Horus Heresy: A Thousand Sons Part 46

No sooner had the words left him than he shot forwards, his essence enveloping Wyrdmake's. He stabbed a spear of brightness into the Rune Priest, but this was no a.s.sault on Wyrdmake's body of light. It was a spear of truth.

"You cannot understand the truth without understanding the omnipresent character of the untruth you are bound to. Enlightenment is fruitless until you free yourself from the lie. The power of truth will merge with you when you become free from all forms of deception. This is my gift to you, Ohthere Wyrdmake!"

Ahriman poured everything into the Rune Priest: the corruption of Horus and the betrayal of everything the Emperor had sought to create, the monstrous scale of the imminent war and the horror that lay at the end of it. Win or lose, a time of ultimate darkness was coming, and as Ahriman opened Wyrdmake to all that he had seen, he too learned all that had driven the s.p.a.ce Wolves and the Custodes to make such furious war upon the Thousand Sons.

He saw the honeyed words of Horus and the sinister urgings of Constantin Valdor, each spoken with very different purposes, but designed to sway Leman Russ towards a destination of total destruction.

The scale of this betrayal shocked him to the root of all that he was. Ahriman had come to terms with Horus Lupercal's betrayal, for it had its origins in the snares and delusions woven by beings to whom the pa.s.sage of vigintillions of aeons were but the blink of an eye. This? This was all too human treachery. These were lies, told for n.o.ble reasons, but which had brought about the unintended consequences of Prospero's destruction.

Anger overtook Ahriman, and he hurled himself at Wyrdmake once more, tearing into his subtle body with unthinking anger. Wyrdmake fought back, but his struggles were feeble, his mind aflame with the horrors Ahriman had shown him.

They fell through the Great Ocean, the weight of their emotions dragging them back to their bodies. Shoals of void-predators came with them, terrible abominations of nightmares undreamed, abortions of monstrous appet.i.te and fiends of insatiable hunger. Ahriman felt their presence, and shaped them further with the most hideous imaginings he could conjure, phage beasts of fang and claw, nameless forms and vampiric bloodl.u.s.t.

At last they returned to the hate-bathed city of Tizca, its ghostly image like looking through a thick fog or a grimy window. Ahriman saw the fighting raging through the blasted park, the clash of s.p.a.ce Wolves and Thousand Sons as both forces tore at one another for all the wrong reasons. Sobek, Hathor Maat and the Scarab Occult stood sentinel over his body as the fighting pushed the Thousand Sons' line inexorably back.

Leman Russ was a blazing column of light as he killed warriors by the score, and Ahriman knew that nothing could stop this feral G.o.d from tearing the Thousand Sons apart. His two wolves, representations of light and dark, smashed warriors from their feet and ripped them to pieces, their savagery the equal of their master. Ahriman dragged his gaze from the Wolf King and his b.e.s.t.i.a.l companions, and held the slumped Wyrdmake before him.

The Rune Priest was a broken shadow of his former haughty self. His subtle body haemorrhaged life energy and his aura flickered with the damage Ahriman's truth had wrought upon his mind.

All his certainty was undone and his soul was bare, raw and undefended.

"This is for Ankhu Anen," said Ahriman, and he threw Wyrdmake to the void-predators. They closed on his helpless form with hungry savagery, snapping and tearing with warp-sharpened claws and vorpal fangs. It was over in seconds, the glowing morsels of the Rune Priest's soul devoured and lost forever.

Ahriman watched with no small amount of satisfaction as Ohthere Wyrdmake's armoured form collapsed, the body of flesh unable to survive the death of the soul. Part of him recoiled from so dark a deed, but the heart of him rejoiced to see his enemy so wholly destroyed.

Ahriman opened his eyes and took a deep breath, feeling the many repercussions that coloured his flesh like angry bruises. The sounds of battle were deafening, and the howling of wolves echoed throughout what was left of Tizca. In an instant, he saw that the battle for Tizca was as good as over. Prospero was lost.

His grip on his heqa staff was rigid, and he saw its gold and blue banding fade until its entire length was utterly black. The symbolism was unmistakable.

"So be it," he said.

AHRIMAN FOUGHT BACK to back with Hathor Maat, holding their line together in the face of the savagery of the s.p.a.ce Wolves and the Emperor's praetorians. Chainblades rose and fell, their jagged, icy teeth red with Astartes blood, and bolters fired hard rounds that impacted and penetrated their targets without time to arm.

