Anatolus struggled to open puffy, swollen eyes. Darkness pulled back and the roiling billows of smoggy cloud, under-lit by dazzling lightning bursts, lay above him, like a shroud covering this dead land. A face loomed over his, a horrific mess of twisted flesh fused with half a gleaming metal skull, so like the guardian he thought he had destroyed.
His heart rate quickened again.
'By Ferrus, he is still alive.’ Anatolus heard a grating, metallic voice say.
Then pain was all he knew and oblivion rushed in on him, a black void swallowing his senses as unconsciousness overcame him.
TWO
JUDGEMENT OF IRON
The Council Chamber, Land-Behemoth Weyland
Gdolkin's mind fell through the starless void of oblivion.
Silver flashed in the darkness...
Metal ghost faces came at him out of the night...
Pincer claws bit, steel jaws snapped...
The rattle of thunderbolts pierced the darkness...
Skeletal creatures of iron loomed out of the darkness, their voices incomprehensible distorted vox-static. They reached for him with grasping hands, their faces inscrutable metal masks...
Bong... bong... bong...
Anatolus was aware of a distant tolling, like that of a funeral bell.
Bong.
The knelling became louder, more invasive. Bong.
Bong.
Iron-Father Gdolkin slowly opened his eyes, the recollections of his distant youth fading back into memory.
He looked around him, taking in the apothecarion from Brother Caduceus's operating slab. He was still on Medusa but now he was back inside his clan company's land-behemoth fortress and not in the frozen, necrotic wastelands of the mythical Land of Shadow.
More recent memories resurfaced from the seething depths of his mind, like bubbles rising to the surface of a dark pool, and he looked down at his right hand. The bloody mess of tissue and bone had been replaced by a gleaming metal augmetic.
He tested his new hand, flexing the tension-sprung digits. He rotated his wrist as he did so, taking in the details of the ancient gauntlet's manufacture: the hammered armour pieces, the embossed Imperial aquila on the back of the hand, the finely-crafted finger joints, every metal knuckle joint worked to resemble a glowering skull.
He recognised the augmetic for the highly revered antique it was and smiled inwardly with satisfaction.
'Is everything to your satisfaction, Iron-Father?' Apothecary Caduceus asked respectfully.
'Oh yes, a great improvement.’ Gdolkin said, a grim smile curling the corners of his stern mouth.
If he were honest, Gdolkin was more than satisfied. This replacement would serve him so much better than the flesh and blood original. Even now he felt a momentary stab of anger as he recalled how the frail appendage had failed him. This attitude was a reflection of how he and all Iron Hands' Space Marines ultimately felt about the physical form.
But this hand wouldn't fail him, Caduceus had seen to that. Thanks to the Omnissiah, and the skill of the Machine God's servants, his right hand would never have the chance to let him down again.
Bong.
The ominous tolling of the bell, leaden with solemnity and the weight of ages, came again.