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Ahriman: Eternal – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Chapter I

VEIL OF GHOSTS

Hargoron, First of those Born of Iron, Breaker of Anvils, listened to his ship creak under the touch of ghosts. Ice crystals crept across the viewport frames. Gossamer shapes drifted and coiled through the dark beyond. Things that might have been faces formed and dissolved. Hands reached, grew into claws, faded and sank back into the blue-green fog. The stars were haloed pinpricks beyond the murk. As he looked, the shape of a head congealed into view. Its eyes were the stolen glow of the stars, pale cataracts in a face of tattered skin around a circle of needle teeth. Hargoron bared his own teeth back.

‘Sensor report,’ he said, his voice a dry rasp in the quiet of the bridge.

‘This eye sees, oh great lord…’ called the principal augur-slave in reply, a wasted thing with a long, metal braced neck beneath a bulbous head. Its frogspawn cluster of eyes rolled across the cracked screens of its console. ‘No returns within sensor range.’ It drooled a cord of spittle as it spoke, the phlegm gathering on the crust layer already thick on the console’s dials.

Hargoron curled a lip in disgust and turned away, scratching a clawed finger across his chin. Flakes of rust-like scabs came away from his skin. Everything had begun to fall apart since they had crossed into the Gorgon’s Shroud. Nothing in the Eye of Terror existed without adapting to living on the border between reality and the warp, but this voyage had cost Hargoron and his warriors dear. Here, the light of the stars outside the Eye was stronger than the hell-light that bled from its heart, but the tides of the warp were thick and laced with the withering touch of entropy. Wrecks rolled in the Shroud’s embrace, breaking into bits as the forces of unreality sheared against reality. Ship systems failed. Corrosion seeped into metal, static into signals, and weakness into muscle and bone. He had needed to leave one ship behind in the Shroud’s heart. Its engines had failed, and its hull had begun to crumble from its skin inwards, as though it were a fruit rotting dry in a desert wind. That had left him with just two craft to make the crossing back.

It had been worth it, though. Plunder from the worlds and wreck drifts within the Shroud filled his holds: great hauls of armour; weapon systems pulled from the bones of dead ships; ammunition and fuel, still good despite its time in the ghost tides. And then there were the true treasures, unique things that would let him barter for high prices with the Warlord and Ascending powers in the Eye. Enough wealth and riches to pay the gene-thieves and flesh-mechanists to give him newborn warriors. Not vagabond legionaries, loyal only to power or opportunity, but warriors loyal to him and him alone. And then… Then who knew? All that remained was to journey back across the Shroud’s boundary. It was a dangerous voyage, and came with its own, unique cost.

He glanced at where the Warp Ghost stood on the steersman’s platform. Its armour was pale grey, the edges dull bronze and steel. The lenses of its helm were cataract pale. It had not moved for hours now. Occasionally it had made a gesture or spoken a handful of words commanding a change of course, but otherwise it had just rotated its head as if looking out beyond the hull and viewports, watching things move in the murk that Hargoron could not see and did not want to. Its own ship held formation off the port bow, gliding in the coiling lightning and veils of gas.

The Warp Ghost’s head turned, and the pale eye-lenses touched Hargoron’s gaze. Despite himself, Hargoron had to suppress an instinct to flinch. The Warp Ghost’s attention moved on. Hargoron spat. The spittle fizzed as the acid ate into the deck plating. No one knew what Chapter or Legion had spawned the Ghosts’ brotherhood, nor what bargain or secret gifted them their skill to navigate the warp-saturated depths of the Eye. He had never seen more than a handful of them at any time, but still they disturbed him. The Warp Ghosts would take a large chunk of his haul, but he did not doubt that without their pilots, his ships would have joined the other wrecks drifting in the slow currents of the Gorgon’s Shroud. They were worth their ferryman’s coin, but that did not mean he had to like their presence. There was an air to them, as though they looked not just into you but also through you. He did not like that. If he had followed his instinct, he would have put his claws through this one’s throat and ordered his ships to fire on the craft escorting them. He had suppressed that instinct; you did not cross the Warp Ghosts if you wished to continue to cross the Eye and live.

