The Thousand Sons enjoyed the best of the fight, their heqa staffs and innate powers having a greater effect on the enemy than the s.p.a.ce Wolves" guns and blades. The Astartes were holding, but against an unstoppable, numberless enemy, it would take more than simple determination to win.
"Very well," he said. "You will fight at my side?"
"Wyrdmake will," snarled Skarssen. "I fight with the warriors of my blood."
Ahriman nodded. He had expected no more. Without another word, he set off towards the edge of the chasm, forging a path with blazing swipes of his staff and bursts of aether-fire from his gauntlets. Wyrdmake matched him step for step, two warriors of enormous strength fighting side by side with powers beyond the ken of mortal men.
A black snake lashed at Wyrdmake"s helmet, and Ahriman severed it. Another wrapped around Ahriman"s waist, and Wyrdmake burned it to ash with a gesture. Their thoughts were weapons as much as their staffs, but they were forced to fight for every step, destroying the tentacles with killing blows and violent impulses. Bred of different gene-fathers, they nevertheless fought as one, each warrior"s fighting style complementing the other. Where Ahriman fought with rigidly controlled discipline, each blow precisely measured and weighted, Ohthere fought with intuitive fluidity, invented on the move and owing more to innate ability than to any imposed training.
It was a combination that was lethally effective, with both warriors fighting as though they had trained with one another since birth. They fought through a dense thicket of black limbs to reach the edge of the chasm, the sinuous matter parting before their every blow. Only when Ahriman felt the faded symbols underfoot did he realise they had reached the edge.
The bodies of Thousand Sons and s.p.a.ce Wolves were being dragged into the pit, their limbs wrapped in glistening black ropes. Ahriman reached out with his aetheric senses, and turned as he felt the spiking, awesome presence of Magnus.
"The primarch!" cried Ahriman, looking deep into the heaving ma.s.s.
Magnus and Yatiri, locked together like lovers, were carried away by the tentacles, and drawn deeper into the beating heart of the ma.s.s.
The darkness closed around Magnus.
And he was gone.
IT WAS NOT unpleasant, not in the slightest.
Magnus felt the impotent rage of the seething enemy as it sought to twist him and overpower him the way it had overpowered Yatiri. The elder was gone, his mind a broken thing shattered by such exposure, his body degenerating with every pa.s.sing second. Magnus had a mind crafted and honed by the greatest cognitive architect in the galaxy, and remained aloof from such brute displays.
He felt its manifestations writhing around his corporeal body, but shut himself off from physical sensations, turning his perceptions inwards as it bore him down into its depths. It amused him to see how its substance had been shaped, its form a reflection of the nightmares and legends of the Aghoru.
So simple and yet so dreadful.
What culture did not have a dread of slimy, wriggling things that lived in the dark? These creatures were shaped by the tortured mind of Yatiri, filtered through the lens of his darkest terrors and ancient legends. Magnus was fortunate indeed that the people of Aghoru had so limited a palette from which to paint its existence.
The inchoate energy pouring into the world had its source far below him, and he shrugged off Yatiri"s embrace with a thought. His flesh burned as hot as a forge, and he blasted the elder"s body to ash as he plunged into the chasm with the first words of the Enumerations on his lips.
His warriors used the Enumerations to rise to states of mind where they could function with optimum mental efficiency, but they were like stepping-stones across a tiny stream to a being such as Magnus. He had mastered them before he had left Terra for the first time, his father"s words of warning still ringing in his mind.
He had heeded the warning, enduring Amon"s tutorials and sermons regarding the power of the Great Ocean on Prospero, while knowing that greater power lay within his reach. Amon had been kind to him, and had accepted the knowledge of his growing obsolescence with good grace, for Magnus outstripped him in learning and power at an early age. Yet he too had warned of peering too deeply into the Ocean"s depths.
The desolation of Prospero was warning enough of the consequences of reaching too far and too heedlessly.
Only when the Emperor had brought the survivors of his Legion to Prospero had Magnus known he would have to disregard the warnings and delve further into the mysteries. His gene-sons were dying, their bodies mutating and turning against them as uncontrolled tides wrought ever more hideous changes in their flesh. Nor were such horrific transformations limited to their bodies. Their minds were like pulsing flares in the Great Ocean, drawing predators, hunters and malign creatures that sought to cross into the material universe.
Unchecked, his Legion would be dead within a generation.
The power to save them was there, just waiting to be used, and he had given long thought and contemplation to breaking his father"s first command. He had not done so heedlessly, but only after much introspection and an honest appraisal of his abilities. Magnus knew he was a superlative manipulator of the aether, but was he strong enough?
