A last figure walked from the gunship, arms raised in blessing, black-and-red armour gleaming with the crude runes of the greater aspects of the warp. A helm of brushed bronze enclosed his head, eyeless and mouthless. Books hung from his waist on chains, and his hand held a sceptre of black iron topped by a rough stone star. A thin human in a skin-tight black pressure suit walked one step behind its master. Its eyes were lidless and pinned open behind fluid-filled goggles. A vox-amplifier filled the space where its mouth would have been. It was the voice-slave of its master, bound by crude telepathy to the warrior that it followed like a shadow. That master had no name. He was just the Apostle of the Unspeaking. The lack of a name would have struck Ahriman as typically ridiculous if it had not been for the fact that the Apostle’s mind was both shadowed and elusive, his thoughts and emotions dissolving from sight as soon as Ahriman’s senses turned towards them. That and the fact that he had never heard of this warrior before made him wonder. Much had changed in the years of the Thousand Sons’ exile, and even before then there were millions of legionaries divided between Legions spread across the galaxy. But there was something about the blankness of this Apostle that made Ahriman wonder what soul moved beneath the bronze mask.

The Apostle bent down, dipped his fingers in the blood of one of the sacrifices and scattered it into the void. A single jagged word echoed from the Apostle’s mind. Around him, all the Word Bearers knelt.

Ahriman felt the psychic resonance in the shrine alter, unbalancing for a moment. He held his will steady, felt the patterns in his thoughts compensate.

+Do not do that again,+ he sent, edging the sending with flat command. The Apostle turned his blank helm towards Ahriman.

‘This is a sacred thing,’ rasped the voice-slave’s vox. ‘It must be marked. The rites and offerings must be observed.’

+Do nothing that I do not command. I will not see your ignorance undo this work.+

‘We do the work of the gods here, sorcerer. It was us that seeded the ground for this act long before you even saw your place in the universe. Do not think that this is a matter of knowledge and power. The gods laugh at such arrogance, but bless those who submit to them.’

Ahriman felt anger spark within him, and cut it away with a flick of will. He drew a breath and his humours balanced again.

He turned from the Word Bearers as Ignis approached from where his gunship had settled behind the rest. The Master of Ruin’s Terminator armour was the orange of furnace flame, and threaded with lines that echoed the tattoos that marked his face. His remade automaton walked behind him, its weapon mounts tracking the Word Bearers as they moved through the chamber.