Editing Warhammer 60K: Age of Dusk (Continued) (section)

==Section 52: The God of Dust: The Battle for Tallarn==


<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">A Note from Volsanius Greal, Compiler: The conclusion of the war against Ahriman’s Dominion of Change is a battle which was not widely known about on a galactic scale. Even searching through Vasiri the watcher’s psychic dreamscapes yields little of use, as around the same time (''roughly late M56, if my records are correct'') as the siege of the Black Library by the dreadful Draziin-Maton. After the opening to this section, I will simply be quoting wholesale from contemporary sources who were present at the battle. The writer of the opening, as will soon become apparent, was not privy to the subsequent sections I am adding in here today...<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

'''[EXCERPT ONE: ‘A Conclusive History of the War of Change, and the Identity of the Real Victors.’ By Wiltem Cazzerite, historian of the Fourth Radius Research facility, of the Inter-orb, Blessed be our Outer Queen]'''

Who won the War of Change?

This has been a question which has baffled historians and psyker-scholars ever since records of this ancient, near-forgotten battle were uncovered in the great masses of documents brought to us in the second and third waves of refugees.

It is fundamentally a vexing question to answer, chiefly because the war seems to lack a military objective. By all accounts, Braiva defeated the Dominion of Change the year before, in the masterful Battle of a Thousand Emperors. For certain, we have extensive, reliable records for this battle. Through a masterstroke of interstellar sleight of hand, Temestor Braiva, the Lord Obscurus of the Imperium Pentum and the High Commander of what Legend would later call ‘Braiva’s Best’, had managed to outmanoeuvre and conquer the thousand warring petty Emperors of the former Theologian Union. He had also allied himself with both the Lychen and Praetorian Empires, and the human fleet thus gathered was the largest deployed since the fall of the Imperium of Mankind. 

This was arrayed against the forces of the Sorcerer Ahriman, the last of the petty Emperors of the Dominion it seems, who had chosen Tallarn as his throneworld. An attack by several companies of Astartes Commanderies had been broken over Tallarn by this Ahriman, who had some source of incredible power on the planet’s surface, apparently a Cube-shaped fortress steeped in high magicks and techno-sorcery. 

Despite Ahriman’s evident military hardiness and power, the scale of Braiva’s Armada (''which I maintain is likely a hyperbolic number embellished by subsequent scholars'') seems like overkill. This would turn out not to be the case, as the invasion fleet suffered setback after setback, including troublesome warp translations, maintenance problems and, most disastrously of all, the death of their great general Temestor a day before they reached Tallarn.

The siege should have been routine, but most contemporary writers I can find begin to go off on flights of fancy, depicting outlandish, insane sights, and events which made no logical sense.

I speculate that- 

'''[EXCERPT TWO : Diary fragment. Author Unknown. ]'''

I am afraid.

This is rare for me. I had escaped Ahriman decades, centuries ago. The things he did to me will haunt me through all the eternity of my life. If I could, I would have fled to the farthest corners of the galaxy, and let all these egomaniacs, tyrants and monsters kill themselves. Kage keeps telling me that option is still open.

“Say the word Crol, and I’ll steal you a shuttle, and slit the throat of anyone that gets in our way. I’d kill the world if us three get to live through this.”

The three of us; he means the baby. If I run, if I am selfish, I can save the baby. But I can’t do that. I’m not built like Kage. I used to be, before Revelation woke the hero in me again. I made a promise, even if it was just in my dreams. Ahriman cannot rise. Revelation needs a chance to rise, and to reach the Well of Eternity before the walls of reality finally collapse. If they do, nowhere in the galaxy will be safe for us.

I told Kage that, and he understood. He has been having dreams too. Dreams of feathers and blood, but he won’t tell me more than that. Can I stand to be a mother again? To outlast my child and watch them wither and die as an old man, while I persist? I have no answer for that yet. I can’t think of the future. I have to think of the moment. There is nothing beyond Ahzek Ahriman.

