The First Heretic

Is the most important one of all. Lorgar’s incubation pod will be carried to Colchis, to walk the first steps to enlightening humanity of the Primordial Truth, and the gods behind the stars. Without the gods, humanity will die, piece by piece, under the predation of the aliens that still lay claim to much of the galaxy. Those that remain will die as the eldar died: in agony, unable to see the Primordial Truth before their very eyes.

This is Fate. It is written in the stars. Lorgar knows that humanity needs divinity – it is what shaped his life and Legion. It is why he was chosen as the favoured son.

Xaphen closed his eyes, murmuring a litany from the Word. ‘Faith raises us above the soulless and the damned. It is the soul’s fuel, and the driving force behind millennia of mankind’s survival. We are hollow without it.’

Argel Tal drew his weapons. The swords of red iron slid free from their scabbards with twin hisses.

Yes. Yes...

Both blades sparked into electrical life as the captain pulled the handle-triggers. Xaphen regarded him with hooded eyes.

‘Do it,’ the Chaplain said. ‘Let it begin.’

Argel Tal whirled the blades in slow, arcing loops, their crackling power fields growing more intense, the blades emanating ozone mist as they burned and rasped through the frozen air.

‘Aurelian,’ whispered Malnor. ‘For Lorgar.’

‘For the truth,’ Torgal said. ‘Do it, and we will carry these answers back to the Imperium.’

Argel Tal looked at Dagotal; the youngest of his sergeants, only recently promoted before the Legion’s humiliation. The outrider commander’s eyes were distant.

‘I am weary of being lied to by the Emperor, brother. I am so tired of being ashamed, when what we believe is the truth.’ Dagotal nodded, meeting his captain’s eyes at last. ‘Do it.’

Three.

He stepped forward, staring at a cluster of vein-like cables twitching as they channelled artificial blood around the semi-organic tower machine.

Two.

Argel Tal span the swords, leaving blurred trails of lightning in their wake.

One.

The blades chopped down, crashing through steel, iron, rubber, copper, bronze and vat-grown blood.

Both swords exploded in his hands, their blades shattering like smashed glass and decorating his bare face with bloody cuts.

And then, for one horrific, familiar moment, Argel Tal saw nothing but burning, psychic gold.

EIGHTEEN

A Hundred Truths

Resurrection

Return

‘I heard your brother,’ Argel Tal confessed.

The primarch was no longer writing. For several minutes, Lorgar had done nothing but listen in mounting emotion as the captain relayed the events in Ingethel’s vision. Now, at these words, he released a breath he’d been holding for some time.

‘Magnus?’

Argel Tal had never heard his sire speak so softly. ‘No. The Warmaster.’

The golden-skinned giant brushed his hands over his face, seemingly afflicted by a sudden weariness. ‘I do not know that title,’ he said. ‘Warmaster. An ugly word.’