‘All stop,’ said the Warp Ghost, suddenly.

Hargoron looked around. The bridge crew were already moving to obey. Out beyond the viewport he could see that his second ship and the Warp Ghosts craft were firing thrusters and sliding to a halt.

‘What–’ he began to growl, but the Warp Ghost held up a hand. Hargoron felt his hands flex as he bit down on his anger. The Warp Ghost turned its head slowly, then more quickly, looking up and to the side, then down. The ship creaked around them.

‘A presence on the tides around us,’ said the Warp Ghost, its voice a dull croak. ‘Shadows… waiting in the fold of the Great Ocean, hiding in deeper tides…’

‘What is it?’ growled Hargoron.

The pale murk beyond the armaglass was thickening. A fork of yellow lightning arced through it, bleaching the view for an instant, then again and again. Hargoron turned to the steersman’s platform, a demand for information on his lips.

The Warp Ghost was not there.

‘Lord,’ the principal augur-slave called. ‘Our etheric resonators are picking up intense local fluctuations.’

Hargoron opened his mouth to snarl an order for alert. The pair of warriors from his personal guard started forwards.

Lightning sheeted the murk beyond the viewports, and in the flash, he saw the shadow of a ship. A warship. Right on top of them, sudden and real, hull flanks like cliffs, towers turning the outlines of their backs into serrated blades. The lightning flared around them, haloing them. Strobing.

‘Shields!’ shouted Hargoron. The ship had lowered most of her voids for the passage through the Gorgon’s Shroud. Some of the crew moved to respond, but the rest just stared, dumbfounded.

It made no difference. Fire lanced from one of the warships. The thin veil of shields overloaded a second before the viewports blew in. Shards of crystal sliced through the bridge. Screams were dragged from throats as the air rushed into the void. Bodies tumbled with it, spilling blood. Hargoron clamped his hands over his head. Power fields sheathed his claws, and he was already shouting into the static-filled vox as a pillar of light blazed into being at the centre of the bridge.

He could taste bitter sorcery in the air. He moved towards the blast doors off the bridge. His two warriors flanked him, firing. He was already calling into the vox, calling his followers to face the attackers. There were gunships and bulk lifters in the launch hangars. He and his chosen warriors could run. The attackers could have the ship. He would take his greatest prizes with him and live to find vengeance.

Hargoron was at the blast doors. His two warriors were at his side, firing bolts into the pillar of light as it grew wider. A horned shadow formed in the blaze of energy, growing clearer, coming closer as though walking from an unseen distance. The pillar of light vanished.

The bolt shells halted in mid-air. Frost flashed across the deck, climbing up the limbs of thrashing crew.

A figure stood where the light had been. Crimson robes hung from sapphire armour. Horns curved up from its helm. The staff in its hand was a line cut into reality, a black wound leaking starlight.

Hargoron snarled. The power fields snapped over his claws. His warriors fired again. Hargoron began to move.

The sorcerer looked at him. Its eyes were blue stars.

Hargoron’s limbs froze. The flames around the barrels of his warriors’ guns were blossoms of orange and red. The sorcerer stepped towards them. It raised a hand. The bolt shells hanging in the air spun and slid until they were resting on the eye-lenses of his two warriors. Hargoron tried to force himself to move, to make his tongue call out one of the phrases of protection he had learnt from a priest of the Horned Darkness.

+I have no time for your spite,+ said a voice inside his skull. The sorcerer’s fingers twitched. The bolt shells slammed through the eye-lenses of Hargoron’s warriors and blew the backs of their skulls and helms out. The sorcerer was right in front of him now. +You have something you do not understand and that I need.+

Hargoron felt the force holding him motionless give for a second. He snapped forwards, claws reaching. The armour of his limbs crumpled and sheared. The claws peeled back as his limbs froze again. He watched as they bent until they were digging into his forearms. Blood glittered as it fell, turning to shards of red ice.

