Warhammer 40: Shattered Steel Soul

Chapter 459 Before Ascension
Time is like quicksand, accumulating from milliseconds into seconds, and from seconds into days. If the river of sand accumulates over a long period of time, then months will follow months, and years will follow years.

Constantine Waldo's spear had not slowed, and the rubble in the tunnel piled up like fallen leaves - fluttering and shattering.

As Erda's emotions swung between swelling rage and fearful worry, Constantine's blade remained precise. The Custodes had been shaped into a weapon of pinnacle precision, and now the Lord Adeptus Custodes was fulfilling the very purpose for which the tool was defined: pure duty.

His battle with Erda had lasted for so long, perhaps several days, or perhaps even longer. For Constantine, in this not-so-long close combat, he had already spent much more time than a battle could last.

The Sun God Spear constantly revealed to him all the truths that Erda possessed. He had held the spear tightly in his hand since the Unification War, as an extension and perfection of his weapon body. Every time the spear drew blood from the enemy's body, memories and truths came with it. In a sense, this was an alternative gene detection nerve, but it was more cruel and irresistible.

The Emperor's last words to Erda came to him again and again through the spear, so that his unforgettable memory of his master was further deepened - not shaken, but as a further filling of the vague fragments in the logic, filling the reserved space in Constantine's heart bit by bit. However, in addition to this, he also saw those closer details.

Specifically, as he read the pages of the Eldar nearly two hundred years old and fresh, the past repeated meaninglessly in the present, he kept seeing a Primarch, a creature that confirmed what he had already believed, that the instability of the Primarchs outweighed the benefits they could bring to the Emperor.

From Elda's past, he kept seeing No. 11 growing through age stages, sometimes a child, sometimes a tall adult, and sometimes a giant snake that did not exist in the real universe, just like every time in his life had experienced a turning point of molting or breaking out of the cocoon, and the previous period had no help to the growth of that original body, and there was no absolute continuity.

When he was young, Erda and he lived in an artificial world that was frozen in a fixed time like an ice block. The surrounding machines operated according to inherent laws, forming a complete and seamless maze world. Everything was an imitation of the real world, and Erda was satisfied with it.

She dressed him in an exquisite outfit as if it were some standard uniform for the heir of an emperor, and then told him about her imagination and conception of the future of mankind, as if that new world had arrived around her without a moment's pause, the whole world was a toy house that she and her companions had built for their children, but in fact it was only for her own use.

As for Eleven, he couldn't speak Gothic at first.

Constantine slammed into the wall behind him, the rock exploded against his armor, his back bones snapped in pain, and his left foot twisted in the cracks of the rock. His spear stuck into the ground, and the world spun upside down before his eyes.

He raised his hand and grabbed half of Erda's palm, breaking her third arm. The blue light screamed loudly, covering Erda's moving lips. This psychic master used hatred to nourish her power for thousands of years. Hatred, the runes of hatred were engraved all over the dozens of meters of blue gauze she wore. Hatred supported her to cross the galaxy and return to Morro, and hatred came from fear.

The Solar Spear pierced down from Erda's thigh, piercing along the edge of the muscle, as vertical as the sun itself. The memory of blood spiraled up along the shaft of the spear, and the world trembled and turned to another memory.

A silent woman moved her child from one land to another, leaving the latter to guess where he was going, and his clothes changed from one exquisite outfit to another as if they were just puffs of phantom smoke.

She towered over him with her tall figure, treating him as though he were some kind of hatchling developing into a giant snake with sharp teeth and fangs, and a child she had to care for in order to show that she was different from her master, so she adorned him with the best food and clothes in the area, wrapped him in polished copper cuffs and fragrant silks embroidered with beautiful patterns, and told him that although she had other expectations, she first hoped that he would thrive.

When they lay in two rooms at night, they listened to each other's voices and heartbeats. This was the loudest way of communication when words were powerless. However, Erda could only read the cold emotions that No. 11 had never expressed during the day. His unappeasable hatred was not directed at the object of his hatred but directly at her.

