The Crimson King

by Graham McNeill

  ‘Ask Ahzek and he will tell you.’

  ‘Ahriman?’ said Tolbek. ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Ahriman, as the pressure seals around Hathor Maat’s helm disengaged with a hiss of vapour. ‘It speaks of a pact long since broken between us.’

  Tolbek took a step towards Ahriman, igniting his fists with a pulse of thought, and said, ‘Beneath the mountain on Terra you swore there would be no more secrets between us. Tell me what the daemon means.’

  Ahriman gestured to the Wolves and Promus as they fought their way through the daemonic hosts towards the centre of the chamber in a blaze of psychic light.

  ‘We do not have time for this,’ he said, turning away.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Tolbek, gripping his arm. ‘And tell me now.’

  Ahriman rose into the fifth enumeration, knowing he might be forced to kill Tolbek. Anger surged through him at his brothers’ ingratitude at all he had done to save them.

  ‘Do you remember on the Torquetum, being a heartbeat from death at the claws of the Voydes of Drekhye?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Tolbek. ‘What of it?’

  ‘There was only one way to save you,’ said Ahriman, letting the power of the Great Ocean seep into his limbs. ‘I made a pact with Aforgomon. Every one of you would be dead but for that.’

  ‘What did you promise it?’

  ‘A single soul.’

  ‘Whose?’

  ‘I did not know at the time. It spoke in riddles.’

  ‘But you know now?’

  Aforgomon collapsed to the ground, its legs buckled and no longer able to bear its weight.

  ‘He knows,’ said Aforgomon, its chest cavity exposed as it slumped onto all fours. ‘The prince with eyes of dust, a heart of ice, a soul of mirrors and the face of a god.’

  Dust and oil spilled from within the yokai’s body, along with fading motes of sickly yellow light. In moments it would be gone, its daemonic form drawn back to the depths of the Great Ocean. Power built in Ahriman’s hands, ready to push the daemon fully into its dissolution. Aforgomon felt his power build and shook its head.

  ‘You will fail without my help, Ahzek,’ gurgled the yokai.

  ‘What help can you give me? You are dying.’

  ‘Give me… what I want… and find out…’

  Ahriman tore his gaze from the dying creature.

  The vast corpse of Magnus was diminishing by the second, every second of its dissolution empowering the shards within Lemuel. Beneath the mighty form of his Legion’s gene-sire, Dio Promus and his allies fought their way ever closer to the heart of the pyramid.

  ‘Aforgomon speaks the truth,’ said Ahriman, turning to his brothers as his heart became cold steel. ‘I know who it wants.’

  Twenty-Three

  Eyes of dust

  No practical

  Guilty

  Bjarki’s eyes were fixed on Promus’ back as they forged a path through the wights. Others called them daemons, but the warriors of the Rout knew their true name. The creatures gibbered with corpse laughter and hooting bellows, their flesh a vile blend of rubber and glossy meat.

  Winter’s fire blazed along the length of his frost blade, and he clove the wights with every swing. Rackwulf fought to his left, his great barbed spear bursting the monstrous beasts like fleshy sacs of multi-coloured blood. Olgyr Widdowsyn sang the old sagas of Fenris, swinging his sword as though the Wolf King himself were watching.

  Every blow was an act of vengeance, and every stride took them closer to where the daemonhost drew power from the floating idol of the Crimson King. Lightning slammed down five paces to his left and exploded in a blinding detonation of unnatural flesh.

  After-images danced behind Bjarki’s eyes. Leering faces and twisted grins flashed in his mind. He blinked away the lingering traces of the images as a beast with flesh of raw pink meat threw itself at him. Its hooked fingers were like spider’s legs clawing for his face. A pulse of thought sent the blazing ice of Fenris through its body and it exploded in a spray of azure flesh scraps.

  Hundreds more bounded into the fight, idiot laughter spraying from their gaping, fang-toothed maws as they trampled one another in their hunger to attack.

  Bjarki’s hunter’s eye spotted an immediate danger.

