Graham McNeill - A Thousand Sons

warrior of the Thousand Sons. Even as he visualised them, the power in him spread to the entire

Legion as Magnus gave the last of his strength to save his sons.

A terrific groaning shattered the stillness, like the spine of the world shearing out of true. The

sound of madness tore through the mundane substance of reality as the dying breath of a god

unleashed power of impossible magnitude.

The surface of Prospero twisted, and Ahriman felt a dreadful lurch of sickening vertigo. It felt

like the bottom was falling out of the world, or like he was plunging down an endless shaft. The

world vanished, replaced with the utter blackness at the end of the universe when all living things

have been dust for billions of years.

It was not silent, this blackness, but filled with myriad howls, as though hunting packs of wolves

stalked the unseen corners between worlds with them. Was there to be no escape from the

Emperor’s war dogs?

With savage suddenness the impenetrable, lightless void was replaced with a swirling maelstrom

of light and colour, blistering visions of hellish despair and unbridled ecstasy. Everything and

nothing came in and out of the bond in moments, stretching out to infinity as the nightmare

continued.

Ahriman felt his grip on sanity slipping, the fragile notions of reality that mortals cling to

snapping one by one as his mind was bombarded with a billion images at once.

Mercifully, his mind hurled itself into unconsciousness lest it be blasted to psychosis by this

unceasing barrage of sensation.

Ahriman floated into the darkness, lost in space and time.

This is the end.

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But it was not the end.

Ahriman opened his eyes and found himself face down on a slab of jagged black rock. Every

portion of his body was in pain, from his bruised and battered body to the very sinews of his mind.

Flickering embers of light reflected on the gleaming obsidian ground and he groaned as he tried to

piece together the last remnants of his memory.

Thunder boomed overhead and crackling lightning threw strobing shadows out before him.

Though his body protested with searing pain, Ahriman pushed himself into a kneeling position and

looked around to see what had become of Prospero.

His first thought was that the last work of Magnus had wrought a dreadful change upon their

home world, but it soon penetrated his fractured mind that the sky was not that of Prospero. It boiled

with storms of a million colours, jagged forks of light and fire dancing in crackling columns that

reached from the ground to the clouds.

He knelt upon the lower slope of an outcrop of black rock overlooking a broken volcanic plain

ruptured with smoking fissures and threaded with glowing streams of lava. Gnarled fists of rock

thrust up from the plain, their peaks topped with crooked silver towers that stood in mocking

imitation of the graceful spires of Tizca. The leather-bound Book of Magnus lay beside him, and he

tucked it protectively under his arm.

Jagged mountain peaks soared into the shimmering sky that bellowed with peals of thunder. The

sky hazed and shimmered like the most magnificent Mechanicum Borealis, but this was no side

effect of centuries of pollution and industry. This was raw aether saturating the air and raging with

oceanic tides of power.

Warriors of the Thousand Sons wandered aimlessly across the broken rockscape in their

hundreds, stunned at the desolation they found themselves in. Quaking discharges rumbled beneath

the ground, as though an endless series of underground tremors constantly reshaped the planet’s

core.

Ahriman rose to his feet, surveying the nightmarish landscape of everlasting turmoil. A hunched

figure shambled towards him, head down, and he recognised the battered form of Khaphed, one of

the Lore-Keepers within the Corvidae library. In this hellish place, it was a blessed relief to see a

familiar face.

“Khaphed? Is that you?” asked Ahriman, feeling his speech fill the air with potential for

wonders and raptures, as though every breath was charged with power.

The warrior didn’t answer and Ahriman felt a dreadful force within Khaphed’s body. The Lore-

Keeper’s head came up and Ahriman took a backward step as he saw the mutant growths that

transformed Khaphed. Distended eyes pushed their way from every surface on the warrior’s face,

such that there was no longer a mouth, nose or any other sense organ other than eyes.

Khaphed reached for him, his myriad eyes silently imploring him for help.

Ahriman thrust his hand towards Khaphed and unleashed a barrage of fire and lightning into the

Lore-Keeper’s body. Such powers were the provenance of the Raptora and Pavoni, but they leapt

from Ahriman’s fingers as naturally as though he had been trained by those cults since birth.

Khaphed’s charred body collapsed and shattered into ashen fragments as it hit the ground.

Horrified, Ahriman ran down the slopes to rejoin the rest of his warriors.

He found Hathor Maat, Amon and Sobek quickly enough, but it soon became clear that the Lore-

Keeper of the Corvidae was not the only member of the Legion to have succumbed to the flesh

change. Dozens more required to be put down, until at last all that remained appeared to be free of

mutation.

All told, twelve hundred and forty-two warriors had survived the razing of Prospero.

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“Where are we?” asked Sobek, raising the most obvious question.

No one had an answer, and for long days and nights, though it was impossible to gauge the

passage of time since everyone’s armour chrono had failed, the Thousand Sons explored the hideous

desolation that was their new home.

The silver towers were discovered not to be parodies of those that had been raised on Tizca, but

those selfsame towers, broken and twisted by the strange alchemy that had brought them to this

place. Beyond these relics of their lost home world, there was nothing to shed any light on the nature

of the place.

No power of the Corvidae or any other cult could fathom its location or any hint of how they had

come to be deposited upon its blasted surface.

All that changed on the day the Obsidian Tower rose from the depths.

It began with yet another earthquake, a common enough occurrence that no one paid any mind at

first. A sullen mood had fallen upon the Thousand Sons, which was wholly expected, for what

manner of man would not keenly feel the loss of his home, father and brothers?

But this earthquake did not simply fade away after splitting yet another fissure in the endless

volcanic plain while sealing another shut. Cracks spread from the centre of the plain in a radial

pattern and a black diamond, like a thrusting basalt speartip, exploded upwards.

It rose into the sky, pushing higher and higher and growing wider and wider with every passing

moment until a new mountain had been birthed. Towering and steep-sided, it rose higher than

Olympus Mons and the Mountain of Aghoru combined. Broken rocks tumbled from its impossible

height, falling from its angular sides to craft a fringe comprising shattered Cyclopean stone and

titanic blocks of strange angles and impossible perspectives.

When the rain of dust and debris had ended, the Thousand Sons gathered at the base of this

stupendous creation, knowing that nothing natural could have created so magnificent an edifice.

Glowing fire arced from the distant mountain’s peak and a shimmering blue light suffused its