Watching them brought their chants to life. Who were these warriors, to adorn themselves in skulls and daemons’ faces, chanting ritual verse as they advanced? What had become of his Legion?
Ingethel pried the thoughts from Lorgar’s mind. The future holds many changes, primarch.
He didn’t answer. Lorgar moved among the warring Legionaries, utterly ignored by all of them. The warriors moved to fire around him, but paid no more heed to his existence. With a hesitant shove, he pushed one of the red-clad Word Bearers’ shoulder guards. The warrior cursed at a missed shot, moving aside and adjusting his aim. The bolter started up its thunderous refrain a moment later.
Surrounded by advancing Legionaries, the primarch looked back to his guide. Ingethel slinked closer, its sinuous, muscled worm’s body parting the crowded warriors with the same ease.
This moment is fifty years distant from when we stand on Shanriatha.
‘Why do they wear red?’
Ingethel reached to one of the Word Bearers, its nails streaking over the daemonic visage on the warrior’s pauldron. The Legionary hesitated; for a moment Lorgar wondered if the daemon had made their presence known. Instead of noticing them, the warrior reloaded, immediately adding his fire back to the assault.
The Legion’s old armour was cast aside to herald the changes taking hold of humanity. They are no longer the Bearers of the Emperor’s Word, Lorgar. They are the Bearers of yours.
‘This cannot be true.’ The primarch flinched as a bolt shell detonated nearby, killing the Word Bearer closest to him. ‘You have still not told me what that creature is – the one that wears the armour of my Legion five decades from now.’
He watched it move, its bunched musculature in concert with the exposed power cables and layered crimson ceramite armour. As it pulled one of the Imperial Fists apart with its immense claws, the black smoke misting from its wings was an acidic shadow, slowly eating into the golden armour of every Imperial Fists warrior nearby.
‘Throne of the God-Emperor,’ Lorgar whispered. In the great beast’s grip, the bisected Imperial Fist fought on, firing his bolter down into the daemon’s face. The armoured creature hurled the warrior’s legs aside, turning its corrupted helm from the shells cracking against its faceplate. Lorgar watched in silence as the winged daemon slammed the halved Imperial Fist onto its taurine crown, impaling the Legionary on its right horn. That, at last, stilled the warrior’s defiance. His bolter fell from his hands, clattering down the shadow-wrapped wings. The daemon fought on, untroubled by the weight of the armoured torso punctured onto its ivory crest.
‘What is that thing?’ the primarch asked again. ‘Its soul is… I do not have the words for it.’ Lorgar stared through the grinding crash of unfolding carnage, peering to see beneath the monstrosity’s flesh. Where a flaring emanation would pulse in a living being, and a hollow chasm would swallow light within one of the Neverborn, this creature possessed both. An ember burned hot in the blackness beneath its skin.
‘It is not human,’ Lorgar’s voice was strained by the effort it took to pierce the black mist shroud rising from the creature’s wings. ‘But it was.’ He turned his eyes to Ingethel. ‘Wasn’t it.’ The words weren’t a question.
This time, Ingethel’s tone betrayed some of the daemon’s own hesitation. The moment inspired some reluctance, perhaps a reverence, in the daemon itself.
That is your son, Lorgar. That is Argel Tal.
A peal of thunder roared from the Eternity Gate itself, as another winged figure landed amidst the melee. Its wings were torn and stained, ragged with rips and the white feathers streaked by blood. Its armour was a shattered ruin of split steel and burnished gold, while its face was masked by a golden helm. The blade in its hands rippled with psychic flame, bright enough to sear the sight from a watcher’s eyes.
‘No,’ Lorgar managed to whisper.
And that is your brother, the daemon pressed. Sanguinius, Lord of Angels. This is how Argel Tal will die.
LORGAR FROZE AFTER the first step forward. He began a breath in the hall before the Eternity Gate, and released it under a sky tortured by groaning volcanoes.
The air had a ripeness to it – that spoiled, blackening reek of an open tomb. Despite the horizon aflame and choking on ash from the erupting mountains, little warmth reached his exposed skin. No wind stirred to freshen the air. The ground quivered in a prolonged shudder, giving a low, moaning rumble of tortured tectonics far below the grey earth. The planet itself objected to what was taking place on its surface.
Lorgar’s vision couldn’t penetrate the blanket of ash swallowing the sky. To cover the heavens like that, the volcanoes had to have been erupting for months, at the very least.
He turned to the daemon, sensing its approach from behind.
‘Where are we? Why did you bring us here?’
A nameless world. We are here because you saw all you needed to see.
The primarch laughed without intending to. Just as he mustered enough control to speak again, a second burst of laughter broke from his lips.
I fail to see the amusement, Lorgar.
‘You show me my armies laying siege to my father’s palace, allied with daemons, waging war against my brothers, and you ask why I wished to see more than handful of seconds?’ Lorgar shook his head, the laughter dying down. ‘I am finished with being led by the nose into your prepared lessons, creature.’
Ingethel drooled. Watch your tone when addressing one of the gods’ chosen.
‘I am here by my own choice. I will leave here by the same virtue.’
Yes,the daemon stood straighter, eliciting several wet cracks from its vertebrae. Keep telling yourself that, Lorgar.
The primarch gripped his crozius, aching to draw the weapon and wield it out of spite, swinging it in anger, reasserting control over life through the use of violence. In this, he was as any of his brothers, and he knew it. The desire was always there. What better way to bend reality to one’s desire? Bleed those who would defy your choices and there is no longer any opposition. The destroyer’s way was always an easy one. It fell to the builders, the visionaries, to do the difficult work.
Lorgar did something none of his brothers would have done in his place. He released the weapon, leaving it undrawn, and took a calming breath.
‘I am here to learn the truth of the gods, Ingethel. And you are here to show it to me. Please do not force my temper.’
The daemon said nothing. Lorgar stared into its bloated eye, still weeping ichor. ‘Do you understand me?’
Yes.
‘Now tell me why you summoned me here. I heard the call of this place, the shrieking of my name through the solar storms. I came to maturity on a world where our ancient holy texts spoke of this dead alien empire as a heaven for humanity. I want answers, Ingethel. I want them now. Why have I been shaped from birth to be brought to this place? What does fate want of me?’
The daemon drooled again. Its gums were bleeding now and two of its arms were curled close to its glistening chest.
‘What is wrong with you?’
I am nearing the end of this incarnation. My essence sits uneasily in this cage of bone and flesh.
‘I have no wish to see you die.’
I will not die, as you perceive the concept. We are the Neverborn. We are also the Neverending.
Lorgar swallowed a pulse of irritation, not letting it rise to the fore. ‘True immortality?’
In the only possible way.The daemon looked to the horizon, just as Lorgar had done only minutes before. Its gaze milked over, going turgid with thought. You ask a question, despite already knowing its answer. You are here, now, because you have been summoned, you are here, now, because your life was engineered to ensure this moment took place. You are here, now, because the gods wished it. In the tangled skeins of time’s web, I have seen innumerable possible futures where you never came to us, Lorgar.