Fire-wyvern shook violently from another aerial bombardment, but Vraver and Kadai didn’t flinch. From the cockpit, through the internal vox, Brother He’ken relayed that they were closing on their objective.

++Ninety seconds…++

‘What was your answer?’ asked Vraver.

Kadai spread his hands as if it was obvious, ‘“Because we must.”’

‘As simple as that,’ said the Raven Guard. ‘I always admired your frankness, Ko’tan. You Salamanders are such pragmatists, even when your very appearance betrays your ideals.’

Fire-wyvern’s engines were screaming. The gunship was banking into a sharp dive. Kadai could feel the inertia even in his power armour. Heavy cannon fire boomed through the hull, muffled slightly by the gunship’s armour.

++Sixty seconds…++

‘It is because of what we are that we can be Vulkan’s Shield. Triumph over adversity, self-sacrifice and the capacity to endure comes from this.’ He gestured towards his diabolic features. ‘By being less human on the outside, we are made more human inside.’ Kadai touched his breastplate where a symbolic flame was rendered in gold. ‘The burning core of our righteousness and the belief in our duty and all the Promethean Creed comes from within.’

++Ten seconds… nine… eight…++

Kadai donned his helmet. Like his armour, it was finely artificed. It depicted a snarling drake head, its scales echoed in the captain’s battle-plate.

The deployment ramp of Fire-wyvern opened slowly. Heat and sound rushed in. Having disengaged his grav-harness, Kadai mounted the ramp first. Brother He’ken had brought them low. Thirty metres down, fire wreathed Echelon City in a crackling veil.

The once regal avenues burned. Plazas fluttered with the charred remains of anti-Imperial propaganda leaflets. Bodies of loyal citizens and cultists alike littered roads clogged with blood and rubble. One structure remained. Blasted ruins filled with Chaos insurgency troops surrounded it. Three battalions, over a thousand troops, moved into position. Their heavy gun emplacements had taken a toll on the schola’s marble walls. Columns were toppled. Statues of prominent alumni were beheaded and defiled. Soon it would be no more. The Space Marines had arrived just in time.

A comm-feed in Kadai’s ornate helm revealed that Navy ordnance would be unleashed from sub-orbit in less than six point three minutes and counting. Only ash would remain afterwards.

He’ken drew them closer still. Heavy bolters from the Thunderhawk’s wings and forward fuselage raked a cannon battery wheeling around to get a bead. Simple brown flak armour and the hoods of their debased cult availed them nothing. The heretics disappeared in a storm of blood and debris.

Kadai unhitched a pair of krak grenades mag-locked to his belt.

The roof of the schola hove into view. It had been damaged and would yield with little force. Kadai cast down the grenades, priming them with a three-second timer. Vrarer loosed two more.

The detonation was fast and loud. In a cloud of smoke and flame, the schola roof collapsed. Several young faces and the older visage of an abbot peered up through the clearing dust at the angels in the war-blackened sky above. Salvation had come.