After acknowledging his Chapter Master, Dak'ir's eye was drawn to Fugis. The Apothecary was one of the Inferno Guard, Kadai's old retinue, of which only three now remained. He had removed his battle helm and clasped it in the crook of his arm. It was stark white like his right-side shoulder armour. His sharp, angular face was haunted by lava-shadows. Even through the rising heat shimmer emanating from below, Dak'ir thought he saw Fugis's eyes glisten.
Ever since Dak'ir had won his black carapace and become a battle-brother, throughout his forty years of service, he'd felt Fugis's watchful eye. Before he became Astartes Dak'ir had been an Ignean, an itinerant cave-dweller of Nocturne. That fact alone was unprecedented, for no one outside the seven Sanctuary Cities had ever been inducted into the vaunted ranks of the Space Marines. To some it made Dak'ir unique; to others, he was an aberration. Certainly his connection to the human side of his genesis was stronger than any the Apothecary had ever known. During battle-meditation, Dak'ir dreamed. He remembered with unerring clarity the days before he became superhuman, before his blood and organs and bones were reshaped forever into the iron-hard cast of the alpha-warrior. Biologically, he was a Space Marine like any other; psychologically, it was hard to tell just what potential lay within him.
Chaplain Elysius had found no taint in Dak'ir's spirit. If anything, the Ignean's strength of mind and purpose was remarkably pure, to such a degree that he had achieved the rank of sergeant especially swiftly given the slow and methodical nature of the Chapter.
Fugis, though, was curious by his very nature and unshackled by the extreme views that afflicted the Chaplain. Dak'ir was an enigma to him, one he wished to fathom. But the Apothecary's watchful eye did not scrutinise him this day. His gaze was turned inward instead, mired in grief-ridden introspection. Kadai had been Fugis's friend as well as his captain.
Unlike his brothers, Dak'ir wore the garb of a metal-shaper, the nomadic smiths who worked the iron found deep beneath the mountains and sweated over heavy anvils. The vestments were archaic, but then on Nocturne they still believed in the old ways.
In the earliest millennia of civilisation, when the native tribes of the planet lived in caves, worshipping the fire mountain as a goddess and its scaled denizens as objects of spiritual significance, metal-shaping was regarded as a noble profession and its masters were tribal leaders. The tradition held thousands of years later, after the development of primitive technologies and the nascent art of metal shaping became forging, after the coming of Vulkan and when the Outlander had taken him away again into the stars.
A pelt of salamander skin covered Dak'ir's loins. Thick sandals were lashed about his feet. The Astartes's bare chest shone like lacquered ebony, onyx-black and harder than jet. In his hands he clasped one of the thick chains that held Kadai's corpse steady above the lake of fire.
Promethean tradition demanded that two metal-shapers would guide the passing of the dead. Across from him, standing upon a plinth of stone that jutted out above the lava much like Dak'ir's own, was Tsu'gan. He too wore a similar garb. But where Dak'ir's Ignean heritage was obvious in his rugged and earthy face, Tsu'gan's noble bloodline, passed down from the tribal kings of Hesiod, made his countenance haughty and cruel. His glabrous skull was fastidiously shorn, and he wore a narrow crimson beard like a spike. It was as much a statement of his arrogance and vainglory as it was simple affectation. Dak'ir's hair was dark, characteristic of subterraneans like the nomads of Ignea, cut simply and close to the scalp.
Accusation and thinly-veiled contempt burned coldly in Tsu'gan's gaze, when their eyes met briefly. The fiery gorge between them spat and bubbled in sympathetic enmity.
Anger rising, Dak'ir looked away.
Tsu'gan was one of few amongst the Chapter that found Dak'ir's singularity deviant. Born into comparative wealth and affluence, as such were possible on a volcanic death world, Tsu'gan had found himself instantly at odds with the idea of Dak'ir being a worthy candidate for the Astartes. The fact of his humble birth, his lowborn origins, and the levelling effect of them both as Space Marines, vexed Tsu'gan greatly.
Heritage was merely the undercurrent of acrimony that ran between them now. The bitterness that divided the two sergeants so cruelly had been set in motion as far back as Moribar, their first mission as neophytes, but its colour and acerbity had changed forever with the recent undertaking to Stratos.
Moribar… The thought of the sepulchre world he had visited over four decades ago unearthed bitter memories for Dak'ir. It was there that Ushorak had lost his life, and that Nihilan's vendetta had been born.
Nihilan who had…
Old memories surfaced from Dak'ir's subconscious like pieces of sharpened flint. He saw again the looming dragon, its red scales glistening like blood in the light of the temple to false gods. The melta flare filled his vision like an incandescent star, angry, hot and unstoppable. Kadai's cries smothered all of his other senses and for a moment there was only blackness and the sounds of his accusing anguish…
Dak'ir snapped to. Sweat laced the grooves of his enhanced musculature; not from the lava heat, Salamanders were resistant to such things, but rather from his own inner pain. His secondary heart spasmed with the sudden increase in respiration, fooled into believing the body was entering a heightened state of battle readiness.
Dak'ir fought it down, mastering his own capricious biology with the many mental and physical routines he had been conditioned with as part of his rigorous Astartes training. He hadn't endured a vision like that since Stratos. By Vulkan's grace, it had lasted only seconds. None amongst his gathered brothers had noticed him falter. Dak'ir felt the impulse to suddenly cry out, and curse whatever fates had led them down this dark path to this grim moment of mourning and sorrow, this grief for a captain beloved.
Kadai's death had stained them both. Dak'ir wore his openly, a white patch of scarification from a melta flare that covered over half his face. He had seen it again in his vision, the self-same blast that had ended Kadai's life so grievously. Tsu'gan, however, carried his wounds inwardly where they ate away at him like a cancer. For now, their feud was kept hidden so as not to arouse the suspicion or displeasure of either Chaplain or, indeed, Chapter Master.
Brother-Chaplain Elysius had almost completed the ritual and Dak'ir shifted his focus back to his duty. It was a great honour to be chosen, and he did not wish to be found wanting under Chapter Master Tu'Shan's fiery glare.
At last the moment came. Dak'ir had carried the weight of the pyre-slab for several hours. His shoulders did not even feel this exertion as he fed the chain down slowly, hand-over-hand. Each of the vast links, twice as large as an Astartes's fist, was etched with the symbols of Promethean lore: the hammer, the anvil, the flame. Though the chain links would not dissolve when they touched the lava, they were still red-hot from the rising heat. As each link fed through his palm, Dak'ir gripped it and felt the symbols being slowly branded into his flesh.
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