Aaron Dembski-Bowden - The First Heretic

The winged shadow vanished from Argel Tal’s vision, and above him the sky was brightened by the last rays of the setting sun.

I am alive, he thought, even as he tore himself apart, even as he ripped a handful of steaming organ meat from his shattered ribcage and burst his first heart in his hand. I did not die beneath the shadow, and I cannot destroy myself now.

This pain will bleed you of sanity. Let me ascend!

Despite agony no living being had ever survived, there was still a moment of fierce resistance in the war behind Argel Tal’s eyes. He wanted to die, to taste nothingness, not to endure further corruption. The sentience that was Raum found itself shackled deeper within by a soul ruthlessly unwilling to surrender.

I will save us, not harm us. RELEASE ME.

The Word Bearer’s concentration went slack, not because he believed the daemon’s words, but from reaching the absolute end of his strength.

Argel Tal closed his eyes.

Raum opened them.

A cloven hoof of bleached bone, wreathed in ceramite that seemed moulded to fit, crushed a gasping Raven Guard warrior into the mud. Great claws with too many joints, resembling the lashing branches of winter trees, closed and opened, closed and opened, while each of its long fingers ended in black talons. Most of the crimson armour was bulked up and layered by dense bone ridges and knuckly spines. It stood taller than even an Astartes – though not equal to the primarchs battling a short distance away.

Its helm was crowned in pagan majesty with great horns of ivory, and silhouetted against the bright cannon fire it seemed to resemble the Taur of Minos from pre-Imperial Terran mythology. Its legs were jointed backwards and brutally muscled beneath the armour, with powerful black hooves leaving burning imprints in the soil. Its Astartes helm was split along the cheeks and mouth grille to reveal a shark’s maw with rows of bladed teeth, glinting with clear acidic saliva.

The daemon drew in a great breath and roared it back out into the retreating ranks of the Raven Guard. That terrible wall of sound hit the Astartes as if an earthquake was laughing at them. Dozens fell to their hands and knees.

Around the warped helm’s left eye lens, the golden sun was all that marked the creature as the man it had been.

TWENTY-SEVEN

An Image to Make his Name

Sacrifice

The Burden of Truth

Ishaq made a jump for it, and rolled under the bulkhead before it slammed down. It was less daring than it sounded as the security doors were taking their sweet time to close, but with the sirens wailing and the emergency lighting darkening everything to deep red, he was hardly thinking clearly. He didn’t want to get sucked out of a void breach, but nor did he want to be caught up here when the battle was over. He needed to go, go, go.

Checking his picter was still in one piece, he broke into another sprint, desperate to get the hell off this deck. The labyrinthine corridors defied this, hindering him further by the fact most of the wall markings were in Colchisian rather than Imperial Gothic.

Have I been here before? One corridor was much the same as another. In the distance, he could hear bulkheads sealing shut and corridors collapsing as the ship sustained more damage. He’d already made it through several thoroughfares where the walls were reduced to wreckage scattered all over the floor in a twisted mess of grey steel and black iron.

He started running again. Four dead men waited around the next corner – four Euchar soldiers, half-crushed by an exploded, fallen wall.

No. Three dead. ‘Help me,’ said the fourth.

Ishaq froze while the ship shook around him. If this soldier survived and identified him later, he was a dead man for being on the monastic deck.

‘Please,’ the trembling man begged.

Ishaq knelt by the soldier and heaved some of the wreckage off his legs. The Euchar screamed, and the imagist squinted through the emergency darkness to see why. Some of the detritus had pierced the soldier’s legs and belly, pinning him to the floor. There’d be no helping him, after all. Pulling this out was the work of a skilled surgeon, and even then, it likely wouldn’t be enough to save the poor wretch.

‘I can’t. I’m sorry. I can’t.’ He rose to his feet. ‘I can’t do anything.’

‘ Shoot me, you stupid bast – ’

‘I don’t have a–’ He saw the soldier’s rifle half-buried in the junk, and hauled it free. As he tried to take aim, the shuddering ship almost sent him sprawling.

Click , went the trigger. Click, click, click.

‘Safety,’ the soldier groaned. Blood was pooling beneath him. ‘The... switch.’

Ishaq flicked the switch along the gun’s side, and pulled the trigger. He’d never fired a lasweapon before. The crack-flash left dancing lights before his eyes, and he struggled at first to see the soldier. The man was dead now, his head emptied against the wall behind him. The corridor itself was blocked by debris, and Ishaq dropped the rifle with a clatter, turning to head back the way he’d come.

The bulkhead at the end of the concourse thunked shut with a finality Ishaq almost swore was smug, trapping him in a corridor with four dead bodies and a lot of wreckage. One door led out of here, marked by what looked like Colchisian verse on the damaged walls either side.

He pounded his fists against it, getting no answer. The door was warm, charged somehow, as if the room on the other side were a living thing. Ishaq hammered meaningless numbers into the keypad, receiving the same amount of success.

At last, he took up the lasrifle again, closed his eyes, and shot the security panel. The keypad shorted out, flickering with small flames, and the door at the heart of the monastic deck opened with a sweltering whisper of released air. The sigh of pressure was obscene in its biological origins, stinking of unwashed flesh and the faecal reek of prolonged deprivation. Voices drifted out from the room as if carried on the air. They mumbled and muttered, and made no sense.

Ishaq stood, staring inside, unable to form words at what he was seeing.

His picter flashed. This, at last, was the image to make his name.

His brother was a warrior, a warlord, and from the very first moment their weapons met, Corax was fighting to kill, while Lorgar fought to stay alive. The battle moved too fast for mortal eyes to perceive, with both primarchs pushing themselves beyond anything else they’d endured.

Corax evaded the crozius without even once parrying. He weaved aside, threw himself out of reach, or fired his flight pack with enough force to boost him up and over Lorgar’s heavy swings. By contrast, sweat stung Lorgar’s eyes as he desperately blocked each of his brother’s attacks. Illuminarum’s great hammerhead rang like a church bell as it battered aside the Raven Lord’s claws.

‘What are you doing?’ Corax cried into his brother’s face as their weapons locked. ‘What madness has taken you all?’

Lorgar disengaged, hurling Corax backward with enough strength to leave his brother unbalanced. The Raven Lord compensated instantly, his flight pack breathing fire and propelling him back at his brother. Bladed wings flashed out to the side, but Lorgar was ready for them. He ignored their scraping, cutting wounds as they knifed through his armour, and focused on hammering Corax’s claws aside. In the seconds’ safety he bought for himself, Lorgar at last landed a true blow. Corax was sent sprawling again as the crozius pounded into his breastplate. The power field around the maul’s head struck with enough force to send a shockwave blasting out from the warring brothers, throwing all nearby Astartes to the ground.