Warhammer 40k: Shattered Steel Soul

Chapter 492 Tower of Babel (Part 2)

The luminous platform, which they might call a flying carpet, sailed in the direction of the light source for another period of time. In Perturabo's precise and stable mind, the physical duration of this journey was two hours and ten minutes. Most of the time along the way, he was talking to Morse's voice, while observing the world on the current flow of time through the blurred waves.

After stepping through the door, Perturabo realized that they were not following the Emperor's life closely, but were traveling up the rapid stream of history, looking for some life path that happened to match the Emperor's life. A strange moment of intersection.

In the beginning, during the period closest to the thirty-first millennium, their encounters were more frequent. As they gradually approached the fifteenth millennium when the Emperor visited Moro, the two lines happened to intersect. The frequency has been reduced.

"What will I say next?" asked Perturabo. The flow of time blew on his face in a form that humans can understand. The fragments of time next to him passed through his field of vision like small islands, flashing with colors that changed with the light source, like mother-of-pearl, with different shades. The fragment's shadow cast a shimmering light and dark change on his body.

"Why do I know, I am not a prophet, Perturabo." Morse said, his voice came quietly in the wind, "I walk on the same side of time with you."

"You know more than I do, Morse, and I want you to tell me. If I didn't do something at an earlier point in time, why would the Emperor tell you at a relatively later point in time that there is absolutely nothing ahead of me? Room to retreat?”

He still had many questions to ask the craftsman on the other side of Moro's Gate, such as why the glowing platform he was currently standing on kept changing colors from dark green to gold, and what the Emperor told them later. Lots of information that seems extremely relevant...

However, soon, new fragments were flying towards his face, expanding like a spider web into a wide veil, enveloping him in it.

...This brilliance is like the light of the star torch itself, bright and transparent, with white coral-like curls on the edges. And the scene inside the time point quickly became more concrete...

Ripples like molten metal continued to roll out in the pale world... In the vast sea... a turbulent wooden ship defended itself from the side with a long bow that floated and fired automatically, and the sails hunted on long poles. The ground is spread out, a huge real spine is embedded in the center of the deck, strings of bone fragments and bells are hung on the outline around the central iron brazier, an old man is sitting by the brazier, warming himself by the fire...

In addition, there is a young man in white robes, standing on the edge and looking out, observing the turbulent and trembling lightning in the subspace, as well as the hazy halos...

Perturabo looked at the people standing there. He only paused for a moment, and then turned his attention to the old man sitting on the ground again.

"There you are," the old man said, the firelight covering his dark skin. "you."

After Morse walked forward to the fire and smiled coldly at another young man who was stunned and had an almost identical face to him, Perturabo was sure that the old man was indeed talking about "you" .

He still doesn't quite understand why Morse can really appear beside him here. Maybe this is determined by some characteristics of psychic energy.

Morse now looked like a translucent ghost, his mist-like skin looking shading in the light of the subspace, and the missing parts of his arms were clearly exposed.

"It's us," said Morse. "Did you guess that, Neos?"

"Almost not," the old man raised his head, looked at Morse, and raised his hand for him to sit down. "So, we met, what do you have to say?"

"Is this Moro?" Morse asked and shrugged, "I remember that your speaking style was really unpleasant during this period, but I didn't know that I was here too... I should be here."

He sat down, invited Perturabo to come over, raised his hand and patted him on the back with a rare kindness, and then spoke to the old man again.

"Who do you think this is?" he said, sounding a little playful. "Can you imagine it, Neos?"

"My son." The old man gave the answer without even thinking. His directness made Perturabo's lungs tighten slightly. He relaxed a little and sat down silently in the empty space around the fire. The heat of the fire covered and fixed his face like a mask of glue that had set.

"No thoughts?" Morse asked.

"This proves that I have succeeded here." The old man said, "How did I do it?"

"You asked me?"

"You arrived from the future to the present, and I lacked a solution to the present. If the answer was not among us, my son would not have been born."

The old man stood up, and for a moment his existence seemed to become extremely distant. The wind and waves outside the sailboat they were on expanded and slapped the outside of the boat.

The young man on the side finally reacted. Half of his mind was still paying attention to Morse's missing arm: "So, you are the future me?"

"You in the thirty-first millennium." Morse replied, avoiding his own eyes, "Don't look at me, I will not make prophecies for you."

The young man moved away from staring at Morse and leaned against the side of the ship to look at the flow of energy in the vast ocean. His hands that would be missing in the future were tapping the dark wooden boards with salt stains on them.

"Emperor," Perturabo used the only title he was accustomed to.

The old man accepted his address as usual, his eyes fixed on him, examining his body structure, and then nodded with satisfaction. "What is your number?" he asked.

"You are too harsh on your child," Morse half complained, "Ask his name, he is a very good person. After all, I think he has seen you many times in your previous life."

The old man was silent for a moment, but did not refuse: "Okay. Tell me your name, my son."

"I am Perturabo." Perturabo said, feeling a burst of urgent buzzing in his ears. He let his heartbeat calm down. "Hello."

"Hello." The old man said, his expression seemed to soften for a moment, "Hello, Perturabo. Come and solve our problem. I need some children, and I can't give birth to them yet..."

He waved his hand, and the corresponding whimpering sound of the wind rippled in the vast ocean, "Their essence will be taken out of this ocean, but I still lack some containers and bait."

"What if there is none?" Perturabo asked. "If we hadn't arrived here?"

"You would have come, children." He said confidently, pausing, "If you don't come... you would still be born, but your shells would be more easily damaged, and your essences would not be as indestructible as I had hoped."

Perturabo didn't care about the plural number the Emperor added after "children". For an old man who was old enough, almost everyone in human history was his junior.

