The First Heretic

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  Once, he would have smiled at the delicious blasphemy of an impossible idea. Not now.

  ‘We’re being hailed,’ one of the vox-officers called from his console.

  At last. A fleet-wide message, from the only voice that mattered. The message was relayed across the bridge, ruined by vox-breakage but recognisable nonetheless.

  ‘My sons.’ No amount of distortion could conceal the hurt and affection in the words. ‘My sons, we have reached Khur. The last prayer from Monarchia must now be answered. Today we witness with our own eyes the ruin our brothers have made of the perfect city.’

  The four Astartes warriors around the command throne shared a glance, though their expressions remained hidden behind their Mark III helms. Each of them heard the tremor in their father’s voice.

  ‘My sons,’ the message continued. ‘Blood demands blood. We will have the answers we seek before the day is done. This, I swear t–’

  The message didn’t end, it was cut off. An overriding signal took hold of the vox-network, powerful enough to eclipse the words of the Legion’s own primarch.

  This voice was deeper, colder, and just as sincere.

  ‘Warriors of the Word Bearers. I am Guilliman of the XIII Legion, Lord of Macragge. You are ordered to descend to the surface immediately and muster in the heart of the razed site once known as Monarchia. Coordinates are being conveyed. There will be no defiance of this mandate. Your Legion, in its entirety, will gather as ordered. That is all.’

  The voice ceased, and silence reigned.

  Almost a hundred souls – human, servitor and Astartes – gathered on the bridge of De Profundis. None of them spoke a word for almost a full minute.

  Without even acknowledging the others, the Seventh Captain turned and stalked across the chamber, his armoured boots thudding on the plasteel decking.

  ‘Argel Tal?’ Deumos spoke into his helm’s vox-link. His visor display tracked his subordinate captain, scrolling white text feeds of biorhythmic data across his vision. He blinked at a peripheral rune to clear the automatic tactical display.

  The Seventh Captain turned, making the sign of the holy aquila over his chest, his gauntlets forming the God-Emperor’s symbol over the polished breastplate.

  ‘I go to ready Seventh Company for planetfall,’ he said. ‘The answers we seek are on the surface of Khur, in the ruins of the perfect city. I want those answers, Deumos.’

  The air was gritty, thickened by dust and smoke haze. The ground was a black ash desert, with heat-seared patches of glass and melted marble that reflected the sunlight until they were crunched underfoot.

  Argel Tal breathed in, tasting the recycled filtration of his own suit – the sweat, the chemical tang of his gene-enhanced blood – but he couldn’t bring himself to seal his suit completely. Each breath drew in a penitent trace of the brimstone and scorched rock reek of the surrounding devastation.

  Nothing was left standing. Stone powder in the air, the result of a million pulverised marble buildings, was already coating their armour as the Word Bearers stood in the heart of Monarchia. Oath parchments and prayer scrolls attached to Astartes warplate turned a grey-white with settling dust. Argel Tal watched his warriors standing amidst the ruination – some picking through debris with no real intent, others simply remaining motionless – and he searched for the words this moment required.

  Whatever those words were, they escaped him for now.

  The vox crackled live, and Xaphen’s identifier rune flashed on the edge of Argel Tal’s red-tinted retinal display.

  ‘We stood here, six decades ago.’ Xaphen came to his captain’s side, his rare, gold-trimmed armour greyed by the falling dust. For once, the Chaplain of the 7th Company resembled his brothers, rendering every warrior equal as they stood among Monarchia’s bones. ‘Now the city is drowning in clouds of dust, but we stood in this very place. Do you recall it?’ Xaphen asked.

  Argel Tal stared out at the annihilated terrain, seeing ghosts in the mist – the spires and domes of buildings that no longer existed.

  ‘I remember,’ he said. ‘This was the public plaza of Inaga Sector.’ The captain gestured south, though every direction offered nothing but the same ravaged landscape. ‘There stood the Tophet Gate, where the preachers and traders gathered.’

  Xaphen nodded. His left eye bore the same mark as Argel Tal’s: the serrated star, symbol of a shared brotherhood. The weapon mag-locked to his back – a ritual crozius arcanum, the war maul of Word Bearer Chaplains – was forged in the same shape. Its hammerhead was a spiked sphere of dark iron, threaded with silver.