The warp transit has been hell in this dark, cold shell, deep in the bowels of the ship. When we translate in system, we have perhaps an hour to reach the shrouded shuttle, and make our way through the naval battle, to the surface. If Ahriman notices us before I reach the cube, we are all, as dear old Ollanious might have said, fucked royally.

The sudden jolt, and the end of the mournful warp shrieks, told us the journey was ended.

Kage hauled me to my feet, and we ran.

'''[EXCERPT THREE : From ‘Memoirs on Apocalypse’, by Admiral Wellsley of the Praetorian High Void Fleet]'''

Commanding a navy, as I have said in many previous chapters, is not merely require willpower, intelligence or strategic brilliance. T takes the mind of an administrator, a governor of whole worlds, to keep a fleet running smoothly, for every frigate is a suburb, every cruiser a town, and every capital ship and command station a vast metropolis, full of men and women, factories and farms, laboratories and churches, homes and garrisons and gunnery decks. Millions upon millions to command and to understand, as cities go to war with one another over millions of kilometres.

Admiralty of a modest fleet is a goliath undertaking. For the Battle In the Wizard’s Jaws, in the Tallarn system, I was tasked with commanding a fleet of one million of ships.

One. Million. I still can scarce conceive of the gargantuan armada I was entrusted with. There were a five hundred ad hoc fleets from the petty emperors of the Dominion of Change that had turned to our side, alongside the diamond hard core of Tyme’s Absolution and Braiva’s attendant fleet, the hundred jagged prows of the uncouth Lychen Butcher Navy, and of course our own Royal Praetorian High Void Fleet.

The Legendary Temestor Braiva was dead, assassinated during our miraculous warp jump to Tallarn, leaving his son Obediah Braiva to take up his father’s sword. But the boy was no void commander, and thus when we reached the Materium once more, it was decided unanimously by the war council that I should organise the armada in the coming battle. Lector Ikriskiall of the Gama-Meson psyker-warriors insisted on assigning me an honourguard of his most potent warriors, to defend my body and mind from the predations of the Sorcerer King.

We returned to realspace with a thousand less ships than when we entered. The warp howled and shrieked and tore at us mercilessly, puckering up and driving our navigators insane. Several of Praetoria’s most excellent navigators were turned to soup in their thrones, such was the maelstrom. So close did we sail in formaton, many of the smaller frigates crashed into one another and burned, while others were torn away from the warp bubble surrounding out fleet entirely. Some say these ships were disrupted by Ahriman and cast into the deepest vaults of the warp, or else consumed by daemonkind, but I cannot say. Every one of my many fleets suffered losses. Those that survived looked ravaged. Even my ship, War’s Spite, bore and ugly scar across her glittering golden prow (''a slight I meant to avenge'').

Once back in the tranquillity of the materium, I set to work organising my fleet. Firstly, I had Promethean engineers construct a domed hololithic display, from where I could commune with by two hundred vice-Admirals, who would in turn relay orders to their own captains, and thus maintain control over the entire unwieldy force.

After two days of careful wrangling, coercion and clenched-teeth diplomacy, I changed the armada from a loose nebula of divergent fleets, into a coherent structure. The formation was shaped like a lance one light minute long, banded by a dozen dense rings of thorns, ready to sweep into flanking positions from every angle in the tactical engagement sphere.

The Lychen Butcher Navy were composed of vessels almost exclusive tailored for frontal assaults, festooned with forward facing weapons with engines over-taxed to the point of disaster, yet undoubtably fast. Jurrasek, the Lychen King, had a flagship that dwarfed all but Tyme’s Absolution. Meglodon it was called; made from the hollowed out husk of some space monster (''legend would have it was one of those extinct ‘Tyranid’ creatures from the dawn of history'') which was then clad in adamantium and bronze, and filled with cavernous abattoirs and troop holds, gun batteries and boarding torpedoes. The Lychens were the bloody iron tip of my lance.