  ‘Nagasena,’ he yelled, as a pair of the blue-skinned daemons hurled themselves at the mortal swordsman. Nagasena spun low, his sword flashing in a vertical cut. He disembowelled one as it flew over him. The second smashed him to the ground as Bjarki had known it would. It reared up, jaws spread wide enough to bite Nagasena’s skull clean from his shoulders.

  Widdowsyn slammed a booted foot into the creature’s flank.

  It detonated in a welter of variegated ichor. Widdowsyn scooped Nagasena up and put him back on his feet without breaking his stride.

  Nagasena nodded his thanks, too winded to speak.

  ‘Keep up,’ snapped Widdowsyn.

  Dio Promus blazed with psychic light as he bludgeoned a path through the monstrous host. Lightning hurled from above slammed down in blitzing spears around him, misting the air with burning daemonflesh. His fists were ablaze with light as he crushed the daemons before him. Bjarki studied the warrior of Ultramar as he fought: a superb fighter, alloying fury and discipline in perfect balance. The cold logic of Macragge wedded to the violence inherent in the Legions.

  Regret touched Bjarki, but he pushed it aside.

  Service to the Allfather allowed for no sentimentality.

  Bjarki ducked as a pack of whip-bodied creatures formed of slick flesh and raw meat vomited gouts of fire from a host of screaming orifices. Bjarki’s hood flared with light and the flames guttered a metre from his body.

  He threw himself at the flaming beasts, striking left and right to utterly eviscerate them. Glittering, immaterial fire licked over his armour at their deaths. They screamed as he slew them, the sound like a burning ice rigger being drawn down into the ocean.

  ‘Do we have a plan?’ said Widdowsyn, his armour spattered in the oily, iridescent blood of their foes.

  ‘Aye,’ said Bjarki, wrenching his blade from a disintegrating corpse. ‘But you will not like it.’

  ‘Do we get to live by the end of it?’ asked Rackwulf, sweeping his fearsome spear around in a killing arc. The daemons knew to be wary of it, but cackled with glee each time it claimed one of their fellows.

  Bjarki looked towards the embattled Dio Promus as he fought the daemons like the Avenging Son himself.

  ‘Not all of us.’

  ‘Step away, Ahriman,’ said Tolbek.

  Even Sanakht, loyal Sanakht, looked at him with fear.

  I have fallen far when even my brothers view me with horror.

  ‘This is the price of our father’s life,’ he said, raising his staff. ‘There is no other way.’

  ‘Whatever it has promised you is a lie,’ said Tolbek. ‘You know this, Ahzek. You can trust nothing it says.’

  ‘I do not, but it has power. And, now more than ever, I need that power.’

  Ahriman swept his gaze over his brothers. Each of them was powerful in his own way, so what quality was it that had made Aforgomon choose one over the other?

  He could not know, and approached Hathor Maat, whose head was bowed over his chest, his breathing coming in spasming hikes.

  ‘Hathor Maat,’ he said.

  The legionary lifted his head, and Ahriman’s resolve almost crumbled in the face of the naked terror he saw in his brother’s face. Pale and clammy, his muscles squirmed beneath skin that blistered with subcutaneous growths.

  ‘Help. Me.’

  Tolbek took a step towards him, and Ahriman felt the Pyrae adept’s mind move into a combative stance. Sanakht’s blades slid a handspan from their sheaths.

  ‘Ahzek, don’t,’ said the swordsman. ‘He is one of us.’
>
  ‘Not for long,’ said Ahriman. ‘The flesh change is upon him. His life is at an end. It will be a mercy to end his suffering.’

  ‘Then let me end him cleanly,’ said Sanakht, his blades of black and white singing from their scabbards. ‘Let him die with honour as a legionary of the Thousand Sons, not as an offering to this thing.’

  ‘No,’ said Ahriman, knowing what must come next.

  Sanakht lunged for him and Tolbek let fire ignite around his fists. Ahriman let slip the bindings around his staff and allowed a measure of the Crimson King’s power to flow into his flesh.

  It came in a torrent, like liqnite through his veins.

  The effect was instantaneous.

  Ahriman clenched his fist and the fire within Tolbek was extinguished utterly. Tolbek staggered, as though some vital element had been sapped from him. He collapsed and the breath from his opened mouth was freighted with the chill of the grave.