  The conversation, such as it was, ebbed to nothing until the unwelcome serenity was broken by another company making planetfall. On howling thrusters, gunships made their final approaches, clawed landing feet crunching onto the fire-blasted ground. Usually, the flame-and-oil stench of their engine exhausts would assault the senses. Here, it was undetectable among the ruin already inflicted.

  Bulkheads and ramps clanged open. Another hundred warriors in the etched armour of the XVII Legion took their first steps into the dead city. What little formation existed broke almost immediately as the Astartes scattered, struggling to come to terms with what they were seeing. Argel Tal blink-clicked a vox rune on his visor display, tuning into the general channel again. These new arrivals, wearing the heraldry of 15th Company, voiced their breathless disbelief and impotent anger. Their chestplates were marked with the sigil of heaped human skulls, the Chapter of the Osseous Throne.

  Argel Tal offered a quiet greeting. The closest warriors saluted, respecting his rank despite his allegiance to another Chapter. Body and blood, every one of them was a Bearer of the Word. That outweighed all else.

  Still more Thunderhawks streaked overhead, the gunships seeking clear ground to land. Between the warriors already on the surface and the gunships remaining where they’d landed, it was becoming a trial to deploy more of the Legion. East to west, north to south, the sky was a mess of shaking gunships and the heat-shimmers of engines struggling to keep the Thunderhawks airborne.

  Every few minutes, the sky would fall dark, heralding the passage of a Stormbird. These largest landers carried entire companies, their deafening passing temporarily blocking out the sun.

  Argel Tal walked without purpose, crushing ruined rock underfoot. He sealed his armour’s ventilation systems when he grew tired of inhaling the sulphuric stench of Monarchia’s grave. Melted rock and scorched earth were never easy on the nose, and the captain’s gene-enhanced olfactory senses were pained by the intensity. Breathing the recycled air of his suit’s internal filters, he walked on.

  The ground was uneven, pounded into blackened craters by the Ultramarines’ orbital assault. Argel Tal felt his suit’s stabiliser pistons and gravity gyros shifting to compensate. There were brief hums of power as the mechanics in his armour’s knees and shins adjusted to new patches of uneven terrain.

  He knew Xaphen was following him even without looking at the digital distance tracker on his retinal display. It was no surprise when the Chaplain spoke again.

  ‘I feel as though we’ve lost a war without firing a single shot,’ the Chaplain voxed. ‘But look to the skies, brother. Our father comes.’

  The sky grew dark once more, and Argel Tal looked upward as the final Stormbird flew overhead. Its hull was gold, reflecting the midday sun in a spray of solar glare. The captain’s visor dimmed to compensate.

  With greater clarity came the revelation of shame. Smaller gunships, Thunderhawks with hulls of blue, flew in formation around the mighty golden Stormbird. An escort squadron: watchmen, not honour guards. The Ultramarines were escorting the Word Bearers’ primarch down to the surface with all the undignified pageantry of a prisoner being led to execution.

  Argel Tal’s visor zoomed in, responding to his narrowed eyes. Static fuzzed for half a second, quickly clearing as his eye lenses refocused at the new range.

  Every turret on the Ultramarines gunships was trained on the golden hul
l of the Word Bearers Stormbird.

  ‘Do you see that?’ he voxed to Xaphen.

  ‘An insult like that is hard to miss,’ the Chaplain replied. ‘I’d believe it a lie, had I not seen it myself.’

  Argel Tal watched the lander’s arc taking it deeper into the city, and without any other signal, every Word Bearer nearby turned and walked in the direction set by the massive gunship.

  ‘This has the stench of history in the making,’ Xaphen muttered. ‘Gird your soul, brother. Mind your humours.’

  The captain had never heard the layer of unease in Xaphen’s voice before. It was not helping his own fragile calm.

  ‘Answers,’ Argel Tal replied, bringing up retinal readouts of bolter ammunition supplies, along with his armour’s power-pack temperature. ‘Answers, Xaphen. That’s all I want.’

  Argel Tal and Xaphen led Seventh Company into the heart of the city, marching to where the Legion gathered.

  One hundred thousand warriors stood in silence beneath the setting sun.

