He looked up into the echoing void, picturing his final battle with the Wolf King. Sadness welled within him at the memory. Two brothers, opposites in many ways, yet so alike at their fundamental levels. How different it might have been.
The dust swirled above Magnus, forming a hazy image of that moment, and he averted his gaze, unwilling to relive his deepest shame once more.
That his world had been razed was a cut to the heart that would never heal, but the Pyramid of Photep’s loss was the deepest wound of all.
One of the wonders of the galaxy, it had been his sanctum sanctorum, the representation of all that was great and noble on Prospero. It had contained his greatest treasures: texts dating back to mankind’s first impressions on clay; its blind, stumbling strides into science and philosophy; its great dramatic literature, and irreplaceable works of art.
All gone, burned in a single night of unimaginable violence.
The night his father unleashed the wolves of Fenris.
They had howled and raged at the moon.
They had feasted well.
But they had failed.
Magnus and his Thousand Sons had escaped, borne through the howling chaos of the Great Ocean to this world of madness. He had never seen this planet before, never known or suspected its existence, but he knew its name as well as his own.
The Planet of the Sorcerers.
An apposite name, for power coursed through every one of his sons that remained.
Power that might soon destroy them all.
Magnus picked a path through the wreckage, a numinous angel amid the ashes of his guilt. His corporeal body had been sundered across the knee of the Wolf King, but this new flesh – fashioned of warp matter – was as solid as it had been in life. But what had that transition done to his soul? What had he become?
He did not yet know.
A ghost? A memory given form?
Or the purest expression of his true nature?
Debris choked the interior of the pyramid, and he stepped over towering bookcases toppled like the mightiest trees of the forest and data-crystals crushed beneath Fenrisian boots. Fluttering pages of ashen grimoires drifted on the mournful wind, and Magnus plucked one from the air.
He recognised it. Of course he did – there wasn’t a tome on Prospero he couldn’t recall.
Indeed, it is a strange disposed time:
But men may construe things after their fashion,
Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.
One of the plays penned by the famed dramaturge of Albia. Even among all the great works of architecture, mathematics and science that lay in ashes around him, this loss struck Magnus deeply. Great works of technology could always be rediscovered, but works of art were unique and would never come again.
Magnus went down on one knee and splayed his fingers in the dust, letting the power of the Great Ocean flow through him. He drew the memory of the ancient wordsmith’s art from within the halls of his memory. Glittering motes of golden light rose like fireflies from the ash. They drifted around him, spiralling in a double helix pattern and flowing into the scrap of paper.
Like a conflagration in reverse, the page reformed. Magnus smiled with pleasure as the motes of light conjoined around the remaining page, forming others in a rush of newly wrought parchment. He closed his eye and let out a breath that was not truly breath, feeling the same joy as the play’s mysterious creator must have felt as he first scratched the words into existence.
Magnus felt weight settle in his palm and opened his eye. The manuscript was complete, the words glistening on the page as though fresh-inked.
‘Do you plan to restore everything you lost like that?’
‘If I have to,’ said Magnus.
‘It won’t work.’
‘And you know this how?’
‘Because I know what you know,’ said the unseen speaker, ‘and you know it won’t work. But you’ll try anyway.’
Magnus rose to his full height and turned, letting memory clothe him in the war-plate he had worn on Prospero’s last day: burnished gold with curling horns, pteruges of boiled leather and a wild mane of crimson hair bound with a bronze circlet.
Before him stood a black-robed figure with the unmistakable bulk of a legionary. His hands were laced before him at his waist, and a golden Crusader ring glittered on the middle finger of his right hand. His features were handsomely clean-cut, and his long black hair, severely swept back over a tapered skull, gave him a hawkish aspect.
‘I have not thought of that face in an age,’ said Magnus, resting a hand on the red leather cover of his eponymous book.
‘Lie to me and you only deceive yourself,’ said the legionary. ‘Remember, I know what you know.’
