[Horus Heresy 12] - A Thousand Sons by Graham McNeill

Author:Graham McNeill
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, Warhammer 40K
ISBN: 9781844168095
Publisher: The Black Library
Published: 2010-02-27T23:00:00+00:00

“PROSPERO IS A paradise,” began Ahriman, “a wondrous planet of light and beauty. Its mountains are soaring fangs of brilliant white, its forests verdant beyond imagining and its oceans teem with life. It is a world returned to glory, but it was not always so. Long before the coming of Magnus, Prospero was all but abandoned.”

Ahriman lifted a box of cold iron from the top shelf of his bookcase and placed it on the desk before Lemuel. He opened the lid to reveal a grotesque skull of alien origin, its surface dark and glossy as though coated in lacquer. Elongated, with extended mandibles and two enormous eye-sockets behind them, it was insectoid and utterly repellent.

“What’s that?” asked Lemuel, curling his lip in revulsion.

“This is a preserved exo-skull of a psychneuein, an alien predator native to Prospero.”

“And why are you showing it to me?”

“Because without these creatures, the cults of the Thousand Sons would not exist.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’ll show you,” said Ahriman, lifting the skull from the box. He held it out to Lemuel and said, “Don’t worry, it is long dead and its residual aura has long since dissipated into the Great Ocean.”

“Still, no thanks. Those mandibles look like they could tear a man’s head off.”

“They could, but that was not what made the psychneuein so dangerous. It was its reproductive cycle that was its most potent weapon. The female psychneuein is drawn to psychic emanations and has a rudimentary fusion of telepathic and telekinetic powers. When fertile, the female psychically projects a clutch of its eggs into the brain of a host being with an unprotected mind, vulnerable to the power of the aether.”

“That’s disgusting,” said Lemuel, genuinely horrified.

“That is not the worst of it.”

“It’s not?”

“Not by a long way,” said Ahriman, with amused relish. “The eggs are small, no larger than a grain of sand, but by morning the following day, they will hatch and begin to feed on the host’s brain. At first the victim feels nothing more than a mild headache, but by afternoon he will be in agony, raving and insane, as his brain is devoured from the inside out. By nightfall, he will be dead, his skull a writhing mass of plump maggots. In the space of a few hours, the grubs have picked the carcass clean and will seek a dark place to hide in which to pupate. By the following day, they will emerge as adults, ready to hunt and reproduce.”

Lemuel felt his guts roil, trying not to imagine the agony of being eaten alive by a host of parasites in his brain.

“What a horrible way to die,” he said, “but I still don’t understand how such vile creatures shaped Prospero and the Thousand Sons?”

“Patience, Lemuel,” cautioned Ahriman, sitting on the edge of the desk. “I am getting to that. You know of Tizca, the City of Light, yes?”

“It is a place I am greatly looking forward to seeing,” said Lemuel.

“You will see it soon enough,” smiled Ahriman. “Tizca is the last

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