The body of the lance was formed by the High Void Fleet, escorting the gigantic carriers of the fleet in their hundreds of thousands. Just behind the Lychen tip I deployed the landers and planetstrikers; once the tip pierced the body of the beast, the ground forces would flow into the wound like debilitating poison, crippling planetside defence lasers and support infrastructure. Obediah and the Heroes of Macharius would lead the ground assault, and storm the Black Cube, the heart of Ahriman’s empire of fiction and change.

The rings girdling the lance were swarms of frigates and squadrons of destroyers, constantly buzzing in and out of formation as they made their crazed patrols between lance and ring.

At the rear we towed nineteen Star forts, and even more orbital stations, waiting for deployment over Tallarn.

Tyme’s Absolution, and the venerable flagships of the Heroes of Macharius took pride of place at the heart of the fleet, serving as logistical hubs and arming stations for the fleet around them.

This was a fleet which could mass-scatter entire planets and swallow whole moons without noticing. It was a chimera of conjoined navies, destined to only hold together for a single battle, but a force the likes of which the galaxy has seen but twice before. No convention navy could have withstood us, withstood me.

But what we faced, in high orbit around Tallarn, was anything but conventional. I have seen wonders and horrors in my time, sights that would turn the hair of a space marine white with fright, or burn the mind of a krork to ash. But this was so... incongruous, so bizarre, it will stay with me for all time.

Flames of every hue flowed through the clouds of Tallarn, bewitching the eye and stopping the heart. Impossibly, lightning filled the void, striking at the accretion disk of ruined starships that orbited the warp-tainted world. There were... faces, boiling through the clouds, hundreds of miles across. No, not faces, one face multiplied a thousandfold as it rippled through the firmament.

“Apotheosis... Dissolution...” my psyker guardians muttered, clutching their force swords that little bit tighter before this spectacle.

My bridge crew were dumbstruck, my hololithic admirals likewise lost for words. Jurassek though grinned, and beat his chest like a jungle ape, eager to face a rival male in a challenge. Slowly, the fleet continued its advance, closing the distance hour by hour. As we did so, some of the space debris began to coalesce, binding together like the formation of a planet. 

But this was no planet. It was as if the hulks of smashed cruisers and gutted battle barges were moulding, coiling to form a statue, a dread idol of Ahzek Ahriman, the Lord of the Rubric himself; the same great horned helm, the same T-shaped barbute visor, the same colossal staff. Except, this statue, ten kilometres tall, could move. It raised a palm.

“Halt. I have forgiven your trespasses, but only to a point. The mice may steal from my pantry, but they may not feast at my table.”

The voice was smooth and toweringly arrogant, and it echoed in every mortal skull like a hammer blow. Even I heard the voice, though it was dulled by the psyker wardens about me.

“It is all parlour tricks; a magicians cloak to hide his frailty!” I bawled, trying to regain control of the situation. The fleet hesitated, cowed by their enemy’s power.

Ahriman’s idol pointed towards me, as if it were singling me out specifically to be gifted. Eldritch energies wreathed the bridge in fire, as the Gamma-Meson guardsmen began their battle cants, whirling their force blades like warding shields. But still I felt the leeching pressure on my very soul, and an insidious whisper, asking me.

“Is this a parlour trick, little man? How frail am I?”

I truly believe I would have died then, on my own bridge, pawing at my throat like a drowning man. But, as fate or the Throne decreed it, in that moment, the Captain of the Stormchild, one of the High Void Fleet’s silent grey battlecruisers, chose to break formation, and take the Stormchild all ahead full. Lances scything, dorsal batteries flaring, the battlecruiser charged the idol, burning away molten chunks of the hateful giant. Distracted, the giant released me.

Stormchild was struck by warp lightning and tainted asteroids, that ripped through its hull and gutted its galleys, but it carried on. 

