Vulkan crouched a little lower and waited until the Stormbird banked so the hatch was angled down towards the node. The hammer he bore was a weapon of his own creation. Thunderheadwas its name. He’d fashioned it on Nocturne in honour of N’bel and his heritage. Captured storms thrashed within its ornate head, beaten into the metal through many long hours of toil in the forge. There was no other like it. No Legionary could wield it. No man could even lift it. Vulkan alone possessed the strength and mastery to bend it to his will.
He donned his drake-helm and it mag-locked to his gorget.
“Do you know what comes after lightning, brothers?”
The Pyre Guard did not answer. Instead they readied their weapons.
Vulkan’s eyes flashed with inner fire.
“Thunder…”
He leapt from the hold.
SHRIEKING AIR WHIPPED past Vulkan as he plummeted through the storm-wracked sky. He descended like a hammer-wielding comet, a roar of the firedrakes of Mount Deathfire on his lips. His salamander cloak flapped wildly behind him, as if the spirit of the beast it once belonged to had returned and approved of its master’s exultation.
A grimace formed on his face behind his helmet as the primarch reached terminal velocity. The wind became an ear-piercing whine as he descended through it. Surrounded by the tempest, he had never felt more alive than in that moment. He wondered briefly if Corax and Sanguinius felt the same elation as they soared through the heavens.
As he closed on the obelisk, Vulkan clenched his hammer in both hands and lifted it above his head. At the moment of impact, he smashed the arrowed summit of the obelisk like he was hitting the head of a nail. With a tremor of energy, the psychic node ruptured and shattered. Vulkan didn’t slow but kept driving through the ancient stone, following an almighty crack that spread through the obelisk’s core. Shockwaves throbbed outwards from the breaking stone, chunks of it pummelling the eldar who looked up at the falling rock and wailed from below before being crushed. Each successive energy pulse emitted from the destroyed obelisk jolted the now transfixed coven with greater and greater violence. The eldar witches had made themselves conduits for the psychic power in the node and now they were being fed every last residual trace of it. No mortal creature could withstand such a backlash of energy. Vulkan landed and the earth blasted outwards from his craterous impact. In synchrony with it, the witches died one by one. Their eyes burned and flesh melted until at last their skulls exploded and they collapsed, headless, to the ground.
Dust and fire surrounded the primarch in a churning pall. He was crouched on one knee, his hammer embedded in the earth. He stayed like that for several moments. His armour rose and fell as he breathed. The remains of the node collapsed around him. Great clefts of stone sheared away and broke into fragments. By the time it was done, Vulkan was encircled by a belt of shattered rock. The engraved runes had all been broken and their captured light bled away.
Already battered by the resurgent Salamanders, the eldar capitulated and fell back.
Victory cries extolling the Legion, the 5th and the 14th Fire-born, appealed to Vulkan’s pride as he heard them on the breeze. Beneath the snarling visage of his drake-helm, he smiled and was aware of someone approaching.
Numeon regarded his primarch from the edge of the devastation.
The rest of the Pyre Guard were just stepping from the Stormbird and cutting down the enemy stragglers.
“I didn’t think you would jump,” Numeon confessed.
Vulkan lifted his head and stood.
“It was an impulse.”
The equerry appraised the circle of broken node stone.
“I also thought it would be more difficult.”
Vulkan raised an eyebrow. “You think that was easy?” When he removed his drake-helm he was still smiling. Rolling his shoulders and then stowing Thunderhead, he turned his attention to the dead psykers. “Dabbling with sorcery has its own rewards.”
Numeon followed him as he walked beyond the circle and out into the emptying battlefield. “So it would seem, my lord.” He regarded the burned and headless eldar corpses impassively. “Hard to tell now, but I didn’t see their seer amongst the coven.”
Vulkan didn’t need to look, he knew. “The female was not amongst them, which is… perplexing.”
“She has likely already fled. They must realise this is a war they cannot win.”
“Perhaps, but then why fight it at all?”
The eldar were on the run again now, all attempts at a tactical withdrawal abandoned in favour of individual survival. They had nothing left to protect and so no reason to linger in a fight for which they were unsuited.
As with the previous battle in the jungle, the natives began surfacing with the cessation of hostility. They appeared moribund, even terrified by their liberators, and clung to each other for support. Some of the children amongst them were sobbing. A girl-child leaned down to touch a dead eldar’s finger until her mother chastened her and she shrank back into the gloom. Army units with attached remembrancers were already gathering the refugees together.
“Do they seem less than pleased to see us, Numeon?” Vulkan asked.
“I find it hard to differentiate their reactions from that of any human I encounter, my lord.”
Vulkan sighed, unable to be completely dispassionate. “They are scared, but of us, not of the aliens. I wonder if—” He stopped when he saw the bodies of the tribespeople amongst the dead. Vulkan’s brow creased with consternation. “I didn’t realise that civilians were at risk inside the battle zone.”
Army medics and field surgeons were dragging away dead natives along with the Phaerians. Most were men and women, but Vulkan saw children too amongst the slain. The cold face of a girl-child, clutching a wooden effigy, haunted the primarch for a moment. Were it not for the dark stain colouring her hemp smock, she might have been asleep. In repose, the girl-child’s face looked particularly innocent. Vulkan had seen horror like this before, after the raids and when Nocturne’s surface split with anger. He had witnessed bodies dragged from the rubble, choked by ash or burned black by fire.
“A warrior chooses his path. It is violent and the threat of death ever present, but these people…” He shook his head slowly, as if only just comprehending. “This was not supposed to happen.”
Numeon was lost for an answer. When Varrun approached with a hololithic wand, the equerry’s frown turned into an expression of relief. “Word from the Legions, my lord.”
Still distracted, gaze lingering on the humans, Vulkan took his time to respond. “Set it down,” he said at length, and Varrun impaled the wand into the ground and activated it.
Spilling out from a triangular apex of hazy light, an image of Ferrus Manus resolved itself.
Both Pyre Guard sank to one knee immediately in deference to the other primarch.
Ferrus Manus was still wearing his battle-helm and his armour bore evidence that he’d been in the thick of the fighting for the desert region. The gleaming plate was sand scoured and reflected the light of the sun behind him. He removed his helm and his silver eyes glittered like chips of ice.
Ferrus was typically taciturn. “Are the jungles won, brother?”
Vulkan nodded. “The eldar node has been neutralised. An easier fight than we first believed but with its share of blood spent to the cause. How fare my brother Legions?”
The primarch of the Iron Hands growled, “Still contested, but I shall not be denied. We encountered difficulty with our mechanised elements. Much of my force is on foot and the Army divisions are coping poorly.”
The Iron Hands mantra, Flesh is Weak, was almost written indelibly into Ferrus’ scowl. He respected humans but was also frustrated by their frailty.
Vulkan decided to change tack. “And what of the Death Guard? Has our brother lived up to his dogged nature?”