40k: Midnight Blade.

Chapter 596 114. Dark Expedition (Thirty-four, Angel's Meditation)

meditation.

The air was cold, and with every breath I took I could smell a faint smell of blood. My nasal cavity, throat, and trachea were constantly being cut and repairing themselves, over and over again.

The low temperature turned the air into thousands of tiny razors, damaging his body. He had been in this room naked in a meditative posture for 122 hours, and even his wings were covered with frost.

The machine that caused such horrific low temperatures still worked firmly on the ceiling of the room, a masterpiece of the Mechanicum, a supreme masterpiece.
Were it not to bear these marvelous names, it would not be worthy to chill a Primarch, nor to shed his blood.

meditation.

The scene outside the porthole was disordered and chaotic. From far to near, seemingly insignificant tiny stones gradually turned into giants like mountains, with glittering debris entwined around them like billions of eyes.

From time to time, there were explosions of fire around the portholes, bright and dazzling, which would temporarily blind ordinary people. That was the bombing of the escort warships, which were destroying the reef to prevent the floating and rotating mountains from harming the Red Tear and the following ships.

All this noise failed to penetrate the armor plate, so the room remained silent. The slow and long breathing sound echoed inside, and a pair of huge and stiff wings lay across the darkness. The light from the porthole shone on them, illuminating dots of frost.

The ship moved, and the light shifted with it, shining on the back where the wings grew. The muscles bulged, and the surface was covered with a thin layer of ice, strong and white.

However, in this environment, its whiteness inevitably makes people a little worried - is this a natural skin color or is it caused by the cold?
No one knows the exact answer.

In the darkness, a pair of eyes slowly opened, breathing stopped abruptly, and a tall shadow slowly stood up.

The proportions of its limbs and torso are perfect, so harmonious that one cannot believe one's eyes. However, the shape of those muscles destroys this harmony.

Let's start with the slender arms that naturally fall on both sides of the body. The muscles of the forearms are in a relaxed state, but they still have an incredible curvature. As the five fingers slowly clench, they are also tightened into a shape that is hard to look away from.

Hard, yet soft. Strong as a warrior, yet soft as a dancer. Can normal human muscles do this? Absolutely not. This is a masterpiece that only exists in imagination and on paper. It is the highest masterpiece that can only be created in human imagination.
Then, someone made it a reality.

Ten thousand years ago, this creature was born in a laboratory. At first it was just an embryo, then it was lost, drifting in a space that shouldn't exist, and finally, it landed on a world called Baal.

This creature came to be known as Sanguinius.

The creature slowly ended its meditation.

He started walking.

Being barefoot did not affect his walking stability, nor did it change his posture. He looked straight ahead, and his steps were powerful, as if he was walking on flat ground, as if he was not walking barefoot on frosted steel.

His muscles worked, bulged, and pulsated, blood began to circulate, and tiny pieces of ice fell from his body, sparkling. At this moment, a pure harmony suddenly erupted from him, bringing the simplest, yet most powerful feeling.

If someone could see this, they would probably be moved to tears and exclaim: This is the ultimate of strength and beauty.

But, can this be achieved just by walking?
So, what if this body danced? Leaping, moving, flapping wings, spinning feet, the strength of the waist, the dancing of the arms.

Then, add a sword to these moves.

A sword that he already held in his hand.

The angel of Baal slowly grasped it, then lifted it up and examined it carefully. A gust of wind suddenly blew up in the room, followed by a continuous sound of breaking. A pair of wings that had been frozen stiff began to flap, stirring up ice slag and blowing the angel's golden hair.

His face and one blue eye were reflected on the mirror-like sword, like the ocean or the sky, but the emotions in them were not very kind.

It is the ocean, but it is the deep blue sea before a storm. It is the sky, but it is covered by dark clouds and is extremely dark.
The blade fell, making a sharp sound that made people feel a little happy. The angel held it in one hand and walked slowly to the other corner of the room.

