The pressure on Evan eased considerably. After he endured the first wave of Magnus's surging assault, the Emperor's psyker power began to be shared out. Evan regained his senses and could once again see everything before him clearly.
The Lord Regent had already left, and the great doors ahead were firmly shut.
He struggled to turn his head, his stiff neck rotating until his eyes fell upon a sight that should never have been witnessed.
It was a horrifying scene. The Emperor's ruined body was disappearing, vanishing from where it sat in a grotesque process of writhing bones.
With the stasis field gone, the Emperor's flesh could no longer endure even another second. The blow Horus had struck eleven thousand years ago finally killed the Emperor's physical body at this moment. The power of Chaos had at last completed its task.
The pipe fittings once embedded in the Emperor's body fell away limply. The devices fitted into his eye sockets dropped into his chest cavity, which then disappeared as well. Clusters of machinery scattered across the throne, flickering with unknown light.
Strangely, all of them rolled off the throne in seemingly natural ways, until the Golden Throne was finally empty.
The remains that had sat upon the Golden Throne for ten thousand years were, at this moment, declared utterly dead.
Then another device connected to the throne, the Astronomican, began to malfunction as well.
As the Imperium of Man's most important navigational beacon, the Astronomican did not strictly require the Emperor to remain beside it at all times. It had been built early in the Great Crusade, and for many years afterward, the Emperor had not stayed beside the Astronomican on Terra, but traveled aboard warships to wage war across the stars.
But now, in 42K888, much of the Astronomican's