40k: Midnight Blade

Chapter 317 37. Blood of Calth (IX, 5k)

004.M31, Calth Orbit, Macragge's Glory.

In his life, Fel Zharost had never been in such pain as now. The flames of anger burned him, even his blood was boiling, and Fel could even taste the bitter taste of ashes.

He knew where this taste came from.

He held the sword and rushed towards a group of screaming demons. They looked like surging darkness, and countless pairs of scarlet eyes of the dead hung on the hideous dog heads. The blade passed, and the flames wrapped around those eyes and began to burn. The demons screamed, but Fel ignored them completely.

He had no time for these filthy evil things. If it were another place, he might be willing to taste their despair, but not now. Now, he had more urgent things to do.

And it had to be fast.

It had to be before he completely crossed that line.

Fel held the power sword tightly and floated away from the melting corpses of the dog-headed demons like a ghost. The way he moved and the speed completely subverted the human understanding of the word "movement". He could be in two places at the same time in a second, and swing the blade at the same time, making fire fall on another group of evil things. He could also pass through the burning wreckage without paying any price, and every time he moved, a burning trail would be left in the air. They were not illusions, but traces of something real, and even the air began to burn. The eyepieces of all the Astartes present began to show false readings, telling them that the air here was decreasing, fading, and the temperature was plummeting. In the blink of an eye, the main bridge of the Macragge's Glory suddenly changed from a terrifying shadow world full of evil things to another appearance. Black flames burned everywhere, and every bolt screamed in terror, and the cables danced and trembled like a living thing. Electric currents and minor explosions burst out from the wreckage of the destroyed instruments, and even the dust in the air was burning. Fel Zharost ran to the holographic projection platform.

He finally arrived here. The light around it was still distorted. Countless ghosts were spying on their world behind these lights. Some of them had been allowed to come, so they rushed into the light and finally successfully reached the world of the living through the blood of innocent people.

Fel swung his sword to kill a group of them. His pale face began to crack. Ashes hung upside down from it and danced in the air. His eyes were burning. Something darker than anger was surging in the depths of his burning eye sockets.

Looking at those lights, Fel suddenly roared - he heard it, Robout Guilliman couldn't hear it, Lorgar Aurelion couldn't hear it, and even the dead themselves couldn't hear that kind of sound. He heard it.

He heard the screams of every dead person when the Calth starport collapsed, and every whisper on the ground of Calth. Some were confused and had not yet realized the arrival of the end of the world, while some were extremely crazy. The roar made the listeners enter a state of empathy.

This is why they were able to get here, this is the reason

Die! Die! They must die! They must pay for this! Revenge, I must avenge the innocent dead, I must slaughter everyone involved in this matter, everyone must die, I will chop off 50 million heads as a sacrifice——

——No!

Fell suddenly woke up.

He did not dare to hesitate any longer, and immediately raised the sword in his hand high.

At this moment, the molecules that constitute the essence of this power sword have changed fundamentally, the decomposition field disappeared, replaced by a dark flame. The inscription on the sword began to deform, and words representing hatred were engraved in words that humans could not understand.

Its guard was elongated, becoming more hideous, more like a pair of horns. The same is true for the sword body. Some serrations that should not appear on the power sword inexplicably appeared, each of which looked like a scarlet gem.

The next second, Fell roared and swung the blade.

No demon on the Macragge's Glory could stop him at this moment, and no demon could even stand in front of this sword at this moment. Before its blade touched them, they began to burn.

One thousandth of a second, or ten million years later, the sword cut deep into the holographic projection table.

The world was stagnant, time stopped flowing, and everyone's eyes were on it at this moment. Roboute Guilliman was the same, and he saw it more clearly than others.

He could see through the distorted light that large groups of demons were waiting, and a person standing between them, that was Lorgar Aurelion.

The real Lorgar Aurelion.

He was shedding tears of blood.

In the stagnant world, the forge in Roboute Guilliman's chest began to be manic. He took a step forward and instinctively tried to call out, but Lorgar had disappeared. The demons obscured him, leaving only darkness and pain.

