Ahriman: Sorcerer by John French Page B

bloody chunk from his thigh. Astraeos turned as he began to fall. Blood was pulsing down his legs. A las-bolt clipped his shoulder.
    A figure stood three tiers above him. Astraeos had the impression of a sour face, and a whip-thin body beneath a ragged coat; that, and the silver of the guns in the man’s hands. Iobel twisted in his grasp, still conscious. He heard the gun cylinders turn, and the hammers cock. His mind flicked out to crush the rounds in the chambers.
    The guns fired. Astraeos saw the tongues of flame lick from the muzzles. Slow, so slow. He tried to turn aside, to refocus his mind into a shield. Something hit him in the chest. It felt soft and warm. Blood misted in front of his eyes. He felt his control of the warp falter, and the processes of his mind slipped free. He began to fall again. He still could feel nothing. The second round hit an instant later, and blew the front of his skull away.
    I am truly blind now, he thought as he hit the stone tier. Still there was no pain. Just a sense that somewhere locked behind walls of pain suppression there was a world of blades and razor edges waiting for him.
    +Ahriman.+ The sending was weak, almost a croak. His awareness was fading, his body and mind closing down to the barest essentials. Everything had become a slow surge of sound and movement behind a window of numbed pain. His will scattered into fragments. The warp crashed in. Memories and half-formed thoughts whirled in the tide.
    It was never going to work.
    Trust me, my friend.
    He was on the ground, slumped on the blood-slick stone. He tried to rise, tried to focus his will. There was a centre of calm within his mind, a pool of utter control that would save him if he could reach it. He would be able to heal himself, to see, to fight. It was there, just there, he could feel it in his grasp…
    His will slipped, and he felt the tangle of occult formulae bleeding out of his thoughts.
    Now, thought part of him. Ahriman will come for me now. I do not end like this. As I came for him, he will come for me. He gave me his oath. He is my master, my brother. He will–
    Darkness came down across his mind like a closing gate.
    Someone far away was screaming. As the dark took him he realised that he recognised the screaming voice. It was his.
    +What was that?+ Ahriman heard Sanakht’s voice rise out of the sea of thoughts. +Ahriman?+
    Ahriman did not answer. He had felt it too. A shift in the warp, like a wind suddenly changing direction. He could see the whole design in his mind like a cage of spun glass, each filament a connection between the real and the warp. Each one and a thousand more had created this moment, had brought them here, and had raised the Rubricae from the ground. And it was slipping out of control. The vital beacon of Astraeos’s mind had blinked out like a snuffed candle. And they were running out of time. He could feel uncertain futures branching ahead of him with every step.
    This must not fail. I must not fail.
    They were one level above where they needed to be. They would break through to the conclave chamber in one hundred and thirty-five seconds, but that would be too late.
    He felt time unravel around his mind like fraying rope. The glowing storm pattern fractured. Ahriman poured more of his will into it. The minds of his brothers shuddered as he drew on them.
    He felt all sense fall away. Everything became distant, just another pattern spinning through the quiet stillness. He could see the possibilities of the next nanosecond, multiply and collapse. He saw the Rubricae climbing over the walls, the molten stone squashing beneath their feet. He saw Astraeos fall. He saw a figure of fire waiting at the end of a billion branching futures. He was the storm, the still point around which the warp turned.
    He straightened, felt his muscles relax as he lowered his weapons to his side. Sanakht and the rest of the Circle moved closer, though he had given them no command. Their wills were his will,