The Eventide had been born venerable, its hull laid down in the shipyards of Saturn at the onset of the Great Crusade, a Dictatus-class Battleship gifted to the XIVth Legion so that the Dusk Raiders might take the Imperial Truth to the undeserving stars. Each of its bulkheads had been painted a deep crimson to reflect the honour bestowed upon it.

All of them except the one before which he now stood.

Whatever it might have been at one time, this one was black. An unclean black. Pitted and ancient with blight and oxidation. A black that caused the skin to itch and the rad counter of Ullis Temeter’s warplate to tick incessantly, increasing in tempo as he reached out a hand towards it, withdrawing it before he touched the warning glyph that was its only adornment.

His men shifted uneasily, fingers never straying far from triggers, as his helm’s machine spirit transmitted the necessary code cyphers.

He felt the thud of locking bolts reverberate through the passageway as they withdrew, and the tortured grind of ageing gears as they struggled to heave the portal open.

Alarms chimed in his suit as the staccato hiss of his rad counter attempted to keep pace with the flood of radiation and other exotic particles, a countdown timer flickering into existence at the periphery of his vision.

They did not have long.

They waited patiently as the timer continued to carve away the seconds until their warplate would be compromised. Until they were irreconcilably contaminated.

They came out of the darkness in ones and twos, all clad in blackened warplate. All armed.

Destroyers.

He had never seen them unarmoured, did not know if they could go unarmoured any longer. They stood, awaiting another, who arrived last.

“Ash-Maker.”

Ullis Temeter waited, but the Centurion gave no acknowledgement, “Ash-Maker, you are needed. The planet below harbours a threat that cannot be allowed to exist. Cannot be allowed to have ever existed. The remembrancers have been sent away. You are called to war.”

There was an awkward silence, followed by the single click of an engaging vox.

“Speak the words.”

Ullis grimaced, the Ash-Maker’s voice was the death-rattle of the immolated.

“Speak the words, Praetor.”

Ullis gritted his teeth “I see a red war and I want it painted black. No battle standards anymore, I want them to turn black.”

“Black as night? Black as coal?” came the desiccated response.

“Yes, I want to see the sun blotted out from the sky.”

The Centurion’s hands tensed around the grips of his Volkite Serpentas, hungry, expectant. Ullis hated this ritual, and what the following words condoned.

“Paint it black Ash-Maker. Paint it black.”