The disordered chaos in the warp surged and tried to enter reality through the gap opened by the holographic projection table, but was blocked by a sword.

To be precise, it was blocked by a person.

Guilliman looked at Fyr Zharost, who had half-knelt on the ground without knowing when, his body was covered with cracks, and countless ashes were hanging from it.

The Lord of Macragge's pupils shrank, and he spoke instinctively: "Apothecary!"

His voice echoed smoothly in the bridge, and the world returned to normal.

Gunfire rang out, and Roboute Guilliman ran to Fel Zharost. The latter half-knelt quietly on the ground, his hands had already left the sword. Fel slowly raised his head, as if he had sensed Guilliman's arrival.

His face at this moment shocked even the Primarch.

His eye sockets were burnt black, and burning lines flickered ominously around him. Two tiny flames were jumping where the eyes should be. Fel's skin was no longer pale, but turned a pale color after being burned, like the color of ashes, and full of cracks, like ceramics that were about to break.

"Sun." Fel spoke with difficulty, his voice switching back and forth between hoarseness and overlap. "My lord, the sun"

"I don't have time to care about the sun now-pharmacist!" Guilliman turned his head and roared at the other end of the bridge. "I need a pharmacist here!"

"I won't die, my lord." Fel slowly stopped him. "At least not today. Death has left a mark on me, but today is not the day it will rip my throat. But be careful of the sun, my lord."

What happened to the sun?

Two seconds later, Robert Guilliman got the answer. A dazzling light came from the corner of his eye, like a supernova explosion-when he turned his head to observe, he found that it was really an exploding star.

The sun in the Viridian system is exploding.

But this is not the end, it is just the beginning. Guilliman's spine shuddered, and the fire in the forge in his chest finally became calm at this moment. At the same time, Fel Zharost's voice, which seemed to be about to break, slowly sounded.

"They transformed it." The third captain of the Night Blade said so. "This is a sorcery, a sacrifice, a way to create more horrible massacres in our world. They want to artificially create a nightmare that separates Terra from us, a storm, my lord, that's what they are doing."

Watching the sun expand, Robert Guilliman was silent for a moment.

"What should I do?"

Amid the violent flashes of bombs, blades, demons, and the sun, Robert Guilliman asked softly.

"Kill." Fel answered resolutely. "This is the only way. We fight our way back to Terra."

--

004.M31, Calth ground, twenty-two kilometers east of the Rhode Army assembly point.

Sevatar climbed up from a corpse and knocked away another Word Bearer who rushed towards him with his shoulder. He was very glad that the guy's body did not deform with the power armor. The latter fell to the ground with the grenade gun in his hand raised.

Oh, no. Don't even think about it.

With fatigue, Sevatar kicked the gun in the Word Bearer's hand away and kicked the latter's forehead heavily. The man's neck made a slightly dull echo and was tilted at a weird angle. The heavy rain washed over and hit his face with a bang.

Sevatar stood there, a little dazed. He wanted to admire his good deeds and taunt the corpse, such as: The most important thing in battle is to keep balance, cousin, you must not forget this. But he failed because two bombs hit his shoulder armor. Sevata immediately ran, rushed back to the corpse, and pulled out his chain saw halberd from the latter's chest. Dark blood gushed out of the wound, and the flesh and blood that made up this body were hissing, disintegrating and melting, but Sevata was in no mood to care so much. He stared at the forest, the thick fog dissipated, and it was pitch black. His observation got the result after a few seconds - no result. The attacker was not among the trees. Following instinct, Sevata raised his head. "Die--!" Something roared and jumped down from above him, corrosive blood-red saliva gushed out from the ferocious jaws like insect mouthparts. Sevata was unable to dodge and was thrown to the ground. The saliva immediately began to penetrate his thick breastplate. Sevatar tried to fight back, but in the next few seconds, all he could hear was the cracking of ceramic steel and the muffled sound of his own bones. He also tasted the taste of blood, his own.

The thing finished swinging and lifted him up with a wild laugh. Sevatar squinted and saw a raised scarlet claw. The human hand bones and the flesh of the demon were fused together, and the ceramic steel armor was used as a filling, which looked extremely strange.

