Lemuel Gaumon lay prone on a rise in Aghoru's salt flats, flanked by his two Remembrancer companions, Camille Shivani and Kallista Eris.
He stared through the heat-haze at the Thousand Sons warriors standing at attention along the roadway.
Their polished helmets were inlaid with gold and amethyst; their crimson armor was resplendent.
The aura-reader, Lemuel, discerned the auras: Hathor Maat's Third Fellowship, the Illuminators, glowing brightly.
Ahzek Ahriman's First Fellowship, the Corvidaes, with their flickering, shifting halos.
Phosis T'Kar's Second Fellowship, the Raptoras, with their heavy, solid barriers.
Khalophis's Sixth Fellowship, the Pyraes, with their pillars of searing flame, Lemuel hadn't known they had arrived.
Over five thousand Thousand Sons blazed with light, stinging Lemuel's eyes.
He focused on the front of the formation, where eighty-one Scarab Occult Terminators stood out.
Their white helmets bore golden crests; their chests were adorned with emerald scarabs.
Their auras were more brilliant than the other Thousand Sons, but were completely overshadowed by the four Magister Templis and Ankhu Anen, Guardian of Prospero's great library, like stars compared to the moon.
Lemuel squinted, still adjusting, when a brilliance blazed into his eyes.
The light of five moons was eclipsed by a descending sun.
"Lord Nareth..." Lemuel whispered.
Camille Shivani and Kallista Eris followed his gaze, looking up to see a black Aquila Lander descending slowly.
Before the dust cloud had settled, Hathor Maat's eyes gleamed and he strode forward.
Ahriman and the other three, taken aback for a moment, followed.
"Lord Nareth." Hathor Maat, in the presence of outsiders, could not use familiar forms of address.
His eyes flickered to obsidian, silently begging the Black Emperor's forgiveness for this impropriety.
"Lord Nareth..." Ahriman and the other three bowed to the Primarch.
Nareth nodded, his gaze sweeping over the four. He gestured to Pat, who stood to his right and rear.
"I recently acquired a new psychic pet. I happen to have five; they are yours."
Santiago Borgkamp , the daemonologist, who had accompanied Pat to the special dimension and discovered a tribal settlement of over a hundred Wyvachs, stood to Nareth's left and rear.
After providing for the contracts of fifty-two Shadows of Order, enabling their advancement to Sequence 5 "Dreamwalker," there were still one hundred and sixty-three Wyvachss remaining.
Besides the newly advanced Captain Diana Pauline, the others he had in mind were Hathor Maat, Ajak Khan of the White Scars, and the Apothecary Narsine.
To avoid drawing attention to his close ties with Ajak Khan and Narsine, Nareth decided not to advance them before the Heresy.
Giving one to Hathor alone would be too conspicuous, so he offered five.
More importantly, the other four had been "linked" in the third layer and "corroded" in the fifth layer of the Kingdom of Disorder Establishing a psychic link with them might yield unexpected gains.
Ahriman, Phosis T'kar, Khalophis, and Anen, seeing the psychic creatures beating their wings in their transparent crystal cages, expressed their thanks in unison.
"Thank you for your generous gift."
After thanking him, they all looked at Hathor Maat.
He understood. He said to the Black Emperor, "Lord Nareth, our gene-father entered the mountains long ago and has not returned."
"We were ordered not to disturb the natives."
"Would you please go and bring our father back?"
Seeing the anticipation in the eyes of Ahriman and the other three, Nareth nodded with a smile.
"Of course. I will help you find him."
Feeling the Thousand Sons' anxiety, Nareth didn't delay. He set off immediately, with Santiago and Pat, escorted by the five Magister Templis and the Scarab Occult Terminators, towards the mountains.
On the hill, Camille stared blankly at the majestic, perfect form as it departed, before snapping back to reality. She tugged at her camera in frustration.
"I forgot to take a picture."
Callista, the divination-psyker, shuddered, shaking herself from the vision she had glimpsed.
"I must see Lord Nareth." Lemuel, thinking of the blazing light, his eyes shining.
He believed that if the shining giant would grant his aid, his Marika would surely return safely.
"Impossible. Lord Nareth will not see you," Camille said softly.
"There must be a way. I will see Lord Nareth," Lemuel said resolutely.
As they spoke, Nareth's obsidian eyes had already seen the massive stones crawling with rotten vines.
The "Mentor of Disorder" stared at the shimmering spiritual luster, thinking to himself.
'Definitely potion ingredients.'
'Given their connection to death, they are undoubtedly from the Death Pathway.
'So Aghoru was worth the trip.'
Hathor Maat, seeing the dead-stones a moment after the Primarch, reported, "My Lord, those stones are objects of worship for the Aghorui."
"Scholars who studied them in secret have confirmed that the dead-stones are impervious to water and fire."
He continued, as the mountains grew closer, "Before our father entered the mountains, we accompanied him to speak with Yatiri, the chieftain of the Aghoru's Ahgrul tribe at the mountain's foot. He asked us not to enter the canyon."
"He said it is a sacred place to the Aghorui."
"Our father forbade us from entering."
Nareth nodded, striding forward.
A drumbeat, rising and falling, sounded from the canyon entrance. Ahgrul warriors raised their weapons.
