That journey stopped as she sensed a higher consciousness within the machine, a spark of something she hadn’t expected to find within its circuits and valves. She sensed a dreadful, aching need to destroy occupying the higher functions of its part-machine, part-organic mind.

Camille saw a shard of mirror-smooth crystal embedded in the robot’s cortex, and knew immediately that it had been cut from a place called the Reflecting Cave on Prospero, just as she knew it had been carefully nurtured by an apprentice crystal grower named Estoca, a man who had that day learned he had an inoperable form of lung blight, but who wasn’t worried because a Pavoni healer had been scheduled to come to his home that evening.

Seated in the back of the crystal was a dancing flame, an animating will that overrode the robot’s childishly simple doctrina wafer, a consciousness that linked all nine robots together under one supreme authority.

The fire burned brightly, swelling to fill the crystal with potency and the urge to fight. The robots raised their cannons in unison, their shoulder-mounted weapons locking into the upright position with a clatter of gears and a wheeze of hydraulics.

Then the Thunderhawk slammed down with a jarring thud, and the connection was broken as her hand fell from the robot’s arm.

The robots turned their faces to her, and a lifeless voice rumbled from the depths of every one of them. The electronically rendered voice of the Khalophis rasped from the mouthpiece of all nine robots, saying, “Stay out of our way, Mistress Shivani.”

The assault ramp blew open, and a howling wind of grit and acrid propellant smoke was sucked inside. The deafening roar of gunfire and explosions filled the compartment.

The maniples of robots marched from the Thunderhawk in ordered ranks and into battle.

THE DISTINCTIVE SNAP of wings folding tight into a white furred body was the first warning of the attack. Magnus looked up past the ruin of a smoking tower to see a host of snow-shrikes plummeting on an attack run, thirty at least.

“Spread out!” he cried, and the warriors of the Scarab Occult threw themselves into the plentiful cover. With a thought, he sent Mahavastu Kallimakus into the shadow of a toppled lion statue, the venerable scribe glassy eyed and compliant. His scrivener harness recorded Magnus’ thoughts, the quill-tipped mechadendrites filling page after page for his grimoire. Shards of glass and twisted metal filled the street, as well as the blazing wrecks of Avenian fighters brought down by the Space Wolves.

The shrikes let loose ululating screams as they dived down through the hail of gunfire. Bolts filled the air, but even Astartes found it hard to hit such fast-moving targets. Mass-reactive shells sparked from toppled spires, but only a few of the diving creatures were hit, tumbling to the street in explosions of bloody fur.

They were agile flyers, their white-furred bodies like feathered serpents. Their wings were long and flexible, capable of incredible feats of manoeuvrability. Raking dewclaws snapped from the leading edges of their wings, turning them into serrated blades, but their long, razor-sharp beaks were their preferred killing tools. Two riders, strapped into flight harnesses, controlled the beasts, one a pilot of sorts, the other a marksman equipped with a lethally accurate longrifle.

Magnus watched in fascination as the Avenian line-breakers swooped low through the maze of debris, their riders controlling them with an ease that spoke of a bond formed over decades of shared experience.

One of the Scarab Occult stepped from cover to take a snap shot, but he had misjudged the speed of the creatures. A shrike flashed down like a glorious chevalier of old Franc, its razored beak like a glittering lance as it skewered the warrior. The blade punched through his chest, and the shrike’s gunner fired a repeating pistol into his face. One direct hit punched through the warrior’s visor and blew out the back of his helmet.

Magnus blinked and the creature erupted in flames, its piercing shrieks a paltry revenge for the death it had caused. Its riders tried to hurl themselves from their blazing mount, but Magnus pinned them to its back with a thought, and let them burn.

The other shrike-riders swept through their position, but the Scarab Occult were too canny to be caught in the open when they had other weapons to wield.

“Channelling,” ordered Magnus, and glittering shapes unfolded from each warrior, Tutelaries in the forms of birds, eyes, lizards and a myriad other unnameable guises. They darted out into the open, and streams of fire and lightning erupted from their shimmering forms as their masters channelled aetheric powers through their insubstantial bodies. A score of shrikes erupted into blazing torches of screaming flesh and fur. The survivors fled skyward, and Magnus waited until they had reached suitably lethal altitude before crushing their bones to powder.

He heard the beasts’ shrill cries of agony, but didn’t bother to watch the riders plummet to their deaths. Sporadic gunfire barked towards the Thousand Sons as running Avenian infantry came into view at the end of the street.

“Foolish,” said Magnus. “Very foolish.”

He clenched his fist, and the guns exploded in the Avenians’ hands, felling the entire line at a stroke. Screams of pain quickly followed, but Magnus paid the awful sound no heed, and strode towards the fallen soldiers. Most still blazed with fear and life, but the stamping boots of the Scarab Occult soon doused them.

Mahavastu Kallimakus trotted obediently after him, the continual stream of Magnus’ thoughts transcribed faithfully into his journal. When this battle was won, Magnus would cull those thoughts into a more artful text for his great work.

He reached the end of the street, looking into the sky along a glorious, flying buttress-like causeway that arced out into thin air towards the raised entrance of the Phoenix Crag’s Great Library.

Corvidae divinations had pinpointed the location of the city’s largest repository of knowledge and history, a vast museum housed in a pyramid of silver, six hundred metres high and two kilometres wide that rose from the main body of the mountain. The similarity to the Great Library on Prospero was not lost on Magnus. Dozens of slender bridges led to a plaza before the eagle-wreathed gateway, some shattered in the assault, others on fire and yet more the scenes of furious running battles.

Leman Russ and his Space Wolves were mauling the upper echelons of the city, tearing through its leaders and politicians like ocean predators in a feeding frenzy. Vox reports indicated that the Word Bearers and Imperial Army units had swiftly overcome the defenders of the valley gates, and were pushing up through the lower levels of the city, leaving little but ashes and devastation in their wake.

Nothing would be left of the city if it were not for Magnus’ restraining hand.

The primarchs had met the previous evening to discuss how best to assault Phoenix Crag, Leman Russ and Lorgar both eager to utterly eradicate the city, though for very different reasons. Russ simply because it stood against him, Lorgar because its ignorance of the Emperor offended him.

It would be hard to imagine three more different brothers: Russ with the bestial mask he thought fooled everyone with its bellicose savagery, and Lorgar with his altogether subtler mask that hid a face even Magnus could not fully discern. They had spoken long into the night, each of his brothers vying for the upper hand.

Phoenix Crag would not be like the other mountain cities of Heliosa, its records destroyed, its artefacts smashed and its importance forgotten. Magnus would save the history of this isolated outpost of humanity, and reclaim its place in the grand pageant of human endeavour.

This world had survived the nightmare of Old Night, and deserved no less.