Free Ahriman: Sorcerer by John French Page B

again. The warp rushed in like a razor-laden wind. She almost fell as it scored into her mind. The two figures on the platform burned in her senses: Cendrion with bright white brilliance, Astraeos with coiling red flame. Neon swirled across her eyes. Heat prickled her skin, and the smell of cold iron filled her nose.
    A storm of oil-black shadow and blue lightning was gathering around Cendrion’s hand. His armour glowed as the script etched into its plates lit. Astraeos was tensing against his bindings, veins writhing under scars. Blood beaded and clotted at the corners of his eye sockets. Iobel could feel the Traitor Space Marine’s mind trying to gather the winds of the warp, trying to shape it. Ectoplasm misted the air, glistening and glowing with sickly light. Cendrion reached out, his hand seeming to push against a great weight. Astraeos bared his teeth. His skin was deathly pale, the veins black worms writhing under his skin. Cendrion pushed his hand forward. The tips of the Grey Knight’s fingers pressed against Astraeos’s skull.

V – Intersection
    V
    Intersection
    Silvanus coughed. The dust was everywhere, sucking into his mouth with every breath. He pulled the black silk of his robe closer around him. The wind glided through the fabric, its cold fingers touching his flesh. A shiver took him and his whole body trembled. He really had no idea why he was here. In fact he had no idea why any of them were here, but it was his own presence that troubled him most. He spat and tasted the gritty chemical taste of the dead world mixed with the scent of smoke. It had been called Vohal, and the figure sitting on the cracked stones of the tower top was called Hemellion, and was apparently its ruler.
    Had been its ruler, corrected a voice in the back of Silvanus’s thoughts. The world the man had ruled was gone, and its people were dead or would be soon enough. Hemellion looked exhausted, and old, and broken. Dust coated his balding head, matted his beard, and had turned the colour of his rich clothes to dull brown. Ahriman stood above the broken king. His armour was blue, but the diffused light blurred it to aquamarine. Horns curled from the brows and cheeks of his helm, and thin pennants of cloth and parchment snapped in the wind. To his left, Kadin stood, the pistons of his limbs creaking as they clogged with dust. The warrior was bareheaded, the glossy scar tissue of his face set into a frown. The rest of the Circle stood around Ahriman. Sanakht was just behind his master, gleaming in polished blue plate; he seemed stooped even though he stood tall, his jackal-crested helm tucked under his arm, his face a carving of focused calm. Ignis stood further away, flanked by a hulking automaton which clicked to itself.
    Silvanus did not like being so close to all of them at once. Their presences crackled against each other like storm clouds; his teeth were itching and he could taste ozone. That was never a good sign.
    Hemellion looked up at the Space Marines. Silvanus saw green eyes glitter in hollowed sockets. There was still strength there, more strength than Silvanus would have believed anyone in such a position could possess at such a moment.
    ‘Why?’ said Hemellion through cracked lips.
    Ahriman reached up and removed his helm with a hiss of releasing pressure. His blue eyes settled on the human. Silvanus’s teeth trembled. Hemellion’s stare did not waver. There was hate there, Silvanus saw, a hate that could overcome even the fear of standing at the feet of a demigod who had just destroyed your world and everything that you cared for.
    Out beyond the walls of the stone fortress, the dry plains extended away to meet a horizon lost somewhere behind the clouds of dust. Now and then the cries of a starving animal drifted up to Silvanus’s ears from the distance. At least Silvanus hoped it was an animal. The defoliant-agent had done its work quickly, killing all the plant life and reducing it to dust. When the winds