He found he could still move his mouth and tongue.

‘I will give you nothing!’ he spat.

The sorcerer tilted its head.

+You do not need to,+ came the voice in Hargoron’s skull. Then there was just a roar as he felt his thoughts come apart like a pillar of dust caught in a gale.

Ahzek Ahriman looked down at the crumpled heap of Hargoron, First of those Born of Iron, Breaker of Anvils. Here he was again, with another example of broken nobility and misguided dreams lying at his feet. He could read the past in the aftertaste of the thoughts he had ripped from the warrior’s mind. Warrior… Yes, Hargoron had been a warrior once, a brother of the IV Legion, raised up during the long years of the war against the Emperor. He had never known anything but conflict with the Imperium that had created him, had never known a time when war seemed an act of optimism rather than bitterness and vengeance. Yet, he had served, and survived, and tried to hold on to the tatters of nobility that he could remember. The warp had undone that in the end, turned the will to endure into a canker that ate Hargoron the warrior and left just this broken shell of base drives and cruelty.

Ahriman shook the reflection free of his mind and let the warlord’s thoughts fall through the sift of his inner senses. Bloody memories, bitter emotions, scraps of images and cruelty tumbled past his inner eye until he had what he needed.

+Lower deck thirty-four, forward section seventy-six, ordnance magazine chamber located next to the primary hangars. Be swift,+ sent Ahriman to his brothers as he ran from the ruin of the bridge. +I will join you.+

Ctesias swayed for a second as the teleport flare faded around him. Even after lifetimes on stolen lifetimes of moving by sorcery and warpcraft, it left him with false sound ringing in his ears and acid in his throat. Part of him still thought he was back on the Hekaton, the acolytes shrieking as the rituals to move their strike force completed. Lycomedes recovered faster and was already moving past him, dragging five Rubricae in his wake. Ctesias moved more slowly after them. Ghost-light haloed the top of his staff. The strips of parchment pinned to his armour were charring as the warding spells inked onto them burned. He could smell the birth reek of the sentinel daemons close by.

+They have sensed us,+ he called to his apprentice. +Be ready to do as I command.+

He brought his thoughts to stillness, suppressing the sensations of nausea rolling through him. When handling the tools of summoning and dismissal, you had to be clean of emotion. To be anything else just invited the daemons of the warp to hook into your soul. Ideally, he would have liked time to prepare for what he needed to do, but as ever time was a luxury he did not have. He could feel tendrils of sensation and thought bleeding into him: the despair of a soul slowly suffocating in the void, the clammy sweat of fevered skin, the sharp pain of a failing heart spreading through the last moments of a miserable life.

The ship was lousy with ghost residue. Rust clogged the rivets on the metal walls. The canker had already been deep in its rotting bones when it had gone into the Gorgon’s Shroud in search of carrion treasure, and the corrosive warp tides had only spread the rot deeper. Things had latched on to its skin and travelled with it. The Breakers of Iron, or whatever the ship’s masters styled themselves, did not have the skill to purge the parasites from their vessel, but some of them had enough knowledge to bind them in place. They had made the daemons their guard dogs. Ctesias had known this when they had begun to scry their prey by mirror and smoke, but now he had to feel it on his skin and thoughts, he wished even more that Ahriman had simply burned the ship and searched the ashes. Some might have found that reaction strange – a summoner and binder of daemons whose lip curled at the warp’s rancid touch. For him, there was no contradiction: a master of hounds did not have to like the reek of their beasts’ excrement. He was old and soul withered, and had seen more than enough that he did not have to lie to himself. Given the choice he would have been a long way from this ship and the prize they had come for. Ahriman, though, did not give those kinds of choices. At least they would not have to remain here long.

