Warhammer 40k: Shattered Steel Soul

Chapter 484 Shell

None of them would accept a gift from the Emperor, the real, former Emperor, at least that was what Ctesias believed.

He is not a person who speaks loudly, that does not really touch a part of his soul, but he does not deny that he has some unique views on things, such as Azak Ahriman, or Amon.

These favored darlings of the Primarch Magnus all have an unusual persistence in many things. That passion can replace blood pumping in their hearts, just like Ahriman who fell without strength among a thousand warriors. The boy was floating within one meter in front of him. When he looked down at him, his face was still proud and a little cold.

Unfortunately, this trait is not unique to the Fifteenth Legion.

"We will not accept your gift," Ahriman said, as the runes surrounding him gradually lifted him up from the time gap at the edge of the crossroads.

They have not really reached the final moment of stagnation, which is a one-way line that will never return. They, the Templar Lecturers, and the Ray, plus Narek and his crew, just stopped on the edge of the cliff where they fell into the cessation of time, precariously listening to the torrent of shadows of the past flowing from them. The feet fell into the endless deep pool and shattered into fragments like stars.

And the boy's shadow floats in the void.

+Why? +The boy asked calmly, without needing to speak. +One Astartes can afford to speak for me. +

Why? Ctesias thought, as if he could hear Ahriman's voice ringing in his ears, carrying the remaining pride and anger in his stubborn but broken soul, as well as the thinking responsibilities he must bear as the chief think tank.

Ahriman's consciousness echoed with the embers of Prospero, and as soon as those flying smoke and dust did not set, Ahriman would never look directly at the Golden Throne. But how on earth will he explain it to the Lord of Mankind? In some moments, he must hate the Lord of Mankind and himself at the same time. That complex hatred will briefly overshadow the hatred for the Dark Lord, and then quickly fall into self-controlled silence.

Ahriman stood silently, then spoke in a low voice.

"We are about to return to Prospero, to raise our city from the ashes, and to recover all that we have lost. Your mission cannot provide us with all that we will seek throughout our days... before repaying Tizca's debt of upbringing to us. Before, forgive us, we couldn't focus enough to fill that hole in terms of what we owed or received from humanity in return.

"Amon will be willing to lead his warriors to continue fighting for the true master of the empire, and perhaps many of us here will be the same - but not everyone."

Not far away, Battusa Narek's eyes were a little wide. He looked at Ahriman's terrifying courage in amazement. Among the Word Bearers, refuting the superiors would not even appear in the scope of thinking. Within—even Aurelion, who claims to serve humanity as their equal.

Soon, he was called upon.

"But here is a man who will be willing to accept your orders, obey your wishes, appear where you need, and do what you need. Because he has no other purpose." Ahriman said, turning his face , casting a glance at Narek. "He would have had the honor had he not refused it."

"How could I refuse?" Narek said, his expression an equal mixture of surprise and disappointment. He walked forward, passed through hundreds of red-robed warriors, arrived at Ahriman's side, and joined him Confront the boy.

"I am willing to obey your command, just as we have always done," Narek sighed, "as we have always been supposed to do. I swear before you... Compared to Aurelion, I How lucky he is to hear directly the Word that he cannot hear.”

The boy looked at him.

+You swore an oath to me to pay for Aurelion? +

"No, my lord, it is impossible. Lorgar Aurelion is not worthy of me doing anything for him. I make a choice for my fate and my mind, and for the fate of mankind."

Battusa Narek knelt down on one knee and pressed the power sword in his hand into the void. The words flowed out of his mouth skillfully, but they also carried a different kind of true emotion - restrained and bitter, rare for those with words.

The traitor of the Word Bearers trembled slightly and said word by word: "I hope that my Lord will be glorified at the end of time, and that your loved ones will be safe on earth. I praise you for your glory, thank you, and hope that you will bow down to me. Listen to our prayers, forgive the sins of the world, and have mercy on all people. Because you are the supreme good and the only source, and everyone in the world should share the blessings you give me. , I will walk through adversity because I believe that the good things you have prepared for us are beyond our greediest imagination.”

Ctesias suddenly realized what Battusa Narek was reading - the teachings of Mulistan, which was also the short scripture written by their first leader.

The boy came down barefoot from the air, holding the skull in one hand and a shell picked up from the river in the other open hand.

+ Open your mouth. +

Narek raised his head and obeyed the boy's command.

The boy placed the shell in his hand under the former Word Bearer's tongue like a coin.

The shell phantom composed of light and time disappeared the moment he took it off, and Narek was knocked down instantly. He covered his mouth and knelt on the ground, and a painful huffing sound came from his throat, as if he had just been immersed in it. In thick swamps or long rivers made of mud and sand, they struggled for a long time on the verge of suffocation and death before being rescued. At this time, they were gasping for air on the bank of the long river.

The boy smiled slightly, and the shadow of the wheat field behind him gradually faded, and he himself turned around and returned to his original dream.

There seemed to be a silvery light guarding him like wings, taking the boy with him into the eternal intersection between here and there, which did not exist in this world.

Those light and elegant colors gradually erased and faded from the edges of the crossroads, leaving only the red-gold runes of the Webway itself and the endless cold pure white.

"The Emperor has left?" Ctesias muttered, looking at the boy's last back.

He turned to Ahriman and asked him distantly: +Are you satisfied, Azhak? +

+ Return to the ship, Ctesias. We're going to set off again. Take Bartusa with you... + Ahriman said briefly, dodging his question.

