A/N
40k+ views, the Emperor approves.
So it's been roughly four months since I updated this, so sorry for the long pause, been busy with classes and to top it all, lost inspiration for this fic. Hopefully, I regain the old drive to keep writing. Thank you all for being patient, I hope these next few chapters more than make up for lost time, enjoy!
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The Red Cyclops of Prospero's baleful burning eye studied the encroaching tide of Fenrisian Astartes amidst the crumbling ruins of his memory, and he found the scene sorely lacking a key element to make it authentic.
Gone were the Sisters of Silence, who alone turned the tide against Magnus' sons when their unmatched sorceries ground the invasion to a halt. Gone were the Emperor's favored Adeptus Custodes, his personal errand boys that he often praised for their prowess second only to the Primarchs themselves. Also, absent from the heels of his hated enemy were the two wolves, Freki and Geri.
Tiny details in the grand spectacle, all of which made all the difference in the Crimson King's conclusions.
Indeed, someone had forced him to face his inner daemons in the most harrowing challenge he'd ever hoped to face, but neglected to include those details that actually mattered. And for as much as it pleased him to mold this memory world into what he once loved and cherished, the sordid past could never be ignored and it remained to haunt him for all his days. All he saw now was a manifestation of it.
"What are we to do now?"
Magnus gave Aggregia a sidewards glance, "I tire of conventional challenges, and I have grown weary of delaying this nightmare." He gripped his spear firmly and prepared for battle, "I wish to awaken from this dream."
The battlefield was large and filled with enemies, each and every one of them a nightmare incarnate to the Imperium's enemies. Aggregia was just about to face them for the first time. Although she did not fight for Chaos, it almost felt like betrayal when she readied herself against the phantoms. In a way, she understood what he had to face that day when Prospero burned, when Magnus inadvertently continued to defy the Emperor despite his initial decision to accept his judgement. "I'm ready, uncle. Who shall fall first?"
"Everyone."
The Crimson King and the Wolf King met once more, as they had in the past, with the fate of an entire world balanced on the outcome, and they fought like the gods of ancient Terran legends. Forking traceries of lightning shot upwards from the ground, isolating them from the host of the Space Wolves and the Custodes. Aggregia, armed with the masteries of the mystic and martial powers garnered from Tizca's thousand years worth of knowledge, finally unleashed herself upon the invaders. A storm stood by her side, and the bleed of the warp in the other. Reality buckled and fled at her incantations, and while untold billions of daemonic entities attempted to breach the thin veil separating the world from the rest of the Empyrean, she managed to block them at every turn.
Just as her uncle had taught her.
Russ rained down blow after blow on Magnus, shattering his horned breastplate, and in return Magnus struck his brother with a searing blast of cold fire that cracked his armor and set light to his braided hair.
The Wolf King's frostblade struck at Magnus, but his spear turned the blow aside as they spun and twisted in an epic battle beneath the madness of a blazing storm of sheet lightning and pounding thunder. This was a battle fought on every level: physical, mental and spiritual, with each Primarch bending every ounce of their almost limitless power to the other's destruction.
Magnus used his powerful psychic magicks, battering Russ with fists of telekinetic force wreathed in fire and lightning. They were locked in battle high above the causeway to the pyramid, the furious horror of their struggle obscured by ethereal fire and bursts of lightning. A flare of black light erupted and Russ cried out in agony.
His blade lashed out blindly and struck against Magnus's eye. The Red Cyclops reeled back from the Wolf King, as broken and bloodied as Leman Russ was, he was brawler enough to seize his opportunity. Leman Russ barreled into Magnus and gripped him around the waist like a wrestler, roaring as he lifted his brother's body high above his head, knee poised to shatter his back a second time.
Magnus' bleeding eye opened, and with but a thought he vanished into thin air, only to reappear behind his brother as the veil of reality snapped with a wicked and thunderous crack. Seizing Russ from behind his head, Magnus placed his fingers over the Wolf King's face, uttering spitefully as he unleashed a horrible spell upon him.
"Oh no you don't! Not this time!"
Russ' scream was cut short as a bright green light flashed from Magnus' outstretched hands, bathing him in eldritch energies that quickly fried every blood vessel in his head and turn his skull brittle as dry clay. The Crimson King only had to draw his hand back and slap the back of Russ' head to send the pieces scattering all across the street below.
Suddenly, time slowed until it was but a standstill. Only Aggregia and Magnus remained aware and able to move through that static state. They wandered around a bit, confused as to what caused the disruption in time.