Lycomedes slammed a ram of telekinetic force through a blast hatch. It blew off its hinges, sending rust-flecked shards clanging off the walls and deck. Ctesias went through. The passage beyond was wide. Spores drifted in the light of cracked glow-lamps. Cords of thick fungus ran through the walls and deck plating. Ctesias felt the metal sag as he hurried. He felt the warp shift. It was sludge thick. Bubbles popped at the edges of his sight. Corpse reek filled his nose.

+They are here!+ he sent.

And the Neverborn came for them. They prised themselves from the walls, dragging rolls of soft fat through layers of rust. They flopped onto the deck, growing limbs and feelers, mouths opening.

Ctesias felt a pulse of will from Lycomedes, and the Rubricae brought their bolters up and fired. The bolts hit the daemons and exploded into blue flame. Fat cooked. Greasy smoke poured out as the things thrashed and burned. They did not vanish though, but grew, bloating, skin ripping. They wobbled forwards, dragging burnt slime across the deck. Ropes of intestine spilled from wounds and whipped through the air to coil around the nearest Rubricae. Lycomedes’ will yanked the Rubricae back, but the coils were winding tighter, oozing acid over armour plates. Ctesias could smell spoiled milk and gut fluid, could hear the buzz of flies inside his head.

+Cut them free,+ snapped Ctesias. +The others are coming – the way must be open.+ He was still going forwards towards the roiling mass of daemon flesh filling the passage. In his mind the true names and words of summoning he had prepared became a chain reaching into the warp.

He spoke the first name aloud.

‘Su’ka’sel’su…’

His tongue blistered. The smell of burning sugar filled his mouth and nose. Beyond the walls of reality, the daemons he had bound to his command thrashed against his will.

‘Ah’kel’mur’hil’su’sel…’

He pulled the Neverborn into being, dragging them with the syllables of their names. Red slits opened in the air. Blood poured out, streaking the deck, foaming, congealing into muscle and skin and chitin. Light exploded into rainbows as it touched opalescent skin. Hooves struck steel. Long heads extended on scaled necks. Ctesias did not look at them; there were some things it was better not to see. The mass of canker-daemons recoiled then lashed forwards. The Rubricae and Lycomedes were clear.

‘Feed,’ commanded Ctesias, and the conjured daemons blurred forwards in a haze of mauve smoke. Booming hoots split the air and sent black specks fizzing on the edge of his sight. Razor claws met bloated flesh. Bile and scented blood splashed the walls. Ctesias let the daemonicide continue for six heartbeats then spoke the dismissal he had been holding on his tongue. The daemons howled as he yanked them back beyond the veil. He paused for a second, running his tongue over his teeth and waiting for the taste of ashes to fade from his mouth. Lumps of fat and gristle were dissolving to ectoplasm on the ceiling, walls and floor.

+The way is clear,+ he sent and began to advance, Lycomedes and the Rubricae forming around him. +We are converging on the hold. Ignis, are you on time?+

Ignis heard Ctesias’ sending as a hiss in his skull. The mockery in the words and the sneer in the tone were not lost on him. He did not respond. He did not have the time or patience to. The rattle of the gunship around him rose in pitch as its engines hit full thrust. The Storm Eagle was now hurtling across the gap to their target at the speed of a macro shell fired from a cannon.

He began to count, slicing the seconds into fractions in his head, watching them form patterns in his mind’s eye. Beside him in the compartment, Credence clattered, as though trying to relieve an ache. The automaton had folded its limbs to fit into the cramped space, but it barely fitted. Beside them, eight of the Rubricae sat immobile in mag-harnesses. Ghost-light burned dully in their eyes and the shallow hiss of falling dust shivered through the warp around them.

Ignis’ count reached one of its sacred values.

+Wake them,+ he sent.

Ptollen nodded and began to speak names with his mind.

+Mabius Ro, Istigelis, T’latton…+ The heads of the Rubricae came up, one after another. The hiss from inside their armour grew louder. Ignis could hear the tones and sound patterns of voices calling from far away through a dust-filled wind.

