Phael Toron floated over the battlefield, his arms extended from his side as he swatted enemy warriors from his path with his thoughts. He laughed at the ease with which he commanded such powers, delirious with the sensations flooding him. How he had feared these powers and dreaded the difficulty in commanding them, but this was no more difficult than breathing!
His warriors followed behind him, the fire that flowed from his hands pouring into them and filling them with light. The power was wild, but Phael Toron didn’t care, letting the chaotic energies flow from the Great Ocean with him as its willing conduit.
A blizzard of explosive shells streamed from the cannons of three dreadnoughts, wolf-clad machines adorned like totemistic idols. Phael Toron unmade the first, disassembling it into its component parts with a gesture. He felt the anguish of the desolate scrap of flesh at its heart as it died, and took pleasure in its terror. In a fit of dark amusement, he turned the remaining two upon one another, letting their guns rip each other apart until nothing remained save torn fragments of smoking metal.
All around him, the warriors of the 7th Fellowship burned with the same fire that poured into him. As he grew in power and confidence, so too did his warriors, their transformation an echo of his own.
A pair of Predator battle tanks opened fire on him. He lifted the vehicles from the ground and hurled them out to sea, laughing at the horrified faces of the Space Wolves. They fell back, gathering in frightened packs as they cowered in ruins of their own making.
Phael Toron’s body shook with the force of the power passing through him, and he fought to control it, remembering the catechisms and higher Enumerations that Magnus and Ahriman had taught him. Power was only useful when it was controlled, they had told him, and Phael Toron understood the truth of that as he felt his grip on its leash slipping. Dtoaa, once his Tutelary, now his devourer, swooped down and filled him with more power than even the greatest master of the aether could contain.
“No!” he cried, feeling the savage glee of Dtoaa as their roles were suddenly reversed.
Agonising pain tore through him, and Phael Toron screamed as his limbs ruptured with the force of the energies pouring into him. His body could not contain such titanic forces and no mental discipline could prevent what has happening to his flesh from taking place.
Phael Toron threw back his head and gave one last scream of horrified understanding before his body exploded with the violence of a newborn star.
A KILOMETRE TO the east, Khalophis marched Canis Vertextowards the smoking, fire-blackened ruin of the Corvidae pyramid. Thick columns of smoke poured from the giant building as its priceless and irreplaceable tomes burned.
Tiny figures in gold and grey fled from his titanic strides. Missiles and hard rounds melted on his fire shield. He was invulnerable and invincible. How could he go back to making war like everyone else after such an experience? To control maniples of robots through the psychically-resonant crystals was sublime, but to command a god of the battlefield was the greatest joy of all.
What his weapons did not burn, his enormous, splay-clawed feet crushed, and he left a trail of devastation more thorough than any the Space Wolves might have made. Khalophis did not care. Buildings could be rebuilt, cities renewed, but the chance to bestride the world as a colossus of metal might never come again.
From his throne in the Pyrae pyramid, he felt the aetheric fire burning his skin, but knew he had to maintain his control over the Titan. Lives and the future of Prospero depended upon it. Utipa’s fire ran like molten gold through the limbs of Canis Vertex, though he felt its desperate urge to command, to wreak harm like he could only dream. Khalophis jealously held onto his control, even as he felt Utipa’s power increase with every life taken and structure obliterated.
He forced himself to concentrate on the battle, sweeping his gaze over the city to see where his immense firepower and strength would be best employed.
The port was the key. Heavy transports bearing yet more soldiers from orbit swooped low over the sea to debark warriors by the hundred with every passing minute. Further out, Tizca’s northern perimeter was still holding. Ahriman and the Corvidae stood shoulder to shoulder with the Athanaeans and Spireguard, fighting with rare courage to hold the seaborne invaders at bay.
Ahriman could do without his help for the time being.
To destroy the port would deny the invaders the beachhead they needed to complete the destruction of the Thousand Sons. Khalophis steered his mighty charge towards the port, fists spitting flame and death with every stride.
Khalophis did not perceive the environment around Canis Vertexas its long-dead Princeps once had. He felt the ebb and flow of battle more keenly than any Moderati. Aetheric energy washed from the battle at the Raptora pyramid and he smiled to know such power.
No sooner had he attuned his senses to the battles raging below him than he felt the sudden surge of energy on the far side of the Corvidae Pyramid. He felt Phael Toron’s presence, but his eyes snapped open as he felt the incredible power building in the Captain of the 7th.
Too late, he halted Canis Vertex’s forward momentum.
“Throne, no,” he hissed as a howling column of searing white fire, fully a thousand metres in diameter, erupted skyward in a blaze of hellish light. The clouds vanished in an instant as a second sun shone throughout Tizca.
Canis Vertexreeled from the blast, and Khalophis felt the enormous, surging swell of aetheric energy pour through the gaping rent torn in the fabric of the world. It blew out his flame shield in an instant, stripping the Titan back to its bare metal and beyond. The crystals bonded with its complex locomotive mechanisms shattered, and Utipa screamed in triumph as it wrested control from him.
Its triumph was short lived as the Titan’s molten skeleton buckled in the intolerable heat.
Its limbs folded beneath its enormous bulk, and the battle engine crashed down on the Corvidae pyramid, completing the destruction Ohthere Wyrdmake had begun.
Khalophis fought to sever his connection to the doomed war engine, but Utipa would not release its grip, and aetheric feedback lashed back upon him. He drew on all his power as Magister Templi of the Pyrae to hold back the fire, but no power in the galaxy could withstand so monstrous a force.
Khalophis had a moment to savour the irony of his death before the fire consumed him utterly, and the entire pyramid of the Pyrae exploded in a searing fireball of glass and steel.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The Last Retreat/The Truth is my Weapon/Wolf-Sign
AHRIMAN SHOOK HIS head, wondering why he was lying flat on his back amid a growing cloud of dust and rubble. He didn’t remember falling or being struck, but rolled onto his side as a surging pain and cramp seized his limbs. He grunted in pain, knowing all too well what that pain signified.
He rolled to his feet and looked to the west in time to see a seething column of bitter fire piercing the heavens. A surge tide flowed from the Great Ocean into the world, and the cramping pain in his muscles told him how powerful he could be if he would only unleash those powers. Shimmering light built behind his eyes and raw aether dripped from his fingertips, liquefying the ground where it touched into a soup of impossible form.
Every single warrior, friend and foe, had been struck down by that terrible explosion, the shockwaves spreading through the city like an earthquake. What buildings were left standing after the punishing barrages were brought down and cast to ruin by its force.
The light diminished as whatever vessel had torn the veil between worlds open was destroyed. Ahriman saw a blazing humanoid form lurching drunkenly on the horizon, like a burning wicker man set alight by highland savages to please their heathen gods of the harvest.