpose. They shared our determination to fight for what was left of their world.

 	Our number fought on, as we were bred to do. The battle for Calth descended into an underground war. The enemy was the same: our Word Bearer cousins, carrying with them a hatred unsought and the shame of our fraternal failure. They had become dark beacons to weak-minded multitudes, and held congress with daemons. A new camaraderie to replace the old, perhaps? The stakes were the same and had never been higher. We fought for the bodies and souls of our small empire. We were the shield upon which the enemy smashed itself, desperate for innocent blood.

 	In defence of that blood, we took our fight into the depths – to the arcologies and the darkness beyond. We crafted the saviour stone of our havens into watchposts, tactical redoubts and the Arcropolis – the Ultramarines fort that dominated the dome-primaris of the Magnesi system.

 	Our conquering instinct – an irrepressible genetic trait – took us through the rubble, smoke and ruin. As ever, my sword led the way, since ammunition for our ranged weapons was by now precious and scarce. It took me and my brothers into the Thurcyon and Edanthe arcologies. The battles were bloody and the tunnels confined, with sword and combat shield the order of both day and night. Like a blue torrent through the foe-choked branches and systems, we battered and stabbed our way to untidy victories.

 	Thurcyon held for us Dusa Dactyl, the Kreedstress of the Edictae-Ghuul. Her cultist maniacs worshipped their Word Bearer overlords – for them it was a dubious yet all-encompassing honour, securing them a martyr’s place in some after-hell of their own devising.

 	Edanthe was a nightmare. A nest of otherworldly beasts, summoned to do our former kinsmen’s bidding. What they lacked in the cultists’ suicidal fanaticism, they more than made up for with murderous savagery. Things of every shape and size, monsters of fang and flame and horn and scale. Creatures crafted of whim. Some were death-dealing creations of infernal perfection while others were unshapely fantasies of a disturbed mind. A madness in flesh, forced upon my eyes. I made scabbards of the wretched beasts, my sword slipping in and out of their nightmare forms. They died hard, sapping our precious strength, before screeching back to inexistence.

 	Cutting through the mobs and monstrosities, we finally faced our dark brothers once more. Their plate was a parody in ceramite; seductive sigils of forbidden lore snaked their way across the legionary red. Spikes, shanks and skewers erupted from their armour, cutting serrated silhouettes in the darkness. Worst of all was the pinpoint loathing in their eyes – their faces were masks of grinning derangement, where murderous fantasies were willed into reality.

 	We ended all but one, the same soul escaping our wrath in both systems.

 	A bearer of the word. A trader in lies. A living untruth known as Ungol Shax.

 	I had faced Ungol Shax on the slaughterfields of Komesh but his throat eluded the edge of my blade. I would have silenced the bastard altogether, if it hadn’t have been for the frothing sea of blood and madness rising and falling before my weapons. Cultists. I spit the word.

 	One after another, in a continuous train of insanity, the Chaplain’s knife-disciples threw themselves before him. Each met the blessed release of my blade or the demolishing crash of my pistol. Each death kept me seconds from my enemy’s end. When the poison-star Veridian razed the very memory of Calth from the surface of the dying world, Ungol Shax and his foetid minions followed us into the deeps. His raving multitudes swarmed the Thurcyon and Edanthe arcologies. They bred and sacrificed in equal measure, bringing forth monsters from the shadows. It took us the better part of a year to clear the systems and bring silence to the darkness once more.

 	The tetrarch had warned against further expansion. He had fought alongside the legendary Ventanus on the surface and was the best of our blades, but also had a gift for arithmata and reckoning. He had the measure of a man with but a glance, and knew his worth with blade, boltgun or fusil mere moments into his company. Besides the primarch himself, he was the best tactical mind for several sectors – perhaps the whole of Ultramar – and despite having little to work with beneath the surface of Calth, had created an unfaltering enclave of order, sanity and survival amidst the chaos of war and want.

 	He was not above compassion either. Those that had fled the fallen arcologies, that had run the gauntlet of daemon-haunted caves and had held out in small groups until they could hold out no more – they were welcomed through the collapsed arches of Arcology Magnesi. Not just the fighting men and women, and those that might be trained as such, but the bedraggled trickle of innocents too. The young, the aged, the infirm and the injured: all were welcome to our dwindling supplies.

 	We could only hold so much ground, however. The tetrarch’s strategic calculations said so. It was better to hold three arcology systems firmly in our grip, denied to the enemy, than fail to hold five or more and allow Word Bearers and their creed-slaves to pour in, flooding the system once more with death and destruction. Whereas rock and vigilance were enough to keep cultists and brother-betrayers from the territory that we’d carved, the daemon-things were something else. Frequent patrols through our own arcologies became necessary. Screams of the awoken would report eaten limbs and the scamper of tiny monstros-ities into the shadows. Outbreaks of violence and cluster-killings amongst the survivors were ascribed to the whisperings of dark entities. Strange contagions swept through the crowded arcologies but were eventually traced back to water supplies contaminated by daemon feculence.

 	These obscenities were thought to originate from Tantoraem, a nearby arcology system overrun with Word Bearers and their filthy allies. During our early fortification of Arcology Magnesi, the tetrarch had ordered the connecting mag-lev tunnels collapsed, sealing off the hab-branch of caves and caverns. What had been formerly thought of as tactically unadvisable became a strategic necessity: Tantoraem had to be cleansed for Magnesi to be safe, in the same way that the Fiend of Abydox and its greenskin empire could not be tolerated on Ultramar’s borders, when the empire was still young.

 	The order was given. With Sergeant Arcadas and Brother Molossus at my side, and the standard of the 82nd Company held high above the helms of the thirty battle-brothers making up the expedition force, I led the invasion of Arcology Tantoraem.

 	Our blades cut through the swarming cultists. Our battered plate took all of the hatred they had to offer. Behind, the fighting men and women of the amalgamated Magnesi garrison – former Imperial Army soldiers and members of various decimated defence force contingents – lit up the darkness with power-conserving streams of las-fire from their fusils.

 	Once again, I feel the presence of Ungol Shax. There was something about the arcology’s rancid defences, something familiar, like an echo of the nightmare that had been Edanthe and Thurcyon. Ultramarines were lost and many among the amalgamates perished. Victory had its price – as it always does – but eventually Arcology Tantoraem was ours. The cavern-complex now lies carpeted with slaughtered cultists, ritually-summoned spawn and the cardinal colours of armoured cadavers – the Word Bearers who brought the righteous fury of Guilliman’s Legion down upon themselves.

 	At the very rear of the Tantoraem system, in the far reaches of the hell-hole’s pillared caverns, I discover that Ungol Shax has once again eluded me. Instead I find the remaining few who would stand in the way of victory absolute.

 	I shake the bolt round about the inside of my armoured fist. Like a die, it rattles. Like a die, it awaits an outcome. An outcome unknowable in the enclosed space of my gauntlet.

 	I look up. Standing in the shallows of a groundwater lake is a battle-brother in red. His plate is splattered with the blood of innocents, but you wouldn’t know. The gore has soaked into the paint, in the same way that some wayward darkness has saturated his soul. He clutches a boltgun – it clunks its emptiness about the chamber with every twitch of the recreant’s ceramite finger. The hollow sound of defeat.

 	He stares into the shallows, his sallow face defiant and fearless. There is shame there; not for what he has done, but rather shame for what he has failed to do. A bitter vexation that plays out upon his cracked and mumbling lips. He is surrounded. Five believers who, their weapons being spent also, have taken to clutching and touching the armoured Word Bearer, like an honoured statue or protective totem. They whisper murderous encouragement and traitor-faith to their lord. They think their demigods and monsters will save them still.

 	One among them is the cultist leader Seid Phegl, Cognosci of the Red Munion. I’ve encountered him before, in the dark and the deep – he came to Calth at the head of ten thousand fools, bought with lies and the simple tricks of beings from the beyond.

 	The Word Bearer turns to look into the lake depths. He watches the dark water lap against the craggy walls, then turns back to the rest of the Ultramarines lining the shore.

 	There will be no escape for him. He knows it, and the boltgun tumbles into the water. The reaction from the cultists is instantaneous, like a sudden affliction. They hiss and writhe about his impassive, armoured form. There are tears. There is fear.

 	‘A word with you, cousin,’ I call out across the water.

 	The Word Bearer bridles. His acolytes haul at his ceramite limbs, but to no avail. He takes one last lingering look into the lake. My free hand unconsciously comes to rest upon the pommel of my sword. If my enemy attempts an escape, then I want to be ready.

 	He doesn’t, though. Shrugging off his followers like a second skin, he strides through the shallows towards me. I hear the creak of my brothers’ plate. Brother Phornax – formerly of the Librarius, and therefore invaluable in his knowledge of the Word Bearers immaterial allies – draws up beside me. Molossus has his hand upon the hilt of his chainsword. Sergeant Arcadas’s all-but-empty boltgun comes level with his helmet optics.

 	‘Pelion…’

 	‘I have this, sergeant,’ I tell him.

 	My enemy’s eyes are furtive and furious, but they are finally fixed upon my own. Arcadas won’t back down, though. ‘That’s far enough,’ he tells the Word Bearer.

 	The legionary slows but keeps coming. His face screws up with spite, barely suppressed.

 	‘It is you who have gone as far as you’re going to go, Ultramarine.’

 	Arcadas steps forward, the muzzle of his bolter aiming at the Word Bearer’s face. I extend two digits of my gauntlet and gently push the boltgun down towards the ground.

 	‘Our brother seems to have something to say,’ I announce, meeting the Word Bearer’s wretched gaze once more. ‘Let’s hear him out.’

