Warhammer 40: Shattered Steel Soul

Chapter 508: Shadow Crossing the Sky (5)

When John Grammaticus woke up from where he was, he had the feeling that he had just been run over by a whole truckload of rhinos - not pain, but numbness. Like what was left of him was a bag filled with bone and muscle glued together, not something alive...

What ran over him was a huge spiritual will.

That will ruthlessly peeled him off layer by layer, examining his internal and external structure like flipping through a book, and brutally took everything that John had from his mind.

Then the other party said something to him and left him alone...

His mind was slow, but he continued to recall the meeting.

Who guided him? Who met him?
He trembled, but he was not alone.

There were some metallic clanking sounds. His mind conjured up a memory of golden armor... a stern face. A spear... that seemed to be flashing with bright force field lightning... that's how he remembered it.

But what he saw was an almost pure white spear, translucent from the entire body, filled with translucent light from the long handle to the tip of the blade, with only a few swirling golden threads clinging to the surface of the spear...

It's like the weapon has just been blessed by a supreme power...

Who blessed it?
Then, another man half-knelt up from his prone position, the heavy cloth seemed to creak, the ornament hanging on his chest swayed slightly… At first he thought it was a cross, but when John looked closely, he found that it was a simplified symbol of the Imperial Sky Eagle—wings spread, head and claws connected, close to the shape of a cross, but undoubtedly a symbol of the Empire.

Who changed the symbol?

While John Grammaticus was at a loss, a strong arm suddenly lifted him up from the ground and forced him to stand up. When he found that he was still much shorter than the soldier in front of him even when he stood up, he felt a sense of relief inexplicably.

"You are not fit to travel with us. You are too weak to bear the will of our Lord." The tall warrior spoke in a cold voice with a calm expression.

"Perhaps, but the boy called my name and asked me to follow you," John laughed. "He said, 'John Grammaticus, you will follow Orlanius Persoon, looking for the source of the curse and the true name of the Dark Lord.' That's what your master told us, so don't be so angry with me, Grand Commander."

Orr slowly stood up, still wearing his simple soldier-like clothes.

This reminded John of the bright, dreamlike world they had just been in, and the thoughtful look in the strange boy's eyes when he saw Orr - and of course Orr's hesitant expression.

That made John feel like an outsider who shouldn't be there. Alas, after all, the two people around him were very familiar with the Emperor, and only he could barely be considered to have met the Lord of Mankind.

"You have a gift," Orr said, interrupting John's thoughts. "A gift for learning spells. And so... the Emperor wishes you to accompany me."

He was silent for a moment and corrected his address to the Emperor.

Yes, that boy did inspire them. John recalled the scene by the river...

The dark-skinned child stood by the river, holding a scary skull in his hands, and told John this surprising thing. He told him that when he felt uncomfortable just by reading the scroll with the spell, it meant that he had a sense and talent for the correct use of this language, and he just needed to learn...

He was indeed gifted with language, but curses were another matter, both in terms of their power and their danger.

John carefully and tactfully expressed his feelings to the two warriors who were loyal to the Lord of Mankind: "I want to be kind to my body, my lords. Although I have some recovery ability, it does not mean that I can just cut your throat and reconnect it - but I am willing to escort you, Or, this is true."

"We must discover the Dark Lord's true name."

Or paused for a moment, looking around, the light that had not yet completely dissipated flickered slightly.

Once they left this area, the edge of the Glorious Crossroads where they were now, any words had to be expressed more cautiously and carefully.

"But there are neither prophets nor psionic masters among us. After the destruction of the Fifteenth Legion, these powers no longer belong to us. Therefore, we must at least master a means to resist the power of the warp."

"But I--" John was about to retort.

"My lord has made his words very clear, John Grammaticus." Constantine's voice was cold and hard, calling him by his full name, without a trace of leeway in his tone.

John smiled bitterly and shrugged his newly recovered shoulders, trying to ease the awkward atmosphere.

Yes, the little boy did come up with some theories that made John uneasy.

When the Lord of Mankind stood at the final crossroads of time, feeling the rhythm of the shadow of the Dark Lord in another part of the world, and looking back at everything that had happened, he realized that the way they had been using spells was incomplete, even Mors the Eternal and Magnus the Red.

