Warhammer 40: Shattered Steel Soul

Chapter 412 Jack
They're dead, Jack thought, completely dead, with no chance of life left in them, and no hope of saving them.

His channel was deadly quiet, so quiet that his stomach began to tighten. Maybe he should have shouted something, called out their names one by one, like it was the easiest way to revive a dead soul. No, he didn't do that, because -

Because he also lost his language.

Thanks to the damage to the temporal lobe, no doubt. A little help from the outside, a little change, the wound is not big, but it is precise enough.

The throne is upon it, he thought, his mind still working, but no longer in the Gothic language that humans could use. His mind wandered between the cracks of his mind, like he was back in his childhood, long forgotten in the surgery of a Space Marine.

The surgery filled his abdominal cavity, stuffed him with more unimaginable parts that could elevate a mortal punk to a secondary immortality, just as he had installed dials into instruments according to the requirements of his master when he was still a taciturn little technician apprentice.

It supplemented him, but also took away another part of him, the shadow that once was nameless, the shadow that observed the world in a more simple and pure way, the shadow that had never armed itself with language and logic, and opened its entire body and mind to the world.

Now, Jack returns to that moment.

He was in distress, a kind of pain gripping his heart and churning inside him.

It wasn't just the frustration of being unable to speak - even though that was enough to kill a Moon Wolf. It was anger, sadness, fear, and some shame and regret derived from fear.

He looked at the bodies of the warriors lying at his feet, killed by a close-range vortex of psychic energy. Jack could not imagine what fragments their minds had been shattered into, what kind of broken darkness they had been caught in their solid armor.

He only knew that death was always at the moment.

Jack breathed into the communicator and opened his mouth, unable to utter a single word. He looked up in frustration at the nearby Bone Mountain, staring unwillingly at the black indentation on the mountainside that looked like mold. The clue was there, but he didn't have time to alert more people.

He took a deep breath and looked at his companions lying on the ground one by one for the last time. He recognized each of them, but again, their names escaped his lips.

Then he lifted his feet and walked in the direction he saw he needed to go. His footsteps would be recorded in satellites and combat support systems, and other warriors would wonder why he went to a specific location on the mountain of bones alone. His actions would become his words, proving everything for him.

With every step towards the mountain of bones, Jack was terrified, not knowing whether a new, unexpected attack would kill him before he reached his goal. But as time passed, his fear changed.

He began to fear what he would discover. He feared the truth.

Why did Lion El'Jonson disappear in battle? Was he alive, or the next Primarch to become lost on Randan?
If he was alive, was he in combat, constantly fighting off an endless stream of enemies? Oh, then he, a mere Space Marine, could not help the Primarch.

Jack gave up thinking about the past. He continued to move forward, looking for a way. Although the Bone Mountain was flat, it was not easy to climb. The gray-yellow fog that seemed to never dissipate surrounded this pile of flesh and blood. The bone spurs all over the mountain and the slug-like poisonous glands that briefly flashed with water were attached to its surface, forming a large number of ugly and dangerous gaps.

The fog burned hot across his power armour, testing the ability of the Space Marine's armour to maintain temperature, as if the bowels of the Mountain of Bones were inhabited by some horrible dragon, or the embers of a dead firebird.

The psychic environment was like a tide, and just as Jack relaxed a little, new enemies quietly emerged from the black shadows. He had no choice but to fight and run, taking quick steps, hoping that a crack would appear in the flat ground so that he could hide temporarily.

The mountains retreated under his feet, cracks that were too narrow to enter were crossed, and hot steam rushed out of the cracks, carrying a strange smell of blood mixed with engine oil. Hissing sounds were hidden deep in the bones, broken bones rolled down, and there were some grinning heads - they were not actually smiling, but the skulls themselves seemed to be smiling.

Then, the psychic tide came again, and the violent vortex struck Jack's mind, prying new holes in his stubborn and dull shell.

This was much easier than before, he thought, perhaps because his only layer of defense - his language and thinking structure - had been destroyed by brain damage.

