Though Phosis T’kar could see no more of the hateful Sisters of Silence, he knew they were there, for his powers were weakening, bleeding from his hands like ink from a splintered quill. The Custodes slew with powerful strokes of their Guardian Spears, hewing armour and flesh with efficient strokes that hit with precisely the force required to do the job of killing.
Phosis T’kar felt his Tutelary’s impotent rage as its power was leeched away. He drew ever more deeply on his own reserves of power, feeding them with the very essence of his soul, turning his emotions outwards as he and his men fought for their very survival.
Enemy warriors surrounded them, warriors who moments before had been on the brink of defeat. The lance of the Thousand Sons had plunged into the body of the Wolves and cut deep towards the heart, but Russ had deflected the fatal stroke. Worse, it had been turned back against them. The Space Wolves clawed at them, the Custodes cut them down and the slavering wolves bit and snapped at the edges of the battle.
“We have to pull back!” shouted Hathor Maat over the thunderous din of gunfire and clashing blades. “We are over-extended.”
Phosis T’kar knew he was right, but could focus on nothing save the monstrously powerful form of Leman Russ as he slaughtered the Thousand Sons without a care for the priceless repositories of knowledge and experience that he was snuffing out with every blow.
“Do it,” he snarled. “Re-form the perimeter.”
Hathor Maat read the fury in his voice and asked, “What are you going to do?”
“I can end this,” he said. “Now do it!”
Hathor Maat needed no second telling, and the order was passed through the ranks of the Thousand Sons. In disciplined groups, the warriors of the 2nd, 3rd and 8th Fellowships collapsed their lines and fell back. Sensing they had regained the initiative, the Space Wolves surged forwards as they scented victory.
“You think we’d make it that easy for you?” hissed Phosis T’kar. He whipped his heqa staff around and surged into the heaving melee with a roar of hatred to equal any lupine howl. A blast of blue fire hissed from his staff, spearing into the chest of the warrior before him and setting him alight. He gave an animal bray of pain, and fell back as Phosis T’kar and his coven pushed into the mass of enemy warriors.
A fiery bloom of light erupted beside him, and he saw that Auramagma and his warriors were with him. Phosis T’kar knew he should be angry with the captain of the 8th for disobeying his order, but instead felt only hateful vindication. Jets of white-hot fire streamed from Auramagma’s hands, melting ceramite plates as though they were softened wax. Burning wolves howled their agony to the sky, and dying warriors had the air sucked from their lungs by the superheated blasts that consumed them.
Phosis T’kar’s bolt pistol boomed and blew off the head of a Custodes warrior who’d lost his helmet. His staff swept fiery arcs as it split armour like eggshells. He killed with brutal skill, feeling a blazing heat surge within his body. His eyes filled with light and his limbs burned with fire.
Ahead, he could see the Wolf King and his golden allies. His vision narrowed until all he could see was the path his staff would take as it shattered armour and burned his foes with fire. He killed warriors by the dozen, feeling the sensation in every cell of his flesh.
His arm swept up and down like a piston, smashing though armour and shattering bone with a strength he had never known. His body seethed with power, but his every iota of attention was fixed on his prey. The enemy fell back from him in horror, unable to match his power. He hurled warriors aside like straw, battering them into the ground with waves of thought until they were little more than smears of gore on the marble. The power flowing through him was incredible.
Phosis T’kar looked over as Auramagma faced the Wolf King with fire wreathing his limbs in searing light. His fellow captain loosed a flood of aether at the primarch. Phosis T’kar roared in triumph as the flames engulfed Leman Russ, and Auramagma’s fire met the chill armour of Leman Russ in an explosion of light like the birth of a star. Russ barely blinked, but the effect on Auramagma was as incredible as it as horrific.
The enormous power of Auramagma turned from the Wolf King’s armour as light is reflected from a mirror, and his screams were hideous to behold as the aether’s spite burned its creator. Auramagma howled in such agony that all who heard his screams were moved to pity as the aether devoured his very essence. A blazing pyre of agony, Auramagma fled through the crush of bodies, and the Space Wolves parted before him, none willing to go near so damned a soul.
At last Phosis T’kar hammered his way through to the golden warriors surrounding Russ and laughed as he saw their terror of him. Their leader turned to face him, and Phosis T’kar relished the look of disgusted hatred he saw. Dark hair spilled from beneath his red-plumed helm, and Phosis T’kar saw he had the eyes of a killer.
“Valdor,” hissed Phosis T’kar, the word slithering and wet.
Constantin Valdor held his long-bladed polearm extended before him. “What are you?” he bellowed, and Phosis T’kar laughed at the foolishness of such a question.
“I am your death!” he boomed, but the words were mangled and distorted by the twisted shape of his mouth. Phosis T’kar loomed over the chief Custodes, and only now did he feel the changes wrought upon his body.
His flesh was a riot of form and function, its every organ and limb reshaped by a madness of transformation. Flesh and armour ran together in a hideous meld of organic and inorganic material, and the bubbling meat of his body seethed with unbridled ambition. How could he not have noticed so profound a change? The answer came to him as soon as the question formed in his mind.
His flesh was no longer his to call his own. Utipa’s presence filled him, its hateful relish and patient malice unlocking the rampant potential locked in his genetic makeup. A wild and untamed transformative power that had lain dormant and contained within him was now given a free rein, unleashing nearly two centuries of change in as many minutes.
In Valdor’s eyes, Phosis T’kar saw what he and the Legion had become, and knew then that this fate had always been theirs. Valdor came at him with his Guardian Spear aimed at his heart, and Phosis T’kar finally understood why his primarch had chosen not to fight.
“Monster!” cried Valdor, driving the spear into his mutant flesh.
“I know,” said Phosis T’kar sadly, dropping his weapons and closing his eyes.
The golden blade clove his heart, and death was a welcome release.
PHAEL TORON ROSE out of the crater in blaze of lightning. Hissing blood streamed from his armour and whipping arcs of power blazed at his fingertips. His armour shone with inner luminescence as though it contained the fiery heart of a plasma reactor. With eyes saturated with aetheric energy, Phael Toron saw the hellish battlescape before him in all its visceral horror.
The host of Leman Russ and the Custodes had all but won the field of battle. Like a sword thrust at the unprotected vitals of a reeling foe, the Space Wolves had cut deep into Tizca. The perimeter of the Thousand Sons was holding, but that it would soon break was beyond question. No force in the galaxy could resist so furious an attack, so lethal a drive and a foe so utterly without mercy: no force but the Thousand Sons with the power of the Great Ocean at their command.
Phael Toron saw the ruin of his Fellowship, the broken bodies and the shattered skulls taken as trophies by howling Space Wolves. He took in the vista with a glance and his rage spilled out in a torrent of force. Those enemy warriors closest to him were hurled back, the armour peeled from their bodies and their flesh torn from their bones. The furred abominations that ran with Russ’ warriors exploded in bright smears, their inner light snuffed out in an instant with alien cries of rage.