Текст книги "A Thousand Sons"

Автор книги: Грэм Макнилл

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CHAPTER FIVE

The Probationer/Creation Myths/Memories of Terra

THE INTERIOR OF Ahriman’s pavilion was his place of calm. Spacious and well-aired, it was a refuge from the heat of Aghoru. A walnut bookcase sat beside his bedroll, the books on its shelves like old friends, well-thumbed and read countless times, as much for their familiarity as their words.

A battered copy of Akkadian Literary Formssat alongside a translated copy of the Voynich Manuscriptand the Codex Seraphinianus. The Turba Philosophorumjostled for space with five of the seven cryptical Books of Hzanand the Clavis Solomoni, together with assorted other texts that would not attract unwelcome attention. But had anyone unlocked the hidden compartments secreted within the body of the bookcase, they would have found far more provocative tomes.

Thuribles hung from sandalwood rafters, and a brazier of green flame burned at the heart of the pavilion. Ahriman breathed in the heady mix of aromas, letting their calming influence ease his passage into the lower Enumerations. He stared into the flames and directed his will along the currents of the aether.

The future was mist and shadow, a blurred fog through which no meaning could penetrate. In decades past, fractured timelines had shone through the veil of the empyrean, and Ahriman had seen the echoes of futures yet to come as easily as a mortal man could guess what might happen were he to step off a cliff.

The tides of the Great Ocean were a mystery to him, as unknowable as the far side of the world was to mariners of old. Ahriman felt his concentration slipping, his frustration at his inability to divine the future threatening to overcome his control. Concentration was the key that unlocked all doors, lying at the heart of every practice of the Thousand Sons, and the means by which the greater mysteries could be unravelled.

Angry with himself, Ahriman shook his head and opened his eyes, uncrossing his legs and rising in one smooth motion. Dressed in crimson robes and a wide leather belt, from which hung a set of bronze keys, he had foregone his armour for this meeting.

Sobek stood by the entrance to his pavilion, clad in his ruby plates of armour, and Ahriman felt his disapproval.

“Speak,” commanded Ahriman. “Your aura wears at me. Speak and be done with it.”

“May I speak freely, my lord?”

“I just said you could,” snapped Ahriman, forcing himself to calm. “You are my Practicus, and if there is no candour between us you will never achieve the rank of Philosophus.”

“It galls me to see you punished thus,” said Sobek. “To be forced to train a mortal in the mysteries is no task for one such as you.”

“Punished?” asked Ahriman. “Is that what you think this is, punishment?”

“What else could it be?”

“The primarch has entrusted me with a great task, and this is but the first stage of it,” said Ahriman. “Lemuel Gaumon is mortal and he has a little knowledge and a little power.”

Sobek snorted in derision and said, “That’s nothing unusual in the 28th Expedition.” Ahriman smiled.

“True,” he said, “but he is a child taking his first steps, unaware that he walks blindfold along the edge of an abyss. I am to help him to remove that blindfold.”

“But why?”

“Because knowledge is a deadly friend, if no one sets the rules. It is our master’s wish that I illuminate this mortal,” said Ahriman. “Or do you doubt the word of the Crimson King?”

Many of the Emperor’s sons had earned honourable names over the decades of war, not least of whom was Horus Lupercal, Primarch of the Luna Wolves, beloved son of the Emperor. Fulgrim’s warriors knew their leader as the Phoenician, and the First Legion was led by the Lion. Magnus alone of his brothers had earned a series of less than flattering names over the decades of war: Sorcerer… Warlock…

So when Ahriman had heard his primarch was known among the 28th Expedition’s remembrancers as the Crimson King, he had allowed the name to stand.

Sobek bowed and said, “Never, my lord. Lord Magnus is the fountainhead of our Legion, and I will never doubt his course, no matter what.”

Ahriman nodded, sensing the presence of Lemuel Gaumon beyond the canopy of his pavilion. He felt the man’s aura, its light dull and unfocussed among the glittering flares of his fellow legionaries. Where they shone with purity and focus, Gaumon’s was blurred and raw, like an unshielded lumen globe, bright in its own way, but unpleasant to look upon for more than a moment.

“Gaumon is without, Sobek,” said Ahriman. “Send him in.”

