It had all begun on Terra.
When Magnus the Red had failed to prevent the corruption of Horus Lupercal by Erebus' schemes at Davin, the Crimson King had then sought to warn his father of the Warmaster's treachery. By combining the efforts of his entire Legion, Magnus had sent his spirit to Terra, to commune with the Emperor and pass on his dire warning. But he had been deceived, and his sending had shattered the wards of the Imperial Palace, allowing the infinite hordes of the Neverborn to lay siege to the Throneworld and forcing the Emperor and His Custodians into an endless war, fought in secret while the Primarchs made war upon one another across the galaxy.
Knowing he had ruined his father's great plan broke Magnus' spirit, and when the Space Wolves had come to Prospero, their orders changed by Horus from capture to extermination, the Crimson King did not intervene. He believed that he and his sons believed to die for what they had done, and sent the Fifteenth's fleet away and deactivated the planet's orbital defenses. Only at the end, when the cries of his sons and his people were too much for him to bear, did he finally abandon the path to martyrdom and face his brother Russ. But even though his power was great and terrible, Magnus' soul had still been cracked by what he had done, and when the Wolf King defeated him and broke his body upon his knee, that crack widened until Magnus' soul tore apart into countless fragments.
Like calls to like, and these fragments had coalesced into a handful of greater soul-shards, which had scattered across time and space. The greatest of these pieces of Magnus had followed his Legion to the Planet of the Sorcerers, where it had slowly died as the course of the Heresy unfolded outside the Eye of Terror. Ahriman and his cabal had restored their father, hunting the other soul-shards and reuniting them, saving their Primarch from dissolution, but three had eluded them. Of these, the Thousand Sons knew of only one : the shard that had gone to Terra, following the path that had brought Magnus' such shame in the first place. It had gone back to the Throneworld, to face judgement and make penance for the crime of the Crimson King. In that shard was contained the best of Magnus : his nobility, his honor and his devotion to his father.
Seeking a defender fit to guard the infernal portal Magnus' folly had created, Malcador the Sigillite had bound the shard into the body of a dying Thousand Son, Revuel Arvida, who had brought the White Scars to Terra at terrible cost to himself. It was Malcador's hope to recreate Magnus as he should have been by consuming the life of Revuel, but the process failed, and a new being rose from the attempt, born of the fusion of a loyal son's soul and a shard of a demigod's spirit. This being called itself Janus, the two-faced god who had orchestrated his own creation. He had become the leader and most powerful of the secretive Grey Knights, the Emperor's last gift to Mankind and ultimate weapon against the Dark Gods. For thousands of years, Janus and his brothers had remained on hiding on the moon of Titan.
And now, with the Segmentum Tempestus burning and the Cursus of Alganar in the hands of the Fifteenth Legion and its allies, the Supreme Grand Master of the Grey Knights had emerged from hiding. He had sensed the return of the Thousand Sons into realspace, sensed the transformation wrought upon them, and felt the echoes of their designs through the Empyrean. So he had come, and brought with him the wrath of the Imperium. More than half of the Grey Knights Chapter accompanied him, and their psychic power was a beacon that burned through the swarms of daemons brought to Tallarn by the Illuminated Empire's crusade.
The Imperial fleet clashed with the Black Crusade armada, and the Imperial Navy fought to allow the Grey Knights and the Space Marines passage to Tallarn. Every psyker in the entire fleet was in considerable pain, screaming prophecies of imminent doom at the top of their lungs : there was no concealing the peril the entire Imperium was in. Few in the Imperial fleet knew what the traitors were doing, but all knew that they must be stopped no matter the cost. Tens of thousands died in ships sacrificed so that the Astartes vessels could reach orbit and unload their deadly cargo onto the planet below, their lives ending in fire and terror, their souls caught and torn apart by hungry daemons. The only reason the Imperial host wasn't decimated further was that the Chaos fleet suffered from the same handicap, as every Warp-touched soul reacted to the arrival of Janus and so many Grey Knights. Some fell to their knees, weeping uncontrollably; others screamed in agony as the corruption of their souls boiled; others still simply stopped in their tracks, their awareness retreating deep inside to avoid facing the terrible light of the Emperor's Gift.
