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The Last Son of Prospero – Chris Wraight

A Black Library Publication

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The Last Son of Prospero

Chris Wraight

‘It has taken me a long time to find you,’ said Kalliston.

Brother-sergeant Revuel Arvida looked up. The sun was hot, baking the mesa, making the sky shake. Rock formations in pale pink and sienna-brown marched out towards an empty horizon, flecked with broken bars of scrub.

‘I do not understand why,’ said Arvida, getting to his feet. ‘I told you where I would be.’

‘The desert is a big place.’

Both legionaries were coated in a fine layer of dust. Menes Kalliston, the taller, wore full battleplate save for the crested helm that hung at his belt on a bronze linked chain. Arvida wore fatigues, loose-fitting, white against the glare. His skin glistened with sweat. Away on the horizon, a line of gold-cranes flapped lazily into the noon haze.

‘What did you learn?’ asked Kalliston.

Arvida looked away from him, upwards, out into sunlight-blurred air. Something gauzy hung there, intermittently visible, caught like a reflection on the edge of vision. Look at it directly and it was gone – only in the half-glance could you see it, and then just for a moment.

‘The sight is failing,’ Arvida said. ‘Falling out of the world. I see stone and sky, nothing beyond.’

Kalliston smiled. ‘It will return. The Great Ocean has its tides.’

‘Or it may dry up.’

‘Does your tutelary give you no guidance?’

‘When I am blinded, Ianius is blinded. When I see, he sees.’

Kalliston nodded. He reached up to wipe sweat from his brow. ‘I wish I could give you more time, but orders have come – we are to make for the void.’

‘Now?’

‘So it seems.’

‘Whose orders?’

‘The primarch’s.’

Arvida resisted a little longer. He had worked hard to control it, the need to probe, the tendency that had prevented his ascension through the Legion hierarchy, despite the power that even Ahriman had told him he possessed. The Thousand Sons were a deferential Legion. A respectful Legion. A Legion within which loyalty counted for more than in most.

‘I do not understand it,’ he said, despite himself. ‘The Ocean is in turbulence – the few visions we still have are all of murder. The guard on Prospero must be maintained, now more than ever. Even you, brother-captain, have counselled the same.’

‘So I have.’

‘And so why–’

‘What would you have me do?’ Kalliston’s severe face creased into another smile, but there was something under it – a weariness, perhaps, or possibly self-reproach. ‘We make for the void. The skimmer is already on its way.’

Arvida looked away. The faint gauze flexed in the air above him, sparkling like sunlight reflected from water. Far out over the hard-beaten earth, the wind whipped dust into tiny vortices, suspended for a heartbeat or two before scattering into nothingness. The deserts of Prospero were changing, turning green as irrigation schemes spread out from the nexus at Tizca. One day the barren lands would be as lush as gardens.

‘Why now?’ Arvida asked.

‘He will have his reasons.’

‘Then he could share them.’

‘Will he live?’

Arvida looked up. ‘What?’

‘Can he overcome the change?’

‘I do not understand you.’

And then Kalliston was gone. Prospero was gone.

Only Ianius remained, hovering like a memory over the deeps, still sparkling in the doused sunlight.

‘Why did we trust?’ Arvida murmured, not expecting an answer, because he had asked that many times before, and had never yet had a good one.

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A Black Library Publication

Published in 2016 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd,
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ISBN: 978-1-78572-277-6

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