Vulkan turned and was about to answer when the vox-bead in his ear crackled. Neither primarch was wearing his battle-helm, but they were still connected to the battle group.
As one primarch’s eyes widened, the other’s narrowed, and Vulkan knew that Curze was hearing the self-same message.
Vulkan reached out for his brother, seizing him by his gorget and dragging him close. Curze smiled and did not resist.
‘Did you do this?’ Vulkan asked. ‘ Did you do this?’ he bellowed when Curze didn’t answer straight away.
The smile thinned and became the dark line of Curze’s pale lips.
‘Yes,’ he hissed, cold eyes staring.
Vulkan let him go, thrusting him back from his sight as he turned away.
‘You killed… allof them.’
Curze feigned confusion. ‘They were our enemies, brother. They took up arms against us, tried to kill us.’
Vulkan faced him again, enraged, almost pleading, abhorred at what Curze had done.
‘Not all, Konrad. You murdered the innocent, the weak. How does that serve anything but a sadistic desire for bloodshed?’
Curze seemed genuinely to muse on that. He frowned. ‘I’m not sure it does, brother. But how is that any different to what you did to that xenos? She was only a child, no threat to you. The rebels of Kharaatan were afforded a quick death. At least I didn’t burn them alive.’
Vulkan had no answer. He had killed the child in anger, out of grief for Seriph and retribution for the damage the rampaging xenos had caused. Perhaps it was also because he hated them, the eldar, for their raiding and the pain they had inflicted on Nocturne.
Curze saw his brother’s doubt.
‘See,’ he said quietly, coming in close to whisper. ‘Our humours are similar enough, are they not, brother?’
Vulkan roared and seized the other primarch, throwing him across the hold.
Curze slid, his armour shrieking as it scored the metal deck beneath. He was already on his feet when Vulkan came at him, and succeeded in blocking a wild punch aimed at his face. He jabbed, catching Vulkan in the chest and jarring his ribs even through his armour. Vulkan grunted, pained, but grabbed Curze’s head and thrust it down into his rising knee.
Curze rocked back, bloody spittle expelled from his mouth. Vulkan tackled him around the waist, giving his brother no time to recover, and brought him down on his back. A savage punch turned Curze’s head and cut open his cheek. He was laughing through blood-rimed teeth. Vulkan hit him again, shuddering his jaw. Curze only laughed louder, but choked a little when his windpipe was being crushed. Vulkan clamped his hands, his iron-hard blacksmiter’s hands, around his brother’s throat.
‘I knew you were no different,’ Curze hissed, still trying to laugh. ‘A killer. We’re all killers, Vulkan.’
Vulkan released him. He sat back, still straddling Curze, and gasped for air, for sanity. He would have killed him if he hadn’t stopped. He would have murdered his brother.
A little unsteady still, Vulkan rose to his feet and stepped across Curze’s supine body.
‘Stay away from me,’ he warned, out of breath, and strode from the hold to where his transport was waiting.
Curze stayed down, but turned his head to watch Vulkan go, knowing it was far from over between them.
I knew I was lost. I suspected it the moment I stepped through the Iron Labyrinth’s gates. This was not a challenge I could overcome, not something I could unravel. Here was a place seemingly infinite and of Firenzian complexity, wrought by a mind equal to my own.
No, that wasn’t entirely truthful. My mind was compromised, and so the featureless corridors of brass and iron that stretched before me were beyond my intellect to navigate.
Standing at the hundredth crossroad, each avenue I had chosen on the ninety-nine before it taking me deeper into the labyrinth and yet, at the same time, farther from my goal, I wondered what Curze had promised my brother in return for this gift.
Perhaps Perturabo hated me as much as he did the rest of us, and he had simply decided that hurting one of his brothers was as good as hurting any? Maybe he resented the fact that I had survived his glorious barrage on Isstvan V, and refused to yield to his lines of armour? Whatever the reason, he had crafted this place with one purpose in mind; that whoever entered it would never leave. It suited Perturabo’s mindset, I think, to imagine me wandering these halls forever, although he could not have known about my immortality. I believed that Curze needed more immediate closure, however. Patience was not his virtue, nor restraint. In the hammer he had provided me with hope. I suspected that he meant to drive me further into madness with that hope. He did not realise that he had actually provided a realistic means of escaping his dungeon.
Deciding that it mattered little if I couldn’t find the heart of the labyrinth, I took the left fork and wandered on.
Unlike my previous trials at my brother’s tender claws, there were no traps, no enemies, no obstacles of any kind. I reasoned the labyrinth itself was the trap, the ultimate snare in fact, fashioned by an arch-trapsmith. Once again, I felt the pulse of the abyss nearby, the black and the red, its savage teeth closing around me. It called to a feral part of my psyche, the monster Curze had spoken of.
I shook the sensation off. Somewhere in this accursed place were my sons. I had to find them, and hoped that I would not come across them in the many bodies I had seen so far. Most of the remains were skeletal, though some yet retained their withered flesh. They were Curze’s rats, the poor wretches who had tried to conquer the labyrinth before me. All of them had died still clinging to hope, desperate and out of their minds.
I think that was what Curze wanted for me, to be emaciated, brought low and desperate, a plaything to mock and punish when his own loathsome presence became too much for him to bear.
Ferrus was with me still. He didn’t speak any more, he just followed like my shadow. I could hear his armoured footsteps dogging my tread, slow and cumbersome.
‘I think we are getting closer, brother,’ I said to the spectre lurking a few metres away.
His teeth clacked together in what I took to be mocking laughter.
‘Ye of little faith,’ I muttered.
I wandered like this for days, possibly even weeks. I did not sleep, nor did I rest and I couldn’t eat. Vigour left me and I began to waste and atrophy. Soon I would not be so different from Ferrus, no more than an angry shadow doomed to walk these halls forever.
And then I heard the talons.
It began as the light tapping of metal on metal, a sharp tip rapped against the walls, echoing through the labyrinth towards me. I stopped and listened, sensing a change in Curze’s game, a desire to see it ended. The tapping grew louder and transformed into the scraping of claws. I was no longer alone with my slow, creeping madness.
‘Curze,’ I called out, challenging.
Only the scraping metal answered. I thought it might be coming closer. I began to move, trying to locate the source of the sound, walking at first, then breaking into a run.
‘ Vulkan…’ hissed the air in my brother’s goading voice.
I ran after it, all the while the scraping and the tapping clawing its way into my skull, setting my teeth on edge.
I rounded a corner, chasing my instincts, but found only another corridor as gloomy and unremarkable as all the others.
‘ Vulkan…’
It came from behind me and I whirled around as something dark and fast slipped by me. I winced, clutching my side. Taking my hand away I saw blood and the shallow cut my brother had delivered.
‘Come out!’ I bawled, fist clenched and a feral hunch to my shoulders. I barely recognised my own voice, it had grown so animalistic.
Only the scraping answered.
I chased it, a bloodhound on the hunt, but could find no trace of Curze. The line between predator and prey was blurring: at times I gave pursuit; at others, my brother. I reached another junction, another crossroads and tried to get my bearings, but the throbbing in my skull wouldn’t allow it.