The First Heretic

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  ‘Stop saying “we”. You are Argel Tal.’

  ‘We are Argel Tal, yes. In forty-three years, Horus will speak four words that will save humanity or lead to its extinction. We know what those words are, Lorgar. Do you?’

  Lorgar cradled his head in his hands, fine fingers pressed to the elegant runes inked onto his skin.

  ‘This is too much. Too much to bear. I... I need Erebus here. I need my fa— Kor Phaeron.’

  ‘They are far from here. And we will tell you something more: neither Erebus nor Kor Phaeron would struggle to accept the truths that we speak. Kor Phaeron has always kept his belief in the Old Ways hidden behind lying smiles, and Erebus drools in the presence of power. Neither of those twisted warlocks would hold their heads in their hands and panic about how the Imperium will–’

  Argel Tal’s voices fell silent, quenched by the golden hand around his emaciated throat.

  Lorgar rose to his feet in a smooth and effortless motion, dragging the Astartes up with him, the captain’s feet lifting from the deck.

  ‘You will watch your tongue when you speak the names of my mentors, and you will speak with respect when you address the lord of your own Legion. Is that understood, beast?’

  Argel Tal didn’t answer. His hands clawed at the primarch’s forearm in desperate futility.

  Lorgar hurled the skeletal figure against the wall. The captain crashed against the metal and tumbled to the floor.

  ‘Wipe that filthy grin from your lips,’ Lorgar demanded.

  When the Astartes lifted his face to regard the primarch, it was Argel Tal who looked out through his own eyes once more.

  ‘Control yourself, captain,’ Lorgar warned. ‘Now finish your tale.’

  ‘I saw things.’ Argel Tal tried to rise on trembling limbs. ‘When the gold faded, there was more to see. Visions. I can’t explain it any other way, sire.’

  Sensing his son’s return to the fore, Lorgar helped Argel Tal to a seating position.

  ‘Speak,’ he said.

  One by one, the pods came down.

  Alone now, Argel Tal stood on the surface of each world and watched them strike home. Not all of them; and that itself was a source of mystery. Was there some significance in the planetfalls he was entitled to witness? Why these, and not others?

  The first was a blazing meteorite, ploughing into the soft soil of a temperate world. The pod didn’t punch deep; it carved a furrow in the ground and skidded to a halt in the midst of an evergreen forest so dense that the overhanging trees refused the moonlight above.

  The child that emerged from the broken pod was pale of skin and fierce of eye. His hair was as black as the armour of the warriors he would grow to lead.

  Twilight fell without warning–

  –withering the trees to dust, their ashes scattering in the sudden wind. In place of the lush forest was bleak tundra reaching from horizon to horizon, populated by black rock and stunted, colourless flora.

  The pod rained down aflame from the grey sky, crashing against the jagged slopes of a cliff side and causing an avalanche of tumbling rocks in its wake. When the dust finally cleared, Argel Tal saw a slender child rise from the wreckage of metal and stone, brushing his dusty hands through hair the white of flawless marble.

  The boy looked to his surroundings, while–

  –Argel Tal was alone on a mountaintop, snow clinging to his armour as it fell. On a distant peak, a fortress stood silhouetted against a clean sky, its exquisite stone battlements and towers lit by the sun shining down through a break in the clouds.

  The Word Bearer stared upward, feeling the light snowfall cool his fevered skin as he watched the pod fall from the heavens. When it struck the earth, it hit with enough force to drive itself into the side of the mountain, shaking the ground with the anger of an artillery barrage.

  Argel Tal waited, watching the wound in the mountainside. At last, a child emerged, climbing over the rocks with ease, his skin bronze in the high sun. For a moment, it seemed the child saw him, but–

  –no world should ever be this dark.

  Argel Tal’s eyes took a few seconds to pierce the deep night, and what met his gaze was no better than the preceding darkness. A lightless sky was dominated by an imposing moon that eclipsed the starlight rather than reflect the sun. A sprawling city on the horizon was barely lit, as though the eyes of its denizens would rebel against any true illumination.

