The First Heretic

‘Help me seek the truth that lies behind the stars. What if we are waging a false crusade? This might be an unholy war... World after world is purged or brought to compliance... We might be strangling the truth – a truth believed in one form or another by countless cultures... We... We... I hear something call out to me, day and night. Something in the void. Is it fate? Is this how we perceive the future? By hearing destiny’s voice whisper our names?’

Lorgar fell silent as Magnus came to him, the larger brother gripping the other’s robed shoulders. The golden primarch’s lips were trembling. His fingers twitched and shook.

‘My brother, you are raving,’ said Magnus. ‘Look at me. Peace, Lorgar. Peace. Look at me.’

Lorgar did as he was asked. Magnus the Red, the Crimson King, fixed his brother’s gaze with his own remaining eye.

‘Your eye has changed colour,’ Lorgar murmured. ‘I hear them calling, Magnus. Fate. Destiny. I hear destiny’s thousand voices...’

‘Focus on me,’ Magnus intoned, speaking slow and soft. ‘Listen well to my words. You are speaking from fear. A fear of failing again. A fear of dooming another world to destruction. A fear that father will order a third Legion, and a third son, to be purged from history.’

‘The fear has faded. I am no longer afraid. I am inspired.’

‘You cannot hide it from me with mere words, brother. And you are right to fear what may come to pass. You stand on the precipice of destruction, and still contemplate a path that will send you falling over the edge. I understand your pain. Everything you achieved on Colchis was for a flawed faith. Every compliant world is one your Legion must revisit and reshape. But you cannot live in fear of making another mistake.’

Lorgar said nothing for several moments. At last, his shoulders slumped.

‘You could have helped me, Magnus.’ The Word Bearers’ primarch lifted his brother’s hands away, and walked back to the wine table. ‘We could have taken the Pilgrimage together, and sought the place where the stars are stained by divine influence. You see into the Great Ocean better than anyone else. You could have been my navigator.’

Magnus narrowed his good eye. In sympathy, the puckered scar marking the absence of his other eye pulled tight.

‘What do you intend to do, Lorgar? You have no idea of what you seek.’

‘I will continue the Great Crusade,’ Lorgar smiled, taking another swallow of the dark wine. ‘I will cast my fleet across the galaxy, and bring every world we find into compliance. And as we sail the heavens, we will be as pilgrims seeking a holy land. If there is truth behind the legends so many cultures share, then I will find it. And with it, I will enlighten humanity.’

Magnus said nothing. Disbelief robbed him of speech.

Lorgar drained the wine. It stained his golden lips again. ‘I will apply my Legion’s full strength to the Great Crusade, and never raise another monument in the Emperor’s image. I will do it all under the watchful eyes of his Custodes war dogs. Surely there is no harm in recording ancient tales of faiths from the cultures we encounter? You yourself assured me they were all false. Father said the same.’

‘I am leaving,’ Magnus said again, and moved to the centre of the room. Resting his gloved hand on the great leather-bound book chained to his belt, the primarch looked back at his brother. They would not meet again for almost forty years, and the galaxy would be a very different place by the time they did.

They both sensed this. It carried between them in that lingering stare: half-challenge, half-plea.

‘What swims within the Great Ocean that you’ve always kept from us?’ Lorgar demanded, teeth clenching. ‘What secrets hide within the warp? Why do you spend your life staring into it, if there’s nothing there? What if I asked our father about your secret travels into the aether?’

‘Farewell, Lorgar.’

The Word Bearers lord pulled back his hood, his handsome features rendered into true gold by the candlelight.

‘Is there a place where reality and unreality converge? An empyrean, a heaven that humanity has always misunderstood? A realm where gods and mortals meet? Answer me, Magnus.’

Magnus shook his head as motes of misty light began to form around him. A teleportation lock from his vessel in orbit. Wind, from nowhere, began to breathe.

‘What are the voices?’ Lorgar screamed over the rising winds. ‘Who calls to me?’

‘If you will not alter your path, then only one thing awaits you in the stars,’ said Magnus.

Lorgar stared in rapt silence, hungering for the answer, but Magnus spoke only a single word before vanishing in a burst of bright light and white noise.

‘Misery.’

ELEVEN

In a God’s Service

Confession

The Pilgrimage

For several kilometres around the Spire Temple, revellers in the streets looked up in horror as the tower-top exploded in searing light. A dusty powder rained down from the observatory – its glass dome pulverised to the tiniest, twinkling shards.