Warhammer 40: Shattered Steel Soul

Chapter 499: Twisted Fortress
The sticky dark purple blood slid down along Akurduna's straight sword, and the hissing sound of corrosion was chewed and swallowed by the hidden roar in the entire fortress city around it.

The Emperor's Son glanced around in a headache during the intervals between battles, turning a blind eye to those disgusting twisted forms. With artistic precision and freehand strokes, his two swords cut off many swollen creatures that sprang out from the shadows. Their weak points were torn into deep cracks by the pressure of the swords, and then poisonous clouds like smoke burst out from the wounds, challenging the limits of the Astartes' mask's anti-toxic function.

Near Akurduna, three warriors wearing purple-gold power armor had been turned into bloody men stained with filth. Low hums of disgust and angry breaths could be heard from time to time on the internal communication channel. These sounds intertwined into a bloody music of battle. The natural rhythm was worthy of appreciation and pride, as it was proof of their strength.

It was not the first time that he had faced the evil of the Warp. Even the battle on Medusa itself was just a barely difficult dish compared to the profane garden when he fought against another evil force in Olympia... What really made beads of sweat drip from his forehead inside the armor was the malicious gaze above Medusa.

That continuous sticky will, like a solidified purple-blue bruise, or a cold and cruel eye, hung high on the back of Medusa's dark sky, watching everything that happened on this dark continent.

Even though it wasn't that close, that close to reality, that eye was enough to make his hair stand on end, and constantly drain his energy and sanity...

Now, when Akurduna swung his sword, he had to use part of his willpower to retain his sanity during the battle. He was like a purple satin in the wind, wandering between the heavy clamps and the broken shells, tearing off the steel armor connected to the flesh, crushing the organs and bulging cysts flowing with oil inside, and calmly resisting any further understanding of these dirty things.

Knowing that these things come from steel and flesh... is enough, nothing more. That terrifying eye still stares at this land.

Some chemical threads wrapped around his right arm, and were cut off in an instant, dissolving into milky white broken fibers... Gray liquid seeped out from the inside of the deformed building complex. Although there was no evidence, an answer jumped into Akurduna's mind: this was a pool of pulp full of souls.

He raised his head and looked far away at the Primarch who was occasionally illuminated - a bright and swift shadow, shifting in the gaps between the flickering lights and shadows, like dancing a ghostly and free dance. Enemies fell one after another under the blazing blade of Fulgrim, which was the flaming sword that Ferrus Manus had once given him.

"My children," Phoenix said with a hint of anger in his voice, "annihilate this evil that has desecrated the homeland of my dearest brothers!"

Following the Phoenix's lead, the Emperor's Children poured deeper into the fortress. Considering the complexity of the situation and the uneasy feeling it brought, even though they had enough people, the Emperor's Children still chose to move forward together in groups, rather than disperse to various parts of the fortress to show their respective combat skills.

In the deep black environment, wisps of metallic reflections fell from the sky like faintly visible spider webs, and the once solid and cold fortress had been transformed into some kind of living corrupt and vulgar thing.

The towers and arches interlocked with each other, leaking unsightly motor oil. Some telescopic buildings were half-embedded in the ground, tightly connected to countless pipelines for transporting liquids. The square doors slid back and forth regularly, and the disgusting plastic steel and fine gold brackets bound all the pollutants and non-material materials that Akurduna refused to further describe together, forming a tight whole...

When the real but ethereal music sounded, the Second Captain suddenly realized that the entire fortress seemed to be transforming into some kind of organ-like instrument, and Fulgrim's dance had acquired a faint soundtrack. Phoenix was the first to notice these changes, and his battle rhythm immediately changed to avoid any fit with the music, breaking the long and obscure caress between the dance steps and the music.

Soon, the music disappeared.

After a moment, Fulgrim laughed, and the clear sound spread across the battlefield, like a strong wind sweeping away the thick smoke. "Attention, our battle brothers are still here!"