"What's going on?" Aggregia said, carefully squeezing past two Thousand Sons spacemarines poised to unleash the deadly payload within their bolters against their enemies.
"Someone wants to make an audience of us." Magnus replied, blinking rapidly as his wound closed up and his sight returned to him.
"This is what we wished had happened on that fateful day, did we not?" A condescending voice spoke, and a bright purple light in the sky caused both of them to look up.
There, held aloft by an unseen hand like a puppet on its strings, was a mirror image of Magnus himself. This doppelganger was bigger, seethed with even greater arcane might, and had an air of arrogance about him that was almost as palpable as the reek of magic around him. His skin was notably of a darker hue, and the single eye blazed bright purple instead of gold.
He, like Magnus, was adorned in the Horned Raiment and bore the Blade of Magnus. His enormous wings were emblazoned with runes of Tzeentchian power, whereas Magnus' remained absent of them.
"So here you stayed all this time, right under my very nose and still wallowing in the muck of the past?" His mocking voice addressed both Magnus and Aggregia, "All things in this universe are in motion, and yet you remain immobile. Tsk tsk, this display of entropy offends Change."
Magnus stepped in front of his niece to shield her with his body should the doppelganger try and attack them, "Better to wallow in my misery than remain a puppet."
"Is this some sort of illusion?" Aggregia whispered. "Why does he look like you?"
Magnus, seeing no reason in hiding the truth, revealed who the doppelganger was. "He is me, with all the best parts and the worst combined."
"We are both puppets." The doppelganger descended until his feet finally touched the ground. He did not have an army to back him, or at least it seemed like it. Magnus had the notion that somewhere beyond the skies of the memory world, a vast enemy fleet was waiting. "To think otherwise is delusional, unbecoming of us both. Too long have I trekked through the stars in search of you, shard of my being. Fortunately, I need you intact, so I'd rather avoid having to fight for your reclamation. Submit and return to where you belong- with me."
Both Magnuses stared each other down, one wielding the powers of the Warp and bent on his path of vengeance, the other striving for redemption.
"And if I do make you fight for it?"
"Then you'll end up like the few who did." Magnus, the Greater, replied flatly, "And I will make sure your transition would be as painful as possible."
"Oh why did I even bother asking?" Magnus, Shard of the Ruminator, smiled humorlessly, "You know very well what I plan to do...so come, let us see whose fate Tzeentch favors more."
In the realm beyond, a dark god's hand rolled the dice between his fingers and tossed it upon the game board. A mighty spectacle played before Tzeentch, between his faithful servant and his defiant twin. His many faces smirked in amused glee as his thousand eyes watched from the Impossible Fortress, deep within the heart of crystalline labyrinth of the everchanging lands of inscrutable depths.
If Aggregia had witnessed Magnus in all his glorious strength, power and unbridled potency before, she would not have been surprised to see how existence itself bowed before his beck and call they way she saw him do then. And yet, she was. Reality, just like a thin piece of fabric, waxed and waned as through every flex of the demigod's fingers it folded in on itself as easily as threads weaved at the tug of a needle.
The earth, the foundations of the memory world, heaved and tore itself apart. Tizca, the whole city and the contenders within it, went up in clouds of ash, flame and sundered rock. The fissures, bursting with eldritch energies, ran through the cracks until all that was left of Prospero was a debris field that sped across the Warp. It erupted like an airburst krakk grenade, throwing the pieces of Magnus the Ruminator's last vestige of his beloved past into oblivion.
"You knew this day would come!" Magnus the Greater roared, meeting his shard on equal footing, if not higher, as they both rained spell and strike upon one another. "Why do you struggle against inevitability?"
"Because I fight for the one thing we both desired most- redemption!" Magnus the Ruminator answered.
"Fool!" The daemon prince spat, "There is no redemption! Nothing we have done demands apology! We were wronged, it is the universe that needs correction- it is they that need redeeming!"
Pink warp-fire blasted against the Primarch, and the Ruminator shielded himself in a golden bubble to block the attack, only to find himself on the receiving end of Magnus the Greater's glaive. The golden bubble shattered as the massive winged demigod swooped down and struck a blow that could sunder whole islands clean. The echo of every attack burst across the Warp like ripples on water, driving the debris far from them into a wide ring, forming some sort of cosmic arena in which the battlefleet of the Thousand Sons came to witness along with their dark patron.