Sobek nodded and left the pavilion, returning a moment later with a heavyset man dressed in a long crimson robe with loose sleeves and a crest of one of the Nordafrik conclaves stitched on his left breast, Sangha, if Ahriman remembered correctly. Lemuel’s skin was dark, though not the dark of those who had been tanned by the Aghoru sun. Ahriman smelled the man’s body odour even over the megaleion oil coating his skin.

“Welcome,” said Ahriman, modulating his accent to a more natural, fluid tone and indicating the rug beside the brazier. “Please, sit.”

Lemuel lowered himself to the rag, clutching a battered notebook to his chest as Sobek withdrew, leaving them alone.

Ahriman sat before Lemuel and said, “I am Ahzek Ahriman, Chief Librarian of the Thousand Sons.” Lemuel nodded vigorously.

“I know who you are, my lord,” he said. “I’m honoured you sent for me.”

“Do you know why I sent for you?”

“I confess I do not.”

“It is because you have power, Lemuel Gaumon,” said Ahriman. “You can see the currents of the aether that flow through the world from the Great Ocean. You may not know the names, but you know of what I speak.”

Lemuel shook his head, flustered and caught off guard.

“I think you must be mistaken, my lord,” said Lemuel, and Ahriman laughed at the sudden panic in his aura.

Lemuel held up his notebook and said, “Please, my lord, I am just a humble remembrancer.”

“No,” said Ahriman, leaning forward and projecting a measure of fire into his aura. “You are far more than that. You are a wielder of sorcery, a witch!”

It was a simple trick, an invisible domination to cow weaker minds. The effect was immediate. Waves of fear and guilt washed from Lemuel in a tide. Ahriman rose through the Enumerations to shield himself from the man’s raw terror.

“Please… I do no harm to anyone,” pleaded Lemuel. “I’m not a witch, I swear, I just read old books. I don’t know any spells or anything, please!”

“Be at peace, Lemuel,” chuckled Ahriman, holding up an outstretched hand. “I am teasing you. I am no fool of a witch hunter, and did not summon you to condemn you. I am going to liberate you.”

“Liberate me?” asked Lemuel, his breathing returning to normal. “From what?”

“From your blindness and limitations,” said Ahriman. ‘You have power, but you do not know how to wield it with any skill. I can show you how you can use what power you have, and I can show you how to use it to see things you cannot imagine.”

Ahriman read the suspicion in Lemuel’s aura, and eased it with a nudge of his own powers, as an animal is calmed by soft words and a gentle touch. The man had no barriers whatsoever in his mind, his psyche undefended and open to the tides of the Great Ocean. In that instant of contact, Ahriman knew the man’s every secret. He saw the barb of sorrow in the man’s heart and mellowed, understanding that the grief driving him echoed his own.

Power was no salve to that grief, and Lemuel Gaumon would realise that in time. That crashing realisation could wait though; there was no need to dash his hopes just yet.

“You are so vulnerable, and you don’t even realise it,” said Ahriman softly.

“My lord?”

“Tell me what you know of the Great Ocean.”

“I don’t know that term.”

“The warp,” said Ahriman. “The empyrean.”

“Oh. Not much really,” admitted Lemuel. He took a deep breath before continuing, like a student afraid of giving the wrong answer. “It’s a kind of higher dimension, a psychic realm where starships can travel far faster than normal. It allows astrotelepaths to communicate and, well, that’s about it.”

“That is broadly true, but the Great Ocean is so much more than that, Lemuel. It is the home of the Primordial Creator, the energy that drives all things. It is a reflection of our universe and we are a reflection of it. What occurs in one affects the other, and like a planetary ocean, it is not without its predators. Your mind, dull though it is, shines like a beacon in the ocean for the creatures that lurk in its depths. Were I to allow you to use your powers unchecked, you would soon be dead.”

Lemuel swallowed and placed the notebook beside him.

“I had no idea,” he said. “I just thought… I mean, I don’t know what I thought. I figured I was able to tap into parts of my mind others weren’t able to. I could see lights around people, their auras, and I learned to read them, to understand what they were feeling. Does that make sense?”

“It makes perfect sense. Those lights, as you call them, are aetheric echoes of a person’s emotion, health and power. A shadow self of that person exists in the Great Ocean, a reflection of their psyche that imprints itself in its currents.”

Lemuel shook his head with a wry smile and said, “This is a lot to take in, my lord.”

“I understand that,” said Ahriman. “I do not expect you to absorb it all just now. You will become my Probationer, and begin your studies on the morrow.”

“Do I have a choice in this?”

“Not if you want to live.”