It was like a distant warning. As they avoided the deformed and active fortress city, opened up a path through the narrow secret passages that still existed, and went deep into the interior of the fortress, the iconic sound of grenade launchers gradually appeared.

Just beyond the greasy, twisted steel, beyond the labyrinth of hoses and levers, another army that had long been engaged in the fight in the area began to make distinct noises.

Scorched earth and steel overlap, ashes and flames interweave, a fragmented war machine is split into countless fragments by the disaster, but each of the fragments is still fighting ruthlessly and continuously. Lasers and flames are occasionally activated, illuminating the silver armor...

Akurduna saw three Gorgon Terminators bombarding a rotting plasteel gate, and behind them followed a slow-moving Dreadnought, and, of course, their weapons were pouring down ammunition at a rate and range no one could fathom.

The Second Captain tried to identify the clan, he was not sure if it was the Averni - he thought it looked like it, but regardless, everyone was relieved to finally see the Iron Hands. If they had gained nothing from this fortress, or had gained something they would rather not have gained, then Fulgrim's trip would not only be a great disappointment, but also a great heartbreak.

He heard that Kasoron had tried to get in touch with the Iron Hands he had encountered, and gave up thinking about why there seemed to be nothing in the big hole exposed outside the Dreadnought. These technologies should have been sealed and kept, buried deep in some secret place he didn't know... Akurduna still understood the principle of taking emergency measures.

Thinking of this, he sighed inwardly, and salty sweat rolled down the corners of his mouth. The face of another golden cousin who always liked to go to the arena with him flashed by.

In any case, the point is and only that during the period when the warp storm was raging, there should have been many cousins ​​of the Tenth Legion who maintained their lives.

On the other side, after guessing a few secret commands and ports, Kesoron successfully established a conversation with the warrior in front of him from a distance: "Cousins, we are the Emperor's children, and we are here to protect your backs. We want to know the news of the Primarch Ferrus Manus."

The few warriors of the Tenth Legion remained silent, their voices simply coming through the internal channels through the mechanical neural nodes and cranial circuits, perhaps thanks to the keys that Fulgrim had obtained from many clans in the past.

"Go to the assault team ahead," a simple sentence that made Akurduna want to smile. If he wasn't busy fighting a huge steel distortion monster in the darkness brought by the immaterial haze, he might have said a few words in reply.

The Emperor's Children's army began to split up, with some detachments breaking away from the group battle and, with effective communication and guidance, going to assist more Iron Hands battle brothers in the battle, like streams of molten purple gold. Akurduna watched everything that was happening in front of him - or more precisely, in his senses - and with high will, he and Fulgrim pushed deeper into the building.

During this battle, the music that seemed to be there and not there started again. This time Akurduna could hear its composition: everything was made up of the friction, knocking, and vibration of steel, and the clever flow and dripping of liquids. Each note fell on a chord that could be combined but revealed a subtle and strange combination. There seemed to be no involvement of any flesh and blood will in this...

"Perfect practical item..." said an Iron Hand. His tone instantly alerted Akurduna, who paid close attention to the direction of the corresponding warrior. The calm and intoxicated tone reminded the chief swordsman of that bastard Fabius again.

The bearings of the small scanner kept spinning, and the Iron Hand surveyed the surroundings, continuing, "The beauty of machinery lies in it..." Akurduna's pupils shrank, and he almost crushed a rusted copper plate of armor under his feet, and mercilessly stabbed his theoretical companion with the scimitar in his hand. In the second moment when a string of harsh garbled codes exploded in the communication channel, his blade went straight into the gap at the bottom edge of the visor, cutting directly into the soft flesh inside, bringing out a string of strong-smelling sprayed blood.

It was still not fast enough, or rather, the target he destroyed was not precise enough. The throat he cut only prevented the disordered hexadecimal code from spreading further in the channel, and the Terminator he was facing at this moment was rapidly changing its form.