It seemed that every touch and comfort she gave him with all her compassion turned into a ruthless hatred that nurtured a negative attitude in the silent time, and it was not his fault. At the same time, Erda also believed that it was not just her fault, because her hatred was not her will but had other roots.

Constantine stood up, with blazing fire burning on his hair and the smell of burning rushing towards him along the collapsing mountain. He swung his fist and hit Erda hard, then twisted her head off with one blow. Erda's body fell backwards, her upper body smashed into the collapsed boulders, and her head rolled out with a shrill scream, as if it was still closely connected to her lungs through a fragile and thin tube of flesh and blood.

Perhaps it was, for this was not the first time Constantine had dismembered a part of her. He was certain that he would need one or more Sisters of Silence, but he would continue to do this alone.

Along the tip of the sun god's spear, time continued to flow simultaneously in the past and the present. Stories, memories, thoughts and perceptions grew from the half-dead flesh and blood. From one day on, Elda forgot to eat, and she only remembered it a month later. She still remembered that when she was about to eat, the food she swallowed was often corroded by the fear and disguised hatred that was rolling in her chest before it was transformed into nutrients, and this fear was transformed into nutrients itself to feed her.

Until one day, they looked at each other with heavy and calm hostility like two gray tombstones facing each other in a grave. Elda asked him if he noticed that he had forgotten to eat, and Eleven replied that so she would not die.

As for the other silversmith who appeared from time to time, he cared nothing about either Erda or No. 11. In Erda's drunken memory, that man stood behind the window, looking down from high to low with a secret look, and quietly waited for time to accumulate silt on them like a river.

The turning point came one day when the silversmith persuaded Erda that a complete Primarch would eventually become a vessel or nail for the Emperor, unless this creature born from the Sea of ​​Souls was returned to his original form.

At that time they were in a mechanical world and all the parts around them were roaring in the human-like shells. No. 11 asked her what difference it made whose tool I was, and what difference it made if I died for the Emperor or for you. Erda said that the Emperor did not love the Primarch but she loved him.

Number Eleven didn't care about her answer because his lips were ready to say "OK" before he heard the answer. When he gave up his body, he rejected her tears with an unfathomable smile, as if he had seen through the meaning of his life.

"You can't kill me--" Erda's head hissed, wrapped into a ball by messy hair and blue scarf, "You can indeed kill me countless times, commander, but--"

Constantine drove the spear into Erda's eye socket, and for a brief moment he did nothing, even as the cave collapsed further towards him.

Then he mechanically drew out the tip of his spear; that was all he could do.

Constantine Valdor felt his throat tightened, and so quickly and without warning, the strong surge of shock broke through the cold state that a Custodian should have normally maintained. From his bones, he heard the thin golden eggshell shattering and collapsing, and the whole world shook with it.

— “He imitated these machines, these tools.”

Morse said, waving his hand to sweep away the fragments he had fished out of the soul sea. There was no noise from sentient souls on this nameless planet, so he completed it more easily than ever before.

"That smile is exactly the same, if he doesn't always try to sabotage the Emperor's plans - have you detected the Webway gate here?"

"No, but it is certain that the door exit here is underground." Perturabo stood up, his gaze withdrawn from the void, and the slight hissing inside the cable continued.

"It's Magnus's star language. He hopes he can talk to us directly."

"Have him contact me directly. After all, his small statue is still on your flagship - a bit out of reach."

Magnus's signal came in haste and haste, and the first words he spoke were to ask Perturabo if he knew that the Emperor had ascended the Golden Throne, and his sigh of annoyance immediately afterwards proved that he knew he had asked a stupid question.

"You are uneasy," Perturabo said solemnly. "Besides the origin of Tyrant Planet, what else have you discovered?"

+Your judgment is always so accurate, and I can't verify my conclusions, Perturabo,+ Magnus replied, his psychic communication was full of fleeting noises due to his chaotic mind,+ The Emperor said that Remus and Valdor knew all the information, so I thought I'd better come and ask-+
"Am I the only one who doesn't know that you all know who I am?" Morse raised an eyebrow. "As you wish. What conclusions have you drawn?"