Among the pieces of the memory world, Aggregia leaped from one spinning rock to the other in search of her uncle. Driven far due to the destruction of Prospero Memoria, she saw in the distance the bright flashes of warp-lightning and the harsh clamor of weapons striking each other. She could feel the strong reverberations of their emotions, for the Warp amplified both thought and feeling to unparalleled heights in that place. The Empyrean roiled, a storm brewed, and she felt her powers grow stronger like a flooded dam ready to burst.
She felt her head spin, her eyes burned as they glowed brightly with psychic energies. Aggregia recalled her lessons, wrestled with the powers threatening to overwhelm her, and brought everything under control. Then, she willed herself to fly forward, reforming her weapon to mimic her uncle's glaive.
As Magnus the Greater gained the upper hand and grasped the Ruminator by the throat, he raised his glaive to call upon the same sorcerous ritual that bound his lost soul shards to his vessel. "Enough of this! You bit at my hand when I extended it freely, now you shall wear the muzzle and be led on a leash!"
Aggregia came soaring through the Warp like a screaming Thunderhawk, glaive raised high as she dove in fearlessly and swung the weapon down with all her might, breaking the Blade of Magnus at the shaft into a million twinkling pieces. The moment she did that, Aggregia inadvertently caused the spell to spontaneously combust. Without a channel to hold its enchantments, the spell instead struck Magnus the Greater and wounded him deep within his soul.
His cry tore through all realities and echoed even into realspace. Another explosion of eldritch energies, and all three of them were blown far from each other.
When Magnus the Ruminator came to, he immediately scoured the debris field for Aggregia. He found her atop a pile of broken marble and precious stones, amid the remains of his own statue. Cautiously, he picked her up into his arms. Due to his stature, she looked very much like the fragile little doll he snatched away from danger all those years ago, and he felt afraid that he might break her if he so much as pressed on her tiny limbs.
Fortunately, she didn't seem to have been injured in the battle, as she opened her eyes and began to rise. "Ugh...did it work? Did we get him?"
Magnus looked around, saw the thousands of ships just sitting among the stars and the dizzying, dancing lights of the Warp around them. He did not see Magnus the Greater then, but he knew he was around. "If we're truly anything alike, I'd say that I don't think so. He'll be back, and would surely bring a little more of hell with him."
"What did he mean when he said that you were a shard of his being?"
Magnus looked down at his niece, "Oh...right. You remember the memory phantom, the one of your uncle Leman Russ? The battle between us? Well, it happened just like that, although I certainly did not win."
"What happened?"
"He nearly killed me, blinded my eye and broke my back on his knee." Magnus replied, the thought of his agony caused Aggregia to wince as she imagined what he went through. "Then I...I just broke apart into a dozen pieces and was scattered all across the galaxy. This one, this Magnus we're fighting against, he is the closest to the whole there is."
Aggregia looked up into his shining one eye, "And you? What are you?"
"I am the least of them all." He said, "The one shred of conscience he had left."
The space around them shuddered, as though terrified of the wrathful being rising through the shattered world's remains like an enraged newborn phoenix. Magnus the Greater, his mortal vessel shimmering with stray pieces drifting like ash on a spent torch, cast his baleful eye upon the pair as he prepared to unleash the full power of his spells and the fleets upon them.
Black lightning danced over his fingers, and his maw opened wide to utter the one word. "FIRE!" At his thunderous command, the ships brought their weapons to bear and targeted both Magnus and Aggregia. A thousand stars were born in the Warp that day, and they tore through space with a force enough to crack worlds wide open.
The young woman swallowed the lump in her throat, "Time to go?"
Magnus wrapped her up in his arms and tucked his wings in, "Yes, quite right." Both disappeared in a blinding flash of bright purple and green, just as macro-cannon fire obliterated the whole debris field into dust.
They left it all behind, landing somewhere far away on some dead world long swallowed up by the Warp. As they stood on the ashes of some alien civilization, both Magnus and Aggregia took their time recovering from the battle. As they did so, the apprentice found herself concerned with the endgame of her training, wondering if there was to be a point in which she would ever be considered ready for the task in rescuing her family.
"So what are we going to do now?" She asked, sitting atop a fallen pillar.
Magnus looked to the skies burning with the incessant throbbing lights of the Empyrean around them, "Prospero Memoria is gone, but we yet live. Now, we find somewhere else to continue your training."
"I've already spent years soaking up your teachings, to the point that I feel as though I were to burst." Aggregia said, detesting the idea of doing it all over again for another decade, perhaps even a century. "When will I be ready to face Kor Phaeron and save my family?"
