A Thousand Sons

by Graham McNeill

  “Very well,” he said at last. “Pass the word that everyone is to use whatever means they need to push these bastards back into the sea.”

  Tulekh nodded and Phael Toron read his ferocious anticipation as the order was given.

  He looked around the fallen dome and drew in a breath as he saw a monstrous shape thumping through the rubble behind the Space Wolves, a grey giant of thick ceramite plates and whirring, clanking mechanics. The dreadnought was dust-covered and fire-blackened, its hull dented with impacts and its back banner in flames.

  One arm was a bloodied, electrically-sheathed fist, the other a whirring, rotating launcher that spun up to replenish its ammo from a giant missile hopper at its shoulder.

  “Move!” shouted Phael Toron as a series of warheads spat from the launcher and streaked towards them.

  The missiles slammed into the ruins of the dome, and a tremendous explosion hurled him through the air. The blast tore his bolter from his grip and he slammed down into a crater sloshing with blood. He rolled and reached for a weapon, but there was nothing within reach.

  Shredded corpses of Thousand Sons were strewn around the crater, their bodies catastrophically mangled by gunfire and explosions. Once again, the nauseous cramps seized him, and he bent double as he felt Dtoaa’s power flow into him, unbidden and unstoppable.

  All around Phael Toron, the rubble rose up into the air and the blood boiled at his feet. The power of the Great Ocean flowed through him, but deep in the cellular core of him, a dreadful flaw was already unmaking him.

  THE THOUSAND SONS were dying. Scores died in the opening minutes of the Wolf King’s attack, his fury unstoppable and his power immeasurable. Clad in the finest battle-plate and armed with a frostblade that clove warriors in two with single strokes, his fury was that of a pack hunter who knows his brothers are with him. His huscarls were grimly efficient butchers of men, their Terminator armour proof against all but the luckiest shots and blades.

  Though Phosis T’kar could see no more of the hateful Sisters of Silence, he knew they were there, for his powers were weakening, bleeding from his hands like ink from a splintered quill. The Custodes slew with powerful strokes of their Guardian Spears, hewing armour and flesh with efficient strokes that hit with precisely the force required to do the job of killing.

  Phosis T’kar felt his Tutelary’s impotent rage as its power was leeched away. He drew ever more deeply on his own reserves of power, feeding them with the very essence of his soul, turning his emotions outwards as he and his men fought for their very survival.

  Enemy warriors surrounded them, warriors who moments before had been on the brink of defeat. The lance of the Thousand Sons had plunged into the body of the Wolves and cut deep towards the heart, but Russ had deflected the fatal stroke. Worse, it had been turned back against them. The Space Wolves clawed at them, the Custodes cut them down and the slavering wolves bit and snapped at the edges of the battle.

  “We have to pull back!” shouted Hathor Maat over the thunderous din of gunfire and clashing blades. “We are over-extended.”

  Phosis T’kar knew he was right, but could focus on nothing save the monstrously powerful form of Leman Russ as he slaughtered the Thousand Sons without a care for the priceless repositories of knowledge and experience that he was snuffing out with every blow.

  “Do it,” he snarled. “Re-form the perimeter.”

  Hathor Maat read the fury in his voice and asked, “What are you going to do?”

  “I can end this,” he said. “Now do it!”

  Hathor Maat needed no second telling, and the order was passed through the ranks of the Thousand Sons. In disciplined groups, the warriors of the 2nd, 3rd and 8th Fellowships collapsed their lines and fell back. Sensing they had regained the initiative, the Space Wolves surged forwards as they scented victory.

  “You think we’d make it that easy for you?” hissed Phosis T’kar. He whipped his heqa staff around and surged into the heaving melee with a roar of hatred to equal any lupine howl. A blast of blue fire hissed from his staff, spearing into the chest of the warrior before him and setting him alight. He gave an animal bray of pain, and fell back as Phosis T’kar and his coven pushed into the mass of enemy warriors.

  A fiery bloom of light erupted beside him, and he saw that Auramagma and his warriors were with him. Phosis T’kar knew he should be angry with the captain of the 8th for disobeying his order, but instead felt only hateful vindication. Jets of white-hot fire streamed from Auramagma’s hands, melting ceramite plates as though they were softened wax. Burning wolves howled their agony to the sky, and dying warriors had the air sucked from their lungs by the superheated blasts that consumed them.

  Phosis T’kar’s bolt pistol boomed and blew off the head of a Custodes warrior who’d lost his helmet. His staff swept fiery arcs as it split armour like eggshells. He killed with brutal skill, feeling a blazing heat surge within his body. His eyes filled with light and his limbs burned with fire.

  Ahead, he could see the Wolf King and his golden allies. His vision narrowed until all he could see was the path his staff would take as it shattered armour and burned his foes with fire. He killed warriors by the dozen, feeling the sensation in every cell of his flesh.

