“So be it,” he said.
AHRIMAN FOUGHT BACK to back with Hathor Maat, holding their line together in the face of the savagery of the Space Wolves and the Emperor’s praetorians. Chainblades rose and fell, their jagged, icy teeth red with Astartes blood, and bolters fired hard rounds that impacted and penetrated their targets without time to arm.
Their line had not held against the unbridled savagery of Leman Russ, and this final stand was being made in the shadow of the Pyramid of Photep. Shards of crystalline glass floated on the oil-scummed waters surrounding Magnus the Red’s lair. The surviving populace of Tizca, who had escaped the initial wrath of the invaders, sheltered within, the last of a great lineage of scholars who had not only endured Old Night, but thrived in its wake.
Armoured vehicles crushed statues and fallen tree trunks, their guns trained on the vast pyramid behind the battle. The struggling warriors were too enmeshed for any of the gunners to draw a clear shot, and so they contented themselves with demolishing the sanctum of their enemies’ primarch. The Pyramid of Photep shimmered in the fading light, its gleaming surface and silver towers bathed in the hellish light of its own destruction. Explosions bloomed upon the mighty crux ansata engraved on its front, and glass rained from its ruptured flanks.
Ahriman knew the end was upon them, for fewer than fifteen hundred of the Legion remained alive. Such a force could conquer planets and quell entire rebellions with ease, but against more than three times their number and facing no less a warrior than a primarch, this was a battle that could only end one way.
To fight was to doom both Legions in the coming war, but Ahriman could no more let these barbarians despoil his world without a struggle than he could undo the past. The Wolf King had built pyres of irreplaceable knowledge and smashed priceless artefacts unique in all the galaxy with the careless stoke of his frostblade.
Such ignorance and thoughtless destruction could not go unanswered.
“I said you were being optimistic,” said Hathor Maat, punching his heqa staff through the neck of a helmetless Space Wolf. Blood squirted from the ruptured jugular, and Hathor Maat completed the kill with a bolt round through the warrior’s skull.
“I stand corrected,” said Ahriman, his thoughts drifting now that he had accepted the notion of his death. In what he knew would be his last moments, he wondered what had happened to Lemuel and his fellow remembrancers. Ahriman had not seen them since Kallista Eris’ death, and he hoped they had somehow survived this horror, though he knew they were probably dead. The thought saddened him, but if this battle had taught him anything, it was that regret was pointless. Only the future mattered and only through the acquisition of knowledge could it be preserved. He lamented that he would never get the chance to replace all that had been lost on Prospero.
A screaming wolf leapt at him and Ahriman put a bolt through its skull. It landed in front of him and he recoiled in horror as he saw this was no wolf, but a monstrous beast clad in fragments of armour, as though a warrior’s body had transformed into some hell-beast.
“What in the name of the Great Ocean!” cried Hathor Maat, as yet more of the hideous melds of man and wolf came at them.
Something Ohthere Wyrdmake had once said to Ahriman returned to him, and he watched as yet more of the howling man-wolf creatures leapt to the attack.
“Wulfen!” he shouted, unleashing torrents of bolter shells into the mass of charging beasts.
“And they say weare the monsters!” shouted Hathor Maat.
The Wulfen were once Astartes, but Astartes afflicted by a terrible curse. Their faces were bestial, but with the last glimmerings of intelligence in the yellowed depths of their sunken eyes. Matted fur covered their faces and hands, yet their jaws were not distended like a wolf’s. Razor-sharp fangs and talons were their weapons, for the knowledge of technology was lost to these savage killers.
Only the most accurate shots would put them down, and they shrugged off wounds that would have killed even an Astartes. Their claws could tear through battle-plate with ease, and their teeth were as vicious as any energised blade. The single-minded savagery was unlike anything the Thousand Sons had fought before, and they fell back from these newly unleashed terrors, horrified that the Space Wolves would dare employ such degenerate abominations.
The Wulfen punched a bloody hole in the Thousand Sons’ line, tearing it wider with every second, and dozens of warriors fell beneath the tearing blades of their claws. Howls of triumph filled the air as the gap the Wulfen had opened was filled with Custodes and Space Wolf warriors. Bands of Thousand Sons were surrounded and hacked down by frost-bladed axes and glittering Guardian Spears.
Ahriman backed along the great basalt causeway over the water towards the Pyramid of Photep, their last refuge on Tizca. The best and bravest of the Legion, all that survived to sell their lives in sight of their primarch, went with him towards the bronze gates that led inside.
The howling of the Wulfen built to a deafening crescendo.
And high above, those howls were finally answered.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Prospero’s Lament
PURPLE LIGHTNING SPLIT the sky and the heavens darkened with the sudden fall of night. A deluge of black rain fell, soaking everything in an instant and saturating the air with the bitter taste of sodden ashes. Ahriman looked up in shock to see a flaming giant descending from the highest reaches of the Pyramid of Photep. The crux ansata rippled with pellucid green fire, and kaleidoscopic bolts of lightning slammed into the ground, immolating dozens of the cursed Wulfen with every blazing strike.
Cracks split the ground and the waters surrounding the pyramid seethed and boiled with anger. Black waves crashed upon the shores, and the glass shards falling from the pyramid were caught in a surging, sentient whirlwind that hurled them like spears to impale enemy warriors and skewer them to the ground.
Ahriman felt an enormous build up of energy, and summoned all his strength to control his body, knowing the mutations within his flesh would seek to throw off the shackles of his form and unleash new and terrifying ones within him. Yet the painful surge of mutant growth never came, and he looked up at the radiant being of fire and light that drew ever closer.
Magnus the Red was a glorious sight, his golden armour and wild red hair ablaze with aetheric energy. His bladed staff threw off blinding arcs of lightning that destroyed armoured vehicles in thunderous explosions. Magnus swept his eye across the horrified Space Wolves, and all who met his gaze died in an instant as they were driven to madness by the stygian depths of infinite chaos they saw there.
Above Tizca, madness raged as the power of the Great Ocean pressed in and the sky became a transparent window into the realm beyond. Gibbous eyes the size of mountains, and amorphous monsters the likes of which only madmen could dream, leered down on the doomed world below. Hundreds died instantly at the sight of such blasphemous horrors.
No sane man could witness such vileness without recoiling, and the invading army paused in its slaughter, shocked by the sight of such dreadful things glaring hungrily at the world below. Even the Wulfen cowered before the sight of these abominable creatures, suddenly feeling the overwhelming insignificance of their existence.
Only Leman Russ and his wolf companions stood unfazed by this vision of Magnus, and Ahriman saw a gleam of anticipation in the Wolf King’s eyes, as though he relished the idea of the coming conflict.
Magnus set foot on the causeway, and the normal tempo of time’s passage slowed, each raindrop falling as though in slow motion, the zigzagging traceries of lightning moving with infinite slowness. The volcanic stone of the causeway rippled with transformative energies beneath Magnus’ feet, and Ahriman dropped to his knees before his primarch, centuries of ingrained obedience making the motion unconscious.