It still amazed him that he had not known of these pathways, for he and his father had flown the farthest reaches of the Great Ocean and seen sights that would have reduced any other minds to gibbering madness. They had explored the forsaken reefs of entropy, and flown across the depthless chasms of fire that burned with light of every colour. They had fought the nameless, formless predators of the deep, and felt the gelid shadows of entities so vast as to be beyond comprehension.

He realised he had not seen these paths because they were not there to be seen. Only this break in the network on Aghoru had allowed him to see it.

Concerns of the material world intruded on his introspective plunge, and Magnus looked out on a world of shadows and deceit. He had passed from the realm of flesh to the realm of spirit without even thinking of it, and floated in a place without form and dimensions save any he desired to impose upon it. This was the entrance to the network, the nexus point that led into the labyrinth. Thiswas what he had come to Aghoru to find.

He stood upon a broken landscape of upthrust crags and tormented geometry, a world of madness and desolation. Multi-coloured storms lashed the ground with black rain, and blistering lightning scored the heavens with burning zigzag lines. A golden line filled the horizon, a flame that encircled him and seethed with wounded power.

Jagged mountains reared up in the distance, only to be overturned within moments of their creation. Oceans surged with new tides, drying up in a heartbeat to become ashen deserts of dust and memory. Everywhere, the land was in flux, an inconstant whirl of creation and destruction without end and without beginning. Ash and despair billowed from cracks in the rock, and it was as perfect a vision of hell, as Magnus had seen.

“Is this the best you can do?” he said, the words dripping with scorn. “The mindless void-predators can conjure this much.”

The darkness before Magnus coalesced, wrapping itself in black spirals until a glistening snake with scales of obsidian coiled before him, weightless and disembodied from any notions of gravity. Its eyes were whirlpools of pink and blue, and a pair of brightly coloured wings ripped from its back. Its jaw peeled back, revealing fangs that dripped with venom.

Its forked tongue glittered, and its maw was an abyss of infinite possibility.

“This?” said the serpent, its voice dry as the desert. “This is not of my making. You brought this with you. This is Mekhenty-er-irty’s doing.”

Magnus laughed at such a blatant lie, though the name was unknown to him. The sound was a glittering rain. The very air was saturated with potential. With a thought, Magnus conjured a cage of fire for the serpent.

“This ends now,” said Magnus. “Your falsehoods are wasted on me.”

“I know,” hissed the serpent. “That is why I do not need any. I told you this was no invention of mine. It is simply a re-creation of a future that waits on you like a patient hunter.”

The cage of fire vanished, and the serpent slithered through the air towards Magnus, its wings shimmering through a spectrum of a million colours in the time it took to notice.

“I am here to end this,” said Magnus. “This portal was sealed once and I will seal it again.”

“Craft older than your master’s tried and failed. What makes you think you will do better?”

“No one has a craft better than mine,” laughed Magnus. “I have looked into the abyss and wrestled with its darkest powers. I overcame them, and I know the secrets of this world better than you.”

“Such arrogant certainty,” said the serpent with relish. “How pleasing that is to me. All the very worst sins are accomplished with such certainty: gluttony, wrath, lust… pride. No force in existence can compete with mortals in the grip of certainty.”

“What are you? Do you have a name?” asked Magnus.

“If I did, what makes you think I would be foolish enough to tell it to you?”

“Pride,” said Magnus. “If I am guilty of sin, then I am not the only one. You wantme to know who you are. Why else manifest like this?”

“If you will forgive the cliché, I have many names,” said the serpent, with a dry laugh. “To you, I shall be Choronzon, Dweller in the Abyss and the Daemon of Dispersion.”

“Daemon is a meaningless word, a name to give power to fear.”

“I know, isn’t it wonderful?” smiled the serpent, coiling around Magnus’ legs and slithering up his body. Magnus did not fear the serpent. He could destroy it without effort.

The serpent lifted its head until they were face to face, the length of its glossy body still coiled around his torso. Magnus felt the pressure as it tightened, but simply expanded his own form to match it. As its form enlarged, so too did his until they were two titans towering over the landscape of discord.

“You cannot intimidate me,” he told the serpent. “In this place I am more powerful than you. You exist only because I have not yet destroyed you.”

“And why is that? Your warriors are dying above. Do you not care for the lives of mortals, you who are so removed from mortality?”

“Time has no meaning here, and when I return it will be as if I was gone for mere moments,” said Magnus. “Besides, much can be learned from a talkative foe.”

“Indeed.”

“I grow weary of these games,” said Magnus, returning to his mortal size once more. The rearing mountains took on a glassy, silvery hue, and he was struck by a momentary flash of sickening recognition. “This ends now.”

“Truly?” asked the snake, its vast bulk shrinking until it was only a little longer than Magnus’ arm. “I have not even tempted you yet. Don’t you want to hear what I can offer you?”

“You have nothing I want,” Magnus promised the snake.

“Are you so sure? I can give you great power, greater than you wield already.”

“I have power,” said Magnus. “I do not need yours.”

The snake hissed in amusement, and its fanged maw parted with a serpentine approximation of a smile.

“You have already supped from a poisoned chalice, Magnus of Terra,” it said. “Yours is a borrowed power, nothing more. You are a puppet given life and animation by an unseen master. Even now you dance a merry jig to another’s tune.”

“And I should believe you?”

“I have no reason to lie,” said the snake.

“You have everyreason to lie.”

“True, but not here, not now,” said the snake, slithering free of Magnus and turning lazy circles in the air. “There is no need. No lie can match the horror of the truth that awaits you. You have bargained with powers far greater and more terrible than you can possibly imagine. You are their pawn now, a plaything to be used and discarded.”

Magnus shook his head.

“Spare me your theatrics. I bested powers greater than you, with your tawdry vision of hell,” said Magnus with contempt. “I travelled the farthest reaches of the Great Ocean to save my Legion, unwound the strands of fate that bound them to their destruction and wove them anew. What makes you think your paltry blandishments will appeal to one such as I?”

“Arrogance too,” hissed the snake, “matched with your towering conceit and certainty… Such a sweet prize you will make.”

Magnus had heard enough, content that the alien intelligence behind this vision was no more than a petty dynast of the Great Ocean, a malevolent entity with nothing to offer him but empty boasts and false promises. With a gesture, he drew the snake to him and took its straggling, whipping form in an unbreakable grip—

It squirmed, but he held it fast with no more effort than he might hold a lifeless rope. Magnus squeezed and the scales peeled from its body, the coloured feathers of its wings becoming lustreless and dull. Its eyes dimmed and its fangs melted from its jaws. The landscape began to break apart, its cohesion faltering in the face of the serpent’s unmaking.