After all, even their knowledge only came from the Emperor's understanding of the scholars of the Tao back then, and the Emperor has only now put forward a new point of view: they have not yet truly "recognized" the origin of the spell.

All the negative consequences that come with uttering the spell are the price of this insufficient cognition - and only when a being truly reaches a depth deep enough to touch the source of the spell can He feel the information hidden deeper within it.

Angelic language, the first language… although it sounds like a language, it does not conform to any known grammatical or lexical rules - this John has long known. However, it can be translated through phonemes and morphemes, which can induce an uncontrollable mental dissociative state.

This state of dissociation stems from an inability to understand the nature of the spell, and using the spell in this situation will bring about compulsory consequences...such as the various disasters that have been recorded to have caused physical harm.

As for how to truly understand all the secrets of the spell...the answer John got left him speechless.

The boy said he didn't know.

"I see," he said, listlessly. "That's what I have to do. Go back to Terra, get under the Dark Lord's nose, and hope he can't smell us."

The boy's advice to him was to return to Terra. After all, the source of the curse was there, and they needed to trace it back to its source.

"You don't need to—" O'er wanted to continue persuading.

"No," Constantine interrupted him coldly, "You need to feel guilty for the unconscious act of giving birth to the Dark Lord." He put away his spear and took a step back, as if suppressing some emotion.

"I didn't refute it, Commander-in-Chief," John put two fingers on his forehead and raised them slightly with a hint of disapproval in his joking manner.

He knew that this fellow hated everyone who had put the Emperor in this situation... Hate, that a Custodian should retain such emotions, but, yes, hate...

Hate indeed.

John smiled, with a hint of self-mockery, "Go and do your thing. You won't be delayed from meeting those primarchs... God, let you tall guys go to the party. We short guys have to hurry back to Terra to die."

-

"There you are, Constantine."

Perturabo's voice sounded even colder in the cold wind. It passed through the valley with the night wind and echoed in the deep silence of the darkness before dawn.

He stood at the wall of the fortress base on the hillside of Telephus, unmoving. Four warsmiths surrounded him like shadows, alert for any possible danger. At the same time, these assistants and guards shared intelligence with their primarch in a timely manner for Perturabo to process.

In addition, there were five tall iron ring mechas standing guard around, motionless and silent, cast in gray-black shadows by the night.

There was no language, they just relied on the information flow after the language of consciousness was converted into numbers to silently transmit the message to the great mind of the primarch. Such silence, in the snow-capped mountains where the oxygen was gradually becoming thinner, presented a deep coldness.

Constantine Waldo felt the temperature here. Above his head, the armor did not have a temperature control system, and a bunch of red tassels were covered with heavy ice crystals.

His eyes swept across the snow-capped mountains with a cyan ground behind the armored primarch. Under the heat released by the workshop furnace, the surrounding ice and snow all melted with the molten iron and solidified into dirty strips like lava, or a kind of coagulated blood scab attached to abstract meaning.

"Who guides your path, Constantine?"

Perturabo turned his gaze back from the darkness outside the city wall, his tone cold and without any emotion. The frost formed a thin layer of frost on the hair on his face, but he seemed not to be affected by the cold at all.

"A beam of golden light."

The voice of the commander of the imperial guards remained calm, blending in with the breaking chill in the air.

He remained calm almost all the time.

With the crackling sound of frost like broken bones, the commander of the imperial guards tore off the heavy cloth covering the spear. After leaving the Glorious Crossroads, the silver-white Spear of the Sun God shone in the dim light before dawn. The silver-white spear was as sharp as a silver thread, one of the few bright spots in the dim environment.

He raised his spear, the tip pointing in Perturabo's direction. The cloth hung halfway over the shaft, fluttering slightly in the cold wind.

The warsmiths raised their guns at him, as did the Iron Rings, which were directly controlled by Perturabo, with their weapons pointed at Constantine without moving.

Perturabo looked at him.

"You would not act rashly against a Primarch, Lord Commander of the Custodes." "Not anymore," Constantine said, and it took him a moment to realize that his answer answered two questions at once.

Does this answer also answer his fate? This is a question beyond his scope of thinking.

"I am no longer Lord Commander of the Custodes, Warmaster. The Custodes were created to watch over the throne, and I will no longer command such a legion." Constantine continued, his voice steady. "Besides this, I will indeed take action against the Primarch. This is my mission from now on, and this is the path you will face."