  One hundred thousand warriors in perfect formation, bolters held in grey fists, helmed heads raised in pride. A hundred thousand pairs of red eye lenses stared ahead. Squad by squad, led by sergeants. Company by company, led by captains. Chapter by Chapter, led by Masters.

  Standard bearers stood before each company, banners held high even as their details faded in the dust. Borne by Sergeant Malnor, the Serrated Sun Chapter icon rose alongside the war banners of its three component companies, eclipsing them in both size and significance. A spiked circle of burnished bronze mirrored the symbol around every warrior’s left eye, decorated with sixty-eight bleached skulls hanging on black iron chains. The skulls were human and alien, each one the head of a fallen enemy champion worthy of remembrance. The left eye socket of every skull was ringed by the serrated sun symbol, painted with Astartes blood, blessed by the company Chaplains.

  Similar icons were held above the mustered Legion. They rattled in the wind, trinkets chiming in grim melody, while the company war banners waved.

  Argel Tal moved forward with the other commanders of the Serrated Sun, leaving their warriors in assembled columns. Although the Chapter was far from the primarch’s favour – such honour belonged to the larger and more prestigious Chapters made from twenty or more companies – their ranks still entitled them to stand at the forefront of the gathered Legion.

  As he walked through ranks of statue-still Word Bearers, Argel Tal switched to the vox frequency secured by Seventh Company prior to planetfall.

  ‘Stand tall, brothers. Enlightenment will soon be ours.’

  A series of ten vox-clicks signalled the acknowledgement of every squad sergeant under his command.

  Several captains voxed quiet greetings as they assembled in an ordered line, their helms and shoulder guards marked with evidence of their own Chapter allegiances.

  Before them all, the golden Stormbird stood at bay, resting in the midst of six Ultramarines Thunderhawk gunships. The edges of their ceramite hulls were scorched bare in places from the fires of atmospheric descent.

  One captain broke ranks. He took a single step forward, and Argel Tal felt the ground’s miniscule tremor as the warrior moved.

  In hulking Terminator armour, the silver-wrought warplate still fresh from the forges of Mars, First Captain Kor Phaeron stood apart from his brothers, as was his right. In the armour of the Legion’s elite, he towered a metre above the lesser captains, clad in layers of reverently sculpted ceramite as thick as the hull-skin of a battle tank. He carried no weapons beyond those his armour already offered: oversized gauntlets ending in talons extending from each finger, the individual blades as long and curved as the primitive scythes used to harvest crops on backwater Imperial worlds. Delicate circuitry threaded along the blades – veins of power that would invest the claws with crackling force upon the First Captain’s desire.

  Unlike the gathered captains, Kor Phaeron wore no helm, and it was fair to say no poet or painter could ever portray the First Captain as a handsome being without liberal artistic license. Argel Tal watched Kor Phaeron’s finger-blades ripple with electric current, a sure sign of impatience. The larger warrior’s expression was locked in the sneer of a man who tastes nothing but bitterness and ash, which was the only face Argel Tal had ever seen him wear. Despite the impressive armour, Kor Phaeron’s visage was corpse-gaunt and bone-pale, as it had been on each of the rare occasions the two captains crossed paths.

  ‘I hate him,’ Xaphen whispered over the vox. ‘He wears that armour as a shield for one thousand weaknesses. I hate him, brother.’

  Argel Tal remained unmoving, bolter across his chest. He’d heard this from the Chaplain many times before, and could offer no answer to ease his friend’s choler.

  ‘I know,’ he said, hoping Xaphen would fall silent. This was hardly the time for such things.

  ‘He is not one of us. A false Astartes.’ Xaphen fell into the familiar lament with teeth-clenching passion. ‘He is impure.’

  ‘This is not the time for old grudges.’

  ‘Laxity like that is why you will never carry a crozius,’ the Chaplain said.

  The nepotism behind Kor Phaeron’s ascension to the First Captaincy was no secret. As the primarch’s spiritual counsel and foster father during the years of Lorgar’s youth away from the Imperium, Kor Phaeron had helped shape the growing demigod in ways his true father had not. They stood together through the years of sacrifice and revolution, through the holy wars that threatened to tear Colchis apart before its unity under the benevolent rule of Lorgar.

