The Omnibus - John French

by Warhammer 40K

  +I am not here because I tried to kill you. A lack of perspective was always one of your finer qualities.+ Khayon went still again, and when his thought voice reached Ahriman again it was speaking to him alone. +There are other deeds that can place a burden on a life. And the Legion pays its debts.+

  Cold skittered across Ahriman’s skin. He felt something dark at the edge of his thoughts, like a void opening beneath previously solid ground.

  +You speak of things that I have not lived… yet?+ Ahriman left the thought hanging, but Khayon turned, looking up at the darkening night smeared with aura light and scattered with the fires of warships. Fresh blots of colour bled across the dome. Lightning stabbed at the mountains, and storm clouds were racing across the horizon.

  +You will need to begin soon,+ sent Khayon. +The warp is wakening, and the torch bearers come to light your path of fire.+

  The rain began to fall, hissing and drumming on the armour of the Rubricae as they moved through the city. Ctesias watched them from a spur of broken plinth. The flayed skin tapers hanging from his amour were smears of ink on half-dissolved tatters. He tried not to move. It was all he could do to not let the pain in front of his eyes swallow his skull.

  The lightning had not faded, but was walking across the ruins. He could see and feel the shapes of the armies moving across that space.

  Yes, he thought, army was the correct word. Armoured figures were spreading through the ruins, forming patterns that changed as soon as they were complete. Circles and spirals of thought rose from the minds of the living. Nothing was still, everything was moving and resonating both in the physical world around them and within the warp. The steps of the ritual had been going on for hours, and would continue for many more.

  The pain in his head and the voices had started again not long after Ahriman’s pronouncement, quieter than before but slowly growing. The tone and texture had changed as well; before there had been anger, and sorrow but now it felt cold, like mourners singing above a grave. He wanted it to stop, and all he could think of was the quiet of the Chamber of Cages. Here even the babbling of the Athenaeum seemed like a pleasant contrast to what was clawing at his head.

  More craft were descending through the night, some to take away those who had chosen not to remain on the surface, or to return others to the ships that would wait in orbit. Above the storm clouds hundreds of ships were moving, some leaving, some moving further out to wait in the gulf between Prospero and its system edge. A few were sinking through the upper atmosphere. He saw the Pyromonarch settle into position as gunships swarmed around her. Gaumata was returning to his ship with cohorts of Rubricae. Their position in what was about to happen lay not on the surface but above.

  Ctesias watched the ships become like islands of iron in a sea of clouds, and waited for his own transport to appear. Among them was the Word of Hermes, and on board her was…

  +You are out of alignment.+ The sending chopped into his thoughts. He squinted up at the dark shape of Ignis and his ever-present automaton. A finger of lightning split the air above the dead city, throwing white light over Ignis’s armour. Ctesias did not move.

  +Ctesias–+

  +Out of alignment, yes. I both heard and understood you.+

  +Correct this error.+

  +I am not going to correct anything, Ignis.+

  +You will–+

  +I am going back to the ship.+ Ctesias winced and clutched his staff. +Now. I am going back to the ship now.+

  Behind Ignis, Credence clattered and cycled its weapon systems.

  +Oh, be quiet, you pile of pistons. If you really want to kill me for that then just do it and have done.+

  Credence’s shoulder cannon swung around.

  Ignis raised a finger. The automaton froze.

  +It is not possible for you to leave. The required patterns–’

  +Will not be overly affected by my being on the ship. I know the plan, Ignis. I know my place and importance in this… scheme, and it is not here and not now. So I am going back to the ship to…+ He looked across the shifting sea of figures and ruins beneath a sky of lightning and night. He thought of the Chamber of Cages. +To have some peace while that is possible.+

  +Why would you wish for such a thing?+ asked Ignis.

  +And there…+ chuckled Ctesias, +is a question which reveals more than the answer.+

  +Ctesias…+ sent Ignis again, as a gunship swooped in above them.

  The downdraft blew the rags of Ctesias’s robes around him. Stablights shone from its wings, washing over him and Ignis. Ctesias pulled himself up with his staff, swayed and took a step as the gunship settled down with a roar of thrusters. Its front hatch was already cracking open.