‘Very well,’ said the primarch. ‘Then let us say that I try not to think of him.’
The figure circled Magnus, studying him as though they were newly reunited acquaintances. The notion was not completely absurd.
‘He remembers the first time he saw you like that,’ said the legionary. ‘He was almost dead and thought you a vision come to usher him into the beyond.’
‘I remember it well,’ said Magnus. ‘I am surprised he does.’
The legionary opened his hands and grinned. ‘Maybe I remember you remembering it, or maybe I read it in the pages of your grand grimoire. Either way, he was not himself back then. Few of you were. But you fixed them, didn’t you? Just like you fixed us.’
‘I tried,’ said Magnus, walking deeper into the ruins of the pyramid. ‘I tried so hard to save all my sons.’
The legionary followed him. ‘I know you did,’ he said, ‘but your cure was worse than the disease.’
‘You think I do not know that?’ snapped Magnus, following a spiralling path towards a wide shell crater filled with razored shards of glass. ‘What choice did I have?’
‘You could have let them die.’
‘Never. They were my sons!’
‘But what are they now?’ asked the figure, descending into the crater. ‘And what will they become? Look into the Great Ocean, Magnus. Read the tides of the future and tell me if you still feel pride at their deeds in all the centuries to come.’
‘No!’ cried Magnus, stumbling down into the crater, all thoughts of regret and shame pushed aside by anger. Glass cracked underfoot, ten thousand reflections staring back at him in silent accusation.
No two were alike, each facet an aspect of his soul he dared not confront.
‘The future is not set,’ said Magnus. ‘Horus fell into the trap of believing that on Davin. I will not make the same mistake.’
‘No, you will make new ones,’ said the figure, tapping a finger against his forehead. Magnus felt his gaze drawn to the legionary’s golden ring. The motif worked into the metal was unclear, but he did not need to see it to know what it was or understand the guilt of what it represented.
‘You will make worse mistakes because you still believe you can fix everything,’ continued the legionary. ‘The all-powerful Magnus – he can save everyone, because he is cleverer than anyone else. He knows things no one else knows.’
‘That face you wear? He cannot be here,’ said Magnus. ‘My brother killed him on Terra.’
‘So?’ asked the legionary. ‘You know better than anyone that the death of the matter binding our souls to this existence means nothing. Less than nothing on a world like this.’
‘I felt him let go of his silver cord.’
‘But you were the one who cut it,’ the legionary reminded him, holding up his ring so Magnus could see the eagle and crossed lightning bolts worked upon its surface. ‘You were the one who sent him back to Terra as a symbol, too broken to serve at the forefront of the Great Crusade.’
‘Russ smote me far worse than I suspected,’ said Magnus. ‘My mind is unravelling.’
‘There’s truth in that, too, but you know I am not a figment of your disintegrating mind. I come bearing a warning.’
‘A warning?’ said Magnus, taking a step towards the legionary and drawing the destructive power of the Great Ocean into his fists. ‘What warning do you bear?’
‘Only what you already know – that the powers you bartered with have not finished with you and your sons. There is a price yet to pay for past misdeeds.’
Magnus laughed, a bitter bark freighted with boundless regret and unending sorrow.
‘What more can the Primordial Annihilator take from me?’ said Magnus, sinking to his knees and lifting handfuls of broken glass and dust. ‘The Wolves razed my world and burned our knowledge to ash! My sons are dying and I am helpless to save them!’
‘Magnus the Red, the Crimson King, helpless? No, you don’t really believe that or you wouldn’t be here.’
Magnus let the glass and dust spill from his hands as he saw the gleam of partially exposed metal beneath him.
‘There is still a way to cheat your fate,’ said the dead legionary.
‘How?’
‘You remember Morningstar?’
‘Yes, Atharva,’ said Magnus. ‘I remember Morningstar.’
Click here to buy Magnus the Red: Master of Prospero.
To Hannah with love
A Black Library Publication
First published in Great Britain in 2017
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