 	‘I have but one thing to say to you, son of Ultramar,’ the forsaken Space Marine spits back.

 	He was fast. He was very fast. A knife – some kind of kris or sacrificial blade, like so many of them carried now. It was there, suddenly between us. Perhaps it had been mag-locked to the rear of his belt, or perhaps it had been passed to him by one of his tactual followers. It was there, regardless, blood-stained and sharpened on the thousand souls it had taken in the service of some infernal pact.

 	It would have claimed my soul, of that I have no doubt – but fast as he was, I was faster.

 	The Word Bearer’s face had no sooner formed the ugly mask of murderous intention, than my sword cleared its scabbard. The blade, light in my grip, sweeps down, taking the Word Bearer’s hand off at the wrist. In shock, the renegade instinctively reaches for the gushing stump with his other hand. Before both gauntlet and knife clatter to the stone floor, my short blade streaks around and slices the other off as well.

 	Moments pass. My blade is still – but ready – and sings with the ruthless execution of the manoeuvre. The Word Bearer stumbles back into the shallows, staring down at his armoured stumps. Blood squirts into the groundwater lake.

 	His acolytes need no order. They throw themselves at me.

 	Seid Phegl, Cognosci of the Red Munion, is suddenly torn back, lost in the bloody crash of a single bolt round from Sergeant Arcadas’s gun.

 	‘Hold!’ I order, such human detritus being not worthy of our precious ammunition. ‘Blades only.’

 	The cultists come at me, and they die. Thrusts and sweeps, as fluid and economical as they are brutal, tear through their squalid forms. The Word Bearer splashes down onto his knees and looks up at me. Bodies, and parts thereof, fall about him.

 	‘As far as we’re going to go…’ I say. ‘Well, we’re still going, cousin, despite the sick attempt by your wayward Legion to destroy us. It’s more than I can say for you. Now you’ll hear me out – where is your master, Ungol Shax?’

 	He sneers. ‘You really think my last words in this universe will be the answers to your questions, Ultramarine?’

 	‘They will be if you desire a clean death. A death befitting a Space Marine, and not some carcass of corrupted meat that lost its way to false enlightenment.’

 	‘Go suckle at your father’s teat, boy,’ the Word Bearer seethes. ‘You are but a babe in the great affairs of the galaxy and your sire the wet nurse of calamity.’

 	‘Where is Ungol Shax, Word Bearer?’ I repeat, struggling to hold my temper.

 	The renegade goes on. ‘Those that fear the great truths of our times are not long for this universe.’

 	‘Longer than you, cousin,’ I tell him. I nod to Molossus, who has unclipped his chainsword and guns the weapon to a throaty roar.

 	‘Belay that,’ a commanding voice booms from behind us.

 	I turn. Through the gloom strides the tetrarch himself. Tauro Nicodemus – Prince of Saramanth, Tetrarch of Ultramar, Champion of Roboute Guilliman himself – now, lowly master of Arcology Magnesi. However, this does not prevent Nicodemus from presenting himself with a more regal bearing. His plate is polished to perfection. His weapons gleam care and lethal proficiency. The plume of his helm, clutched under one armoured arm matches his pteruges and scarlet mantle. The cloak follows him like a river of blood, through the damp darkness of the caves, flapping aside to reveal the bejewelled Crux Aureas – the mark of a champion.

 	To the unknowing eye, such ceremony might appear as an exercise in vanity. Serfs and seneschals should have more important duties to attend to in times of war than lacquering the filigree of their tetrarch’s pauldrons. As in all things, Nicodemus has prioritised strategy over self-importance. Like the arcology itself, men’s souls required fortification. The people of Calth – decimated and returned to the mean existence of survival underground – need a symbol of pride and defiance. There are no better symbols of Ultramar’s superiority and grandeur in the face of catastrophe than the Legiones Astartes themselves. Nicodemus needs them to feel that dignity and worth, to know that they are so much, despite having so little. There is still a war to be fought, and the tetrarch cannot allow the emptiness of men’s hearts to fill with defeat, for then the war would be lost before it had even begun.

 	Nicodemus has been blessed with the primarch’s eyes, and I find the familiar, reproving gaze of Guilliman upon me.

 	‘The Seventeenth Legion are our cousins no more,’ the tetrarch says, marching up and flanked by two honour guards. He passes his helmet on and holds out his gleaming gauntlets. The first Ultramarine places a master-crafted bolt pistol in his hand; the other a magazine of precious ammunition. ‘They are the heralds of their own oblivion. Their words hold no interest for us. The only deed to warrant our attention is their death, and we shall be the instrument thereof.’

 	Tauro Nicodemus steps up to the kneeling Word Bearer. The renegade goes to speak but the tetrarch puts a single bolt through his skull before the words escape his cracked lips. The shot echoes about the cave.

 	‘Am I understood?’ he asks.

 	‘Yes, tetrarch,’ the Ultramarines answer in unison.

 	Nicodemus nods. ‘Sergeant Arcadas.’

 	‘Yes, my lord.’

 	‘The 82nd Company’s work here is done,’ he says. ‘Have your men gather what ammunition remains – rounds, flasks and power packs. Collect it bolt by bolt, if you have to. Anything we can send back at these armoured mongrels upon their return. Leave everything else to rot.’

 	‘Yes, sir.’

 	Arcadas, Molossus and the Ultramarines go to disperse.

 	‘Tetrarch,’ I say.

 	‘Speak,’ Nicodemus replies, the word knowing and heavy. Molossus hovers with his tattered banner, while the sergeant searches the corpse-plate of a nearby Word Bearer, watching the storm between his masters quietly unfold.

 	‘Would it not further the Legion’s interest to hold this arcology?’ I ask. ‘If we abandon it, won’t the enemy return over time to threaten our security once more?’

 	‘I forgive you your conquering spirit, brother,’ Nicodemus says, ‘for it burns as bright as any in Ultramar. The time for empire building will come, trust me, but we are not building empires here. This is attrition. This is survival. We look to more than just the Legion’s interests. The people come first. We were bred in service of humanity, not to simply gratify our own warrior desires.’

 	‘Ungol Shax was here,’ I counter. ‘He will be a threat to the people and their survival until we end him.’

 	‘So you would clear out arcology after arcology in your search for this one enemy, building a guttering empire in the darkness as you go,’ the tetrarch says. ‘What of the other diseased minds that will prey upon our vulnerability in the meantime? We don’t presently have the numbers to hold that much territory.’

 	‘We are Ultramarines…’ I venture. Nicodemus narrows his eyes.

 	‘You do not need to tell me that, Pelion. We are Ultramarines and we could do it, but ask yourself whether we should do it. It is a question you ought consider. For example, I do not know what you expected to gain from engaging the enemy in conversation there.’

 	His tone confuses me. ‘I was drawing information from the prisoner, tetrarch.’

 	‘No Hylas. This man had no information to give you. You were pointlessly toying with him, as though you expect to create fear in the hearts of such men with petty threats of violence and the promise of an executioner’s mercy. They have turned from the Emperor’s wisdom and consigned themselves to damnation. They are already living out their greatest fear. Your only duty is to end such abomination, and end it quickly. You think you were drawing information from him, while he drew you further into his lies and ignorance. The only words that the Seventeenth Legion now bear are poison.’

 	‘Tetrarch–’

 	‘Enough,’ Nicodemus commands. ‘We will not play their games in the shadows. It is what the Word Bearers want for us, and they wait for us there. You will stand to your post, Honorarius Pelion, and not be drawn into such dark–’

 	A sudden splashing from the far reaches of the groundwater lake attracts the attention of every Ultramarine in the chamber. Someone, or something, is surfacing.

 	Sergeant Arcadas and the tetrarch’s honour guard bring up their bolters in a flash, and once more Molossus guns his chainsword into life. Tauro Nicodemus, still with pistol in hand, stares into the dark waters. It is I, however, leading with the short blade of my sword, that first advances into the shallows.

 	A spiked and armoured shape breaks the surface. It gasps and gurgles in the icy, gritty water, hauling itself up from the depths and over the jagged rocky bed of the lake. The colour of the plate identifies it as an enemy. A Word Bearer.

 	As I close on the prone form, my suit lamps shine upon a scarred and shaven head. He brings up his chin and sputters the remaining water from his multi-lungs, and sharp, Colchisian features greet the illumination.

 	I halt in the shallows when I see his eyes. They are gone.

 	The flesh about the empty sockets is bloody and botched. His eyes have either been taken by another, or he has cut them out himself. The senseless barbarism and despoliation of the Emperor’s flesh disgusts me.

 	The Word Bearer senses the movement about him and reaches out for my armoured leg.

 	‘Friend?’ he coughs.

 	I wade behind my enemy. My blade slips beneath the renegade’s chin and rests against his inviting throat.

 	‘Foe,’ I correct him.

 	The Word Bearer finds his way to a smile.

 	I look to Tauro Nicodemus. ‘At your command, my lord,’ I say. The tetrarch does not look pleased.

 	‘Sergeant,’ he says. ‘Where does that lake lead?’

 	‘I was not under the impression that lakes led anywhere, tetrarch,’ Arcadas replies.

 	‘Tetrarch…’ the Word Bearer mouths with obvious relish, until my sword presses harder into his Colchisian flesh.

 	‘Those about to die have no business addressing princes,’ I tell him. ‘Now hold your tongue, or you’ll force me to cut it out.’

 	‘I fear you may merely end what he has started,’ Nicodemus says, looking at the mutilation already wrought on the Word Bearer’s face. ‘What are these markings on his head?’

