Tactical data streamed across Argel Tal’s eye lenses as his targeting sensors cycled in frantic inability to lock onto the creature. Each attempted lock drew an invalid response. Where his retinal view would always display analyses of an enemy’s armour and anatomy, a Colchisian rune now blinked Unknown, Unknown, Unknown across his eyes.
Xaphen voiced the same problem. ‘I can’t lock onto it. It’s... not there.’
Oh, I am here.
‘Did you hear that?’ the Chaplain asked. Argel Tal nodded, though his audio receptors had tracked no changes at all.
He disengaged the magnetic clamp sealing his bolter to his thigh, and aimed it the creature. He flinched when a golden hand rested on the weapon, lowering it to the floor.
‘No,’ Lorgar whispered. The primarch’s eyes shined. With the threat of tears? Argel Tal wasn’t sure.
Lorgar, the creature said again. The primarch met the thing’s unbalanced stare.
Four arms curled from its slender torso, each ending in a clawed hand. Its lower body was the mating of serpent and worm, ripe with thick veins in the grey flesh. Its face was almost entirely given over to its open jaws, with selachimorphic teeth in disorderly rows.
A biological impossibility. An evolutionary lie.
It was never still, never motionless, even for a moment. Veins throbbed beneath its discoloured skin, betraying its pulse, and its talons were constantly opening and closing. Only one of its four hands remained closed: gripping Ingethel’s ritual staff in a clawed fist.
One eye was sunken, dark and buried in a face of filthy fur. The other: swollen fit to burst, and the sickening orange of a dying sun.
Nothing remained of the maiden. What reared up before them on its coiled lower body was utterly beyond notions of gender.
I am Ingethel the Ascended, it said, and its silent voice was a hundred murmurs all at once. Argel Tal found his eyes drawn to the curved spines of blackened bone that arced out from the thing’s shoulder blades.
Wings, he thought. Wings of black bone.
Yes. Wings. Humanity forever lies to itself about angels. The truth is ugly. Lies are beautiful. So mankind makes the gods’ messengers beautiful. No fear, then. Lovely lies. White wings.
‘You are not an angel,’ Argel Tal spoke aloud.
And you are not the first Colchisians to reach this world. Khaane. Tezen. Slanat. Narag. All ventured here, millennia ago, guided by visions of angels.
‘You are not an angel,’ Argel Tal repeated, clenching his bolter tighter.
Angels do not exist. They have never existed. But I bring the word of the gods, as angels must do. Look for the core of truth at the heart of humanity’s lies. You will see me. My kind. Angels. The creature blinked. Its swollen eye wouldn’t allow it, but its black pebble of an orb vanished for a moment under wet, wrinkled flesh.
Angels. Daemons. Just words. Just words.
Lorgar stepped forward at last. To Argel Tal’s eyes, he seemed naked without a crozius in his hands.
‘How do you know me?’
You are the Chosen. You are the Favoured Son of the Powers. Your name has echoed across our realm since time immemorial, carried on the winds by the shrieks of the neverborn.
‘I do not understand what you are saying.’
But you will. There are lessons to be taught. Things that must be shown. I will guide you. One lesson comes first.
The creature, Ingethel, gestured two of its claws – one at Xaphen, the other at Argel Tal.
Your sons, Lorgar. Give me their lives.
‘You ask a great deal of me,’ said Lorgar. ‘You plead for my trust and for the souls of my sons, yet I owe you nothing. You are a spirit, a daemon; superstition born from nightmare and incarnated into flesh.’
All the while, Lorgar walked around the creature. He showed no fear, no trepidation. Argel Tal recognised the faint tension in the primarch’s fingers. The Urizen ached to wield the crozius that, for now, was not at his side.
You know of the Primordial Truth. You know that a secret lies behind the stars. You know this is not a godless galaxy. The very gods you seek are the Powers that sent me to you.
Lorgar’s angelic countenance twisted into a patient smile. ‘Or I could speak a single word to my sons, and their weapons would end this conjuror’s trick.’
Ingethel’s jaw quivered, its fangs clicking together in a grotesque failure of symmetry. Argel Tal had seen the expression on its face before, written on the wide-eyed, shivering visages of trapped vermin.
Your blood-sons could not end me.
‘They have ended everything else the galaxy has thrown at them.’ The primarch made no pretence at hiding his pride. Argel Tal and Xaphen raised their bolters in perfect unison, both warriors sighting down the gun barrels at the creature’s eyes.
I bring the answers you have sought all your life. If you wish to awaken humanity to enlightenment, if you wish to be the architect of the faith that will save mankind, I–
‘Enough posturing. Tell me why you must take my sons from me.’
It moved in a blur, its serpentine tail leaving a smear of residue the thickness of treacle along the stone. One moment, the creature stood in the centre of the platform, the next it slithered before Lorgar, staring down at the primarch.
Lorgar didn’t recoil. He merely looked up at the creature.
The Great Eye. I will guide them into the storm, into the realm of the Powers. That is the first step, written in fate’s own hand. They will return with answers. They will return as the weapons you require. Your time will come, Lorgar. But the Powers call for your sons, and I will guide them to where they must go.
‘I would not sacrifice them for answers.’
Ingethel’s jaw clicked as it trembled. Its laughter was little more than verminous chittering.
Do you believe that? Nothing matters more to you than the truth. The Powers know their son’s heart. They know what you will do before it is done. If you desire enlightenment, you will take this first step.
‘If I agree to this... will you harm them?’
Ingethel turned its bestial head to the side, watching the two warriors with its inhuman eyes.
Yes.
The decision was not to be made lightly.
As he was wont to do, the primarch retreated into seclusion, away from the distractions of fleet management, away from the menial responsibilities that came with soldiering, and remained in the caverns beneath Cadia’s surface.
Argel Tal and Xaphen returned to their Thunderhawk at the modest landing site, finding they had much to say to one another and little will to speak it. While the Chaplain voxed a scant, vague update to the ships in orbit, Argel Tal took the task of appraising Aquillon of the situation over a secure vox-channel.
Almost an hour later, the captain descended the gang ramp, standing once more on the desolate plains, watching the sky with its shroud of rippling violet.
Incarnadine, ever the silent watchman, stood as an imposing sentinel nearby. Argel Tal saluted, but the robot made no response. Next to the automaton, Xi-Nu 73 emitted a blurt of irritated machine-code. Something in his data readings apparently vexed him. At that point in time, the Word Bearer couldn’t have cared less.