+Ready,+ sent Ptollen. His will meshed with the Rubricae so that they would obey as though part of Ptollen’s own body.

Ignis did not acknowledge the lesser sorcerer. He was still counting the seconds to impact. He could have watched through sensor systems and let the gunship’s machine-spirits deal with the distance and time to target. He could have, but he chose not to. Everything he needed to know was in the ratios and patterns that formed and re-formed in his mind. Times, fuel weights, weapon explosive yields, all of it and more sliced into fractions and sent spinning through his thoughts. In an age long past he had been called a Master of Ruin, one who could mesh destruction with the secret geometry of the universe. The title had long since become meaningless, but the knowledge it stood for was his truth.

A second passed. Fractal patterns opened in front of his mind’s eye. For a flash it was as though he were looking at the face of something truly divine.

+Loose,+ he sent. The gunship shook as the first wave of rockets kicked free of their weapon pods.

+Rise,+ commanded Ptollen, his dark blue robes rippling like water. The mag-harnesses thumped open. The Rubricae stood.

Ignis felt the patterns in his mind change, felt the values of projected distance and time bend, become a perfectly folded flower of cause and effect. He pushed his mind out beyond the hull of the gunship and into the vacuum. He had created these moments and now he would allow himself to see them become real.

The rockets hit the doors of the hangar bay. Melta warheads detonated. The metal of the doors flashed yellow with heat. Nine nanoseconds later the second wave of rockets hit, and high explosives blew the semi-molten metal to spray. The gunship’s assault ramps opened. Atmosphere howled out. Ignis could see dust and vapour beyond, curdling the light of the stars to bile green and ochre. Ptollen was at the edge of the forward ramp. There were figures tumbling into the void from the breach in the ship. The glowing hole yawned wide in front of them…

And then they were through.

The gunship fired its thrusters, skidding in the air. Ptollen jumped, his axes bright with blue fire. The Rubricae followed. They hit the decking and rose, firing at the same instant. Most of the enemy in the hangar were mortal – humans with rusted augmetics. There were three Born of Iron, though. Thick clogs of corrosion covered the dull metal of their power armour. Oil wept from their vox-grilles and joints in thick runnels. The volley of fire from the Rubricae hit them and wreathed them in blue flame. They kept coming forward, scabs of mould cooking on their armour. Ptollen met them at a run. Of the exiled Thousand Sons he was the one who most favoured the martial over the cerebral. His power and learning had always been great – great enough to earn him a place in the outer circles of Ahriman’s original cabal – but that power had always focused on war. On killing. Ignis might have said that he liked him.

One of the Born of Iron swung at Ptollen. The warrior had a lightning-sheathed maul, its head a starburst of jagged spikes. Ptollen met the blow with the blade of his axe. Ignis felt the warp howl as the axe sliced through the maul. Light screamed out. The warrior tried to recover but the axe head was already in his throat, slicing down through the meat of his torso, burning flesh to smoke.

The gunship dropped to the deck. Ignis came down the ramp, hearing the beat of seconds in his soul. Credence unfolded and followed, gun rotating up to fire. A beam of un-light shrieked across the space and hit the remaining Born of Iron warriors as they closed on Ptollen. They became brief shadows, then exploded, their matter annihilated in a shrieking blink. The Rubricae were already moving across the deck, firing on the mortal crew that still lived.

+Open the inner doors,+ sent Ignis. Credence pivoted and the beam of its cannon lanced at the blast doors that led to the rest of the ship. The metal began to distort and shake. Ptollen moved towards them, raising his axes above his head. Lightning arced from him, striking the doors and spidering across them.

Ignis felt the deck shiver as another gunship touched down next to his. This one was smaller, its lines curved smooth where the edges of the Storm Eagle were sharp. Its hull was black, edged with gold. The scars of repeated repair marked its plating. The ramp in its belly opened as its clawed feet gripped the deck. The pariah walked into sight. She was human, female, tall, thin limbed. A cloak of golden-and-black scales hung from her shoulders over a bodyglove of deep crimson. A golden helm sat on her head, its blank visor covering all but her mouth and chin. The hilt of a longsword rose above her shoulders. Ignis felt his mind recoil as he looked at her. His thoughts and senses slid off her, and he felt something hollow and hungry pulling at his soul.

