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Ahriman gazed up at the domed structure that he was trapped within. He could neither see nor sense an exit, nor could he dip his mind into the future and seek out a trail of psychic breadcrumbs his impending self might have laid down behind him.
All he could see was the dark tower that loomed at the centre of the structure, and the blinding stablight that swept the space. He lurked in shadow as a cousin in the XIXth might. He did not truly know what would happen to him if the light cut the night and found him, but the persistent ache in his temple and a hot spark in his bones were premonitions enough to prove it would be his doom.
As he dodged the coruscating light that sought him he saw it sweep over the cells that lined the room. Even as he hid from its terrible radiance he could not help but peer into each illuminated chamber, past the bars and into what lay beyond. Even in the brief moment where the light touched them, Ahriman was struck by each tableau with which he was faced.
Inside one cell laid carnage too terrible to contemplate, even to one so well-versed in slaughter– one built not to be the scholar he had become, but a wretched tool for war and for destruction. As his heart ached for the barbaric destiny of his brethren, he gazed upon another room.
It held a wealth of weapons so unlike those he had been moulded to wield. They all glowed a sickly, haunting green, and were adorned with sigils he was loath to admit he did not yet recognize: lines bisected pulsing circles, all of them that strange glowing green. The light almost found him then, as he reached out as if he could grasp the assorted guns and blades and learn from them. But the next chamber was soon illuminated.
It contained riches the likes of which he had never before seen. Treasure glittered like myriad stars in the void, before the following chamber displayed a fleeting glimpse of a garden filled with rancid, odious blooms.
The next cell gave him pause. How one tiny room could contain the entirety of the Imperium’s glory was beyond his profound intellect. A rare feeling of vertigo, totally foreign to his enhanced physiology, struck him as his mind grappled with the enormity of what had been captured within finite space.
The next cell displayed a body of water so vast and so deep that Ahriman once again struggled to accept that such a thing could be trapped in this strange prison with him. He smelled the salty sting of the monstrous lake and as he raised his hand to his face he felt wetness gathering at the corners of his eyes. He felt his guts tighten within him as he realized with utter certainty that this enormous lake was filled with tears; with grief enough to have been shed by a planet entire.
Ahriman raised himself into the lower enumerations as he stared at the cells, trying to tease meaning from the vistas, or useful metaphors from what the light had shown him. But rare and pernicious doubt had begun to plague him: he was sure that the room with the weapons had been here. But now– now it seemed to have moved to the uppermost floor, away from where he stood.
But before he could process the potential fallibility of his mind, he noticed that the views inside the cells started to shift and to change. The tortures and the endless conflict found inside the first room he had beheld was not the only cell now doused in crimson. Whenever he saw the cell that held the weapons, their blades had been stained red.
The plants in the dark garden oozed a sickening ichor that was no longer black. The lake of tears, no longer silver. And the Imperium was bathed in blood. Ahriman felt unfamiliar fear, a sensation that he had once thought excised from his emotional repertoire. He felt certain that the blood would rise until he might drown.
The enumerations barely kept latent panic at bay. Something was drawing his gaze; some inexorable power pulled him to the centre of the chamber. There lay the source of the light and a cage not unlike the cells that lined the rounded room.
His painted lips parted on a gasp as he saw a figure reaching through the bars. Fingertips emerged from the darkness, then a hand. The skin matched his own. He knew the limb well, for he had seen its double every day since his birth on Terra. He staggered back as he saw that this figure, too, was drenched in blood.
Ahriman wanted to cover his face; wanted to hide away from the truth of it, but he found that he could not. He wanted to dive into the light and let it scorch him to nothing, rather than see the fingers on that hand sprout countless eyes. Rather than see its wrist adorned with sapphire feathers. The rest of the body– so like his own before the changes imposed upon it from some unknown source– emerged from the darkness. Ahriman looked up into its face as it crumbled into sand, and–
–and suddenly he felt his mind unspooling, soft and sweet. Not the wretched rending of horror and pain, like claws in his psyche tearing it asunder. But a gentle unwinding, like a taut muscle finding pleasure in release.
He was slowly drawn back to his body from a singular, warm point of contact. He opened his kohl-rimmed eyes, and there was his father before him, resplendent in all of his crimson majesty. He was clad only in a simple turquoise shendyt, with a golden chain around his waist. He had placed a finger under Ahriman’s chin, and had tilted his face up to better look upon him.
“Is that better, Ahzek?” asked Magnus the Red.
Ahriman smiled distantly. “Yes,” he said vaguely, but a kind of sedate contentment suffused his soft voice. “Much better.”
Magnus smiled back, beatific and magnanimous. He leaned down, then, and pressed his lips against his first captain’s. This was the very least that he could do for his sons, he thought. When they were in distress and distraught, he could come to them like this.
He could slip the knowledge that everything would turn out right in the end into Ahriman, here and now– he could put anything in him, really, and take out anything he wanted besides. But he still needed his son striving to sift through the multitudinous sands of the future. It would be cruel of him to kill that hunger for knowledge of what might be to come, and so he didn’t push that little comfort into him.
But he knew that he could at least gift his sons some respite for a while, and it felt good to help where he could. Ahriman was so loose and so open for him already, his brow no longer knit and his pretty lips no longer pursed. Magnus looked down upon him with a sad smile. He would do whatever he could for his troubled son.
The future was Ahriman’s gift, and the past his burden. Magnus would give him whatever it took to fill the aching void that was left behind from what was taken from him. And if it failed to help him– if it hurt him, or drove him into a darker depression– well, Magnus could also easily lift that burden from his son’s strong shoulders as well.