 	I look down at the hatch-scarring across the Word Bearer’s shaven skull. It looks like a grate or portcullis.

 	‘Exalted Gate Chapter,’ I inform him. ‘Just like Shax.’

 	The Word Bearer’s pained smile broadens. I look to Nicodemus. ‘It would be my honour to end this abomination now,’ I say, echoing his earlier sentiment. ‘However, I think it might be prudent to put questions to this prisoner.’

 	‘Pelion…’ the tetrarch warns. I am testing a hero’s patience.

 	‘The lake clearly leads somewhere my lord,’ I say. ‘The dark depths alone did not give birth to this aberrant brother.’

 	‘I wouldn’t bet on that,’ Nicodemus mutters.

 	I turn to the tetrarch in a formal salute. ‘Ungol Shax remains a threat, my lord. His men are operating in the region. He might be operating in the region. Surely, it would be tactically perilous to allow that? The prisoner might have information to that end. I request an interrogation-audience, Lord Nicodemus.’

 	Vexation ripples across his patrician features. ‘Sergeant Arcadas,’ he calls out.

 	‘My lord.’

 	‘Have your men complete their sweep of Tantoraem.’

 	‘Yes, tetrarch.’

 	‘In the meantime,’ Nicodemus tells him, ‘have a chamber cleared and set aside for the questioning of the prisoner.’

 	‘Straight away, my lord.’

 	‘Pelion,’ the tetrarch says, turning to walk away. ‘Have the prisoner gagged, secured and brought before me.’

 	‘Sir?’

 	‘I shall conduct the questioning myself,’ Nicodemus says. ‘Have no doubt, Honorarius Pelion, that if I suspect treachery of any breed or creed, I will order the prisoner ended – information or not.’

 	I don’t quite know what to say. I watch his scarlet cloak stream about him and follow the tetrarch into the darkness.

 	‘Thank you, my lord,’ I call after him.

The chamber has clearly been used for sacrifices in the recent past. Splatters of browning blood forms a collage with other forms of filth across the walls, floor and ceiling. What Sergeant Arcadas had taken for some kind of stone table actually appears to be a rune-inscribed altar, loaded with profane ritual significance.

 	The Word Bearer doesn’t know that he’s seated before such an atrocity, blind as he is. I put him down harshly on an empty ammunition crate. He’s unsteady, and not just because he can’t see. I had summoned one of the engineer crews we used to secure and maintain barriers across the numerous arterial tunnels and arcology subways. Using their plasma torches, I had the Word Bearer’s arms braced across his chestplate and the palms of his gauntlets fused to his armoured sides. So there the bastard sits: a prisoner in his own plate.

 	The bolt round rattles around the inside of my gauntlet.

 	Tauro Nicodemus stands before the prisoner, resplendent and grim in equal measure. Brother Daesenor stands sentinel on the doorway, the fat muzzle of his boltgun trained upon the prisoner. The tetrarch nods. I cut the gag from the Word Bearer’s mouth with the tip of my sword.

 	The prisoner works his jaw.

 	‘Name and rank,’ Nicodemus demands. The Word Bearer purses his dark lips. ‘Let’s not play games, legionary,’ the tetrarch insists. ‘You know that I will not dishonour your flesh – nor my own – with torture and affliction. Let us talk as Legiones Astartes, as warriors of a galaxy broad and wide, and divided. As enemies, if you wish, but enemies that both hate and respect one other.’

 	‘You have a gift with words, tetrarch,’ the legionary observes with a smile. ‘In another life, you might have been a bearer of the Word. Are you sure you have chosen the right side?’

 	‘Of all the things we want from you,’ I say from behind him, ‘praise and approval are not among them.’

 	‘Name and rank,’ the tetrarch demands again.

 	‘My name is Azul Gor,’ the Word Bearer says. ‘Exalted Gate Chapter. And you?’

 	‘Tauro Nicodemus of Saramanth.’

 	‘Oh, how the mighty have fallen,’ Azul Gor says.

 	‘The mighty go where they are needed,’ Nicodemus counters. ‘Today, I am needed on Calth. On another day it might be anywhere in Ultramar. On another still, anywhere in the Imperium of Man. Wherever my enemies dare to soil the earth with their presence, I will be needed.’

 	‘I think it amusing that it was in fact the Warmaster that sent you to this doomed world.’

 	‘Then Horus sent me to the place where I was most needed,’ the tetrarch says. ‘Perhaps there is hope for him yet.’

 	I interject. ‘Galactic politics aside, I hope you don’t mind me asking where you and your villainous kindred have been hiding. We paid you a visit. You were not at home.’

 	‘I was in the deep and the dark,’ Azul Gor replies absently.

 	‘Can’t we all say that?’ I mutter.

 	‘We cannot, Ultramarine,’ he hisses. ‘Imagine being blinded, stumbling about a cave as black as night, buried deep below the surface of dead world – a world bathed in the glare of a star turned from the light. Can you imagine a deeper darkness?’

 	The chamber falls to silence.

 	‘What happened to your eyes?’ Nicodemus asks.

 	‘I put them out,’ Azul Gor said. His honesty burns. ‘I put them out so that I might not have to look upon your starched faces and the dazzling gleam of your untested war-plate.’

 	‘You didn’t expect to find us in Tantoraem,’ I accuse.

 	‘And you negotiated a flooded cave system, without your weapon or helmet,’ the tetrarch adds.

 	I nod. ‘Or your eyes. I put it to you, Word Bearer – you did not expect to find us at Tantoraem. I think you were looking for your master, Ungol Shax.’

 	The blind defector begins to laugh. It is a horrible chuckle laced with venom and bitterness.

 	‘Ungol Shax is dead.’

 	‘You lie!’ I spit back, working my way around the altar. ‘It is all you know. It is all you are. I would slit your throat, but for the untruth that would pour from the wound in place of good, honest Legion blood.’

 	‘I wish you would, Ultramarine,’ Azul Gor roars back.

 	I lash out. My blade lurches forward, coming to rest under the Word Bearer’s sharp chin.

 	Nicodemus throws up his hands. ‘Pelion!’

 	‘Where is Ungol Shax?’ I hiss.

 	‘He is dead,’ Azul Gor tells me once again, ‘as I soon will be too. As will you be, Brother Pelion.’

 	‘By your hand, I suppose,’ I dare the Word Bearer.

 	‘No,’ he says. ‘By my word. You roar your boldness, but sometimes actions speak louder. You restrain me here – a blind prisoner – with your blade at my throat and the clunk of a primed boltgun aimed at me from the corner. You stink of fear. Fear. That makes you weak. I need not blades nor boltguns. I have words, and I could end you with but a single one.’

 	‘And which word would that be?’ I furiously demand, the tip of my sword dimpling the flesh of his throat.

 	‘Penetral–’

 	The small chamber echoes with gunfire.

 	It is over. Azul Gor is dead. Three bolt rounds. Two in the chest, and one in the skull. Brother Daesenor’s weapon smokes in the silence that follows.

 	I round on the sentinel, but Nicodemus raises a gauntlet.

 	‘I ordered it,’ the tetrarch admits, ‘as I told you I would. This is my fault. This was a mistake.’

 	‘He was talking,’ I protest.

 	‘He was,’ Nicodemus agrees. ‘He was talking you into the darkness. You’ve seen how far the Word Bearers have fallen. You’ve seen their depravities. That word was likely some kind of incantation, and his death at your hands would have been a latent bargain with some otherworldly creature.’

 	I stare at the tetrarch.

 	‘We would do well not to underestimate our lost kinsmen,’ he continues. ‘The entire episode – being unarmed, the eyes, emerging from hiding – it was probably a ruse to get him into a room with an Ultramarines officer. A target worthy of his sacrifice. It is my fault. I take responsibility.’

 	The tetrarch goes to leave the chamber. He looks to Daesenor and nods at the trussed-up corpse of the Word Bearer. ‘Take care of that please, brother,’ he says, before turning to me. ‘I’m going back to the Arcropolis. Have Sergeant Arcadas complete his sweep and then withdraw from this damned place. Assist the Army sappers in demolishing our breach point.’

 	‘Won’t you reconsider occupying the arcology?’ I say, but my heart isn’t in it.

 	The tetrarch ignores my words.

 	‘Ensure that nothing can get through where we entered,’ Nicodemus says. ‘That’s your responsibility.’

 	The breach point is nothing more than a ragged hole in the cavern wall.

 	Seismic demolition charges had been requisitioned from a tunnel-team lockup. They are not military grade, or anything close to the power and precision of the tactical demolitions used by the Legiones Astartes. However, in sufficient quantity – and under expert supervision –the seismic charges would do the job.

 	Sergeant Arcadas is clearing the last of his warriors from Arcology Tantoraem. With members of the Army, the sergeant’s Space Marines had made swift work of searching the cave system for Legion munitions and power packs. All else – rations, weaponry and plate – was destroyed on the further orders of the tetrarch for fear it might somehow be contaminated. Blades were broken. Fibre bundles were ripped out. Bolters were breech-blown or fouled with crude plugs.

 	Imperial Army forces trudge by under the milky orb of Sergeant Brotus Grodin, carrying caches of recovered munitions and packs. Grodin is a retired soldier – one of the Emperor’s ex-serviceman, who has been placed in charge of one of the newly organised units of the Veridian Cicatrix. The Cicatrix had been the tetrarch’s idea: Cicatricians are all remnants of former defence regiments that have been decimated and scattered during the surface war. Their camo-chitons are a myriad of local colour, each member hailing from a different defence force or ceremonial guard. All wear flak plate from Konor – breastplates, skirts and guards. Their visored helms display the nose and cheekguards favoured by many of the Calth militia, and each carries a battered buckler, short blade and the slung length of a las-fusil.

