‘Hail Vulkan and the glory of Prometheus!’ Ba’ken chimed. ‘Let Him on Earth witness your courage, men of the Phalanx.’

The effect of the sergeants’ words was galvanising. Coupled with Mannheim’s own stirring rally, the men became intractable in the face of almost certain death.

Tsu’gan heard a deep cry of pain to his left and saw Lazarus fall, impaled as Dak’ir had been by eldritch fingers.

‘Brother!’

S’tang and Nor’gan went to his aid as Honorious covered their retreat with his flamer.

‘Hold, Fire-born, hold!’ Tsu’gan bellowed. ‘Give them nothing!’

Tenacious to the end, the Salamanders would fight until their final breaths, and none so fiercely as Tsu’gan.

The battle-hardened sergeant was ready to make his final pledges to his primarch and his Emperor when the comm-feed crackled to life in his ear.

‘You may have cheated death, Ignean,’ snapped Tsu’gan when he realised who it was. ‘But then survival over glory was always your–’

‘Shut up, Zek, and raise Pyriel right now,’ Dak’ir demanded, using the other Salamander’s first name and mustering as much animus as he could.

‘Our brother needs to marshal all of his concentration, Ignean,’ Tsu’gan snapped again. ‘He can ill afford distractions from you.’

‘Do it, or it will not matter how distracted he becomes!’

Tsu’gan snarled audibly but obeyed, something in Dak’ir’s tone making him realise it was important.

‘Brother-Librarian,’ he barked down the comm-feed. ‘Our absent brother demands to speak with you.’

Pyriel nodded labouredly, his hands aloft as he struggled to maintain the barrier.

‘Speak…’ the Librarian could scarcely rasp.

‘Do you remember what you felt before the first assault?’ Dak’ir asked quickly. ‘You said there was something about the shield, an anomaly in its energy signature. It is psychically enhanced, brother, to keep the warp echoes out.’

Through the furious barrage a slim crack was forming in the void shield’s integrity, invisible to mortal eyes but plain as frozen lightning to the Librarian’s witch-sight. And through it, Pyriel discerned a psychic undercurrent straining to maintain a barrier of its own. With Dak’ir’s revelation came understanding and then purpose.

‘They want vengeance against Aphium,’ said Pyriel, beginning to refocus his psychic energy and remould it into a sharp blade of his own anger.

‘For the complicity in their deaths over a thousand years ago,’ Dak’ir concluded.

‘I know what to do, brother,’ Pyriel uttered simply, his voice drenched with psychic resonance as he let slip the last of the tethers from his psychic hood, the crystal matrix dampener that protected him psychically, and laid himself open to the warp.

‘In Vulkan’s name,’ Dak’ir intoned before the link was overwhelmed with psychic static and died.

‘Brother Tsu’gan…’ Pyriel’s voice was deep and impossibly loud against the battle din. A tsunami of raw psychic power was coursing through him, encasing the Librarian in a vibrant, fiery aura. ‘…I am about to relinquish the barrier…’

Tsu’gan had no time to answer. The psychic barrier fell and the warp echoes swept in. Thunder split the heavens and red lightning tore across boiling clouds as the warp storm reached its zenith.