MAGNUS FELT THE world fall away from him, shedding his corporeal body as a serpent sheds its skin and rises renewed. Ancients watching such creatures believed they knew the secrets of immortality and named their houses of healing in their honour. To this day, the symbol of the Apothecary, the caduceus, bore serpents entwined in a double helix.

Chains of flesh were shrugged off, and Magnus distilled his molten core into a seething arrow aimed from Prospero to distant Terra. With a thought, he shot up through the Occullum and into the heavens. His body of light was a beautiful thing, existence as it was meant to be experienced, not the mundane solidity endured by mortals.

Magnus shook off his revelries, for the energy of the spell was propelling him ever onwards. He felt Ahriman’s words, the words of ancient sorcerers of Terra, wrapping his incandescent body in purpose, the life energies of the Thralls empowering him with their vitality.

This was a dangerous spell, and no other being would dare wield it.

The blackness of space dissolved, and the raging torrents of the Great Ocean surrounded him. Magnus laughed with the pleasure of it, rejoicing in the familiar energies and currents that welcomed him like a long lost friend.

He was a bright star amid a constellation of supernovas, each a flickering ember next to his beatific glory.

Here in the Great Ocean, he could be whatever he wanted to be; nothing was forbidden and anything was possible. Worlds flashed past him as he hurtled through the swelling tides of colour, light and dimensions without name. The roiling chaos of the aether was a playground for titanic forces, where entire universes could be created and destroyed with a random thought. How many trillions of potential lives were birthed and snuffed out just by thinking such things?

Predators avoided him as he sped towards his destination like the most incredible comet ever set loose in the stars. They recognised him and were fearful of his brilliance in a realm where the light of creation blazed in every breath. Stagnation was anathema to Magnus. All life needed to progress through a series of evolved stages to prosper, and change was part of the natural cycle of all living things, from the smallest single-celled organism to the radiant creature encased within the crude matter of humanity.

The nobility of his cause threw off sparks of potency that created phantom worlds and concepts in his wake. Entire philosophies and bodies of thought would be born in the minds of those  lucky enough to have his leavings descend upon their dreaming minds.

His course altered, a roving thought steering him around a monstrously dark shadow, the heaving bulk of something enormous shifting in the depths of the Great Ocean. Magnus felt a glimmer of familiarity in the stirred-up memories, but suppressed it with a shudder that sent a torrent of nightmares into the dreams of the tribal warriors of a feral world soon to encounter the 392nd Expeditionary Fleet.

There were no landmarks in the Great Ocean, its topography ever-mutable, yet this landscape of streaming colour and light was familiar by its very changeability. He had flown this shoal before, and he recoiled from it, concentrating on keeping his course true.

A shudder passed along his bright essence, and Magnus felt the first clutch of his Thralls die. Their soul lights winked out and a measure of his incredible, ferocious speed bled away.

“Hold on, my sons,” he whispered, “just a little longer.”

What he sought was close, he could feel it: the same subtle vibration in the fabric of the Great Ocean that had drawn him to Aghoru. It was faint, like a distant heartbeat hidden within a rousing drum chorus.

Its creators had selfishly sought to keep it for themselves, little realising their time as masters of the galaxy was over. Even with their empire in decline, they kept their secret jealously close to their hearts.

Magnus sensed one of their hidden pathways nearby and opened his inner eye, seeing the glittering fabric of the Great Ocean in all its revealed glory. The hidden capillaries of the alien network were visible as radiant lines of molten gold, and Magnus angled his course towards the nearest.

Distance was a similarly meaningless concept here, and with a thought he spiralled around the golden passageway. He focussed his energy and unleashed it at the lattice in a blaze of silver lightning. Scores of his Thralls died in an instant, but the shimmer-sheen of the golden passage remained unbroken. Magnus hurled his fists against the impervious walls, snuffing out his Thralls by the dozen with every blow, but it was useless.

It had all been for nothing. He couldn’t get in.

Magnus felt his glorious ascent slowing, and howled his frustration to the furthest corners of the Great Ocean.