Lion El'Jonson, handsome as ever, with a face of alabaster and golden hair falling demurely, looking unharmed and uncombat-proof, was facing a long, metallic, ornate corridor, with crimson banners erected behind shimmering glass as a backdrop, and was speaking to someone across from him.

"Where are we going?" the Lion asked, his voice cold, the sheath of his sword striking his moving legs.

Then, the psychic wave faded, throwing Jack back into reality.

Who was he talking to? Jack couldn't help wondering, when did this conversation take place? And why on earth had Lion El'Jonson disappeared in battle?
A worse possibility, Jack thought, and so suddenly, the last image of Hashem returned to him.

The smile of the Word Bearer did not even end with the chopping of the power claws, but solidified and frozen on that smooth face, and did not disappear until his head was chopped off by Jack himself. Jack kissed his cheek, his tears wet Hashem's face, and the blood from the Word Bearer's neck splashed onto his chest.

If this worse possibility befell Lion El'Jonson...

A sense of deep shame suddenly came over him: the First Primarch, who had a deep conflict with his own genetic father, the Wolf God, had forced him to chop off his brothers' heads. And now, his brothers were dead, all of them, just to find the lion who had ventured here against the rules - this was not Lion El'Jonson's fault, but Jack couldn't help but connect the two things closely.

For one terrifying moment, Jack maliciously wished that the Lion's cruel ideas would be repaid to him personally.

He didn't believe that Lion didn't know the true identity of the Silver Angel. If his guess was correct, when the Dark Angels stubbornly insisted on acting alone, Lion El'Jonson might have already begun to act ruthlessly on the surface, but secretly did secret things that needed to be judged by strict laws...

Moon Wolf painfully suppressed this thought. This was not what he should be thinking.

He walked on, his torment growing. Lion El'Jonson had better not have deceived them, or else, or else -

What was Hashem's death? Even—what was Gerry-Gris's death?
Jack continued to climb, bones trembling dangerously beneath his feet, loose objects above his head giving terrible warnings of falling. When he got close enough to the rift, he smelled more fresh scents - blood, xenos blood, Space Marine blood, and even... that unfamiliar smell. The blood of the Primarch.

In this dark crack, a fierce battle once broke out. The combatants went all the way to the depths of the crack...

The tide surged again, and sparks of psychic energy crackled and flashed, blooming with a dazzling and disgusting brilliance. Jack fell and slid over several chaotic bones until he threw his body onto the surface of an obstacle built by a giant skeleton inside the rift, and his helmet rested on the edge of a deep rift.

With his peripheral vision, he peered into the dark crack and saw that Leon and another tall being seemed to be fighting. In the corridor, they attacked each other with bare hands...

Without further ado, he knew it must be another Primarch, Duncan Aihe. A Primarch can only be defeated by a Primarch.

As the tide receded again, Jack took a breath, regained his spirit, and stumbled forward in the sloping internal passage of Bone Mountain. The layout here began to make him feel strangely familiar, whether it was the width of the passage or the distribution of each turn. He was sure that he had never been here before.

Soon, the first body appeared - it was an alien, not a silver angel, and was a mess of bones and flesh. Jack found traces of bombs here, but no bodies of his cousins.

Taken away again, he thought angrily, unable to help coughing in the strong smell of blood, and moving forward alone following all the suspicious traces.

The path inside began to narrow, and soft flesh and blood pressed inward from the surrounding walls. They were fresh and fragile, but too many and too dense, as if they were about to block the passage. There were constant gurgling sounds and the sound of blood flowing humming around him, hot air lingering, and his power armor sounded an alarm.

Jack squeezed through the narrow gaps, and soon he was forced to move forward bent over, and then on all fours.

Like a wolf, he thought. No wonder he joined the Shadow Moon Wolves. It turned out that his fate had come true here.

Then a second wave of pain overwhelmed him, knocking him to the ground with a pain that was like his soul being torn apart. He wanted to curse something in Cosmian or High Gothic, anything that could express his anger and doubt.