  His arm swept up and down like a piston, smashing though armour and shattering bone with a strength he had never known. His body seethed with power, but his every iota of attention was fixed on his prey. The enemy fell back from him in horror, unable to match his power. He hurled warriors aside like straw, battering them into the ground with waves of thought until they were little more than smears of gore on the marble. The power flowing through him was incredible.

  Phosis T’kar looked over as Auramagma faced the Wolf King with fire wreathing his limbs in searing light. His fellow captain loosed a flood of aether at the primarch. Phosis T’kar roared in triumph as the flames engulfed Leman Russ, and Auramagma’s fire met the chill armour of Leman Russ in an explosion of light like the birth of a star. Russ barely blinked, but the effect on Auramagma was as incredible as it as horrific.

  The enormous power of Auramagma turned from the Wolf King’s armour as light is reflected from a mirror, and his screams were hideous to behold as the aether’s spite burned its creator. Auramagma howled in such agony that all who heard his screams were moved to pity as the aether devoured his very essence. A blazing pyre of agony, Auramagma fled through the crush of bodies, and the Space Wolves parted before him, none willing to go near so damned a soul.

  At last Phosis T’kar hammered his way through to the golden warriors surrounding Russ and laughed as he saw their terror of him. Their leader turned to face him, and Phosis T’kar relished the look of disgusted hatred he saw. Dark hair spilled from beneath his red-plumed helm, and Phosis T’kar saw he had the eyes of a killer.

  “Valdor,” hissed Phosis T’kar, the word slithering and wet.

  Constantin Valdor held his long-bladed polearm extended before him. “What are you?” he bellowed, and Phosis T’kar laughed at the foolishness of such a question.

  “I am your death!” he boomed, but the words were mangled and distorted by the twisted shape of his mouth. Phosis T’kar loomed over the chief Custodes, and only now did he feel the changes wrought upon his body.

  His flesh was a riot of form and function, its every organ and limb reshaped by a madness of transformation. Flesh and armour ran together in a hideous meld of organic and inorganic material, and the bubbling meat of his body seethed with unbridled ambition. How could he not have noticed so profound a change? The answer came to him as soon as the question formed in his mind.

  His flesh was no longer his to call his own. Utipa’s presence filled him, its hateful relish and patient malice unlocking the rampant potential locked in his genetic makeup. A wild and untamed transformative power that had lain dormant and contained within him was now given a free rein, unleashing nearly two centuries of change in as many minutes.

  In Valdor’s eyes, Phosis T’kar saw what he
and the Legion had become, and knew then that this fate had always been theirs. Valdor came at him with his Guardian Spear aimed at his heart, and Phosis T’kar finally understood why his primarch had chosen not to fight.

  “Monster!” cried Valdor, driving the spear into his mutant flesh.

  “I know,” said Phosis T’kar sadly, dropping his weapons and closing his eyes.

  The golden blade clove his heart, and death was a welcome release.

  PHAEL TORON ROSE out of the crater in blaze of lightning. Hissing blood streamed from his armour and whipping arcs of power blazed at his fingertips. His armour shone with inner luminescence as though it contained the fiery heart of a plasma reactor. With eyes saturated with aetheric energy, Phael Toron saw the hellish battlescape before him in all its visceral horror.

  The host of Leman Russ and the Custodes had all but won the field of battle. Like a sword thrust at the unprotected vitals of a reeling foe, the Space Wolves had cut deep into Tizca. The perimeter of the Thousand Sons was holding, but that it would soon break was beyond question. No force in the galaxy could resist so furious an attack, so lethal a drive and a foe so utterly without mercy: no force but the Thousand Sons with the power of the Great Ocean at their command.

  Phael Toron saw the ruin of his Fellowship, the broken bodies and the shattered skulls taken as trophies by howling Space Wolves. He took in the vista with a glance and his rage spilled out in a torrent of force. Those enemy warriors closest to him were hurled back, the armour peeled from their bodies and their flesh torn from their bones. The furred abominations that ran with Russ’ warriors exploded in bright smears, their inner light snuffed out in an instant with alien cries of rage.

  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 Vertex towards 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 Vertex as 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 Vertex reeled 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 h
is 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.

  A flickering image appeared in his mind, a taunting vision of a future he could not change, and he closed his eyes as the towering battle engine that had fallen on Coriovallum died for a second time. Ahriman had seen where it would fall, but had no desire to watch the destruction of the Corvidae pyramid.

  He heard the earth-shattering sound of screaming steel and breaking glass, the sound of all that might yet be known reduced to ashes and lost hope. The monstrous battle engine crashed to earth, sending another powerful tremor through the city as the Pyrae temple exploded in a simultaneous fireball.