A slender shape in form-fitting golden armour danced into view, a long-bladed sword lancing for his belly. He batted the blade away with his heqa staff and took stock of his attacker. It was a woman, but no ordinary woman. The lower portion of her face was obscured by a silver muzzle-mask and her dark eyes were tattooed with tears.
Now Phosis T’kar knew why his powers had failed. He heard screams of pain as the kine shields failed and more of the Silent Sisterhood made their presence felt. She came at him with a lancing thrust of her sword. He blocked it with his staff once more, sliding the hook down to the hilt of her blade and twisting.
She read the move and drew her blade back, spinning around and going low with a slender dagger aimed at his groin. Phosis T’kar stepped in to meet her and her dagger shattered on the plates of his thigh. He brought his knee up into her face and crushed the mask hiding her jaw. Blood and teeth flew from the impact, but the woman rolled out of reach.
All along the edge of the plaza, hundreds of armoured warriors came together in a battering clash of plate. No longer was this a battle to be fought with one side having the advantage; this was now a brutal, sweating, throat-tearing fight at close quarters.
Phosis T’kar unsheathed his combat blade and dropped into a fighting crouch before the armoured woman. He held his staff out before him with his knife high at his shoulder.
“Very well, null-maiden,” he snarled. “I’ll just kill you the old-fashioned way!”
THOUGH HIS BODY lay recumbent on a crystal throne of golden fire, Khalophis marched through the ruins of Tizca with the strides of a mighty giant. Structures were children’s building blocks, the fires flickering embers. People were specks to be crashed beneath his thunderous steps.
He marched past the Kretis gallery towards the Skelmis Tholus with the wide expanse of ocean at his right shoulder. The streets of Old Tizca were too narrow for a titanic battle engine such as Canis Vertex, and ancient buildings exploded as he smashed through them like some destructive colossus from ancient legends.
Gunfire lashed up, but none of it could harm him. He felt the heat of Sioda gather in his right arm, and unleashed a torrent of fire that bathed six streets in billowing clouds of sticky flames. He couldn’t hear the screams, but he saw his howling victims falling to their knees and begging for salvation.
The guns of Canis Vertexwere functional, but with his Tutelary’s connection to the Great Ocean, his pyrokinetic abilities were boosted a hundredfold and he had no need of them. The mighty fists of the Titan were wreathed in flames, and with every gesture, tank-sized fireballs slammed into the enemy. Khalophis laughed as he spat tongues of flame from both arms, burning the invaders back to their ships.
The attacking forces had cut a deep wound into Tizca, but Khalophis saw how far the invaders had extended themselves in their urgent need to break the defenders in two. Canis Vertexcould cut them off from their reserves, and the Thousand Sons’ lines would drive them back to the ocean.
The Athanaeans dispersed word of the enemy movements, and the Corvidae met and countered any surprise attacks planned on a whim. The battle was by no means won by either force, but from his god’s-eye view Khalophis could see the battle was turning in favour of the Thousand Sons.
“You bit off more than even you could chew,” roared Khalophis, the words coming out in the real world as a deafening blurt of eardrum-busting static from the engine’s war horn.
Gunships and speeders slashed forwards, guns blazing and missiles arcing towards his armoured hide. Without voids, he would have been vulnerable, but a shield of flame turned shells to molten droplets of lead and detonated missiles before they could impact. He felt his Tutelary’s savage joy, its power jostling for control, and he clamped down his authority.
It shrieked in jealous spite and Khalophis spasmed with a soul-deep sensation of nausea.
Canis Vertexhalted its rampage and explosions erupted across its armoured chest as its aetheric armour vanished. Scenting blood, the Jetbikes, speeders and gunships closed in to deliver the deathblow.
“Get back,” he hissed. “This is mine!”
Sioda screeched and angrily returned to the body of Canis Vertex.
A billowing flare of heat erupted from the Titan, and a dozen aircraft were swatted from the sky by the intense burst, their engines fused and pilots seared to charred bones.
Khalophis spat onto the floor of the Pyrae temple, the blood hissing as it boiled in the intense heat. His armour was smoking, and dark light built behind his eyes as he wept tears of fire that cut blackened scars down his cheeks.
THE LIBRARY OF the Corvidae, normally a place of quiet sanctuary and solitude was now a site of frantic activity. Ankhu Anen directed the labours of hundreds of scribes and servitors as they emptied the shelves and datacores of the library. The vast chamber contained hundreds of thousands of texts, too many ever to be evacuated in so short a time, but Ahriman’s orders had been explicit.
Everything that could be saved was to be transferred to the Pyramid of Photep.
The light of fires filtered through the crystal walls, and danced over the steel and glass shelves of the library. Massively overladen bulk servitors carried panniers of books, and terrified scribes swept even more onto protesting load lifters.
He had tried to impose some kind of order on the evacuation of the library, but soon found that impossible. The panic of being so close to the fighting was a plague spreading through his minions, and his carefully ordered plans had fallen apart within moments.
“Ensure the Pnakotic manuscripts are kept separate from the Prophecies!” he shouted, seeing a tearful scribe bundling books from different eras together in a servitor’s overflowing pannier. Scrolls and torn pages fluttered to the terrazzo floor. Dust fell from the high ceilings as something exploded nearby, and the library echoed with terrified screams.
Bodies flowed past him, their arms filled with heavy books and rolled-up maps and parchments. The Corvidae had collected so much in their researches into the future, so much that had yet to be studied and properly interpreted. How much knowledge of things to come would be lost in this senseless attack?
A wave of dizziness swamped him and he reached out to steady himself. His hand closed on the cold steel of a shelf and he glanced over at the book nearest his fingers. It was a tattered, worn, leather copy of Liber Draconi, incongruously sitting next to the Book of Atumand twine-bound pages of the Voluspd.
He snatched his hand away as though burned.
“The dragon of fate,” he whispered.
Since his earliest days in the ranks of the Thousand Sons, Ankhu Anen had been haunted by dreams of a hissing dragon born of ice and fire. Its breath was the death of stars and its eyes the light of creation. Long had he sought the meaning of his dream, but the symbolism of dragons was manifold.
To some, the dragon represented intellectually superior man overcoming the untamed natural world, or creatures of primal chaos that could only be destroyed through disciplined marshalling of mental and physical prowess. To others, it was a symbol of wisdom, adopted by primitive emperors to enhance their perceived power. To Ankhu Anen it was a symbol of impending doom.
He backed away from the bookshelf, and looked up as a sudden premonition of danger flashed into his mind. A flaming mass was hurtling towards the temple, its form blurred and indistinct through the crystal panes.
Ankhu Anen turned and ran back towards the entrance of the library as a tremendous blast rocked the temple. Glass panes and adamantium columns shattered as a blazing, golden-skinned Thunderhawk gunship smashed into the temple. The wreck spun as its remaining wing caught one of the enormous structural members and it slammed into the ceiling before dropping to the floor of the library with a thunderous explosion.