Two years after Unchanged capped off his trilogy, Ahriman is back in a new audio drama from John French, Ahriman: Key of Infinity. This time Ahriman has caught himself a necron Cryptek and, accompanied by Ignis and Credence, sets out to understand the powerful time-altering technology it possesses. To the Cryptek, Setekh, the interrogation provides all the time it needs to carefully arrange an escape, but then perhaps it hasn’t reckoned with the sheer power the Thousand Sons sorcerers possess.
It’s only a short audio, a little under eighteen minutes long, and it’s quite narration-heavy. While the arrogant, manipulative Setekh is voiced brilliantly by an almost-unrecognisable Steve Conlin, John Banks’ narration does a lot of work, showing us Setekh’s internal thoughts as he plans his escape. Despite that, it’s a sharp story that works brilliantly as an audio, with a welcome return for Jonathan Keeble as Ahriman and some excellent sound design nicely complementing a typically clever French plot. Time manipulation is a perfect subject for an Ahriman story, proving to be great fun in this small, standalone story, and a mouth-watering glimpse of what could be if this was ever developed into a novel-length tale.
Key of Infinity was originally released as part of the 2017 Black Library Advent Calendar – click here for all my 2017 Advent reviews.
See also: all the other Ahriman-related reviews on Track of Words.
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