Perturabo's expression darkened. He raised his hand, pressed the back of Constantine's spear blade, and pressed it down gently.

The cold frost and snow seemed to slip through his fingers, and under Constantine's force, the spear blade stopped descending.

"You cannot kill a Primarch, Constantine Valdor." He did not deny Valdor's words. "You were born only as a Warden of the Throne. You cannot even defeat Alpharius and Omegan."

Constantine remained motionless, he was being enlightened by the Emperor himself. When he was given the command, did he ever think that the birth of the Primarch was the source of all this?

"I was born to slay the inhuman, Warmaster. You must understand that when a Primarch dies at the hands of the Solar Spear, it is only their shadow that is stripped from the Warp. What remains is their unfettered will. This spear has been consecrated as a conduit to the Crossroads, and the power that was stripped will be returned to the glory of our Lord."

A gust of wind carrying ice and snow swept by, and in the distance metal fragments creaked and wailed.

Silently, the warsmiths seemed to have received orders from their primarch and laid down their weapons one by one, but still in protective formation. The same was true for the Iron Ring Troopers.

"You are our assassin?" Perturabo asked grimly. "Very well, do it then. What will become of the will that my brother leaves behind?"

"Relying on something, or dissipating in the time of the real universe." Constantine said, "I cannot carry out an assassination alone. Even Konrad Curze or Corvus Corax would have difficulty assassinating any of you alone. My Lord made you too powerful to consider how to kill you."

"Then, the only thing you need to perform is the final execution. I understand your mission, and I will include you in the calculation."

Perturabo said coldly, without any objection to the killing proposed by Constantine, nor did he show any hesitation. In Constantine's eyes, this was even enough to make people question whether the fourth son who once cared for his brother was actually one with this person.

Indeed, Constantine believed that Perturabo understood that if they could obtain a good assassin, it would be much easier to destroy the Astartes defenses around Terra.

The death of the Primarch was a blow to the Legion's heart. Even if it was not enough to destroy both of the Legion's life-supporting hearts, it was enough to cause a great setback to a unit.

The sky gradually brightened, and the light of dawn sprinkled slightly on Perturabo's profile, shrouding his figure in an unreal glow. The air was still cold, and the snow was silent, as if the light of dawn was another layer of ice, freezing the life of this land in the depths of silence.

Perturabo looked into the distance, raised his voice, and seemed to be talking to the empty light, and said to himself: "Can you hear me?"

His call pierced the air like a cold wind, launching layers of echoes in the air. The sound shook the surface of the mountains, as if to tear apart the snow-covered land, but in the end, everything returned to silence and the mountains remained standing.

Perturabo waited for several seconds, silence and cold being the only echoes.

Perturabo simply turned back to the Warsmith and gave a calm order. "Fokker, contact the Astropathic Choir and write to Rogal Dorn to inform him of what you heard," he ordered. "Repeat it verbatim, but let him hear it alone."

The Warsmith's heavy armor hummed into motion, and he did not question it. "Yes," he said, and retreated back along the wall.

Then Perturabo stepped out from his guards and came to Constantine, looking down at him. His eyes looked down at Constantine, as if he could see through his armor.

The sky was getting brighter, and the sky gradually changed from dark to gray-blue. From a temporal perspective, the land was reviving, but the darkness of the cold night still held back Olympia, frozen in the snow that never melted. The mountains of Olympia were like a huge rock that was forever frozen, refusing to revive further.

The Iron Lord effortlessly reached out and grabbed the cloth wrapped around Constantine's spear. Constantine did not resist and loosened his grip to allow the Warmaster to remove it.

Aside from his Apollo Spear and his own armor, nothing else was needed for Constantine's mission.

The heavy cloth fell heavily and slowly into Perturabo's hands, rolling into an inconspicuous mass. The spear, which was completely exposed, flashed with a cold light.

Perturabo reached out and touched it lightly, and a drop of blood slid down his finger.

At this moment, Constantine felt another kind of power.

His consciousness was pulled into another world, a dark storm world filled with roars and screams. Inside, on the top of a high mountain, there was an almost violent luminous machine. Those madly rotating gears and cables entangled like spider webs formed a steel cage, which bound a dazzling light source. It kept running at high speed, cutting out infinite straight rays of light in the turbulent storm.

