Could it really be? Had he really reached his long sought after goal? Was this the place spoken of in the legends of his people, in the most famous heroic story of He Who Broke the Darkness, the Light-Bringer, Ferrus Manus? Was this really the fabled Land of Shadows?

Whether it was or not, it was a fearful place. The skeletons of the long-dead structures - surely signs that someone, or something, had once dwelt here -filled him with a sense of ominous dread. The chill wind moaned through the wide basin valley, the gaping holes in the stone structures creating resonating, booming harmonics that made Anatolus think of the wailing of storm giants. The sound of the wind only served to make the place seem even more dead and empty of life than if there had been utter silence.

For a moment he doubted the decision he had taken to make the arduous, mind- and body-testing trek to find the land of the ancients. What could there be for him here other than a slow, lingering death, from exposure or starvation, in the toxic, abrasive cold?

Almost immediately he mentally berated himself for the lapse of his resolve. Such thinking was weakness. He had made it this far. The hard part was behind him. Surely he had proved himself worthy

already? He would face whatever awaited him here and see whether he was judged worthy or not by the Sons of Ferrus.

Boldly ready to meet whatever fate would throw his way, Anatolus strode into the dead city.

At first the noise was no more than a slithering susurration, like a rock-viper gliding over the sand. Then he heard the clicking of claws.

Anatolus went no further, his father's bolt pistol now held firmly in his hand.

A monstrous spectre of gleaming metal bones burst from the drifts in front of him, frozen ash cascading off its parts. The construct rose high above him on a segmented body of silver coils. Its skull-face darted snake-like from side to side between hulking shoulders of adamantium. A distant rumbling lightning burst strobed across the gleaming surface of its body, pock-marked by the degrading march of time. The long-dead clan-chiefs of this place had left their unsleeping servants to protect their decaying realm.

The death's-head grimace fixed Anatolus with a cold, emotionless stare. It was an inhuman thing, a silent killer, its sole purpose at this time, in this place, to take what little of his life remained.

His bolter gripped tight in his hand, Anatolus felt his heart pumping faster and the narcotic kick of adrenaline coursing throughout his body. The metallic guardian would not find his life so easy to take, on that matter he was resolved.

BlNG... BING... BING.

The chiming of the monitoring logister made the normally calm Apothecary start and the surgical servo-skulls to describe nervous figures of eight over the operating slab. Caduceus swiftly checked the monitoring medicae-auspex with a trained eye, decades of experience reading the instalments at a glance.