"When I say you're ready." Magnus replied as he did so many times before, having heard the same inquiry more times than he cared to count. "You are impatient, you are weary of my instruction and see it as tediously academic. But there is no other way, Aggregia."
The young woman grumbled quietly and tucked her arms in.
"Oh don't give me that look. Your enemies have millennia's worth of knowledge of the mystic arts, with daemonic assistance and oftentimes the favor of the Chaos gods, among other things. Millennia, Aggregia, whereas you have trained under me for little more than a decade. You are not ready, and if you plan on facing Kor Phaeron with what you have now, you will get yourself and all you love killed. Such a scenario would be generous of me, for Kor Phaeron does not aim to kill you, but take you alive."
He paused, letting Aggregia's gaze to meet his on their own. "He will torture you, strip you of all humanity and corrupt your purpose into little more than that of a slave serving the will of the Ruinous Powers. And believe me when I say this, he can be very creative when he puts his mind to it."
Another pause, for he wished for the truth to sink in. And yet, ever the stubborn girl, Aggregia ignored the warnings. "All evidence to the contrary. You say I'm not ready, but look at how I handled myself against your doppelganger. And to think, I would have been left without a teacher had I not intervened."
Magnus' massive chest heaved, his eye closed as he felt his ire boil within his head. Later, after calming himself down, he spoke again. "Yes, and I thank you for sparing me from a horrible fate. But we were only lucky that time, and there will be another encounter in the near future, so I must prepare you for it."
"We are to face them alone, then?" Aggregia asked, "Are you so hesitant to call on anyone's strength besides your own? Isn't that your goal all along, to make an ally out of my father? If you help me save my family now, it's the quickest way to gain his favor!"
"I find myself running out of patience for your willfulness, girl." The Crimson King said sharply.
Aggregia's frown deepened as she rose up and defied her teacher, "And I, uncle, have run out of it entirely. If you will not help me and serve to further delay my quest in saving my family, perhaps I should go alone."
"You will do no such thing!" Magnus grabbed her arm, "Do not think that because you shattered a mere trinket at the right time that you are ready to face Kor Phaeron and expect to be on equal footing!"
"Please let go of my arm." Aggregia said, eyes narrowing at her teacher.
His grip grew ever tighter, as did his tone. "You will heed my instruction, girl." Magnus hissed, "I will not tolerate any of your recklessness, not now, not ever!"
"Oh, well that's too bad." Aggregia replied spitefully, her free hand raised to cast a spell exactly like the one Magnus used to teleport them to safety. She'd been practicing that spell in private for a long time, and now she felt it was the perfect opportunity to use it, to prove her teacher wrong. To push through that boundary took a great deal of willpower, as Aggregia had grown to respect Magnus as an apprentice would her master.
And yet, she had other plans than to spend centuries in the Warp. If Magnus was so concerned for her facing Kor Phaeron alone, she would have to drag him with her, that they might face him together.
Her eyes glowed bright with golden light, "I'm afraid I will have to disappoint you."
"Don't-"
The words were barely out of his mouth when the portal sucked them out of the Warp and into realspace.
Kor Phaeron squinted and blinked twice, wondering if he was imagining things or his mind had finally attained true madness. The girl, the one who stood behind her father, cowering at his heels like a whimpering pup, she was gone. His outstretched hand lowered, eyes quickly scanning the smoking crater where she stood moments before.
"What...?"
The wingless whelp, Sanguinius, began to stir beneath his boot. The Black Cardinal gazed out into the horizon, saw the warp storm closing in on the world around him, and smiled. He bent down and snatched the young man by the throat, seeking to taunt Horus further.
"Look at me." He said to the Primarch as he struggled to stand. Infernal chains rose up from the ground and coiled around Horus' arms and legs, keeping him on all fours like a slave bowing in obeisance. "No no, stay where you are. I said look at me, not stand."
Kor Phaeron laughed, "There...I remember the day the Gilded Corpse forced us all to kneel before him on Monarchia. Imagine that, poor souls were they that in offering their undying fealty to the False Emperor, they were rewarded with spite. You once saw the truth as we did, and yet you deny yourself the embrace of the Ruinous Powers."
The Primarch snarled, "Did you really come all this way just to harp on about the loss of your beloved city?"
