Warhammer: Start with a dog.

Chapter 522 It is normal for six warlords to have seven or even eight people
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"Sometimes I think... this dream is too real."

When the voice that he was now extremely familiar with sounded from behind him, Hong Suo, now the leader of the Red Pirates' envoys to the Black Legion and the "promised" reinforcements, was concentrating on making careful pre-war calculations for the upcoming battle. Although he was used to calculating the strength of the troops as cold numbers on paper, the numbers were his own, not others'. If he still wanted to delay as planned, he would have to try his best to preserve the manpower of his troops in the next countless battles, until Abaddon withdrew, or was defeated and retreated, or - Abaddon won? This possibility should be left to the end.

Damn Luft Huron, that old fox! He doesn't play tricks but plays open tricks, right? Indeed, as he owns a star fortress, he has to take the corresponding war responsibilities and demonstrate his ability... But he will remember this account! Humph, we are all Chaos people, who wouldn't secretly leave a back-up plan for himself? But not now...

But Hong Suo couldn't ignore the voice.

The Warsmith, who now missed the days when he was a pure potion master with a caring little apprentice to serve him, old enemies to take revenge on, and joyful experiments to do, sighed, sat down on the swivel steel office chair he had specially made for himself, and turned around without lifting his butt to face his current warband champion, who was considered to be Khorne's favorite warrior, the Dark Apostle, the Demon Possessed, the "Undefeated" Mercury, who was standing behind him with his arms folded and looking out the window - it would be great if he really was such a person!
If he had known that this Primarch was nothing like the one described in those sham books written by those little Ecclesiarchs, he would never have thought of choosing such a god who could not be sent away and holding him on his head as his own achievement! How could he be so greedy! He should have run away as soon as he got the Indomitable! Half of the Ultramarines Fifth Company, a navigator fleet, a frigate fleet, and a fully operational Ramirez-class star fortress as the first opening record is actually good enough...

Look at it now! Even if he managed to get it, he couldn't use it as his victory and bait as originally planned. In the end, he attracted the Blackheart King's extra suspicion: everyone knew what the blue eyes from the dark apostle who came to his door meant in the chaotic world.

He collected his thoughts and pondered how to respond to the man who was now his superior in a double sense.

However, the other party continued to speak on his own, which made Hong Suo feel relieved but also worried.

"Is this Warp-tainted dream really just a dream? Honso, has my brother told you about his further research conclusions on this creation?"

Robert Guilliman, now with a pair of small demonic horns and scripture tattoos on his skin and armor, was looking at the black void outside the porthole of the fortress assigned to them, as well as the huge black stone hull of the Eternal Will that occupied half of his field of vision, and the huge black Chaos fleet flying with the Eternal Will in the void. "Things have developed to this point. The heresy and blasphemy I have seen along the way have exceeded the sum of all the ugly traitors I have seen in the past two centuries. I must admit that I have seen too many things that I have never imagined, so much so that I have been unsure several times, why can what I see exceed my imagination? Is this place where I am really not a real purgatory?"

The Ultramarines Primarch with the appearance of a demon apostle was unhappy. "What makes me more confused, sad and puzzled is," he said, "when I tried to get to know more people to see why they continued to plunge into the lies of heresy and cast themselves into the eternal hellfire ten thousand years after the betrayal of the past, many of the confession stories I heard really made me very, very sad, and even more angry." He clenched his fists, and Hongsuo began to sigh again.

As expected, Guilliman struck the animated black stone that served as a table hard. The thing shrank and began to cry at a frequency that tortured Leman's ears, like a child whose ears were tortured. Even so, everything here dared not move. These twisted creations formed by the black stone injected with the essence of the warp stayed in place trembling, enduring the "venting" of the superior in their eyes in the room.

"My disguise tattoos, my scrolls and my armor seemed to make many of them think I was a priest, a confessor, someone they could talk to."

Guilliman turned, his amber eyes gleaming in the shadows. "I expect to hear tales of corruption due to greed, lust, or other evil deeds, which will make me feel that they will deserve the death we will kill, but those who are truly corrupted by such crimes will not come to me for confession. Everyone who comes to me has a story that makes me want to hang an Imperial official or High Lord. If the Empire my father dreamed of building is half as bad and corrupt as they say, then it is a hopeless situation for the Loyalists. I am not surprised that some choose to turn to Chaos."

