Aaron Dembski-Bowden - The First Heretic

‘Not a soldier?’

‘Not a soldier,’ Lorgar nodded. He looked exhausted. ‘There are greater things in life than excelling at shedding blood.’

‘If you are not a soldier, then you have no right to lead a Legion,’ said Magnus. ‘The Astartes are weapons, brother. Not craftsmen or architects. They are the fires that raze cities, not the hands that raise them.’

‘So we are speaking in hypocrisies today?’ Lorgar managed a smile. ‘Your Thousand Sons are responsible for much of Tizca’s beauty, let alone Prospero’s enlightenment.’

‘True,’ Magnus returned the smile, altogether more sincere, ‘and they are also responsible for a great number of faultless compliances. The Word Bearers, by comparison, are not.’

Lorgar fell silent.

‘Is this about Monarchia?’ Magnus asked.

‘Everything is about Monarchia,’ Lorgar admitted. ‘It all changed in that moment, brother. The way I see the worlds we conquer. My hopes for the future. Everything.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘Do not patronise me,’ Lorgar snapped. ‘With the greatest respect, Magnus, you cannot imagine this. Did the lord of all human life descended upon you, burn your greatest achievements to ash and dust, and then tell you that you – and you alone – were a failure? Did he throw your precious Thousand Sons to the ground and tell your entire Legion that every soul wearing their armour was a wasted life?’

‘Lorgar–’

‘What? What? I spent decades on Colchis dreaming of the day god himself would arrive and lead humanity to the empyrean. I raised a religion in his honour. For over a hundred years, I have spread that faith in his name, believing he matched every dream, every prophecy, every mythic poem about the ascension of the human race. Now I am told my life was a lie; that I have ruined countless civilisations with false faith; that every one of my brothers who laughed at me for seeking a greater purpose in life was right to laugh at our bloodline’s only fool.’

‘Brother, calm yourself–’

‘No!’ Lorgar instinctively reached for a crozius that wasn’t there. His fingers curled in a rage that couldn’t be released. ‘No... Do not “brother” me with indulgence in your eyes. You are the wisest of us all and you see nothing of the truth in this.’

‘Then explain it. And shackle your temper, I have no desire to be whined at. Or will you strike me, as you struck Guilliman?’

Lorgar hesitated. After a moment, he brushed a white petal from the railing with his golden palm. Anger quietened, without fully fading, as the petal flitted down through the air. He met Magnus’s gaze.

‘Forgive me. My choler is kindled, and my control lacking. You’re right.’

‘I always am,’ Magnus smiled. ‘It’s a habit.’

Lorgar looked back out over the city. ‘As for Guilliman... You have no idea how fine it felt to strike him down. His arrogance is unbelievable.’

‘We are blessed with many brothers who would benefit from being humbled once in a while,’ Magnus smiled, ‘but that is for another time. Speak what must be spoken. You are afraid.’

‘I am,’ Lorgar confessed. ‘I fear the Emperor will break the Word Bearers – and break me. We would be cast alongside the brothers we no longer speak of.’

The silence was hardly comforting. ‘Well?’ Lorgar asked.

‘He might,’ the one-eyed giant said. ‘There was talk of it, before Monarchia.’

‘Did he come to you to ask your thoughts?’

‘He did,’ Magnus admitted.

‘And he went to our brothers?’

‘I believe so. Don’t ask what sides were taken by whom, for I do not know where most of them stood. Russ was with you, as was Horus. In fact, it was the first time the Wolf King and I have agreed on anything of import.’

‘Leman Russ spoke in my favour?’ Lorgar laughed. ‘Truly, we live in an age of marvels.’

Magnus didn’t share the amusement. His lone eye was a deep, arctic blue as it fixed upon Lorgar. ‘He did. The Space Wolves are a spiritual Legion, in their own stunted and blind way. Fenris is an unmerciful cradle, and it breeds such things in them. Russ knows that, though he lacks the intelligence to give it voice. Instead, he swore that he’d already lost two brothers, and had no desire to lose a third.’

‘Two already lost.’ Lorgar looked back to the city. ‘I still recall how they–’

‘Enough,’ warned Magnus. ‘Honour the oath you took that day.’

‘You all find it so easy to forget the past. None of you ever wish to speak of what was lost. But could you do it again?’ Lorgar met his brother’s eyes. ‘Could you stand with Horus or Fulgrim, and never again speak my name purely because of a promise?’

Magnus wouldn’t be drawn into this. ‘The Word Bearers will not walk the same paths as the forgotten and the purged. I trust you, Lorgar. Already, there’s talk that compliance was achieved on Forty-Seven Sixteen with laudable speed. Settler fleets are en route, are they not?’

Lorgar ignored the rhetorical question.

‘I need your guidance, Magnus. I need to see the things you see.’ The gold-skinned primarch watched the procession weaving through the streets, marching closer by the minute.

‘You know of Colchisian mythology, and the Pilgrimage to where gods and mortals meet. You know how it matches the beliefs of so many other worlds. The empyrean. The Primordial Truth. Heaven. Ten thousand names in ten thousand cultures. It cannot be mere superstition, if shamans and sorcerers on so many words all share the same beliefs. Perhaps father is wrong. Perhaps the stars hide more secrets. Perhaps they truly do hide the gods themselves.’

‘Lorgar...’ Magnus warned again. He turned from the balcony, and moved back into the expansive chamber atop the Spire Temple. The domed ceiling was glass, offering a breathtaking view of the sky as night fell. The stars were beginning to make themselves known, pinpricks of light in the sapphire sky.

‘Do not hunt for something to worship,’ Magnus said, ‘merely because your faith was proven false.’

Lorgar followed his brother, slender fingers toying with the hem of his grey robe’s sleeve. The Word Bearers primarch spent much of his time on Colchis in this spire-top observatory, staring up at the stars. It was here that he’d watched and waited for the Emperor’s arrival so many decades ago, mistaken in the belief that he would be a god worthy of worship.

‘Is that how you see me?’ he asked Magnus, his voice softer than before. Hurt shone in his eyes, flecked with buried anger. ‘Is that how you judge my actions? That I cast about in ignorance, desperate for something, anything, to hear my prayers?’

Magnus watched the stars coming out for the night. He noted several constellations already – their shapes taken and bestowed on Chapters within the Word Bearers Legion. There, the faint image of a crozius crowned with a skull; there, the high seat, adopted as the symbol of the Osseous Throne; and there, the flared circle of the serrated sun.

‘That is how history will judge you,’ said Magnus, ‘if you remain devoted to this path. No one will see your desire to elevate humanity or raise the species into some unknown enlightenment. They will see you humiliated and weak, desperate for something to believe in.’

‘Humanity is nothing without faith,’ Lorgar whispered.

‘And yet we do not need religion to explain the universe. The Emperor’s light illuminates all.’

‘That is what you always fail to see,’ Lorgar moved over to a table with several crystal wine glasses. ‘You think faith is about fear. About needing things explained to ignorant minds. Faith is the greatest unifying element in mankind’s history. Faith was all that kept the light of hope burning through the millennia on the thousands of worlds we now reclaim in this Crusade.’