  Fire heralded the pod’s arrival – brightening the air over the wasteland with blazing light as it tore groundward. The impact was a spear-thrust into the metallic-smelling soil, driving the incubator deep into the ground with enough force to split the land with tectonic cracks.

  The Word Bearer maintained his balance, breathing in air that tasted of iron and waiting for signs of movement from the chasm freshly-carved into the infertile earth.

  The boy that rose under the night sky was corpse-pale, and unique among the progenitors Argel Tal had seen so far, for he carried a shard of his gestation pod clutched tight in his fist – a knife, crude and instinctive, made from the twisted metal of his pod.

  Thunder announced itself overhead. The boy raised his face to the sky, a sudden trident of lightning illuminating the child’s gaunt, unhealthy features.

  Argel Tal–

  –stood atop another cliff edge, this one overlooking a valley that split a brutal mountain range.

  The pod hammered down – a blur of grey metal – smashing against the rock walls without piercing the stone. Argel Tal watched as the pod span end over end, wrecking itself in its devastating fall down the mountainside. Dark metal ripped from its armoured hull, shed like peeling scabs.

  It came to rest upside-down at the bottom of the valley, and Argel Tal’s visor zoomed in to compensate for the distance. He saw the pod shake once, twice, then roll aside, pushed away by the infant it had contained. Free of his burden, the boy touched trembling hands to a face awash with blood.

  The scream of pain that rose from the valley had no place leaving the lips of a child so young.

  When–

  –everything changed again, Argel Tal watched the dusk through a haze of mist. The fog was thin, a sickly celadon jade that spoke of both chill air and toxicity. What little daylight pierced the mist was born of a pinprick sun, meagre in both size and generosity, setting below a flat horizon.

  Plainsland stretched in every direction, as uninspiring and barren as any number of ignorable lifeless worlds Argel Tal had passed as part of the Great Crusade’s expeditionary fleets.

  The falling pod trailed smoke and flame, burning with green fire as it ignited the virulence in the mist. Its final descent brought it hammering against the rocky ground, cracking open as it skidded over the shale.

  The Word Bearer moved closer to the downed capsule, seeing tendrils of fog creeping through the rent metal, misting up the interior behind the clear viewplate. Something pale moved within, but–

  –he was standing in the white stone and shining crystal heart of a city, surrounded by spires, pyramids, obelisks and towering statuary.

  The pod fell from the summer sky at a meteor’s angle, shearing through a slender tower with a crash of breaking glass that could be heard across the city. A moment later, the incubator cracked the mosaic ground, sliding and burning across the white stone until it ended its fiery journey against the base of a great pyramid.

  Crowds of tanned, handsome figures gathered in the afternoon sunlight, watching as the metal coffin’s rivets and bolts unscrewed and removed themselves, detached by unseen hands. Plate by plate, the pod’s armour plating lifted away, floating in the air above the crash site. At last, the final structural pieces drifted apart, while at the heart of the hovering display was a red-haired child, his eyes closed, his skin a burnished coppery red.

  The boy’s feet didn’t touch the ground. He floated a metre above the burned mosaics, and at last opened his eyes. Argel Tal–

  –walked the surface of a wasted world. The air held the taint of
exhaust fumes, and the lifeless landscape was a grey twin to Luna, Terra’s only moon.

  The pod fell from a night sky filled with stars – each of the constellations pregnant with the promise of deeper meaning. The ground rumbled in protest as the pod struck, and the Word Bearer climbed the small rise of a crater’s lip to see the incubator gouging a furrow through the silvery soil.

  The pod’s door blasted open even as it was coming to rest, clanging loudly in the silent night. The boy that rose from the confines was inhumanly handsome, his fine features pale and contemplative, his grey eyes matching the earth of the world he’d landed upon.

  There was no–

  –chance to move closer.

  He was home. Not the sterile decks of the expeditionary fleet, nor even the Spartan sanctuary of his meditation chamber aboard De Profundis. No, he was home.

  The sky was a cloudless expanse of blue above the dusty desert, while a city of grey flowers and fire-hardened red bricks sat by the side of a wide river. Argel Tal regarded the Holy City from his position downriver; such was his pleasure at this curious homecoming that he forgot to look up until the last moment.