“Tomorrow,” said Lemuel. “Lucky I happened to be selected for the 28th Expedition, eh?”

“If there is one thing I have come to know in my long years of study, it is that there is no such thing as luck when it comes to the positioning of the universe’s chess pieces. Your coming here was no accident. I was meantto train you. I have seen it,” said Ahriman.

“You saw the future?” asked Lemuel. “You knew I was going to be here and that this was all going to happen?”

“Many years ago, I saw you standing on the streets of Prospero in the robes of a Neophyte.”

“On Prospero!” said Lemuel, his aura shimmering with his excitement. “And a Neophyte, that’s one of your ranks, isn’t it?”

“It is,” confirmed Ahriman, “a very low one.”

“And you saw this? It’s the future? That’s amazing!”

Ahriman smiled at how easily mortals were impressed by such powers. How impressed and, more often, how frightened.

“In years past, I could travel the Great Ocean and open my eyes to a world of potential futures,” explained Ahriman. “To do that is no great trick, even mortals can do it. But to read those currents and sort meaning and truth from the chaos is a skill beyond all but the most gifted of seers.”

“Will I be able read it?”

“No,” said Ahriman, “not without decades of training by the Corvidae. To read the multi-dimensional patterns of the Great Ocean and lift meaning from the meaningless requires two modalities of thought. Firstly, the rapid, accurate and efficient movement of thought from concept to concept, whereby all ideas become one; and secondly, the halting of thought altogether, were one idea is reduced to nothing. I have an eidetic memory, a mind crafted by the greatest technologists of the forgotten ages that allows me to do this. You do not.”

“Then what canI do?”

“First you must learn how to shield your consciousness from danger,” said Ahriman, rising to his feet. “When you have accomplished that, thenwe will see what you can do.”

THE ALIEN TITANS towered above him, majestic and powerful, but Khalophis wasn’t impressed. True, they were bigger than Canis Vertex, but they had none of the robust brutality of the Warlord guarding the gates of the Pyrae cult’s temple. He stepped back, craning his neck to see the elongated curves of their mighty head sections.

Phosis T’kar had told Khalophis of the giant statues, and he’d wanted to see them for himself, to measure himself against them.

He turned from the towering constructs to face his warriors. A dozen Astartes from the 6th Fellowship stood behind the black altar, an object that reeked of dark rites of sacrifice. He’d listened at the Rehahti as his primarch had explained that the Mountain was a place of remembrance for the dead and was to be treated with respect. That didn’t change the fact that Khalophis simply didn’t trust the Aghoru.

Their masked leader stood with ten other tribesmen, all with their faces obscured by mirrored masks. Their presence had been a condition of allowing Khalophis and his warriors to come to the valley. That spoke of subterfuge. Why would the Aghoru not want the Legion to come to their valley?

“What do you have to hide?” he whispered, unheard by any save himself.

The masked leader of the Aghoru was looking at him, and Khalophis gestured towards the giant constructs.

“Do you know what these are?” he asked.

“They are the guardians of the Mountain,” said the tribesman.

“Maybe they were once, but now they are just expensive statues.”

“They are the guardians,” repeated the masked tribesman.

“They are Titans,” said Khalophis, slowly, “giant war machines. In ages past they could level cities and lay waste to entire armies, but now they are dead.”

“Our legends say they will walk again, when the Daiesthaibreak the bonds of their eternal prison.”

“I don’t know what that means, but they won’t walk again,” said Khalophis. “They are just machines, dead machines.”

He pointed up towards the giant head of the construct. “The princeps would sit up there if this was an Imperial Titan, but since it’s alien, who knows what’s really in there? A giant brain in a jar, a wired-in collective of self-aware robots, it could be anything.”

The Aghoru tribesman said, “What is a princeps? Is that a god?”

Khalophis laughed uproariously. “He might as well be. It’s not a term in favour, but what else really gets the sense of it across? An Astartes is a god to mortals, a Titan… Well, that’s the god of the battlefield. Even the Legions take note when the engines of the Mechanicum walk.”

“These have never walked,” said the tribesman, “not as long as we have known them. We hope they never do.”

“It’s Yatiri, isn’t it?” asked Khalophis, bending down.

“Yes, Brother Khalophis, that is my name.”

“I am not your brother,” he hissed. Even cut off from his powers and unable to communicate with his Tutelary, Khalophis felt energised, not with the surging tides of aether that normally empowered him, but by the act of domination.