The steel that already occupied more than 40% of its body was cursed with spirit, and together with the part of its tissue structure that humans naturally possessed, it began to spirally reorganize, fuse, and twist. Rings and connected pipelines were stacked and reconstructed, and another scream came out of the mouth of this new creation: "Ah——"

The sound spread in the background's steel music. The noise seemed to cause the entire area to fall into endless shaking and turbulence. The corridors and overpasses began to be torn apart, and six metal cables connected by a series of iron rings instantly wrapped around Akurduna's wrist and spread further upwards unshakably.

A stream of plasma spurted out from another Iron Hand's gun, instantly melting the tentacles that entangled Akurduna, and he responded to this help with the subsequent battle. He cut, chopped, and dissected, separating the shell and flesh into places in the darkness, returning the festering filth to dust...

At this moment, he suddenly understood what the gray flowing slurry was. It was what the Iron Hands, which had been contaminated by this kind of pollution, had been transformed into after being granted the Emperor's mercy by their companions in time.

From the corner of Akurduna's eye, Fulgrim seemed to have just completed a similar purge, the bright flaming sword sweeping away the last of the foul slurry that covered it and blocked out the light.

The bright and blazing fire seemed to spread outward from the blade of the purple phoenix, lingering around his body, weaving an illusory feather coat that spread out on one side of his body, or a pair of flaming wings that fluttered faintly.

This was the Fulgrim they had known all these years, Akurduna thought, and a calm pride welled up in his chest, even if it was quickly shattered by the demands of reality.

Fulgrim asked loudly, questioning the Iron Hands and the dark space itself. His voice trembled with anxiety, and although his control of his own emotions was not perfect, it was more moving: "Where is Ferrus Manus? Where is your Primarch!"

"not here."

A voice found Fulgrim about five seconds later, accompanied by a lot of trivial crackling, which seemed to be the noise caused by electricity in an area with extremely chaotic signals. The source of the sound was deeper in the fortress, belonging to one of the Iron Hands, or more than one.

This was the chorus of many confused Iron Hands, their subconscious response after their shocked spirits were awakened by the Phoenix.

"Where is that!" Fulgrim roared.

There was silence at first, and then a reply full of hesitation and trembling.

"The secret room where the Key of Hel is sealed..."

-

"This is……"

The technical expert brought by the commander of Interrex had his eyes full of reflected blue light. He stretched out his hands in surprise towards the holographic projection that appeared in front of him, as if he couldn't wait to hold up those precisely designed drawings.

Seeing that the technology officer's mind had been captured by the gifts brought by the Iron Warrior, Commander Naud took Kyle Valen out of the outer hall of the reception room and walked into the compartment indoors.

"I don't think we can repay the selfless gift that the Iron Warriors have brought us. In addition to some bases for the Iron Warriors to station and the supply of weapons, what kind of help do you need, Warsmith?"

Naud bowed respectfully to the warsmith who had come from afar. His gratitude was real enough to make Kyle Varen feel dazed in this turbulent season, and his words also made the warsmith swallow some of his colder demands and threats. Perhaps only in this remote land could they receive such a welcome and sincerity.

"Change my title," Kyle Varen said. "In the Iron Warriors' current chain of command, I will serve as the Trident of the Interrex Sector, commanding those Iron Warriors returning from our long and great mission, and coordinating with your forces. Master Perturabo made this decision immediately upon hearing the letter from his Lost Son."

"And those blueprints." Naud nodded. "I understand that these blueprints were sent to us in the name of a mandatory order, requiring Interrex to build weapons and ships according to the blueprints. However, we will not forget your selflessness just because of this."

Kyle Varen stared at him. "So, you are throwing away an opportunity to join the Iron Warriors under duress. You are actively participating in what is about to happen."

"If we were trembling and hesitant, I don't think our conversation would be so pleasant... Or can we really still have this conversation, Trident?"

Naud smiled, with a hint of melancholy in his eyes, and so did the interpreting musicians around him.

"Alas, we are finally back to the topic of your Lord of Mankind, warrior."

(End of this chapter)