Seizing that opening, thousands of Space Marines made planetfall, aiming for the closest location to the Hellgate that they could. Millions more troops descended onto Tallarn, but only the Astartes were sent to the Cursus : the rest were spread out among the planet's cities, for the Grey Knights didn't trust them to resist the corruption of Chaos should they be sent against the Hellgate.
Among the transhuman host were the Space Wolves and their cousin Chapter, the Wolf Brothers, reborn from their first catastrophic founding through the efforts of Thrar Hraldir, an Apothecary who had perfected the Canis Helix so that the Wolf King's scions could endure way from Fenris' stabilizing influence. Nigh two thousands warriors of Russ charged alongside the Grey Knights, shouting the same oaths their ancestors had shouted in the burning streets of Tizca. With them came warriors hailing from Chapters born from each of the loyal Legions, their different allegiances forgotten in the face of the Illuminated Empire's evil. Save for a few ancient Dreadnoughts, none of these warriors had lived through the horrors of the Horus Heresy. Most of them had never even fought against a Traitor Marine. But they had fought against the many other horrors of the galaxy, in the endless wars that must be waged to keep the Imperium safe. And what they did not know, their Chapters remembered. On every Chapter homeworld, in archives forbidden to all but the battle-brothers, the tales of the great rebellion were kept, the rolls of the dead and the oaths of vengeance.
The Legion forces of the Illuminated Empire met their loyalist brethren before the sacrificial pyramid, howling their savage joy at the chance to spill the blood of their cousins again. With every Librarian sensing the approaching culmination of the Traitors' foul spell-work, no time was given to tactics or strategy. Tanks and Dreadnoughts joined the battle as soon as they landed, and a horde of heroes clashed with a Legion of renegades. Transhuman blood flowed on the sands of Tallarn, and the air was filled with the sound of clashing blades and bolt shells detonating on ceramite.
Sanakht, greatest swordsman of the Fifteenth Legion, fought alongside the Legionaries, back to back with Kroeger. The psychic wound he had suffered against the Maelat prevented him from participating in the ritual, but his skills with the blade were undiminished, and his hatred of the Space Wolves burned as bright as ever. The sons of Russ recognized his armor, even if it was now sapphire blue instead of copper red, and threw themselves at him, eager to finish what their forebears had begun on Prospero. With Kroeger's Iron Warriors at his side, the son of Magnus met the Wolves head on, and cut a bloody path through them, what remained of his psychic powers enhancing his skills even further. Sanakht had lost his power, but none of his control, and he wielded what little energy he still had access to with a precision unseen in any other Sorcerer.
At the head of the Imperial host was Janus himself, great and terrible in his power, and all who faced him died. Silver lightning shrouded him, leaping from his ornate armor to incinerate entire squads of Chaos Marines. Bolt rounds and plasma shots splashed harmlessly on his great war-plate, and his great psi-blade blazed with fire so hot it charred the gruesome trophies of Chaos Marines more than a hundred meters away. Around him came the Grey Knights, and like a mighty spear they pierced through the ranks of their enemies, advancing far ahead from the rest of the host. They were cutting themselves from reinforcements and they knew it, but it did not matter to them. They had come to Tallarn to fulfill their sacred duty : the protection of Mankind from the darkest horrors of the Warp, and they would not be stopped, no matter the cost.
Eventually, sheer weight of number began to tell, and the Knights of Titan began to fall. The gestalt union of five hundred of the Imperium's mightiest psykers began to weaken, just as they were about to cut their way out of the Legion host and face the Thousand Sons Sorcerers. The collective might of a thousand Sorcerers, among them a hundred Exalted, smashed into the Grey Knights, forcing them to stop in their track. Reality rippled under the strength of the energies unleashed in that momentous confrontation, but only Janus was able to go forth, his gaze fixed onto the pyramid, where the Arch-Sorcerer of Tzeentch was still cutting out the hearts of willing sacrifices and calling upon ancient, evil powers to fulfill his goal.