Its escorting frigate was pulled apart like an exploded diagram, as if some impossibly vast hand had peeled it apart with an artisan’s deftness. But still Stormchild charged on.

Even with the bridge aflame and its lances torn away, it managed to fire its final armament. The Nova Shell was the size of a building, and crossed the void at a high fraction of the light speed barrier. When the projectile struck, the flash was blinding. Moments later, the idol doubled up in pain.

Seizing the moment, I rose from by throne and ordered the ships to fire at once.

You have never seen a million ships firing at once. Indeed, if you did see such a thing, it would be the last thing your tortured retinas would ever see. Mercifully, there were no portholes on the War’s Spite’s bridge, nestled in the heart of the ship, and so I only felt the ship shuddering as it unleashed five throbbing volleys, joining its fire to the fleets.

The idol was destroyed, and the debris rings blazed like a newborn stellar cluster. With the void ablaze, the lance thrust into the burning crucible. The flames and the debris were alive with fury, coiling around my ships, deliberately colliding with those that got too close. Soon, my best laid plans, sketched out over a fortnight before, were as dust on the wind. 

The enemy was not an opposing fleet or a rival armed force. The fleet battled a snarl of disrupted realspace itself, a crawling hell of semi-sentient hulks and ghost ships that grew weapons like rotten meat grew mould. It was like trying to wrestle a forest fire, or engage in a swordsman’s duel with a thunderstorm.

It was madness, it was chaos. Ships rolled and banked in the upper atmosphere, desperately firing in all directions to rid themselves of the strangling coils of sentient deck plating that tried to constrict them. Ships used to duelling at light minute ranges were engaged at ramming speed. Reports flooded in of enemy boarding actions; blank-eyed Tallarn meat puppets charging armsmen positions with suicide belts and demo charges, pink daemons capering with the entrails of weeping men, gold and sapphire giants marching in immortal lockstep, bolters blazing and swords methodically carving through ratings and soldiers alike.

Some of the fleet’s captains had been driven mad, and fired upon whoever got closest to them, friend of foe. Other ships from the conquered petty emperors, threw in their lot with Ahriman out of fear, and attacked the rearguard. These few were destroyed by their fellows, and their wreckage was in turn animated by Ahriman and his Cabal to become new foes for us to face.

Tyme’s Absolution was doing the best out of all of us, its bombardment cannons designed for close range. Any enemies trying to board that battle barge found fully equipped regiments of Steel Legion veterans, Macharian Lion Legionnaires, Elysium Drop troops, Lussorian Narc Warriors in their proto power armour and the lethal Ryzan-Catachan Plasma Commandoes to greet them. The Lychen too revelled in the carnage, their modified prows simply ramming their way through the living wreckage. The Lychen met their boarders well too. The bloody halls of those haemovore savages ran with more blood than the Lychen knew what to do with. Their stocks of meat would never run low in such a butcher’s yard.

By this point, my only concern was clearing a path for the landing ships. I ordered the captain to punch through, and the War’s Spite, like a gladius through meat, did just that. In its wake the drop ships descended through the bruised clouds, to an uncertain future below.

All I could do then was pray to the Golden King of all Humanity to watch over them.

'''[EXCERPT FOUR: Untitled Piece. Author Unknown ]'''

The whole world wanted us dead. But we were soldiers of the Imperium Pentus; everyone wanted us dead. We had left pieces of ourselves at every battlefield for a thousand light years. We were the tempered Edge of the Steel, and we do not break, we lacerate. The moment I landed I shat my breeches however, and vomited into my rebreather. The air was not just poisonous, it was filled with madness. I was lucky. Some folks turned inside out, or twisted their own heads off and kicked them away, the head laughing manically as it fell.

Fire-breathing worms burrowed through the multi-coloured sand dunes, and spiders clambered over the clouds, vomited white muck which made predatory trees grow in the bellies of the dead. Many eyed things slavered and lashed at us. Our tanks broke them apart, we bayoneted the spiders, and the artillery burst the bellies of the worms. They were killing us with every breath, every sweep of a bladed arm, but we were killing them too.

