[Warhammer 40K - The Horus Heresy 52] - Heralds of the Siege by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Military Fiction, Science Fiction, Warhammer 40K
ISBN: 9781780308906
Published: 2018-09-18T11:46:28+00:00

The Khan drew his tulwar, and the green light of the machines glittered on the curved edge of the blade.

‘Get away from him,’ he ordered.

But Malcador looked up, out at the arcane columns that towered over the slab, at the coils and the sigil-daubed ritual plates. The runes were glowing now, racing out of control. Ether-traps blew, showering the floor of the chamber with smashed crystal.

‘Too late,’ the Sigillite said, an edge of awe in his cracked voice, and he started to back away. ‘He comes.’

The Khan pushed the Sigillite aside and reached out for the medicae slab.

He never made it. The aegis broke with a scream of torn atmosphere, hurling menials to the floor and cracking the stone flags. The chamber’s interior erupted into eye-burning light, and the machines blew apart in unison. Hassan was thrown hard into the far wall, and Malcador was bent double. The Khan barely kept his feet, leaning steeply against the hurricane of raw energy.

Arvida’s body was swamped in a nova of numinous light-spores, his outline lost behind a howl and a shriek of warp-rage. A chorus of screaming tore out—the roars of a tortured legionary, the bellows of a far deeper pain, and something else again, all overlapped, jumbled into a fractured mess of agony.

Malcador gained his feet, bracing his staff against the maelstrom and squinting into the inferno. ‘The shard is here,’ he breathed.

The dazzle of ether-brilliance blew itself out, revealing the husks of destroyed medicae stations at its epicentre—a broken slab, and a lone creature, man-shaped, staggering amidst the wreckage. It burned like the sun, a white hole in the world’s fabric, writhing and shimmering, its shifting outline thundering like the planet’s winds unleashed. It was screaming still, its back arched in the pain of its reanimation, its limbs jerking, its eyes streaming with strands of curling plasma.

The Khan strode towards it, fighting as if against a gale. ‘Sorcerer!’ he cried, holding out his empty hand. ‘Come back to us!’

Malcador placed his staff-heel onto the chamber’s floor, setting it against the tearing winds. ‘No,’ he muttered, signalling discreetly to the cowled figures recovering their positions all across the chamber. ‘He must not fight it.’

At the sound of those words, the creature that had been Arvida suddenly turned. Its blazing eyes locked on to the Sigillite. It seemed to swell, to grow, sucking energy towards itself until it was nigh as huge as the Khan himself. It roared in pain and fury, threw its lightning-crowned fists out wide and sent a wall of kinetic force crashing into Malcador, hurling him across the buckling chamber floor.

The Sigillite struggled to get back to his knees, his face streaked with blood, his robes billowing. The unholy creation poured its soul out in a maelstrom of misery and anguish, stripping the runes from the metalwork, blistering the bronzed casings of the cracked warp machines. The fires raged, and its empty eyes sprayed raw starlight, bleaching the stone as white as phosphor.

Malcador gasped against the cold power of it, but his disappointment was tinged with fear.

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