Prospero.
An ethereal gate materialized from nowhere. Amon was the first to step through, treading upon the ashen bones that carpeted the dust-covered graveyard.
Ahzek Ahriman followed close behind, the horrific image of his apprentice Sobek reduced to lifeless dust replaying endlessly in his mind, gnawing at his heart.
Uthizzar listened to the murmuring whispers of ghosts, the memories of doom echoing in his mind.
Kalophis inhaled the acrid scent of scorched metal, his gaze fixed on the fused, solidified ruins.
Hathor Maat, last to emerge, carried the Book of Magnus in his hands and asked Amon:
"How are we to find the fragments of our father?"
"We must return to the moment he was shattered," Amon explained.
The Thousand Sons recalled that soul-searing instant in their minds, and nodded in silence.
Ahriman ascended to the sixth level of the Enumeration, the ruins rose from the ground, revealing their former splendor.
He walked toward the sunlit city, his gaze sweeping over the countless citizens practicing Taijiquan in the parks, soothing their restless minds.
His eyes lingered on the Vosani Restaurant along the Street of a Thousand Lions, where he had once shared baked pastries with another of his Practicus, Lemuel Gaumon.
Painful memories stirred. He had carefully trained only two apprentices.
Sobek had turned to dust; Lemuel had broken with him. And Tizca itself had been reduced to ashes by the Wolves.
Ahriman forced himself to collect his thoughts, bury his grief, and walk toward the spectral shadow of the Pyramid of Photep, surrounded by swirling black sand.
The five pressed forward amid hoarse, dying whispers and mournful cries, the dim outlines of hundreds of Legion warriors flickering in and out of sight.
"Wolves," Uthizzar warned.
A tide of beasts surged from underground, their bodies composed of not-yet-cooled volcanic rock.
Some were upright, half-man half-beast, with eyes like glowing coals and jagged fangs of darkness revealing burning embers.
Others were powerful four-legged creatures with high-arching spines.
He thrust his power fist into a claw aimed at his head, shoving a twin-linked bolter into its charred chest.
Nine bolts detonated in an exact pattern within the wolf-beast's body, dissolving the spectral force that sustained it.
The Athanaean arts were nearly useless here, the specters were embodiments of hunger and death, their faint thoughts bared with no concealment.
The Corvidae arts could still unleash psychic sorcery in battle, but their precognitive sight was blurred.
Hathor raised his hand, Pavoni arts easily froze the searing lava-heat within the specters.
He clenched his fist, the wolf-beast exploded into pebble-like fragments.
Kalophis unleashed cascading flames that swept toward the iron-grey specters.
The Pyrae Magister Templi, standing at the forefront of the Great Ocean's tide, became the battlefield's king, wolf after wolf vaporized in an instant.
With a wave of his hand, flames within hundreds of wolf-specters died out, branding them into clustered stone statues.
"Now you show your true face at last," Ahriman said mockingly, his force-staff blazing with deadly runes that blasted the statues to rubble.
"ROAR!"
A deafening howl rang out, all the Wolf-specters halted.
They raised their heads in unison, unleashing a piercing chorus of cries.
Uthizzar's expression shifted, he asked bitterly: "That executioner did not die, what is it?"
"You may call him the Daemon Wolf-King, he has stolen a form he does not understand and walks here in the flesh," Amon said.
Uthizzar nodded, recalling the torn veil during their father's battle with the executioner.
Amon struck the altar of debris with his staff. "Hathor, it is time."
Hathor, holding the Book of Magnus, stepped onto the obsidian altar.
Ahriman moved to his front; with Amon behind and Uthizzar to the right, their linked minds became his eyes.
Kalophis's blazing fire surged into Hathor, lifting him skyward.
Hathor let out a grunt, his form flickered between dark gold and crimson; one eye rapidly vanished; his flowing hair whipped wildly.
He had become the Crimson King.
Radiant light burst forth, where it passed, the ghost-wolves crumbled to nothing.
The burning colossus with the Wolf-King's face, seeing its former and future foe, unleashed a terror both wolflike and not.
Both avatars hurled themselves at each other, the crimson one-eyed angel and the daemon-infested dust collided.
They tore at each other like beasts, ash and light-wreathed vortex churning into a storm of shadow and radiance that swept the surroundings.
With a cataclysmic explosion, the remaining framework of the Pyramid of Photep collapsed.
Both avatars crashed to the ground, the impact throwing up a mushroom cloud of debris and dust.
The beast-avatar rose first, no longer mimicking the Wolf-King's form, it had become a frenzied, shattered daemon.
It bent down, seized Magnus, and raised him high overhead.
"Now," Amon warned.
"We are not here to taste failure again, but to find hope."
His and Ahriman's eyes blazed, precognitive sight pierced the infinite dimensions of time.
Aetheric light merged as one, the Book of Magnus drank deeply of the Thousand Sons' power.
A torrent of chaotic, indistinct images surged through Hathor's mind.
Hathor witnessed again the wolf-monster lifting Magnus high and smashing him down across its knee.
The Crimson King's body exploded, his mind shattered.
An impossibly intricate network of geometric patterns burst forth, shifting, ever-changing eyes gleaming; rotating wheels and spirals of energy intricately intertwined.
The instant of Magnus's death replayed, his soul shattered into countless spinning shards.
With his Corvidae eyes, Hathor's consciousness pursued thousands of soul-shards.
Following the law of convergence, most had not entirely broken free of the Crimson King's will, awaiting the future reassembly into a single whole.
But six shards had fully separated from their source:
One shard, belonging to a friendship he could not forget, landed upon a familiar vessel: the Shadow's Sovereignty.
One lingered at the place of judgment and betrayal, but was swallowed by black mist and vanished without a trace.
One resided in a lost library of an exiled king, tens of thousands of volumes written in Phoenician letters groaning upon overloaded shelves.
One inhabited an inhuman prison, cold and unfeeling, isolated from the aether. It was steeped in agony, guilt, and pure, unadulterated hatred.
One, a soul-devouring god crouched at the foot of a mountain, guarded by monumental sentinels.
The final fragment lay at the center of humanity. Once made brilliant by a grand vision, its flickering light now dimmed day by day alongside ruined dreams.
On Terra, the figure seated upon the Golden Throne snapped His eyes open.
He knew He could no longer suppress the catastrophic shockwave caused by His proud and arrogant son, nor keep it contained beneath the Imperial Palace.
A psychic tsunami roared and erupted across the mountain ranges, its violent torrent battering the mind of every living soul on Terra.
....
If you enjoy the story, my p@treon is 30 chapters ahead.
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