In the centre of the star was a black raven’s head, smaller than the scarab, yet subtly given more relevance thanks to its positioning within the Legion’s symbol. This was the symbol of the Corvidae, one of the cults of the Thousand Sons, though he had been able to glean precious little of is tenets during his time with the 28th Expedition.
“Lord Ahriman sends this hes of water,” said Sobek. His voice was sonorous and fulsome, as though produced in a deep well within his chest. Lemuel supposed the peculiar Astartes tone was due to the sheer volume of biological hardware within his body.
“That’s very gracious of him,” said Camille, holding her hands out to receive the hes.
“Lord Ahriman instructed me go give the water to Remembrancer Eris,” said Sobek.
Camille frowned and said, “Oh, right. Well, here she is.”
Kallista took the proffered hes with a grateful smile.
“Please send Lord Ahriman my thanks,” she said, placing the heavy vase on the ground. “It’s most considerate of him to think of me.”
“I shall pass your message to him when he returns,” said Sobek.
“Returns?” asked Lemuel. “Where’s he gone?”
Sobek glared down at him, and then marched back towards his encampment. The Astartes had not answered his question, but Lemuel caught an upward flicker of Sobek’s eyes towards the mountain.
“Friendly sort, isn’t he?” remarked Camille. “Makes you wonder why we bother, eh?”
“I know what you mean; none of them are exactly welcoming, are they?” said Lemuel.
“Some are,” pointed out Kallista, emptying water into her canteen, and managing to spill more than she transferred. “Ankhu Anen has helped us, hasn’t he? And Captain Ahriman is quite forthcoming in his remembrances. I’ve learned a lot from him about the Great Crusade.”
“Here, let me help you,” said Lemuel, kneeling beside her and holding the vase steady. Like most things designed for or by Astartes, it was oversized and heavy in mortal hands, more so now that it was filled with water.
“I’d be fascinated to read what you’ve accumulated so far,” he said.
“Of course, Lemuel,” said Kallista. She smiled at him, and he felt his soul shine.
“So where do you think Ahriman’s gone?” asked Camille.
“I think I know,” said Lemuel with a conspiratorial grin. “Want to go look?”
THE SEKHMET, THE Scarab Occult, Magnus’ Veterans, whichever name they bore, it was one of fierce pride and devotion. None of lower grade than a Philosophus, the last cult rank a warrior could hold before facing the Dominus Liminus, these veterans were the best and brightest of the Legion. Having transcended their likes and dislikes, defied their mortality and broken down their idea of self, these warriors fought from a place of perfect calm.
The Khan had called them automatons, Russ decried their fighting spirit and Ferrus Manus had likened them to robots. Having heard his primarch’s tales of the master of the Iron Hands, Ahriman suspected the latter comment was intended as a compliment.
Clad in hulking suits of burnished crimson Terminator armour, the Sekhmet crunched out over the salt plains and onto the lower slopes of the Mountain. Ahriman felt the presence of his Tutelary above him, sensing its unease as the psychic void beyond the deadstones loomed ever closer.
Phosis T’kar and Hathor Maat marched alongside him, their strides sure and eager. The shimmering forms of Tutelaries darted thorough the air like wary shoals of fish in the presence of pack predators. Like Aaetpio, the Tutelaries of his fellow warriors and captains were fearful in the face of the Mountain’s emptiness.
To those without aether-sight, Tutelaries were invisible, but to the Thousand Sons with power they were bright visions of exquisite beauty. Aaetpio had served Ahriman faithfully for nearly a century, its form inconstant and beautiful, a vision of eyes and ever turning wheels of light. Utipa was a bullish entity of formless energy, as bellicose as Phosis T’kar, where Paeoc resembled an eagle fashioned from a million golden suns, as vain and proud as Hathor Maat.
Ahriman had thought them angels at first, but that was an old word, a word cast aside by those who studied the mysteries of the aether as too emotive, too loaded with connotations of the divine. Tutelaries were simply fragments of the Primordial Creator given form and function by those with the power to bend them to their will.
He linked his thoughts briefly with Aaetpio’s. If Magnus wasin trouble, then they would need to find out without the sight or aid of their Tutelaries.
Though he had seen nothing tangible in any of his divinations, Ahriman’s intuition told him something was amiss. As Magister Templi of all Prospero’s cults, Magnus taught that intuition was just as important a tool for sifting meaning from the currents of the Great Ocean as direct vision.
Ahriman suspected trouble, but Phosis T’kar and Hathor Maat longed for it.
THE 28TH EXPEDITION had come to Aghoru three months ago. Its official designation in the War Council Records was Twenty-Eight Sixteen, though no one in the XV Legion ever called it that. Following the successful compliance of Twenty-Eight Fifteen, the sixty-three ships of the 28th Expedition translated from the Great Ocean to find a system of dead worlds, empty of life and desolate.
Indications were that life had once existed here, but now did not. What had caused such a system-wide cataclysm was unknown, but as the fleet made its way towards the sun, it became clear that life on the fifth planet had somehow survived the disaster.
How Magnus had known this insignificant shoal of the galaxy had included a planet inhabited by a severed offshoot of humanity was a mystery, for there were no residual electromagnetics or long-dead emissions to suggest anything lived here.
The Rehahti urged Magnus to order the fleet onwards, for the Crusade was at its height and the Thousand Sons had their share of plaudits yet to earn. Nearly two centuries had passed since the Crusade was launched in glory and fanfare, two centuries of exploration and war that had seen world after world folded into the body of the resurgent Imperium of Man.
Of those two centuries, the Thousand Sons had fought for less than a hundred years.
In the early years of the Crusade, prior to the coming of Magnus, the Astartes of the Thousand Sons had proven especially susceptible to unstable genes, resulting in spontaneous tissue rejection, vastly increased psychic potential and numerous other variations from the norm. Labels like “mutants” and “freaks” were hung upon the Thousand Sons, and for a time it seemed as though they would suffer an ignoble ending as a footnote in the history of the Great Crusade.
Then the Emperor’s fleet had discovered Magnus the Red in a forgotten backwater of the galaxy, on the remote world of Prospero, and everything changed.
“As I am your son, they shall become mine,” were Magnus’ words to the Emperor, words that had changed the destiny of the Thousand Sons forever.
United with the Legion that carried his genetic legacy, Magnus bent every shred of his towering intellect to undoing the damage their aberrant genes had done.
And he had succeeded.
Magnus saved his Legion, but the Crusade had progressed in the time it had taken him to do it, and his warriors were eager to share in the glory their brothers were earning with every passing day.
The Expedition Fleets of the Legions pushed ever outwards from the cradle of humanity to reunify the Emperor’s realm. Like squabbling brothers, each of the primarchs vied for a place at their father’s side, but only one was ever good enough to fight alongside the saviour of humanity: Horus Lupercal, Primarch of the Luna Wolves and beloved son of the Emperor.
The Emperor stood at the head of the Luna Wolves and Guilliman’s Ultramarines, ready to unleash his terrible thunder against the greenskin of Ullanor, a war that promised to be gruelling and punishing. Who better than the favoured son of the Emperor to stand at his side as they throttled the life from this barbarian foe?