He knew the answer to that now, for he had saved his warriors. He had seized control of their destinies from the talons of a malevolent shadow in the Great Ocean that held their fates in its grasp. The Emperor knew of such creatures, and had bargained with them in ages past, but he had never dared face one. Magnus" victory was not won without cost, and he reached up to touch the smooth skin where his right eye had once been, feeling the pain and vindication of that sacrifice once more.
This power was a pale echo of that, a degenerate pool of trapped energy that had stagnated in this backwater region of s.p.a.ce. He could sense the billionfold pathways that spread out from this place, the infinite possibilities of s.p.a.ce linked together by a web-like network of conceptual conduits burrowed through the angles between worlds. This region was corrupt, but there were regions of glittering gold in the ocean that threaded the galaxy, binding it as roads of stone had once bound the empires of the Romanii Emperors together.
To memorise the entire labyrinthine network was beyond even one as gifted as him, but in a moment of connection beyond the darkness, he imprinted a million paths, conduits and access points in his mind. He might not know the entire network, but he would remember enough to find other ways in and other paths. His father would be pleased to learn of this network, pleased enough to overlook Magnus" transgression at least.
It still amazed him that he had not known of these pathways, for he and his father had flown the farthest reaches of the Great Ocean and seen sights that would have reduced any other minds to gibbering madness. They had explored the forsaken reefs of entropy, and flown across the depthless chasms of fire that burned with light of every colour. They had fought the nameless, formless predators of the deep, and felt the gelid shadows of ent.i.ties so vast as to be beyond comprehension.
He realised he had not seen these paths because they were not there to be seen. Only this break in the network on Aghoru had allowed him to see it.
Concerns of the material world intruded on his introspective plunge, and Magnus looked out on a world of shadows and deceit. He had pa.s.sed from the realm of flesh to the realm of spirit without even thinking of it, and floated in a place without form and dimensions save any he desired to impose upon it. This was the entrance to the network, the nexus point that led into the labyrinth. This was what he had come to Aghoru to find.
He stood upon a broken landscape of upthrust crags and tormented geometry, a world of madness and desolation. Multi-coloured storms lashed the ground with black rain, and blistering lightning scored the heavens with burning zigzag lines. A golden line filled the horizon, a flame that encircled him and seethed with wounded power.
Jagged mountains reared up in the distance, only to be overturned within moments of their creation. Oceans surged with new tides, drying up in a heartbeat to become ashen deserts of dust and memory. Everywhere, the land was in flux, an inconstant whirl of creation and destruction without end and without beginning. Ash and despair billowed from cracks in the rock, and it was as perfect a vision of h.e.l.l, as Magnus had seen.
"Is this the best you can do?" he said, the words dripping with scorn. "The mindless void-predators can conjure this much."
The darkness before Magnus coalesced, wrapping itself in black spirals until a glistening snake with scales of obsidian coiled before him, weightless and disembodied from any notions of gravity. Its eyes were whirlpools of pink and blue, and a pair of brightly coloured wings ripped from its back. Its jaw peeled back, revealing fangs that dripped with venom.
Its forked tongue glittered, and its maw was an abyss of infinite possibility.
"This?" said the serpent, its voice dry as the desert. "This is not of my making. You brought this with you. This is Mekhenty-er-irty"s doing."
Magnus laughed at such a blatant lie, though the name was unknown to him. The sound was a glittering rain. The very air was saturated with potential. With a thought, Magnus conjured a cage of fire for the serpent.
"This ends now," said Magnus. "Your falsehoods are wasted on me."
"I know," hissed the serpent. "That is why I do not need any. I told you this was no invention of mine. It is simply a re-creation of a future that waits on you like a patient hunter."
The cage of fire vanished, and the serpent slithered through the air towards Magnus, its wings shimmering through a spectrum of a million colours in the time it took to notice.
"I am here to end this," said Magnus. "This portal was sealed once and I will seal it again."
"Craft older than your master"s tried and failed. What makes you think you will do better?"
"No one has a craft better than mine," laughed Magnus. "I have looked into the abyss and wrestled with its darkest powers. I overcame them, and I know the secrets of this world better than you."
"Such arrogant certainty," said the serpent with relish. "How pleasing that is to me. All the very worst sins are accomplished with such certainty: gluttony, wrath, l.u.s.t... pride. No force in existence can compete with mortals in the grip of certainty."
"What are you? Do you have a name?" asked Magnus.
"If I did, what makes you think I would be foolish enough to tell it to you?"
"Pride," said Magnus. "If I am guilty of sin, then I am not the only one. You want me to know who you are. Why else manifest like this?"