But it didn’t look like Ahriman would come to regret or resent his father’s gifts, no. He was so eager like this, in this state. Eager to undo his azure robes and bare himself, in the way that his mind was already bared to his sire.
For Magnus could feel his son’s simmering desire at all times: the sweet core of his love that pulsed within him always. And it was no challenge for him– with such infinite power– to stoke that flame. He could blow upon it ‘til it was a burning conflagration, like the glorious raptures of the Pyrae cult.
Ahriman moaned for him, then, as if he could not help himself. Magnus nodded to himself. It was best like this, he thought, for him. For his son. Like this, there were no worries for his loss. No worries about their future. His world would one day change, yes, but for now his mind was soft and open.
Magnus lifted his son’s warm body easily, and laid him down, spread and bare for him, upon the silks and cushions upon his bed. He played his body like an ancient setar, plucking Ahriman from within and drawing sweet music from his lips. Without any great effort he could reach inside him, even without the connection of a caressing touch, and press what nerves and muscles elicited the greatest pleasure from his son.
Ahriman arched his back and gasped and threw his head back against the pillows as Magnus stoked him from within with only the wondrous powers which he easily drew from the Great Ocean. He played with Ahriman until his son was begging; until there were sweet tears in his lovely eyes; until he was trembling and moaning and trying to cover his parted lips with his hand.
He flung his arm over his face, too, as if his son could hide any desire from him; any sweet reaction to his spectral touch. Magnus chuckled to himself as he leaned down to kiss Ahriman’s broad chest. Physical touch was good, too. Magnus was proud of Ahriman for always teaching others that truth. While control over their subtle bodies was key to their survival and their quest for knowledge, they must stay grounded in their flesh as well.
Ahriman pressed up into Magnus’ touch, his moan coming cracked from his throat. Magnus knew exactly where his son wanted it; exactly where he was most sensitive. He rolled the raised flesh of Ahriman’s nipples under his thumbs, and the sounds his son made were beautiful.
His dark skin was burning hot to the touch, and with his long thick hair spread across his silken cushions, he looked like a sketch from an ancient book of beauties by the lost peoples of Thru’n. The sight of his son was etched forever in the endless library of his mind, preserved for all eternity like a precious tome.
Ahriman was gazing up at him with such sweet adoration that it spread a honeyed warmth through Magnus’ blood. It was too bad that his son’s mind was so sharp and so brilliant, in a strange way. It was such a treat to soften him like this; to relax his mind and his muscles for him. For Magnus was huge, and it was imperative that he make space in his son to fit him.
And so with his mind he stroked Ahriman where he was most sensitive inside, sending shocks of pleasure into him as a mortal might with his fingers or a toy. He looked down to see Ahriman practically drooling for it: his lips were parted and shuddering little gasps slipped out.
Magnus felt a warm ache in his chest as he watched his son tremble beneath him. Did Ahriman know how beautiful and special and powerful he was? The primarch noddled silently to himself and decided that he would show him with his body and his mind.
He stretched and filled him so easy, when he slipped inside. His rough deep groan was mirrored by his son’s tremulous, quavering sigh. Ahriman was so ready for him, so ready to take all of him in as he filled his body and the spaces between his synapses and his self. He poured into him like rich wine into a waiting vessel, and he felt his son’s wanton drunkenness from the feeling.
Magnus leaned down and kissed the tears from his eyes, and the gasps from his trembling lips. “So good,” Magnus whispered to him, and Ahriman could only make a high, hurt sound in response. His son was clinging to him, holding on to him as if he could hold him inside himself forever. It would be so easy for him to lose himself to this, Magnus knew, and as sweet as that might be they had work to do: so much to learn, and so much to know.
And so he would help elevate Ahriman to reach his climax. As wistful as it made him, the sweet succour that he offered his son could not last forever. The darkness would return to him along with his thoughts, as it always did. But for now he slipped into the cool crystal currents of Ahriman’s mind, luxuriating in the refreshing shape of it.
He knew what would send his son tumbling over the edge of pleasure, to scorch out everything until he finally came back to himself. As he slowly rocked against his Chief Librarian, he slipped but a tiny, dense and sparkling star of his own pleasure into Ahriman’s mind. Just a small fraction of the entirety of the matrix, a single static image from an ancient picter’s art– a drop in the ocean of ecstasy to land upon his lovely son’s tongue.
When he did it, Ahriman’s eyes opened impossibly wide before rolling back in his head. His body shook, even harder than before, and with one final whimper he went completely limp in Magnus’ arms, his exhausted mind parting with consciousness.
Magnus groaned himself at the momentary tightness around his cock, when Ahriman clenched down around him and came. He inhaled slowly before looking down at the spent son in his arms, his body now gone as soft as his mind. Magnus chuckled to himself.
“Ah,” he murmured. “That might have been a little much.” He always overestimated his favoured sons, it seemed. But in the end, the strength and structure of their minds paled in comparison to his own mighty will. The pleasures of one such as he were far beyond what a Legionary was built to endure.
He laughed softly once more before gently lowering Ahriman’s damp, sweat-slicked body back down onto the soft pillows. It was good, in a way. He could rest just a little, free from the visions and the memories both that haunted him. The effects of his inherited pleasure would surely wear off soon, Magnus thought, as he slowly and gently sunk deep into his son’s body once again. There would be no lasting effects, and more’s the pity– Magnus dearly wished that he could impart some permanent peace upon his beloved, beautiful son.