  The pod – his father’s black iron womb – hit the rushing river with a great splash, throwing spray and a fine wet mist into the air. Argel Tal was already sprinting, his armour joints whirring as he ran over the arid soil. He didn’t care if this was a vision or if he was really here; he had to reach his father’s pod.

  Astartes battle armour wasn’t made for this. With its immense weight, his boots sank into the sticking river mud, generating grinding protests from the inbuilt mercury-threaded stabilisers in his shins and knee-joints.

  The Word Bearer hauled himself through the waist-deep mud, clambering lower down the riverbank to reach the downed capsule. As he neared the incubator, one thing was obvious above all else: Lorgar’s pod

  had suffered a great deal more damage than any other.

  He reached out, the ceramite armouring his fingers just managing to scrape the pod’s side, and an image flashed before his eyes, superimposing itself over reality.

  The pod rattled, spinning through the void, tumbling alone through the warp’s tides. Burn marks and cracks appeared as the lurching journey continued, while mist the colour of madness seeped in through the armour cracks. The child within slept on as pain marred its features, now restless in its repose.

  See how the gods of this galaxy treasured your primarch above the others, keeping him in the Sea of Souls for decades, preparing him for the role he would play in the ascension of mankind to divinity.

  Lorgar felt their blessed touch more than any of his brothers.

  Argel Tal–

  –stumbled, staggering to a halt.

  The pod before him was a clone to his father’s, but growing faint and indistinct before his eyes. The ground was dark, the night sky was starless, and for a moment Argel Tal wasn’t sure whether he stood on the surface of a world or the deck of a powered-down ship.

  As his senses faded, he caught a momentary glimpse through the viewplate on the pod’s bulky front. Whatever moved within the incubator had too many limbs to be a lone human child.

  Argel Tal stepped closer, only to have his attention stolen by a blur of scarlet in the glass reflection. It was his helm, his chestplate, but warped by ivory protrusions – a twisted, gothic bio-architecture formed from ceramite and bone. The face that looked back was a tusked rendition of his war helm, painted crimson and black but for the golden star around his right eye lens.

  He–

  –opened his eyes.

  The observation deck, on board the Orfeo’s Lament. The sky beyond the dome was full of thrashing chaos.

  The daemon remained exactly where it had been, its muscled form never completely still, forever swaying side to side, its claws flicker-twitching in the air. Xaphen, Torgal, Malnor, Dagotal – all were exactly as they had been before.

  The outrider sergeant checked his retinal chron. Three seconds had passed. Four. Five.

  They’d been gone no time at all.

  ‘Was any of that real?’ he asked.

  Ingethel the Ascended gestured with two of its spindly arms, the talons pointing to the ground behind the Word Bearers. There, on the decking, were the swords of red iron: broken beyond repair, the shards darkened by scorch markings from the detonation that ruined them.

  ‘That looks real to me,’ Xaphen chuckled.

  You have seen much, and learned more. One matter remains. The daemon slithered around the Astartes, circling them with slow relish. Something akin to amusement glinted in its ugly eyes as it watched Argel Tal.

  ‘What remains?’

  A leap of faith.

  Xaphen’s eyes met Argel Tal’s. ‘We’ve come this far. We stand united.’

  The captain nodded.

  A choice must be made. You have witnessed the truth of the gods. You have seen the Emperor’s own lies laid bare, and you know the slow extinction that awaits humanity if the species remains blind to the Primordial Truth.

  So choose.

  ‘Choose what?’ Argel Tal narrowed his eyes. Unwilling to tolerate the creature’s stench any longer, he put on his helm, breathing easier as the collar seals hissed and locked.

  To lower this vessel’s Geller Field. Ingethel stroked a claw down the dome’s side. On the other side of the dense glass, screaming faces and frantic talons pressed against the daemon’s hand. Lower the Geller Field. Become the architects of humanity’s destiny, and the weapons Lorgar needs to wield against the Empire of Lies.

