“Then what canI do?”

“First you must learn how to shield your consciousness from danger,” said Ahriman, rising to his feet. “When you have accomplished that, thenwe will see what you can do.”

THE ALIEN TITANS towered above him, majestic and powerful, but Khalophis wasn’t impressed. True, they were bigger than Canis Vertex, but they had none of the robust brutality of the Warlord guarding the gates of the Pyrae cult’s temple. He stepped back, craning his neck to see the elongated curves of their mighty head sections.

Phosis T’kar had told Khalophis of the giant statues, and he’d wanted to see them for himself, to measure himself against them.

He turned from the towering constructs to face his warriors. A dozen Astartes from the 6th Fellowship stood behind the black altar, an object that reeked of dark rites of sacrifice. He’d listened at the Rehahti as his primarch had explained that the Mountain was a place of remembrance for the dead and was to be treated with respect. That didn’t change the fact that Khalophis simply didn’t trust the Aghoru.

Their masked leader stood with ten other tribesmen, all with their faces obscured by mirrored masks. Their presence had been a condition of allowing Khalophis and his warriors to come to the valley. That spoke of subterfuge. Why would the Aghoru not want the Legion to come to their valley?

“What do you have to hide?” he whispered, unheard by any save himself.

The masked leader of the Aghoru was looking at him, and Khalophis gestured towards the giant constructs.

“Do you know what these are?” he asked.

“They are the guardians of the Mountain,” said the tribesman.

“Maybe they were once, but now they are just expensive statues.”

“They are the guardians,” repeated the masked tribesman.

“They are Titans,” said Khalophis, slowly, “giant war machines. In ages past they could level cities and lay waste to entire armies, but now they are dead.”

“Our legends say they will walk again, when the Daiesthaibreak the bonds of their eternal prison.”

“I don’t know what that means, but they won’t walk again,” said Khalophis. “They are just machines, dead machines.”

He pointed up towards the giant head of the construct. “The princeps would sit up there if this was an Imperial Titan, but since it’s alien, who knows what’s really in there? A giant brain in a jar, a wired-in collective of self-aware robots, it could be anything.”

The Aghoru tribesman said, “What is a princeps? Is that a god?”

Khalophis laughed uproariously. “He might as well be. It’s not a term in favour, but what else really gets the sense of it across? An Astartes is a god to mortals, a Titan… Well, that’s the god of the battlefield. Even the Legions take note when the engines of the Mechanicum walk.”

“These have never walked,” said the tribesman, “not as long as we have known them. We hope they never do.”

“It’s Yatiri, isn’t it?” asked Khalophis, bending down.

“Yes, Brother Khalophis, that is my name.”

“I am not your brother,” he hissed. Even cut off from his powers and unable to communicate with his Tutelary, Khalophis felt energised, not with the surging tides of aether that normally empowered him, but by the act of domination.

“We are all brothers,” said Yatiri, calm in the face of his hostility. “Is that not what your great leader teaches? He tells us that we are all one race, divided by a great catastrophe, but drawing together once more under the watchful eye of the great Sky Emperor.”

“That’s true enough,” conceded Khalophis. “But not all who were divided wish to be drawn together again. Some of them fight us.”

“We are not fighting you,” said Yatiri. “We welcome your coming.”

“That’s your story,” said Khalophis, leaning on the altar and regarding the mortal through the green-hued lenses of his battle helm. Though this was designated a compliant world, Khalophis had his combat senses to the fore. The Aghoru falarica were picked out in white, the tribesmen themselves in red, though the threat indicators were negligible.

“We arethe story,” said Yatiri. “From the moment your leader set foot on our lands, we became part of it.”

“That’s remembrancer talk,” spat Khalophis. “And I don’t trust people who wear masks, especially masks like mirrors. I ask myself what they’re hiding behind them.”

“You wear a mask,” pointed out Yatiri, walking past Khalophis towards the cave mouth.

“This is a helmet.”

“It achieves the same thing, it conceals your features.”

“Why do you wear them?” asked Khalophis, following the tribesman towards the towering guardians of the Mountain.

“Why do you?” countered Yatiri without turning.

“For protection. My helmet is armoured and it has saved my life on more than one occasion.”

“I wear this mask for protection also,” said Yatiri, reaching the foot of the leftmost giant.

“From what? Your tribes do not make war on one another and there are no predators of any great size on this world. Where is the need?” asked Khalophis.

Yatiri turned and rested his hand on the smooth surface of the enormous foot. This close to the giants, the scale of them was truly breathtaking. Khalophis thought back to the fire-blackened ruins of Kamenka Ulizarna and the sight of Magnus the Red standing before the might of the greenskin colossus. That had been a battle to remember, and standing this close to an alien war engine made him fully appreciate the power of his beloved leader.

“Our legends speak of a time when this world belonged to a race of elder beings known as Elohim,” said Yatiri, squatting beside the enormous foot, “a race so beautiful that they fell in love with the wonder of their own form.”

Yatiri turned his gaze towards the cave mouth and said, “The Elohimfound a source of great power and used it to walk amongst the stars like gods, shaping worlds in their own image and crafting an empire amongst the heavens to rival the gods. They indulged their every whim, denied themselves nothing and lived an immortal life of desire.”

“Sounds like a good life,” said Khalophis, casting a suspicious glance into the darkness.

“For a time it was,” agreed Yatiri, “but such hubris cannot long go unpunished. The Elohimabused the source of their power, corrupting it with their wanton decadence, and it turned on them. Their entire race was virtually destroyed in a single night of blood. Their worlds fell and the oceans drank the land. But that was not the worst of it.”

“Really? That sounds bad enough,” said Khalophis, bored by Yatiri’s tale. Creation and destruction myths were a common feature in most cultures, morality tales used to control emerging generations. This one was little different from a hundred others he had read in the libraries of Prospero.

“The Elohimwere all but extinct, but among the pitiful survivors, some were twisted by the power that had once served them. They became the Daiesthai, a race as cruel as they had once been beautiful. The Elohimfought the Daiesthai, eventually driving them back to the shadows beneath the world. Their power was broken and they had not the means to destroy the Daiesthai, so with the last of their power, they raised the Mountain to seal their prison and set these giants to guard against their return. The Daiesthairemain imprisoned beneath the world, but their hunger for death can never be sated, and so we bring them the dead of our tribes at every turning of the world to ensure their eternal slumber continues.”

“That’s a pretty tale,” said Khalophis, “but it doesn’t explain why you wear those masks.”

“We are the inheritors of the Elohim’s world, and their destruction serves as a warning against the temptations of vanity and self-obsession. Our masks are a way of ensuring we do not fall as they fell.”