“This world is compliant, is it not?” asked Skarssen, and Ahriman sensed the confusion amongst the Space Wolves at his newly subservient tone.

“It is,” agreed Magnus.

“Then what is left to do?” he asked. “There are worlds yet to be brought to heel, and your Legion’s strength is required. Your brothers-in-arms call for you, and it is a warrior’s duty to fight when called.”

“On your world perhaps,” said Magnus, “but this is not Fenris. Where and when the Thousand Sons fight is for me to decide, not the Wolf King, and certainly not you. Do I make myself clear?”

“You do, Lord Magnus, but I swore a blood oath not to return without your warriors.”

“That is none of my concern, and this is not a matter for discussion,” said Magnus, an unmistakeable edge of impatience in his tone.

“Then we are at an impasse.”

“I fear that we are,” said Magnus.

AHRIMAN CONCENTRATED ON the words before him, his quill scratching at the heavy paper as he committed the morning’s events to his grimoire. There would be other records, of course, but none that told of events with a true understanding of what had really happened. His words flowed from him without conscious thought as he rose through the Enumerations and let the natural rhythm of memory and intuition guide him.

He closed his eyes, freeing his body of light and letting it rise up from his flesh. The currents of the Great Ocean bore him into the darkness, and Ahriman hoped to catch a glimpse of things to come. He quashed the thought. To focus on the desires of the ego in this place of emotion would only diminish the probability of success.

His connection with the material world faded, and the Great Ocean swelled around him, a maelstrom of non-existent colours, nameless emotions and meaningless dimensions.

Occasional ripples ushered him onwards, powerful minds, intense emotions and primal urges. The anger of the Space Wolves was a red reef of raw directness, the gasping lust of two remembrancers as they coupled a purple swirl of conflicting desire. The fear of a Legion serf as he rubbed a salve into an infected rash was a splash of vivid green, the scheming of yet another as she plotted how to further her career, a dull ochre yellow.

They rose around him like temple smoke, though concepts such as up and down had no meaning here. A swirling fog surrounded him, an impenetrable mist of emotion, feeling and possibility. His mere proximity wrought potential existences within the fog, his presence an imprint in the warp and weft of the Great Ocean, shaping and shaped by the immaterial unmatter that made up this alternate dimension.

This was the very essence of the Primordial Creator, the wellspring from which all things came. Nothing was impossible here, for this was the foundry of creation, the origin of all things, past, present and future.

Ahriman flew onwards, revelling in the aetheric energies, bathing in them and refreshed by them. When he returned to his body, he would be energised as a mortal would be by a good night’s rest.

The kaleidoscopic world around him stretched out to infinite realms of possibility. Ahriman let his consciousness be borne along by the currents, hoping to chance upon a rich seam of things yet to pass. He focussed his mind on the teachings of the Corvidae even as he opened his mind to the vast emptiness of thought. Such apparently contradictory states of mind were essential to the reading of the future, difficult for one such as him, near impossible for anyone less gifted.

He felt the first nibblings of other presences in the Great Ocean, formless creatures of insensate appetite, little more than mewling scraps of energy drawn to his mind as students flock to a great master. They thought to feed on him, but Ahriman dismissed them with a flicker of thought.

Such whelp creatures were no threat to an Adept Exemptus of his skill, but older, hungrier things swam the depths, malevolent predators that fed on the hot, life-rich energies of mortal travellers. Ahriman was protected, but he was not invulnerable.

It began softly, a faint hiss, like rain on glass.

He felt its feather-light pull, and he drifted towards it without apparent interest. Too quick, and he would disturb the fabric of the Great Ocean, overwhelming the skittish trickle of future events with the swells of his eagerness.

Ahriman controlled his excitement, letting his course and that of the thin stream come together, opening his mind’s eye to the bracing cold of unwritten events.

He saw a mountain of glass, tall and hollowed out, yet a stripling compared to the Mountain of Aghoru. A great space within was filled with yellow light, a spiking cauldron of conflicting emotions and hurt, a gathering thundercloud, shot through with golden lightning, filled the sky.

Ahriman knew this was important; visions in the aether were shaped as much by the viewer as they were by the Great Ocean. This mountain and thunderstorm could be a true vision, or could be allegory, each aspect symbolic of something greater. It was the skill of the adept to sort one from the other.

Hot excitement ghosted through his immaterial form. It had been years since any Corvidae had been able to peel back the skin of the aether to reveal the future. Might this mean the eternal waxing and waning of the tides of power were shifting once more in his cult’s favour?

The intensity of the thought rippled outwards, disturbing the liquid nothingness enfolding him. The vision fractured, like the surface of a lake in a rainstorm. Ahriman fought for calm, but his tenuous grasp on the stream was slipping. The glass mountain vanished, breaking into millions of pieces and falling like tears. A weeping eye was reflected in every shard, red and raw with pain.

He fought to hold on to the jagged, painful images, but the aether surged, and it was gone, swept away in the angry swells of his own desire. Like the onset of a sudden storm, the substance of the Great Ocean turned violent. His own frustration was turning against him. Red waves broke against him as his mind was wrenched from thoughts of the future.

His perception of the immediate returned to him, and he sensed the vibrant hunger of nearby void hunters, rapacious conceptual predators that followed the spoor of travellers’ emotions to devour their bodies of light. Dozens of them circled him like sharks with the scent of blood. He had remained longer than was safe, far longer.

The first emerged from the blood red mist, all appetite and instinct. It came at him directly, its glittering teeth forming in the instant it took to think of them.

Ahriman flew out of its path, its crimson form twisting around to follow him as another predator emerged from the mists. His mental analogy of sharks had given them form, and its body was sleek and evolved to be the consummate killer. He forced his mind to empty, discarding all metaphor and vocabulary, for they were the weapons his enemies would use against him.

He flew from them, but they had his scent now. Half a dozen more followed, their forms blurred and protean, borrowed from those whose bodies of light had been given shape by his careless simile. A void hunter surged towards him, massive and powerful, its jaws opened wide to swallow him whole.

Ahriman gathered the energy of the aether to him, feeding on the red mists and unleashing a torrent of will at the hunter. Its body exploded into shards of fire, each one snapped up and devoured by one of the other predators. Twin heqa staffs appeared in Ahriman’s hands, blazing with aetheric fire. Such weapons were necessary and dangerous at the same time. To burn so brightly would attract other beasts, yet without them he would surely perish here, leaving his mortal body a dead, soulless husk on the floor of his pavilion.

They circled him, darting in to bite and snap, each time deterred by a sweep of his fiery staffs. Ahriman rose into the eighth Enumeration. He would need the focus of its aggression to stay alive, but it would only inflame the hunger of the beasts. The creatures came at him in a rush. Ahriman had seen their gathering fury, and lashed out with his blazing weapons.