‘ Hnngg…’ I tried to speak but the razor in my mouth muffled any protests.
I was in a corridor, the ceiling low enough that my armoured chassis just scraped it. The metal bulk of the death machine I was wearing filled its width. Ahead of me, partially shrouded by the gloom, I saw their eyes. They were wide, and widened further when they saw me, or what had become of me.
‘Run!’ a man wearing a dirty and tattered Army uniform said to another. They fled into the dark, and with the sound of my metal skull scraping the ceiling above, I gave chase. My strides were slow at first, but built with a steady, loping momentum. Rounding a corner, I caught sight of the men. They had taken a wrong turn and were trapped at a dead end. I could smell ammonia and realised that one of the troopers had soiled his fatigues. The other was wrenching a pipe off the wall, trying to make an improvised weapon and a last stand.
He swung it experimentally, like a man standing next to a fire who wields a burning torch to fend off a predator. I heard a low shunkof metal as a switch was thrown remotely. Harsh light suddenly filled the corridor from the search lamps on my chassis, blinding the two men. I tried to resist but my armoured frame propelled me after them, the serrated blades at the ends of my arms blurring into life with a throaty roar.
I tried to stop it. I heaved and thrashed, but could barely move. A passenger of the machine, I could only watch as I turned the men to offal and listened to their screaming. Mercifully, it ended quickly and the air grew still again. Only the sound of my desperate breathing and the gore dripping off my spattered frame in fat clumps disturbed the quiet.
Something scurried past behind me and my deadly armour turned as if scenting prey. I was moving again, striding down the corridor on the hunt for fresh victims. I struggled, but could not stop or slow the machine. Along the next stretch of tunnel, I saw three figures. More of my brother’s slaves. I had been unleashed upon them in this pit, clad in death. Curze was making me kill them.
My lumbering gait turned into a frenzied run, the clanking footfalls like death knells to my ears. Up came the search lamps again, hot and buzzing next to my face, and I saw three men. Unshaven, brawny, they were veterans. As I bore down on them, they grimly held their ground. One had fashioned an axe from a section of plating, a taped-up rag around the narrow end for a handle; another had an improvised club like my last kill; the third just clenched his fists.
Such defiance and insane valour. It would not avail them.
‘Come on!’ the one with the axe shouted down at me. ‘Come on!’
My armoured frame obliged, responding to the goad with chainblades spinning.
When I passed another corridor that crossed with the one I was in, I realised what the veterans had done. My puppeteer did not.
As I reached the crossroads, heading blindly at the three men who were shouting and jeering a few metres beyond the junction, a second group of prisoners sprung the trap. A spear thrust grazed my ribs and I grimaced. It went on into the metal vambrace encasing my left arm, severing some cabling. Oil and fluid began to vent furiously.
Just as I was turning to face my first attacker, a second axe weighed in and embedded itself in my right hip. It bit into my flank but the armour bore the brunt. My chain-blade tried to lash out but the cabling snapped and the armature fell limp.
A stern-faced legionary looked up at me, pulling his spear back for another thrust. He wore the black and white of the Raven Guard, through his armour and iconography had seen far better days. My still functional right arm whipped around and took off the warrior’s head before he could attack again.
As the black, beak-nosed helmet bounced off into the darkness, my search lamps flickered and all of the ambushers attacked me at once. I spun, opening up two of the veteran troopers and spilling them out onto the metal deck. The third stooped to pick up his comrade’s fallen club, but my leg snapped out before he could grab it. The impact hit him square in the chest. I heard ribs break and watched him half spiral down the corridor before crumpling in a lifeless heap.
My last opponent struck again, focusing on the damaged arm, which was spitting sparks and spraying oil. Another legionary loomed into my eye line. My heart sank when I saw the colour of his battle-plate.
Emerald-green.
He was broad-shouldered, the faded insignia of the 15th company emblazoned on his dented pauldron.
Nemetor…
I had believed he was dead. Curze had saved him. He’d done it so I was the one that butchered him.
Entombed in the machine, I was unrecognisable to my son. Ducking a hopeful swipe of my remaining chainblade, he hacked into my left arm and jolted some of the pins impaled in my nerves loose. Some feeling returned, and I found I could move the arm again. Watching Nemetor’s hope turn into horror as the weapon he thought he’d destroyed began to move as I lifted it, I then turned the buzzing chainblade on myself. Momentum from my frenzied machine’s attacks drove the saw into my body, first cutting metal, then flesh.
I let it gore me until darkness began to crouch at the edge of my vision, until death, however brief, reclaimed me.
‘Clever,’ I heard the voice of my brother say.
I blinked, opening my eyes and saw the death machine had been removed and that I was back in my cell.
‘I stand both impressed and disappointed,’ he said.
At first I saw armour of cobalt-blue, trimmed with gold; a firm and noble countenance, framed by close-cropped blond hair; a warrior, a statesman, my brother the empire builder.
‘Guilliman?’ I breathed, hoping, my sense of reality slipping for a moment.
Then I knew, and a scowl crept onto my face.
‘No… it’s you.’
I was sitting with my back against the wall, looking up murderously at my brother.
Curze laughed when he noticed my expression.
‘We’re getting close now, aren’t we?’
‘How long?’ I croaked, tasting ash in my mouth and feeling a fresh brand in my back.
‘A few hours. It’s getting faster.’
I tried to stand, but was still weak. I slumped back.
‘How many?’
Curze narrowed his eyes.
I clarified my question, ‘How many times have you tried to kill me?’
My brother crouched down opposite, within my reach but betraying no concern about retaliation for what he had done to me, what he continued to do to me. He nodded to the wall behind me.
I turned to see my reflection mirrored in obsidian. I saw Curze too, and Ferrus Manus, now little more than a walking cadaver in his primarch’s armour, standing just behind him.
‘You see them?’ He pointed to the numerous honour scars branded into my back. Some stood out from the others, a clutch of more recent brandings that I had no memory of and could attribute no oath to.
Curze leaned in and whispered into my ear, ‘A fresh scar every time, brother…’
There were dozens.
‘Every time, you returned to torment me,’ he said.
I faced him. ‘Torment you?’
Curze stood, his armoured form casting a shadow over me from the low light in the cell. He looked almost sad.
‘I am at a loss, Vulkan. I don’t know what to do with you.’
‘Then release me. What is the point of killing me over and over again if I cannot die?’
‘Because I enjoy it. Each attempt brings with it the hope you will stay dead, but also the dread that we shall be forever parted.’
‘Sentiments of a madman,’ I spat.
Curze’s eyes were oddly pitying. ‘I think, perhaps, not the only one. Is our dead brother with us still? Is Ferrus here?’
At the mention of his name, the cadaver’s mouth gaped as if amused. Without eyes or much flesh, it was hard to tell.