  The more he thought about it, the more he was sure that he needed the quiet of the Chamber of Cages. Yes, that was what he needed. He was sure of it. He was just not sure why.

  +I will be there to do what Ahriman needs,+ sent Ctesias. +Have no fear of that.+

  +Every detail of this is vital. You know that. We helped design this moment with him.+

  +Yes, we did, but I am still going back to the ship, and to the quiet of the Chamber of Cages.+

  Ctesias mounted the assault ramp. Ignis was still staring at him.

  +I will come with you,+ sent Ignis, and followed up the assault ramp and into the gunship.

  Ctesias was too shocked to reply.

  The howls of the wolves rose from the edge of memory. Ahriman listened to them, far off yet close by, separated by time but not by distance. Gunshots clattered against the wash of fire, and the blast winds of great explosions. There were voices on those winds, too.

  ‘…fall back to the Temple…’

  ‘…go, my son…’

  ‘…the south districts are burning…’

  He felt something pass, jostling him as it ran past. Cold flashed across his skin.

  ‘…we trusted you…’

  Then another presence was buffeting him, and the voices were closer, louder, rising with the tones of fire and steel.

  ‘…get to the temple…’

  ‘…my last gift…’

  ‘…if you wish to die that is a gift I can grant…’

  The noise was all around. Shrapnel rang from his armour. Gunfire boomed louder and louder in the chorus. The ground shook, and shook, and shook to the fall of bombs.

  ‘…Ahriman, do as I ask you…’

  ‘…Ahriman, what do we do?’

  ‘…Ahriman…’

  He opened his eyes, and the ghosts vanished. Rain pattered from the plates of his armour and slid from it in runnels. Lightning cut the sky. Eyes and minds watched him from the plain around him and the sky above. They were all where they needed to be. Positioned. Watching. Waiting. Thousands of strands of incantation had been blown into the warp, and the placement of each soul in the ruins of Tizca was as it should be. They waited. And the warp waited with them.

  Ahriman looked at where the Black Staff rested in his fingers. He opened his other hand. A small pinch of mud dried to dust lingered on his palm. A spot of rain fell into the centre of the ash. Slowly he unfolded a thought and pulled a tiny silk bag into the air. The dust flowed up into the air and into the bag. Strings tightened, and the handful of ashes tied itself to the crest of the staff.

  A last pause.

  A last beat of hearts and blood.

  A last breath.

  He raised the staff.

  His will and thoughts roared.

  The warp heard.

  The ghosts of Prospero rose again.

  Arcs of ghost light rose from the ashes and reached into the void. Vast pale shapes slid across Prospero’s face. Mouths howled from storm clouds. Cords of lightning stabbed at the stars. The psychic shockwave struck the ships holding in low orbit and ran on into the dark, trailing screams in the vacuum. On board the Word of Hermes, Silvanus had a second to flinch and then the world exploded from inside his head. Screaming waves of colour drowned his sight. He was falling, his muscles bunched tight enoug
h to crack bones.

  He hit the floor of his navigation chamber left arm first. The bones shattered from wrist to shoulder. He did not feel it. There was no space in his head for him to feel anything. Shapes and sounds flew at him: red screams, ice as white as the stab of needles, and through it spun lines which called names and words he did not know but understood.

  +Rise,+ called the warp as it twisted. +Rise.+

  Ignis felt the pattern snap into being and staggered. Behind him Credence growled a query. A step in front of him Ctesias stumbled. Strings of lightning ran up and down the passage walls. The hull of the Word of Hermes moaned. Silver tears were rolling down the dark metal of the walls.

  He forced himself to straighten, forced his mind to roll with the power that was pouring through it. He had helped design what Ahriman was doing, had crafted the ratios of incantation and measures of alignment in the elements. He could feel the touch of formulae he had designed spiralling though the warp, but they were changing, combining, expanding beyond anything he had conceived.

  And he was in the wrong place.

  Ctesias was ahead of him, moving fast.

