Ahriman: The Dead Oracle Read Online Free PDF

emblems to hold the daemons they bind. I use my mind, and write the keys of summoning on my psyche.
    The daemon tilted its head back and bellowed. The rotting throng surged to answer the call.
    I was drowning in my own blood. Blisters had grown and burst on my tongue. The chamber around me was lost in a fever blur.
    I chewed the end of the name out, and suddenly I was on the filth soaked floor, shivering.
    The others were still fighting, still hacking, still burning as the lesser daemons threw themselves at us.
    Above us the daemon held still, flesh pulsing in a mockery of breathing. Its name was within me, divided and locked away, like a weapon broken into parts until it is needed, until it is allowed to be whole again. It looked down at me, hatred in its blood and pus-filled eyes.
    ‘Be gone,’ I said in a cracked voice. ‘Come not again, until I call.’
    Its shape broke apart, shredding from the edges, reducing until it was nothing. It watched me until the last gust of the invisible wind took its eyes.
    I passed into blackness then, unconsciousness falling across thought and sensation like a knife.
    The voice came from emptiness. ‘You are owed a question.’
    I recognised it. It was a voice I had not heard speak with a tongue since… since… a time , the memory of which I have bartered away.
    ‘Menkaura?’ I asked, and the image of the dead Oracle appeared as though created by the name. He no longer wore his silvered armour, or eyeless helm. An open, simple face watched me from above the red armour of the Thousand Sons Legion.
    I turned my gaze, and looked into the flat nothing of… wherever I was. I could feel nothing but the turning of my thoughts. It did not feel like a dream, but it did not feel real either. It did not feel like anything.
    I looked back to Menkaura.
    ‘Ask your question,’ he said.
    ‘You are dead,’ I said. His face did not even move. ‘Your soul was taken by the daemons of the Plague Father. You were unmade.’
    He just looked at me, unmoving, his expression blank.
    ‘What is your question? A question was bought, payment was made. It must be asked.’
    I shook my head. My thoughts were clear, but seemed to be coming together with frozen slowness.
    ‘It was Ahriman’s question, and he asked it of the daemon that had taken your place.’
    Menkaura did not move or speak. I smiled grimly to myself.
    ‘He knew that something would be there, but he kept that from me while making me ready to bind you. Lies, and half-truths, hidden ends and greater purposes. He has not changed.’ I laughed, the noise flat in the black space. ‘But he was right. If he had asked me to bind one of the exalted ranks of the neverborn I would have refused. I would never have stepped into such a trap, not for any promised reward. I should have expected the deception. I should have known. And now I have turned a creature sent against us into my slave.’ I paused, hissing breath between my teeth. ‘ Our slave. That was what he wanted, what he needed me for. Why dirty his hands with such things? Why swallow the poison himself?’
    ‘He is afraid,’ said Menkaura. My gaze snapped up to him, the words of the questions still lingering in my mouth. ‘He is afraid of what he has begun. A destiny awaits him. A chance to be many things draws closer with every step he takes. He can see that. It is like a mountain of fire burning the sky beyond the horizon. He sees its light, but not its shape. He knows that others see it too, powers that move in the mortal and immortal realms. And he fears them. He fears that he might fall on his journey, and that he might reach the end of it.’ Menkaura paused, nodding slowly as though in agreement with a voice that only he could hear. ‘He is right to fear.’
    I knew then that what I was seeing and hearing was not a dream. It was something else, a scrap of unfinished time resolving itself, a conversation that needed to play out for fate to be satisfied. The Dead Oracle’s words