Nareth did not stop. The warriors, in sunset-colored robes and leather breastplates, stared at the majestic giant and slowly parted.
Santiago and Pat followed. The Thousand Sons halted at the canyon entrance.
Santiago, following the Black Emperor, surveyed the mountains. The countless paths were distinct, their curves and lines extending to the heavens, like a dream.
The angles of each cliff and ravine were precisely placed. Stone pillars were evenly spaced, adhering to mathematical exactness.
"Every feature here adheres to geometric proportion. It cannot be natural."
"Some supernatural force shaped these mountains..." the daemonologist marveled.
He had never imagined that anyone, no, only a god like his Lord, could possess such power.
"Indeed, this place is not natural."
Nareth looked towards the end of the canyon, where two massive, elegant constructs stood, taller than Warlord Titans.
Their heads were set with gleaming gems. Their pale, bone-like forms were seamless.
"Aeldari Titans," Santiago and Pat said in unison.
The daemonologist studied the statue-like constructs. "They are long dead, weathered by time."
Nareth said nothing. Under normal circumstances, yes. But with external interference, such as Tzeentch's corruption, they could awaken.
He did not act recklessly. He did not want to attract Tzeentch's attention.
His purpose here was the dead-stones, and to have Santiago and fifteen other "Scribes," who had already marked three coordinates, complete the final mark and advance to Sequence 5 "Traveler."
Pat tore his gaze from the Aeldari Titans, looking at their feet.
Over a thousand men and women in robes and mirrored masks surrounded a large basalt altar.
They chanted in low voices, pounding on drums.
Pat looked at the altar: earrings, bracelets, straw dolls, and beaded necklaces.
"Offerings?" the Chaplain Master said, in Vostoyan. "Heresy."
"This mountain range is a land of the dead," Nareth said, staring at the dark, gaping cave behind the altar.
"One billion Aeldars are entombed in that lightless cavern."
"My Lord, shall we enter?" Santiago's gaze was deep, fixed on the dark cave.
He felt that the entrance led to another dimension, another special space.
"Not yet," Nareth said, shaking his head. He looked towards the entrance of the cave, where a crimson giant in golden armor had appeared.
Magnus emerged. His eye shifted to gold.
"Nareth."
"Magnus." Nareth moved around the altar to meet him.
"I would have thought you'd be at Ullanor. I didn't expect to find you in this backwater."
He felt Magnus's subtle probing and smiled.
"This place is not simple. Your three months here prove that."
Seeing Nareth evade the question, Magnus didn't press. He introduced the masked chieftain beside him.
"Yatiri, chieftain of the Ahgrul tribe."
"The local mythology is quite interesting. Would you care to hear it?"
Nareth nodded, looking at Yatiri.
"Of course. I am always willing to listen."
"In our legends, the first race to inhabit this world were called the Erohim." Yatiri's High Gothic was flawless, Magnus had taught him well.
"The Erohim built a vast empire among the stars, ruling like gods."
"But they were without restraint. Their long lives were filled with desire."
Nareth knew the Erohim were what the Aghorui called the Aeldars. He listened patiently as Yatiri continued.
"They were ultimately corroded by their own decadence and debauchery. Their entire race was destroyed in a single night. Most of the Erohim died, but that was not the worst of it."
"The few survivors were twisted by the corrupting power. They became the Dasai."
"The Erohim, their power near its end, could not destroy the Dasai. They could only drive them here, using their last strength to create this mountain range to imprison them."
Nareth nodded. He knew the Dasai were what the Aghorui called the creatures of Chaos.
The mountain range was a cage, built by the Aeldar to imprison Chaos. The dead-stones were a supernatural substance, forged by the death-agony of a billion souls, a potion ingredient for the Death Pathway.
As he pondered, Yatiri continued.
"The Dasai are imprisoned deep within the earth, but their hunger for life is never sated. So, for every rotation of the world, we bring our tribal dead here to perform the ritual, to keep them slumbering."
"The Erohim's fall is a warning. It teaches us to resist vanity and self-love. That is why we wear these masks."
Magnus, having listened to Yatiri's tale with a smile, his golden eye blazing, spoke.
"Nareth, though this is a land of the dead, I can feel that billions of paths extend from here, connecting to the vast starry void..."
Nareth listened to Magnus's enthusiastic account. He already knew that the entrance to the Webway lay here.
He remembered that it was by using the knowledge gained here that Magnus would, not long after, send a message to the Emperor through the Webway, reaching the heart of His great project, the Webway portal beneath Terra.
Without discovering the Webway, his psychic message would not have reached such a convenient location. The Emperor had only told Malcador and a select few; He had not revealed the laboratory's location to Magnus.
The laboratory itself was shielded by a psychic barrier of the Emperor's own making, almost impossible to breach from outside. But it could be penetrated from the Webway entrance within.
Aghoru was Tzeentch's key location for His chosen Primarch, Magnus.
It was all part of Tzeentch's grand design: to lure Magnus to investigate the Webway's secrets; for Magnus, in sending his message, to use the most effective means, the Webway, thereby shattering the Emperor's Webway project, incurring His punishment, and ultimately falling to become His Daemon Primarch.
As Nareth and Magnus conversed, beyond the veil, within the Impossible Fortress, shifting eyes watched the two Primarchs.
....
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