The Emperor’s Angel of Death

"Mom, can I still play with Hammer Brother in the future?"

Hearing this, her mother turned her head, revealing a face with some remaining traces of angelic blessings, a trace of sorrow in her eyes, and then nodded.

"If there's a chance in the future."

After saying that, she continued to work hard.

Willie didn't quite understand. Her mother's attitude was very strange. Hammer Brother was a big guy who often played with them children. He was very, very big and looked silly. He often carried a big hammer. Because the children couldn't remember his name, they always called him Hammer Brother. Although he was very big, he was very gentle. Once, Willie got into a mechanical pipe while playing, and it actually fell down. Hammer Brother lifted the huge machine with all his strength before she suffocated, saving her. After that, the two became good friends and established a unique telepathic connection.

But not long ago, she felt as if a piece of her heart had been cut away, making her uneasy.

"Mom—"

Just as she was about to speak again, her mother suddenly rushed over, hugged her, and covered her mouth, her eyes showing a look of fear.

Willie also heard it at this time. Outside the tightly closed door of the shack, there were heavy footsteps. This kind of footsteps could usually only be made by Hammer Brother.

But there was more than one footstep, it seemed like there were several, chaotically intertwined, and accompanied by a language she couldn't understand.

At this time, her mother didn't even dare to breathe, she just huddled in the corner of the shack with her daughter, desperately looking at the thin door.

I don't know how long it took, but the sound gradually disappeared before she let go and breathed a sigh of relief.

"Willie, don't talk anymore, Mom is taking you to escape for your lives."

"Escape for our lives?"

"Don't talk, okay?"

"Okay."

Then she began to fiddle with the door again. Willie hugged her doll and stared blankly. Suddenly, she twitched her nose. Although it was very subtle, because of the connection established in the past, she still felt it.

Hammer Brother's scent?

So she carefully walked towards the door, making sure not to startle her mother, then stretched out her little hand and slowly, little by little, opened the metal door, revealing a crack.

When she looked outside the door, her eyes lit up immediately, and then she opened the door completely.

"Mom!"

Hearing her daughter's voice, she turned her head, her eyes almost popping out of their sockets.

"Hammer Brother is here to help us!"

Willie pointed happily at the door with a flower-like smile on her face, and at the same time, the head of a mutant appeared outside the door, but it was hung on the waist of a white-armored giant covered in purple blood, and a hand holding a warhammer also reached into the room——(Just writing for fun, don't scold me)

When Warlord Raghu was thrown onto the cracked flagstones of the cellar, his first act was to kneel in supplication, and when he looked up, there they were, the Elders of the Order.

They clung to the surrounding walls, to each other, even to the ceiling, hooking there with claws, the angelic bloodline in them overwhelming the human, skin carapaceous, shades of bruised purple or faint blue, some with three arms, some with four, but all with long necks and bloated heads, and burning amber eyes, shoulders and bodies decorated with rippling scales.

These were the oldest of the Order, second in blood only to the Pureblood Angels, and though Raghu was the first Poem-Sage to boast third-generation blood, he must still kneel before them.

“Elders,”

Raghu’s third hand clawed a shallow furrow in the ground, testament to his inner turmoil at this moment.

“Forgive me, I had no choice.”

“You should have held your position.”

One of the second-generation hybrids emitted a slurred hiss.

“Yes, of course I wanted to, but—but we were outnumbered, many of our fortifications were destroyed in the initial barrage, many kin and warriors were buried alive, burned alive, we had too few heavy weapons to stop the enemy, those great iron men, with their warhammers and chainswords, they were butchering us, even the Pureblood Angels could not stand against them, it would have served no purpose for us to all die there—”

“Excuses!”

A four-armed hybrid roared.

“Punish! Tear him apart!”

Another demanded.

“Replace him!”

Raghu lowered his head, knowing this was not undeserved, he had fought with all his strength, his force, tens of thousands of kin, only a scant thousand had withdrawn from that hell.

But then another voice, deeper, from the shadowed corner, with an authority that implicitly overruled the second-generation hybrids.

“Raghu is not at fault.”

The hissings of the hybrids subsided in the face of this voice, whether willingly or forced, they could not interrupt when it spoke.

A robed figure, richly adorned, wielding a sceptre, face aged, stepped from the shadows, followed closely by a banner-bearing acolyte.

The Cardinal halted, and fixed Raghu with eyes that glowed with psychic light, saying slowly:

“No one could have held for two hours under that assault.”

“So we must accept the bitter fruit of this failed uprising.”

Another, reedy, voice spoke suddenly, and the first Cardinal stepped aside, as did the hybrids, for the second Cardinal, who held a staff in one hand, and a serpentine, curved sword in the other, and whose skin and bearing appeared far younger, stepped forward, his own banner-bearing acolyte at his heels.

“Failure must be faced squarely, if we continue to believe there is hope in holding on, the Order will die in delusion, I have received intelligence that the Machine-Lords have summoned brutal reinforcements from the stars, giants clad in armour, if we are truly convinced that remaining here is doomed, then we should relocate as soon as possible, concentrate all elite forces, break out through the acidic marshes to the south, to a more hidden place, and await the next opportunity.”

“To conduct such a breakout with our current strength is to throw our Patriarch, our Holy Father, into the fire, I cannot accept it, the Coking-City has not yet fallen and the Machine-Lords are alert and forewarned, do you believe the Order would have any chance of resurgence after such a transfer? Unless to another world.”

The two Cardinals seemed to argue, yet displayed no signs of strife, for in this moment of the Order’s life or death, formless psychic tethers ensured they knew what was most important.

“Then… there remains only the third path…”

A low rumble sounded, and the two Cardinals stepped back quickly, and the other hybrids scrambled down from the heights, and prostrated themselves, and Raghu threw himself flat on the ground, for he knew he had not even the right to kneel before it.

The Patriarch’s vast form emerged from the shadows, a certain humanlike anxiety and resolution in its baleful gaze, and finally its decision was broadcast to all the Genestealers—

The main force retreats underground, preserves its strength, leaving only a few troops to continue guerrilla warfare in the city!