Read Ahriman: Gates of Ruin for Free Online

how many daemons I named and summoned. The only thing that reached me in that age was a roar of pure focus and power which shivered through the warp. I recognised it. It was Ahriman, shouting into the beyond, the voices of Ignis and Astraeos joining him as he called the scattered ships of our fleet to come to his light. I heard that summons, but it did not shake me, and so I rolled on and my store of life and names began to dwindle, until I was just a voice speaking to itself.
    +Stop, Ctesias,+ came a voice. +It is done. +
    I heard and the voice checked the flow of names.
    +It is over. Dismiss them.+
    I felt my mouth moving. I did not want to obey. I wanted to let all the poisonous knowledge within me flood out and leave me empty.
    +Please, Ctesias.+
    I obeyed, and felt the acid of my tears blister my cheeks.
    The touch of a hand brought me back to awareness. I was still where I had been. Folds of charred ectoplasm and conjured flesh lay on the floor all around me. The air reeked of rotting meat and burning hair.
    The first thing I saw was Silvanus, sitting on his chair, head lolled back, eyes closed. He looked dead, but for the slow rising and falling of his chest. Astraeos stood beside him. Slime and burned blood lacquered his blue armour. The ship was still – still and quiet, no song, no screams of killing, or battle.
    ‘We are within the Antilline Abyss,’ said Ahriman from where he crouched at my side. His head was bare, and though he looked tired I recognised satisfaction in his expression. ‘The rest of the fleet reached us. Two ships were lost to the passage, but the rest are beside us while we rest and repair. There is still a long way and many more jumps until we are beyond the Eye, but the first step is complete. We are past the Gates of Ruin.’ He nodded carefully. ‘Thanks to you.’
    I looked down from his gaze. My hands and arms were shaking. My mouth filled with sharp edges and I felt weaker than a mortal child. It had become a familiar consequence of serving Ahriman, but this was the most spent and damaged I had been in a long, long time. I forced my limbs to stillness, and after a moment managed to get my tongue to work.
    ‘This is what you wanted me for?’ I said, my voice a croak. ‘When you negotiated my service, did you know it would come to this? The binding of the Maggot Lord, the Oracle, Be’lakor – was it just so that I could find and break the Gates of Ruin?’
    He rocked back, watching me carefully. The feather touch of his thoughts brushed through my own as he read the surface of my mind. I did not have the energy to resist or muster anger.
    ‘No,’ he said after a long pause. ‘I did not have exactly this in mind, but it is good to see first what you are capable of. You have served the future of our Legion well, but the purpose I have for you waits in the future’
    ‘The Legion…’ I snorted, and felt the tremors in my flesh begin again.
    ‘Yes,’ he said and straightened. ‘The Legion. We all have to have something to serve. Even those who believe they do not.’
    I shook my head, but could not muster a stronger objection.
    Looking back, with all life times that have piled into ages between that moment and this one, I think I loathe him more now than I ever did then. I write this and I think of all that I know now that I did not then, and all the ways in which fate would play out to make so much of those days seem like cruel jests. I look back and I realise that there is one reason above all the rest that I hate Ahriman.
    He was right.
    We all need something to serve.
    And we cannot choose what.

About the Author
    About the Author
    John French has written several Horus Heresy stories including the novellas Tallarn: Executioner and The Crimson Fist, and the audio dramas Templar and Warmaster . He is the author of the Ahriman series, which includes the novels Ahriman: Exile and Ahriman: Sorcerer , plus short stories including ‘The Dead Oracle’ and ‘Hand of Dust’.