The machine on the ceiling also stopped working at this moment, the room temperature began to rise rapidly, and two robotic arms stretched out from a wall, carrying clothes, and came in front of him like snakes on an apple tree.

He put on his underwear and outer robe, tied the knot around his waist, and suddenly he became a capable warrior.

Then, a mechanical sound came from the wall.

"Do you want to start training?"

"Yes," said Sanguinius. "Intensity 10."

He raised his head, raised his hands, held the sword upside down with two fingers, combed his long hair behind his head, and tied it up with a hair rope. During this time, the blade trembled dangerously, almost cutting across his seemingly soft neck.
But it didn't.

The ground cracked open, and the pipes hidden underneath began to rumble, as if something heavy was crawling inside. This was indeed the case, and half a minute later, a shadow even larger than Sanguinius stood up silently from the cracked ground.

A stream of hot air gushed out from its back, and two points of red light simulated by electronic signals suddenly lit up inside the steel mechanical skull. Pale white light followed closely behind, completely illuminating the room as wide as a training ground.

At this moment, two things are in conflict.

One is Sanguinius holding a sword in one hand, and the other is a huge monster made of steel.

It looks ferocious, with high-strength alloy plates tightly attached to the artificial muscle bundles underneath, no wires exposed on its body, and a pair of ferocious horns hovering above its head.
Sanguinius looked at it calmly, then changed his stance to hold the sword in both hands.

In his eyes, this crude imitation had changed into a different look. The steel armor turned into blood-red fur, the artificial muscle bundles turned into real strong muscles, and the electronic signal light in the eye sockets turned into real hellfire.

At its feet were corpses, human corpses. Broken, utterly desecrated by senseless violence, terror written across every face. The place it stood on was no longer a room on the Red Tear, but a living hell, a place shrouded in darkness.

The shells flew over its head and flew to the other side of the battlefield. The smell of gunpowder and blood instantly hit Sanguinius, bringing him back to a hundred generations ago.

Veins suddenly bulged from his forehead, and his hands holding the sword were no longer stable. Indescribable anger quietly bloomed from his eyes.
The angel's canine teeth protruded from his lips, savage but also cruel. It shouldn't appear on such a handsome face - wait, is it really handsome?
No, not anymore.

It had been twisted by anger, and every detail had become hideous, with tightly furrowed brows, elongated and thin lips, and overly long canine teeth that only a beast should have stuck on the lower lip, wiping out the blood and provoking a burst of sharp white.

And those eyes.

Those eyes whose whites had been devoured by red bloodshot.

At this moment, Sanguinius is no longer beautiful. The world sees him as the embodiment of justice, as flawless, loving and kind. This is true, but only at certain times. He always hides a kind of anger, and a kind of desire.
The desire had not gone away, nor had the anger, and as a warrior, he welcomed the anger.

After ten thousand years of silence, he personally welcomed it into his body.

The angel roared and rushed towards Kabanha.

There was no sound, no movement, as if he didn't hold the sword in his hand. However, the huge steel monster was completely cut in half at this moment, and bright sparks suddenly burst out from the broken end, creating a frightening color.

The heavy sound was heard again, but this time, it did not stand up again. A few seconds later, the ground cracked again, and the steel object, which was split in two, rumbled away along the pipe again.

Sanguinius let out a long breath, closed his eyes, and let his sword fall.
meditation.

Can I fight as well as I once did? Are my senses still sharp? Am I worthy of this sword? Four thousand years have passed since Vulkan brought it to me, and it has never been stained with blood.

It was forged in the hands of the best smiths among us, and shaped in the furnace of Nocturne. It should drink blood and perish. It should not gather dust in my armory.

The sword is covered in dust.

Sanguinius chewed on the word, smiled bitterly, and then called out: "Dante!"

His voice echoed and swirled in the room until it became a low, distorted echo, and the person he called responded to him as always.

