His heightened sensitivity to the immediate future gave him an unmatched situational awareness. He could read the flow of thermoclines across the mountains, see every aircraft, and feel the fears of their crews as they surged towards Phoenix Crag. His awareness floated above the unfolding assault, reading its ebbs and flows as surely as if it were a slow-moving battle simulation.

The flame-crowned city of the Avenian kings lay ten kilometres east of the tightening noose of aircraft. It was a silver-sheathed mountain with an eternally burning plume of blue fire at its highest tower, a majestic creation of glass spires and soaring bridges that appeared as fragile as spun silk. Graceful minarets and pyramids of glass capped the mountain peaks, and sprawling habitation towers glittered like pillars of ice in the bright sunlight. Columned processionals marched their way into the mountains from the shadowed valleys below, their lengths wreathed in explosions and smoke as artillery brigades and the heavy armour of the Prospero Spireguard, Lacunan Lifewatch and Ouranti Draks laid siege to its lower levels.

As Phoenix Crag was battered from below, so too was it assaulted from the air.

“As above, so below,” whispered Ahriman.

Three thousand aircraft streaked towards the last bastion of the Avenians, roaring through a storm of defensive gunfire and the last squadrons of enemy fighters. Impulsive Space Wolf Thunderhawks raced for the crown of the mountain, while heavier Word Bearer Stormbirds and Imperial Army bulk landers dived towards its sprawling base. Thousand Sons’ aircraft speared towards its guts, a mixture of darting Lotus fighters, Apis bombers and Stormhawk transports.

Ahriman likened the Thousand Sons assault to a living organism, with the awesome force of Magnus the Red as its unimaginably powerful mind. Magnus directed the assault, but the Athanaens were his thoughts, the Raptora his shield, and the Pyrae and Pavoni his fists.

The Corvidae were his eyes and ears.

Ahriman saw a flickering image of an armour-piercing shell punch through the belly of Eagle’s Talon, a roaring Stormbird of the 6th Fellowship, and sent a pulse of warning into the matrix. He felt the brief moment of connection with the impossibly complex lattice of Magnus’ mind, the brightest sun at the heart of a golden web that eclipsed all others with its brilliance.

No sooner had his warning been sent than Eagle’s Talonbanked sharply. Seconds later, a stream of shells tore empty air and exploded harmlessly above it. This was one of a score of warnings pulsing from Ahriman’s enhanced awareness, the vessels of the Thousand Sons dancing to his directions to evade harm. Each permutation altered the schemata of the future, each consequence rippling outwards, interacting with others in fiendishly complex patterns that only the enhanced mental structure of a specially trained Astartes could process.

On another modified Stormhawk, Ankhu Anen, a fellow disciple of the Corvidae, undertook similar duties. It was not an exact science, and they could not see every danger. Some aircraft were going to be hit, no matter how much the Corvidae sought to prevent it.

To mitigate against such immovable futures, every assault craft carried a mix of covens from each cult.

High ranking cultists of the Pavoni and Pyrae filled the air around the aircraft with crackling arcs of lightning and fire to detonate incoming shells before impact, while the Raptora maintained kine shields to deflect those shells that penetrated the fire screen. Athanaeans scanned the thoughts of enemy fighter pilots, skimming the manoeuvres and intercepts they planned from the surfaces of their minds.

It was a dance of potential futures, a whirlwind of the possible and the real, each one moving in and out of existence with every passing moment.

It was as close as Ahriman ever felt to perfection.

A nearby explosion rocked the Stormhawk, the shell that had been destined to blow it from the sky detonating harmlessly off its starboard wing.

“Two minutes to skids down,” shouted the pilot.

Ahriman smiled.

The dance continued.

CAMILLE FELT SICK to her stomach, but relished the feeling as the aircraft hurled itself to the side and an explosion thumped their underside with a deafening clang of metal. The helmet she wore was dented and uncomfortable, but had saved her skull from being smashed open on the fuselage several times already.

“Not like you read about, is it?” shouted Khalophis from the far end of the compartment.

“No!” shouted Camille with a forced laugh. “It’s better.”

She wasn’t lying. Though her skin prickled with fear and her heart was thudding against her chest, she had never felt more alive. The prospect of seeing up close what the Expeditionary fleets were doing in humanity’s name was a unique opportunity.

Phoenix Crag was a combat zone, and nothing was certain in a place like that. A chance ricochet, a stray artillery round, anything could snuff out her life in a moment, but what was the point of being alive if you weren’t willing to come out of your comfort zone and see what was being done on the bloody knife-edge of history?

“How long until we land?” she called.

“One minute,” said Khalophis, walking down the centreline of the aircraft’s ready line with his Practicus, a warrior called Yaotl, ensuring the Thunderhawk’s cargo was ready for deployment. “Are you sure you want to see this? Astartes war is not pretty for those unused to such sights. Mine is certainly not.”

“I’m ready,” Camille assured him. “And I want to see it. I’m a remembrancer, I need to see things first hand if my accounts are to be worth anything.”

“Fair enough,” said Khalophis. “Just keep behind the maniples. Stay out of my way, for it’s not my duty to protect you if you get into trouble. Keep close to Yaotl, he will shield you with a fire cloak, so be careful not to touch anything of value you might find – it will burn like promethium-soaked paper.”

“Don’t worry,” said Camille holding up her gloved hands. “I won’t.”

Khalophis nodded and turned to the muttering Techmarine following him. The Techmarine consulted a data-slate and made last minute adjustments to the weapon systems of the Thunderhawk’s silent passengers.

Ranked up in three lines were nine automatons, bulky machines in the shapes of humanoids, but twice as tall as an Astartes. Khalophis had called them Cataphracts, battle robots that reeked of grease and a hybrid electric fuel smell. Their bodies were exaggerated and armoured on the torsos and thighs, heavy plates of armaplas bolted to piston legs and cog-driven arms.

Coloured a vivid blue and gold, their heads were hunched down in the centres of their chests like peaked crowns, their carved faces like expressionless masks of long-dead emperors. Each was armed with a long cannon on one arm and a grossly oversized fist on the other. A huge, belt-fed weapon was slung behind each robot, and from the greased rails on their backs, Camille guessed they would slide up onto the shoulders when the time came for them to fire.

What would she feel from such an inanimate hunk of metal, what purely objective recall might its frame of steel and ceramite yield? She pulled off a glove and tentatively reached out to touch its cold arm.

She closed her eyes as the sensations came: the lightless times between battles, the dark, oil-dripping voids between activation and oblivion. She saw through its unfeeling eyes, a host of foes falling beneath its weapons, an eternity of war waged without thought for the consequences or reasons behind its actions.

Camille followed the coursing energy filling the robot as its power came online and new life flowed through its cabled veins. She followed the trail of power from its source, feeling the swelling sense of purpose as the robot’s battle program came alive, its synthetic cortex processing the instructions that would send it to war.