And of course, it changed his sons. The Word Bearers could never go back to a time before the truth.
Argel Tal and Xaphen were my closest links to a world I could no longer see, and the Pilgrimage’s destination changed them in ways far more profound than mere physical differences. The knowledge was a burden to them: that they and their brothers in the Word Bearers Legion must be the ones to return to the Imperium with this terrible truth.
I cannot conceive how they endured, being the heralds of such tidings. To be the ones chosen to enlighten an entire species that humanity would struggle from now until the day creation died. There would be no Golden Age, no era of peace and prosperity. In the darkness of the future, there would be only war.
Perhaps we are all playing the roles marked out by the gods. People who are destined for greatness will often dream great dreams as children. Fate shapes them for the years to come, offering their young minds a teasing glance at what will be.
Blessed Lorgar, Herald of the Primordial Truth, dreamed like this. His childhood was tormented by visions of his father’s arrival – a god of gold, descending from above – as well as nightmares of someone unknown, something unseen, forever calling his name.
And that is perhaps the greatest tragedy of the Word Bearers Legion. Their father knew he would be one of those bringing enlightenment to humanity, but he could never foresee how it would come to pass.
The primarch has spoken of his brothers and how they dreamed similar dreams. Curze, born on a world of eternal night, dreamed of his own death. Magnus, Lorgar’s closest kin, dreamed the answers to the universe’s mysteries. One was cursed with foreknowledge; the other blessed by it. Both were destined to do great things as they reached maturity. Their actions have shaped the galaxy, just as Lorgar Aurelian’s have.
As for myself, I only remember one nightmare from my youngest years.
In my dream, I sat in a blackened room, as blind in the darkness then as I am now. And in that darkness I sat in silence, listening to a monster breathe.
Where is the line between prescience and fantasy? Between prophecy and a child’s imagination?
The answer is simple. Prophecy comes true.
We just have to wait.
- Excerpted from ‘The Pilgrimage’,
by Cyrene Valantion
TWELVE
Death
Final Flight of Orfeo’s Lament
Two Souls
Xaphen lay dead at the creature’s feet.
His spine twisted, his armour broken, a death that showed no peace in rest. A metre from his outstretched fingers, his black steel crozius rested on the deck, silent in deactivation. The corpse was cauled by its helm, its final face hidden, but the Chaplain’s scream still echoed across the vox-network.
The sound had been wet, strained – half-drowned by the blood filling Xaphen’s ruptured lungs.
The creature turned its head with a predator’s grace, stinking saliva trailing in gooey stalactites between too many teeth. No artificial light remained on the observation deck, but starlight, the winking of distant suns, bred silver glints in the creature’s unmatching eyes. One was amber, swollen, lidless. The other black, an obsidian pebble sunken deep into its hollow.
Now you, it said, without moving its maw. Those jaws could never form human speech. You are next.
Argel Tal’s first attempt to speak left his lips as a trickle of too-hot blood. It stung his chin as it ran down his face. The chemical-rich reek of the liquid, of Lorgar’s gene-written blood running through the veins of each of his sons, was enough to overpower the stench rising from the creature’s quivering, muscular grey flesh. For that one moment, he smelled his own death, rather than the creature’s corruption.
It was a singular reprieve.
The captain raised his bolter in a grip that trembled, but not from fear. This defiance – this was the refusal he couldn’t voice any other way.
Yes. The creature loomed closer. Its lower body was an abomination’s splicing between serpent and worm, thick-veined and leaving a viscous, clear slug-trail that stank of unearthed graves. Yes.
‘No,’ Argel Tal finally forced the words through clenched teeth. ‘Not like this.’
Like this. Like your brothers. This is how it must be.
The bolter barked with a throaty chatter, a stream of shells that hammered into the wall, impacting with concussive detonations that defiled the chamber’s quiet. Each buck of the gun in his shaking hand sent the next shell wider from the mark.
Arm muscles burning, he let the weapon fall with a dull clang. The creature did not laugh, did not mock him for his failure. Instead, it reached for him with four arms, lifting him gently. Black talons scraped against the grey ceramite of his armour as it clutched him aloft.
Prepare yourself. This will not be painless.
Argel Tal hung limp in the creature’s grip. For a brief second, he reached for the swords of red iron at his hips, forgetting that they were broken, the blades shattered, on the gantry decking below.
‘I can hear,’ his gritted teeth almost strangled the words, ‘another voice.’
Yes. One of my kin. It comes for you.
‘This... is not what... my primarch wanted...’
This? The creature dragged the helpless Astartes closer, and burst Argel Tal’s secondary heart with a flex of thought. The captain went into violent convulsions, feeling the pulped mass behind his ribs, but the daemon cradled him with sickening gentleness.
This is exactly what Lorgar wanted. This is the truth.
Argel Tal strained for breath that wouldn’t come, and forced dying muscles to reach for weapons that weren’t there.
The last thing he felt before he died was something pouring into his thoughts, wet and cold, like oil spilling behind his eyes.
The last thing he heard was one of his dead brothers drawing a ragged breath over the vox-channel.
And the last thing he saw was Xaphen twitching, rising from the deck on struggling limbs.
He opened his eyes, and saw he was the last to awaken.
Xaphen stood stronger than the others, his crozius maul in his hands. Through the blur of Argel Tal’s returning consciousness, he heard the Chaplain speaking orders, encouragement, demands that his brothers stand and pull themselves together.
Dagotal remained on his knees, vomiting through his helm’s mouth grille. What he produced from his stomach was much too black. Malnor leaned against the wall, his forehead pressed to the cool metal. The others were in similar states of disarray, hauling themselves to their feet, purging their guts of stinking ichor, and whispering litanies from the Word.
Argel Tal couldn’t see the daemon. He looked left and right, targeting reticule not locking on to anything.
‘Where is Ingethel?’ he tried to ask, but the only sound he made was a sick, thick drawl of wordless growling.
Xaphen came over to him and offered a hand to help him rise. The Chaplain had removed his helm, and in the chamber’s gloom the warrior-priest’s face was unnaturally pallid, but otherwise unchanged.
‘Where is Ingethel?’ Argel Tal repeated. This time, the words came forth. It was almost, but not quite, his voice.