  ‘Wait,’ he shouted with his true voice, but Ctesias did not seem to hear or slow. Ignis felt something he was sure must be rage. This was something to do with the Athenaeum, and it would be like Ctesias to take this most critical of moments and use it as cover for… what? Had he deduced that Sanakht had been a sacrificial victim rather than a heroic martyr? Had the Athenaeum revealed something to him? Had he a different intention?

  Ignis pushed forward, straining to take a step towards the sealed door just a few metres away. Smoke bled from the joints in his armour. The warp was vibrating on the other side of the shadows. He had to reach the chamber with Ctesias. It did not matter why Ctesias was doing this; Ahriman had given Ignis the task of watching him and making sure that he did not become a danger rather than a necessary weapon. Ahriman had been unequivocal on that.

  He took a step and then another. Heat was bubbling through his veins. The sounds of battle were all around him, booming like a storm tide.

  ‘Ctesias!’ he called, but the summoner was moving faster not slower, and the warp spun and locked into deep parts of his thoughts. Fire and dead voices roared in his ears. He was part of it, locked into the grand mechanism that was growing through the warp from Prospero as its dead heart wakened. He was a cog, spinning to the rhythm and needs of something vast and other. He could feel the muscles clenching randomly under his skin. He could taste metal.

  The world blinked.

  The ground beneath his feet was not the deck of the Word of Hermes; it was the earth of Prospero. Fire clothed the sky with detonations. He was straining forward, the wreckage of his armour hanging from his body as he pulled a maniple of war automatons behind him. The wolves charged from the smoke. The automatons locked in place and fired. Casings cycled from their cannons. He could hear the fraction of a second between each shot.

  Credence’s fist slammed into his back.

  He began to turn, cyber commands spitting out…

  But the vision of Prospero burning was gone. Credence’s bulk filled the ship’s passage behind him. In front of him, Ctesias was at the door of the Athenaeum’s chamber. Light and shadows were swaying across the walls and floor.

  Ignis staggered forward. Numbers fell from his lips without him being able to stop them. He could feel every second pass. Every angle between every edge and corner in the corridor.

  Ctesias pulled the hatch open and lunged through. Blue light shone from beyond. Ignis felt his muscles writhing under his skin as he forced his limbs with every shred of will. The door was past him, and he was through into the light of the chamber beyond.

  The screaming of Prospero stopped. Stillness and silence hit him like a blast wave. He fell to his knees, gasping. Ctesias stood just inside the door hatch. The spherical cages hung at the centre of the room, but their bars were strips of black against a blinding light.

  ‘Ignis…’ hissed Ctesias. ‘I am where I need to be now. Can you hear it? Can you hear the quiet?’

  Ignis forced strength into his limbs. His fists slammed into the floor grating, and he began to push himself to his feet. He stood, his muscles and armour screaming at each other as they moved together.

  Ctesias had taken off his helm, and Ignis could see his eyes gazing at the caged Athenaeum. And those eyes had become cold and blue. Like stars.

  ‘I am here,’ said Ctesias, though to whom Ignis was not sure.

  The bars of the spherical cages were blackening, their edges orange with heat. Worms of light ran under the Athenaeum’s skin. Its eyes were bright suns. Bones and blood glowed under the surface of its skull. It was looking at its hands.

  ‘I cannot… see.’ It flexed each finger one at a time. ‘Ctesias…?’ It turned its head, and looked at Ignis. ‘Where is Ctesias?’

  Ignis stared back. The voice and the look was not the Athenaeum’s. It was the voice of something else. Something that had once been called a primarch and then a daemon. It was the voice of Magnus the Red.

  ‘Why am I here?’ asked the voice, and the glowing figure was at the bars of the innermost sphere. ‘I am lost, Ctesias.’ Ignis tried to move but could not. ‘Ctesias,’ said the Athenaeum. ‘You must free me.’

  The echoes of the dead rose from the ashes of Prospero. They soared into the sky as columns of shrieking light. They pulled themselves from the sludge in bodies of tangled wreckage and splintered armour. They shook the ruins of Tizca with their pain.

