Ahriman: Gates of Ruin Read Free Page B

shell. His face was bare, the features as smooth and impassive as I remembered them. Tattooed circles and lines shifted between designs on his exposed skin. His mind flickered with cold emotionless patterns that I did not recognise and had no desire to understand.
    I slid my gaze from Ignis to the sculpture in pistons and machine joints that stood beside him. A lacquered carapace of orange rode over its chest and shoulders. Geometric designs covered the armour plates, cutting the polished orange with fine lines of coal-black. It was a battle automaton, a fact that the weapons in its fists and on its back left were established without doubt. This was what he had been talking to with his mundane voice.
    +A pet? Or do you keep it for conversation?+
    He waited for a long moment, his eyes moving over me systematically from feet to crown. Then he shook his head slowly and precisely.
    +Credence guards my life,+ he sent.
    I waited but he said nothing else. My teeth clamped together. I had forgotten how it was to talk to members of the Order of Ruin. The centuries that separated that moment from the last time I had seen Ignis had been a blessing in that respect.
    +Thank you for clarifying that.+
    Ignis nodded once.
    +You have changed since I last saw you, Ctesias.+
    +How kind of you to notice.+
    +My observation was not intended to give you comfort.+ His sending was leaden with lack of emotion. Perhaps it is the daemons. Perhaps they have stolen some of my patience, or gifted me with a need for emotional subtlety not common in my kind. Whatever the cause, I felt my face twitch and my hand clench on my staff.
    I closed my eyes and let out a breath, letting the enforced calm roll through me. When I opened them I looked past Ignis. Ahriman stood beside Astraeos just inside the door. Both were armoured but without helms. Ahriman was gaunt, the pits of his face deep beside the sharp lines of his bones. He looked weary, ill even, but his eyes glittered with triumph.
    +What is your will, Ahriman?+ I glanced between Astraeos, Ignis and his automaton.
    +You have found a way to the Antilline Abyss,+ he said, and stepped forward. I noticed that he was limping ever so slightly. A vein pulsed at his temple and his face was not just tired but drawn. +For that you have my thanks, Ctesias.+
    He stopped above the still shape of Silvanus and looked at him for a long heartbeat. I could feel his thoughts turning and the currents of the warp shifting with them.
    +Ignis is correct. He will not answer you if you call him with thought and voice.+
    +Why?+ I asked, suddenly too tired for the dance of intellect and words.
    Ahriman glanced at Ignis, and nodded.
    +The pattern of the Navigator’s thoughts,+ sent Ignis, +is a spiral going ever out and curling ever inwards. It eats everything else that is in his mind, and it will continue without end.+ The Master of Ruin paused, and I glanced at him. The tattoos on his face had become still, the lines seeming to splinter his features into shards. I had the sudden impression of distaste and contempt, though I could not say why. +The ratios and progression of the spiral is… a thing I would not have let come into being.+
    I shivered inside my armour. I did not know what Ignis had meant exactly, but I could understand what he was trying to say. It was what I had been worried about ever since I had given the Navigator the sphere.
    +His mind beats to a song,+ I sent almost before I meant to.
    Ahriman nodded, and looked at me.
    +Will that song lead us out of the Eye, Ctesias?+
    I broke his gaze, and looked at Silvanus, curled around a daemon pearl like a sleeping child. I thought about all the things that I had done for Ahriman, and all the uses he had put me to since I had come to his service. I wondered if there was more to this situation than I saw or guessed. I wondered what else Ahriman might be trying to achieve besides breaking the Eye’s shackles. I remembered the offer he had made me when I lay bound in Amon’s