I'm re-reading the Horus Heresy, and this is my review of Heralds of the Siege , book 52 in the series. Heralds of the Siege is an anthology, consisting of several short stories, and I'm going to review each one. Exocytosis is the seventh short story in the book, written by James Swallow.
Exocytosis leads up to Book 54, The Buried Dagger, and it's basically a coming-of-age story. Lord Typhon has been pursued across the galaxy by the loyalist Dark Angels, and he arrives on Zaramund to repair and recuperate. His host is Luther of Caliban (from Book 6, Descent of Angels).
Some locals of Zaramund approach Typhon, calling him Typhus, and insisting that he's the fulfillment of a recent prophecy they received from Nurgle. As pestilence spreads, he must choose whether to embrace it or to fight it.
Aside from being the literal story of Typhon and Luther and how they react to the Horus Heresy, this is also the story of the true meaning of the heresy. At this stage, most people in the 40th millennium would only have known that Horus had declared the Emperor unfit. That's not heresy so much as a political statement. On the other hand, a group of fanatics had started to call the Emperor a literal god. If anything's heresy, it's that.
What becomes clear on Zaramund, though, is that Horus has made a deal with dark powers. The extent of that, and what it can mean for populations of entire worlds, is indicated by Typhon and his interactions with the plague-ridden people of Zaramund.
It's a good story, although like the previous Children of Sicarus story, it's a transitional one. It gets Typhon and Luther from one state to another. That's not bad in itself, it's just something to understand before reading. There's not really a start or a finish to this story, it's sort of a glimpse of an experience rather than a short story.
All images in this post copyright Games Workshop.