"So when you were wandering among the heretics, you heard some stories of betrayal that tormented your soul and troubled your conscience. Is that right?" The Warsmith pointed out, "My lord, I am an apothecary, not a so-called priest. I may not be so good at healing the mind of a primarch, but since you told me this, I think I can recommend a mental strengthening remedy that my comrades love to use and is effective."

"What's the cure?"

"Please read after me." Hong Suo raised his head and recited the words he had heard Thortan recite before. Although he had never read it himself, he felt that the power was indeed flowing out from between his teeth and tongue, and taking shape like a hammer hitting a steel block on an anvil. "Steel becomes strength, strength becomes determination; determination casts faith, and faith creates tough iron."

The Ultramarines' Primarch stared at the Warsmith.

"According to one of my...old comrades, this prescription is very useful for strengthening the mind at Lions Gate Airport." Hong Suo said politely.

Guilliman snorted heavily, and it was obvious that his anger was successfully interrupted by this unexpected move when he was about to drill into a corner, but it had not disappeared yet.

"I think you should think about it from another perspective. First of all, we have been staying in the Warp and heretics recently, especially here. We are waiting for the meeting here, but there is no doubt that Blackstone Fortress can act because of the corruption of the Warp. Although your soul is pure, the environment is subtle. You have no experience in resisting this, so you should always remind yourself of this and be careful."

Hong Suo saw the other person's expression startling and then suddenly calming down. The invisible surging power under his skin receded like a tide, and the sound of animated furniture in the room also calmed down. "Go on."

"Secondly, what you are listening to here are the confessions of heretics. Perhaps some of them have indeed suffered injustice, but even in such a bad situation, there are still people who remain loyal, right? For the respectable defenders, their loyalty can only be given to this collapsing empire, because if they give up their loyalty, it will be no different from what they have been fighting against all their lives. And the anonymous sacrifices of the loyalists to protect mankind have formed the cornerstone of human survival today. Or let's put it a little deeper." The war blacksmith's voice was cold, like the freezer in his laboratory, "The places worth protecting in this empire are almost gone, and the sacrifices forced and coerced are given the name of righteousness... My father thought so too, so after experiencing loyalty and betrayal, he determined that neither of them was the final path... He found ways to escape from the rotting corpse of the empire with the fragments of your brothers. We, together with my respected fathers, we are now protecting not the empire, not your powerless father, but..."

The Primarch's eyes flickered, and Hong Suo knew that he understood. As for what the Primarch understood, it was not his concern.

There were footsteps outside, and then Abaddon's herald knocked on the door of their quarters. The Warmaster's Chaos fleet was only a day's journey from Cadia, and the Great Despoiler was summoning all Warlords of their power to the council chamber.

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Draula Mokas was following Abaddon's request, carefully observing the thoughts of all those summoned to the meeting hall as he announced his victory and subsequent battle plans.

This conference room activated and controlled by her has an amplifying effect on her mind-reading ability, helping her to better read the thoughts in these people's minds, because she originally had to concentrate to carefully read the exact thoughts of a single person, and there were too many people here, and too many diverse ideas, like a wasteland full of weird weeds and wild flowers. Without the help of the conference room, it would be difficult for her to distinguish individual thoughts and visualize them.

This is why the Warmaster usually does not summon all the hand-picked lords at once when he makes such a request to her, but today's situation is special.

She had just observed Urkanthos, the representative warlord of Khorne, the Lord of the Black Fleet, a head full of blood and pain. Whenever the red light behind his head dimmed, the Butcher's Nail would drip more red into it like a blood syringe. Only the cold and wind-like orders of Abaddon, her great and powerful father, could make this vicious dog temporarily retract its fangs and calm down.

The hall now held so many veterans of the Long War, traitors, heretics, and cultists that those in the back row had to squeeze together, stepping on hoofs or knocking their weapons against each other to avoid accidentally standing between the upper and lower rows of huge teeth that served as door panels.