  Sanakht’s blade twisted aside and Ahriman felt the swordsman’s frustration at his rebellious muscles. Ahriman sent another jolt of power through Sanakht’s body, jerking him like a demented marionette.

  ‘I am sorry, brothers,’ said Ahriman.

  Aforgomon somehow forced itself to its feet, the once pristine body it had possessed now little more than ash held together by will and desire.

  ‘Do it, Ahzek,’ it wheezed. ‘It has to be now!’

  Ahriman spun on his heel and slammed the butt of his heqa staff against the last remaining gleam of the invocatus symbol upon the yokai’s skull.

  He screamed as he struck, the blow weighted with desperation, guilt and regret. The thing’s head came apart in a detonation of softened ceramite fragments. The body dropped straight down, coming apart in a mist of sodden ash.

  A shadowed after-image bloomed from the wreckage of its form, a revenant of dark light, coiled impossibly dense within its artificial shell.

  ‘Throne forgive me!’ yelled Ahriman. ‘Take him!’

  The shadowed umbra swooped on Hathor Maat and pushed itself inside him like a cloud of microscopic fireflies invading his every pore.

  Hathor Maat’s body jerked upright, lifted into the air by the inhuman force filling him. His mouth stretched wide, the plates of his battle armour shattering as the body within swelled to unimaginable proportions.

  A piercing screech, like a thousand murders of crows, issued from Hathor Maat’s mouth as it ripped across his face, tearing the skin and muscle wide open. His skull split apart and a mist of blood swirled as the two portions writhed and swelled, darkening from pallid bone to a vivid blue.

  ‘What have you done?’ cried Sanakht as warp light blazed from Hathor Maat’s contorting form. The Pavoni bent over as the muscles on his back expanded to monstrous proportions and a pair of feathered wings erupted from his flesh in a spray of blood and gristle.

  His form continued to expand, the legs cracking and splintering as they reshaped into reverse-jointed horrors of feather and claw. The amorphous, gory masses of his skull elongated and twisted like birthing snakes as they transformed into two serpentine necks topped with bulbous growths that undulated like birth sacs.

  The sacs ruptured and two avian heads, ebon-beaked and filled with secret malice, were born. They screeched with a wail that split reality and made every daemon within the chamber fall to the ground in adulation at this great lord of the Pantheon arisen within their midst.

  The daemon towered over Ahriman, a bipedal creature with wide pinions of rippling azure. Its twin heads slid through the air, one fixing Ahriman with its piercing eyes of dead white, the other spouting a litany of nonsense doggerel of veiled meaning.

  ‘You seek power, Ahzek Ahriman,’ it said. ‘And you shall have it.’

  There was no practical for this.

  No training on Ultramar had prepared Promus for a battle such as he faced now. He waded through the host of foes, striking all around him and using his powers like never before. The fire of Macragge that poured from his gauntlets burned all it touched, scorching the beasts to guttering pools of waxen residue.

  They split and reformed, sullen and grim-eyed where once they had chittered with inhuman laughter as they clawed his armour. He fired his bolter one-handed, impossible to miss in the sea of nightmarish creatures. Lightning flickered around him, battering the ground with explosive detonations.

  Promus looked up at the colossus floating overhead.

  Its form was unravelling, drawn out in smoky trails by the thing inhabiting Lemuel Gaumon.

  Not much longer until he was in range.

  More lightning slashed around him, a blitzing storm of raw power. The ground buckled, throwing up great chunks of protean stone and dust. Promus forged through it all, leaping great chasms as they ripped across the ground.

  He had no idea if Bjarki or any of the others were still with him. All his attention was focused forwards. Killing and moving. Moving and killing. He mag-locked his bolter to his thigh, saving his last shells, and took a two-handed grip on his blade.

  His steps were slowing, the mass of bodies growing too thick for him to easily sweep aside. He lost track of time, his world shrinking to his immediate sphere of combat – the swing of the blade, a crack of a fist, the piston blow of a kick. He lost count of the daemons he killed, no longer capable of discerning any difference between them.

  The press of bodies all around him was growing ever stronger, scores of rubber-fleshed horrors clambering over him in search of his eyes with chisel-nailed fingertips.

