The First Heretic

that treasonous soul might be, he would pull it apart and feast upon its flesh.

‘We were never human.’ He said the words quietly, not even realising he spoke them aloud. Raum seized hold in the moment of melancholic anger, and the body they shared broke forward into a run.

‘For the Emperor!’ Aquillon cried.

The Gal Vorbak answered with the laughter of daemons.

In the years to come, Argel Tal recalled precious little of the battle. Sometimes he attributed this to Raum’s presence in ascendancy, sometimes he attributed it to his own guilt seeking to purge the night from his mind. Whatever the truth, any reminiscence left him hollow and worn, at the mercy of fragmented images and half- remembered sounds.

It was like thinking back to the moments of earliest childhood, before genetics had shaped his mind with an eidetic memory, when it was a struggle to fill a forgotten time with all five senses and make them feel real.

We were never human. He never forgot those words, nor how they were both true and false, all at once.

Malnor.

Malnor sometimes rose from the churning mess and resolved with clarity. When had Malnor died? How long had they been fighting? He wasn’t sure. Nirallus’s blade had hewn the Gal Vorbak’s head clean from his shoulders, but Malnor did not fall. A wraithly image of his helm remained, snarling and shouting in silence. Nirallus, a blade master beyond anything Argel Tal had ever seen, had been forced to carve Malnor to pieces to put the warrior down for good.

The fight was too frantic and frenetic for sanity to have any place in its motions. Thought and formality vanished, replaced by training and instinct. A blur of blades and claws. The crack of ceramite. The grunts of pain. The smells of spit, of acid, of sweat, of parchment, of bone, of panic, of confidence, of smoky bolter muzzles, of charged blades, of tear-salt, of breath, of blood, and blood, and blood.

And then, the first kill.

Nirallus. The blade master. He killed Malnor, and that left him vulnerable. Torgal and Sicar had leapt onto the Custodian’s back. Chop, chop, chop went the hacking blades, biting into armour joints at the back of the neck and the base of the spine. A life for a life.

Nirallus fell. Torgal leaped away, to safety. Sicar stayed to feed, and earned death himself. Aquillon. The Occuli Imperator. He avenged his brother’s slaughter by ending Sicar a heartbeat later with clean, bright sweeps of his sword.

Argel Tal was on him in that moment. He remembered the leap, and the soreness in his throat as he roared once more. He remembered the juicy, meaty crunch as the Custodian’s head ripped free of its neck. Like a flopping serpent, Aquillon’s spine hung down from the dripping helm. A dizzying stench of blood; a maddened laugh that may or may not have been Argel Tal at all. He never knew for certain.

Six of the Gal Vorbak still drew breath. Six possessed warriors gave their desert dog cackles and ran for the last Custodes with daemonic vigour burning in their limbs.

And this was the last moment Argel Tal could ever recall, until the air was cold again and it was all over. Sythran pulled his helm free, and faced them bareheaded. Instead of waiting with his halberd in hand, he hurled it as a spear.

The Gal Vorbak scattered, but it still struck home. One of them took the blade in the chest with a crack like a falling tree. The spear pounded through ceramite, bone and meat with enough force to burst from the Word Bearer’s back. The Astartes flipped over with the impact, his chest cavity stripped hollow, his lungs and two hearts blasted out of him, reduced to pulped meat on the ground.

Sythran had smiled as the other five descended upon him. He considered his vow of silence complete given the circumstances, and he laughed at the warrior he’d killed.

‘I always hated you, Xaphen.’

VI

Valediction

It is so very like you, to think of one soul’s safety while an entire world burns beneath your feet. I reassured you that you were wrong to worry; that all would be well, as it always is.

Now the sirens wail and the corridors echo with gunshots. The precaution you ordered as a comfort is now a last hope of defence, and I am not a fool – I know they will not be able to protect me against what is coming.

I write these words as quickly as I can, hearing the crashing of blades getting closer with each moment. I could try to hide, but I won’t. The answer is obvious: they will find me no matter where I am, and I cannot outrun such enemies. They will find me if I cower in the cargo holds, or sit comfortably in my own chamber. The secrets I hold mean they have no choice but to come for me, and though you have left these breathless guardians, I am under no illusions. They will come and they will find me. When I die, I will die without betraying my Legion. I promise you that.

My life has been long, and I have no regrets. Few can say such a thing, and even fewer can do so with sincerity. Even you cannot make that claim, Argel Tal.

When you read these words, please know I wish you all the fortune in the world. I have heard the way you speak of Calth and the wars to come, and I trust in your vision and passion for the righteous crusade our Legion will lead. You will bring enlightenment to the galaxy. I have faith in that, never doubting it for a single moment.

Stand with Xaphen, as he stands by you. You are the sons of a demigod, and the chosen avatars of the true deities. No one can take that from you.

I hear blades against my door please remember th

Epilogue