Somehow, Obediah got through to us on the radio. He was wearing his father’s uniform, and rode atop his super heavy tank, Macharius’ sceptre in his hand. We managed to fight in formation, even though the landscape kept shifting beneath us, seeking to drown us in ash and sand. We were to converge on the great black block, which sat at the top of an insurmountable hillock. The edges of the dunes kept falling away, refusing to stick to the cube. 

The Lussorian false-Space Marines fought as hard as their namesakes, clambering over mountains of Tallarn dead. The poor Tallarn folk were dead-eyed puppets, fed into the grinder, grasping at us with bladed fingers, that we neatly cut off.

The Chevantai wove a ballet of death around them, their lithe forms drifting weightlessly between combats, long laser lances neatly killing where they may. Plasma Commandoes scoured the way ahead with green fire, unrelenting and methodical as clocks. The Lychen... they fought with a red miasma of gory foam about them, heedless and hungry for flesh. Any flesh.

I giggled when I saw row upon row of redcoat Praetorians in their pith helmets. They were like stiff ribbons of crimson in a sea of boiling soup, straight where everything else was curly. It was only when they fired, row after row, that the power of their firing drill became apparent, chopping down whole tides of Tallarn folk like wheat before a scythe.

But Ahriman couldn’t be finished this way. He had his own terrible things to set on us. The Rubricae were automatons of sapphire and gold, and nothing we did mattered to them. Our lasrifles were useless, and our heavy weapons only slowed them down. Every time they fell, they always rose again. Their bolters killed more of us than anything. Some of the Rubricae looked like Commandery Astartes, only their helmets were filled with the dead light of Ahriman’s enchantment, goaded forwards by his cabal of sorcerers.

Ahriman’s image itself, fashioned out of blue flame, wandered the battlefield lazily, languidly gifting anyone nearby with instant death. With a wave of his hand, he swatted scores of men to the ground, burnt to a cinder in moments. Nothing could harm these apparitions, for they were not the true demi-god. That lay within the cube. The cube we could reach.

There were other things too. Bigger than ogryns, they were faster and stronger too. The Golarch were like mindless Astartes imbued with strength beyond conception. Only the artillery could bring them down, and not before the giants tore apart tanks and infantry with equal ease.

I was distracted by one of the Golarch abominations pulling Duc de Aronelle’s legs off when I died. I looked away once, and a Rubricae put a bolt shell through me. I burst apart like a grape.

“Clumsy me,” I giggled as my face fell away from the bone.

'''[[EXCERPT FIVE: Diary Fragment. Author Unknown. ]]'''

Braiva’s Best were a distraction. That’s all I intended for them, though it pains me to admit that. Something to catch Ahriman’s gaze as I put the knife in. 

We were close now. Kage was almost carrying me at this point up the dunes. Pregnancy and running was never going to be a realistic outcome. Ahriman couldn’t see me. I had aided him in the construction of his cube, or his god engines, and I knew the back doors and hidden alcoves in the psychic architecture. And where I opened the doors, I left them open. I broke his seals, each just a fractional amount. Nothing he might spot in his mania, but enough for two souls to split through and leave a weeping wound behind.

This route, there were just a few Tallarn puppets opposing them, and Kage put them down with his pistol with the casual ease of a natural born killer.

We were running out of time. I could feel Ahzek on the cusp of transcendence. More than daemonhood, this was godhood. And with it, one step further to dissolution for all. I could taste Ahriman’s name on the tongue, on the tongue of every sentient being. 

I fumbled with the invisible black door of the cube, remembering the codes I had inputted two lifetimes ago. He had changed them, but not enough. Ahriman in his towering arrogance hadn’t considered I would dare return.