  The Word Bearers didn’t all react alike. Xaphen closed his eyes with a knowing smile, as if this confirmed something he’d been waiting to hear. Torgal rested his hands on his holstered pistol and sheathed blade, while Malnor placed his grey gauntlet on the stocks of the two bolt pistols mag-locked to his thighs. Dagotal stepped back from the group, his body language betraying his unease even though his eye lenses gave no emotion away.

  Argel Tal didn’t reach for a weapon. Instead, he laughed.

  ‘You are insane, creature.’

  This is the respect you show to a messenger of the gods?

  ‘What did you expect? That the Word Bearers would kneel and accept everything you said as a divine mandate? We are done with kneeling, Ingethel.’

  The daemon’s maw quivered as it offered a rattish hiss. Lower the Geller Field and you will taste the last promise of proof.

  ‘We must heed the messenger’s words,’ said the Chaplain.

  ‘Enough, Xaphen.’

  ‘Aurelian demanded this of us! We were ordered to follow the guide, no matter where he led us. How can you baulk at the final moment of truth?’

  ‘Enough. We are not risking the ship in this storm. We already lost the Shield of Scarus. A hundred brothers lost in this sector of space, and you smile when it comes to losing a hundred more.’

  They were not chosen, Argel Tal. You are. It was their time to meet destruction. They lacked the strength of will to endure what you are being offered.

  The captain rounded on the daemon. ‘What will happen if we lower the field? Will we be at the mercy of the storm? Pulled apart like every other Imperial vessel that lost Geller stability during warp flight?’

  No. Lower the anathemic skin, and my kin will come to join us. To share the final revelation with the gods’ chosen warriors.

  ‘Daemons... on the ship.’ Argel Tal watched the faces of screaming souls thrashing against the dome. ‘This cannot be our choice. These cannot be the gods of the galaxy.’

  Xaphen softened his voice. To Argel Tal’s ears, he’d never sounded more like Erebus, his former mentor.

  ‘Brother... We were never given a promise that the truth would be easy to bear. The way we were chosen – and our father favoured – by true divine power.’

  Argel Tal turned to stare at Xaphen through a targeting reticule. ‘You seem very certain about this course of action, brother.’

  ‘Are you not honoured to be chosen like th
is? I wish to be one of the first to receive the blessing of the gods. It is a leap of faith, as Ingethel said.’

  ‘Sylamor will not lower the Geller Field, even if we order it. It would be suicide.’

  There will be no fruitless death. This is your moment of ascension, Word Bearers. Let fate take its course. Think of your primarch, kneeling in the dust before Guilliman and the God-Emperor.

  This moment will be the beginning of his vindication. The Emperor’s lies will damn your species. The Primordial Truth will set it free.

  ‘We can carry this lore back to the Imperium, but humanity will never surrender itself to this... chaos.’

  Humanity has no choice. It will die under the claws of aliens, and those few that survive will be swallowed by the spreading influence of the warp gods. They only grow stronger, Argel Tal. If one refuses to worship them, then that species has no place in this galaxy.

  The Word Bearer didn’t speak the words that lay on his tongue – nevertheless, the daemon sensed them.

  What will you do, human? Fight us? Wage war against the gods themselves? How lovely, to imagine the little Empire of mortal man laying siege to heaven and hell.

  Just like the eldar... You will see the Primordial Truth, or you will be destroyed by it.

  ‘One last question,’ he said.

  Ask.

  ‘You name the Emperor as the Anathema. Why?’

  Because of the future. The Emperor will damn your species, denying humanity its birthright as the chosen children of the gods. He wages war against divinity, shrouding your species in ignorance. That will damn you all. The Emperor is not only loathed for his treacheries against the gods, he is anathemic to all human life.

  Lorgar knows this. It is why he sent you into the Eye. Your enlightenment is the first step in the human race’s ascendancy.

  Argel Tal looked into the daemon’s eyes for a long, long moment. In the mismatched depths, he once more saw Lorgar abase himself in the dust. He felt the deceitful Emperor’s psychic gale throwing him from his feet, casting him to the dirt before the Ultramarines.

  He felt the serenity of standing in the City of Grey Flowers, knowing beyond doubt that his cause was holy, that his crusade was just. How long had it been since he’d felt such purity of purpose?