Warhammer 40: Shattered Steel Soul

Chapter 480 The Thief

"To be honest, I never knew what you were planning, Orlaneus. I am just a latecomer, and I don't have the same inexplicable grasp of the entire foggy history as you do, as if the human world would no longer function without you... I forgot that the Emperor was one of you. I take it back."

John Grammaticus shook the limited leather map in his hand, not thinking about where the raw material of this rough material came from.

The road under his feet was nothing like what No. 11 had described. It was no longer a narrow passage filled with milky white oil mist, but a whole section of it glowed with an ominous and blazing red light. Webway, huh? It was a very ordinary name, but the psychic master had reminded him a thousand times of its importance.

And then there’s the importance of where they’re going next.

"Morro?" Orr stopped when he heard the term. He stared at John's back hesitantly. "Why do we need to go there?"

"Are you asking me?" John pointed at himself. "Was it me, not you, who accompanied the Emperor to Morro thousands of years ago? I don't know. Apart from a Primarch telling me that Morro was the key to the whole damn universe, all I got was this fragment of the map, and the reward I got was my life that was saved last time."

A Primarch, Or thought, like Alpharius? He had given him no good memories, too many lies and too little truth.

The children of Neos think highly of themselves, but do they really have a will as great as their talents? Perhaps not all of them.

"Who is that?" he said dully, slowing down his pace to catch up with John. This deep passage made him sometimes think he was stepping into the border of purgatory.

"I don't know, and it probably doesn't matter. I bet he's dead. I'm just an executor of a mission, ready to compensate a Primarch for saving my life, and perhaps for the negative impact I've had on humanity by serving the Illuminati.

"The mission is to find someone who probably knows the truth and take him to Morro at the end of this year - 001.M31. Do you know why this time is so important to you immortals?"

John said, standing still, facing the blocked passage in front of him, his face bitter. A colorless dark abyss stretched before him, filled with residual darkness.

"Now, all roads are blocked." He fanned himself with the fragment of the map in his hand, turned and raised an eyebrow at Orr, "You can start to regret following me out of the Alpha Legion's flagship. Orr... Orr?"

Ol Persson did not answer his question, momentarily immersed in the fragments of his own past, until John tapped him on the shoulder with the rolled-up map and pulled him back to the present.

"Were you possessed by a demon just now?" John asked.

"No."

"That's good, otherwise I might not be able to beat you." John shrugged, "So what—"

"Is it the thirty-first millennium now?"

"Yes, that's the current state according to the Imperial calendar. I don't know if it's true or not. Don't you ever check the calendar? There are no clocks in the taverns in Ultramar? Never mind," John sighed, "What new discoveries have you made, soldier?"

O'er's eyes slowly moved across his face, with a blank look of deep thought.

"This is the year, then," he said absently.

"Considering that we have nowhere else to go and plenty of time, I won't ask why you don't just say it all at once."

O'er was silent for a moment, his response becoming fluent, his tone regaining control, and his expression becoming more complex.

“Not in the past, not in the age of myth, not in the twilight of night… but in the thirty-first millennium,” he said, “now, the fire thief has taken possession of it.”

"Excuse me, Or, but I am not as familiar with mythology as you are. I am just a newcomer. Even though I see that there are only a few immortals left in the entire galaxy who are still working diligently - I mean, please translate this sentence into something I can understand. You are not talking about the famous Prometheus... Theus..."

"Prometheus. The fire thief."

"Oh, thank you. That's the word. It's a metaphor, right? How could human history use thirty thousand years to record something that hasn't happened yet?" John laughed dryly.

Orr shook his head slightly, the cross swaying against his chest. The light in the tunnel began to flicker, swaying on the webway walls like a candle flame. An unstable tremor was rolling down this dangerous passage.

"Half is a metaphor," he said, "half, perhaps real. I must indeed go to Morro, if what Neos once described is true... Now is the time to reveal the answer to the mystery. What he saw that year..."

Orr gave John Grammaticus a suspicious look and stopped talking.

"Well, Orlanius Persoon, I will no longer pray for your trust. It seems to be more difficult than running across half the galaxy."

"Because you mentioned that you knew Erda," said Or.

"I shouldn't have told you I worked for her at one point. I was wrong." John openly expressed his regret for this matter. "It makes me ten thousand times more suspicious, but I swear I didn't intend to lure you into some place to kill you quietly, or anything like that. The only problem now is how the hell we are going to find our way to Morro, because it seems that everywhere we go..."

Suddenly—so startlingly, so suddenly—a trembling light pierced the darkness, and time seemed to stand still... Everything slowed down, the light moved slowly, winding between the raised hands of John Grammaticus, passing over the silver cross on the chest of Orlanius Persoon... and then went away, away, to the end of the roaring darkness...

That ray of light refracted everywhere in the winding and narrow corridor of the network, and the darkness stagnated and slowed down under the penetration of this thin thread, dully rubbing the thin thread of light until a certain unbearable moment: the dark world shattered, making way for a narrow invisible path of glory.

John opened his eyes wide, and the light reflected swirling patterns in his eyes, like the dancing light reflected by a torch on the wall in a cave. Stolen fire? Ignite fire? Fire without source? There is no answer.

"What happened?" he asked.

Or Persson took a step into the light and reached his hand into the darkness in front of him. The path of light became wider with his movement. The surrounding darkness violently collided and scratched the path, but it just screamed unwillingly and shattered under the illumination of the light.