We were in. The riotous colors outside were absent inside. Inside the cube, it was acrid light and long inky shadows, cast by exotic machineries all bound together by umbilical cords and human sinew. It was like being inside a daemon’s clock, a device of impossible complexity. Amidst this machinery, I saw the tell tale form of webway portals. They looked like the human webway project, their edges too definite and blunt to be eldar.

“Why of course it is Crolomere,” Ahriman purred. “What my father ruined with his bumbling weakness, I have completed. Upon my ascension, I will stream through the webway, to all corners of the galaxy to proclaim my majesty. And the universe shall weep with joy, at the fulfillment of prophecy.”

His voice was like ice water, and froze me to the spot.

The lights banished all shadow inside the cube. Rubricae emerged from all around, encircling us in a wall of sapphire and gold. Behind them, Ahriman’s sorcerers emerged, clutching their staffs like spears. Ahriman himself wore no armor, or even clothes, and glided weightlessly towards them calmly, arms outstretched. He was a giant, swollen to Primarch scale now, his old armor orbiting him like moons about a gas giant. He was beautiful and terrible to behold.

“Did you truly think I would not notice your progress, in my own inner sanctum? Or that you were lowering my ward spells? What do you hope to achieve? I am beyond even grandfather, the anathema now. I see all, I know all, and I will know more. I am Paradox and Unity, Love and Horror, I will be everything at once and ever shifting. I topple Tzeentch, I vanquish Lorgar. There are none who can st-”

“Oh shut the fuck up,” Kage spat. Ahriman paused in disbelief. 

I looked to Kage in horror. He just shrugged. “What? He was going on and on.”

Ahzek raised his hand... then one finger, and slowly drew it across his throat. Kage fell then, clutching his slit throat desperately, blood dribbling between fingers.

I screamed, but Ahriman sealed my mouth. One of the larger Rubricae took up position beside its master, watching dispassionately as she suffered

“Why are you so afraid? That mortal was always going to die? But you cannot die Perpetual,” he purred.

I tried to hide my next thought. I couldn’t. Tears came unbidden to my eyes.

“Ahh... but the bastard in your belly... you fear that is quite killable, hmm?”

He heard my next thought. “Who are you praying too? All the gods are dead or slaves, save me. Are you praying to me? How sweet,” he said, leaning down to touch my cheek. “I see into your soul, as I see everything.”

The giant Rubricae exploded then, and from it rose a copper-skinned titan from my nightmares.

“Not everything, my son,” Magnus the Red explained, as a crimson burst of fire swept Ahriman from his feet. The Rubricae did nothing, frozen in inaction between two masters. Released from my spell, I crawled away. Crawling towards the heart of the machine.

I couldn’t look back, but I heard the flaring of the two demi-gods, and saw glimpses of red and blue flames dueling, like lightning before the thunderclap. If I witnessed the sorcerous exchange, I feared I would be cast into oblivion, or worse.

“I will become a god! I have already surpassed you!”

“You prattle like a child Ahriman. A child with a gun, who does not understand what trigger he is pulling. I am here to save you.”

“Save me? Then who will save you? I will devour you father, consume the red and end this charade!”

The two warring essences fought on every plane, flowing between walls and through times, killing Tallarn and birthing new worlds in forgotten timelines. They wrestled as giant men, and writhed like paints in a watercolour. Ideas were weaponized and sharpened to points, and songs were sung that unraveled spacetime around them.

Kages followed me, crawling along the floor on his elbows, clamping his throat closed. He left a red smear as he did so. I blinked back tears as I worked, carefully tearing pages form the Rubric tome, plugged into the heart of the cube. I read them in every connotation, before tearing them up. Fleshy cables were rerouted, and psychic complexes altered and remade anew. I knew what Ahriman had done, because I was the one who showed him how to do it. I felt a familiar tightening pain as i worked. Not now... do not come now...