This was the truth that the Spear of the Apollo revealed to him.

He stared at these metaphors, at a halo filled with anger and repression.

Perturabo narrowed his eyes and said nothing. He just threw the heavy cloth in his hand out of the city wall.

The cloth fluttered slowly in the night breeze, slipped in the air, and gradually disappeared into the unfathomable dark valley.

"I would like Lorgar Aurelion to be your first and last victim, Constantine, but I know that is impossible," Perturabo said. "I will determine if you are powerful enough to match any of us."

"Now? Right here?" Constantine raised his eyebrows slightly.

"You don't always get a chance to rest and recuperate before you kill one of my brothers," Perturabo said, but he had no intention of using force. Instead, his eyes fell into the distance again, as if he was just waiting.

Constantine Waldo waited in silence, every muscle ready for battle.

As a gust of hot wind blew past him from behind, he realized that he was still too slow.

In just a moment, the attacker was close.

He tried to fight back, but the handle of his spear was pressed against his chest, and the smell of bronze and blood instantly rushed into his respirator. He growled and parried the attacker's next punch, but his forearm and abdomen were hit together, and there was a sound of cracking bones. He quickly stepped back to relieve the force, but his spear was still pressed tightly against his chest by the attacker.

Constantine felt the opponent's fingers had already slid towards the edge of the Solar Spear. The hand did not tremble at all, and even ignored the sharpness of the spear. The rough skin resisted the dangerous position and stayed on the edge of being pierced, while his fingers firmly grasped the tip of the spear that was flashing with cold light, as if the weapon that should have cut off his palm was just a blunt object.

Perturabo interrupted them.

"enough."

The murderous atmosphere in the air seemed to be strangled by something. The attacker leaned forward slightly, as if examining Constantine. After a moment, he let go of the blade of his spear and stood up straight.

“Constantin Valdor,” Angron said in a voice like thunder in a valley. “The Emperor has indeed chosen us, then.”

"I am glad you confirmed it again," Perturabo replied, his voice without any emotion. This reply was just a courtesy. "Constantine, follow the direction of the star message and observe Rogal Dorn's reaction after receiving it..."

"I do not answer to you, Warmaster."

"But you will make the right choice. What other path do you have?" Perturabo asked, a storm building on his face. "The Emperor has designated your path."

"Yours is designated as well," Constantine said indifferently, as if the fractures and pain in his body had no effect on him.

Behind them, the stars were rising slowly, and the first rays of sunlight gently brushed across the snow. The wind carried the heat of the earth awakened by the sun and rose up, whistling and stirring up a mess of pale snowflakes.

"This is what we have chosen for each other," Perturabo said in a low voice. "It is enough. It will save us time. Rogal Dorn must be using astropathic communication with Olympia, and our response will surely be faster than the message he sends."

For two seconds, Constantine said nothing. He looked at the white tip of his blade and slowly wiped away the trace of blood that remained on it.

This is a weapon that has been unsheathed, and its camouflage has been discarded by Perturabo.

"Goodbye, Primarch." He said goodbye softly, and disappeared in the wind along a golden line that was invisible to the naked eye. His figure gradually disappeared, and the golden line seemed to merge into the wind in an instant.

Perturabo seemed to sense something, and his eyes swept across the trace left by the invisible golden line.

Suddenly, the wind surged from the valley, and the heavy cloth that was sinking seemed to be awakened in his eyes, and was suddenly lifted up by the wind, rolling and floating, rushing towards the sky against the falling trajectory. Under the dawn light, the cloth appeared scarlet, like a bloody wound soaked in blood, leaving a broken mark against the sky.

Perturabo watched the red cloth disappear into the dawn light, then his gaze turned to Angron, who stood beside him.

“His reflexes are good,” Angron said, flexing his fingers. “His strength is fair.”

To receive such an evaluation from a Primarch who was good at close combat was a level that the former Commander of the Imperial Guards could hardly achieve.

"This means that his speed and strength are still growing, or being unlocked," Perturabo said, and then changed the subject and returned to the last topic they discussed in front of the holotagram yesterday.

"What other bait can you think of that would be enough to lure the Word Bearers to Isstvan III, Angron? Prospero is nowhere to be found..."

(End of this chapter)