Abomination… He could not help the thought even though he had been in her presence many times since she had come into Ahriman’s orbit. She was called Maehekta, and she was a soul blank: without presence in the warp. Those with mundane minds struggled to be close to such creatures. To those with psychic gifts, their presence could be agony. Ignis swallowed a mouthful of bile.

‘Keep your distance,’ he snarled.

‘Of course,’ she said.

The blast doors at the other end of the hangar collapsed with a crash of lightning.

Ignis shivered inside his armour, turned away from Maehekta and stalked towards the opening.

The doors ached in Ahriman’s mind as he looked at them. They were cold iron. Lines had been cut into their surface, scratched deep in the dull grey, words and symbols flowing together in a web that glowed in his mind’s eye. Old words, old symbols. Rust and decay crawled over the space before the doors. Blooms of metallic fungus hung from the ceiling, and milk-white moisture beaded the walls. In places, the deck and wall plating had become as soft as skin. Amongst this, the door and its frame remained stubbornly clean and solid.

+Where is the key bearer?+ snapped Ahriman as Ctesias came from one of the tunnel openings.

There were still sounds of gunfire and screams from passages leading to other sections of the hull. Ctesias had unleashed part of his menagerie of Neverborn into the lower decks under the eye of his apprentice, and the daemons were doing what was in their nature. Ahriman had cut away the psychic backwash of the killing, but he could still feel the ghosts of razor claws sliding against the shell of his mind and hear the shivers of terror and pain.

+With Ignis,+ replied Ctesias. Ahriman could feel his brother’s wariness. +They are coming.+

Inside, Ahriman forced the anger down beneath a layer of calm. His thoughts had blurred for a moment.

Of course Maehekta was with Ignis… He had to focus. Had to move through the actions that would solve the problem. He closed his eyes inside his helm.

Blink.

Blackness.

A burning line in the distance, running from edge to edge of his inner sight. Had it got closer? He could taste the dust and ash…

No, he willed.

Blink.

+The warding is exceptionally strong,+ sent Ctesias, moving next to the vault doors. Ahriman forced himself to focus on what Ctesias was saying. +We could unpick them if we had time. No guarantee that it would not trigger some nasty counter-effects. We could overload them but whatever is inside might not survive intact. Might as well let Ignis try and bore through with melta charges, though that is not going to be much better.+ Ahriman felt Ctesias’ gaze sharpen on him. Their telepathic link narrowed, so that it was between them alone. +What is inside, Ahriman? Hasn’t the time come for you to share that secret?+

‘We…’ began Ahriman aloud.

Blink.

The burning line was still there. A migraine on the horizon of his mind.

Control. He had to keep moving forwards. Had to. For them all.

‘We do not need to break the doors,’ he said.

‘Why?’ asked Ctesias, frowning at him.

‘Because why break a door if you have a key?’ said a cold female voice.

Maehekta advanced from the mouth of the passage. Ignis and Ptollen followed her, keeping their distance, their movements betraying their revulsion at her presence. Ctesias visibly flinched back as she walked past him to the vault doors. Ahriman kept his mind steady and did not move, even as Maehekta cast shadows onto the edge of his thoughts. The key in her hand was black iron and hung from a loop of dull chain. She ran her finger along the surface of the door, found what looked like a deep crack and slotted it home. A click, a turn and then the doors were retracting into the walls. Coolant vapour fumed out.

The space beyond was utterly dark. Ahriman’s helm display fuzzed as it tried to build an image from the available light. His senses could feel the wards worked into the chamber’s geometry pushing back his mind.

