Warhammer 40: Shattered Steel Soul

Chapter 483 After Death
"I thought you were dead, Remus," said Elda, seeing a shadow in the air of the embers of Moro that seemed to her to be true or false.

The cold shadow walked out from the flying dust, his black robe swirling with the wind and sand. His eyes looked at her mercilessly, as if he was unfamiliar with her image.

Erda couldn't remember why he came here or when she appeared in this land called Moro.

"Why are you wearing a black robe?" asked Elda.

Remus twitched his mouth sarcastically, then turned it into a smile.

"Because you think I'm dead, and I'm in mourning for myself," he said, and something in his tone seemed to relax. "What makes you think that, Ilda? And besides, I want you to call me Morse now."

"I remember it, a name that symbolizes death," Erda took a step forward, and Morse reached out to stop her to prevent her from stepping into the thorn bush.

Erda suddenly realized that they had come to the edge of the thorn field again. Some drops of blood extended from the edge of the vines and fell on the dry black land.

Elda stared at the thorn bush and vaguely saw the shape of a flame. The old fire burned coldly among the twisting and winding thorns, and the vines crackled and turned into ashes, falling down.

"He came over here to meet us," she murmured. "You were there then... That was the last time I saw you, Remus... Are you really still alive?"

"You'd better not think he killed me, that would be a fool," Morse shrugged ungraciously. "I was only away for a while. What did he say to you that frightened you?"

"His plans changed," said Jalda, watching the flames in the thorn bush waning and then growing. "That wasn't his plan at first."

Morse looked at her.

"I know," he said. "I want to hear your side of the story. Why did you come back here, fifteen thousand years after it was over? Why did you destroy the map of the Webway, after you had already completed it? Why did you seize a Primarch, only to oppose him? You are acting inconsistently, Yalda. I find it hard to understand you."

Zelda shook her head. "Don't you see?" she asked, her skin running cold. A gray wind blew across the ash plain, stinging her burning naked skin. "Don't you see what he will become? You left too soon, Remus..."

"Oh, that's enough," Morse said. "I don't want to hear my old name from you again, Elda. You can choose to tell you what he showed you as soon as possible, or we can end this conversation here." He nodded and deepened the arc of his smile at Elda. "It's over."

"He will become - that thing," Erda replied, walking towards Morse, still unable to believe that this long-lost immortal is still alive. "He will become the darkness itself, Morse, I saw it all," a tear fell from the corner of her old eyes, with a slight redness, "He showed me his delusion, the king of darkness... This is not what he should be, that's not what we said at the beginning."

As Morse watched her, Erda sensed a subtle rage rising from the burnt-out embers of Morro and surrounding her.

She shook her head slightly. "You know very well, Morse. He brought us to Morro and told us that he would look for a successor - he didn't. Something changed him, something from the warp, something we have feared for so long..."

"You want to tell me, is Neos bewitched?" Morse interrupted her.

"I realized it very late, Morse," Ilda said sadly, and the memory of the darkness made her shudder all over: a dark, skeletal, terrifying existence, crouching like a beast between the metal thrones, staring into her eyes, surrounded by countless tiny demons that were subordinate to him, glaring at her with similar cold eyes... She raised her hand and covered her aching temple, a wave of nausea rose from her stomach to her esophagus, and her head began to ache.

"So you saw it," Morse said quietly, waving his hand, and the shadows around him seemed to slide with his movements. "You saw it, and therefore you meant to destroy him, Ilda."

"Why not?" Elda looked at Morse, examining the scars on his supernatural body. She saw the rings of time, a glittering nothingness, and in this nothingness there was still something missing. She vaguely understood everything she saw. She knew something was wrong, but she couldn't tell what it was.

She stared at him sadly. "He was changed by the Warp, you should have known. He should not have believed what he saw in Morro... a spirit from the Great Ocean deceived him, made him believe that he could control the power of the Dark Lord, made him regain confidence in the Warp that he was obviously wary of... made him intend to create twenty false Daemon Princes, Mors. He should not have done this - how cautious he was. Tell me, can you imagine him preparing to create a sorcery circle that spanned the galaxy? Is that him? Is that the Neos we trust?"

"He's been—"

"He has always been full of aspirations and ideals, but how could he rashly throw the entire galaxy into a gamble? It's a gamble that is bound to fail!"

Morse stared at her. "You meant to stop him, Ilda—and you became part of his doom."

"I...is that so?" Elda said softly, avoiding Morse's burning gaze. She tried to find something to support herself, but failed.

All she saw were thorns, sandy plains... the broken surface of the world, scarred rocks, and fallen flags immersed in swirling sand. The smell of blood filled the air, squeezing her chest and lungs. She wanted to vomit, and a distant and gorgeous melody tore at her dizzy consciousness.

"Did I make fate happen?" she whispered. "Did I really?"

"The birth of darkness is inseparable from you, Erda," Morse pressed on step by step. His words were so gloomy that they hit Erda's heart like a heavy stone. "Now that mankind has come to this point, you have contributed to it, Erda."

"God knows I tried..." Erda asked blankly, dark shadows flashed before her eyes again and again, and her fingers went numb.

"you lose."

"Really? Did I do something wrong?"

Morse stared at her. "That's totally wrong."

