The Crimson King by Graham McNeill

Author:Graham McNeill
Language: eng, eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Published: 2017-04-11T10:52:05+00:00

Fourteen

The quest

Sorrows to spare

The mountain

How long had it been?

The horologs had been the first system to fail. Amon no longer knew how long he had followed his father’s trail across the Planet of the Sorcerers. Years, if the wheezing of his armour’s servos and the rust eating its plates was any guide.

Or had he only recently set out from the ruins of the Obsidian Tower?

Time moved strangely within the Great Ocean, and many were the tales of travellers undone by its temporal chaos. Some flew its tides for a day only to return and find the empires they once knew had gone to dust. Others emerged centuries before their birth, strangers in lands once familiar.

Dust-stiffened rags swathed the remains of Amon’s armour, fluttering in frozen winds as he left the ruins of Gnoph-Keh’s crystalline cathedral behind.

Magnus had passed this way, lost and alone.

And where the Crimson King trod, miracles followed.

Everywhere Magnus worked his wonders, the aetheric winds carried rumour of them to those with the wit to hear it. Amon had followed every such rumour, tormented by the pain of his ruined body and the guilt of knowing his father had fallen to madness because of him.

In his seemingly endless quest, Amon had seen great and terrible things, witnessed the sins of the past and the future’s many dooms. He saw ghosts of heroism unmatched and suffered the echoes of deeds too terrible to imagine. He fought countless battles, defeated hosts of monsters, but remained always two steps behind the Crimson King.

In his darker moments, Amon almost believed his father did not want to be found. Every time such disloyal thoughts rose from the abyssal depths of his mind, despair took him until some fresh rumour lured him onwards with the promise of finally locating the primarch.

Such a rumour had muttered of Gnoph-Keh, a minor Pavoni known to possess only limited grasp of his Fellowship’s artes. The aether winds whispered of how he had raised tens of thousands of ancient crystal corpses to craft a titanic ossuary of gleaming glass. They spoke of him waging war against his Prosperine brothers with an invincible army of yhetees wrought from ice and breath.

Trying not to let hope blind him to the likely falsehood of this latest rumour, Amon bade his Stormbird follow the muttering winds to its source. Like him, the gunship had changed greatly in these strange times, its silhouette slowly assuming a more hawk-like aspect, its mien transforming from screaming raptor to patient hunter.

As soon as he had laid eyes upon the crystalline ossuary, Amon recognised his father’s aether-craft. The Crimson King’s power bled from every reflection and star-bright pinpoint of light.

Gnoph-Keh barred its gates against him, so Amon summoned his awesome power and proceeded to demolish the crystal ossuary piece by piece. A thousands-strong host of ice-born yhetees sallied forth from the splintering fortress, but they were crudely made things and insultingly easy to destroy. The will animating them was weak and Amon easily unravelled the raptures that gave them life.

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