The First Heretic

‘The primarch’s own word, not mine.’ Erebus nudged another body with his boot. When a rasping breath wheezed from its mouth grille, the Chaplain repeated his execution, cleaning the blade again afterwards. ‘The Legion never struggled to adopt the new faith. We are philosophers as much as warriors, and take pride in such. All could see how the gods had seeded their worship into our culture from generations in the past. The constellations. The cults that always looked skyward for answers. The Old Ways themselves. Few Word Bearers resisted the truth, for most had always felt it on some level.’

‘Few resisted...’ An uncomfortable thought climbed Argel Tal’s spine with prickling fingers. ‘Was there a purge? A purge of our own ranks?’

Erebus weighed his answer before giving it voice. ‘Not all wished to turn on the Imperium. They believed that stagnancy was strength, that stasis was preservation. No such reluctance remains in the Legion now.’

So Word Bearer had slain Word Bearer, unseen by the eyes of other Legions. Argel Tal breathed slowly, not wishing to ask yet unable to resist. ‘How many died?’

‘Enough.’ Erebus took no joy in confessing it. ‘Not many – nothing like the numbers of those who were culled from the faithless Legions – but enough.’

They moved around the charred hull of a Sons of Horus Rhino. The armoured personnel carrier’s tracks were shattered and scattered like teeth punched from a jaw, while the sloped green hull was pockmarked with bolter fire. Erebus glanced inside. The driver was dead, slain by the shell that destroyed the tank’s front plating, his sea-green ceramite ruptured with shrapnel as he lay slack in his seat.

‘Why do I sense that was not your only question,’ he muttered.

Argel Tal scratched his cheek, and the motion turned into a subtle check, feeling his face for any further changes. He was himself again, at least for now. The mutations were locked inside his genetic code as the daemon slumbered. He knew they’d return soon enough. Just dwelling on the thought was enough to set Raum stirring, the daemon slowly writhing in its repose, like a creature shifting in its sleep.

‘The Custodes,’ he said. ‘We have suffered a long exile to keep them alive. Xaphen’s ritual kept them silenced. Tell me why, Erebus. We have ached to be by the primarch’s side.’

‘So has every Word Bearer in every one of the Legion’s fleets.’

‘We are the Gal Vorbak.’ Argel Tal crashed a fist into the Rhino’s flank, denting the armour plating.

‘Temper, Argel Tal.’

‘We,’ the commander repeated, ‘are the Gal Vorbak. We brought the truth to the primarch at the cost of our own souls. I am not demanding glorification. I am asking for a reason why we were kept in exile.’

Erebus walked on, leaving the tank, and the two Salamanders warriors it had crushed, behind. ‘You came to reflect a side of the primarch’s doubts, until Kor Phaeron and I were able to reignite his conviction. We travelled to those first worlds we conquered – the ones that we’d allowed the Old Ways to in secret remain out of respect. On those worlds, Lorgar’s passion to enlighten the Imperium was reforged anew.’

‘So why were we not recalled? Xaphen’s ritual to silence the Custodes–’

‘I know the ritual,’ Erebus snapped. ‘I wrote the ritual myself, after weeks of communion. Only then did I provide it to Xaphen, and it has been refined each time the invocation was cast.’

The invocation. A spell. Sorcery. Argel Tal shuddered. The word alone was enough to make his skin crawl. On the hillside, the first construction work was beginning on a towering funeral pyre, and a platform for the Sons of Horus to aggrandise themselves above the ‘lesser’ Legions. Argel Tal and Erebus paid the work little heed.

‘I can read the reluctance in your voice, Argel Tal. You do not burn with fervour to kill them, and I will see through any lies you tell me otherwise.’

‘I have no desire to slay them. We have grown closer over time, bonding through battle. But I must know why they were ordered to be spared.’

‘I need them alive,’ the Chaplain admitted at last.

‘Obviously,’ Argel Tal snorted. ‘But why?’

‘Because of what they are. Imagine a life form that cannot reproduce. Imagine it self-replicates instead, but the process is not perfect. It only achieves immortality for its species by creating weaker versions of itself down the generations. We are an example of this. From the Emperor came the primarchs, from the primarchs came the true Astartes. We are a species that names the Emperor not only as our inceptor, but our grandfather.’

Argel Tal nodded, waiting for Erebus to continue. He felt the threat of a smile as he recalled their lessons just like this, back in the days of tutor and student, master and acolyte.

‘We are the third generation of this genetic line. But what if our fleshworkers, our Apothecaries, and our psychically-gifted warriors could use our link to the Emperor as a weapon against him? Should we not capitalise on that possibility?’