The First Heretic

Ingethel slithered closer to the gathered Word Bearers. The black-wood staff, once carried by the maiden who sacrificed herself to bring the daemon into being, tapped on the decking like an old man’s walking cane.

Such things I have to show you.

It gestured two gnarled claws at the world below. There is no lesson in Melisanth as it is. You must see Melisanth as it was.

Close your eyes. Hear the storm outside. Listen to the tide breaking against your vessel’s skin.

Melisanth is but one world floating in the Sea of Souls. One amongst millions. Let me show it to you.

And then, no more than a heartbeat later – Open your eyes, Argel Tal.

He’d always treasured sunrise.

This one, an ocherous orb painting fierce light over a city of spires and minarets, was one to remember. Even with pain tolerance and resistance to light saturation written into his genetic code, the rising sun was bright enough to make his eyes ache. And that was beautiful too, for it had never happened before.

Ingethel was nowhere to be seen. They stood on a cliff’s edge, above an alien city turned golden by the dawn. Argel Tal turned to see his brothers: Xaphen, watching the xenos colony; Malnor and Torgal with him; Dagotal, staring up into the blue sky.

This was Melisanth, came the creature’s burbling voice in his mind. See the city made of bone and gemstones. See the spires too delicate for mortal physics to support them, standing only because of eldar witchcraft.

Now see the Fall.

In the sky above, the clouds raced in a cyclical dance – day and night flashing past in a blur of flickering grey. Tendrils of violet clawed across the heavens, thickening, linking, coiling, staining the air with red mist. Sweat broke out on Argel Tal’s face and neck in the savage heat. It warmed even the aqueous moisture that lubricated his eyes.

As he watched, the city below began to tumble, its spires and walkways falling to shatter on the ground, crushing crowds of slender alien figures and demolishing lesser buildings beneath.

Their sorceries are fading. This is on the edge of the Great Eye. The destruction took days to unfold on these lesser colonies. At the core of their empire, all life was ended in mere moments.

Argel Tal could hear the city dying, the sounds of thunder, sorrow and lamentation carried up to him on the wind.

‘Aliens,’ Xaphen smiled at the toppling towers. ‘May they all burn, soulless and forgotten.’

None of the others disagreed. ‘Why did this happen?’ asked Argel Tal.

The eldar were close to seeing the truth of the universe. Their civilisation spanned the galaxy, evolving for millennia under the guidance and worship of their gods. And then, at the last step... they faltered.

‘How?’

Look to the sky.

The storm clouds gathered in a threatening spiral, darkening the land to every horizon. From the very first raindrops – hot on the skin and rich in their metallic reek – it was clear what was in store for the city below. With a single peal of thunder, loud enough to vibrate the air itself, the blackened clouds ground together and signalled the opening of the heavens.

Sheets of scarlet rained from the sky, showering the broken city in blood so thick it stained the bone structures that still remained standing. Xaphen closed his eyes, lifting his face to the downpour.

‘This is not human blood. It’s too sweet.’

Argel Tal wiped his face clear of the raining gore. In the city below, creatures were melting from the shadows of fallen monuments, rising from the lakes of blood that were forming in the streets. They staggered and sprinted, each one uneven and unnatural in its own half-formed way. Some crawled on a multitude of boneless limbs. Others wailed as they dashed on spindly legs, reaching out with curling claws.

My kin, taking physical form. They hunt souls, and flesh, and blood and bone.

‘Why is this happening?’