Space War: City of Light.

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d powers that went far beyond standard Librarius disciplines but since his

st of the gunship. He was too late to save the pilot. The man's skull had already crumpled. There was also damage to the landing gear and two missile launchers. A fuel line had been severed but the fusion reactor was intact, as was most of the hull's ceramite pla

he air trembled with a groaning howl. It was a fraction of a second, truncated and left the only moveme

seeing echoes of other dimensions. By stepping outside the natural, temporal constraints, he had become interspatial. Was this a glimpse of the warp, he wondered, seen from another angle? Or was it another place, so foreign as to be

when he and Mariah had lost whole months examining one incomprehensible detail. Blood Angels were long-lived, even by the standa

ey matter, glistening and bulbous, like a grotesque blossom. While Mephiston had been examin

culus. Mephiston's masterworks, The Glutted Scythe, was strapped to his armour in a gilded reliquary, a repository of every blood right and discipline he had ever mastered, but he had no need to refer to the text, mouthing the

. But since his second rebirth in the, under the knives of the Adeptus Mechanicus, the growth had accelerated. While Qvo-87 dismantled his body, Mephiston's mind had been elsewhere, performing another act of remaking. He had bound a darkness into his soul, absorbing the savage heart of the Blood Angels curse. The warp has shown him a black angel, a terrifying manifestation of the Chapter'

n's obliterated skull. The pilot's head was thrown back at an

through them, into the sp

ould see the moment at which he realised a xenos fig

asked himself a dreadful questi

ht be considered ambiguous, necromancy was not one. It was exactly th

lised that me might be able to do it. He might be able to re

rated by the idea. What, really

h, quoting from the scrolls of her father S

iah was still motionless but somehow, she had follo

as recalling a warning Mariah gave him years ago. The quote had ru

rous. When everything is possible, nothing is safe. The potential for harm he carried was incalculable. If the Chief Librarian of the Blood Angel

ruined face and realised just ho

the laser blast and repaired the gunship, but they were still surrounde

ensed the limits of his power. Even now, he was not omnipotent. The galaxy was leaning its weight against him, willing him to resume his proper place in the con

the being's psyche, he examined its physicality, studying the rangy muscles and ligaments beneath i

Gene-bred hunger flared in his throat, an

, his psychokinesis would not be powerful enough to attack the xenos fighters or immolate

ether, binding and melding them to his will. The molecules began to clump together, forming a clot. Once he was sure it was large enough, Mephiston though himself across the void and into another pilot's blood. He repeated the process, creating an

his own hulking, genhanced frame, free of the baf

us and Mariah and the other Blood Angels were still tormented statues, silently howling as he

n of noise as he re-entered time's violent slipstream. Ant

le. The ship tumbled and rolled until Mephiston, and Mariah reached o

celus, staring at the bloo

to save the pi

respect flashing in his eyes as he saw the xenos fighters

aised his voice so the rest of the Blood Angels could

as engulfed by light. It was as though they had broken the surface of a frozen lake. Brittle shards erupted all around them, casting reflections