"No," Narek said, with the daze of severe pain still remaining on his face. He stretched out his hand, as if he was grabbing something in the void, to push himself up. Ctesias realized that the Traitor Word Bearers had heard the voices of the Suns of Dust.

+So, where are you going? + Ahriman asked calmly, perhaps without much expression until he died of complete brokenness.

"Listen to the light of the stars," Narek said softly to the empty world, "I have a guide to goodness, Azhak Ahriman. Leave me the ship I brought, Chapter Fifteenth Legion, I will not go with you to Prospero."

+ Just your ship? + Ahriman confirmed once, then nodded, + Go ahead, Battusa Narek. +

Narek seemed to have come back to his senses, the erratic expression quickly faded away, and his own face returned.

"And my crew," he said half-complainingly, nodding back to Ahriman, "I can't sail an entire ship by myself during the storm season, even with the Emperor's blessing, that would be too much. And , since you want to go back to Prospero, then follow this path of the web - forget it, I will draw a diagram for you. Who brought the draft paper, scholars? "

——

The coiled energy vortex suddenly spread outward after a sudden contraction, spreading out like ripples in the real universe, briefly revealing the blank road wrapped in it.

The Wan Zhang Ray drew a sparkling trajectory in the tide of reality, and was facing a fleet gathered in front of it - there may be hundreds of imperial warships, of different sizes, some as thin as mosquitoes and flies, and some as scattered as drops of water. Empty pea shells fell haphazardly over Prospero.

The silence in the vacuum was torn apart by the vast reverberations aroused by the noisy human voices and emotions that remained in the fleet. Ctesias could hear those terrible war cries, reverberating and spreading from every point in time, overlapping with the following moments again and again. , until the roars and roars that remain in this moment of "this time" are so intense that they can no longer be added.

If he got closer, Ctesias could predict the confrontation between those naval guns and the defensive rails, as well as the explosive sparks.

His heart trembled a little, facing all this challenged the upper limit of what he could accept. Even if he prides himself on being a person who is not easily irritated... maybe he is right. He has already heard some companions whispering painful curses near them, staring directly in the direction of Big Tizka, until Tears welled up in their eyes.

Some fragments of names flashed through Ctesias' mind. He couldn't help but capture the strokes and syllables of the real names that appeared within his range of perception, trying to write down the names of the people who had committed atrocities against Prospero one by one. Note down all the punishments meted out to the Prosperos by the Luna Wolves, and those executioners who were on the opposite side of their hatred.

Maybe they came back too late - no, they came as fast as they could. The webway route obtained from the boy was shorter than any other route...

Ahriman did not miss a single choice that would have brought them back faster, or if he did, and he had another choice, then who could blame Azak except the wronged souls of the City of Light? ·Ahriman?

In the Fifteenth Legion, there is no one with a higher status than Azak Ahriman. Only his own conscience can kill him, and that is indeed an effective weapon.

+Do not consider them our enemies,+ Ahriman whispered, like the tap of a wind chime upon Ctesias's mind.

He was right, Ctesias thought, but it was not easy to do. In this short period of time, more than three hundred names have fallen on Ctesias's mind, hanging on him in the form of a hook.

Something like a dreamcatcher, he thought, a hook with a string of names... He ran his hand over the names... Some of them belonged to Luna Wolves, some were native to Prospero, and even many of them he He knew them all...and some of them brought him a lot of surprise.

Iron Warriors? This surprised Ctesias, and other Thousand Dust Sun scholars with their own strengths also came to the same conclusion and exchanged glances with each other.

Azak Ahriman closed his light blue eyes. For some reason, it seemed that this did not surprise him.

His power extended in the warp, and the black crows captured every moment brought by the vast ocean flow, combining them into an image of reality, Prospero's reality.

As they expected, many scenes had been destroyed. The damage to the pyramids and the dimming of the glory made them heartbroken, but the scene on the ground was still beyond their expectations: the battle was still going on, and the duration of this attack had far exceeded the extent that Prospero himself could hold on.

There, on their ground, the unique colors of the Iron Warriors were filling the gaps in every battlefield of the City of Light without hesitation. Under the terrible background of the black sun hanging in the sky, they fought relentlessly with the Shadow Moon Wolves to defend the land of Tizca.

They were about... still 20,000 people. The temporary fortifications after the city was broken had become extremely solid. Force field shields and physical fortresses were distributed on the devastated Great Tizca. Although it destroyed the beauty that once existed here, it formed another kind of scenery, a cruel scenery that the Thousand Dust Suns could not think of anything better than this.

It meant they still had something to protect, and many remnants that had not been completely destroyed. It meant that Tizca's civilization had not been destroyed, even if it was on the verge of shattering. It meant... they still had friends to rely on, that the Iron Warriors had kept their promises, even too much. What kind of gratitude could express their hearts...

The air was filled with mixed emotions, with a heavy sense of shame, despair and regret, but there was also hope: there were still many people who had not been killed, in their homes.

Ahriman stared at the scene of Prospero, as if he had fallen into a kind of deathly quiet thinking. His expression was hidden under the blank helmet, and his heart was silently surging.

They held their breath, eagerly waiting for their chief to make the next decision.

Ctesias could hear the swords of the jackal head sculptures gently clinking.

+Prepare to drop anchor, + Azak Ahriman said, reaching out a hand forward, his left hand burning with red fire, and the staff in his right hand swirling with circles of satin-like energy.

The souls that were closely connected to Thousand Dust Sun roared silently under his guidance. The roars spread into tremendous power, instantly igniting the pearl-white Moon Wolf warships.