The First Heretic

The malformed beasts ran in packs, dragging down any of the slender, weeping survivors they found. The sight left him cold. Genocide should be a purification, and there was nothing of purity in this insane unleashing of unknowable powers.

‘Answer me,’ Argel Tal said softly. No answer came, beyond the blood running down his cheeks and over his lips. He could smell nothing else, taste nothing else, beyond the sanguine rain.

New towers rose from the tumbling city below – slender spires formed from pulsing walls of still-living flesh, decorated by voiceless faces and flayed arms stretching from the architecture. The rising towers reached for the panicking eldar in the streets, using their lives as raw material, their alien flesh as living mortar.

Watch them die. You would die the same way.

‘I told you to answer me,’ said the Word Bearer.

Watch and learn, Word Bearer.

‘We have records of the eldar and their histories.’ He spat the foul blood that kept running onto his tongue. ‘They speak of the Fall, when decadence and sin bred corruption throughout their culture. A spiritual cataclysm annihilated them centuries ago. That devastation is this? This... divine wrath?’

This is their judgement. In their ignorance, they see only the death of an empire as countless worlds drown in blood and fire. In this moment of ascension, the eldar choose terror over power, and damn their kingdom to ashes because the Primordial Truth frightens them all.

They have given birth to a god. A god of pleasure and promise. Yet they feel no joy.

‘Enough!’ Argel Tal threw back his head and drew breath into his three lungs. The storm intensified, its tortured skies bleeding onto the world below.

‘Answer me!’ he screamed at the sky.

This is the Fall they speak of in whispered tones. The eldar were blind. They could have lived in harmonic union with the Powers, as humanity must soon learn themselves. Instead, they are dying. Unable to accept the Primordial Truth, they are being destroyed by it.

You ask why? Can you not see why? This is not how empires die, Word Bearer. This is how gods are born. The eldar faith has given the galaxy a new deity. She Who Thirsts. Slaa Neth. It has a thousand names.

These are its first moments of life, and it wakes to find its own worshippers are abandoning it, out of ignorance and fear.

This endless storm, this Eye of Terror, is the echo of its birth-cries.

‘I have seen enough,’ Argel Tal watched the city below, now silent, flooded, reaped clean of all life. ‘Blood of the gods, I have seen enough.’

Then open your eyes.

Ingethel was watching them, its mismatched eyes unblinking as they reflected the sick light from beyond the dome. The stench of blood lingered in Argel Tal’s nostrils, despite the warriors’ pristine armour and clean skin.

‘That was unpleasant,’ said Torgal.

‘Sir,’ Dagotal reached for Argel Tal’s shoulder guard. ‘I think we should leave this place.’

It was Xaphen, not the daemon, that quelled such discussion. ‘You overstep your authority, sergeant. We will not flee from the truths we’ve travelled so far to find.’

Argel Tal ignored their bickering. His vox-network was alive with squads checking in, retinal runes flickering as each sergeant linked to him.

‘Sir, we just saw...’

‘Captain, there was a voice and... and a vision...’

‘This is Vadox Squad, reporting...’

The Word Bearer turned to the daemon. ‘Every one of my warriors on the ship saw what we saw.’