+Did he - the Emperor - start out as...?+
Magnus struggled to find the broken words, and Perturabo could almost imagine the Crimson King frowning, surrounded by a mess of waste paper and ink, his desk stained with red and blue ink, and his monocle being fidgeted with nervously.

"I bet you're right," Morse said softly, his words turning into an unknown puzzle in Perturabo's eyes. "You may continue, Magnus."

+Did he not prepare to ascend the Golden Throne from the beginning? Because he said that the power of Tyrant Star could support the entire Thutmons, my father was right, but if that was the case, there would be no need to structure the runes into distributed chain nodes from the beginning - this is a feasible option, but not the only best option.

+Since my father has mentioned that he still has a backup option if the plan fails, I can't help but consider his other preparations, and I believe that I can see another better option for Rune, so the Emperor cannot turn a blind eye to it.

+You see, just as I was delighted to realize that the webway itself was a formation, my father had discovered what I had discovered long before...+
Magnus fired off all his words in one breath like a continuous psychic cannon, fearing that if he stopped, he would not be able to muster the courage to finish his statement. In fact, he would rather not know anything about his discovery.

+Continuing along this line of thought - feel free to interrupt me, Morse, if I'm wrong, continuing along this line of thought, I realized that the best way is to allow a sufficiently powerful and awake psychic to ascend the Golden Throne, and at the same time deploy equally powerful talents in the remaining twelve secondary nodes, so that the entire Great Rune can achieve a more stable balance...+
Magnus paused for a moment, as if waiting for Morse to interrupt him. He didn't.

+ In this way, on the one hand, we no longer need to indirectly regulate the stable balance between the power of Tyrant Star and the Dark Gods of the Warp by controlling the number of deaths, but directly use the network composed of all nodes as a high-speed energy exchange intermediate storage; on the other hand, this will also strictly control the internal energy core of Tyrant Star.

+So, if we continue to reason like this, how can we find twelve gifted people and an absolute master of psychic powers...+
"You're right," Morse said, finally interrupting Magnus. "And it's incomplete—still incomplete. Just like my knowledge of his plans. Just like his knowledge of his plans."

"You can choose to continue to state your views. I believe I can hear more fragments that coincide with the complete plan left to me by the Emperor. After all, you are of the same blood. He imposed his brutality and talent on your birth, Magnus. Your hatred of the warp held you back, but you are still extremely talented."

Magnus remained silent.

+I don't want to.+
He said that for a moment, his stubbornness was surprising, his pearly red face must have turned even redder, and his eyes were probably wandering, as if he was chasing the gray smoke rising from a tomb.

He repeated. +I don't like it.+
"A man cannot remain a child two hundred years after his birth, Magnus," Perturabo said, thunderclouds gathering over his face, but his voice steady. "You understand that. Now, tell me what you are up to. I believe this is the last unsealed node, is that correct?"

+…Yes. +Magnus reluctantly admitted that +the other eleven endpoints were already closed. +
"There is no need for us to waste any more time here," Perturabo said slowly, "Clean the surface. This is just an empty shell of a world. After eliminating the hidden dangers, we will seal this place off and then begin preparations for the Emperor's... ascension... Hmm?"

A terrible fear suddenly surged from his instinct, making him almost utter some kind of dark call. The weight of negative emotions suddenly and quickly accumulated in the depths of his soul, with a call and desire for nightmares and destruction. He was strange and familiar with it, and he knew himself - he knew that no human in the entire universe and galaxy could escape from it.

In the pocket he carried it in, the crystal box from Ishtar cracked.

-

Lorgar Aurelion gently wiped his hands with a towel, then picked up the knife, pondered, and cut open his palm along the palm lines, letting the blood condense into bright dewdrops and fall into the amber water in his cup.

He held up the golden cup, stared at the drop of blood, and knew that the knife was sharp enough. Then, all the preparations he needed were complete.

He walked into the darkness of the Wanderer's Sanctuary.

(End of this chapter)