The tent was larger within than it appeared on the outside. At the end of its gloomy length, Dak’ir saw a figure seated upon a throne. It was a silhouette, a veritable giant, and armoured unless he was mistaken.

‘Come forth!’ Dak’ir challenged, brandishing his sword.

The figure did not answer, did not even flinch.

‘If you are my enemy then face me.’

Still nothing.

Dak’ir crept closer.

From the corner of his eye he thought he saw movement… a flash of reptilian eyes, a streak of blue on black. But when he looked, the drygnirr wasn’t there.

He watches, even now… even as I burn.

The figure on the throne was mocking him, Dak’ir was certain. He would cut the–

A thrown spear tore into the side of the tent and a shaft of light spilled in. It lit the figure, a silhouette no longer. His armour was pitted and broken, as if it had been corroded by time or–

The melta’s beam cutting across the temple. There is nothing I can do, even when it touches my face…

Though badly damaged, much of the paint chipped away, Dak’ir saw the armour had once been green. A pair of wings with a flame in the centre emblazoned the warrior’s shattered breastplate. Fingers of bone poked out from his ruined gauntlets. A chest cavity of dust-choked ribs yawned through the ragged gaps in his plastron. A skull, locked in a rictus-grin, regarded Dak’ir where a battle-helm had long ceased to be.

A word, a name, trembled on Dak’ir’s lips as he approached the armoured cadaver.

‘Ka… Ka…’

He was my captain. My guilt gives him form in this place.

Dak’ir was less than half a metre away – ‘Ka… Ka…’ – when the corpse-warrior reached out with his deathless hands and seized Dak’ir by the neck.

‘Diiiiieeeee…’ it hissed, naming itself and damning Dak’ir in one word, though its rictus jaw never moved.

Yes, that was his name. I cannot forget.

Dak’ir was choking. He scrabbled at the bony fingers but they wouldn’t relent. Blood pulsed in his ears and he felt his eyes bulging as his brain was starved of oxygen.

The burning… Use it!

He had to drag some breath into his lungs or be strangled by the terrible undead thing before him. That was when he noticed the air bleeding out of the room, devoured hungrily by the flames wreathing his body. It burned, a flame so invasive it went to the nerves and threatened to overwhelm Dak’ir.

The skeleton’s grip loosened.

Dak’ir choked through fire-cracked lips.

‘What is happening?’

Let it burn us. Embrace the flame. It is yours to mould…

The fire became an inferno. It roared outwards in a wave, cascading from Dak’ir’s body, exploding the skeleton to ash with its fury, yet he was untouched.