The First Heretic

‘I curse the truth we have discovered,’ he confessed. ‘I curse the fact that we have reached the edge of reality, only for hatred and damnation to stare back at us from the abyss.’

‘The truth is often ugly. It is why people believe lies. Deception offers them something beautiful.’

The creature that was and wasn’t Argel Tal continued its recitation.

The primarch opened his eyes and looked upon the face of the future.

It towered above them all, taller even than Lorgar, and regarded them with mismatched eyes above an open maw. The Cadian worshippers were so silent, so still, that the Word Bearers were no longer sure any other beings remained alive in the cavern.

Tactical data streamed across Argel Tal’s eye lenses as his targeting sensors cycled in frantic inability to lock onto the creature. Each attempted lock drew an invalid response. Where his retinal view would always display analyses of an enemy’s armour and anatomy, a Colchisian rune now blinked Unknown, Unknown, Unknown across his eyes.

Xaphen voiced the same problem. ‘I can’t lock onto it. It’s... not there.’

Oh, I am here.

‘Did you hear that?’ the Chaplain asked. Argel Tal nodded, though his audio receptors had tracked no changes at all.

He disengaged the magnetic clamp sealing his bolter to his thigh, and aimed it the creature. He flinched when a golden hand rested on the weapon, lowering it to the floor.

‘No,’ Lorgar whispered. The primarch’s eyes shined. With the threat of tears? Argel Tal wasn’t sure.

Lorgar, the creature said again. The primarch met the thing’s unbalanced stare.

Four arms curled from its slender torso, each ending in a clawed hand. Its lower body was the mating of serpent and worm, ripe with thick veins in the grey flesh. Its face was almost entirely given over to its open jaws, with selachimorphic teeth in disorderly rows.

A biological impossibility. An evolutionary lie.

It was never still, never motionless, even for a moment. Veins throbbed beneath its discoloured skin, betraying its pulse, and its talons were constantly opening and closing. Only one of its four hands remained closed: gripping Ingethel’s ritual staff in a clawed fist.

One eye was sunken, dark and buried in a face of filthy fur. The other: swollen fit to burst, and the sickening orange of a dying sun.

Nothing remained of the maiden. What reared up before them on its coiled lower body was utterly beyond notions of gender.

I am Ingethel the Ascended, it said, and its silent voice was a hundred murmurs all at once. Argel Tal found his eyes drawn to the curved spines of blackened bone that arced out from the thing’s shoulder blades.

Wings, he thought. Wings of black bone.

Yes. Wings. Humanity forever lies to itself about angels. The truth is ugly. Lies are beautiful. So mankind makes the gods’ messengers beautiful. No fear, then. Lovely lies. White wings.

‘You are not an angel,’ Argel Tal spoke aloud.

And you are not the first Colchisians to reach this world. Khaane. Tezen. Slanat. Narag. All ventured here, millennia ago, guided by visions of angels.

‘You are not an angel,’ Argel Tal repeated, clenching his bolter tighter.

Angels do not exist. They have never existed. But I bring the word of the gods, as angels must do. Look for the core of truth at the heart of humanity’s lies. You will see me. My kind. Angels. The creature blinked. Its swollen eye wouldn’t allow it, but its black pebble of an orb vanished for a moment under wet, wrinkled flesh.

Angels. Daemons. Just words. Just words.

Lorgar stepped forward at last. To Argel Tal’s eyes, he seemed naked without a crozius in his hands.

‘How do you know me?’

You are the Chosen. You are the Favoured Son of the Powers.Your name has echoed across our realm since time immemorial, carried on the winds by the shrieks of the neverborn.

‘I do not understand what you are saying.’