Of course, there are also some cultists or heretics who will be consciously surrounded by a circle of space left by everyone else. That is where the members of the Nurgle warband "The Messengers of Decay" from Skelak Slaughterborn or their inflated servants stay.

Even though they were all servants of the dark god, several other warlords chosen by Abaddon and their men were not willing to get close to their companions. In addition to the spreading plague, there was also an unbearable stench. Perhaps only the plague warriors themselves were willing to endure it.

For example, at this moment, Mocas saw behind Urkansos, the yellow-green plague cloud was entangled behind Lord Skerak's head like the thick phlegm in the lungs of a dying patient, and his thoughts were the countless flies buzzing in it, they were chaotic, dense, and incomprehensible but they were constantly breeding. When she observed that these thought flies were hatched from the brain of the Plague Lord in the form of fat white maggots, she pinched her fingers to suppress the nausea habitually and shifted her gaze.

Or look at this head. This is Defram Koda, the Lord of the Slaanesh Warband in the Warmaster's Black Legion and once his comrade. The chaotic and inverted narratives and confessions in his mind are like a constant torture, manifested as beautiful poems and patterns written on glass with the fingertips and blood of a patient, and his cruelty is savoring the pleasure of drinking the essence of the pain of ten billion souls - the shadow of her father's face flashed through it, and she couldn't catch the thought, but she didn't intend to give up monitoring him later.

Next to Koda was Zara Feston, a Supreme Wizard Lord from the Thousand Sons Legion. There were rumors that this name was just a title of honor, but no one knew whether this rumor was true, because at this moment, Mokas observed that countless eyes had opened in the mind of this warlord representing Tzeentch. They were like colorful soap bubbles that burst and emerged all the time, with countless changes and possibilities forming clusters of fine changes that formed more recognizable words floating on the top, each of which tempted those who could see them to walk towards the path that the wizard wanted them to take.

The next person standing there was the Warsmith Colom Gate, who had returned at the Warmaster's summons. He wore a gun-steel helmet, the characteristic of the Fourth Legion. Once an Iron Warrior, he was now a member of the Black Legion, and the representative of the Chaos Undivided Forces here. The Warsmith's mental images were not only difficult for Mokas to understand, but also made a young man instinctively afraid: floating above his head were extremely terrifying numbers, formulas, calculation charts, various functions and advanced mathematical tools. The Daughter of Blackstone thought that he might be calculating how to hollow out a planet to make a maze.

The last one was also a warsmith, Honso and his champion, cannon fodder sent by the secret rival of her beloved Warmaster - she curled her lips and looked at the two men's ordinary minds. The warsmith's head was surrounded by various strange-colored flesh masses, about eighteen? Or twenty? The blue and green light was like an ocean surrounding them, and the white-gold sunlight penetrated the sea surface and shone on them. What a strange warsmith; his champion, the Word Bearer? It was even more boring. His mind was empty, and the Daughter of Shadows deliberately stared at it because of this emptiness - it was really empty. She had never seen anyone's mind so empty. This was a Khorne champion. She really hoped that Urkanthos's head, which was always wrapped in blood and red light, could be as empty as this.

Father would have thrown them into one of the toughest enemy sectors until they were completely exhausted, unless they were prepared to rebel right then and there - and the Warmaster could then use that to demand explanations, compensation, or even a war in his favor from the Red Corsairs. How smart! Her master, her Warmaster, her father.

Mokas knew that she should lower her strange eyes in such occasions and remain respectful to her master, but after seeing so many busy or violent and stupid minds, she couldn't help but raise her eyelids and look at Abaddon on the throne with her purple eyes and black stone eyeballs.

She secretly rejoiced that Abaddon's mind was open to her to some extent, and regarded it as a tacit indulgence.

And this was the most beautiful thought she had ever seen, no one could compare to it, thoughts were like planets orbiting Abaddon's head, so beautiful, so timeless.

Except for one thing that destroyed the tranquility and beauty of this celestial body: the mark of Chaos Chosen on his forehead.

It had been sent down and lit by the Dark Gods themselves, and it looked like a replica of the discord in the galaxy, like the fire that had ignited the beautiful stars that surrounded his mind.

Mokas wept for what Abaddon had endured.

(End of this chapter)