Warhammer 40k: Shattered Steel Soul

Chapter 490 Tower of Babel (Part 1)

The nearby river is gradually thawing, and the ice on the shore is gently breaking into flowing ice floes. It was still cold, but it was almost noon and the stars were heating up.

Battusa Narek sat down on the rocks lying on the shore, took out a sketchbook from his robe, and the pen in his hand wandered on the paper for a while, settling on the frame of the picture, and then began to outline a tall tower. outline draft.

After a while, a young girl walked over from the village path holding a tub of shirts and burlap robes. Her face had hard lines and an unusually sinister look. Her long white hair was braided into two braids. Falling on both sides of the shoulders one after the other. She glanced at Narek and raised her pale eyebrows: "Priest, you are here."

"I am," Narek replied, twirling his pen between his fingers. He had nothing to give this mortal, but in a village he might have given her a pair of woolen gloves he knitted in his spare time. "Good morning, Alyona."

The girl squatted down a few meters away, broke open the ice, and soaked her clothes in the water. Narek stared at her hands, which were not even slightly frozen. The people in this semi-barbaric world are in unusually good health. If they were allowed to do some training, they might be able to drive tanks directly in the company.

"I still don't understand what you said yesterday," Alyona asked after a while, turning her face sideways. "You told us that the God Emperor is indeed outside our world, but you also told us not to believe in Him casually. I wonder Don't understand, priest."

"You sound like you don't understand," Narek smiled, "We do have to believe in ultimate justice in the universe, but that's not..."

"Don't say that, priest," Alyona shook her head, threw back the braid that had fallen in front of her head, and took out from the basin a little girl's lambskin petticoat, which was sewn with fine stitches.

"Let me give you a suggestion. I am one of the smartest people in the village, but even I don't understand your reasoning from the bottom of my heart. You'd better tell us more about your story-" She waved her hand. A string of sunlight folds colorfully into the rising water droplets, "those 'old stories'."

"Then you have to wait until I have a dream," Narek said, looking down at his sketchbook. "I have no story of my own, and no past to speak of. I am just speaking for Him. Only if He allows me to see it can I tell you those historical stories.”

"What's the big deal?" Alyona laughed heartily, her light eyes shining like a newborn wolf, "I don't want to listen to preaching, I like stories."

Narek sighed, carefully considering his next words. After a while, he spoke, and the wind mixed his voice with the moist vapor and the astringent smell of grass from the wet soil on the ground. "Like yesterday, I just saw a few new scenes and I was painting them. If you want to hear it, I will tell you in advance."

——

It was a harvest night, and the boy had gone hunting with his uncle and father in the morning. The spears thrown by the two adult hunters pierced a lone cub in the group. The boy's movements were very vigorous. He drew a very cold arc in the air with a knife sharpened by stone, and nailed it there. The back of a small mammal with a shiny scalp.

He ran over and cut the knife into the animal's veins to bleed it. The scarlet fluid covered his hand.

Finally the adults picked up the four legs of the animal. They had wandered too far during the day and found a nearby stone cave where they went in to rest for the night. Someone has been here before. There are fluffy hay and branches piled near the edge of the cave, as well as bone powder and other things.

It would get cold quickly, and they hid themselves in the shadows deep in the cave, as if there was heat in the shadows. No, they were just huddled together. There was no wind inside, so it wasn't so cold.

The boy cut open the animal's belly, thrust the knife in, cut through the fat, trying not to break the bag of the unpleasant smell, and pulled out some of the contents. He can also curl up in it and sleep, he's not that big.

Finally, he got in and faced a stone wall. Even at night, the edges and lines on the stone wall were blurred. He was soon soaked with blood, and he stretched the thick hide on either side of the animal's belly. For a while, he lay like that, listening to his father and uncle begin to argue, with no interest in talking to either of them. , as if it had nothing to do with him at all.

He stared at the stone and heard heavy rain falling outside. The rain was as noisy as being vomited out of the sky. Lightning soon followed, and the rain gradually stopped. The light suddenly burst into the night from time to time, until he gradually heard a crackling sound like crushed branches.

Then, a warmth came close to him, spraying on his arm like the breath of a beast. There were also some bright things, like the shimmering fragments when there were fluctuations in the water during the day, swaying and shining through. He opened his eyes wide, and the heat was getting closer and closer, as if the lightning was contained by something, stored or imprisoned in something, and transformed into a more stable source.

What is that thing, emitting unstable red light, shining on this stone wall, tracing the uneven contours there, bright and dark now and then?

The boy was transfixed by the light that should not have been there, so perfect in its heat and radiance that it shone brighter than the eyes of any newborn animal, even as his father and uncle stopped arguing and avoided the spot in fear. He still ignored the fire.

Here, only this bright thing has enough temptation, it flutters like a bird, is hot like an animal, and exudes the power of life itself.

The boy stretched out his hand to catch its shadow on the stone wall. He seemed to understand what it was about. He felt that he had thought it through and understood how to create it. His heartbeat quickly calmed down, and the steady beat in his chest drove him to stand up and get closer to the thing that was emitting light and heat.

He was wrong, there was something else in the shadow, a towering, mountain-like existence, quietly reflected in the light. He seemed very old, yet still very young. Nothing could make him old. He was there, but it seemed that he did not belong to this era, but came from somewhere else.

As soon as he saw him, the boy felt as if he should be very familiar with him. His pulse quickened, and there was a dull pain in his blood vessels. The speed of the world seemed to speed up suddenly, and then slowed down into a long river, vaguely and warmly wrapped around him. With.