Their line had not held against the unbridled savagery of Leman Russ, and this final stand was being made in the shadow of the Pyramid of Photep. Shards of crystalline gla.s.s floated on the oil-sc.u.mmed waters surrounding Magnus the Red's lair. The surviving populace of Tizca, who had escaped the initial wrath of the invaders, sheltered within, the last of a great lineage of scholars who had not only endured Old Night, but thrived in its wake.

Armoured vehicles crushed statues and fallen tree trunks, their guns trained on the vast pyramid behind the battle. The struggling warriors were too enmeshed for any of the gunners to draw a clear shot, and so they contented themselves with demolis.h.i.+ng the sanctum of their enemies' primarch. The Pyramid of Photep s.h.i.+mmered in the fading light, its gleaming surface and silver towers bathed in the h.e.l.lish light of its own destruction. Explosions bloomed upon the mighty crux ansata engraved on its front, and gla.s.s rained from its ruptured flanks.

Ahriman knew the end was upon them, for fewer than fifteen hundred of the Legion remained alive. Such a force could conquer planets and quell entire rebellions with ease, but against more than three times their number and facing no less a warrior than a primarch, this was a battle that could only end one way.

To fight was to doom both Legions in the coming war, but Ahriman could no more let these barbarians despoil his world without a struggle than he could undo the past. The Wolf King had built pyres of irreplaceable knowledge and smashed priceless artefacts unique in all the galaxy with the careless stoke of his frostblade.

Such ignorance and thoughtless destruction could not go unanswered.

"I said you were being optimistic," said Hathor Maat, punching his heqa staff through the neck of a helmetless s.p.a.ce Wolf. Blood squirted from the ruptured jugular, and Hathor Maat completed the kill with a bolt round through the warrior's skull.

"I stand corrected," said Ahriman, his thoughts drifting now that he had accepted the notion of his death. In what he knew would be his last moments, he wondered what had happened to Lemuel and his fellow remembrancers. Ahriman had not seen them since Kallista Eris' death, and he hoped they had somehow survived this horror, though he knew they were probably dead. The thought saddened him, but if this battle had taught him anything, it was that regret was pointless. Only the future mattered and only through the acquisition of knowledge could it be preserved. He lamented that he would never get the chance to replace all that had been lost on Prospero.

A screaming wolf leapt at him and Ahriman put a bolt through its skull. It landed in front of him and he recoiled in horror as he saw this was no wolf, but a monstrous beast clad in fragments of armour, as though a warrior's body had transformed into some h.e.l.l-beast.

"What in the name of the Great Ocean!" cried Hathor Maat, as yet more of the hideous melds of man and wolf came at them.

Something Ohthere Wyrdmake had once said to Ahriman returned to him, and he watched as yet more of the howling man-wolf creatures leapt to the attack.

"Wulfen!" he shouted, unleas.h.i.+ng torrents of bolter sh.e.l.ls into the ma.s.s of charging beasts.

"And they say we are the monsters!" shouted Hathor Maat.

The Wulfen were once Astartes, but Astartes afflicted by a terrible curse. Their faces were b.e.s.t.i.a.l, but with the last glimmerings of intelligence in the yellowed depths of their sunken eyes. Matted fur covered their faces and hands, yet their jaws were not distended like a wolf's. Razor-sharp fangs and talons were their weapons, for the knowledge of technology was lost to these savage killers.

Only the most accurate shots would put them down, and they shrugged off wounds that would have killed even an Astartes. Their claws could tear through battle-plate with ease, and their teeth were as vicious as any energised blade. The single-minded savagery was unlike anything the Thousand Sons had fought before, and they fell back from these newly unleashed terrors, horrified that the s.p.a.ce Wolves would dare employ such degenerate abominations.

The Wulfen punched a b.l.o.o.d.y hole in the Thousand Sons' line, tearing it wider with every second, and dozens of warriors fell beneath the tearing blades of their claws. Howls of triumph filled the air as the gap the Wulfen had opened was filled with Custodes and s.p.a.ce Wolf warriors. Bands of Thousand Sons were surrounded and hacked down by frost-bladed axes and glittering Guardian Spears.