“We are all brothers,” said Yatiri, calm in the face of his hostility. “Is that not what your great leader teaches? He tells us that we are all one race, divided by a great catastrophe, but drawing together once more under the watchful eye of the great Sky Emperor.”

“That’s true enough,” conceded Khalophis. “But not all who were divided wish to be drawn together again. Some of them fight us.”

“We are not fighting you,” said Yatiri. “We welcome your coming.”

“That’s your story,” said Khalophis, leaning on the altar and regarding the mortal through the green-hued lenses of his battle helm. Though this was designated a compliant world, Khalophis had his combat senses to the fore. The Aghoru falarica were picked out in white, the tribesmen themselves in red, though the threat indicators were negligible.

“We arethe story,” said Yatiri. “From the moment your leader set foot on our lands, we became part of it.”

“That’s remembrancer talk,” spat Khalophis. “And I don’t trust people who wear masks, especially masks like mirrors. I ask myself what they’re hiding behind them.”

“You wear a mask,” pointed out Yatiri, walking past Khalophis towards the cave mouth.

“This is a helmet.”

“It achieves the same thing, it conceals your features.”

“Why do you wear them?” asked Khalophis, following the tribesman towards the towering guardians of the Mountain.

“Why do you?” countered Yatiri without turning.

“For protection. My helmet is armoured and it has saved my life on more than one occasion.”

“I wear this mask for protection also,” said Yatiri, reaching the foot of the leftmost giant.

“From what? Your tribes do not make war on one another and there are no predators of any great size on this world. Where is the need?” asked Khalophis.

Yatiri turned and rested his hand on the smooth surface of the enormous foot. This close to the giants, the scale of them was truly breathtaking. Khalophis thought back to the fire-blackened ruins of Kamenka Ulizarna and the sight of Magnus the Red standing before the might of the greenskin colossus. That had been a battle to remember, and standing this close to an alien war engine made him fully appreciate the power of his beloved leader.

“Our legends speak of a time when this world belonged to a race of elder beings known as Elohim,” said Yatiri, squatting beside the enormous foot, “a race so beautiful that they fell in love with the wonder of their own form.”

Yatiri turned his gaze towards the cave mouth and said, “The Elohimfound a source of great power and used it to walk amongst the stars like gods, shaping worlds in their own image and crafting an empire amongst the heavens to rival the gods. They indulged their every whim, denied themselves nothing and lived an immortal life of desire.”

“Sounds like a good life,” said Khalophis, casting a suspicious glance into the darkness.

“For a time it was,” agreed Yatiri, “but such hubris cannot long go unpunished. The Elohimabused the source of their power, corrupting it with their wanton decadence, and it turned on them. Their entire race was virtually destroyed in a single night of blood. Their worlds fell and the oceans drank the land. But that was not the worst of it.”

“Really? That sounds bad enough,” said Khalophis, bored by Yatiri’s tale. Creation and destruction myths were a common feature in most cultures, morality tales used to control emerging generations. This one was little different from a hundred others he had read in the libraries of Prospero.

“The Elohimwere all but extinct, but among the pitiful survivors, some were twisted by the power that had once served them. They became the Daiesthai, a race as cruel as they had once been beautiful. The Elohimfought the Daiesthai, eventually driving them back to the shadows beneath the world. Their power was broken and they had not the means to destroy the Daiesthai, so with the last of their power, they raised the Mountain to seal their prison and set these giants to guard against their return. The Daiesthairemain imprisoned beneath the world, but their hunger for death can never be sated, and so we bring them the dead of our tribes at every turning of the world to ensure their eternal slumber continues.”

“That’s a pretty tale,” said Khalophis, “but it doesn’t explain why you wear those masks.”

“We are the inheritors of the Elohim’s world, and their destruction serves as a warning against the temptations of vanity and self-obsession. Our masks are a way of ensuring we do not fall as they fell.”

Khalophis considered that for a moment.

“Do you ever take them off?” he asked.

“For bathing, yes.”

“What about mating?”

Yatiri shook his head and said, “It is unseemly for you to ask, but you are not Aghoru, so I will answer. No, we do not take them off, even then, as pleasures of the flesh were among the greatest vices of the Elohim.”

“That explains why there’re so few of you on this world,” said Khalophis, wanting nothing more than to return to the encampment and re-establish his connection to Sioda. With the power of the Pyrae in ascendance, his Tutelary was a winged essence of shimmering fire. His connection with Sioda allowed Khalophis and the 6th Fellowship to burn entire armies to ashes without firing a single shot from their many guns.