"It's him," Or said, both certain and confused. "This is his power." "Why did I hear that the Emperor is dead..." John received Or's gaze, raised his hands in salute and surrender. "Well, then we have another way to go."

-

“All that death,” Fusistaka said, “means nothing.”

Ahriman struggled to stand up from the ground, and Fusita pulled him up, looking into the blue, trembling eyes of the Chief Librarian. The witchfire faded from around them, and there was no longer the cruel sound of the flame whipping the air. Magnus's red warm power returned to their side, flickering crystal-like and broken on the ground.

Not far away, the Tuchucha Engine gave up its attempt to breach the Webway's barrier. Fusistaka shuddered as he concluded that Magnus's rune was indestructible.

"Did the Luna Wolves really go to destroy Prospero? Did they really do that?" Haselmat murmured, psychic energy lingering between his fingers, bursting into bright red fire.

He stretched out his five fingers and stared at the lines on his palm, as if he was a novice palmist. The next moment, he clenched his fingers suddenly, and flames danced wildly and burst out from between his fingers.

"Battusa Narek is not a liar," Ahriman stood up, his composure flakes away into tiny crumbs that fell invisibly. "But if we can get back quickly, there is still hope, my brothers. We can still save our homeland from senseless destruction. Nothing is certain."

"Do you believe what you say?" Haselmat asked bluntly, lowering his head slightly, raising his eyes and staring bitterly at Ahriman's pale cheek.

"I do. This is not what we deserve. Prospero did not deserve destruction - not even the Luna Wolves deserve the guilt of slaughtering innocents. These deaths serve no purpose. Mutual slaughter has no place among the Legiones Astartes. We are warriors loyal to the Emperor... to Mankind. How can we die because of our hatred for each other?"

He said this, but his gaze was already stuck in the distance, so dim.

"Now," he continued, "there is a force, a being, that has stolen the fruits of humanity's victory and attempted to destroy our future. What a hateful thief.

"We reached the top of the mountain, which was what we had. We fell into the valley, which was not what we should have done. Although, we do have to assume the possibility of the latter. Then..."

"how?"

"Then we will have to climb back up from the bottom of the valley," Ahriman said, the light in his eyes becoming hazy.

Just as Fusistaka was about to say something, a subtle ripple passed through his body and brushed against his two hearts. He shuddered, feeling a lingering ember rolling, boiling, circling and swooping, flowing towards them along the long passage, but its destination was another place farther away.

He looked around in amazement. The scattered dust turned into tangible waves of light spots, calling each other and rushing forward. The trivial murmurs became larger and more vast.

"This is not fair..." A voice came, in the flow of the halo, "No, damn laser... Ah, my boots, legs - what? What is this?... It hurts, it hurts... The wolf is biting us, mom, it's a wolf..."

There were tens of millions of names, names of the dead, names that had lost their meaning, names that should not have died, with the life and power that each name was born with, and with... hatred, deep and heavy hatred and resentment that roared endlessly, surging and beating and squeezing the limited minds of several temple lecturers in the webway.

Inigo... Sorenson... Melen... Pedros... Elijah... Beruku...

A thousand names, ten thousand names, all poured out at once. Ahriman recognized some of them, familiar names he had heard from time to time around the Great Library of Tizca.

Schmidt... Rupp... Celedonio... Adel... Savvas... Cowan...

Prospero's soul burned between those dead names, and Ahriman clenched his teeth, letting out a painful, hollow whine as the scalding water flowed down his face, causing a burning pain on his tongue like the acid secreted by Astartes.

The words he had just uttered were suddenly and fiercely shattered by reality, and the stench of burnt flesh, the noise of broken bones, the murmur of bursting shrapnel, and the loud, numerous roars and roars, just hit his soul.

At the same time, these resentful and vicious souls were tearing apart the only living person they could find. Fusistaka roared and fell to the ground. After he learned to control the power of the warp, the pain of having his soul plundered had never hurt him so fiercely again.

Among them, some out-of-control vengeful souls also recognized them and pointed at them, "Where are you?" a child's voice shouted, "Dad said the red warriors will protect us..."

And then there was the warrior's voice, and the death of Wolf and Dust, the last blast of those warriors before they breathed their last, echoing in the flood of the dead, all blending into one - as if they had actually died for the same thing, sacrificed undeservedly for the same reason.

Meaningless……

+Come here! + Ahriman immediately sent out the call, or order.

For a long time - or perhaps not so long, but Ahriman felt every second as long as an anniversary, as weak as the souls themselves. The souls of the clerics of the temple were connected to each other, as a solid whole, resisting the raging river of the dead.

Where were they going? Ahriman forced himself to stay sane, to keep the psychic chains running. Where would the Prosperos go after they died? Would they not even get to rest? Was this the end of the Thousand Dust Sun? Was it all worth it? Was this what they got?

Such precious souls, two hundred years, no, thirty thousand years of hard work... those unforgotten brilliance, those treasures that cannot be tarnished, destroyed in vain, turned into ugly black embers of destruction and hatred and resentment, never the same as they were when they were alive, never again...

The remaining mark of Magnus flickered in the torrent, as soft as a feather, touching the palm of Azak Ahriman. He no longer had the strength to react, and just accepted it. The torrent continued to spread, filling the interior of the webway and being transported to an unknown destination.

So, at the end of the long passage, a bit of cold starlight was lit by the souls of the dead.

He who stole the fire in the past is drinking the fire of the souls of the dead. This malicious, careless offering that burned the City of Light was made unintentionally.

So, it is light.

(End of this chapter)