His mind was more focused on another thing. This is Morro, the place where the Emperor re-selects the role of the Primarch and truly understands the changes he can make to the Webway... They will make a decision, whether to tell the Emperor another way... or reject the future of the birth of the Dark Lord, reject the other possibility of the Webway, reject the many deaths that have already occurred...

"Verify my thoughts," the old man turned to Morse, "Tell me if my guess is correct or not."

Morse sighed, "Correct, I think."

"Okay," the old man said, "Remus, I need your power to restrain the warp."

"Oh, how?"

"A harpoon is enough."

The young man smiled, and he was interrupted just as he raised his arm and condensed the prototype of a harpoon in his palm.

"No," Perturabo said, "Is this enough?"

Morse's eyes flickered, and his armless shoulder moved.

"You decide," he said.

Perturabo stood up, his tall body towering above everyone. The information became coherent in his mind, including the many hints that the Emperor would give him downstream in time.

If they had given up the idea of ​​interfering with the Emperor here, then the true Webway project would never have been born... The Dark Lord would not have come at the end of the Great Crusade, and in turn, Erda would not have formed the Illuminati, Magnus would not have died, and the destruction they were facing now, but they did not yet know, would have ended...

"Father," he said to the Emperor, savoring the taste behind the word, "Do you understand the Webway?"

"Tell me what you want to say." The Emperor stared at him.

"A greater plan," Perturabo said, "a plan with no retreat. As you told me, we should not have room to retreat."

"Speak."

"First..."

His words were interrupted by a scream.

Morse stretched out his hand to himself. The young man was confused and chose to respond. The next moment, he screamed in pain, and his half arm was rapidly disintegrating, emitting thousands of broken runes and bright lights. He glared at Morse in shock and fell to his knees in pain.

The black-robed craftsman knelt down face to face with him, his expression grim, their eyes locked tightly, as if they were a single individual.

The runes spread outward, and huge waves rose in the vast ocean currents. Some huge energies gathered into tangible masses, like giant sharks or flying birds, swooping down on them from the sky. The bodies emitting strange luster rolled up the irresistible power like nature itself, but were tightly bound by the open spell net. The vast ocean surged with a vast wailing like a wail, and the waves and high-frequency screams beyond the range of human hearing gathered around them into a vortex.

"First, it is more effort - the original gene body you originally envisioned is perfect, but it is not enough to complete the duties they are about to perform. As a container, they must be more - indestructible and extraordinary."

As Morse spoke, his own components began to boil, and the silk threads spread out from his body, disintegrating in all directions, and each string plucked a rapid and repeated low tremolo.

"Second, you must realize that what you will create is not your offspring." He said, a vague smile rose on his cold face, and his voice rose in the pain of decomposition.

"Before that, they were tools, weapons and containers. My Lord, you should not treat them as children."

The black cloth wrapped around his body was completely scattered, pouring out everything contained in it from the cracks, like golden blood, completely spilling in all directions.

And the arm he took from his younger self was twisted into the last part of his carrier in the world; the young man's face turned pale, he fell into a coma in the process, fell forward, and Morse caught him.

"He will not remember this memory, my Lord." He said softly. "This memory belongs to me now... After that, you just need to let him go."

The old man witnessed all this, the storm around him rolled up his clothes, and his half-white hair flew behind his head.

He said: "Therefore, in the plan you mentioned, from now on, Remus, you will rely on the only remaining strength to live.

"Besides, my son will not be my son, but my tool - then, what will I give? "

Nyos said, his dark eyes reflecting the sharp edge of the fire. Was there a sense of loss or regret? Perhaps Perturabo expected and feared to see these emotions on his face. He found nothing.

Morse's voice echoed without a source, and his body had turned into a dense golden net:

+Give your future, Neos. You will sit on the throne in the thirty-first millennium. And many deaths, many destructions, and an uncertain final outcome...+

Then Perturabo spoke. For a moment he suddenly wanted to shout, but his voice was as gloomy and stubborn as a tomb.

"We have come a long way to get to this day - there is no one thing, no death that we can regret, that can make us stop and start over, and abandon the possibility of future success. "

The old man nodded, his thin finger pointing to the obsidian blade that came out of his robe.

"Then you can tell me about the plan. "He said, his face gradually became fuller, and the cold golden crown bound his flying black hair. Standing here was almost the emperor in Perturabo's memory.

--

"No existing sacrifice is worth denying, no written history can be humiliated, no hesitation out of regret can determine the road, and no broader future can end because of reluctance..."

"This sin is indeed chosen by us for each other, and we are really willing to choose it ourselves..."

Batusa Narek woke up from his sleep, half of his brain was still immersed in the echoes of the wind and waves, and it was still early. On his planet, the sun had not yet risen from the sky, and the weather vane on the wooden roof was still creaking rhythmically in the night wind.

His stiff body gradually relaxed, and a warmth slid up his arm, making his heart calm. He immediately found his paper and pen and tried his best to remember The fragments he could still save - this was not something a priest could know, but the Emperor gave it to him, and he had to write down this story in his own handwriting.

This is something that someone should know... he thought... but it cannot be told in its original form. This is an incomprehensible and vast secret, mysterious, uninterpretable and unreasonably harsh. This is... the story of the Emperor, the story of the origin of the Empire, and the Iron Lord...

However, the Emperor's thoughts will be conveyed in a certain way, so what he needs will be... ah, a fable. A fable that people can understand, but not read too much, causing loss and panic.

In addition, Narek has a premonition that this history that he has been witnessing will come to an end in the dream of the next day. Or rather, the end has been clear from the beginning, and he will follow the river of time and return to the present...

Then, he will do what he should do.