Darkened shrouds hung over the advancing warriors and tanks, areas of dead space where Sisters of Silence guarded the host’s captains. Ahriman avoided them, knowing he would be hurled back to his body should he venture within such a hateful darkness. His foeman would never set foot within such darkness, for he was as hypocritical as the rest of them.
Ahriman smiled as he saw Ohthere Wyrdmake, so proud, so arrogant and so filled with anger that it was a wonder he could function as a human being. As much as he told himself he did this for his Legion’s survival, Ahriman was forced to admit he was going to enjoy this mission of revelation.
He reached down with ghostly hands and wrenched Wyrdmake’s body of light from his flesh, tearing up with such violent suddenness that the Rune Priest’s armoured limbs went as rigid as a fresh-carved statue. His comrades and acolytes rushed to his aid, but Wyrdmake was beyond their help now.
Ahriman released his nemesis as his shimmering form took shape, coalescing into a bright replica of the man below. His aura blazed with shock and anger, but that quickly turned to sly hatred as he saw who floated before him.
“Warlock,” spat Wyrdmake.
“Is that all you have for me, old friend?” asked Ahriman, folding his arms. “Insults?”
“I have sought you this day,” said Wyrdmake.
“I know, I felt your clumsy pursuit. A Neophyte of Prospero could have sensed you. How did you acquire my psychic trace?”
“Your brother in the library gave you up,” said Wyrdmake triumphantly.
Ahriman laughed.
“Is that what you think happened?” he asked. “If Ankhu Anen did so, it was because he wantedyou to find me. He knew I would kill you if you did.”
“I think not,” said Wyrdmake, a golden staff appearing in his hands.
Ahriman shook his head and the staff exploded into shards of fading light.
“In this place, in this realm, do you really think we will fight like that?”
Wyrdmake hurled himself towards Ahriman, his hands outstretched like claws and his face transforming into that of a snarling wolf with its jaws poised to tear out his throat. Ahriman surged to meet him and they came together in a blazing explosion of power.
Wyrdmake clawed at him, but Ahriman moved like quicksilver, evading every strike and rising higher and higher into the Great Ocean. Spinning like intertwined spirals of genetic code, they streaked through the aether, Wyrdmake attacking in a frenzy of claws and snapping bites, Ahriman deflecting every strike with graceful precision.
“You are the same as me,” he said, evading yet another raging attack.
Wyrdmake broke away from Ahriman’s blazing form and shook his head, the wolf-form retreating within his shimmering flesh.
“I am nothing like you,” he snarled. “My power comes from the natural cycle of birth and death of Fenris. I am a Son of the Storm. I am nothing like you.”
“And yet you are not on Fenris,” said Ahriman. “We call it by different names, but the power you use to call the storm and split the earth is the same power I use to scry the future and shape the destiny of my Legion.”
“Is this all youhave for me?” snapped Wyrdmake. “Lies? I can believe nothing you say.”
“Lies?” said Ahriman. “Look at what you are doing to my world. I have no need of lies. The truth is my weapon.”
No sooner had the words left him than he shot forwards, his essence enveloping Wyrdmake’s. He stabbed a spear of brightness into the Rune Priest, but this was no assault on Wyrdmake’s body of light. It was a spear of truth.
“You cannot understand the truth without understanding the omnipresent character of the untruthyou are bound to. Enlightenment is fruitless until you free yourself from the lie. The power of truth will merge with you when you become free from all forms of deception. This is my gift to you, Ohthere Wyrdmake!”
Ahriman poured everything into the Rune Priest: the corruption of Horus and the betrayal of everything the Emperor had sought to create, the monstrous scale of the imminent war and the horror that lay at the end of it. Win or lose, a time of ultimate darkness was coming, and as Ahriman opened Wyrdmake to all that he had seen, he too learned all that had driven the Space Wolves and the Custodes to make such furious war upon the Thousand Sons.
He saw the honeyed words of Horus and the sinister urgings of Constantin Valdor, each spoken with very different purposes, but designed to sway Leman Russ towards a destination of total destruction.
The scale of this betrayal shocked him to the root of all that he was. Ahriman had come to terms with Horus Lupercal’s betrayal, for it had its origins in the snares and delusions woven by beings to whom the passage of vigintillions of aeons were but the blink of an eye. This? This was all too human treachery. These were lies, told for noble reasons, but which had brought about the unintended consequences of Prospero’s destruction.
Anger overtook Ahriman, and he hurled himself at Wyrdmake once more, tearing into his subtle body with unthinking anger. Wyrdmake fought back, but his struggles were feeble, his mind aflame with the horrors Ahriman had shown him.
They fell through the Great Ocean, the weight of their emotions dragging them back to their bodies. Shoals of void-predators came with them, terrible abominations of nightmares undreamed, abortions of monstrous appetite and fiends of insatiable hunger. Ahriman felt their presence, and shaped them further with the most hideous imaginings he could conjure, phage beasts of fang and claw, nameless forms and vampiric bloodlust.
At last they returned to the hate-bathed city of Tizca, its ghostly image like looking through a thick fog or a grimy window. Ahriman saw the fighting raging through the blasted park, the clash of Space Wolves and Thousand Sons as both forces tore at one another for all the wrong reasons. Sobek, Hathor Maat and the Scarab Occult stood sentinel over his body as the fighting pushed the Thousand Sons’ line inexorably back.
Leman Russ was a blazing column of light as he killed warriors by the score, and Ahriman knew that nothing could stop this feral god from tearing the Thousand Sons apart. His two wolves, representations of light and dark, smashed warriors from their feet and ripped them to pieces, their savagery the equal of their master. Ahriman dragged his gaze from the Wolf King and his bestial companions, and held the slumped Wyrdmake before him.
The Rune Priest was a broken shadow of his former haughty self. His subtle body haemorrhaged life energy and his aura flickered with the damage Ahriman’s truth had wrought upon his mind.
All his certainty was undone and his soul was bare, raw and undefended.
“This is for Ankhu Anen,” said Ahriman, and he threw Wyrdmake to the void-predators. They closed on his helpless form with hungry savagery, snapping and tearing with warp-sharpened claws and vorpal fangs. It was over in seconds, the glowing morsels of the Rune Priest’s soul devoured and lost forever.
Ahriman watched with no small amount of satisfaction as Ohthere Wyrdmake’s armoured form collapsed, the body of flesh unable to survive the death of the soul. Part of him recoiled from so dark a deed, but the heart of him rejoiced to see his enemy so wholly destroyed.
Ahriman opened his eyes and took a deep breath, feeling the many repercussions that coloured his flesh like angry bruises. The sounds of battle were deafening, and the howling of wolves echoed throughout what was left of Tizca. In an instant, he saw that the battle for Tizca was as good as over. Prospero was lost.
His grip on his heqa staff was rigid, and he saw its gold and blue banding fade until its entire length was utterly black. The symbolism was unmistakable.