Janus walked among the Thousand Sons, and he did not strike them, though whether it was to save his strength for the confrontation ahead or because of any lingering attachment to the Fifteenth Legion was known only to him and the Emperor. Then, as he reached the base of the pyramid, five humanoid figures stood in his path. The Ancients had come to defend their god, even if it meant facing an true divine being. Great indeed was the loyalty Bile and Ahriman had ingrained into them.
The Ancients cast off their human shapes as they attacked the Supreme Grand Master, revealing the nightmarish aspects that they had evolved into over two millennia of growth. There was nothing even remotely human in the monstrosities that barred Janus' path, nor anything daemonic either. The Ancients had moved beyond the human notions of the infernal and into realms of darkness where no psyker had ever been able to thread. Things only glimpsed in the feverish nightmares of madmen manifested before the Grey Knight, existence itself screaming at their grotesque presence. The closest Chaos Marines vomited in their helmets, overwhelmed by the sheer otherness of the eldest shape-shifters. A safe distance away from the fighting, Fabius Bile watched, and a sense of pride warmed his cold, cold heart as he saw what his children had made of themselves.
Janus answered the obscene sight of the Ancients with a call to the Emperor on his lips, and unleashed his power. It surged, a tide of silver light, and burned away the darkness of the Ancients, banishing the shadows surrounding them and revealing them in their full horror. Any mortal would have been driven to insanity at the sight, but Janus' mind was a fortress equal to the Imperial Palace. He fought with his sword against claws and fangs and things that had no name in any language. Liquids that weren't blood poured out of the wounds he carved into the unnatural flesh, and Janus' own crimson vitae was spilled as the wards and thrice-blessed ceramite of his armor was pierced.
In the end, Janus triumphed. His power burned out the twisted souls of three Ancients, and he threw the last two through dimensional rifts that began to appear as the ritual of opening the Hellgate neared completion. Cast directly into the Warp, the two creatures would wander the Empyrean, their unholy nature allowing them to survive where no mortal could, until the bonds of loyalty placed upon their essence dragged them back to Sortiarus. There they would join the Illuminated Empire and bring another path to inhuman apotheosis to the mortal cultists of the Thousand Sons, rebuilding their monstrous lineages under the Tower of the Cyclops.
With the Ancients dispatched, nothing remained in Janus' path. Wounded, with much of his power expended fighting the abominable creations of Bile and Ahriman, the lord of the Grey Knights pressed on, climbing the steps of the pyramid toward the Arch-Sorcerer. The shape-shifters who had been brought to be sacrificed turned around and threw themselves at him, transforming into their war-shapes, but they were as flies before a storm, and he swatted them out of his way with blasts of telekinetic power. And finally, Janus came face to face with Ahriman.
'Ahzek,' he said, and his voice boomed with power no longer contained. 'What have you done ?'
'What I had to,' replied the Arch-Sorcerer, nimbed in eldritch energies and holding in one hand his Black Staff, and in the other the sacrificial dagger, still dripping with inhuman blood. 'Everything we have done, here and everywhere else, was done to preserve the Legion.'
'The Legion was dead. It died on Prospero, when Horus deceived Russ into executing us, and I was deceived into letting him do it rather than submit and let him take me back to my father. What you and the others have done is an abomination. You have turned from everything we ever fought for, and become the very things we were sworn to defend Humanity against.'
'It was necessary,' said Ahriman, unmoved. 'No matter the price to pay, it will all be justified once we bring Mankind into a new Golden Age by freeing them from the lies of the Imperium and elevating them into the next stage of their evolution.'
'You call this justified ?' There was something new in Janus' voice, something very much like regret, even desperation. 'Look around you, Ahzek. Look at where you stand, at the company you keep. See what you have become. What you made of yourself, of your Legion.'
The Primarch-shard gestured to Ahriman, to the altar behind him, to the rivers of blood flowing on the pyramid's stone and to the Hellgate looming over it all.
'Look, Ahzek,' he pressed. 'The Warp has lied to you, just as it lied to me so long ago.'
'I saved us from the curse ! I unmade the flesh-change you could do nothing but delay ! I am the master of the Warp !'