 	Their exposed forearms and thighs all bear horrific radiation burns and solar scarring. This is the now infamous Mark of Calth, a testament to their desire to fight on across the sun-scorched surface of their doomed home world. It was this unifying feature that Nicodemus chose to honour in their name, despite the fact that Grodin’s contingent alone is made up of former members of the Vospherus 14th and 55th Irregulars, and the Tarxis 1st Citizen’s Reserve. Helmetless, with the scowl on his roasted half-face driving the Cicatricians on, Grodin taps the passing soldiers on the arm with a swagger-sceptre.

 	‘All through, m’lord,’ Grodin reports gruffly.

 	‘Thank you, sergeant,’ I say. ‘Would you be so good as to accompany my legionary brothers back to the Arcropolis with the supplies?’

 	Grodin nods and follows his dour troops, leaving me with Brothers Daesenor and Phornax as breach sentries.

 	Ione Dodona also remains.

 	She retreats, unspooling detonator cable. The three of us follow her to an outcrop, behind which she has set up a simple plunge-detonator. The equipment is only frontier mining-standard, but serviceable – like the seismic charges Dodona is using to collapse the breach point.

 	‘Are we set?’ I ask.

 	‘Two more charges to wire,’ she answers, fingering through the nest of cable. ‘One more minute.’

 	Dodona has been invaluable. Grodin’s men have heart and grim determination but they are all topsiders. As a Sapper Second-Class, even before the conflict, Dodona had been part of the Calth Pioneer Auxilia. Commonly known as ‘the Benthals’, the sappers’ expert knowledge of the cave systems, structural integrities and explosives became a powerful weapon in the war as it progressed beyond a simply military endeavour. Many lives and much in the way of precious ammunition have been saved by the strategic collapsing of caves and tunnels swarming with cultist forces and degenerate Word Bearers.

 	Collectively, Dodona possibly has a higher kill-count than some frontline battle-brothers. What they achieve with bolt and blade, the sappers accomplished with millions of tonnes of rock. In a way, Calth itself has taken the fight to the invaders.

 	As we wait, Daesenor and Phornax monitor the breach for enemy activity. Without the opportunity to carry out a full survey, there was no way of knowing all of the entry and exit points in the Tantoraem arcology. An enemy force could stream through and flood our territory through our own breach point. My brothers’ bolters are there to give Dodona time to finish her work and bury any opportunists. As it is, all is silent and still.

 	Casting my eyes across Dodona’s equipment and schemata, I pick up a scratched dataslate. It displays detailed maps of arcologies both completed and – before the war – in a state of construction. Tracing my ceramite fingertip across the slate, I follow the pillar-lined mag-lev tunnels out of Magnesi-South, through the breach point and down through the branching cave systems of Tantoraem. My digit drifts the torturous route of our incursion. I think on the brothers lost under my command, drowning in the sea of rabid cultists. I feel my boots slipping in the blood of our loyal Cicatricians, and relive the clash of our formations against throngs of fanatical Word Bearers, like ships smashing against rocks in the shallows.

 	Then I reach the groundwater lake, the shallows where we captured Azul Gor. To my surprise, my finger travels on, arriving at a single slate designation: Penetralia.

 	‘What is this?’ I ask Dodona, who is clearly not impressed at having to disentangle herself from detonator cables to check the slate. Unlike the Cicatricians, her lamped helmet is close-fitting and her flak-plates are set into a dark body-suit, better adapted to clambering through rough caves and tight tunnels. She shines her lamps down onto the slate screen.

 	‘That would be the Penetralia,’ she tells me. ‘It’s a series of tunnels formed naturally in the rock. It’s quite a labyrinth down there, but the region was ear-marked for excavation as the entry point to another arcology.’

 	‘But it’s submerged,’ I mutter, having seen the lake for myself. Dodona nods.

 	‘Groundwater flooded part of the Penetralia and the mag-lev mining track leading to the excavation,’ she says. ‘Pioneers were evacuated and operations were abandoned until pump-crews could be brought in, but by that time the war had already started.’

 	‘Why wasn’t I supplied with this information?’

 	‘It’s not an arcology,’ Dodona insists, ‘it’s a dead end – flooded, at that. An excavation barely begun.’

 	‘On the other side of the tunnels,’ I press the Pioneer, jabbing my ceramite finger at the screen, ‘is it possible that the caves remain dry? Airlocked, perhaps?’

 	She considers this for a moment. ‘Yes, it’s possible – but why would you even think that? It’s deeper than we’ve ever bothered to go before.’

 	‘We pulled a Word Bearer from the waters of that lake,’ Brother Phornax informs her. ‘He didn’t come from Tantoraem.’

 	I hand her back the slate and turn to my two brothers.

 	‘Hold off on the detonation,’ I order. ‘Send word back to Magnesi.’

 	‘But the tetrarch–’ Dodona begins.

 	‘I’m going to see the tetrarch now,’ I tell her. ‘Blow the breach point only in the event of an enemy incursion.’ Snatching up my helmet, I nod to Daesenor and Phornax. ‘Vigilance, brothers,’ I tell them. ‘I will send reinforcements. Our enemy could be lying in wait – remaining hidden from sight. We may not have finished our work here.’

 	The mag-lev line runs into the lake – I can see it clearly now. Earlier, I had unknowingly emptied the freight car of some of the Red Munion sharpshooters. With fusil bolts lancing off my plate and my short sword cleaving through cultist bodies in the confines of the vehicle, I had not realised that it was part of the mag-way.

 	Sergeant Brodin’s Cicatricians are clearing the bodies now, carrying the cadavers and dumping them in a fire. The reactivated freight engine hums and crackles its intention to move. The sergeant himself is rinsing down the car interior with buckets of lake water, while Ione Dodona works with a plasma torch to air-seal the vehicle as best she can.

 	I have faith in her efforts. She has already worked wonders with the dormant electropolar engine. She has spent a lifetime working down in the arcologies on such machines and so I leave the workings and operation of the mining tram to her.

 	We would not bother with the mag-lev but for the Army troopers; my brothers and I could traverse the flooded tunnels just as Azul Gor had done, with the benefit of enclosed suits and autosenses. The Veridian Cicatrix have no such equipment, however, and I am forced to rely upon the rotting rail system. It will undeniably hasten our journey, even though it has taken some time to ready the engine car.

 	I am relying upon the Cicatricians to bolster our numbers. When I took evidence of an unfinished network beyond Tantoraem to the tetrarch, once again he was not pleased. He was not pleased that its existence had been missed in the first place, and not pleased that it might well harbour a hidden Word Bearers outpost. I reminded him of Azul Gor’s last half-spoken word, and showed him the unfinished Penetralia branch.

 	He still angrily refused my request of two full legionary Breacher squads to clear the Penetralia tunnels; anger at me, himself or both, I could not tell. He did at least grant my subsequent request for a reconnaissance party – if there was a waiting enclave of Word Bearers on our doorstep, there was no denying that it was a tactical necessity to confirm their existence, number and threat level. This was at least the way I framed the request. Nicodemus regarded it more as a job unfinished, an objective untaken. I accepted responsibility and took the rebuke in silence.

 	I have been allocated two battle-brothers. I asked for Molossus and Sergeant Arcadas, but I got Brothers Daesenor and Phornax, plus my pick of the Army troopers and Pioneers. I accepted without argument.

 	Brotus Grodin and his men had just arrived at the Arcropolis with the Tantoraem salvage when I ordered the sergeant and a squad of his Cicatricians to resupply and head back out to the breach point with me.

 	It’s fair to say that Tauro Nicodemus is not the only one who is currently not pleased.

 	Dodona clears us to mount the freight engine. The Cicatricians stand, clutching the long barrels of their las-fusils. Dodona operates the chunky levers of the tram, while Daesenor, Phornax and myself tower over them in the freight compartment with our blades and combat shields at the ready. Phornax and I pack our pistols while Brother Daesenor carries his all-but-empty boltgun slung over his shoulder.

 	The salvage from Tantoraem was paltry and already earmarked for the Magnesi defenders, and we only have a few precious bolt rounds between us. I rattle my single remaining shell in the grip of my gauntlet, as I frequently do. I hold it a little way from my mag-lock belt, then release it. The round flies to the belt from my finger and thumb, clicking into its usual place.

 	The tram engine manages a throaty hum that takes us out of the siding and down the shore. The groundwater parts, churning aside as the tram pushes on before disappearing into the inky black depths of the lake.

 	The hum builds to a whine as the carriage pushes through the weight of the water. The cab-lamps illuminate the flooded tunnels of the Penetralia beyond the rapidly steaming windows – everything is rough, rocky and unfinished. Dodona burdens the electropolar engine. Her plasma welding is serviceable, but it can’t hope to completely hold back the water. Closed ceiling vents disappoint, admitting a near-constant downpour, and water leaks in through some of the las-bolt holes that Dodona failed to spot. The door seals bubble and spume liquid darkness. Water pools rapidly in the freight compartment before crawling up the boots of the Cicatricians, much to their growing concern.

 	As the water reaches their skirts and breastplates, Sergeant Grodin orders fusils held out of the rising inundation. Some of the men begin to panic.

 	‘How much further?’ Grodin calls up to the cab, trying not to sound too alarmed.

 	‘Not far, sergeant,’ Ione Dodona calls back to him. ‘I think,’ she adds under her breath.