"If you will forgive the cliche, I have many names," said the serpent, with a dry laugh. "To you, I shall be Choronzon, Dweller in the Abyss and the Daemon of Dispersion."
"Daemon is a meaningless word, a name to give power to fear."
"I know, isn"t it wonderful?" smiled the serpent, coiling around Magnus" legs and slithering up his body. Magnus did not fear the serpent. He could destroy it without effort.
The serpent lifted its head until they were face to face, the length of its glossy body still coiled around his torso. Magnus felt the pressure as it tightened, but simply expanded his own form to match it. As its form enlarged, so too did his until they were two t.i.tans towering over the landscape of discord.
"You cannot intimidate me," he told the serpent. "In this place I am more powerful than you. You exist only because I have not yet destroyed you."
"And why is that? Your warriors are dying above. Do you not care for the lives of mortals, you who are so removed from mortality?"
"Time has no meaning here, and when I return it will be as if I was gone for mere moments," said Magnus. "Besides, much can be learned from a talkative foe."
"Indeed."
"I grow weary of these games," said Magnus, returning to his mortal size once more. The rearing mountains took on a gla.s.sy, silvery hue, and he was struck by a momentary flash of sickening recognition. "This ends now."
"Truly?" asked the snake, its vast bulk shrinking until it was only a little longer than Magnus" arm. "I have not even tempted you yet. Don"t you want to hear what I can offer you?"
"You have nothing I want," Magnus promised the snake.
"Are you so sure? I can give you great power, greater than you wield already."
"I have power," said Magnus. "I do not need yours."
The snake hissed in amus.e.m.e.nt, and its fanged maw parted with a serpentine approximation of a smile.
"You have already supped from a poisoned chalice, Magnus of Terra," it said. "Yours is a borrowed power, nothing more. You are a puppet given life and animation by an unseen master. Even now you dance a merry jig to another"s tune."
"And I should believe you?"
"I have no reason to lie," said the snake.
"You have every reason to lie."
"True, but not here, not now," said the snake, slithering free of Magnus and turning lazy circles in the air. "There is no need. No lie can match the horror of the truth that awaits you. You have bargained with powers far greater and more terrible than you can possibly imagine. You are their p.a.w.n now, a plaything to be used and discarded."
Magnus shook his head.
"Spare me your theatrics. I bested powers greater than you, with your tawdry vision of h.e.l.l," said Magnus with contempt. "I travelled the farthest reaches of the Great Ocean to save my Legion, unwound the strands of fate that bound them to their destruction and wove them anew. What makes you think your paltry blandishments will appeal to one such as I?"
"Arrogance too," hissed the snake, "matched with your towering conceit and certainty... Such a sweet prize you will make."
Magnus had heard enough, content that the alien intelligence behind this vision was no more than a petty dynast of the Great Ocean, a malevolent ent.i.ty with nothing to offer him but empty boasts and false promises. With a gesture, he drew the snake to him and took its straggling, whipping form in an unbreakable grip- It squirmed, but he held it fast with no more effort than he might hold a lifeless rope. Magnus squeezed and the scales peeled from its body, the coloured feathers of its wings becoming l.u.s.treless and dull. Its eyes dimmed and its fangs melted from its jaws. The landscape began to break apart, its cohesion faltering in the face of the serpent"s unmaking.
"You bested nothing," said the snake as Magnus broke its neck.
AHRIMAN SWEPT HIS heqa staff in a wide arc, clearing a s.p.a.ce in which he and Wyrdmake could fight. It was a hopeless task. No sooner was one ma.s.s of writhing tentacles severed, than hundreds more would slither from the pit to take their places. His control of the Enumerations was lost, his concentration broken in the face of the primarch"s disappearance into the pit. Ahriman would normally fight divorced from the concerns of emotion that compromised his clarity of combat, but his mind was swamped with the competing fires of anger and hate.
With control stripped from his mind, Ahriman knew fear once more.
Only when he had watched Ohrmuzd die had he felt such a void in his soul.
He had vowed never to feel that way again, but this was even worse.
Ahriman fought to reconnect with his higher states, but his primarch"s fate was too near to be salved with the Enumerations. Instead, he focussed on the fight for survival, letting his consciousness stretch no further than the next enemy to be slain. Such a state of being was unfamiliar, but cathartic.
The air was thick with foes, making it impossible to tell in which direction the exit lay. The dark power that energised the tentacles bloated the chamber, a seething corruption that pressed on the surface of his mind like a lead weight.