  Ahriman watched as a body of crystal and twisted girders grew from the ground before him. It towered against the sky, and bellowed with a mouth of broken swords. The shockwave shattered the crystal ruins around Occullum Square. The howl went on and on, rising higher and higher, growing as the pain of Prospero’s death vented into reality. It was deafening, soul-breaking. Ahriman felt the patterns of the ritual unfolding as the border between reality and the warp cracked.

  The creature rising from the debris turned as it grew. Ahriman felt its gaze fall on him. The shriek coming from its mouth was the scream of shells, and the howl of wolves. Its arm formed as it raised it into the sky. Shards of armour and lumps of ash flowed together. Rain was streaming from the sky and exploding from the creature as ice. It struck down at Ahriman. The creature’s arm shattered. It reared back, debris sucking back as its form grew with rage.

  Ahriman could feel the bitterness and confusion rolling up from the well beneath Prospero. All those who had died on this ground, all the humans burned, all the Wolves and Thousand Sons who had fallen, the lost rage and hate of all of them was free now. It was like a fire burning through a forest.

  +Hold, brothers,+ he sent, and felt the thousands of minds connected to him hear. He could not feel each individual, but he did not need to. He was the apex, the balance point of everything that was about to happen.

  Far off at the edge of his awareness he felt ships break from the warp, and cut towards Prospero.

  +They are coming, brothers. The Imperium comes.+

  He felt them understand, and changed the shape of his thoughts. The change rippled out through his brothers’ minds, and in the warp–

  The cascades of lightning froze. The scream of the dead vanished. The rain became a curtain of glittering beads hung against bruised clouds. Ahriman could not turn or blink. He did not feel shock, or surprise. He could not. He was still, an unmoving part of a tableau that he could only see and hear.

  Something like a hiss of breath rattled close behind him. He felt wet warmth on the back of his head.

  +This will pass,+ said a voice from behind him. +Just as all things will pass. I have not stopped your ritual. It will continue. Its end is almost inevitable, and I have no desire to see you fail. Not yet.+

  A figure moved into the space before him. Its skin was flame blue, and the nine wings which dragged behind its back glinted with tarnished colours. It did not look at Ahriman, but turned to look across the vista bef
ore them both.

  +Your failure and ruin will come soon, but only when you are ready for it.+ It turned to him then. A single blue eye burned beneath its cowl. +Did you think that I would not have my vengeance on you, my traitorous son?+ It tilted its head, and crystal razor teeth glinted beneath the burning eye.

  XIV

  PERSPECTIVES

  The city was there when the dust storm had passed. Iobel had seen the storm coming, had seen it rise up against the sky and roll across the land. The wind had dropped just before it had swallowed her. She had had a handful of seconds to look up and see the ochre cliff loom above her. Then the dust had been all around her, whipping her skin and pouring into her nose and mouth. She had folded to the ground. She had stayed there, curled into a ball, her robe pulled across her face as the storm dragged over her.

  When the wind dropped, she found her limbs wrapped in a dull heaviness; the storm had half buried her. She rose – blinking at the sunlight – and saw the city. She stood at the centre of an open space, which might have been a square or a broad avenue. Fragments of walls and pillars pointed up at the sky. Sand dunes rose and fell as far as she could see. The wind and sand had dug into the rubble, sculpting it into shapes that resembled half-melted wax rather than stone.

  She turned full circle. Column caps and the stones of buildings sat here and there. Most were the same colour as the sand, but some were grey, or dull green and blue. What looked like statues stood submerged up to their waists. Each of them must have been as tall as a battle Titan. She made out the lines of what might have been heads, torsos and limbs, all weathered to blurred impressions. She could imagine that great and grim faces would have looked out to the edge of the world from where she stood. Except, of course, what she was seeing was just as real as what she could imagine. The statues had been weathered, not by sand and wind, but by forgetfulness, slowly grinding down the details and burying them under time.

  ‘Hello?’ she called. ‘If you are here, Magnus, then show yourself.’

  The words sounded foolish, and an echo was the only answer.