Aaron Dembski-Bowden - The First Heretic

Fire heralded the pod’s arrival – brightening the air over the wasteland with blazing light as it tore groundward. The impact was a spear-thrust into the metallic-smelling soil, driving the incubator deep into the ground with enough force to split the land with tectonic cracks.

The Word Bearer maintained his balance, breathing in air that tasted of iron and waiting for signs of movement from the chasm freshly-carved into the infertile earth.

The boy that rose under the night sky was corpse-pale, and unique among the progenitors Argel Tal had seen so far, for he carried a shard of his gestation pod clutched tight in his fist – a knife, crude and instinctive, made from the twisted metal of his pod.

Thunder announced itself overhead. The boy raised his face to the sky, a sudden trident of lightning illuminating the child’s gaunt, unhealthy features.

Argel Tal–

–stood atop another cliff edge, this one overlooking a valley that split a brutal mountain range.

The pod hammered down – a blur of grey metal – smashing against the rock walls without piercing the stone. Argel Tal watched as the pod span end over end, wrecking itself in its devastating fall down the mountainside. Dark metal ripped from its armoured hull, shed like peeling scabs.

It came to rest upside-down at the bottom of the valley, and Argel Tal’s visor zoomed in to compensate for the distance. He saw the pod shake once, twice, then roll aside, pushed away by the infant it had contained. Free of his burden, the boy touched trembling hands to a face awash with blood.

The scream of pain that rose from the valley had no place leaving the lips of a child so young.

When–

–everything changed again, Argel Tal watched the dusk through a haze of mist. The fog was thin, a sickly celadon jade that spoke of both chill air and toxicity. What little daylight pierced the mist was born of a pinprick sun, meagre in both size and generosity, setting below a flat horizon.

Plainsland stretched in every direction, as uninspiring and barren as any number of ignorable lifeless worlds Argel Tal had passed as part of the Great Crusade’s expeditionary fleets.

The falling pod trailed smoke and flame, burning with green fire as it ignited the virulence in the mist. Its final descent brought it hammering against the rocky ground, cracking open as it skidded over the shale.

The Word Bearer moved closer to the downed capsule, seeing tendrils of fog creeping through the rent metal, misting up the interior behind the clear viewplate. Something pale moved within, but–

–he was standing in the white stone and shining crystal heart of a city, surrounded by spires, pyramids, obelisks and towering statuary.

The pod fell from the summer sky at a meteor’s angle, shearing through a slender tower with a crash of breaking glass that could be heard across the city. A moment later, the incubator cracked the mosaic ground, sliding and burning across the white stone until it ended its fiery journey against the base of a great pyramid.

Crowds of tanned, handsome figures gathered in the afternoon sunlight, watching as the metal coffin’s rivets and bolts unscrewed and removed themselves, detached by unseen hands. Plate by plate, the pod’s armour plating lifted away, floating in the air above the crash site. At last, the final structural pieces drifted apart, while at the heart of the hovering display was a red-haired child, his eyes closed, his skin a burnished coppery red.

The boy’s feet didn’t touch the ground. He floated a metre above the burned mosaics, and at last opened his eyes. Argel Tal–

–walked the surface of a wasted world. The air held the taint of exhaust fumes, and the lifeless landscape was a grey twin to Luna, Terra’s only moon.

The pod fell from a night sky filled with stars – each of the constellations pregnant with the promise of deeper meaning. The ground rumbled in protest as the pod struck, and the Word Bearer climbed the small rise of a crater’s lip to see the incubator gouging a furrow through the silvery soil.

The pod’s door blasted open even as it was coming to rest, clanging loudly in the silent night. The boy that rose from the confines was inhumanly handsome, his fine features pale and contemplative, his grey eyes matching the earth of the world he’d landed upon.

There was no–

–chance to move closer.

He was home. Not the sterile decks of the expeditionary fleet, nor even the Spartan sanctuary of his meditation chamber aboard De Profundis. No, he was home.

The sky was a cloudless expanse of blue above the dusty desert, while a city of grey flowers and fire-hardened red bricks sat by the side of a wide river. Argel Tal regarded the Holy City from his position downriver; such was his pleasure at this curious homecoming that he forgot to look up until the last moment.

The pod – his father’s black iron womb – hit the rushing river with a great splash, throwing spray and a fine wet mist into the air. Argel Tal was already sprinting, his armour joints whirring as he ran over the arid soil. He didn’t care if this was a vision or if he was really here; he had to reach his father’s pod.

Astartes battle armour wasn’t made for this. With its immense weight, his boots sank into the sticking river mud, generating grinding protests from the inbuilt mercury-threaded stabilisers in his shins and knee-joints.

The Word Bearer hauled himself through the waist-deep mud, clambering lower down the riverbank to reach the downed capsule. As he neared the incubator, one thing was obvious above all else: Lorgar’s pod

had suffered a great deal more damage than any other.

He reached out, the ceramite armouring his fingers just managing to scrape the pod’s side, and an image flashed before his eyes, superimposing itself over reality.

The pod rattled, spinning through the void, tumbling alone through the warp’s tides. Burn marks and cracks appeared as the lurching journey continued, while mist the colour of madness seeped in through the armour cracks. The child within slept on as pain marred its features, now restless in its repose.

See how the gods of this galaxy treasured your primarch above the others, keeping him in the Sea of Souls for decades, preparing him for the role he would play in the ascension of mankind to divinity.

Lorgar felt their blessed touch more than any of his brothers.

Argel Tal–

–stumbled, staggering to a halt.

The pod before him was a clone to his father’s, but growing faint and indistinct before his eyes. The ground was dark, the night sky was starless, and for a moment Argel Tal wasn’t sure whether he stood on the surface of a world or the deck of a powered-down ship.

As his senses faded, he caught a momentary glimpse through the viewplate on the pod’s bulky front. Whatever moved within the incubator had too many limbs to be a lone human child.

Argel Tal stepped closer, only to have his attention stolen by a blur of scarlet in the glass reflection. It was his helm, his chestplate, but warped by ivory protrusions – a twisted, gothic bio-architecture formed from ceramite and bone. The face that looked back was a tusked rendition of his war helm, painted crimson and black but for the golden star around his right eye lens.

He–

–opened his eyes.

The observation deck, on board the Orfeo’s Lament. The sky beyond the dome was full of thrashing chaos.

The daemon remained exactly where it had been, its muscled form never completely still, forever swaying side to side, its claws flicker-twitching in the air. Xaphen, Torgal, Malnor, Dagotal – all were exactly as they had been before.

The outrider sergeant checked his retinal chron. Three seconds had passed. Four. Five.