Ahriman backed along the great basalt causeway over the water towards the Pyramid of Photep, their last refuge on Tizca. The best and bravest of the Legion, all that survived to sell their lives in sight of their primarch, went with him towards the bronze gates that led inside.

The howling of the Wulfen built to a deafening crescendo.

And high above, those howls were finally answered.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE.

Prospero's Lament PURPLE LIGHTNING SPLIT the sky and the heavens darkened with the sudden fall of night. A deluge of black rain fell, soaking everything in an instant and saturating the air with the bitter taste of sodden ashes. Ahriman looked up in shock to see a flaming giant descending from the highest reaches of the Pyramid of Photep. The crux ansata rippled with pellucid green fire, and kaleidoscopic bolts of lightning slammed into the ground, immolating dozens of the cursed Wulfen with every blazing strike.

Cracks split the ground and the waters surrounding the pyramid seethed and boiled with anger. Black waves crashed upon the sh.o.r.es, and the gla.s.s shards falling from the pyramid were caught in a surging, sentient whirlwind that hurled them like spears to impale enemy warriors and skewer them to the ground.

Ahriman felt an enormous build up of energy, and summoned all his strength to control his body, knowing the mutations within his flesh would seek to throw off the shackles of his form and unleash new and terrifying ones within him. Yet the painful surge of mutant growth never came, and he looked up at the radiant being of fire and light that drew ever closer.

Magnus the Red was a glorious sight, his golden armour and wild red hair ablaze with aetheric energy. His bladed staff threw off blinding arcs of lightning that destroyed armoured vehicles in thunderous explosions. Magnus swept his eye across the horrified s.p.a.ce Wolves, and all who met his gaze died in an instant as they were driven to madness by the stygian depths of infinite chaos they saw there.

Above Tizca, madness raged as the power of the Great Ocean pressed in and the sky became a transparent window into the realm beyond. Gibbous eyes the size of mountains, and amorphous monsters the likes of which only madmen could dream, leered down on the doomed world below. Hundreds died instantly at the sight of such blasphemous horrors.

No sane man could witness such vileness without recoiling, and the invading army paused in its slaughter, shocked by the sight of such dreadful things glaring hungrily at the world below. Even the Wulfen cowered before the sight of these abominable creatures, suddenly feeling the overwhelming insignificance of their existence.

Only Leman Russ and his wolf companions stood unfazed by this vision of Magnus, and Ahriman saw a gleam of antic.i.p.ation in the Wolf King's eyes, as though he relished the idea of the coming conflict.

Magnus set foot on the causeway, and the normal tempo of time's pa.s.sage slowed, each raindrop falling as though in slow motion, the zigzagging traceries of lightning moving with infinite slowness. The volcanic stone of the causeway rippled with transformative energies beneath Magnus' feet, and Ahriman dropped to his knees before his primarch, centuries of ingrained obedience making the motion unconscious.

The Primarch of the Thousand Sons was a divine, rapturous figure of light amid the darkness. The gold of his armour had never been brighter, the red of his vast mane never more vivid. His flesh burned with the touch of immense power, greater than anything it had ever contained before. His eye locked onto Ahriman, and the depths of despair he saw in that haunted, glowing orb froze the blood in his veins. In that moment, Ahriman felt the horror Magnus had felt as his sons mutated into monsters and the anguish, centuries later, as he watched them butchered to serve a brother's lunatic ambition.

He understood the n.o.ble ideal that had stayed the primarch's hand throughout the battle, recognising it for what it was, not for what he had thought it to be. He felt his father's forgiveness for doubting him, and heard his voice in his head.

"This doom was always meant for me, not you," said Magnus, and Ahriman knew that every warrior of the Thousand Sons was hearing the same thing. "You are my sons, and I have failed you."

Ahriman wanted to weep at his primarch's words, feeling the sorrow of a being who had beheld all of creation, but had fallen short in his reach to grasp it. When Magnus spoke again, he alone heard the primarch's voice.

"Ahzek, lead my sons within the pyramid."

"No!" he cried, tears of grief mingling with the rain falling in endless torrents.

"You must," insisted Magnus, lifting his red arm and pointing towards the bronze gates of the pyramid, which now swung open. White light shone enticingly from within. "Amon awaits you, and he bears a priceless gift you must bear away from this place. You must do this, or all we have done here will have meant nothing."