 	The freight tram rumbles on against the water. The cab-lumens suddenly flash before going out. Our suit lamps provide the only illumination now. Someone cries out in alarm as a closed vent shears off, water gushing into the space with renewed force.

 	Everything is deluge and darkness. As the water rises beyond my belt, the Cicatricians begin to paddle and splash, holding onto the side of the compartment and trying to keep their heads above the surface. We assist them as best we can, helping them to climb the cab wall to the overhead stowage bins, but soon it is all they can do to keep their helmets between the ceiling and the frothing water. They are coughing. They are drowning in the dark.

 	‘Ione…?’ I press her, preparing to expand my multi-lung.

 	I fear we might lose the Cicatricians, but the Pioneer is having her own problems. She is routinely pulling herself down under the water to operate the mag-lev’s manual levers and peer through the front screen. She surfaces.

 	‘Can’t see a damn thing,’ she splutters.

 	‘Ione!’ I shout back. She slips below the water again.

 	A moment later we are all thrown forward by a sudden halt. The magnetic seals on our boots keep me and my brothers in place, but Grodin and many of his squad lose their grip in the surging water – it crashes them into the ceiling, then drags them back down again.

 	The tram has stopped. The engine gurgles and sparks.

 	With a sudden, ear-popping crash, the left-hand bank of windows burst outwards, dragging men and floating equipment out in the inescapable surge of water. The compartment evacuates quickly, but I claw open the exit hatch, my suit lamps providing ghostly illumination in the darkness beyond.

 	The dry darkness.

 	Turning, I see Ione Dodona slumped down in the cab like a drowned bilge-rat, her hand still on the brake and her chest rising and falling in deep, ragged breaths. Through the forward screen I see the rear bumpers of another engine – an engine our car almost collided with.

 	I step down from the freight car with Phornax and Daesenor, ordering the pair to secure a perimeter as the Cicatricians groggily regroup. Our vehicle still sits in the shallows, unable to go any further up the incline because of a longer, deactivated train that runs all the way up to the dead-end siding. I stand still for a moment.

 	I look down at the water, my suit lamps lighting up the surface of the dark lake. The resplendence of my cobalt-blue armour is reflected back to me from the glassy ripples. I wonder if it has recently caught the armoured reflections of my sworn enemies – have I finally cornered Ungol Shax and his Word Bearers brethren?

 	Walking the length of the first vehicle, my sword and shield ready, it becomes apparent that the train is partially flooded – suggesting that it must have been used fairly recently. Certainly since the flooding of the Penetralia with groundwater.

 	‘Anything?’ I growl over the vox.

 	‘Nothing… Aye, nothing,’ my brothers return.

 	Activating barrel-mounted lamps on their fusils, Sergeant Grodin coughs out orders to the Cicatricians to perform a weapons test. Firing searing beams into the lake depths, we discover that over half of the squad’s weapons have temporarily succumbed to water infiltration. In the absolute darkness of the Penetralia, with no arc-lights or reflection vents, this isn’t ideal.

 	‘Dodona,’ I call out. The dripping Pioneer steps down from the tram, her helmet lamps on the data-slate she’s studying.

 	‘Three exits from this terminus chamber,’ she tells me. ‘All swiftly devolve into natural branches of the cave system, with chambers and grottos situated throughout.’

 	‘With Word Bearers lying in wait,’ I murmur. Grodin returns with his squad, and I turn to him. ‘Three entrances, sergeant – we’ll take one each. Brother Daesenor, follow Grodin and I’ll take Dodona. Sergeant, split your men between myself and Brothers Phornax and Daesenor. We will split up to cover more ground. I want every twist, turn, cavity and crawlspace checked for enemy presences. We are looking for Ungol Shax and his dark brotherhood. Keep channels open and vox back any contacts. If you run into numbers or are ambushed, establish a hold point and fall back by sections to the terminus chamber. We’ll regroup there. Understood?’

 	I get helmeted nods and a grim, ‘Yes, my lord,’ from Grodin and the Cicatricans.

 	‘Maintain communications,’ I say before leading Ione Dodona and three soldiers into the Penetralia.

 	Dodona isn’t wrong: the Penetralia is a labyrinth. Tunnels corkscrew, jagged slopes erupt before our lamps and the ceiling regularly slopes down to meet the tops of our helmets. Passages wind and bifurcate, riddled with grot holes and burrows. Blind corners open into vertiginous vaults and small caverns form sudden dead ends. The darkness is almost palpable, its viscid obscurity devouring the light from our illumination.

 	My suit lamps lead the way, the halo of light feeling its way across the angularity and sharp stone. Dodona’s helmet beam dances ahead, guiding me through the branching network of tunnels. Behind, the three Cicatricians – all former members of Tarxis Reserve – explore the holes and hollows with their barrel-mounted lamps. My shield scrapes around corners, while my blade stands ready and retracted, poised to sweep forward and take a Word Bearer’s head from his armoured shoulders or to cleave down through the torso of an unfortunate cultist.

 	Our reconnaissance reveals little, however, but the black emptiness of the Penetralia’s lonely depths.

 	‘Daesenor, what do you have?’ I vox.

 	‘This place is dead,’ he returns. ‘If Ungol Shax was here, I think we missed him.’

 	‘Phornax?’

 	‘The Word Bearers were here,’ my battle-brother informs me with confidence. ‘We’ve pushed on to a larger chamber at the heart of the tunnels. There are statues and iconography.’

 	I nod to myself. If Arcology Tantoraem was anything to go by, our betrayer-kinsmen and their cult followers are wanton idolaters, constructing temples and statues and worshipping at the stone feet of their otherworldly sponsors. I make a note of Phornax’s position from my optical-overlay. ‘Hold position,’ I tell him. ‘We’re coming to you. Brother Daesenor – meet us at this chamber.’

 	‘Affirmative,’ Daesenor replies. ‘But I’ve lost one of my men in the damned tunnels. Sergeant Grodin is looking for him now. We’ll be there shortly.’

 	Pushing on through the thick darkness and a knot of intersecting passageways, we step out into the open space of a larger chamber. I can see the beams of lamps ahead in the pitch blackness, cutting through the murk like blades. Phornax and his men are waiting near the centre of the cavern, but the light from their lamps blinks and breaks. As I advance, I come to understand why.

 	Phornax was right. There are statues here, but nothing like I’d seen in the dark chapels and reverence-dens of cultist-held arcologies. These statues are different sizes but humanoid in shape. Each is crafted from an obsidian-like substance – crystalline and angular. It absorbs the light from our lamps like a black hole. Even our reflections are absent from its glassy, midnight surface. There simply isn’t sufficient light. This material swallows it all.

 	‘Volcanic glass?’ Pioneer Dodona says with a frown. ‘Not on Calth, surely. Not in these quantities…’

 	I watch the dark material begin to wisp and curl under the light of our lamps. It dissipates and drifts away like a thin, black vapour. It is strange indeed.

 	‘It’s not obsidian,’ I say. ‘Touch nothing. Nobody touch anything.’

 	It is as though the statues were crafted from solidified darkness itself.

 	The representations are everywhere, obscuring the beams of Phornax’s lamps. The Ultramarine and a soldier of the Vospherus 14th are examining something at the heart of the rocky chamber. Statues, many in number, are clustered about them – a crowd of the crystalline forms, all facing inwards to a central point. It is decidedly unnerving.

 	‘What do we have?’ I ask my battle-brother impatiently.

 	Phornax is kneeling. He stands at my approach.

 	‘An unholy temple of some kind,’ he confirms, ‘seemingly used for ceremonies and communion with the monstrous beings of the empyrean.’

 	He gestures to the floor at my boots. The rough surface has been smoothed and polished, and there is a pattern etched into the bedrock. It bears dreadful glyphs, and symbols that make my eyes ache.

 	‘Cultist volunteers were brought here for sacrifice, Honorius, and a ceremony employed to commune with some beast or malignificant.’

 	I hear Phornax’s words, but I rarely understand his Librarius-talk. I am a practical warrior to the core. I’m not often interested in the ‘material or immaterial’ nature of the universe. I believe in one thing: my Legion. The Ultramarines have proved time and time again that they can kill whatever they encounter. All other considerations are pure theoretical.

 	‘So these were volunteers?’ Ione Dodona asks.

 	Phornax steps aside to reveal a grisly pile of scorched bones at the centre of the pattern. Sprawled across the blackened ribcages lays a more freshly-dead member of the Red Munion – a woman, with her slender fingers still wrapped around the hilt of a sacrificial blade embedded in her heart. Dodona’s lip wrinkles with disgust.

 	I swiftly tire of the macabre scene and my brother’s interest in it.

 	‘Is there anything here that points to Ungol Shax or his location?’ I ask.

 	‘Ungol Shax is here,’ Phornax tells me. ‘I think that’s him behind you.’

 	With my helmet on, Phornax cannot see the scowl that his ghastly revelation has brought to my face. I turn to find another statue at my back; it too is angular and crystalline. The idol matches me for height and brawn, and its arms are raised in some gesture of triumph or accomplishment. In one hand it holds a sceptre – nay, a crozius with a headpiece in the design of a portcullis, or a gate. An Exalted Gate.

 	Under my suit lamps, the abomination begins to smoulder, bleeding its lighter-than-air darkness into the faint, draughty breeze.

 	I look around at the other statues. It all becomes clearer to me.

 	Despite the angularity and lightlessness of their forms, many do bear similar features: helms, packs and the broad outline of Legion war-plate. Smaller idols in between appear to be midnight representations of cultists, caught in moments of jubilation and madness. I find my helm shaking involuntarily from side to side. What, in the name of the Five Hundred Worlds, has happened here?