"Oh, Monarchia was not my beloved city, it was Lorgar's. His love for the False Emperor was misplaced, wasted, but it was commendable. Now he serves the true gods of this universe as I do, who duly reward his devotion." Kor Phaeron extended his hand as if to invite Horus to return to his service to the Ruinous Powers, "I am being rather unusually generous with traitors by giving you this one chance, but I do believe there is always a place for you among us. Join us once more, Horus Lupercal. The great work of the legions, the conversion of all those lost souls, it needs capable missionaries like yourself-"
A loud crack and a bright flash of light caused the Black Cardinal to turn his head. His brow arched as he took in the sight of the pair, and his smile grew even wider. Horus too was watching, he couldn't believe how much she had changed, and who it was that stood at her side.
Aggregia, no longer the whimpering pup but a grown woman brimming with psychic potential, stood beside Magnus the Red. The red giant still clutched her arm, a mixture of horror and confusion upon his face as he realized where he'd been brought to.
Magnus' mouth was agape, and his brow furrowed in anger. "You idiot! You blasted fool!"
"Now or never." Aggregia declared, pulling her arm free from his grasp and giving him her ultimatum. "Stand by me, uncle, or flee back into the Warp and forever lose your chance at redemption. Today I save my family or die trying."
"You-" Magnus' fury caused his words to stop at the tip of his tongue, his face noticeably growing redder, defying the notion that such a thing was not even possible. His massive hands trembled as they balled up into fists, then he turned his baleful gaze towards the Wordbearers closing in on them. "Fine."
"Magnus? Magnus the Red?" Kor Phaeron guffawed, hands gripping tight to his mace. "My my, this is a surprise! I have to confess, yours is the last face I expected to see today."
"You will have plenty more to see of the unexpected, I assure you." Aggregia said, rubbing her hands together.
The Black Cardinal set more psychic chains to wrap around Sanguinius' body like a cocoon, then tossed him aside like a discarded bag. He relished the opportunity to face the treacherous daemon prince and his newfound ally in battle, "Come then! Show me all that you have in store!"
As they battled amidst the ruins of Horus' home, the Primarch strained against his chains and broke the links one by one, though finding it exceedingly difficult every time he snapped free from one to the other. Every link proved to reform to replace the ones broken, each time growing larger and heavier the further he went. He could only look on, a spectator instead of a participant, as his daughter faced off against the Black Cardinal.
The light of the world went out as the warp storm grew in its intensity, leaving only red and the shadows of darkest black on the face of Y'ttetia. The shower of stars in the sky, the frenetic exchange of fire from loyalist ships and traitor voidvessels, was the only thing next to the dueling psykers that chased away the shadows. The brilliance of their fight, the heavy aftershocks of every blow and spell, set the land ablaze.
Rock and dirt flew into the air without a tether, gravity no longer had any hold in that place, as if retreating in terror from the creeping influence of the Warp.
Horus had yet to find out about what transpired behind the scenes, how his daughter came to be this strong and brought his traitor brother from the Warp to battle at her side. It horrified him to see her wielding the eldritch powers of psyker in a manner that could only be from a sorcerer of Prospero. For only the Thousand Sons could possibly harness that much strength with seemingly limitless potency, and could only mean that she had been instructed under the tutelage of none other than Magnus himself.
He feared the worst, as any father would. That fear gave way to restlessness, and he roared in frustration as he worked even harder to break free from those damnable chains.
Aggregia parried Kor Phaeron's blows with arcane glyphs that formed over her hands like shields, then clapped her hands together to unleash a wave of psy-fire that seared the Black Cardinal's skin and cooked him in his own armor. She could see and anticipate every move he made, using a complex form of divination that allowed her to foresee the near future and counter any action he had yet to take.
Kor Phaeron stifled a mad cackle and reeled from the attack, withdrawing quickly to summon a few of his favorite daemon-engines with a flick of the wrist. He never got the chance to finish the summoning rite, for Magnus interrupted his channeling spell by counteracting it with a little summoning of his own. So instead of snatching out a roaring beast of possessed iron and hell-forged brass, Magnus forced Kor Phaeron to summon a burning wreck of a Thunderhawk right on top of him!
The ground opened up into a great burning pit, transforming into a fleshy maw lined with rows and rows of misaligned teeth. The bodies of the slain, including Celestine's, started to tip into its yawning mouth. Magnus immediately moved to retrieve the Living Saint's corpse before it became lost to the Warp once more, leaving Aggregia to face Kor Phaeron alone for but a moment.
It was enough for her to prove him wrong, as she showed just how terrible her wrath could become when it concerned her loved ones. Yet there remained that ever-present danger of her unrestrained fury as she threw everything she had against the Black Cardinal. Magnus could see it better than anyone. The daemons of the Warp, they were closing in on her, moving unseen through the thin veil of reality with claws extended and grinning maws dripping with anticipation.
