‘The Athenaeum is not a book, brother,’ said Ahriman, his true voice rising above the rushing air. ‘It was not the books of Kalimakus, it was Kalimakus himself, his link to Magnus. It is a river of knowledge, ever seeking for a way into the world. It consumes all those who dip their minds into its water. But a son of Magnus could perhaps be a strong enough vessel to last longer. That is the fate treachery bought you. You will become the Athenaeum, my brother.’
‘Always teaching,’ sneered Sanakht. He began to laugh. ‘Everything you try will fail, Ahriman. That you do not know why only makes you more the fool.’
Ahriman’s jaw tightened.
The laughter died in Sanakht’s throat.
‘Do not say that you are sorry,’ he said.
Ahriman shook his head.
‘More than you will ever know,’ said Ahriman, and sent his brother into the heart of the fire with a thought.
The Imperial fleet spread out as it closed on Apollonia. Dozens of vessels churned the void as they dropped from the warp. Most were warships summoned by the power of the Inquisition. They bore new names for this service, names that spoke to the intent of their purpose. Wish of Purgation, Seventh Judgement, Damnation’s Answer: if they survived this battle their crews would go to the fire, and their hulls would be reconsecrated under their old names. But for now they existed only as the tools of the Inquisition’s judgement.
Amongst them ships of three Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes broke from the aether together. The Immortalis was a daughter of the Jovian forges bound to the Black Consuls; beside her rode the First Oath, battle-barge of the Praetors of Orpheus, and the vast Brazen Claws battle-barge Sunderer. Called by old oaths they moved forwards as the fleet spread to their sides.
Ignis watched the scene play out in his mind, and across the lenses of his helmet. The Imperial ships began to fire into the already scattered remains of Ahriman’s fleet. He started to count vessels, and calculate arcs. The fires of battle brightened. The ships of his Thousand Sons brothers were close now, clustered around the Word of Hermes. It was the renegades, the scattered ships of the mongrel warbands that took the opening salvoes. Some of the ships broke away and raced towards the Imperial fleet, bleeding and firing ragged broadsides as they went to their deaths.
Silvanus was right, there was no way they could reach the system edge now, no way they could drop to the warp. No way out, no way at all.
Ignis shivered, and looked to the Sycorax. Impossibly it still held its shape even as it burned and fresh explosions ripped through its structure. Space was rippling close to its hull, bulging and smoking with sickly light as the warp pressed through the thinned skin of reality. The ship was a pyre, and the storm was rising to meet its death. Ignis reached out his thoughts to the Thousand Sons ships which had gathered close. He gave the order and the ships fired on the Sycorax as one.
Astraeos saw his own body quiver and start to fall. It moved with the slowness of a jammed pict-feed. The three Grey Knights were still, their silver armour shining golden light across the rubble-strewn floor. He saw all of this as though looking down from a great height as the scene grew distant beneath him. His mind was a thousand spinning fragments of pain and emotion. The angel thought form was everywhere, melting his will, shredding it into scraps.
He could not think clearly. Everything was a jumble of sensations. Memories flicked around him like tarot cards tossed into the air. He was not even aware of time or the past or the present any more. Some small flare of clarity spluttered as images ripped into smaller and smaller pieces.
I am being torn apart, the lone thought said. My existence is being shredded, and the scraps burned. He had not stood a chance, not really, not with all the arts that Ahriman had taught him, or the need for vengeance boiling through his soul. A splinter of pain lanced into his fading thoughts, sudden and vicious in its urgency. His last thought spun on in confusion. The pain came again, like a barbed hook tugging into flesh.
Why has this happened? The question rang clear in his thoughts. Why has all this happened? He remembered his home world burning, and the inquisitor shaking his head.
Why had his Chapter died? They had kept their oaths, but the Imperium had broken theirs and slaughtered them as traitors. That unanswered question had driven him for so long, carrying him to the Eye of Terror, and into the service of Ahriman. Why had it all happened? What reason had the Imperium had to kill his brothers? How had it begun?
He saw it then, the answer that had eluded him, that made no sense unless you accepted the broken logic of the warp. He knew why his Chapter had died.