 	I hear shouts from the rear of the temple-chamber. At first I take it to be a greeting – Daesenor arriving with his men. Then I realise then that it’s my men that are calling out, and I feel an unseemly dread descend upon our gathering.

 	‘We can’t find Olexander,’ Ione Dodona reports.

 	Names mean nothing to me. Numbers do, however, and our numbers are decreasing. I look to Phornax and his remaining Cicatrician.

 	‘Where are the rest of your men?’ I ask.

 	‘Checking the tunnels leading from the far end of the chamber,’ the former Librarian tells me, concern creeping over his features. ‘Soldier?’

 	The remaining Cicatrician has two fingers to the side of his helmet. He has no contact with the missing troopers. He shakes his head.

 	‘All units, report in,’ I call across the vox.

 	Squad members present within the temple-chamber swiftly acknowledge my request. A haunting static stands proxy for the rest. ‘Daesenor, report,’ I insist.

 	Nothing.

 	I stride to the edge of the statues.

 	‘The enemy are playing games in the dark,’ I hiss through gritted teeth, my gauntlets creaking about the hilt of my sword, and my combat shield. ‘Form up,’ I order. ‘Stick together. Phornax – take point.’

 	The Ultramarine gives me a lingering glance. That’s what Phornax does. Beyond the eerie nature of his former calling, he has a dislikeable habit of questioning orders without the forthright nature of actually doing so. He allows the silence to ask the questions. It is within the shallow soil of his breaks and pauses that the seeds of doubt take root. Then, like weeds growing up between marble slabs, his misgivings rapidly spread to others.

 	But before I have to repeat myself, he has holstered his pistol and has his sword and shield ready. He replaces his helmet and strides away from the forest of statues. His optical-overlays lead him towards one of the chamber’s many craggy exits, taking us towards the coordinates of Brother Daesenor’s last vox-transmission. I motion Dodona and the troopers after him.

 	‘Name?’ I say to Phornax’s remaining Cicatrician.

 	‘Evanz, my lord,’ he replies. ‘Vospherous 14th.’

 	I can hear the fear in his voice. Like a fortification on trembling foundations, the soldier’s nerve will only hold so long. I have seen the common fighting men of the Imperium break under the fearful circumstances of explorative warfare and crusading. Facing the unknown enemies of the galaxy – technological abominations, deviant isolationists, or the horrors of the xenos – I have known soldiers lose control of their minds and bodies.

 	‘Evanz of the Vospherous 14th,’ I say. My voice comes at him like a wall, strong and unshakable. I attempt to lend him a little of my fortitude and fearlessness. ‘I want you to watch our rear. You see anything creeping up behind us, and I want to know about it. Understood, soldier?’

 	The Cicatrician makes a show of priming his fusil and bringing the weapon close in at his flak-armoured shoulder.

 	‘By my honour, Lord Pelion.’

 	As we negotiate the twisted darkness of the Penetralia, I feel the jagged passages closing in about me. My mind drifts to the millions of tonnes of rock above my helmet. Suddenly, the labyrinthine tunnels themselves seem threatening – twisting and turning, rising and falling. Several times we seem to double back on ourselves, and I imagine the passageways like a knot of writhing serpents. There are dead ends and cavities around every corner, necessitating routine forays through tight apertures and shadowy side tunnels.

 	Several times my hearts quicken at the announcement of supposed enemy targets. I hunger for our foe. Perhaps we had found the shadow-corpse of Ungol Shax… or perhaps not. If his Bearers of the Word still haunt the passageways of the Penetralia, then they shall be mine. I have pledged my blade to their ending. This is a task unfinished. A mission without completion.

 	But time after time, our enemy targets turn out to be shadows and silhouettes, cast by our own light – the very bedrock playing with us. The Cicatricians beg our pardon, but it is not difficult to see how the depths are rattling them. The scar tissue of their faces is taught with tension, their mouths unsmiling, their eyes peering through the slits of their helmets with dread expectation.

 	‘Lord Pelion!’ Evanz erupts. Such a warning had been sitting on the soldier’s sun-scalded lips since entering the tunnel complex.

 	I turn, half-expecting another false alarm, but like the Cicatrician, I catch the shadow and its movement. Rocks don’t move.

 	Before I can stop him, Evanz plucks off several las-bolts from his fusil. Light from the blasts ripples back down the passage, throwing more fleeting shadows along the rugged walls.

 	Something retreats.

 	Flushed with the validity of his sighting – his fear moment-arily forgotten and a tension-fuelled rage taking over – the soldier charges off after his shots with a roar.

 	‘Hold!’ I shout, but Evanz is already disappearing into the darkness. ‘Hold your positions!’ I bark back at the rest of the group before setting off after him.

 	It doesn’t take me long to catch up, my armoured strides taking me with confidence back down the rough passage. I find him at an uneven crossroads – one I don’t recall passing through. Evanz’s helmet is off. He’s young, but his flesh is sun-scarred, lined with age and anxiety. He holds his empty fusil slackly at his side and his chest rises and falls beneath his plas-fibre breastplate. He stares with hollow eyes, but each of the passages offer nothing but fearful gloom.

 	He stiffens as I move him to one side. I scan the rocky convolutions of each tunnel, cycling through different optic spectra. Nothing.

 	‘Back to the group,’ I order. Evanz stands transfixed by the empty obscurity. ‘Now!’ I growl.

 	The soldier turns, deflated, and starts trudging back up towards his Cicatrix compatriots. I give the crossroads a last long, lingering look. ‘I’m here,’ I announce to the darkness, my voice carrying further than I expected. ‘When you tire of your cowardice and playing games in the shadows, I am here.’

 	Back with the group, I exchange Evanz for one of the Tarxis Reservists on the rearguard and order Brother Phornax onwards.

 	It doesn’t take us long to find Sergeant Grodin. Like a crystalline outcropping in the rock, we find the Cicatrician – his back to the passage wall, his helmet turned up the tunnel and his fusil aimed back down it. I know little of the work of artists and remembrancers, but the sergeant strikes me as a sculptural study in panic and confusion.

 	We also discover the soldier he was searching for, a member of the Vospherous 55th, hiding in a small grotto. The trooper clutches his helmet to his breastplate and peers fearfully around a rocky corner, out into the tunnel. His scarred face remains aghast at the horror he must have beheld there, fixed in solidified shadow that smokes and steams under the glare of our lamps.

 	‘Pelion,’ Phornax calls.

 	The former Librarian had found Brother Daesenor. He could have been a statue from any compliant world, or one of the many depicting the noble and heroic exploits of the XIII Legion to be found across the worlds of Ultramar. For his lethal service on the fields of Komesh alone, Daesenor deserved as much. With his boltgun snug at his pauldron and his helmet optics lined up with the weapon’s mean sight, the Ultramarine still looks ready to fire. I examine his gauntlet. His digit is fully depressed. The trigger has been pulled. Daesenor has been petrified in the moment that it might have saved him.

 	I feel a curse, common and uncouth, escape my lips. A tightness creeps into my voice.

 	‘Phornax – surely the Librarius has something to say on these unnatural matters?’

 	‘Officially, the Librarius has nothing much to say about anything anymore, brother,’ Phornax returns dispassionately.

 	‘Unofficially, then?’

 	Phornax hesitates. ‘The Heralds-that-were have clearly developed their sorcerous interests,’ he tells me. ‘They draw outlandish powers from the immaterial plane that enhance their already considerable capabilities.’

 	‘Gifts like your own,’ I ask.

 	‘No, brother,’ Phornax continues warily. ‘Magicks and superstitious deviancies. Augmentations in the form of polluted artefacts and otherworldly bargains.’

 	‘Could these perversities be responsible for these dark deeds?’

 	‘Yes, brother.’

 	‘And what weapons do we have to combat such deviancy?’ I ask.

 	‘You have my bolt and blade, as you have always done.’

 	I stare at him, and he stares back. Dodona looks on with some trepidation.

 	‘I’ll take point,’ I tell him, pushing past. As our pauldrons scrape in the confines of the tunnel, I’m sure he can sense my frustration. He doesn’t have to be witch-kin to do that.

 	Leading with my sword and shield, I move from corner to craggy corner, peering around with lamp and optics. As my light reaches down the tunnel lengths and through rocky corkscrew paths, I feel doubt infecting my thoughts. The desire to bring my enemy to battle can be heard in the grit-pulverising economy of my steps, in the fluid caution of rehearsed manoeuvres and positioning. The creak of my gauntlet about my weapons. Muscle and plate hydraulics primed to strike.

 	I want my enemy dead. Such need burns with perfect execution. No mistakes. The enemy will not benefit from my silent vexation.

 	At the same time I cannot indulge untruths. Finding Daesenor was unnerving: if a battle-brother of his skill had nothing to combat the dread powers of our Word Bearer foes, then there is little that my blade has to offer. I drew blood, fast and first, from the cheek of Deucalius of Prandium in a duel of honour. Draegal – the Cardinal-Crimson – lost helm and head to the seething sweep of my sword. The tentacular horrors of Twelve-Forty-Seven would have dragged me into their communal maw, had it not been for the snip and clip of my blade.

 	But if these monstrous bastards in the deeper darkness of the Penetralia took Daesenor in the instant before a bolt round could depart his barrel, then I fancy the flash of my blade might not be fast enough.

 	The junctions and intersections are the worst. At the dark nexus of adjoining passageways I feel the eyes of the foe upon me. The length of each holds the simultaneous, shadowy promises of an enemy acquired and latent doom.