'NO ONE IS EVER MASTER OF THE WARP !' shouted Janus. 'Any who believe to the contrary are merely deluded fools deceived by the malign intelligences that dwell within ! Damn you, Ahzek, you know what the Dark Gods are ! My other self showed them to you, before you "restoredˮ him, and dragged him from restful oblivion into eternal damnation !'
'The "Dark Godsˮ are nothing but amalgamations of emotions in the Sea of Souls. They are not truly sentient, even if they are indeed malevolent. They can be manipulated, outthought. And that is what the Illuminated Empire is about. We will master the power of the Warp, while keeping these Powers quiet through controlled offerings. It is the only way for Mankind to survive, and with the Cursus in our hands, even the Gods themselves will have to heed our will.'
Janus shook his head, and his sadness was obvious. Yet his resolve was even clearer.
'You are mad, Ahzek, if you cannot see the evil of your actions. I will stop you.'
'The only way you can do that,' said Ahzek softly, 'is by killing me and every other Thousand Son here. Do you really have it in you to murder your own sons, again ?'
The Grey Knight chuckled, entirely without humor.
'Of course I do. Even now, after everything I have been through, enough of Magnus, of the Emperor, remains in me that I can do whatever is necessary for the good of the Imperium. Even if it means killing my own sons. Truly, fate has been cruel to our line … Goodbye, Ahzek. I will make sure your soul burns to ash, and is spared the torments of Tzeentch.'
And so the favoured son of the Crimson King and the vessel of his nobility began to fight.
Janus charged, and his blade descended onto Ahzek's helm with enough strength to cut a Baneblade in twain. The Arch-Sorcerer blocked it with his staff, and the impact sent a shock-wave that shook the pyramid to its foundations. Janus freed his sword, and turned aside to dodge a blow from the dagger in Ahriman's other hand. The blade may appear small and insignificant, but in Janus' soul-sight, it blazed with the lives it had claimed in the last days, and was more than capable of piercing through his armor. On and on they slashed at each other, Ahriman's two weapons compensating for his smaller stature compared to Janus' Terminator-class armor.
Even as the two warlords fought on the material plane, their minds also clashed on the psychic plane. A storm of sorcerous wind and fire surrounded them, hiding their duel from the rest of the battle's fighters. In the Immaterium, a billion daemons watched as the soul-fires of two of the galaxy's greatest psykers fought, with those who were drawn too close obliterated by the conflagration, never to return. Far away, in the Eye of Terror, Magnus lifted his gaze from the Illuminated Empire, and silently encouraged his son as he fought against his wayward shard.
Ahriman was the Arch-Sorcerer of Tzeentch, greatest psyker in the Fifteenth Legion and Lord of the Rubric. But even though Janus was weakened from his battle with the Ancients, he was still the mightiest shard of Magnus the Red, and his armor and sword amplified his tremendous powers to god-like levels. Slowly, step by step, Ahzek was forced back, toward the edge of the platform atop the pyramid. An errant blow from Janus' sword pulverized the altar into dust. In Janus' sight, the Sorcerer's silhouette was illuminated by the baleful light of the Hellgate, the shadow of an infernal lord come to bring damnation to the worlds of men – and that image drew him on and on, calling upon all the power he had kept locked away for more than three thousand years. With a final blow, he sent Ahriman's dagger flying, knocked the Black Staff aside, and ran Ahriman through.
The two combatants froze in place, Ahriman out of shock and Janus because he was focusing all of his power into the sword, trying to fulfill his promise and destroy Ahzek completely. Agony burned the Arch-Sorcerer, and the grimoire at his hip, the Necroteuch that had been given to him by Lorgar Aurelian what seemed a lifetime ago, burst into flames with the sound of a hundred Neverborn shrieking. Ahriman's hand opened, and his Black Staff fell to the ground, shattering into a thousand pieces as it hit the stones.
'Die, Ahzek,' said Janus softly. 'Die, and rest. It is over.'
