The First Heretic

Argel Tal didn’t answer. His blade and bolter were suddenly very heavy in his hands, and he stared at the Ultramarines displaying their own shock so openly. While they held ranks, it was clear they were uneasy. And rightly so.

‘What have you done to my city?’ Lorgar’s voice was a hissing whisper, spoken through a false smile.

‘It was not compliant,’ Malcador’s words were slowed by patience. ‘This culture, this world, was not comp–’

‘Liar! Blasphemer! It was the model of compliance!’

Several Ultramarines retreated a little now, and Argel Tal could see them looking to one another in doubt. A flutter of voices teased the vox-network as the Word Bearers picked up signals from the Ultramarines voxing each other in their unease. Only Guilliman appeared unmoved. Even Malcador was jarred, his eyes wide and his staff gripped tighter as he faced down the primarch’s anger.

‘Lorgar...’

‘They chanted my father’s name in the streets!’

‘Lorgar, they–’

‘They honoured him with each sunrise!’ Lorgar came closer, his eyes wild, focused like targeting reticules on his father’s advisor. ‘Answer me, human. Justify this, when statues of the Emperor adorned every place of gathering!’

‘They worshipped him.’ Malcador raised his head, for he was half the height of both primarchs. ‘They revered him.’ He looked up at Lorgar, seeking some sign of comprehension in the giant’s golden face. Seeing none, he drew breath again, and wiped a fleck of the primarch’s spittle from his cheek. ‘They worshipped him as a god.’

‘You plead my case for me?’ Lorgar dropped his crozius, letting it fall to the broken ground with a dull thud. He looked at his hands, fingers curled into claws as if he would tear out his own eyes. ‘You... you stand in the ruin of perfection, and you say yourself this city was annihilated for nothing? Have you travelled the length of the galaxy to show me you have lost your fragile mortal mind?’

‘Lorgar–’ the Sigillite tried again, but the rest of his words never left his throat. Malcador fell in silence, smashed aside by Lorgar’s backhanded strike. Every warrior nearby heard the wrenching snap of bones breaking, and Malcador crashed onto the rocky ground twenty metres away, tumbling to a halt in the dust.

Face to face with his brother, Lorgar bared his teeth into Guilliman’s impassive features.

‘Why. Did. You. Do. This.’

‘I was ordered to.’

‘By this worm?’ Lorgar laughed, reaching out a hand towards the fallen figure of Malcador. ‘By this maggot?’ The Word Bearers’ primarch shook his head and stalked back to his own warriors.

‘I will take my Legion to Terra, and inform our father of this... this madness, myself.’

‘He knows.’

The voice was Malcador’s. He rose on unsteady limbs, his words strained and spoken through bleeding lips. Guilliman inclined his head, the barest movement enough to send two of his warriors to aid the Emperor’s advisor. Malcador stood, still hunched from the pain, and ordered the approaching Ultramarines away. With his arm outstretched, his staff leapt from the ground a dozen metres away and slapped neatly into his palm.

‘What?’ Lorgar said, uncertain he’d heard correctly. ‘What did you say?’

The wounded First Lord of Terra closed his eyes, using his staff of office as a crutch.

‘I said, he knows. Your father knows.’

‘You lie.’ Lorgar clenched his teeth again, his breath coming fast and shallow. ‘You lie, and you are fortunate I do not kill you for this blasphemy.’

Malcador didn’t argue. He closed his eyes, raised his head to the sky, and spoke without sound. Every Word Bearer, every Ultramarine, every living being in a

ten-kilometre radius heard the man’s psychic voice pulsing through their minds, such was its power.

+He will not listen, my lord. Not to me+

Lorgar froze, his hands a hair’s breadth from retrieving his crozius on the ground. Guilliman’s most expansive movement since arriving was to turn from his golden brother, not in disgust as Argel Tal first thought, but without any expression at all. He was simply shielding his eyes.

Malcador’s eyes remained closed, his face angled up to the heavens. To the vessels in orbit.

Lorgar stepped back, voicelessly mouthing ‘No, no, no...’, as if whispered words could somehow alter fate.

The world around them exploded in light.

The displacement of air resulted in a bang not far from a sonic boom, but that wasn’t what sent Argel Tal reeling. He’d seen teleportation technology used before – had travelled via such rare means himself – but the noise was filtered to tolerable levels by his helm’s perceptive systems.

And it wasn’t the light of a teleport flare that forced him to avert his eyes. This, too, would have been compensated for by his armour’s internal sensors, dimming his eye lenses immediately.

But he was blind. Blinded by gold, burning like molten metal.

The vox shrieked with thousands of his brothers voicing the same malady, but the reports from his brethren were dull, half-lost in an assault of noise that shouldn’t exist. It wasn’t a fault with the vox; it was in his head – a crashing of waves loud enough to throw off his balance.

Blind and almost deafened, Argel Tal felt his bolter slip from his grip. It took all his strength to remain