He understood how fate had unfolded and heard its laughter.
He cried out, and the scream was silence. The pain and rage were beyond even the agony of his soul ripping to shreds. There had been no hope, not for him, not for his brothers. There was nothing left, not even the comfort of the lies he had believed.
‘Ahriman,’ he said, and heard the bitter name come from his lips. Vengeance, yes, there was still vengeance to live for.
+Astraeos,+ said a voice in his mind. It sounded very distant but familiar, as though it had always been there. +Astraeos, my son. I am here.+
+What are you?+
+I am waiting.+
And within him a connection made long ago emerged for the last shreds of his soul; it came as though summoned, it came like an answer.
The bond, the link to the creature bound by Maroth, the daemon he had bound to his will once but never called on again.
He touched the connection to the daemon.
But it cannot answer, he thought. It was locked away on the Sycorax behind silver doors and wards. Even as that thought formed he felt something respond, something that called in a voice of brittle ice.
+Call me and I shall come.+
The angel thought form was slicing through the last pieces of him. It was not separate from him now, it was the universe.
Call me and I shall come… the words lay in the last scrap of his awareness, black as a fall into night, sharp as a razor. He could see his true body, slumped on its knees amongst scattered embers.
+I call you to me,+ he said, with voice and thought.
The creature on the throne of the Sycorax looked up. Light exploded through the bridge. The crystal of the viewport shattered. Fire and molten shards billowed inwards. Then the air was rushing around it, pulling debris towards the vacuum. The creature sat unmoving on the throne.
It could feel the bond to Astraeos now, snapping in the winds of the warp like rope whipping in a gale. The bond had been made in ignorance, but it had been made willingly. Soul bound to soul, will to will.
A chunk of twisted metal spun into it from above with bone-breaking force. It felt the shock of impact as the metal sliced into its shoulder. Blood showered from it in strings of wet globes which burned as they spun away. It did not move from the throne – it could not. It needed the end of its host and the call of the one it had waited for to occur together.
The bridge was a spinning blur. Its flesh and armour was flowing together, setting into bronzed chitin and glowing soft flesh. A wash of glittering energy spilled through the bridge. A spar of girder shot through the burning wave and transfixed its chest to the throne. The skin of its skull blistered. Flesh began to melt from its bones. Black liquid bubbled between its glass teeth. For a second the flesh of its face settled into a single twisted mass of scar tissue above a ragged slit of a mouth. Above the smile a single bright blue eye looked out.
‘I call you to me,’ Astraeos’s voice echoed from all around.
A salvo of macro shells hit the last remains of the Sycorax and turned the world to bright oblivion.
The ghosts of bloody feathers were falling around Astraeos as he opened his eyes. He looked down at his hands. Fire burned beneath the smooth skin, then blinked to nothing. He looked up. The barrels of a Grey Knight storm bolter looked back at him. It fired. He felt the fragments and fire slice through the air. He stopped them. A sword flashed
towards him, its edge running with lightning. The blade slammed into the floor. Astraeos looked down at the blade. He stood a metre from where it had struck.
He looked back up. The Grey Knight tried to wrench the blade up. His armour would not move. The air around the warrior was glowing; he was sweating frost and blue light as he strained. The wards woven into the ceramite were keening under the psychic pressure. The Grey Knight’s arms started to move. The sword started to rise.
Astraeos felt a stab of pain in his eyes. The Grey Knight’s armour imploded with a wet thump.
There were three more Grey Knights on the floor, one dead, the other two unconscious from the psychic feedback of their thought form’s destruction. Astraeos turned away from them. He had to leave. He had to be far away from what was about to happen. It would take time to prepare, vengeance always did.
‘Ahriman,’ he said, and shadows formed in the wake of the word. Yes, it would need time, but time and fate were on his side.
He closed his eyes. When they opened again they were fire. He raised his hand. The air shivered and then split. Astraeos looked into the tumbling madness beyond and stepped through.