Ahriman lifted a trembling hand from his side toward the blade impaling him. Blood was flooding from the wound, mixing with the red vitae that had drenched the platform as the sacrifices went on. The pain was atrocious – any other Legionary would have already died. But he was the Lord of the Rubric, keystone of the grand spell that protected all the sons of Magnus from the ravages of the flesh-change. He had known since facing Fulgrim that it would take a truly enormous power to kill him, but faced with Janus' determination, he suddenly wondered if the Grey Knight would actually be able to end him – and that doubt sparked something very much like fear within him. Ahzek did not fear death for himself, but he feared what his demise would mean for his brothers. Images of the flesh-change returning, of the Illuminated Empire collapsing and his Legion being driven to extinction by vengeful enemies flooded his agonized psyche.
No, he thought. I will not let this happen.
For the third and final time, Ahzek Ahriman called upon the whole of his power. He called to all the fragments of himself, spread out across time and space, to grant him the power he needed to accomplish the mission given to him by his Primarch. He called, and they answered, from worlds long-lost and epochs past and yet to come. Power flooded through him, greater than anything he had ever experienced, and it was the easiest thing in the world to pull out the sword from his chest.
Janus screamed in horror as he saw what Ahriman was doing. The Arch-Sorcerer was destroying himself, allowing his body to be consumed by the terrible energies of the Warp. He knew exactly the risks he was taking, the price he would have to pay. But he did it nevertheless.
Because even now, Ahzek Ahriman truly believed that he was doing the right thing.
As Janus struggled to remain standing before the immense power Ahriman was unleashing, Ahriman raised his hands and closed them into fists. With a gesture of his head, he tore the holy sword from Janus' hands and sent it flying through the battlefield. The weapon smashed into the sands point first, creating a crater of glass at the center of which it stood planted, still glowing with the awesome power of its wielder. Ahriman then punched out, smashing his gauntlets into the chest of Janus, his hands shrouded in power. Cracks spread across the silver armor, and Ahriman punched again, and again, holding Janus in place with the power he was calling from his fragments.
Eventually, Janus was forced to his knees, his armor falling to pieces around him. His helmet fell off, revealing a strange, noble double-face that was eerily familiar to Ahriman. He stared at Ahriman with eyes filled with anger, sorrow and regret, and under his horned helm Ahriman stared back with an eyeless face. Then, with a final blow, the Arch-Sorcerer struck the temple of the Grand Master, and Janus fell, slowly, unconscious. For all the power he possessed, the base of his body was still human, and there was only so much damage he could take before shutting down. Blood flowed from his split skin, and the moment it touched the stone and flowed into the ritual patterns laid down the Thousand Sons, the power contained within finally triggered the Hellgate.
The Cursus of Alganar opened, a circle of burning, mind-bending colors that did not exist in any sane reality blazing upon the battlefield. A great cry rose from the plains below the pyramid at the sight, and Ahriman stood there, unable to move. His body was being consumed from the inside by the power he had called, and he could sense the abyss of destiny yawning under his feet. Ever since he had completed the Rubric and returned Magnus to his sons, his doom had hung over him : it was his fate to replace his father at the Court of Fate, to lay claim to the unoccupied throne of the Crimson King. Lorgar had warned him on Sicarius, all that time ago. The Warp abhorred a vacuum, and someone would take Magnus' place. Someone had to, in order to protect the Illuminated Empire from the machinations of rival Powers. And yet, Ahriman still fought against the transformation. He didn't want to leave his brothers behind, to lose all that remained of his mortality. And so he clung to it, resisting the pull of destiny with all of his indomitable will, and slowly, bit by bit, the pull diminished.
For a moment, Ahriman dared to think that he was going to succeed, that he was going to reject his destiny one more time. Then the heavens above Tallarn tore open, and a host of nightmares descended upon an already tormented world. There were all kinds of horrors in that flock : daemons born from the despair of dying civilizations, monsters spawned by unholy experiments into the quest of transcendence, and the ghosts of a thousand worlds murdered in the name of expediency.
The host flew above the battlefield, and even Chaos Marines who had fought in the infernal landscapes of the Eye of Terror paused and looked up as this swarm drew nearer to the top of the pyramid, where it stopped, impossibly immobile as one of its number stepped down to face Ahriman, standing between the Arch-Sorcerer and the inanimate body of Janus.