Kor Phaeron felt them draw near, and he rejoiced as he knew that the dark gods smiled on him that day. He shrugged off the pain of his wounds, impressed with the improvements the girl showed. Ever one to capitalize on opportunities, he attempted to broach the subject in tempting her to the side of Chaos. Boldness, after all, was required in reaping results.
"Such savagery! Such fury! Your hatred for me has grown vast in so little time!" He exclaimed, raising his hand to absorb the next blast of rage given in the form of dancing streaks of red lightning. "Or has it been years in your stay in the Warp?"
Aggregia did not answer, finding it annoying that her enemy talked so much. When one hand was not enough to project her growing ire, she put in the other to smite him with double the power in an effort to shut him up.
His tongue proved impossible to stop as it wagged ceaselessly within that ugly mouth, "Tell me, how did you find your stay? Did the song of the sea of souls not sing sweetly in your ears, as they do to me now?"
Something, or rather, someone was whispering in her ear. Aggregia could feel the chilling caress of Tzeentch's hands gently placing themselves on her shoulders, his myriad of voices offering aid in exchange for a promise, a favor for a favor.
"Aggregia!" Magnus' voice snapped her out of her trance, "Do not listen to him! You do not need his help, together we can win this!"
The touch withdrew, but the voices left a deep impression on her psyche, vowing to always be by her side whenever she would need aid. Such a promise unnerved, yet intrigued her.
"You have heard the voice of the gods, I can see that you did!" Kor Phaeron smiled, "They call to you! Do not turn away from your destiny, child. We have so many plans for you."
Aggregia grimaced and lowered her hands, a gesture that Kor Phaeron welcomed as he opened his arms as if to draw her in for an embrace. The young woman lunged forward, proving that she had no intention of embracing him in any way that he expected. With a loud curse, she leaped atop the towering figure and thrust her hands deep into his chest, negating the warp-infused ceramite and his protective enchantments via a forbidden spell she'd learned from Magnus' locked collection.
All spells concerning the Immaterium had a bit of malevolence with them, no matter how life-giving or beneficial they may seem. This spell, one of Magnus' design, was no different. No one but the Crimson King himself knew its name, but its effects were simple to discern.
Soul-splitting, the most direct way to blast an opponent out of realspace and into the Warp, essentially killing them unless their souls remained guarded and tethered to some godlike being. But the spell Aggregia used was incomplete, and it did not kill Kor Phaeron immediately. It also sapped from her a great deal of energy, making her feel light-headed and unsteady like a newborn fowl.
The giant fell to the ground wheezing, with the woman still kneeling atop his chest. The light of life began fading from his black eyes, and the mad smile on his lips stretched into a triumphant grin. "Good..."
"Just die already!" Aggregia hissed, pushing a hand against his face.
Kor Phaeron's right hand twitched, and he whispered a foul incantation as a final insult to spite her. Aggregia braced herself for the impending blast, or whatever it was that he was about to throw her way.
To her surprise, nothing came, not towards her at the very least. Kor Phaeron laughed as he slipped away, finding a measure of satisfaction in his deeds that day. When Aggregia glanced about to find out what exactly was it that made him feel so happy, she found that he'd spirited away her brother Sanguinius, his location now a mystery to them. Her eyes blazed with newfound hate, and she glared at Kor Phaeron.
Her other hand grabbed his throat as she hissed, "Where did you take him?"
"Somewhere...far away..." He whispered hoarsely, "He is out of your hands now..."
"Bastard!"
Kor Phaeron cackled madly as pain surged through his body. Aggregia endeavored to make his passing as agonizing as possible, never once stopping even as he died. The flash of sparks lit up the darkening atmosphere, drawing in the swarms of daemons now spilling out of the grossly sundered veil of reality. They poured into the land like a water from a ruptured waterskin, flooding the mountain abode and surrounding the few who remained amidst the ruins of the Lupercalian home.
Y'ttetia cracked and buckled, its crust and mantle tearing apart to expose the glowing core beneath. Seas boiled, and cities burned, while the earth shot up into space upon the planet's death.
Magnus, seeking to salvage what he could from that tragic circumstance, pulled Aggregia off from Kor Phaeron's corpse. He seized Horus, still bound in chains, and carried Celestine on his shoulder.
Finally, he closed his one eye and uttered the incantation, his mind recalling the best place in the local system that would serve the next chapter of his story best. With that, he teleported them away, leaving the world behind to its fate.
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