Graham McNeill - A Thousand Sons

humours with a thought, but without access to the aether, Hathor Maat had to do it like the rest of

them: with discipline, concentration and self-will.

The valley widened, and Ahriman saw a host of figures standing at the crest of the slope, like the

legendary warriors of Leonidas who fought and died at Thermopylae. Ahriman felt nothing for

them, no hatred and no fear. In the lower Enumerations he was beyond such considerations.

With their sunset-coloured robes, baked leather breastplates and long falarica, the Aghoru

warriors were the very image of the barbarian tribes of ancient Terra. The warriors were not facing

down the valley to repel invaders, but were instead focussed on something deeper in the valley and

beyond his sight.

Ahriman’s fingers flexed on the hide grip of his bolter. The warriors above turned at the sound

of the Sekhmet’s advance, and Ahriman saw they were all wearing masks of polished glass.

Expressionless and without life, they resembled the gold leaf corpse masks placed upon the faces of

ancient Mycenaean kings to conceal the decay of their features.

At the most recent conclave of the Rehahti, Magnus had had invited Yatiri, the leader of the

Aghoru tribes gathered at the Mountain, to speak with them. The proud chieftain stood in the centre

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of Magnus’ austere pavilion, clad in saffron robes and wearing the ceremonial mirrormask of his

people. Yatiri carried a black-bladed falarica and a heqa staff, not unlike those carried by the

captains of the Thousand Sons. Though centuries of isolation had separated his people from the

Imperium, the regal Yatiri spoke with clarity and fluency as he requested they refrain from entering

the valley, explaining that it was a holy place to his people.

Holy. That was the word he had used.

Such a provocative word would have raised the hackles of many Astartes Legions, but the

Thousand Sons understood the original meaning of the term—uninjured, sound, healthy—and rose

above its connotations of divinity to recognise it for what it truly meant: a place free of

imperfection. Yatiri’s request had roused some suspicion among the Legion, but Magnus had given

his oath that the Thousand Sons would respect his wishes.

That request had been honoured until this moment.

The Aghoru parted as the Sekhmet approached the crest of the valley, the sharpened blades of

their falarica glittering in firelight. Ahriman had no fear of such weapons, but he had no wish to start

a fight he didn’t need to.

Ahriman marched towards the Aghoru, keeping his pace steady, and his gaze was lifted upwards

in awed amazement as the titanic guardians of the valley were revealed to his sight.

On Prospero, the cult temple of the Pyrae was a vast pyramid of silvered glass with an eternally

burning finial at its peak. Where the other cult temples of Tizca raised golden idols of their cult

symbols before their gates, the Pyrae boasted a battle-engine of the Titan legions.

Supplicants to the pyromancers approached along a brazier-lit processional of red marble

towards a mighty warlord Titan. Bearing the proud name Canis Vertex, the engine had once walked

beneath the banners of Legio Astorum, its carapace emblazoned with a faded black disc haloed by a

flaming blue corona.

Its princeps was killed and its moderati crushed when the engine fell during the bloody

campaigns of extermination waged in the middle years of the Great Crusade against the barbaric

greenskin of the Kamenka Troika. The Emperor had issued the writs of war, commanding the

Thousand Sons, Legio Astorum and a Lifehost of PanPac Eugenians to drive that savage race of

xenos from the three satellite planets of Kamenka Ulizarna, a world claimed by the Mechanicum of

Mars.

Ahriman remembered well the savagery of that war, the slaughter and relentless, grinding

attrition that left tens of thousands dead in its wake. Imperial forces had been victorious after two

years of fighting and earned a score of honours for the war banners.

Victory had been won, but the cost had been high. Eight hundred and seventy-three warriors of

the Thousand Sons had died, forcing Magnus so reduce his Legion from ten fellowships to the

Pesedjet, the nine fellowships of antiquity.

Of greater sorrow to Ahriman was the death of Apophis, Captain of the 5th Fellowship and his

oldest friend. Only now that Apophis was dead, was Ahriman able to use that word.

Canis Vertex had been brought down on the killing fields of Coriovallum in the last days of the

war by a gargantuan war machine of the greenskin, crudely built in the image of their warlike gods.

Defeat seemed inevitable until Magnus stood before the enemy colossus, wielding the power of the

aether like an ancient god of war.

Two giants, one mechanical, one a flesh and blood progeny of the Emperor, they had faced each

other across the burning ruins, and it seemed the battle’s conclusion could not have been more

foregone.

But Magnus raised his arms, his feathered cloak billowed by unseen storms, and the full fury of

the aether unmade the enemy war-engine in a hurricane of immaterial fire that tore the flesh of

reality asunder and shook the world to its very foundations.

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All those who saw the giant primarch that day would take the sight of his battle with that

bloated, hateful, war machine to their graves, his power and majesty indelibly etched on their

memories like a scar. Ten thousand warriors bowed their heads to their saviour as he returned to

them across a field of the dead.

The Legio Astorum contingent had been destroyed, and Khalophis of the 6th Fellowship had

“honoured” their sacrifice by transporting Canis Vertex back to Prospero and setting it as a silent

guardian to the temple of the Pyrae. The raising of such a colossal sentinel was typical Pyrae

showmanship, but there was no doubting the impart made by the sight of the dead engine sheened in

the orange firelight of the temple.

Ahriman was no stranger to the impossible scale of the Mechanicum war engines, but he had

never seen anything to compare with the guardians of the valley.

Taller than Canis Vertex, the identical colossi that stood at the end of the valley were, like the

mountain they inhabited, enormous beyond imagining. Soaring, graceful and threatening, they were

mighty bipedal constructions that resembled an impossibly slender humanoid form. Crafted from

something that resembled porcelain or ceramic the colour of bone, they were manufactured as

though moulded from one enormous block.

Their heads were like sinuous helmets studded with glittering gems, and graceful spines flared

from their shoulders like angelic wings. These guardians were prepared for war. One arm ended in a

mighty fist, the other in an elongated, lance-like weapon, its slim barrel gracefully fluted and hung

with faded banners.

“Sweet Mother of the Abyss,” said Phosis T’kar at the sight of them.

Ahriman felt the calm he had established within him crumble when confronted by such powerful

icons of war. Like gods of battle, the towering creations rendered everything in the valley

inconsequential. He saw the same grace and aesthetic in these guardians as he had seen in the

valley’s formation. Whoever had willed this mountain into existence had also crafted these

guardians to watch over it.

“What are they?” asked Hathor Maat.

“I don’t know,” said Ahriman.

“Xenos Titans?”

“They have the look of eldar about them,” said Phosis T’kar.