Graham McNeill: A Thousand Sons

Russ rained blow after blow on Magnus, shattering the horned breastplate, and in return Magnus

struck his brother with a searing blast of cold fire that cracked his armour and set light to his braided

hair.

It seemed as though the combatants had swollen to enormous proportions, like the giants they

were in the myths and legends. The Wolf King’s frostblade struck at Magnus, but his golden axe

turned the blow aside as they spun and twisted in an epic battle beneath the madness of a blazing

storm of sheet lightning and pounding thunder. This was a battle fought on every level: physical,

mental and spiritual, with each primarch bending every ounce of their almost limitless power to the

other’s destruction.

The waters around the pyramid broke upon the shores, black as oil, and churning as though an

unseen tempest boiled beneath the surface. Space Wolves and Custodes ploughed through the water,

wading through the crashing spray to reach the pyramid in lieu of aiding Leman Russ in his battle.

Magnus swept his hands to the side, and the warriors on the water cried out in agony as it

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transformed into corrosive acid, burning through ceramite plates and rendering flesh and bone to

jelly.

Thick rain fell, fit to drown the world, and the ground underfoot transformed into a stinking

quagmire from which writhing shapes like grasping hands emerged. Wounded warriors were

dragged down into the mud, struggling against their unseen attackers, but unable to resist being

pulled under to their doom.

Prospero was breaking apart, the veil between worlds cracking, and the maddening gibbers and

screams of the Great Ocean’s denizens drove men to their knees in terror. The assault on the senses

was total, and Ahriman could barely keep his feet as hurricane-force winds battered the pyramid,

tearing glass panes from its structure and breaking the silver and gold towers from its corners.

Thunder banged in the midnight sky, and heaving earthquakes ripped ever-widening cracks in the

ground, toppling what few structures of Tizca remained standing.

The epicentre of this destruction was Magnus and Russ, and Ahriman watched the two titans

wrestle with the bitter enmity reserved only for those who had once called each other friend. Such a

contest of arms was the most desperate thing Ahriman had ever seen. He wanted to rush forward and

remind them of their former kinship, but to intervene in such a planet-shaking conflict would be

suicide.

Ahriman had cautioned his warriors not to wield their powers for fear of the flesh change, but

Magnus showed no such restraint and battered Leman Russ with fists wreathed in fire and lightning.

Russ was a primarch and such powers as could shatter armies had little effect on him save to drive

him to higher fits of rage.

Magnus drove his fist into Russ’ chest, the icy breastplate cracking open with a sound like

planets colliding, and shards of ceramite stabbed the Wolf King’s heart. In return, Russ snapped

Magnus’ arm back, and Ahriman heard it shatter into a thousand pieces. A blade of pure thought

unsheathed from Magnus’ other arm, and he drove it deep into Russ’ chest through his shattered

armour.

The blade burst from Russ’ back and the Wolf King loosed a deafening bellow of pain. A chorus

of the wolves that were not wolves added their howls to that of their master. The two enormous

lupine monsters that accompanied Russ leapt upon Magnus, fastening their jaws upon his legs.

Magnus slammed his fist into the black wolfs head, driving it to the ground with a strangled yelp, its

skull surely shattered. With a bellow of anger, Magnus tore the white wolf from his leg with a

thought and hurled it away over the heads of the milling army at Russ’ back.

Ahriman felt hands dragging him away as the howling winds and driving rain tore through the

gates. He tried to shake them off as someone shouted his name. Hathor Maat and Amon pulled him

away from the entrance as the vast mechanisms slowly began hauling the enormous gates closed.

“No!” he shouted, his words snatched away by the screaming winds. “We can’t!”

“We must!” shouted Hathor Maat, pointing towards the crashing waters separating the Space

Wolves from the pyramid. Using the stocks of their bolters as paddles, the enemy had jury-rigged

concave shards of roof debris to use as makeshift boats, and were surging over the waves towards

the gateway. The water had returned to its natural state, frothed patches of liquefied flesh and bone

scumming its surface the only reminder of the men who had died there. Hordes of Wulfen plunged

into the water, entire packs pushing towards the pyramid with hundreds more right behind them.

Ahriman looked past the approaching monsters to see Magnus and Russ locked in battle high

above the causeway, the furious horror of their struggle obscured by ethereal fire and bursts of

lightning. A flare of black light erupted and Russ cried out in agony. His blade lashed out blindly

and struck a fateful blow against his foe’s most dreaded weapon: his eye.

In an instant, the pyrotechnic cascade of light and fire was extinguished and a stunning silence

swept outwards. All motion ceased, and the titans battling on the causeway were no more, each

primarch now restored to his customary stature.

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Ahriman cried out as he saw Magnus reel back from the Wolf King, one hand clutched to his

eye as his shattered arm crackled with regenerative energies. As broken and bloodied as Leman

Russ was, he was brawler enough to seize his opportunity. He barrelled into Magnus and gripped

him around the waist like a wrestler, roaring as he lifted his brother’s body high above his head.

All eyes turned to Russ as he brought Magnus down across his knee, and the sound of the

Crimson King’s back breaking tore through every warrior of the Thousand Sons’ heart.

Ahriman fell to his knees, dropping the Book of Magnus as sympathetic pain, like a white-hot

spear, stabbed through him. No pain in the world was worse, for this blow could unmake a

primarch, and such wounds were a death-strike a hundred times over to any mortal warrior. He knelt

against the closing gateway as the Wulfen packs reached the shoreline alongside warriors led by a

bloody-fanged captain with burned hair and an ice-bladed axe.

The Wolf King howled his triumph to the blackened heavens, and a rain of blood replaced the

oil-black downpour as Prospero wept for her fallen son. Ahriman’s tears were bloody as Leman

Russ dropped Magnus to the mud and brought the frostblade Mjalnar around to take the head of his

defeated foe.

With the last of his strength, Magnus turned his head, and his ravaged eye found Ahriman.

This is my last gift to you.

Leman Russ’ blade swept down, but before its lethal edge struck, Magnus whispered unnatural

syllables unknown to Man since he had first raised his guttural chants to the nameless gods of the

sky. Magnus’ body underwent an instantaneous dissolution, its entire structure unmade with a word,

and Ahriman gasped as vast and depthless power surged into his body.

It was too much for any mortal man to contain, but as it swept through him, he knew what he

had to do.

Ahriman clasped his hands upon the jade scarab set in his breastplate, filling his mind with its

every curve and nuance, its imperfections, the intricacies of its golden mounting and the exact

dimensions of the black scarab worked into its substance.

He knew everything about that gem, and pictured the identical artefact on the chest of each