  When the God-Emperor came to Colchis over a century before to offer Lorgar command of the XVII Legion, Kor Phaeron had been far too old to receive the organ implantations and prepubescent genetic manipulations necessary to grow into one of the Astartes. Instead, through rejuvenat surgery, costly bionics and limited gene-forging, Kor Phaeron was exalted above humanity as a sign of the value placed in him by the primarch.

  Despite leaving humanity behind, he had not ascended to the ranks of true Astartes. Argel Tal watched him now, this pinnacle of genetic compromise. Respect stilled his tongue, even if admiration did not.

  Kor Phaeron spat onto the broken ground. The acidic gobbet of saliva hissed as it ate into the ruined stone. Only then did Argel Tal reactivate the vox-channel to Xaphen by blink-clicking his brother’s name-rune.

  ‘Are you galled only by the First Captain’s impurity? Or is it his complete lack of Legion discipline, and that his victories eclipse yours and mine put together?’

  Xaphen chuckled, the sound low and dark. His crozius hammer was in his fists, its mace head resting on the ground.

  ‘He is at the primarch’s side for each campaign. He commands the First Company, the Legion’s finest, and wears the armour of the Terminator elite. It would take a fool to fail in those circumstances.’

  ‘I have heard him preach, brother. As have you. I do not like him, but I respect him. He speaks the Word with an insight possessed by no other, and his wisdom pours fire into my blood. He orchestrated victory in a planet-wide civil war when he was merely a human priest. Do not underestimate him now.’

  Xaphen’s voice was sterner. ‘Impurity cannot be forgiven.’

  ‘The primarch chose him,’ the captain’s tone also grew stonier in response. ‘Does that mean nothing to you?’

  ‘I do not doubt our father’s judgement,’ came the reluctant reply.

  Just when Argel Tal sensed more to come, Xaphen fell silent, perhaps detecting an implied lecture in his brother’s disapproval.

  ‘Stand ready,’ Kor Phaeron growled, his grinding voice at odds with his cadaverous face. ‘The primarch comes.’

  As those words hung in the air, the ramp beneath the cockpit of the golden Stormbird began to ease down on smooth gears.

  Argel Tal breathed out, slow and tense, feeling his primary heart thud faster. Although he wasn’t in battle, his secondary heart started a slower counter-beat to the hammering of his first.

>   The figure descended the ramp alone, and the Seventh Captain felt the stinging threat of worshipful tears even as he kept his gaze on the ruined ground. He’d not seen his primarch in almost three years. To be cast away from his radiance, even in the name of sacred duty, was to walk in shadow, devoid of inspiration.

  The vox came alive with thousands of muted voices as countless Word Bearers breathed their father’s name. Many thanked fate for the chance to stand within his presence once again. Reverent chants ghosted over the communication channels, never rising above whispers. Argel Tal was one of the few that remained silent at first, thanking fate in voiceless piety.

  Three years. Three long, long years of fighting in the darkness, praying for this moment to come. All doubt, all concern, all suspicion of the Ultramarines’ summons was erased in a dual beat of his twin hearts.

  The figure stopped walking. Argel Tal knew this from the cessation of footsteps on blackened earth.

  Only then did he speak. A single word: a name used only rarely beyond the warrior-sons who carried Lorgar’s blood in their veins, as they conquered an ignorant galaxy by crozius and bolter.

  ‘Aurelian,’ the captain said, the word drowning in so many similar whispers.

  Argel Tal raised his eyes at last, to see the son of a living god standing in the heart of a necropolis.

  THREE

  Blood Demands Blood

  Sigillite

  The Master of Mankind

  The Seventeenth Primarch was known to the emergent Imperium by many names. The worlds left in his Legion’s triumphant wake knew him as the Anointed, the Seventeenth Son, or more elegantly, the Bearer of the Word.

  To his primarch brothers he was simply Lorgar, the name given to him on his home world of Colchis during the years of turmoil before the Emperor’s arrival.

  Yet as with many primarchs, he also bore an informal title – a term of respect often used by the eighteen Legions. Where Fulgrim of the III Legion was known respectfully as the Phoenician, and Ferrus Manus of the X Legion carried the Gorgon as his title, the lord of the XVII Legion was the Urizen – a name pulled from the half-forgotten writings of ancient Terran myth.