Elda knelt on the ground. There seemed to be a shadow in a white robe standing in the thorn bush. When she looked at him, the shadow disappeared. She turned her head slowly, feeling dizzy as if she was drunk...

What had she said today? Was it Remus who was before her? Hadn't she just seen Neos show her the prospect of the Dark Sun?

And she was so overcome by the fear that she fell to one side, hitting her head on a rock, her shoulders limp, she didn't know who she was or what she was going to do, the world in front of her spun and then righted itself, a distant song echoed and caught her racing heart.
This is my dream, Neos said, his eyes were so sincere, and hidden in his sincerity was only unreasonable certainty and madness. He said we should reshape the entire galaxy with our own hands, because I am sure that all this can succeed, because this is an established agreement, and we have only this one way to go, even though it is wild and tortuous... "What..." she said.

"What did he say to you, Ilda?"

Morse stood before her like a tower, and the tune of the music was speeding up, and all the time flew by, like the birds of time flying in the void from the more distant past to the present, flying towards the road sign with "Hope" written on it... No fragments were left, most of the moments were blurred, the images flickered, and Neos stared at her from every cold moment, threatening her with terrifying darkness. She shuddered.

"He said to me..." she said.

"Ok?"

"Morro told him everything... He saw him..."

"Who did he see?"

Elda covered her head, painful marks on her face. She reached out her hand to Morse, but the black-robed craftsman ignored her.

She stared at him as more fragments flew by, about how she was torn apart by a man in golden armor, about how she broke into ten thousand broken pieces, and continued to fight with some kind of surging fear, until her fear was no longer enough to support her three incarnations dancing in the cave. She trembled, as if she understood something.

"You are dead, Remus," she said dreamily. "It was my dream."

"What nonsense are you talking about?"

"This is my posthumous dream," said Elda. "It must be this, Remus... I was killed by his lackeys, in Morro, in 001.M31." She shuddered for a moment. "I am dead, and so are you... At the last moment, you captured my memory. You can do it."

The flames on the thorns burned more and more fiercely.

"Perhaps," Morse said noncommittally, moving closer to her, towering over her. His shadow leaned over her. "Perhaps you've left, or maybe you haven't..."

Flames began to climb the edges of his black robes, the flames gnawing at his robes.

"But you still remember who he saw, don't you?" Morse said. "Someone made him do something on Morro that was completely different from what we had agreed on. He gave up the simple plan and chose the birth of darkness instead. Is that right, Ilda?"

"You are right," said Erda, with a trace of pity in her expression. "He divided you because he listened to the words of a visitor from the Sea of ​​Dreams, Remus - he finally told me, he said his belief came from the echo of the future, he told me... and Or, he told us about all this... he said he wanted to become the King of Darkness because he believed in the promises from the future, how absurd!"

"An echo of the future?"

"In the first year of the thirty-first millennium, a voice from the future assured him of the success of his plan - can you believe it, Remus? He believed it. He believed an echo, a deception, a vision of the Warp that inspired his ambitions."

As Erda spoke, she stood up, ashes continued to fall from her body. She was dying completely, and she had never felt so light. The fear that had entangled her for thousands of years was gradually fading away. She smiled slightly, with a dying pride.

"It was in Moro," she whispered in a dream, "he believed in a future he could not have. So I came here, believing that I could find the truth of that fraud... Constantine Waldo, his best spear came here, believing that he could wait for the truth he expected. And you, your remnant soul, drifting from fifteen thousand years ago to this day, still looking for the reason why you died. How do you feel, Remus?"

She looked at the broken halo flowing on the black-robed man's body and his skin obscured by the black smoke. Somehow, she couldn't show the ironic smile she should have.

"When this is all over, he will have left us all behind. We the Eternals, the Astartes and Primarchs he favors, all of humanity, Remus. Neos needs us, but he will not need us forever; what place will humanity ultimately have in his Imperium of Man?"

Morse ignored Elda's words, or at least he said so.

"It's over," Morse said coldly, and his presence seemed to be moving away from her, becoming fainter and more distant, out of her reach... and the fire in the thorn bush gradually burned across the entire space. It was the fire from which the Emperor had walked, the fire that Neos had stolen, seized, and robbed from the Warp.

Morse grabbed a flame and threw it into the cave where they were. The raging fire suddenly illuminated the entire dark wall and further burned through the space like a canvas.

"Yes, it's over," Erda whispered, like words in a dream, mixed with a declaration of victory or a wandering hesitation like the sand, she could no longer tell. "It's over, darkness has fallen, we have all lost."

"You're wrong, Ilda," Morse said. "It's not over yet."

"am I wrong?"

The world was falling, the stones peeling off bit by bit, shattering in the empty darkness. The colors and sounds were leaving her, countless fragments, rushing towards the end of nothingness.

There was another echo, existing in the collapsing mind. His voice was still so clear, even - not only his voice, not only Remus was here, but also another familiar voice, another familiar presence, so familiar that she could not walk into her end peacefully. At her last moment, new fears and worries captured her.

"She's wrong," Morse said, "and you're telling the truth, Or. Somehow I don't want to come to that conclusion."

The second echo came much later, and the regret in it was so restrained and subdued, yet deep enough that it made Erda suddenly and madly resist her final death that made her proud.

No... she thought, no... no, why would he... let her see him, just once... no, it's too late...

"Yes, she is wrong," said Orlanius Persoon.

(End of this chapter)