“What is it?” asked Sobek.
“Evidence of the Unseen,”said Ahriman, reading the words on the smouldering parchment. “The sea rises and the light falters. The moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out. On that day, the sun will go down for the last time.”
Ahriman dropped the paper, watching it float off in the billowing thermals. The words were too apt to be coincidence, and he feared for what they represented. He watched the confetti of ashen books, scrolls and treatises dance like burning snowflakes above him.
“So much will be lost, but I will restore it,” he vowed. “All of it, no matter how long it takes.”
Ahriman took a deep breath, the scale of such an undertaking not lost on him. His senses were stretched to the limits of perception, his mind alive with the flickering light of possible futures. He drew deeply on Aaetpio’s well of power to enhance his awareness. His skin felt as though his Tutelary’s fire was burning him. He had felt something like this once before, but forced that memory from his mind as he sensed the presence of inimical souls nearby.
“Scarab Occult!” shouted Ahriman, aiming his heqa staff towards one of the narrow streets leading down into the Old Town. “Stand to.”
Flames and smoke belched from the street as a host of shadowy warriors smashed through the burning rubble and into the wider thoroughfare. Dust coated their armour and black, carbonised streaks marred the gleaming plate, but there was no mistaking the winter’s grey of the Space Wolves.
The enemy Astartes had seen them, unsheathing bolters and viciously-toothed swords hung with wolf-tails.
The moment stretched for Ahriman. His perceptions raced down the length of his bolter, following the path his shot would take. In his fleeting vision he saw it smash through the visor of one of the Space Wolves, blowing out the back of his helm in an explosion of blood and brain matter. The precognitive flash froze him for the briefest second with the enormity of what it represented.
Astartes were at war with one another, and the sheer horror of that fact cost Ahriman a fraction of a second.
It was all the Space Wolves needed.
Though the Thousand Sons had been forewarned, still the Space Wolves fired first.
A hail of bolter fire slammed into Ahriman and the Scarab Occult. One warrior went down, his chest-plate broken open and his vital organs pulped by a mass-reactive shell. Two others dropped, but returned fire. The spell on Ahriman was broken, and his choler came to the fore as his bolter bucked in his hand and a Space Wolf was pitched backwards, his helmet a smoking ruin.
Another was lifted from his feet by Sobek, his Practicus using his kine powers to pound the wolf-cloaked warrior to destruction against the marble walls of the Fountain House. Three other Space Wolves jerked and spasmed as the Pavoni amongst his warriors vaporised the super-oxygenated blood in their veins. Flames licked from their eye-lenses, and they fell to the ground as their armour fused around them. The Tutelaries of the Scarab Occult spun around the Space Wolves, amplifying their masters’ powers with gleeful spite.
The last three Space Wolves were blazing columns of fire, the plates of their armour black and molten, like onyx statues frozen in a moment of unimaginable agony.
Ahriman took a moment to contemplate what they had done. Aaetpio flickered above his head and he felt its urge to flow into him. Crackling arcs of crimson lightning flickered at his fingers and he suppressed them with a burst of impatience.
“Restrain yourself!” he snapped, not liking his Tutelary’s eagerness one bit.
Sobek approached him, wringing his hands, asking, “What did you say?”
“Nothing,” said Ahriman. “It doesn’t matter.”
“They caught us unawares, but we’ll hurl them back to Terra,” said Sobek, and Ahriman saw the light of his Practicus’ Tutelary echoed in the fiery gleam pulsing behind his visor.
“We have killed warriors of a brother Legion,” said Ahriman, wanting Sobek to appreciate the gravity of the moment. “There is no going back from this.”
“Why should there be? We did not start this war.”
“That doesn’t matter. We are at war and once you are at war, you fight until the bitter end. Either we defeat the Space Wolves or Prospero will be the Thousand Sons’ tomb. Either way we lose.”
“What do you mean?”
“If we survive this attack, what then? We cannot remain on Prospero. Others will come and finish what Russ has begun. If we lose, well, that speaks for itself.”
Sobek hefted his heqa staff, its length rippling with fire.
“Then we had best not lose,” he said.
KHALOPHIS RECLINED UPON the crystal throne at the heart of the Pyrae temple. His armour reflected the flames billowing at the edge of the chamber. To anyone other than a cultist of the Pyrae, the chamber would have been unbearable, the air too hot to breathe, the fire too hot to endure.
Fire sprites and elemental aspects of the aether spun and danced in the air, leaving incandescent wakes behind their insubstantial bodies. Sioda hung over him like a fiery guardian angel, the Tutelary’s form having swollen to enormous proportions since the treacherous bombardment had begun.
Armoured Neophytes surrounded him, arranged in the sacred six-pointed hexalpha pattern representing the volatile union of fire and water. They carried soul-crystals hewn from the Reflecting Caves, and flickering embers of life force burned within them.
“Are you sure of this, my lord?” asked Pharis, his Zelator’s voice betraying his unease.
Khalophis grinned and flexed his fingers upon the carved armrests of the throne. Darting fire swam in its depths, and he felt the enormous rage of the wounded consciousness beyond the temple walls awaiting the chance to strike back at his enemies.
“I have never been more sure of anything, Pharis,” said Khalophis. “Begin.”
Pharis backed away from his master, and nodded to the Neophytes. They bowed their heads and Khalophis gasped as their energies surged into him. The throne blazed with light, and he fought to direct the raging power that threatened to consume him.
“I am the Magister Templi of the Pyrae,” he hissed between clenched teeth. “The Inferno is my servant, for I am the Lord of Hellfire and I will teach you to burn.”
Sioda swept down and enveloped his body. Khalophis felt his consciousness torn from his flesh to fill another body, one of iron and steel, of crystal and rage. No longer were his muscles fashioned from meat and tendons, but from enormous pistons and fibre-bundle hydraulics newly lined with psychically resonant crystals. The bolter was no longer his weapon, but vast guns capable of obliterating entire armies and fists that could tear down buildings.
Khalophis surveyed the battlefield with the eyes of a god, a towering avatar of battle roused to fight once more. His limbs felt stiff and new, his senses taking a moment to adjust to their enormous dimensions and ponderous weight. He flexed his new body. The metallic grinding of long dormant gears and the shriek of rekindled pneumatics cut through the clamour of battle.
Sioda’s fire flowed along the incredibly complex mechanisms of his body, filling them with new life. He took a thunderous step forward and let loose an atavistic roar, his voice that of a braying war horn.
Like a mighty dragon woken from centuries of slumber, Canis Vertexmarched into battle one more.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The Line is Holding/They Will Turn On You Too/Understand the Foe
THE JETBIKES WERE golden, with curved prows shaped in the form of eagles’ beaks, their flanks carved to resemble swept-back wings. Phosis T’kar counted seven of them, swooping in low on an attack run towards his position at the end of the Raptora plaza. The warriors riding them were also golden, their red helmet plumes streaming behind them like pennants. Rapid-firing cannons blazed from underslung gun pods, ripping up the flagstone road leading from the Mylas agora.