Salamander

Wrath,

guarding the medical tents and searching for survivors. Naveem's old squad spent most of its time within the battered confines of the ship, opening up sealed areas and exhuming the dead from their metal, airlocked tombs. Brother Gannon had taken temporary charge, though he was untested as a sergeant. Agatone was content to remain behind. There were the observances of ritual cremation to be conducted for Vah'lek, and he was keen to be present for them.

These thoughts tumbled through Dak'ir's mind like flakes of ash drifting from the far off peaks of Scoria's volcanoes. As he stared into the grey void, the vista before him seemed to blend and shift…

…once distant mountains loomed suddenly large and immediate, arching over Dak'ir's head like crooked fingers until they touched and formed a canopy of rock. Ash, so ubiquitous before, drained away as if escaping through the cracks of the world to flee certain doom, and left solid rock beneath Dak'ir's feet. He was in a cave. It reminded him of Ignea. A tunnel led down, down into the heart of Scoria where promised fire lurked, flickering against the walls like dancing, red spectres. They took him deep, these imagined apparitions, to the nadir of the earth where lava ran thick in streams and shimmered with lustrous heat. Pools of liquid fire threw murky, joyless light that seemed to cling and conspire instead of illuminate. And there, dwelling within a vast cavern and surrounded by pits of flame like balefires, the dragon uncoiled. Scales shimmered like spilled blood in the lava-light, its sulphurous breath overwhelming the reek of the mountain.

Dak'ir was standing across from it. A tall pike was gripped in his gauntlet, and the lake of fire separated them. Hunter and beast eyed each other across the flaming gulf that ignited in empathy for their mutual anger.

'You are my captain's slayer.' The voice sounded distant and strange to him, but Dak'ir knew it as his own. It was a much a promise as an accusation.

Rage lent strength to his body that he didn't know he possessed, as Dak'ir leapt across the massive lake of fire to land crouched on the other side.

Challenge given and accepted, the dragon came at him, a bestial roar ripping from a fanged mouth wreathed in black fire.

Dak'ir cried out for Vulkan, and the primarch's vigour steeled him. As the beast came on, its footfalls shedding rock and cracking stone, Dak'ir took the pike and drove it like a lance into the dragon's belly. It screeched and the cave shook. It was a cry so full of wrath and agony that it levelled mountains and opened up the roof to a grey sky that was steadily turning red.

Clawing, rending deep grooves into the stone, the dragon struggled. Dak'ir pushed. He drove it to the lake of fire, heaved it flailing over the edge and let it burn as the heat rose up to consume it.

The dragon died, and in the haze and smoke of its conflagration it changed to become a man. His armour was red like scale, his mouth was fanged like a maw and he wore the defiled livery of a former angel who had turned his back on duty and loyalty, to embrace corruption. The body broke away, naught but bones and ash, a frugal meal for the lake of fire. Then the world broke away with it. A great tremor wracked the earth and Scoria split. Columns of fire erupted like bursts of incendiary exploding from under the ash, and the mountain was swallowed beneath the earth. Dak'ir witnessed a world die, consumed by itself. Then the fire came to him, and he was burning too…

'

I sense doubt in you.'

Arrested suddenly from the dream, Dak'ir flinched. He kept the reaction small, though, and barely noticeable. Until that moment, he had thought he was alone.

'It's not doubt, Brother-Librarian,' he replied coolly, shrugging off the remnants of his vision as Pyriel came to stand beside him.

They were a hundred metres or so from the edge of the encampment, looking out across the dunes past the relentlessly pacing Thunderfire cannons and the hidden grenade belt beyond them. 'More a lack of resolution. Something I can sense, but beyond my reach.'

It wasn't a lie. The instinct had been there throughout the dream, just subdued by his subconscious mind.

'That there is something here, beneath the ash, that we are just not seeing,' stated the Librarian.

'Yes,' said Dak'ir, looking for him to extrapolate, uncertain why he himself was so surprised at Pyriel's prescience. The Librarian kept his gaze on the horizon, inscrutable as rock.

In the absence of further explanation, Dak'ir decided to go on.

'Ever since we made landfall, after the crash, I felt as if I was… being

watched.'

Now Pyriel turned to regard him. 'Go on,' he said.

'Not the ash creatures that attacked us,' Dak'ir explained. 'Not even an enemy as such, just something…

else.'

'

I have felt it, too,' admitted the Librarian, 'A glimpse of a consciousness unknown to me. It is not the mind of a xenos that I feel. Nor is it the taint of Chaos exhibited by the traitors Brother Tsu'gan has found. It is, as you say, ''else''.'

The Librarian stared at Dak'ir a little longer, before turning back. 'Look out there,' he said, gesturing to the grey horizon. Dak'ir did as he was told. 'What do you see?'

Dak'ir opened his mouth to speak, when Pyriel raised a hand to stop him.

'Think carefully,' he advised. 'Not what there

is,

but what you

see.'

Dak'ir readjusted and looked hard. All he saw was ash and spires of distant rock crested by dark clouds, and a grey horizon smudged with umber and red where the volcanoes vented.

'I see…' he began, but stopped himself to truly open his eyes. 'I see Nocturne.'

Pyriel nodded. It was a small movement, near undetectable, but expressed his satisfaction elegantly.

'

That

is what I see also. Beneath the layers of ash there is rock. The volcanoes have been venting for so long and so continuously that the grey flakes have made this place a grey world, with darkling skies, bereft of life. The oceans, for I believe the deep basins in the ash deserts were once large water masses, dried up long ago. Underground tributaries might still exist, but I doubt they're enough to support significant life. Scoria, I suspect, was once much like Nocturne, only more advanced in its geological cycle.' Pyriel stooped and placed a hand against the ground. He beckoned Dak'ir to do the same.

'You feel that?' the Librarian asked, closing his eyes, shutting out smell and sound, focusing purely on touch.

Dak'ir nodded, though he had no way of knowing if the Librarian had seen or realised his affirmation. There was a tremor running through the earth, faint but insistent like a pulsing vein.

'Those are the last heartbeats of a dying world, brother.'

Dak'ir's eyes snapped open and he stood. The recent vision came back at him, and he wondered briefly if somehow Pyriel had seen it, had looked into his mind and perceived his very dreams.

'What are you saying, Librarian, that Nocturne will suffer the same fate?' The question came across more petulantly than he would have wanted.

'All worlds end, Dak'ir,' Pyriel answered pragmatically. 'Nocturne's demise might be millennia from now, it might only be a matter of centuries. I wonder if our progenitor brought us here to