 	I push on. There is little point in informing the others that we are now hopelessly lost. That is not the point. The enemy will find us. Of that, I am sure.

 	I hear a half – nay, a quarter-stifled scream, and something clatters to the rocky floor. I spin around to find Evanz staring down one of the passages I just passed. His finger is outstretched in inexpressible horror. The fear is washed from his face and replaced by the ugly contortion of dread and disgust, and then the Cicatrician flashes from living being to crystalline shadow. First his trembling finger, then his arm and armour before his fear-sculpted face, the soldier suffers some kind of sorcerous petrifaction. Like a flesh-eating darkness, the shadow takes him, turning Evanz into crystallised tenebrosity.

 	The passage echoes with shouts of panic and horror. The remaining Cicatricians back into the immovable wall of armour that is Brother Phornax, as the former Librarian looks on with cold interest.

 	I cannot let our tormentors escape. Charging forward, I smash aside the glassy darkness that was Evanz. The muzzle-lamp from his dropped fusil still shines its beam up the tunnel… but there is nothing there.

 	I advance steadily. It will take more than ‘nothing’ to stop me.

 	My steps take me up the tunnel at speed, my sword and shield held close to my body. My suit lamps reach ahead of me, revealing the crooks and chicanery of the Penetralia passages. Whatever killed Evanz must be retreating just as quickly, since my light reveals nothing but a dead end, though it soon turns out to be a tight corner.

 	As I scrape my plate through the narrow gap, I find myself looking into the face of Olexander. The first of my party to go missing, he is in shadow also – dissolving silently under the beams of my suit lamps. His statue soaks up the illumination like a sponge: the helmet, the crystalline shaft of a las-fusil clutched in one hand, the other hand stretched to hide his eyes from the sudden horror he spotted in the darkness of the tunnel entrance.

 	The tunnel entrance in which I’m standing.

 	Olexander stands at the head of crowd of such statues, and I realise that I’m back in the unholy temple-cavern, the twisting tunnels of the Penetralia somehow leading back upon themselves.

 	‘Phornax!’ I call out. ‘The foe is playing a game that I cannot win. They’ve lost themselves and they wish for us to follow.’

 	Phornax enters the cavern through the narrowing with the same difficulty I experienced, yet Ione Dodona and the Cicatricians slip through with ease, not wishing to be left behind in the passageway on their own.

 	‘The Word Bearers elude us,’ I say, lending words to what everyone else is thinking.

 	‘The Word Bearers are dead,’ Phornax replies, his conclusion flat and lacking in the comfort such reasoning should inspire.

 	‘Then who is it?’ I demand. ‘Those weakling cultists?’

 	Phornax sweeps his outstretched gauntlet across the statues, set in their ghoulish tableau. ‘They invited something into the deep and the dark,’ the former Librarian insists. ‘Something they couldn’t control. Something that destroyed them.’

 	I can’t quite bring myself to believe it. So many men lost so swiftly. No shouts. No screams. No enemy sightings. Daesenor gone without a single bolt round discharged…

 	‘Some… thing,’ I echo.

 	‘What is it?’ Ione Dodona murmurs.

 	‘Something that kills on sight,’ Phornax replies. ‘An unnatural. It hides in the shadows, waiting for us to seek it out with our lights. The horror of its otherworldly appearance alone seems enough to kill.’

 	The shadows lurch forward as the barrel-lamp belonging to one of the Cicatricians suddenly disappears. We all turn, weapons raised, but the unseen beast has left nothing but a figure, carved into the darkness. Dodona screams.

 	‘Get back!’ I roar. ‘It’s in here with us!’ Bundling her behind me, I heft my shield high. She screams again. I cannot blame her. She is only human.

 	‘Lord Emperor,’ one of the soldiers cries. ‘It’s–’

 	And the Cicatricians are gone, petrified into crystallised darkness. Their curiosity has killed them.

 	Without thinking, I almost turn to look before I catch myself. As quick as lightning, I grab Phornax and Dodona. ‘Close your eyes, both of you!’

 	Fear is a stranger to my hearts. I am Legiones Astartes – I am an Ultramarine – but there is something primal about the fear of darkness. It is a fear of the unknown that even I can understand. I keep my eyes fixed upon the engravings at my feet.

 	‘How can we kill it?’ Dodona shrieks, gripping tightly onto my shield arm.

 	‘We can’t,’ answers Phornax. Though he would deny it, I can feel him casting about with his feathery witch-sight, brushing against my soul in the darkness.

 	My concern for them becomes concern for all our people, all who eke out their existence beneath the standard of the 82nd Company in Arcology Magnesi. What if such an abomination were to find its way in?

 	I cannot allow that. Tauro Nicodemus must be warned.

 	‘Brother Phornax,’ I find myself saying, ‘take Dodona and get back to the terminus chamber. Do not delay. Make your way back to Magnesi and inform the tetrarch of what we faced here. The Word Bearers doomed themselves and us along with them. He will know what to do.’

 	I feel objection building in my brother, but there’s no time.

 	‘Hurry,’ I urge him.

 	Phornax slips a gauntlet under Ione Dodona’s arm. Though she pulls hard on my vambrace, her dread allows her to be dragged away.

 	‘What about you?’ she shrieks back.

 	‘Get Brother Phornax back to Magnesi,’ I command her. I bring the blade of my sword up sharply and carve through the crystalline form of a Word Bearer statue nearby. It shatters, and the cacophony fills the temple-chamber – the screech and fracture of tumbling obsidian echoes through the tunnels and crevices of the Penetralia.

 	‘I’ll draw it down to me,’ I tell her, ‘and give you a chance to escape.’

 	She starts to speak, but my blade smashes through two more Word Bearers.

 	‘Go!’

 	The tunnel devours them like a great serpent. I stand alone in a sphere of my own meagre radiance. The blackness about me is overwhelming. I feel its intention to extinguish my very existence. Who will know of Pelion? Pelion the Lesser, who fought an ancient evil in the bowels of a doomed world like the heroes of ages past, freeing the empire of Ultramar from the tyranny of things-that-should-not-be?

 	I put my combat shield through a cultist. My sword cuts another in half. It rains shards of pure darkness, and the shattering feels too harsh for the chamber to contain.

 	Impossibly, amongst the raucous destruction, I hear a crash from the far end of the chamber. I spin around – combat shield out in front of me and blade poised to strike. Some kind of unseen beast is headed straight towards me in the gloom.

 	It’s been drawn. The distraction has succeeded. Now I will pay for my success.

 	I prepare myself for the horror I’m about to witness. Some dreadful thing, so disturbing in form as to be beyond my imagining. Some abominate existence that lives only to end my own. I feel the cold perversity of its solitude, its cursed power damning it to an eternity alone, ending even those foolish enough to summon it into the light. The violence of its advance burns with primordial fury. A tsunami of crystalline frag threatens to engulf me.

 	In that moment, I find myself thinking of Azul Gor. His face, full of bitterness and hatred, flashes momentarily before my downcast eyes. I think on his insistence that he could end me with a single world. Indeed, that word – ‘Penetralia’ – has led me to my doom.

 	Then, I realise.

 	Azul Gor survived the attentions of this beast of the beyond. Upon its summoning, the monster turned all who had gathered to witness it into solid darkness – perhaps Azul Gor was not invited to the ritual. Perhaps he had other, more important duties, or perhaps he had merely sensed the coming destruction.

 	Regardless, escaping the Penetralia cost him his eyes.

 	The beast is all but upon me, vomited forth from the darkness and smashing an explosive path through the victim-statues. That it means to end me is clear.

 	I bring the sword to the side of my neck. There is only one thing left to do – I run the blade across my throat. Its sharpened molecular edge slips into the groove created between my helm and plate seals. It slices through the power cabling and neural feeds. The light in my visor dies. The helmet’s optics darken, and the data from my autosenses is cut.

 	I impose upon myself an artificial blindness. A disability that might save my life. Everything sizzles to static-shot black.

 	The impact of the beast knocks me clean off my feet, and I crash backwards through the shattered assembly. The thing feels like a charging beast of burden, some bull-grox on the stampede. It’s hard to ascertain its size from such an attack, but the monster strikes me as a powerful quadruped, or a perpetually hunched thing lunging forwards on two more powerful legs.

 	No horns. No claws. No snaggle-toothed jaw.

 	Perhaps no jaws at all. Just an otherworldly bulk, full of fury and ancient hideousness.

 	The world has flipped about me in tumultuous darkness. I scramble back to my feet, sword and combat shield in hand. I shut down my suit lamps, plunging the entire chamber into an abyssal blackness. I doubt that this will faze the daemon-thing. I call upon my decades of training and my other superhuman senses. It is difficult – as a Space Marine I rely on sight, augmented both genetically and technologically, to kill and to avoid being killed.

 	Instead I tune into the beast’s movements. With my feeds and helm power cut, I cannot enhance my hearing. My ears are sensitive, though, even through the dead shell of my helmet. In a cave now carpeted with glassy shards of darkness, I can hear the crunch of its footfalls.

 	I immerse myself in a world of sound. I detect every creak of every shard; the whisper of pulverised blackness underfoot; crystalline fragments evaporating into wisps of powdered darkness.

 	It’s circling me. It’s confused. I haven’t succumbed to its curse-power.

 	Perhaps I’m the first to do so. I enjoy its perturbation. I concentrate. I focus.

 	Crunching. The sound of more shards crushed into splinters. It’s behind me now. It’s behind me… A chill snakes up my spine, but I quash it with my resolve. Such misgiving belongs not in the minds of the Legiones Astartes.