Ahriman watched as Sanakht rose in the pillar of flame. To his mundane eyes the flame-shrouded shape still looked like Sanakht, still the slim lines to the face, still the silver-worked blue armour, still the slight crease at the edge of his mouth and eyes which hinted at mockery or laughter. But to his second sight the figure was not Sanakht. The inferno drained into it. It was a void, a shadow cast by an absence, an outline of a figure with wings and arms and curled horns. It had no size but it seemed both to tower beyond the confines of the chamber and to be small, as though it was shrunk by vast distance. It was not a living thing any more, it was a point in the universe where knowledge converged and bubbled to the surface of reality. It was not Sanakht; it was the Athenaeum.
The Athenaeum hung in the centre of the suddenly silent chamber. Then it fell to the ground in a clatter of ceramite on stone. It lay on the floor, body held in a seated position by its armour, head lolling in the collar. Its eyes were cataract white in the dead skin of its face. Ahriman started forwards and then froze. The Athenaeum’s lips were quivering as though it was trying to remember how they worked. Fire-cast shadows appeared on the walls, but there was no fire.
‘And the Wolves come,’ it said in a dry corpse voice. ‘They come out of the night. Red are their axes, and their dreams and wishes are for blood and frost. The black-clad son of the thousand…’
Words tumbled from its mouth. Ahriman listened to them, hearing things that he understood and more that he did not.
‘…the path, the path, the path written in the blood of red suns, the path…’
He moved closer, extended his mind and hand towards the Athenaeum.
‘…the ashes of Prospero are the embers of the new flame…’
He was just a step away. He held his mind still. His thoughts brushed forwards as light as a breath. His fingertips touched the polished blue of a shoulder guard. Sanakht’s head rolled up and back. Ahriman stared at the Athenaeum, and the shadow it cast in the warp. He could not look away. He felt his mouth open, and the slightest tremble move his tongue.
‘Ahriman,’ said the Athenaeum.
His hand and mind snapped back as though he had tried to touch something hot. His mouth and throat were dry.
‘Yes,’ was all he could say.
‘All things draw to a point, and the sins of the past and future create a new darkness.’
‘What… what is close?’
‘Focus is blindness. We create our own enemies.’ Its head lolled back and it began its drone again.
Ahriman looked down at the Athenaeum, and felt a sudden shiver of uncertainty.
A dull crack filled the air, then another, rattling through the stillness like a chaingun. Stone fragments tumbled from the wall beside the door. He spun around, reaching out with his will even as he felt the telekinetic force strike the door again. Cracks spiralled across the glass-smooth stone.
Thunderheads reared in the warp. He felt the surge of vast currents roll around him like the waves of a storm-darkened sea. His Rubricae had turned towards the doors, their guns rising. A thought pulled his helm from the bloody floor. A broken horn on the right temple reformed as it settled over his head. He reached out with his mind and pulled the body of the Athenaeum up. It was time to leave.
The door blew out of the wall and spun through the air towards Ahriman. His mind met it. The door burst into glowing dust. The Rubricae were firing through the ragged breach in the wall. Blue and red flames flashed in the dust cloud.
Cendrion came out of the murk. In the warp he was a single tongue of white flame. Cracks were still spreading from the broken doorway. Chunks of stone fell from the ceiling.
Five paces separated Ahriman and the Grey Knight.
Ahriman tilted his head. A slowed slice of time spread between them.
Five paces.
He took a breath, felt it soak into his muscles.
His left heart beat once.
Cendrion flew forwards, sword rising. Flame poured from Ahriman. The silver of the Grey Knight’s armour flashed to white heat. Ahriman reshaped his will. A whirl of shadows rose around him, beating with a thousand dark wings. Crow voices screamed in his mind.
Four paces.
Cendrion rammed a blunt spear of mental force at Ahriman. He met it and spun its power into his own. The shadow birds around Ahriman flew faster. Izdubar and a cluster of other armoured humans broke into sight. Gunfire buzzed towards him. He unmade the rounds in flares of light. They kept coming.
Three paces.
Ahriman held the thought of the beating wings, pouring himself into each one, feeling his mind and body become like smoke. Cendrion’s sword was a splinter of sharpness and sunlight above his head. He could feel the pressure in the warp building and building.
