“Onwards, my brothers,” said Magnus. “We have a world’s legacy to save.”

THE CITY’S BUILDINGS were graceful structures built into the fabric of the rock, a maze of dwellings, workplaces, recreational spaces and interconnecting streets, boulevards and subterranean passages. To any normal force, this kind of uphill fight would be a brutal, building-to-building brawl, time-consuming and wasteful of lives, but the Thousand Sons were no normal force.

Ahriman maintained his connection to Aaetpio, using his Tutelary’s link to the aether to shift his perceptions into the near future. He saw traps before they were sprang, and read the presence of minds alive with anticipation of ambush.

Instead of breaking open each building, the Scarab Occult simply willed their Tutelaries into their enemies’ hiding places, and burned them out with invisible fires or crashed them with psychic hammer blows. Methodical and swift, Ahriman’s First Fellowship pushed upwards towards Magnus, the primarch calling his warriors to him to defend the city’s intellectual heart from destruction. The Thousand Sons fought their way up into the mountain city along marble-flagged boulevards, each Fellowship fighting in the manner of its captain’s nature.

Phosis T’kar’s 2nd Fellowship bludgeoned their way straight through the middle of the enemy brigades they encountered, smashing their strongholds with barrages of aetheric force while advancing under the protection of invisible mantlets of pure thought. Hathor Maaf’s 3rd Fellowship burned their enemies alive, boiled the blood in their veins or sucked the air from their lungs, turning their bodies against them in spitefully painful ways.

Khalophis alone was not summoned by the primarch’s call, instead tasked with securing the Thousand Sons’ rear echelons with his Chapters of Devastators and battalions of robot maniples. Psychically resonant crystals allowed the captain of the 6th Fellowship to direct his mindless charges with complete precision, instead of relying on the doctrina wafers provided by the Legio Cybernetica.

Flocks of shrikes looped in to attack the Thousand Sons at every opportunity. These attacks were so swift and bloody that not even Ahriman’s heightened pre-cognitive senses could anticipate them all. The First Fellowship had suffered nearly a hundred casualties so far, and he knew there would be more before the battle was concluded.

Ahriman made his way towards a fallen pillar, behind which Lemuel Gaumon was sheltering. He noticed its fluted length was classically proportioned and the capital was shaped like the leaf-topped columns of the Great Library on Prospero. Ahriman smiled at the incongruous nature of the observation.

Lemuel’s hands were pressed to his ears to block out the barking shrieks of the alien birds and the thunderous bangs of Astartes bolt fire. The man’s terror flared from his body in streams of greenish yellow energy. Beside him, Sobek returned fire, the percussive reports of his weapon sending up puffs of dust from the top of the column.

“Is it all you hoped for?” asked Ahriman, slamming a fresh magazine into his pistol.

Lemuel looked up, his eyes brimming with tears. He shook his head.

“It’s terrible,” he said. “How can you stand it?”

“It is what I am trained for,” said Ahriman, as a booming volley of bolter fire echoed from the walls. Shrieking wails echoed, and stuttering return fire spanked from the top of the pillar. Lemuel flinched as energy projectiles whined past, curling himself into a tight ball. Sobek kept up his methodical volleys, unfazed by the nearness of the enemy fire-bullets.

A sudden, violent pulse of warning from Aaetpio sent Ahriman to his knees.

The shrike’s beak slashed over his head, and he spun his heqa staff up to block a slashing wing. He shot the creature in the face, leaving only a spraying stump as the bolt detonated within its skull. It collapsed, as another flight of shrikes dived in to attack.

A flying killer’s claws tore into the column next to him. The stone split apart as the beast slashed its wings at him, dewclaws snapping from leathery chitin-sheaths. Lemuel screamed in terror, and the monster turned its long, stabbing beak towards the remembrancer. Ahriman reached out with an open palm and crushed his hand into a fist.

The shrike standing over Lemuel gave a strangled squawk as its nervous system overloaded with pain impulses. It collapsed into a shivering heap until Ahriman stamped down on its neck, spinning around as his precognitive sense screamed a warning at him. He blocked another bladed beak with a sweep of his staff, sending a pulse of fire along its length.

The creature shrieked as its body caught light, the flames spreading over its furred body with unnatural rapidity. The flames fed on a victim’s life-force, and would only extinguish when the creature was dead.

Sobek battled two of the beasts, his left arm held in the beak of a white-furred shrike as it attempted to saw through his shoulder. The second beast’s wings boomed as it hovered above his Practicus in a dust-filled whirlwind, raking Sobek’s armour with tearing claws.

Astartes and predatory killers fought in a confused mass of thrashing limbs, blades and claws. Ahriman swung his pistol around and drew on Aaetpio’s connection to the Great Ocean, tracing the myriad potential pathways of the future to follow the path his bolt would take in a fraction of a second. He squeezed the trigger twice in quick succession.

The first bolt punched through the skull of the shrike holding Sobek down, the second exploded the heart of the hovering beast, both impact points less than ten centimetres from Sobek’s body. Both beasts collapsed, slain instantly by Ahriman’s precision kill-shots.

“Thank you, my lord,” said Sobek, freeing his gouged limb from the beak of the shrike. The armour was sliced through, and the meat of Sobek’s arm was bloody and torn.

“Are you able to fight?”

“Yes, my lord,” Sobek assured him. “The wound is already healing.”

Ahriman nodded and knelt beside Lemuel.

“And you, my Neophyte?” he asked.

Lemuel took a deep breath. His skin was ashen, and streaked tears cut through the dust caking his cheeks. Gunfire still rattled further down the boulevard, but none of it was aimed in their direction.

“Are they dead?” asked Lemuel.

“They are,” confirmed Ahriman. “You were in no danger. Sobek maintained a chameleon field around you, so the birds were probably not even aware of you until you screamed, and Sergeant Xeatan protects you from a chance kill with a kine shield.”

“I thought you were Corvidae?” said Lemuel. “Divinators? Aren’t Raptora the telekines?”

“Most of my warriors are Corvidae,” nodded Ahriman, pleased to have this opportunity to teach, even in the midst of a firefight. “Like all Fellowships of the Thousand Sons, each Chapter and every squad is made up of warriors belonging to a variety of cults. Sobek and I are Corvidae, but Xeatan is Raptora.”

Ahriman pointed to a warrior sheltering in a recessed doorway from the sustained fire of a dozen Avenian soldiers. His shoulder guard was emblazoned with the serpentine star of the Thousand Sons with the image of a long, colourful feather at its centre.

“And Hastar over there is Pavoni. Watch.”

Despite his obvious terror, Lemuel peeked over the edge of the column in time to see Hastar leap out into the street as the Avenian soldiers broke from cover. His bolter was clamped to his thigh, and he braced himself with his back foot at right angles to his out-thrust left leg. The Avenians saw him, and raised their weapons. Before they could fire, sheet lightning leapt from Hastar’s outstretched hands, and a deafening thunderclap shattered every pane of glass for five hundred metres in all directions.

Ahriman’s autosenses compensated for the sudden brightness, but Lemuel blinked away dazzling afterimages. By the time his vision had cleared, it was all over. The Avenian soldiers were charred columns of blackened flesh, burned statues kept upright by heat-fused bones. Flesh ran from their corpses like melting butter. Lemuel bent over and vomited the contents of his stomach.