Ferrus grit his teeth, standing his ground with Vulkan. His rage was written loudly upon his face.
“I have no quarrel with that, brother.”
An arena lay before them, of ragged tree stumps and flattened jungle flora.
A gritty patina washed over their armour and surrounded the beast like a low-lying, earthy fog. It glared at them, expressing its ancient hate and malice, dwarfing the primarchs utterly.
“Try again, monster,” said Vulkan, dropping his voice to a predatory rumble.
He heard a low whompof displaced air and registered a blur of sudden movement in time to slam into Ferrus Manus and bear him down. A scaled, gnarled mass whipped overhead as the pteradon’s axe-bladed tail narrowly missed the Gorgon’s exposed neck.
Vulkan was quickly up on his feet and moving. “Don’t lose your head, brother.”
Ferrus scowled. “Worry about your own. It’ll take more than that to cut my flesh.” He was moving too, making for the pteradon’s blindside to flank it.
Its monstrous size and strength were formidable advantages, but with its enemies splitting up it couldn’t bring them to bear against both. Emitting a reverberant screech, it went after Vulkan.
Hunting monsters was second nature to the primarch of the Salamanders. Nocturne was lair to many scaled and chitinous horrors. As a boy, Vulkan had slain them all. Even the drake he wore as his mantle was huge, but this… this was a behemoth.
He lost sight of Ferrus behind the pteradon’s bulk, but stayed near to the beast to deny it its greater reach. The brackish reptile stench was potent close up. Mortal men would have gagged on its foul aroma but Vulkan had ranged the steppes of Mount Deathfire and endured its sulphurous vapours. This was nothing to him.
A hot chain of sparks flew off the primarch’s armour as the monster caught him with its talons, before he turned and smashed Thunderheadinto its flank. Its scales buckled and snapped. The cracks in the monster’s natural armour filled with blood, and a shriek of pain tore from its throat. A heady coppery scent dirtied the air further, and Vulkan knew he’d hurt it.
Keep moving.It was a mantra in the primarch’s head as he chased along the pteradon’s flank. Stop and we die.
No man could hope to face such a monster, let alone fight it. Primarchs were more than men, more than Space Marines.
They were like unto gods but even gods could fall.
As if hearing his thoughts, the monster came again. It lunged, and Vulkan narrowly avoided the razor teeth. He came up for a retaliatory strike, but the beast snapped at him again and he dropped his shoulder to dodge. It used its bulk to slam into him and Vulkan staggered before edging back.
Teeth as long as chainblades and drooling with saliva loomed in the primarch’s eye line.
He swung Thunderheadin a narrow arc to loosen his wrist, readying to crush the monster’s neck, when a clutch of roots spewed from the earth to trap him.
Vulkan snarled.
The witch was trying to even the odds with sorcery.
He tore his arm free but further serpentine bonds coiled around it, pinning him. Vulkan roared and the beast roared with him, sensing its meal was close. Widening its chasmal jaw, the pteradon was about to bite off Vulkan’s head when it reared up in sudden agony. Swinging its leathery neck to peer over its shoulder, it screeched at a second assailant.
“Like I said, worry about yourself, brother…”
Ferrus Manus appeared from behind the monster, seen through the gaps between its massive limbs. He’d shattered a bone framing its wing membrane and leapt clear as it slashed at him belatedly with its tail. Shedding the root bonds, Vulkan punched Thunderheadinto the beast’s unprotected belly. Muscles ruptured and bones cracked, eliciting another shrill of bestial agony. A swipe of the pteradon’s bladed wing claw prevented his follow up attack and forced him to retreat, while Ferrus Manus was kept at bay with stabbing thrusts of the monster’s barbed tail.
Venturing in close again, Vulkan took a chunk of scale from its back. The two-handed blow left gore drooling between the knots and scars of its body like before, and he knew its formidable strength was ebbing.
“We’re close!” he yelled.
Ferrus charged in to shatter the monster’s standing leg. It screeched, stumbling in pain. A line of blood jetted across Vulkan’s plastron as he caved in a portion of the pteradon’s snout. It reeled before Ferrus sheared through one of its wings, leaving the membranous tissue ragged. Between them, the savage primarchs were tearing the monster apart. A bleat of panic escaped its throat, gurgling with the blood in its nasal cavity and mouth. The pteradon suddenly realised who was predator and who was prey.
It tried to flee but the primarchs were relentless, battering its wings with continuous blows and pounding its body like it was a carcass for tenderising. A flash from above presaged a jolt of lightning that struck Ferrus in the chest, winding him. He staggered and the monster was allowed to rise. Even though it was wounded, the hard beats of its wings were achieving loft. Another psychic bolt jagged down at Vulkan, but he evaded it and seized the pteradon’s flank.
“There’s no escape,” he muttered, gripping the edges of the monster’s scales and using them like handholds as the ground steadily fell away and he was borne upwards.
“VULKAN!”
Ferrus’ shout was devoured by the wind rushing into Vulkan’s ears. It whipped around him, whistling and screeching with the speed of the monster’s ascent. Battered by the rigours of the elements, Vulkan gritted his teeth and clung on. Amidst the tempest engulfing him, he heard the tolling of metal on metal. The anvil beckoned.
Crushed against the beast’s coarse flank, the world around him devolving into a shrieking blur, he knew he had to rise. When he pulled his hand free, the fingers of his gauntlet were rimed with gore from where he’d been digging in. Grabbing another armoured scale, Vulkan climbed. It was slow. Every moment held the threat of him losing his grip and being cast into arboreal oblivion below. Split branches fell like rain as they reached the forest canopy and surged through it. They scraped like claws across his face and for a few seconds he was blinded, his vision filled by parting foliage. Vulkan held on.
The striking of the anvil tolled in his ears.
After they’d breached the jungle roof, he was able to claw a little further up the pteradon’s body and reached the bony nub of its foreleg. He fought the pressing sense of disorientation as all visual and auditory markers disappeared in the maddened ascent. Heavy wing beats throbbed painfully in his ears as direction lost all meaning. There was only the need to hang on and the will to climb. The beast flew higher.
The sun still burned the sky, but it was wreathed in cloud as the monster rose, ever further into the heavens. It couldn’t shake him. It barely had the strength to climb, so Vulkan only needed to bear the raging wind that pulled at his body and tugged at his fingers.
He dug in and ate up the slow metres to his prey. His mind retreated back to the lava chasm all those many long years ago.
It was another life.
Reaching the muscular join between the monster’s wings, he found his enemy.