The tech-priest said nothing else for a moment as he communed with the pict-viewer's machine spirit. Three planetary systems became highlighted on the borders of the swirling amethyst warpstorm. Next to each of these an inset box appeared containing a projection of a planet rotating steadily on its axis. There was the smog-smeared orb of the forge world, the cloudless desert sphere of Herod and a smaller, blue-white ice-locked world.

The three systems effectively formed a triangle around the area of space in which lay warpstorm Araken.

'Hekla - from the myth cycles of the Wolves of Fenris.’ Gdolkin said, his Chaplain's knowledge of other Astartes Chapters' beliefs coming to the fore again.

'I see you know your legends,' the tech-priest said. 'I too have come across the same stories in my long years researching the Araken artefacts and every legend surrounding them. Hekla sounds Fenrisian because it is, or rather, she is.’ the tech-priest confirmed. 'In ancient Fenrisian myth Hekla was a spiteful goddess of the underworld, ruler of the frozen hell that claimed the souls of those warriors who drowned at sea.

'It would seem that some time in the distant past the Sons of Russ - perhaps even the Great Wolf himself, during the Emperor's Golden Crusade - discovered, or at least named, the planet. It is a world of ice and fire, its permanently frozen surface rocked by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions emanating from the furious, molten heart of the planet.'

'How long ago was the Hekla artefact destroyed?' Librarian Melchor asked, joining the discussion.

'Within the opening weeks of what we now know is the Despoiler's thirteenth Black Crusade. Once the Heklarunsten was destroyed the chain of events, that we have inexorably become part of, was set in motion until they reached their inevitable conclusion on Herod.'

A fourth star system now became highlighted in the very midst of the turbulent warpstorm anomaly. The inset image next to this one showed a wire-frame model of the system with its star and seven orbiting planets. The fifth, the largest, was highlighted and circling that in turn was a distinct moon.

'And this is what it has all been about from the start. The one system, or rather one world within that system, hidden from humanity for thousands of years. We must enter the discharging anomaly. We must travel to that lost system.'

'Why? What awaits us there?' Gdolkin asked.

'The prize that could turn the tide of the war against the Despoiler.'

‘And does this world you speak of have a name?' the Iron-Father challenged.

'Yes. I believe it to be the lost Adeptus Mechanicus outpost world of Crucible.’ Thule said, his shoulders becoming hunched, his manner conspiratorial. He smiled like a lizard, in smug satisfaction, at the startled reaction his words produced from the hard-bitten Space Marines.