The thought empowered him and he snarled, feeling his anger rise to the fore. It was good to feel controlled aggression after so long keeping it in check. This world was nothing to the Thousand Sons, and he railed against their enforced presence here when there were wars to be fought elsewhere. The Wolf King had demanded their presence in battle, and yet they wasted time on a forgotten world that offered nothing of value.

Khalophis reached out and ran his hand across the Titan’s foot, feeling the smoothness of its surface. Such a material must surely be brittle, and he longed to destroy it. He clenched his fists and dropped into a boxer’s stance.

“What are you doing?” cried Yatiri, leaping to his feet.

Khalophis didn’t answer. The strength in his arms built, the strength to shatter steel and buckle the hull of an armoured vehicle. He pictured exactly where his fists would strike.

“Please, Brother Khalophis!” begged Yatiri, putting himself between Khalophis and the enormous, splay-clawed foot. “Stop this, please!”

Khalophis distilled his focus into his clenched fists, but the blows did not land. His consciousness rooted itself in the eighth sphere of the Enumerations, but he forced his thoughts into the seventh, calming his aggression and shackling it to that more contemplative state of being.

“Your strength would be wasted,” cried Yatiri. “The guardians are impervious to harm!”

Khalophis lowered his arms and stepped back from the target of his violence.

“Is that what you think?” he asked. “Then what’s that?”

Rising from the ground and spreading into the foot of the towering construct like cracks in stonework, thin black lines oozed upwards like malevolent, poisoned veins.

“Daiesthai?”hissed Yatiri.

KNEELING ON THE sun disc of his glittering pyramid, Magnus closed his first eye and unshackled his body of light from his flesh. His captains and warriors required the Enumerations to achieve the separation from flesh, but Magnus had mastered spirit travel in the aether without being aware that such a thing might be considered difficult.

The Enumerations were philosophical and conceptual tools to allow a practitioner of the mysteries to sift through the myriad complexities involved in bending the universe to his will. Such was his gift, the ability to achieve the impossible without knowing it was beyond comprehension.

On a world such as Aghoru, that process was eased by the aetheric winds that blew invisibly across the planet’s surface. The Great Ocean pressed in, as though around a precious and delicate bubble. Magnus plucked a thought from the third Enumeration to express the concept; this world was a perfect sphere, structurally impossible to improve upon, yet the Mountain was a flaw, a means by which that perfect balance might be upset. When he had entered the cave with Yatiri, he had observed all the formalities of the Aghoru ritual of the dead, but the pointless chanting and somatic posturing had amused him with its naivety.

The Aghoru truly believed they placated some dormant race of devils imprisoned beneath the earth, but the time was not yet right to disabuse them of that notion. Standing in the dark of the cave, he could feel the vast pressure of the Great Ocean far beneath his feet, leeching up through wards worn thin by uncounted aeons.

There were no devils beneath the Mountain, only the promise of something so incredible that it took Magnus’ breath away. It was too early to be certain, but if he was right, the benefit to the human race would be beyond imaging.

What lay beneath the Mountain was a gateway, an entrance to an indescribably vast and complex network of pathways through the Great Ocean, as though an unseen network of veins threaded the flesh of the universe. To gain control of that network would allow humanity free rein over the stars, the chance to step from one side of the galaxy to the other in the blink of an eye.

There was danger, of course there was. He could not simply open this gate without the Great Ocean spilling out with disastrous consequences. The secret to unlocking this world’s great potential would be in careful study, meticulous research and gradual experimentation. As Yatiri intoned the meaningless rituals for the dead, Magnus had drawn a filament of that power upwards, and had tasted the vast potential of it. It was raw, this power, raw and vital. His flesh ached for its touch again.

The things he could do with such power.

Magnus rose up, leaving his corporeal body kneeling upon the sun disc. Freed from the limitations of flesh, his body truly came alive, a lattice of senses beyond the paltry few understood by those whose only life was that lived on the mundane realms of existence.

“I will free you all from the cave,” said Magnus, his voice unheard beyond the walls of the pyramid. His body of light shot through the pyramid’s peak, rising into the night sky of Aghoru, and Magnus relished this chance to soar without company or protection.

The Mountain reared over him, its immense presence towering in its majesty.

He rose up thousands of metres, and still it dwarfed his presence.

