Ahriman: Sorcerer by John French

brothers surrounded him, adding to his awareness, sharpening his focus. Eight minds unequal in strength, but perfectly balanced, perfectly unified. He was all of them, and they were all him. Together they were the Circle. Beyond them the human acolytes knelt, hands linked, white vapour pouring from their eyes as they fed the Circle with power.
    The moment was here, the moment he had prepared for. It would not last long. What they did now was a near impossibility, a miracle created through knowledge and foresight. They had created a bridge between two points in space from the High Citadel of the Sycorax to the surface of Vohal. As the Rubricae advanced the Circle would appear within its walls. Astraeos’s mind was the beacon, the thread drawing them through the night.
    The human acolytes shrieked as Ahriman pulled the strength from their minds and broke reality with it. The ghosts of stars rushed past them as they streaked through the warp towards the beacon of Astraeos’s call, towards the fortress on Vohal, towards Iobel. Time stretched out without end, and then reality snapped into place with a roll of thunder.
    Sanakht’s eyes opened. For a halted heartbeat of time he stood still, weapons undrawn at his side. The Circle had manifested in a high vaulted hall of stone. The storm had ripped the roof open, and the light of gunfire and lightning blinked down through the ragged holes. Snow spiralled in the air.
    Ahriman stood a pace away from him, his aura roaring like a blue and white flame above the horns of his helmet. Sanakht felt the heat and focus of the rest of the Circle. Once his mind had burned like theirs. Not any more; his power was a candle beside the inferno of Ahriman and the rest. He wondered, as he had many times before, if it would not have been better if Khayon had burned out all of his psychic ability; at least he would not have been able to see what he had lost.
    Better to be broken than to be the weakling amongst the strong .
    The first gunshot shattered his thoughts. A pulse of las-bolts smacked into Sanakht’s chest and shoulder. Blue lacquer blistered from the impacts. Thirty humans stood in the chamber, all clad in gloss-crimson armour. Sanakht kicked forwards. His swords slipped into his hands. Both were curved, their blades inlaid with lapis and copper. A black jackal head capped the pommel of the blade in his left hand, a white hawk head the right. Power shuddered through the jackal blade as he sent his will into its crystal core, and a blue power field sheathed the hawk blade.
    The crimson-armoured humans were moving, scattering into firing positions. Blast shutters began to slam down across the door out of the chamber. The air sang with the buzz of las-bolts. Sanakht covered the gap in a single double beat of his hearts. Red threat runes covered his helmet display.
    The humans tried to pull back while still firing. They were fast and disciplined, but they were still too slow. He took the first one across the neck with the jackal blade. The human exploded. Fragments of cooked meat pattered off Sanakht’s armour. He spun forwards, power and force swords weaving through limbs and bodies. He lifted the intentions from his opponents’ minds in the instant before they became action. Shots and blade thrusts reached for him, but touched onlyair. Here in the dance of blades and the spiralling of cuts he was still something of what he had been; here he was still a demigod of war.
    The blast door shut and sealed with a metallic ring.
    +Move, brother,+ shouted Ahriman’s thought voice. Sanakht ripped the hawk blade from a split torso as he felt the psychic pressure wave building behind him. Another human stood in front of him, its plasma gun levelled at his face. +Move now!+ Sanakht dived to the side. The human fired. A bolt of plasma flashed through the air above him.
    The psychic shockwave ripped through the chamber. The armoured humans lifted from their feet, spinning through the air, screaming for