  Promus roared and took a knee, his sword planted before him. He shouted the name of Guilliman, and a corona of blue fire exploded from the blade. Daemons burned to cinders and he rose to his feet as the tsunami of destruction rolled outwards. He strode through the charred remains of the daemons. His steps were laboured now, his body wracked by the toll of wielding such power, but he was where he needed to be.

  Promus looked up through blurred sight.

  The colossus of Magnus was nearly gone, its substance all but unravelled. Lemuel’s flesh was practically transparent, the stolen power burning him alive from within.

  Promus unsnapped his bolter from his thigh and took aim, centring the sights over the back of Lemuel’s skull. The man’s body hung steadily in the air, rippling with power.

  An easy shot.

  ‘Theoretical – you die and Magnus dies with you,’ he said.

  Promus poured power into the bolts, feeling the cold hardness of the metal, the chemical mix of propellant and explosives, imbuing them with every hexagrammatic ward he knew.

  ‘Practical – don’t miss.’

  Promus squeezed the trigger three times in quick succession.

  He saw the warded bolts fly as true as if he’d fired them on a clear day at the firing range.

  One for the head, two for the chest.

  All three bolts burned to ash moments before impact.

  Lemuel turned his gaze towards Promus, and his eyes lit up with spiteful amusement as he saw the battle raging below, as if he were only now aware of the chaos he had unleashed.

  Lemuel laughed and the cruelty Promus heard was terrifying.

  The remembrancer slashed his hand downwards and a searing lance of fire flew at Promus.

  It struck him in the gap between his gorget and shoulder guard, punching down through his ribcage. It vaporised the bone shield over his ribs and flash-burned his primary heart to ash. One lung detonated within his chest as the air it contained expanded with explosive force.

  Promus’ sword blade shattered into a storm of fragments, and razor-edged shards sliced across his face. The fire punched down through the meat and muscle of his pelvis to shatter every bone between his hip and ankle before exploding outwards and blowing out the lower half of his left shin.

  The pain was excruciating. Promus collapsed to the ground, fighting for air and f
eeling a jagged hand clamp over his chest as his secondary heart registered the destruction of the primary organ. He tried to blink away the bright lights fogging his vision as his armour flooded his system with pain balms.

  Promus tried to move his arms, but his body would not obey him, his nervous system paralysed by shock. The daemons shrieked with hateful laughter, bounding in to rend their suddenly disabled foe limb from limb.

  He gasped in pain, his chest heaving with the hammer blow of his secondary heart kicking in. The dormant lung sac behind his main organs inflated and Promus sucked in a desperate draught of air.

  He lifted his bolter and pulled the trigger.

  The hammer slammed down on an empty chamber.

  ‘Damn,’ he choked, turning the weapon around to use as a bludgeon.

  The first of the daemons leapt for him, jaws wide and hooked arms outstretched. He clubbed it away, but more came in a rushing tide of claws and teeth. Another flew at him, and Promus was too weak to stop it.

  A brilliant silver-steel blade struck the daemon from the air with a perfect strike of razored metal.

  Aoshun.

  And then Nagasena was there, standing over him with the Dragon Sword held overhead in a classic challenge stance.

  ‘You will not touch him,’ Nagasena promised the daemons.

  The sea of daemons parted before Ahriman and the towering creature Aforgomon had become. They dropped back in adulation, falling upon their knees and howling their blind, idiot devotion to the mighty creature. One head darted back and forth, spouting an insane chatter of meaningless gibberish, its beak snapping open and shut as though trying to bite back its words.

  Ahriman’s heqa staff vibrated with the power flowing to the surface. He tasted metal at the nearness of his gene-sire, a power that had kept itself dormant since leaving the past of Old Earth.

  ‘You have the power to draw Magnus from Lemuel?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ said Aforgomon, ‘but you will.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘You will find out.’

  The storms overhead raged with ever-greater power, a swirling maelstrom of colours undreamed. A mirror of the great Eye that seethed in the darkest arm of the galaxy. Power boiled in its depths, and its allure promised a time of endless invention, where stasis was anathema.