Ahriman: Gates of Ruin Read Online Free PDF Page A

stillness.
    Ahriman had not moved.
    Silvanus’s foot hung above the deck, his step forwards falling.
    Ignis’s mouth was opened, air drawing into his lungs to shout a word.
    Fire wreathed Astraeos’s sword.
    And daemons turned towards us.
    All of them.
    +Fire the guns, mistress,+ came Ahriman’s thought.
    The daemons shot towards the Sycorax . Shrieks stabbed into my mind, and the world became a blur of sliced instants.
    The view beyond the viewport vanished behind clouds of snarling faces and claws.
    My mind formed the words of a ward.
    The song was a deafening shriek in my skull.
    I felt the ship shake as its guns fired.
    The view beyond the crystal vanished.
    Fire broke across my eyes, and my lenses dimmed as the Sycorax cloaked itself in detonations. The air blistered. Colour poured from nothingness, and the shrieks were rising and rising in my skull, blotting out every other thought.
    A slender arm reached out of nothing and peeled open the air. Ahriman exploded forward, his hand reaching for Silvanus as a whip crack of force pulled the Navigator from his feet. A wet, red claw snapped shut where Silvanus had been. A lithe figure stepped through, claws clacking on the deck.
    ‘Kill protocol!’ shouted Ignis. Credence came forward with a thunder rolling of gears. Sheets of flame spat from its fists. Pale flesh boiled to black smoke. Casings fountained from the cannon on its shoulders. Ignis was wading towards it, blades of silver and lightning growing from his fingers as he slashed at spinning shapes.
    More and more wounds were opening in the midair. The scent of hot blood and sugar filled my mouth. My eyes were filling with spinning shapes of colour. I sensed rather than saw the daemon. It lunged at me from beyond reality, its talon and body forming as it struck. I caught the blow on the head of my staff. Silver-laced iron shattered warp-born bone. The daemon spun back, screaming in pleasure and pain. I spoke a word in my mind and fire poured after it. It pirouetted aside and I saw my flame char its perfect skin.
    ‘You will be mine,’ it called to me in a voice of glass and razors. I looked for Ahriman, but the air was a curtain of fire and bleeding reality.
    Astraeos was striding forwards wreathed in cold light. A daemon spun to meet him, its arms wide. His sword was a burning sheet as he cut. The daemon ducked under his blow, sprang off the deck, and landed on his shoulders. Its arms folded around him as though in an embrace, its head dipping down beside his helm, claws reaching for his neck. I felt the pulse of raw power as invisible force ripped the daemon into the air, and tore it in two. Blood and ectoplasm misted the air. Its last sound was a laugh.
    The light and fury parted, and for a second I saw Ahriman. He was pulling Silvanus to his feet, a sphere of white-hot debris orbiting him. Daemons circled him, tumbling faster than my eyes could trace. I tried to reach out with my mind but, the warp was a wall of screams and sharpness. Then Ahriman turned his head, and his eyes met mine. The daemons were crowding around him, their claws clashing against the bright sphere around him.
    +Ctesias,+ he began, but I never heard the thought completed, because in that instant a claw snapped shut on my arm.
    Ceramite split like skin. Blood gushed out, and I was screaming, and screaming, and the pain was the burn of acid and the taste of honey. I froze, my body juddering in place. The daemon leant closer, tongue licking needle teeth. Blurred murder filled the Navigator’s sanctuary. The warp was pouring in through the ship’s hull. Pale figures spun amongst spears of flame and lightning. Blood and colour sweated from empty air. I could see Ahriman, his hands on Silvanus’s skull, unmoving even as a towering figure of pale skin and razor edges unfolded in the space behind him.
    +Ahri–+ I shouted with all my will. But the daemon’s claw bit deeper into my left arm, and fresh agony stole the warning
    Hush, the daemon