‘A null chamber…’ said Ctesias aloud. ‘Well built…’ He stepped to the threshold and extended a hand into the space beyond. Ahriman knew that Ctesias would be pushing his mind against the psychically dulling effect beyond the door. ‘Powerful, and very well constructed. The wretches that used this ship did not make this.’

‘Light,’ said Ahriman. Credence buzzed. A stab-beam shone from the automaton’s gun-mount. The space was large. Piles of what looked like wreckage lay in heaps across the floor. Ahriman picked his way past jumbles of broken power armour, a heap of horned skulls and bones, and stone troughs holding pieces of crystal that gleamed black in the lumen’s glare. He could feel the echoes of anger and pain and spite coming off every object he passed.

‘This was a spoil heap, not a treasury,’ said Ctesias. He, Ignis, Ptollen and Maehekta had followed. The Rubricae stayed guard at the door. The sounds of violence from the rest of the ship had receded. ‘This is just dross. They went into the veil and collected every piece of warp-saturated refuse they could find. That they thought this’ – he gestured at what looked like a power fist fused with a bony growth of quills – ‘was worth sealing in this vault tells you everything. Bitter gods, but the legions of the Eye deserve extinction.’

‘We are only here for one thing,’ said Ahriman, moving forwards as he swept his gaze around. An angular shape sat alone beside a pile of tarnished silver chains. He moved closer. The shape resolved into a regular block of crystal, eight feet at its longest point and half that wide and deep. Cracks, abrasions and dust clouded its surface, but a small window had been polished on its top. Ahriman looked in. He stayed still for a long moment, then stepped aside so that Maehekta could see. She straightened and looked up at Ahriman.

‘It is the one,’ she said.

Ahriman felt himself sway as he nodded. He blinked. The burning line was there, closer.

No, he thought. No. A little more time. His mouth was dry. He could feel heat. Could they not feel it? They must have seen. He had to… say… something. But he could not. He could not speak, could not open his eyes, could not see anything but the oncoming horizon of fire.

No, not here. Not now… If it took him now, then there would be no way out for the others. No time…

‘What is it?’ asked Ctesias, coming forward to investigate the crystal.

Ctesias stepped forwards and looked at what was inside the block of crystal. The polished substance was flawlessly transparent, so that he could have believed he was looking through a window into air. A humanoid figure lay within. It might have been seen as resembling a skeleton crafted from brushed steel and carbon. A black sphere sat in the centre of its forehead. Gold threaded its surface in places, forming patterns of circles and lines.

‘An alien?’ he said aloud, turning. ‘This is supposed to save us?’

Ahriman did not answer. Ctesias began to reach out with a telepathic connection. Ahriman raised a hand. The fingers were shaking.

‘It… is coming…’ he said.

Ctesias felt it then, the heat pouring into his mind and body, like inhaling the air from a furnace.

Ignis had gone still. The Rubricae by the door quivered where they stood. Ptollen fell to his knees.

Ctesias had an instant to draw breath.

Then it was there.

A bomb blast inside his skull.

White light.

Roaring sound.

Charring heat.

He could see nothing but the fire.

It was known as the Pyrodomon. That was what the daemons that Ctesias had summoned had called it. It had begun when Ahriman and the rest of his Exiles had fled the Planet of the Sorcerers after trying to cast the Rubric for a second time. First the soothsayers and augurs had lost their sight of the future. Blackness had crept across their inner eyes until they could see only a few moments beyond the present. Then they had seen the burning horizon. Gilgamos, the most powerful augur besides Ahriman, had described it as a golden line drawn across a black sheet. Others had begun to see it whether they were looking into the future or not. Ctesias had closed his eyes from exhaustion one day and there it had been, bright and painful. Soon it was always there, a burn line in the dark behind his eyelids. Ahriman had called the Circle of his lieutenants. They had debated and argued, but none of them knew what it was. Ahriman had remained silent for most of that. Ctesias had found that more disturbing than anything else – not because Ahriman did not know what was happening, but because Ctesias suspected he did. Then it had come for them.

