The First Heretic

The Gal Vorbak closed in. At the centre of the crimson circle, the three golden warriors went back to back. They offered the Word Bearers nothing but breastplates emblazoned with the Imperial eagle, and blades that would only ever rise in the Emperor’s service. Of the Astartes Legions, only one had ever been honoured enough to engrave the aquila upon their armour – the once-noble Emperor’s Children, now a core part of the Warmaster’s rebellion. But these were Imperial Custodians, the praetorians of the Master of Mankind, and kept their mandate far above such concerns. The Custodes wore the aquila more often than the primarchs themselves. Each eagle symbol shone on their chests in solid silver, clutching lightning bolts in their claws. Nowhere else in the Imperium were the two symbols of the Emperor’s ascension twinned like this: forged into the armour of his chosen guardians.

The hunters drew even closer. At their vanguard, Argel Tal spared a brief moment’s concern for the fact the Custodes had not fired upon them. Perhaps they lacked ammunition after the battle aboard the ship. Perhaps they wished to end this cleanly, with blades rather than bolters.

‘You killed Cyrene,’ he said, the words thickened by spite and the acidic bile stringing between his jaws.

‘I executed a traitor who had borne witness to a Legion’s sins.’ Aquillon aimed at his sword at Argel Tal’s warped visage. ‘In the name of the Emperor, what are you? You seem more nightmare than man.’

‘We are the truth,’ Xaphen barked at the trapped Custodes. ‘We are the Gal Vorbak, the chosen of the gods.’ All the while, the Word Bearers stalked closer. A noose was closing around the Custodians.

‘Look upon yourselves,’ Aquillon said in disbelief. ‘You have cast aside the Emperor’s vision of perfection. You have abandoned everything it meant to be human.’

‘We were never human!’ Hissing spit sprayed from Argel Tal’s jaws as he roared the words. ‘We. Were. Never. Human. We were taken from our families to fight the Forever War in the name of a thousand lies. Do you believe this truth is easy to bear? Look at us. Look at us! Humanity will embrace the gods, or humanity will embrace oblivion. We have seen the Imperium burn. We have seen the species brought to extinction. We have seen it happen, as it happened before. The cycle of life in a galaxy owned by laughing, thirsting gods.’

Aquillon’s voice held nothing but kindness, and that made it all the crueller. ‘My friend, my brother, you have been deceived. The Emperor–’

‘The Emperor knows far more than he has ever revealed to you,’ Xaphen cut in. ‘The Emperor knows the Primordial Truth. He has challenged the gods and damned humanity with his hubris. Only through allegiance....’

‘...through worship...’ said Malnor.

‘...through faith...’ said Torgal.

‘...will mankind endure the endless wars against the tides of blood that will drown our galaxy.’

Aquillon turned to each of the Word Bearers as they spoke their piece of the sermon. He looked back to Argel Tal at its conclusion.

‘Brother,’ he said again. ‘You have been most blackly deceived.’

‘You. Killed. Cyrene.’

‘And you count this as some unfathomable betrayal?’ Aquillon’s laughter was rich and ripe, and to hear it made Argel Tal’s teeth grind. ‘You, who stand out of the Emperor’s light, malformed into a monster. You, who binds tortured souls into the walls of your ship with forbidden lore, letting them suck in all psychic sound for forty years? You, accuse me of betrayal?’

Even through the daemon’s rage fogging his thoughts, even through his grief-born anger at Cyrene’s murder, his brother’s words struck with enough force to wound. Argel Tal had walked through that chamber himself many times, and no matter how ardently he hated the necessity of it, he had still allowed its existence.

Images assailed him with guilty stabs, each memory knifing into him before he could cast it aside. Xaphen, chanting from the Book of Lorgar, as an astropath shrieked before him. She was being disembowelled, and not quickly, her pain serving as a focus while she was chained to the chamber walls. Colchisian symbols that had been tattooed onto her flesh an hour before still bled freely. The vitae engines, maintained by an Apothecary of the Legion, would keep her alive for many months to come. The daemon Xaphen summoned within her would enslave her mind to that most simple of tasks: to draw in and digest any psychic communication from nearby minds.

No word would ever reach Terra, but for the falsified reports the Word Bearers made themselves. Compliances achieved. The perfect Legion. Lorgar, the Seventeenth Son, as loyal as any father could hope.

‘I accuse you,’ Xaphen laughed himself, ‘of being a fool. Your precious astropath has been wailing your suspicions right into the mouths of listening daemons for four decades. Every time you huddled around him and heard the Emperor’s words, you were hearing nothing more than the lies I whispered into a daemon’s ears.’

Argel Tal did not add to Xaphen’s relish. The chamber was no source of sinister pride for him. He had condemned not one woman to die in agony there, but sixty-one souls in all. The strain of possession wore the astropaths down with disgusting rapidity. Their degradation was quick, but never merciful. Stinking black cancers ate through their bodies after only a few months. Most faded fast, their minds eroded by the warp’s winds like a cliff suffering in an endless storm. Few ever lasted a year – soon enough, it was always time to bind another helpless, screaming astropath into the life support engines, and inflict horrors upon their flesh with ritual blades and burning brands.

He considered it part of his penance to watch each binding. Each time, he would wait for the moment when the captive’s eyes would glaze, not in death, but in surrender. Each time he would watch for that precious second when the daemon’s consciousness devoured its way to the fore of the victim’s mind. The screaming would cease. Silence would resume, blessed in the wake of such sounds.

Nineteen had volunteered. Nineteen members of the fleet’s astropathic choir, nourished by years of Xaphen’s sermons, had volunteered for the honour of keeping the Legion’s greatest secrets. Curiously, these burned out the fastest, succumbing to biological erosion before those who were unwillingly bound. It seemed suffering was a source of strength in the ritual – Xaphen had noted it, and informed Erebus. He received thanks in return, and the rite was amended in the Book of Lorgar. Xaphen had blazed with pride for weeks afterward.

The Custodes had found the chamber at the heart of the monastic deck, but someone, somewhere, somehow, had found it first. Aquillon had been led there. Of that, Argel Tal was certain. He vowed in silence then. Whoever