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Magnus blinks slowly as the vision fades and consciousness returns to him, bringing with it a bone-chilling certainty.
This, then, the answer he has sought since Nikaea. The reason his father made a sorcerer-child with power rivaling His own and then forbade the use of that power.
He closes his eye, breathes, opens it again, and still the images from the vision linger as though they have been etched into his mind. His own emaciated form upon a golden chair, bound in a mass of wires and cables, his body wracked by seizures like the throes of a dying man, the pain of his powers being drained from him into the chair’s arcane mechanism, a pain he has felt only once before and thought it would kill him even then.
This is what his father has been working on, his father who is no father at all and Magnus no son to Him, only a convenient source of power, a battery to be drained and discarded and replaced. Who next, once Magnus has nothing left to give? Lorgar? One of Magnus’ own sons, all of them used up one by one?
No, this triumph he will not grant to the one he once called father. Magnus has given of his flesh and soul for his sons before; he will give all of it now, if it will spare them.
Magnus opens his book and lays out a plan.
The last wire connects to his head, his crimson locks replaced by ports and cables, and Magnus meets the Emperor’s gaze one last time ere he closes his eye.
Ahzek, he thinks, a single tear running down his face. My favoured son…
The mechanism whirrs to life, ready to drain Magnus’ power into the Golden Throne, but there is none left. It is over in an instant. Magnus’ soul, once named the brightest among his brothers, flares with the force of a thousand suns and goes out, and all that is left is a lifeless body slumped upon a throne of molten gold and burned wires.
Far away on Prospero Ahzek Ahriman falls to his knees, a cry dying on his lips as the force of his primarch’s death takes his breath away. Power drains into him, and for a moment he thinks he hears his father’s voice whispering to him.
“My last gift to you, my son.”
Then it is over. Ahriman rises, Magnus’ book chained to his waist, Magnus’ power coursing through him, and swears that he will not rest until the Emperor has paid for all He has done to His brightest son.