Magnus shot higher into the sky, a brilliant missile that twisted, spun and wove glittering traceries of light in the sky. His dizzying flight was invisible to all, for Magnus desired to remain alone, and masked his presence from even his captains.

He flew as close to the Mountain as he could, feeling the black wall of null energy radiating from artfully fashioned rocks and peaks designed with but a single purpose: to contain the roiling, unpredictable energies trapped beneath it.

Magnus spun around the mountain, relishing the aetheric winds whipping around his body of light. Ancient mystics had known the body of light as the linga sarira, a double of the physical body they believed could be conjured into existence with time, effort and will, essentially creating a means to live forever. Though untrue, it was a noble belief.

Onwards and upwards he flew. The atmosphere grew thin, yet the subtle body needed no oxygen or heat or light to sustain it. Will and energy were its currency, and Magnus had a limitless supply of both.

The sun was a fading disc of light above him, and he flew ever upwards, spreading his arms like wings as he bathed in the warmth of the invisible currents of energy that permeated every corner of this world. The world below was a distant memory, the encampment of the Thousand Sons a pinprick of light in the darkness.

He saw the vast swathe of the galaxy, the misty whiteness of the Milky Way, the gleam of distant stars and the impossible gulfs that separated them. Throughout history, men and women had looked up at these stars and dreamed of one day travelling between them. They had balked at distances so vast the human mind was incapable of conceiving them, and then bent their minds to overcoming the difficulties in doing so.

Now the chance to take those stars, to master the galaxy once and for all, was in their grasp. Magnus would be the architect of that mastery. The ships of the Thousand Sons hung motionless in the void above him, the Photep, the Scion of Prosperoand the Ankhtowe. Together with Mechanicum forge vessels, Administratum craft and a host of bulk cruisers bearing army soldiers of the Prospero Spireguard, they made up this portion of the 28th Expedition.

Up here, bathed in light and energy, Magnus was free of his earthly limitations, self-imposed though many of them were. Here, he saw with perfect clarity, his form unbound by the laws and bargains made by both him and his creator. Unlike his brothers, Magnus remembered his conception and growth, recalling with perfect clarity the bond that existed between him and his father.

Even as he was forged in the white heat of genius, he spoke with his father, listening to his grand dreams, the colossal scale of his vision and his own place within it. As a mother might talk to the unborn babe in her womb, so did the Emperor speak with Magnus.

But where a growing child knows nothing of the world outside, Magnus knew everything.

He remembered, decades later, returning to the world of his birth to travel its forgotten highways and explore its lost mysteries with his father. The Emperor had taught him more of the secret powers of the universe, imparting his wisdom while little realising that the student was on the verge of outstripping the teacher. They had walked the searing red deserts of Meganesia, travelling the invisible pathways once known as songlines by the first people to walk that land.

Other cultures knew them as ley lines or lung-mei, believing them to be the blood of the gods, the magnetic flow of mystical energy that circulated in the planet’s veins. His father told him how the ancient shamans of Old Earth could tap into these currents and wield power beyond that of other mortals. Many had sought to become gods, raising empires and enslaving all men before them.

The Emperor spoke of how these men had brought ruin upon themselves and their people by trafficking with powers beyond their comprehension. Seeing Magnus’ interest, his father warned him against flying too long and too high in the aether for selfish gain.

Magnus listened attentively, but in his secret heart he had dreamed of controlling the powers these mortals could not. He was a being of light so far removed from humanity that he barely considered himself related to his primordial ancestors. He was far above them, yes, but he did not allow himself to forget the legacy of evolution and sacrifice that had elevated him. It was his duty and his honour to speed the ascension of those who would come after him, to show them the light as his father had shown him.

In those early days, Terra was a changing world, a planet reborn in the image of its new master as shining cities and grand wonders were raised to mark this turn in humanity’s fortunes. The crowning glory of this new age was his father’s palace, a continent-sized monument to the unimaginable achievement of Unity. It took shape on the highest reaches of the world, a landmass of architecture to serve as an undeniable symbol of Terra’s new role as a lodestar for humanity. It would be a shining beacon in a galaxy starved of illumination during the lightless ages.

Magnus had studied the ancient texts his father had assembled within the Librarius Terra, devouring them all with a hunger that bordered on obsession. He stared into the heavens from the Great Observatory, toppled mountaintops with his brothers upon the Martial Spires and, greatest of all, soared upon the aether with his father.