The heat had arrived first. Ctesias had felt it grow inside him, radiating from his core to his skin. Then pain flooding his flesh. Then light, roaring from the black distance. It was so fast. The gap between one heartbeat and the next. It had overwhelmed him. Pain and burning and the roar of a firestorm. It had seemed to last for eternity. When it had passed, Ctesias found himself crouching on the floor, his mouth filled with the taste of dust and ashes.

It had happened to all of them. Every one of the Thousand Sons had, for an instant, experienced the same thing. It had affected the Rubricae too. Whatever task they had been performing, they had frozen. The ghost-fire had burned in their eyes. Some, it seemed, had spoken, calling out in cracked ghost voices for old comrades, for help, for the fire to stop. That should not have been possible. The Rubricae were sealed suits of armour that held the soul shadows of the Thousand Sons who had worn them. The Rubric Ahriman had cast had reduced them to empty shells of dust. All that remained of them were echoes of their names and lives caught in an eternal cage. They could not act, only obey. But in the fire, something had changed.

Panic had set in. Theories and courses of action buzzed between the minds of the Exiles. It was an attack. It was a curse sent by Magnus the Red as punishment for the Exiles returning to his realm. It was the effect of changes in the Eye of Terror.

Then it had happened again. And again. Each time more intense, each time with less warning. And now it did not simply pass. Now it took things with it.

The fire had descended from the warp and when it had gone, one of the Rubricae had been dust. No echo of his soul remained. Others had followed. Ahriman had told Ctesias to find out what the daemons of the warp knew. He had come back with a name: Pyrodomon, an apotheosis, a metamorphosis in flame. The first of the living had been taken soon after.

It had been a sorcerer called Iskiades. He had been a diviner of dreams and a warrior of subtle arts. They had found him after the Pyrodomon manifested. The seams on his armour were sealed. The lenses of his helm glowed with a dull ghost-light. Inside there was only dust and the soft echo of his name. Iskiades, who had survived the casting of the Rubric, now just a ghost in a cage of armour, now a Rubricae.

That was when Ahriman had given voice to it at last: it was an after-effect of them casting the Second Rubric. It was an etheric blast wave from what they had done, now catching up with them. The great ritual they had enacted to try and save the Legion had not ended. It was out of control, like a fire that had taken hold of a great forest and would not be extinguished until it had burned every tree to ash. And they did not know how to stop it.

The inferno rushed through Ctesias. He was screaming behind his clamped-shut mouth. Gold and red and orange spilled and blotted across his sight. He could feel dust and sand on his skin inside his armour.

Not me! he heard his inner voice shout. It was not a plea, it was a silent roar of fury. He had spent his own soul many times and taken countless lives to hold on to life. He would not end like this. Not now. Not me.

The fire vanished. He was gasping, shivering. Bubbles of colour popped in his sight.

‘Ctesias.’ It was Ahriman. ‘Ignis.’

He forced himself up, blinking. Acid tears stung his cheek.

Ahriman was there. Ctesias could see he was fighting to stay standing. Ignis lumbered into sight. His orange-and-black Terminator armour was pale with witch-frost. Maehekta was still beside the block of crystal. She looked utterly unmoved.

‘That was worse,’ gasped Ctesias. ‘More intense than the last time.’

+Get the artefact back to the ship, we must be gone,+ came Ahriman’s thought-voice, ragged, his control fraying. +Now.+

‘Credence,’ said Ignis. The automaton clanked forwards and lifted the block. Pistons hissed in its frame as it took the weight. They turned to the door.

Ptollen stood where Ctesias had last seen him. He did not move. He did not look at them.

They all stopped.

+Brother,+ sent Ctesias at last. ‘Ptollen?’

Ptollen’s head rose and turned. Pale light filled his eyes. In his mind, Ctesias heard the slow scream of dust falling without end.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2021.
This eBook edition published in 2022 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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ISBN: 978-1-80026-825-8

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