The door slid open, and a warrior in golden armor walked in with a stern face. He was fully armed and majestic, almost stabbing Sanguinius in the eyes.

The angel had something to say, but he swallowed it back. He looked at the man with a sigh, as if he was looking at a mirror. He watched the slight discomfort on the latter's face before he spoke.

"Where are we sailing to, my son?" the angel asked gently.

"We are almost at the 500th world," Dante replied in a low voice. "According to the star map provided by the Military Affairs Department, we will only need thirty hours at most to enter it."

Sanguinius nodded in understanding, but suddenly asked, "You seem to have some doubts, my son, what is it?"

Dante was slightly startled, obviously he had been hit on the point. He was silent for a few seconds before answering, "It's because of the Astronomican, the Primarch."

"What happened to the Star Torch?"

"We are almost unable to catch its light." said the Chapter Master of the Blood Angels, his tone still very low, one could even say it sounded a little sad.

As his Primarch, Sanguinius tasted more emotions, such as pity, pity, and the last emotion: self-blame.

In almost a moment, the archangel understood what Dante wanted to say.

He sighed.

"I know what you're thinking, Dante. You're thinking, the glory of the Astronomican has declined to this point, and the territory of the Empire is so vast, how many people are living in a world without sunlight?"

"No, not only that, Father." The Blood Angel responded with difficulty. "I also think that we-"

"What about us?"

“We failed them,” Dante said.

He was worried that his words would incur the wrath of the Primarch, but he still pointed it out. He knew how sharp this sentence was, and the angel's expression at the moment was enough to explain everything.
His suddenly furrowed brows and downward-curved mouth corners all showed his heavy mood after hearing these words.

However, the rebuke that Dante had imagined never came. In fact, Sanguinius did not even show any intention of refutation.

He nodded heavily and admitted the matter, his expression becoming as complicated as Dante's, only with more compassion and the same self-blame.

After a moment, he spoke slowly.

"Since leaving Terra, we have only fought about twenty battles, jumping and shuttling all the way, leaving the warp only when necessary. Gathering troops, obtaining supplies, and finding help."

"During this process, you did some things that were completely different from facing the demonic tide. For example, you suppressed the rebellion or drove away the alien pirates. They were just small fights and not worth mentioning, but you also saw something else, didn't you, my son?"

"You see those people wailing and suffering in the constantly running war machines, and then you suddenly realize that the things you have been accustomed to don't seem ordinary."

"You discovered that the living conditions of those people were completely different from those in the solar system. Moreover, they were severely oppressed. The fruits of their labor were embezzled and put into the pockets of certain officials, and then handed over to the local governor for his enjoyment."

"We were supposed to be dealing with these things, but we turned a blind eye to them. We just took the manpower and material resources handed over by the Governor and left. Then you think about the worlds where the Astronomican is not visible. In the places where its light can be seen, people are already living such a hard life."

"So, what about those dark places? We were supposed to be the protectors, but we failed to fulfill our responsibilities and do what we should do - and you feel extremely guilty about it."

The more he spoke, the calmer his expression became. In the end, it could almost be described as expressionless. But Dante didn't dare to look at him anymore. He lowered his head deeply and said yes in a low voice.

"Keep it," Dante heard his father say. "Call it what you want, Dante. Keep it inside of you, and you'll need it someday."

"One day, you will turn it into an outrage. Why must humanity suffer like this? Why do we have to go through the Old Nights, the Rebellion, and the endless war? Why can't those people live simply and peacefully? Keep it, my son, and hold the sword tightly."

Dante heard Sanguinius' fingers crunching on his sword.

After a few seconds, his Primarch left the room and headed for the bridge. Dante followed, thinking that was the end of the conversation, but Sanguinius said something else as they were about to reach the bridge.

"My brother Conrad taught me that." He smiled sadly, then strode through the sliding door and into a noisy and tense world of war.

Dante stood there for a few seconds before remembering to follow.

(End of this chapter)