Then, the shadow that suddenly appeared shrank, but it still stood majestic. What might have been his head was lowered, as if the shadow were looking at the boy.

"Who are you?" asked the boy, speaking for the first time tonight.

The shadow stared at him, but he did not speak. Maybe he was just a shadow, and words had not yet been born, so he had no words that could be conveyed without sound.

Not long after, the shadow stretched out a hand to him. His movement was not fast, but a warm sun-like touch came closer with his movement. That warmth seemed to give the shadow a color, a certain warmth. The color of her face gently approached him. The boy climbed out of the animal's body and tried to grab the shadow's hand. The invisible light shone on his body.

Then, Shadow knelt down in front of him, half-kneeling on the ground, and his arms seemed to be wrapped around him. For a moment, the boy thought that this might be the shadow that was born with the kind of light and heat that could be used. From then on, he could see his arrival every time the light was lit. Then, with a tired, sighing wind, the shadow disappeared from the light-reflecting cave.

When the boy woke up, he was still curled up in the animal's body.

The light that was on last night had long been extinguished. What shone on his face again was the sunlight from the outside world, and the smell of dried earth after the rain billowed in the tip of his nose. There is always an uncertain fresh smell in the soil on rainy days.

He stood up and looked at the stone wall again, beginning to feel that the shadows from last night were all things that would happen in that chaotic world after they fell asleep. However, he suddenly began to look forward to... Will he see that shadow again?

He walked to the edge of the cave and looked out at the wilderness outside. The things burned last night have been turned into blackened dust in the passing wind. It seems that nothing has happened here, but something has indeed changed - perhaps more than the changes that a warm night can bring, the kind of natural revelation Perhaps far more than a momentary refuge.

The boy squatted down, stared at the pile of ashes, and reached out to push away the impurities inside, as if he could find some shiny fragments. There was indeed something hidden here, and when he touched it, his hand hurt as if he had been bitten. He was thinking, staring at the bright light that quickly dissipated. A new term was brewing at the edge of his brain and suddenly jumped out.

fire.

He stood up and looked back at his relatives. They didn't know what it meant yet, but the boy did. It's not yet now, but the world will definitely change because of fire, and the change will be thorough.

——

"Fire," Alyona said, sitting down on the ground next to Narek, "it has a process of discovery."

"You're very perceptive, girl," Narek said. "Your description is more accurate than I thought."

"Of course, nothing exists from the beginning. Just like there has to be someone who knows that flax can pull out the silk..."

"fiber."

"Okay, fiber. I never thought our clothes didn't float up from the river when no one told me it was possible." Alyona untied her hair and began to braid it again. "Just like someone must have discovered that your armor can be made out of iron..."

"Ceramite." Narek smiled.

"Oh! Priest!" Alyona tightened her hair in annoyance and pulled the three whips tighter, "But you haven't talked about the tower you drew. You haven't said what the shadow is... Isn’t this the witchcraft of the Imperial Truth? Is that boy a wizard?”

"Officially speaking, he is an uncertified psyker." Narek smiled, "If you must classify him."

"The kind of psyker who would be captured by the Fifteenth Legion?"

"Not for a while, I'm afraid. The Fifteenth Legion probably won't be in charge of this duty for a long time, I guess."

"Well, I also want to meet the Space Marines. I have only heard of them, and I heard that they are all five meters tall." Alyona looked up. If she was not braiding her hair, she would definitely be gesticulating. "It eats everything. It captures children. The boys are used as armed monks, and the girls are eaten."

"Even the Word Bearers would not eat children," Narek said, his smile unaffected by the words in his mouth, like he no longer had a connection to it.

"Listen to you, you know a lot. Tell me something more, priest, for example, tell me about the tower - by the way, if you are still willing to accompany us to plow the land, maybe we are willing to believe in your sect. Really." Alyona said.

"Is the task the day after tomorrow to help you drive the truck? Alas, I don't have time to stay here all the time. I will go to the next place along the Glorious Road." Narek said. "But I still tell you a story."

--

An unfinished tower stands on the plain, and countless soldiers died beside the tower, illuminated by the momentary light in the thunder and lightning. The echoes of blood and screams linger vaguely around the tower, and broken limbs and melted and condensed armor fragments merge into a dirty and barbaric mass, wantonly piled up into a battlement of flesh and blood.

The crowned man held a bloody sword in his hand, standing quietly in the lobby outside the tower, staring at the tower. Every column, every interlaced cornice and arch, every broad and finely carved vault was densely covered with countless words.

Surrounding him, twenty corpses fell in the hall, their mouths burned through by unknown forces, their teeth and lips melted into a condensed mass. The cold frost sealed their faces and ended the words in their mouths. No matter how powerful the power was, what potential and possibilities it had, it has now ended under the vast power and ruthless slaughter of the crowned man.

The flame on the long sword in the man's hand gradually extinguished, and the twisting of the shadows in the changing light and shadow on the surrounding walls became more and more wanton and unrestrained, as if something was about to be born from it. This was not enough to stop the man from moving forward, but he seemed to suddenly think of something, and his steps gradually stopped.

The frost seemed to have become a lens, creating a concrete shape on the wall. The man finally stopped walking. His robes were blown up by the wind, and he stared intently at the shadows on the wall, with some unknown expectation in his heart.

Behind him, a new visitor walked into the hall, holding a dagger in his hand, and his eyes fell on the crowned man in front of him, unable to move away for a long time.