He could no longer see Uthizzar, and did not know whether the warrior still lived. The Thousand Sons and s.p.a.ce Wolves fought in isolation, small groups cut off from one another in the midst of the black mora.s.s. Diametric opposites, they were united as one force as they battled not for victory, but for survival.
Ahriman"s pistol had long since run dry, and he swung his staff in a two-handed grip, laying about himself with crushing strokes. His every movement was leaden, his thoughts dull and slow. The Great Ocean was a potent force in combat, but the toll it took upon a warrior was equally potent.
Ahriman"s mastery of his battle powers was second to none, but even he had nothing left to give, his spirit exhausted and his body pushed to the very limits of endurance. He fought as a mortal must fight, with courage, heart and brute strength, but he already knew that alone would not be enough. He needed power, but all he could feel was the energy boiling from the chasm that had taken the primarch. Even in despair, he knew that would be the first step on a road that had but one destination.
He would face what was left of this fight without the aether.
That made it an alien fight to make, and he was reminded of his words to Hathor Maat when he had glibly told him he might one day need to go to war without his powers. How prophetic those words now seemed, though he had said them without any expectation of facing such a situation himself.
Ahriman"s concentration slipped, and a whipping ma.s.s of tentacles enfolded his arm, dragging his heqa staff aside. He struggled against its strength, but it was too late, and his other arm was entangled. His legs and torso were enveloped, and he was lifted from the ground, the joints of his armour creaking at the abominable pressure.
Wyrdmake tried to pull him down, but even the Rune Priest"s strength could not equal the alien power matched against him. Over the hideous slithering of the deathly tentacles, he could hear the sounds of warriors dying, the shouted oaths of the s.p.a.ce Wolves, and the bitter curses of the Thousand Sons.
Then the pressure eased and the tentacles around his body began crumbling and flaking to nothingness. Even in his exhausted state, he felt the rampant energies of the pit suddenly vanish, as surely as if a spigot had been shut off.
The sound of gunfire and chopping blades was replaced by heaving breaths and sudden silence. Ahriman tore himself free of the desiccating tentacles that bound him, bracing himself as he fell back to the ground. He landed lightly, and looked up into the towering ma.s.s of writhing blackness as its substance unravelled before his eyes. What had been dark and glossy was now ashen and bleached of colour. The liquid solidity of the tentacles was now as insubstantial as mist, and they fell in a powdered rain.
Floating in the haze of their ending was a blood-red figure, a blazing giant in dusty armour, who descended with his arms outstretched, his single eye shimmering with a golden light. His hair was matted and wild, like an ancient war G.o.d come to earth to scour the unbelievers with his divine fire.
"My lord!" cried Ahriman, dropping to one knee.
The Thousand Sons followed his example, as did many of the s.p.a.ce Wolves. Fewer than twenty had survived the battle, but the bodies of the fallen were nowhere to be seen.
Magnus set foot on the ground, and the gold and silver symbols worked into the rock at the edge of the chasm shone with renewed vigour, as though freshly energised. Ahriman felt the deadening effect immediately, a force like that which had once filled the deadstones, but cleaner, fresher and stronger.
"My sons," said Magnus, his flesh invigorated and vital. "The danger is pa.s.sed. I have destroyed the evil at the heart of this world."
Ahriman drew in a cleansing breath, closing his eyes and rising into the first of the Enumerations. His thoughts cleared and his emotional peaks were planed smooth. He heard footsteps behind him and opened his eyes. Lord Skarssen of the s.p.a.ce Wolves" 5th Company and Ohthere Wyrdmake stood beside him. The Rune Priest gave him a weary nod of respect.
"The battle is won?" asked Skarssen.
"It is," confirmed Magnus, and Ahriman heard fierce pride in his voice. "The wound in the world is no more. I have sealed it for all time. Not even its makers could undo my wards."
"Then you are done with this world," said Skarssen, and Ahriman could not tell whether it was a question or a statement.
"Yes," said Magnus. "There is nothing more to learn here."
"You owe the Wolf King your presence."
"Indeed I do," said Magnus, and Ahriman caught a wry grin at the very corner of his primarch"s mouth, as though he were privy to a jest that eluded the rest of them.
"I will inform Lord Russ of our departure," said Skarssen. The Wolf Lord turned away, gathering his warriors in readiness for the march to the surface.
"Direct, without fuss or unnecessary formality," said Uthizzar, appearing at Ahriman"s side, "that is the s.p.a.ce Wolf way. Maddening at times."
"Agreed, though there is much to admire in its simplicity," said Ahriman, pleased that Uthizzar had survived the battle. The telepath was on the verge of collapse. Ahriman was impressed by his fort.i.tude.