Two paces.
Ahriman vanished, and in his place a cyclone of shadow and carrion cries roared. Chunks of stone ripped from the floor. Cendrion leapt, spinning his body into the turning wind, sword slicing.
One pace.
Cendrion’s sword cut through the spiral of shadow. The mass of wings parted like a slit sheet of silk. Ahriman felt the pain of the cut, felt the Grey Knight’s will pouring into the blade. But he was ready. The Grey Knight was strong, strong in ways that he had never imagined, but he was like his sword, a weapon, and that focus made him blind. Ahriman focused his whole mind for an instant. Cendrion’s sword shattered. Silver fragments spun through the air.
He felt the Grey Knight’s shock. He almost smiled. Then the flock of shadow birds tore through Cendrion. Wards woven into the silver armour held and then cracked. Splinters of ceramite tore into Cendrion’s muscles. A wall of telekinetic force lifted him from the floor, spinning his bulk like a dry leaf. Polished plates buckled and tore. Ragged edges of metal punctured his flesh. Bones in his chest and arms shattered. Warning chimes sang from around his collar. His flesh burned as warding runes melted on the inside of his armour. Liquid silver dripped from the Grey Knight as he fell.
Ahriman pulled his dispersed mind back together, feeling the substance of his body flickering back into reality.
He looked down at Cendrion.
His right heart beat once.
XXI
STORM BREAK
The killing salvo hit the Sycorax. Plasma conduits ruptured. Fires raced through her machine decks and blew plates from her aft hull. Then the fire found a primary reactor core. The explosion ripped the ship in two. A disc of blue-white fire razored outwards. Clouds of gas spread in a flower of furnace light. The two halves of the ship twisted in different directions. Half-melted cliffs of honeycombed metal crawled with flames as pockets of gas and fuel ignited. The front section exploded first as munitions held close to its forward guns cooked off in a kaleidoscopic display of overlapping detonations. The aft of the ship lasted a little longer, turning over slowly like a fire
-blackened mountain tossed into the heavens. Then the warp drives sucked it into a single bright point, before blowing it outwards. A sphere of glittering, metallic sand pattered against the larger chunks of debris. The scream of the Sycorax’s death became silent, like a voice cut off by a knife across the throat.
The battle seemed to hesitate for a second as the great ship died. The curtains of warp flame trembled. Volleys of macro-cannon fire stuttered in mute fury. Ships drifted for an instant, course correction forgotten.
A line of lightning appeared in the empty space where the Sycorax had been. It shone like a razor slit in a black veil, lengthening slowly then faster. Impossible cries rolled through the vacuum. Crew screamed in the guts of ships. Globes of blood formed in the void, flowed together, split apart. The line widened, buzzing between colours.
The slit of light touched the Wish of Purgation as it thrust at the head of the Imperial fleet. The warship shone, rainbow colours sparkling over the pitted metal of its hull. Dazzling splinters broke from it like shattering crystal. The ship held its shape for a second and then collapsed, its angles folding into each other, as though nothing had ever been there.
The warp storm boiled through the widening tear.
Vapour the colour of skinned flesh spilled into the vacuum. Vast faces, rolling eyes and smiles of teeth congealed into being, divided, shrank and divided again until thousands of shapes were tumbling in the void. The shapes twisted and began to scramble through the vacuum towards the light of the battle. The writhing ball of daemons reached the heavy cruiser Damnation’s Answer, and swarmed through its hull into the air-filled decks within. The crew began to die, flesh running from their bones at the daemons’ touch. Its weapons began to fire at random as hallucinations danced in the gunners’ minds. Its engines still burning, it slewed through its own fleet like a drunken madman.
Ships fired back. Macro-cannon rounds struck shoals of daemons and churned them to foaming blood and fire. The battle-barge Sunderer turned into the tide spilling towards it, and sawed through it, defence turrets and macro batteries lighting its hull with a cloak of explosions. The other two Space Marine vessels held course. Locking their firing grids together, they burned through the clouds of ectoplasm, and bore down on the ships clustering close to the moon.
The Omnibus - John French Page 68