"What of you, my lord?" asked Ahriman. "What will you do?"

"What I must," said Magnus, looking over at the raging form of Leman Russ as he charged with a glacial lack of speed onto the causeway. The primarch reached down and touched the jade scarab in the centre of Ahriman's breast-plate. The crystal shone with a pale light, and Ahriman felt the immense power resting within it.

"This was cut from the Reflecting Caves," said Magnus. "Every warrior of my Legion bears one set in his armour. When the moment comes, and you will know it when it does, concentrate all your energies on the this crystal and those of your battle-brothers."

"I don't understand," pleaded Ahriman. "What must I do?"

"What you have been destined to do since before you were born," said Magnus. "Now go!"

"I will stand with you," vowed Ahriman.

"No," said Magnus with an endless abyss of regret. "You will not. Our fates are unravelling even now, and what happens here has to happen. Do this last thing for me, Ahzek."

Though it broke his heart, Ahriman nodded, and the world swelled around him as the flow of time restored its integrity from the distortion Magnus' arrival had caused. The bellows of burning pyres and immaterial thunder rolled across the face of the world once more, and the deafening fire of weapons roared even louder than before.

The howl of the Wolf King blotted them all out. Ahriman and the Thousand Sons turned and ran towards the Pyramid of Photep.

Ma.s.sES OF PEOPLE filled the pyramid, terrified civilians and exhausted Spireguard. The Thousand Sons poured inside, their armour black and dripping from the nightmarish deluge drowning the world beyond. At a conservative estimate, Ahriman guessed that just over a thousand warriors had escaped the attack of the Wulfen.

"A tenth of the Legion," he said.

The horrifying scale of the loss staggered him.

Hathor Maat and Sobek came alongside him as he struggled to come to terms with what had become of their beloved Legion. Still numb from the sight of so few survivors, Ahriman sought out Amon, who stood in the centre of the vast chamber.

Amon was clad in his armour, but the plates were clean and unblemished. His weapons were sheathed and he carried a reinforced chest, sealed with a padlock of cold iron.

"He said you would live," said Amon.

"The primarch?"

"Yes. Years ago as you lay dying in the midst of the flesh change he knew you would live to see this moment."

"Spare me your tales," stormed Ahriman. "The primarch said you have something for me?"

"I do," confirmed Amon, holding the chest up for Ahriman to open.

"It is locked."

"To all others perhaps, but not to you."

"We don't have time for this," hissed Ahriman, looking over his shoulder as two G.o.ds of war clashed with the sound of worlds colliding. Blazing light filled the pyramid, and the howl of Leman Russ vied with the thunderous lightning of Magnus.

"You must make time," snapped Amon, "or all this will be for nothing."

Ahriman reached up and took hold of the lock, which snapped open with a metallic click at his touch. He opened the lid and drew in a breath as he saw the book within, its cover red and cracked with age, as though it were an archaeological find instead of a working grimoire.

"The Book of Magnus," breathed Hathor Maat.

"Why me?" demanded Ahriman.

"Because you are its new bearer," said Amon. "You are to keep it safe and ensure the knowledge contained within its pages never falls into the wrong hands."

Ahriman lifted the book from the iron chest, feeling the weight of power and expectation contained within its hallowed pages. The potency of the incantations and formulae called to him, alluring and redolent with promises of the great things he might achieve with the secrets inscribed upon its pages.

He wanted to refuse, to place the book back in its chest and secure the lock so that no one would ever gaze upon its pages and crave the power it could grant. He wanted Magnus to return and retrieve his grimoire, but understood with sudden clarity that was never going to happen.

Magnus had no expectation of surviving his duel with Leman Russ.

Ahriman took the book and ran back to the bronze gates of the pyramid, desperation lending his strides greater speed. Brilliant flashes of light and thunderous impacts came from the other side of the gate, as colossal forces beyond mortal comprehension were unleashed.

Ahriman reached the mighty portal, and saw a battle between two brothers that was unparalleled in its savagery, power and folly. Magnus and the Wolf King struggled with the fate of a world balanced on the outcome. Forking traceries of lightning shot upwards from the ground, isolating them from the host of Wolves and Custodes.

Russ rained blow after blow on Magnus, shattering the horned breastplate, and in return Magnus struck his brother with a searing blast of cold fire that cracked his armour and set light to his braided hair.

