The First Heretic

His spine twisted, his armour broken, a death that showed no peace in rest. A metre from his outstretched fingers, his black steel crozius rested on the deck, silent in deactivation. The corpse was cauled by its helm, its final face hidden, but the Chaplain’s scream still echoed across the vox-network.

The sound had been wet, strained – half-drowned by the blood filling Xaphen’s ruptured lungs.

The creature turned its head with a predator’s grace, stinking saliva trailing in gooey stalactites between too many teeth. No artificial light remained on the observation deck, but starlight, the winking of distant suns, bred silver glints in the creature’s unmatching eyes. One was amber, swollen, lidless. The other black, an obsidian pebble sunken deep into its hollow.

Now you, it said, without moving its maw. Those jaws could never form human speech. You are next.

Argel Tal’s first attempt to speak left his lips as a trickle of too-hot blood. It stung his chin as it ran down his face. The chemical-rich reek of the liquid, of Lorgar’s gene-written blood running through the veins of each of his sons, was enough to overpower the stench rising from the creature’s quivering, muscular grey flesh. For that one moment, he smelled his own death, rather than the creature’s corruption.

It was a singular reprieve.

The captain raised his bolter in a grip that trembled, but not from fear. This defiance – this was the refusal he couldn’t voice any other way.

Yes, the creature loomed closer. Its lower body was an abomination’s splicing between serpent and worm, thick-veined and leaving a viscous, clear slug-trail that stank of unearthed graves. Yes.

‘No,’ Argel Tal finally forced the words through clenched teeth. ‘Not like this.’

Like this. Like your brothers. This is how it must be.

The bolter barked with a throaty chatter, a stream of shells that hammered into the wall, impacting with concussive detonations that defiled the chamber’s quiet. Each buck of the gun in his shaking hand sent the next shell wider from the mark.

Arm muscles burning, he let the weapon fall with a dull clang. The creature did not laugh, did not mock him for his failure. Instead, it reached for him with four arms, lifting him gently. Black talons scraped against the grey ceramite of his armour as it clutched him aloft.

Prepare yourself. This will not be painless.

Argel Tal hung limp in the creature’s grip. For a brief second, he reached for the swords of red iron at his hips, forgetting that they were broken, the blades shattered, on the gantry decking below.

‘I can hear,’ his gritted teeth almost strangled the words, ‘another voice.’

Yes. One of my kin. It comes for you.

‘This... is not what... my primarch wanted...’

This? The creature dragged the helpless Astartes closer, and burst Argel Tal’s secondary heart with a flex of thought. The captain went into violent convulsions, feeling the pulped mass behind his ribs like a bunch of crushed grapes, but the daemon cradled him with sickening gentleness.

This is exactly what Lorgar wanted. This is the truth.

Argel Tal strained for breath that wouldn’t come, and forced dying muscles to reach for weapons that weren’t there.

The last thing he felt before he died was something pouring into his thoughts, wet and cold, like oil spilling behind his eyes.

The last thing he heard was one of his dead brothers drawing a ragged breath over the vox-channel.

And the last thing he saw was Xaphen twitching, rising from the deck on struggling limbs.

Lorgar lowered the quill once more. An unknowable emotion burned in his eyes – whatever it was, Argel Tal had never seen it before.

‘And so we come full circle,’ said the primarch. ‘You died and resurrected. You found the crew slain. You sailed out from the Eye, taking seven months to do so.’

‘You desired answers, sire. We brought them to you.’

‘I could not be prouder of you, Argel Tal. You have saved humanity from ignorance and extinction. You have proved the Emperor wrong.’

The captain watched his father closely. ‘How much of this did you already know, sire?’

‘Why do you ask?’