No, he couldn't—Jack had never wanted his language so badly.

Lion El'Jonson held the sword in his hand and pierced the chest of the Second Primarch. Jack breathed a sigh of relief, and then he saw more - no!

He held his head and wailed loudly, his cries of pain breaking through all the closed barriers, a strong feeling of suffocation gripped him, and together with the severe headache, it seemed that he would die on the spot. Blood flowed out from the wound on his head, flowing all over his face, almost drowning him.

It killed them!
He roared loudly, and this overwhelming psychic energy tore his soul apart, causing him to fall into the darkness and coldness of death. It was this huge psychic energy tide that killed his companions. Why did it come about?

Then he saw it. In his suffocating fear, he saw Lion El'Jonson, in his prime, with a face as white as stone and untouched by war. He asked him: Who are you?
And in the corridor where he was, the flag protected by a glass cover...

Jack stretched out his hand tremblingly, reached into the surrounding flesh wall, and tore out a blood-stained flag with a completely shattered glass cover from the flesh of the corridor. Its former deep red color was faintly visible.

The Moon Wolf barely managed to use his weak limbs to crawl forward in the extremely low corridor. The tide rose and fell. He saw Lion El'Jonson greet Duncan three times, they fought each other five times, they shook hands twelve times, and Lion stabbed Duncan's chest with a sword thirty-one times. Over and over again, everything happened in the Glorious Queen of the Second Legion, everything...

All of this happened here. Inside this mountain of bones. Or rather, it happened in the illusion when this mountain of bones had not yet been covered and eroded by flesh and blood, but was still bathed in the glory of the Emperor and sailed in the void...

Jack exhaled a foul breath, he couldn't hold on for too many times. The repeated psychic tides tortured him deeply, and all the signals were warning him that his brain was about to dissolve.

Maybe, there was only one more time left. A maximum psychic wave. This was the limit he could endure.

Finally, he found a relatively open path in the bloody corridor. There were sword and knife scars all over it, and someone had hacked a path through it.

Lion El'Jonson.

He has been polluted. He has been caught in a cycle of degradation.

Jack couldn't tell how far he had gone, maybe a few kilometers, maybe more.

After he climbed over a pile of corpses made up of various aliens, Jack fell into a dome hall behind a cross section. This place was probably some kind of ritual site of the Second Legion. Except for being covered in blood and full of cracked bones, it was even relatively well preserved.

Then he saw a lion, half of its body sunk in flesh and blood, its chest sticking out, its head hanging low, its brow furrowed, a huge wound covering its face with blood, it was trapped in an endless nightmare, unable to escape.

He was so vulnerable... so unprotected. He was already wounded. Primarchs were not indestructible... Jack knew they would hurt, would bleed. And he still had too many bullets in his bolter.

Even if he still has the control of consciousness, Jack thought, but...

There was no precedent for this. Leon said in his memory that the temporary war council would be informed of this information.

—This has happened before. It has already happened, Jack thought. All events are a repetition of the past. The wolf seeks the lion. The pure executes the polluted.

He heard the lion's teachings, once again, and he would never forget that moment.

"You can kill him now, Luna Wolf," the lion said to him.

Jack raised his gun, a grim and desperate pleasure urging him on. This was the last chance, he had sensed the foreboding of the psychic tide.

Then he put down the gun.

Everything that existed was an endless repetition of the past, but he—he would not be part of it. Not anymore.

A possibility, Jack thought. A possibility that Hashem and Gerry-Gris had never had.

A possibility... one that he himself would never have the chance to experience again.

The huge tide of psychic energy finally defeated his last bit of consciousness. His brain boiled and burned in extreme pain. Everything was drifting away from him. He spun in agony, gasped in silence and knelt in wild pain.

He had reached the Lion, and more would follow his path. Like... who? he thought, remembering.

Norwood. The Iron Warrior who had shown them the way with his life.

Iron Warriors, Dark Angels, Word Bearers...

It's his turn.

The bolter fell from the Luna Wolf's hands.

(End of this chapter)