“Enochian,” mused Mahavastu. “Interesting, you must tell me more of it.”

“In case anyone’s forgotten, didn’t you say that Magnus the Red was in grave danger?” asked Kallista. “Shouldn’t we focus on that?”

“Oh, of course, yes!” exclaimed Mahavastu, flicking through the book to the last page, which bore a charcoal sketch rendered with quick, passionate strokes. The image seemed to depict a naked figure emerging from a giant forest, though as Lemuel looked closer he saw that it wasn’t a forest at all.

It was a nest of sinuous, snake-like tentacles emerging from a giant chasm, and before it was the unmistakable form of Magnus the Red, ensnared by half a dozen of them. His warriors were also under attack, fighting for their lives in a giant cave.

Within a mountain…

“What is it?” asked Camille. “I can’t make head nor tail of it.”

“I have no idea,” said Mahavastu. “Lemuel?”

“I can’t say for sure, but I agree it looks bad.”

“What’s that word below the picture?” asked Kallista.

Scrawled beneath the image was a single word, and Lemuel’s blood froze in his veins as he realised it was one of the few Enochian words he understood.

“Panphage,” he translated, and Mahavastu flinched.

“What?” asked Kallista. “What does that mean?”

“It means ‘the thing that devours all’,” said Lemuel.

CHAPTER TEN

The Hydra/Belly of the Beast/Time will Tell

THE THING THAT had once been Yatiri drifted towards the Thousand Sons, borne aloft by the supporting black tentacles. The darkness of his eyes was absolute, as though they were gateways into a realm where endless night held sway. Magnus drew his curved sword, and Ahriman felt his master’s enormous power swell to the fore.

The vox spat with Fenrisian oaths and muttered catechisms of the Enumerations, but Ahriman heard only the sibilant whispers drifting from the black mass that rose from the pit.

Magnussss… Magnusss…

It seemed to be repeating his primarch’s name, but it was impossible to be certain.

Magnus the Red stepped towards Yatiri, and the tentacle around the Aghoru’s neck tightened. Veins bulged on Yatiri’s face, his skin pale and discoloured, calloused where his enforced wearing of the mask had hardened the skin.

Yatiri’s features were blunt and wide-spaced across the skull, a heavy brow and high forehead suggestive of thick bone protecting the brain. Ahriman realised that he had never seen the Aghoru without their masks, not even the children.

Questing tentacles that had detached from the domed roof descended towards the Astartes, and Ahriman drew his pistol, fingers tightening on his heqa staff.

“If those tentacles get too close, destroy them,” he ordered.

The cavern echoed with the sound of the saw-toothed edges of chainblades revving up.

Yatiri’s body drifted towards Magnus, and Ahriman felt his finger twitch on the trigger. Great power filled the tribesman’s body, a dark tide that Ahriman sensed was but the merest fraction of the power leaking up from beneath the world.

“My lord?” he said.

“I know,” said Magnus. “I can contain it. This is no mystery to me.”

Uthizzar moved alongside Ahriman, his heqa staff alive with internal lines of power. Though he could not see Uthizzar’s face, he saw the strain he was under in every forced movement.

Ahriman kept one eye on Magnus and the other on the waving pseudopods approaching from above. They were smooth and oily, quite unnatural, and Ahriman sensed a monstrous intelligence in their sinuous movements, like snakes poised to strike at helpless prey.

“My lord,” said Ahriman once more. “What are your orders?”

Magnus did not reply, meeting Yatiri’s gaze. Ahriman felt the power flowing between them, sensing immense energies struggling for supremacy. A silent battle of the soul was being fought, and Ahriman could do nothing to help his primarch.

Then two things happened at once.

Yatiri’s body suddenly rushed forward, and his arms closed around Magnus in a hideous parody of a brotherly embrace, his black eyes ablaze with inner fire.

And the black serpent-like tentacles poised above the Astartes attacked.

No sooner had they moved than Ahriman opened fire.

The deafening crack of bolters filled the cavern with echoing bursts and strobing muzzle flashes. Black ichor splashed armour as the tentacles exploded with each impact. Yet there were scores of them, and for each one obliterated, a dozen more remained.

Ahriman emptied his magazine in four controlled bursts.

He felt Uthizzar next to him, the telepath forced to fight with combat moves drawn from muscle memory rather than skill. The crushing pressure of dreadful power seeking entry to his mind was almost unbearable, and he could only imagine what it must feel like to a telepath.

“They keep coming!” yelled Uthizzar.

“Like the hydra of Lerna,” said Ahriman between swings of his staff.

Each time a bolt found a target, a tentacle exploded in a mass of tarry black blood, hissing fiercely as it evaporated. They were insubstantial, but their threat was in quantity, not quality. Ropes of matter enfolded Ahriman, wrapping around him like constrictor lizards.

He released controlled bursts of energy, and they melted from his body. More reached for him, but his heqa staff swept out, its copper and gold bands rippling with fire. Uthizzar stepped back, and Ahriman braced his mind’s defences, knowing what would come next.

A blistering surge of invisible aether erupted from Uthizzar in a deafening shriek, burning through the air like the shockwave of a magma bomb. It went unheard by the Space Wolves, but the tentacles around them dissolved into black fog at its touch, and others drew back, recognising his power and wary of him. Uthizzar dropped to his knees, head bowed, and bleeding aetheric light from every joint in his armour.

In the few moments’ space Uthizzar had created, Ahriman pushed towards where he had last seen Magnus. The primarch’s body was still held in Yatiri’s loathsome embrace, but his flesh was all but obscured by a mass of writhing tentacles. More were slithering around his body with every second that passed.

“Go!” cried Uthizzar, and Ahriman saw how much the unleashed storm had drained him. To loose such power while under so fierce an attack was nothing short of a miracle.

Ahriman nodded to Uthizzar and pushed onwards as fresh enemies flailed from the pit, blocking him from reaching the primarch. It was a living wall of snaking darkness, but his staff cleaved through them like a threshing scythe.

An unstoppable mass of tentacles boiled from the chasm, thousands of blind monsters empowered by some hideous perversion of the Great Ocean’s energy. His power was anathema to these creatures, the pure fire of the aether a nemesis touch to such corruption.

The Space Wolves fought with immovable fury, blades hacking with relentless force and implacable resolve. Their guns fired in a non-stop crescendo, yet they were hideously outnumbered by their foes and had not the power of the aether to aid them.

Ahriman saw one of the Space Wolves lifted from his feet by a host of tentacles, his armour buckling under the awful pressure. He kept firing and howling until his armour finally gave way with a horrid crack of ceramite and bone. Blood fountained from the shorn halves of his body, but he continued shooting, even as his remains were drawn into the pit. Nor was he alone in his fate. Everywhere Ahriman looked, warriors were being torn apart. Dozens were dying with every passing minute, yet still they fought on.

Lord Skarssen laid about himself with a sword that glittered with cold light, a blade that legend would say was fashioned from ice hewn from the heart of a glacier and tempered in the breath of the mightiest kraken. Like Ahriman’s staff, the blade was the bane of the darkness, destroying it with the merest touch.