This representative was human, or at least appeared as such. He was dressed in tattered robes that had not been washed in years, and his face was scarred and weathered by countless battles. But it was his eyes that betrayed his true nature : they glowed with a blinding, unforgiving white light.
Ahriman recognized the face, even though he had only seen it once, and it had been very different back then.
'You,' he said, straining to speak as he fought against the remaining energies trying to change him into a creature of pure spirit. 'I know you. You were there … when I claimed the Keystone.'
'You don't even know my name,' said the man, and his voice was entirely too human compared to the cacophony of the host massed in the air behind him as he spoke for them all. 'You never asked for it when you came and murdered my world. Hear me, then : I am Anarion Dragleiov, the last soul of Legato, the world that burned to create your precious Keystone. Or at least, that's who I was once. Now I am the Herald, speaker for the Children of Ahriman.'
'What … ?'
'There are consequences to every action, witch. Punishment follows every sin, sooner or later – and you have committed so many sins. The galaxy bled because of you, in the past, present and future, all because of your ambitions. We are those your fragments abandoned after they were done, your children of time. And we have come here, because when you called for all of your power, you shone so very brightly that it was finally possible for us all to come together and follow the path you unwittingly opened for us … and here we are. The reckoning, at long last.'
Before Ahriman could say anything else, Anerion flew at him, propelled by the hatred of the billions of souls the Arch-Sorcerer's fragments had destroyed, and the Children came after him. They smashed into Ahriman, surrounding him, clawing at him and lifting him in the air. He struggled and fought back, lashing out with spears of psychic power, but there were too many of them, and he was still barely holding his physical form together against the energies raging inside his soul. The Thousand Sons, still locked in psychic confrontation with the rest of the Grey Knights, could only watch in horror as their leader was raised into the air by the swarm of unholy entities.
'This is your fate,' said Anarion, and there was nothing human left in his voice as the light of his eyes started to glow from every blood vessel in his face. 'This is your punishment !'
The Children of Ahriman carried their creator directly into the Hellgate. Ahriman had just enough time to realize what was happening before being slammed through, followed by the entirety of the swarm. Cast into the Warp without the protection of a Geller Field, the Arch-Sorcerer could no longer hold back his transformation. The last shreds of his humanity burned away, and the God of Change laughed as a new Prince joined his court, glowing with the light of the Rubric that made up his core. This new arrival was immediately followed by a veritable horde of spirits. The Children were reforged by the same fires that had transfigured Ahriman, becoming another Power in their own right, driven by hatred of Ahriman, vowing to spend all of eternity keeping him away from his brothers, trapped in the Court of Change, never to return to the Materium.
With his new power, Ahriman reached out to Tallarn, and teleported every soldier of the Illuminated Empire back to their ships, and transported the Hellgate into the specially prepared hold aboard the Truthbringer. The Exalted Sorcerers, knowing in their souls what had happened to their leader, immediately ordered the fleet to disengage from the Imperial armada. They had accomplished the purpose behind the Black Crusade, though at a terrible cost, and it was time now to return to the Eye of Terror. Part of the fleet amassed by the shape-shifters was left behind to hold back Imperial pursuit, the crews mind-controlled into giving their lives to facilitate the escape.
And aboard the Truthbringer, the torpid body of Supreme Grand Master Janus held in chains …
AN : Well, here we are. It has happened at last. Ahriman has paid the price for his power, for saving his Legion from the flesh-change. It was always going to happen, and he knew it, but I find it fitting that it finally occurs in part forty-nine, which is seven times seven (with seven being the sacred number of Nurgle, the opposite power of Tzeentch).
The Tallarn arc is done. Next we will go back to Iskandar and Abaddon on Drol Kheir. I think you will like what I have planned for them there. It certainly will surprise you, and after the last chapter of the RH, I think you all know that I can be quite surprising when I want to ...
Speaking of the RH, I am working on the final part of the Battle of Macragge, which I know many of you are impatiently waiting for. So far, none of your theories about what the Sacrificed Son is are correct. Keep them coming ! I am curious to see if anyone can figure it out before the chapter is done.
Zahariel out.