 	The thing closes. I sense its horrid form at my back. I imagine its outline, and I strike.

 	I spin, crunching shadow-sand beneath my boots. I slam the monster with my combat shield, then back-slam it, my short blade sweeping forwards. The sword cuts through daemon-flesh, and cuts deeply.

 	I hear nothing. Not a screech. Not even a whimper of pain.

 	Perhaps the being doesn’t even have a mouth, or any organ for such expression? Instead, I feel the ache of its agony within my mind.

 	I turn on my heel, my blade biting into it once more from the flank. I hear the crunch of an agonised stumble. The bastard thing certainly didn’t like that.

 	It circles, but gives me a wide berth. I turn with it, my sword and shield raised.

 	‘Come on!’ I roar at the beast. ‘Come on, hell-spawn! Face your death!’

 	Incredibly, it has grown wary of me. I don’t think that I could destroy it with my modest short sword alone, but it definitely doesn’t seem to want another taste of the blade.

 	Then, the monster does exactly what I don’t want it to.

 	The crunching footfalls retreat – the thing is leaving. It has tired of playing with the blinded toy that hurts it every time, and there is other prey taking flight through the tunnels of the Penetralia. Prey that can be horrified into oblivion by the monster’s ghastly appearance.

 	I swing my sword and shield about me wildly, smashing more of the statues to pieces, hoping to entice the monster back. I fail.

 	Sheathing my blade, I reach out with one gauntlet and stumble for the rocky reassurance of the temple-chamber wall. I have to find my way back to the terminus. I cannot risk taking off my helm – this could be a trick, and the beast could be waiting for just such an opportunity.

 	I have no real idea what it is capable of. It follows no theoretical that I can recall.

 	So I make the lonely, stumbling trek back through the Penetralia – Pelion the Lesser, lost in a labyrinth, lost in the darkness outside of my war-plate, and trapped in the darkness within. A deeper darkness, if ever there was one.

 	Pushing myself off one tunnel wall and scraping to another with my shield outstretched, I try to retrace my route through the winding maze of caves and passageways. It seems to take an eternity, knowing that every step of the way the beast could be ghosting my clumsy footfalls, and knowing equally that the monster could have reached Phornax and Dodona by now. Knowing that it could have them, before they have chance to power up the mag-lev engine and make their submerged escape.

 	I would warn them, but for the severance of my vox-link. I hurry, but my haste is enemy to my intention. I stumble. I fall. I get up. I feel my way on.

 	I know that I have reached the terminus chamber when I hear the water – the lap of the lake against the rocky shore. In my blindness, sound has become my greatest guide. I stop, and I listen.

 	I can hear movement. Something paces the moist rock of the shoreline. Beyond that, I detect breathing. Shallow, terrified breathing. Not the sound of a Space Marine.

 	‘Dodona!’ I call out. Without my vox-grille, I’m forced to shout through the ceramite shell, and the sound of my voice pains my ears after so long spent in the quieted darkness.

 	‘Pelion?’ she responds with gasping relief.

 	It’s a question. She can’t see me. The chamber must be in darkness. I approve. The lack of light, be it accidental or intentional, has saved her.

 	She moves, ever so slightly. There is a slurp and splash of water. She’s kneeling in the shallows, hiding in plain sight.

 	I hear the beast’s pace quicken. It knows where she is. It wants her to see it.

 	‘Pelion,’ Dodona whispers through the darkness. Her voice trembles. She must be cold in the water. Cold, and out of her mind with human, mortal fear. ‘It’s here…’

 	‘I know,’ I call back. ‘Brother Phornax?’

 	‘He’s gone.’

 	The thing ventures into the water, its infernal legs carrying it through the shallows towards her.

 	‘Ione,’ I say, stumbling forwards along the wall of the terminus. I, too, am making for the groundwater lake. ‘Ione, I want you to stay perfectly still. Do you understand?’

 	‘I’m so scared,’ she replies, the honesty falling out of her.

 	‘I know,’ I try to reassure her. Then I lie. ‘Me too.’

 	There, in the darkness of the cave and in the darkness of my helmet, I reach a conclusion. It is not enough to escape. To run for reinforcement. To flee and take the word to others that they too should flee. I am an Ultramarine. An honoured champion. Otherworld monstrosity or not, it is my duty to end this beast.

 	Regardless, it is between me and my only exit. The thing must die.

 	As Space Marines, we are taught and trained to make the most of any advantage that the immediate environment has to offer. I think on the mag-lev engine, and the damage it might visit upon the beast. I think on the millions of tonnes of rock hanging above us, and how I might bring it down upon the monster to crush the unlife from it. The darkness defeats me here – the daemon will not oblige me by standing in front of the tram, and if there were mining demolitions somewhere in the terminus chamber, there is no way I could find them. I discount these desperate strategies.

 	I think on the darkness. I think on the light.

 	The light…

 	‘I need you to do something for me, Ione,’ I call out.

 	‘Yes?’

 	‘When I tell you to, close your eyes, and dive for the bottom.’

 	‘I can’t swim!’ she protests, one fear replaced by another.

 	‘You don’t need to swim. Just stay under for as long as you can. Can you do that?’

 	‘I can’t swim,’ she repeats. ‘Staying under the water won’t be a problem.’

 	I listen to the monstrosity – this thing of hideous darkness that Ungol Shax has inadvertently unleashed upon the world. It strides through the shallows with predatory intent. It closes on the terrified Pioneer. I sheath my sword. I rest my shield against the wall.

 	I am ready.

 	‘Now!’ I bellow. I hear her go under. The dive is messy and uncertain; there is splashing, and then nothing. She is beneath the surface.

 	The beast splashes too. It is searching the shallows for its prey, staring down into the dark water.

 	I reactivate my suit lamps.

 	Abruptly, the movement ceases.

 	Everything grows still. For an agonisingly long moment, I wait, listening to the faint lapping of the waters. I go to remove my helmet, but caution stays my hand.

 	I wait. I wait to confirm what I already know. The Legiones Astartes are not particularly blessed with imagination. Tactical ingenuity, perhaps. Creativity in the construction of strategic defences. An inspiration of the moment, guiding our hand in the confusion of combat. We leave notions of fancy and the elegance of creative representation to the delicacy of the human hand. I remember admiring the paintings of Priscina Xanthoi, remembrancer and artist on the Twelfth Expedition. I did not communicate any such sentiment to Xanthoi herself or my superiors; but staring at her paintings, her visions, her interpretations, I feared that I might lose myself within them. Her beautiful depictions of our early accomplishments, both bloody and bright, had an incredible life and interiority. She told our story in her portraits and vistas. When age began to claim her and she was summoned back to Terra, I felt that the expedition lost a little of its remembered grandeur. Our achievements never seemed so noble as when they were viewed through Priscina Xanthoi’s incredible eyes. They certainly haven’t since.

 	When finally I open my eyes to the gloom of the terminus chamber, I come to wonder how the remembrancer would have painted the monstrosity that stands in the shallows before me. Would she have given it eyes, a mouth, or even a face? Perhaps her gyrinx-hair brushes might have been able to capture its full, ethereal horror. The alien nature of its existence and the revulsion of reality itself about its immaterial form. Perhaps she could have done mind-scalding justice to its chthonic grotesqueness and freakery.

 	I cannot imagine such a nightmare. Unfortunately, I don’t have to.

 	Ione Dodona erupts from the water, her lungs bursting to breathe the cold air again. She devotes her first lungful to the most horrified, soul-churning scream I have ever heard in my long and war-filled life. Screaming is good. Screaming means that at least she is still alive.

 	My suit-lamps are casting the terminus chamber in a bleak light – light enough for the daemonic monster to have caught sight of its own reflection in the undisturbed surface of the lake.

 	There is also light enough for me to see Ione Dodona stumbling backwards through the water, away from the statue of the beast, crafted in shadow.

 	She is still screaming.

 	I approach the indescribable horror of the crystalline thing – it is a horror beyond imagining. I fight the involuntary inclination to look away, and force myself to behold the beast. My eyes sting at the sight. I stumble. I feel my mind reel. I plunge through the glass floors of insanity. Reaching out for my training, the stunted nullification of emotional-limitation, the solid grounding of psycho-indoctrination, I claw my way back into the moment.

 	I am Hylas Pelion. Pelion the Lesser, Honorarius of the XIII Legion, 82nd Company.

 	My being floods with hatred for my enemy. It had no right to exist in this universe.

 	Ione Dodona is still screaming. The Pioneer is lost. Even petrified, the daemon-form was too much for the fragility of her all-too-human mind. I think of the battle for Calth, the war beneath its surface and the greater war that must surely follow. This, then, is the shape of the enemy to come. Increasingly, the Emperor’s true subjects and servants will face evil in such forms, brought forth from the beyond by our brothers in darkness.

 	Common humanity is not ready for such visions. Madness will find them, like it has found Ione Dodona. She screams and she screams, her mind broken. Perhaps it would be a kindness to spare her this torment?

 	I pluck my single remaining shell from where it is mag-locked to my belt. I shake the bolt round about the inside of my armoured fist. Like a die, it rattles. Like a die, it awaits an outcome. An outcome unknowable in the enclosed space of my gauntlet, a realisation it can only find in the breech of the pistol that sits brusque and empty upon my belt. I draw the pistol and thumb the bolt into it.

 	The weapon comes up, level with both the crystalline abomination and the screaming Pioneer. The muzzle drifts between them. My ceramite fingertip finds its way to the trigger, and both I, Pelion the Lesser, and the weapon find our way to realisation.