Ahriman’s cabal seemed at last to notice Kage and I, and the threat we posed. The Rubricae turned from their dueling masters, and advanced upon us. They couldn’t risk shooting the machine, and so drew their energized khopesh blades as they closed in on me.

No one save me noticed that the webway portals had activated. With the psychic wards lowered, the cube was open to the webway. The black armoured nightmares which burst forth from the portals were wreathed in fire, and their faces were masked in bone. Leaing the charge of the Legion of the Damned charged a howling berserker Astartes of Fenris, with the black axe Morkai held aloft. Upon his shoulders sat two giggling children with dark pigtails and pretty dresses. As the wolf killed, they laughed and braided his shaggy mane. A sorcerer turned with staff raised, but too late to avoid the blow which bisected him from neck to navel.

“Revelation! We are the Rout!” howled the space wolf.

“We are twins!” added one of the girls, unhelpfully.

I ducked behind the machine as the two breeds of deathless horror tried in vain to kill one another. Ethereal blades cut into rune-etched armour, and khopesh blades passed harmlessly through incorporeal forms.

Somewhere near, or eons distant, I heard Magnus shriek and scream, his voice then fading away. All eyes save mine fell upon Ahriman then, who held aloft a blazing red eye, wrenched from the skull of his once invincible father.

Time slowed then, at that moment of convergence.

Ahriman swept the apex twins aside with a gesture. 

The space wolf threw Morkai.

And I grasped a fetid cord of sacrificial muscle, and I gnawed through it like a dog. 

The world froze. I felt a billion billion voices, neverborn and never to be born, scream in one mighty voice, before being silenced. I felt the souls of thousands, ensnared in a crystal trap, howl in elation and freedom. I felt all of Ahriman’s godlike power, all his raw warp energy, pour into the Rubric.

But not to enhance it. I had seen to that.

It was to reverse it.

The entire world shuddered, as more contractions wracked my belly.

The fire in the Rubricae’s eyes faded. They all, as one, staggered onto one knee. 

Ahriman screamed. It was disturbingly shrill and piercing for a space marine. His luminous form faded, until he was merely a naked man on his knees.

He locked eyes with me and through the pain, I stared right back.

I have never seen an Astartes look so afraid. He was weeping, as his flesh began to desiccate and crack, slowly at first, then more swiftly.

“All... is... dust...” he wheezed, as his lips began to dissolve.

“Not all,” I spat through bloody lips. “Only you.”

Ahzek Ahriman collapsed then, into naught but drifting ash.

I didn’t watch what happened next. I vaguely heard the concussive boom of bolters, and the alarmed shouts of the dying, but it was all far away and distant. All I could focus on was the baby spilling from me. It was stuck. It couldn’t break free. In pain and fear I continued to shriek.

Kage saw me, saw the fear writ large across my face. I knew what he was going to do before he did it.

“Don’t,” I breathed weakly.

He didn’t listen. He unclasped his hands from about his throat, and reached for me. The blood flowed in a tide from him, but even as his life and strength were failing, he pulled the child free, cutting away the umbilical with his combat knife. He slipped the little boy into my arms. I saw him smile before he fell on his face, and moved no more.

My head reeled, my mind swimming through treacle. The cube was fading away, leaving me in the dark. I heard the flutter of great wings. Pale white feathers, stained in blood fell all around me.

I looked up blearily, and saw the most beautiful face in the world. The man smiled at me.

“I know you,” I said with a drunken grin. 

A vast hand wiped away my tears. “A blood sacrifice, shed in love and honor was needed to bring me...us here. What grace is left of me is now His. My nephew, in life and death.... Take Him from this place Crolomere. Take him through the winding path.”

“The webway? Who... who are you? Tell me your name,” I asked, as the figure began to fade.

The man’s perfect smile was the last thing to vanish, and it said. “I wish we had met sister. Perhaps things would have been different, if we had known our sisters...”

Strong hands carried me after that, and I was led into the portal, and beyond the materium entirely...
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