Then, with an unholy roar like the screams of a daemon choir, fire burst across the heavens and the sky began to burn. The meadows were gone and all around her were endless plains, drenched in blood and sown with the skulls of countless millions.
The last thing the seer saw - the image filling the fiery sky beyond the horizon - was that of the daemon-lord, the Warmaster of Chaos, blasphemy personified. A cloud-washed blue-green world was held in his crushing claw, the very crust of the planet fracturing in his grasp, boiling magma - its life blood - leaking from the broken sphere.
Thunder rumbled across the burning sky above her.
No, not thunder. Laughter.
The hellish noise echoed inside her skull; it was the last sound she heard.
A spear of white heat sliced through her brain and her world exploded into oblivion.
MEDUSA
'And lo, despair was compounded, for Mankind had lost not only He Who Broke the Darkness, Ferrus Manus, the Shining Light of Medusa, cut down by Foul Corruption and Betrayal: for worse was to come, and there was much anguish and horror, for the Most Holy God-Emperor was, alas, to be lost to the world of Man.'
- Extract from the Scriptorium of Iron
ONE
IRON-FATHER
Land-Behemoth Weyland of the Iron Hands' Vurgaan clan company, the Chapter world of Medusa
The near-quiet of the apothecarion reverberated softly with the whirring and clicking of the hovering attendant surgical servo-skulls, the careful work of the clan company's chirargeon-healer and the plainsong chanting of the distant Iron Choirs, as they called on His Divine Majesty's protection for the Iron-Father and the Omnissiah's blessing on the bionic replacement that was to be grafted to his body. The Iron-Father was coming one step closer to eradicating all weakness from his physical form.
Strong in mind, strong in body: that was the way of the sons of Ferrus Manus.
Two Space Marines of the Iron Hands' Chapter stood silently in the darkness of the chirurgia-annexe, while the Iron-Father's servitor bodyguard stood motionless as statues at the entrance to the apothe-carion, their pallid flesh a deathly grey in the low light of the operating theatre. The chamber was lit only by the soft torchlight from the walls, the focused beams of the flitting servo-skulls and the Apothecary's operating spotlight.
Brother-Apothecary Caduceus's gleaming white armour picked up every speck of light and reflected it back into the chamber. Its brightness was a stark contrast to the black and grey armoured suit worn by Iron-Father Gdolkin, lying on the operating slab. The one way in which it did resemble Gdolkin's was in the clan marking borne on its left shoulder plate. The symbol of a polished taloned gauntlet, on black, stood out like silver in a seam of carbon, whilst on the right shoulder plate there was etched the winged prime helix that was the emblem of the Apothecaries. The bright blood-red design represented not only the sacred gene-seed of the Chapter, the protection and perpetuation of which was the Apothecary's prime duty, but also the sacrifice that every Marine was prepared to suffer to ensure the Chapter's future survival.