It seemed as though the combatants had swollen to enormous proportions, like the giants they were in the myths and legends. The Wolf King's frostblade struck at Magnus, but his golden axe turned the blow aside as they spun and twisted in an epic battle beneath the madness of a blazing storm of sheet lightning and pounding thunder. This was a battle fought on every level: physical, mental and spiritual, with each primarch bending every ounce of their almost limitless power to the other's destruction.

The waters around the pyramid broke upon the sh.o.r.es, black as oil, and churning as though an unseen tempest boiled beneath the surface. s.p.a.ce Wolves and Custodes ploughed through the water, wading through the cras.h.i.+ng spray to reach the pyramid in lieu of aiding Leman Russ in his battle. Magnus swept his hands to the side, and the warriors on the water cried out in agony as it transformed into corrosive acid, burning through ceramite plates and rendering flesh and bone to jelly.

Thick rain fell, fit to drown the world, and the ground underfoot transformed into a stinking quagmire from which writhing shapes like grasping hands emerged. Wounded warriors were dragged down into the mud, struggling against their unseen attackers, but unable to resist being pulled under to their doom.

Prospero was breaking apart, the veil between worlds cracking, and the maddening gibbers and screams of the Great Ocean's denizens drove men to their knees in terror. The a.s.sault on the senses was total, and Ahriman could barely keep his feet as hurricane-force winds battered the pyramid, tearing gla.s.s panes from its structure and breaking the silver and gold towers from its corners. Thunder banged in the midnight sky, and heaving earthquakes ripped ever-widening cracks in the ground, toppling what few structures of Tizca remained standing.

The epicentre of this destruction was Magnus and Russ, and Ahriman watched the two t.i.tans wrestle with the bitter enmity reserved only for those who had once called each other friend. Such a contest of arms was the most desperate thing Ahriman had ever seen. He wanted to rush forward and remind them of their former kins.h.i.+p, but to intervene in such a planet-shaking conflict would be suicide.

Ahriman had cautioned his warriors not to wield their powers for fear of the flesh change, but Magnus showed no such restraint and battered Leman Russ with fists wreathed in fire and lightning. Russ was a primarch and such powers as could shatter armies had little effect on him save to drive him to higher fits of rage.

Magnus drove his fist into Russ' chest, the icy breastplate cracking open with a sound like planets colliding, and shards of ceramite stabbed the Wolf King's heart. In return, Russ snapped Magnus' arm back, and Ahriman heard it shatter into a thousand pieces. A blade of pure thought unsheathed from Magnus' other arm, and he drove it deep into Russ' chest through his shattered armour.

The blade burst from Russ' back and the Wolf King loosed a deafening bellow of pain. A chorus of the wolves that were not wolves added their howls to that of their master. The two enormous lupine monsters that accompanied Russ leapt upon Magnus, fastening their jaws upon his legs. Magnus slammed his fist into the black wolf's head, driving it to the ground with a strangled yelp, its skull surely shattered. With a bellow of anger, Magnus tore the white wolf from his leg with a thought and hurled it away over the heads of the milling army at Russ' back.

Ahriman felt hands dragging him away as the howling winds and driving rain tore through the gates. He tried to shake them off as someone shouted his name. Hathor Maat and Amon pulled him away from the entrance as the vast mechanisms slowly began hauling the enormous gates closed.

"No!" he shouted, his words s.n.a.t.c.hed away by the screaming winds. "We can't!"

"We must!" shouted Hathor Maat, pointing towards the cras.h.i.+ng waters separating the s.p.a.ce Wolves from the pyramid. Using the stocks of their bolters as paddles, the enemy had jury-rigged concave shards of roof debris to use as makes.h.i.+ft boats, and were surging over the waves towards the gateway. The water had returned to its natural state, frothed patches of liquefied flesh and bone sc.u.mming its surface the only reminder of the men who had died there. Hordes of Wulfen plunged into the water, entire packs pus.h.i.+ng towards the pyramid with hundreds more right behind them.

Ahriman looked past the approaching monsters to see Magnus and Russ locked in battle high above the causeway, the furious horror of their struggle obscured by ethereal fire and bursts of lightning. A flare of black light erupted and Russ cried out in agony. His blade lashed out blindly and struck a fateful blow against his foe's most dreaded weapon: his eye.