If nothing unexpected happened, this thing would break his head into several pieces in half a second.

The Nostramo sighed, ignored the pain, and raised his right hand nimbly, and the accident happened.

The roar of the chainsaw halberd flashed by, and an arm of human size fell to the ground, and Sevatar immediately rolled away from the spot.

Siani's voice sounded in his heart, with a mocking tone.

You see, Yago, this is why I always tell you to hold the weapon tightly on the battlefield, even if your fingers are broken, you must make sure the weapon is in your hand. Is my advice effective? Will you leave your weapon on the ground or in someone else's body in the future?

Yes, yes, I heard it, you nagging old man. After all these years, why can your voice still mock me at this time?

Siani from Terra did not answer. Of course he did not answer. He was far away on the other side of Cos.

For half a second, Sevatar stood up from the ground bleeding, but the attacker disappeared again. The scene of cutting off the arm looked horrifying, but Savita knew in his heart that for these things, this kind of injury was not even considered a minor injury.

He began to move cautiously, breathing heavily and looking very weak. His opponents were fooled, as they always were, not very cautious, not very smart, and they had the capital to do so.

Sevatar raised his hand and used the rotating single-molecule saw blade of the chain saw to block an incoming sharp claw. The bones that made up the thing began to shatter, and the fragments flew away, but its owner began to laugh loudly, and the sounds overlapped like two people talking.

"We know you, Yago Severtarion," he said, low and malicious. "We want to taste your flesh and see if it's different from your brothers and we'll eat your face, just like we eat everyone else's."

"So you're a face-eater?" Sevatar asked, swallowing a mouthful of blood. "So you are a bug. No wonder you are so ugly. Hey, but I want to ask something, why do you call yourself us? Even Ogryn wouldn't call himself that."

The Word Bearers, who were no different from demons, laughed and rushed towards him. Sevatar sighed and instinctively turned his head to avoid the attack. At the same time, he began to calculate the probability of killing this opponent without using his psychic powers. How big.

He has used psychic powers too many times today, and every time, he can feel some kind of change.

It's like undergoing an operation without the use of anesthesia. You can clearly feel that your flesh and blood is being replaced by something more heterogeneous, but it does not produce a rejection reaction with you. In fact, your body loves it.

This was the weirdest thing, and he didn't like this feeling very much.

He backed away while swinging his weapon to block the attack.

The broken bones were still hurting, and the corrosive saliva had turned the breastplate into a piece of metal full of holes. However, he no longer bleeds. It's hard to say whether it was the help of his self-healing ability or something else. Savita didn't bother to think about it.

He took a dozen steps back while his enemy pursued him, waving his claws and spitting out acidic saliva. Savita managed to dodge them all, but unfortunately, this did not mean that he had the upper hand, because his opponent's attacks were getting faster and faster.

Are you done yet? Sevatar thought angrily. Even that monster Sigismund can't be faster than you. Who are you?

"We will take your head back to prove it!" his opponent roared. "Iago Severtarion, your death has come!"

"Shut up, you face-eating insect stupider than Ogryn!" Sevita roared back angrily, a blue light flashed in his eyes, and the grass immediately froze.

Dark frost surged out of the air, instantly freezing the Word Bearer's legs, making him unable to move, and even began to spread upwards. Sevatar immediately rushed towards him, holding the chain halberd high in his hand.

His opponent immediately thought of a way to break the situation. He waved his claws and cut off his own legs to break free. He had walked with the darkness, and he could fully recover from such injuries, but he was a little slower after all.

In other words, Savita is faster than him.

Damn it, Sigismund, now I'm faster than you, what am I.?

A head flew high into the air and was chopped off by the chain halberd in the heavy rain, breaking into two halves. The Word Bearer's headless corpse stood there blankly, and after a moment, it began to boil.

The armor fused with flesh and blood and the ugly exposed bones all turned into flesh at this moment. However, in just a few seconds, the corpse melted completely with a hiss, leaving only some broken bones in place.

Sevatar sat down weakly and began to breathe heavily. This time it was not a disguise, but real fatigue.

This is already the third time he has killed someone with a negative message: No, that's not right. In their own words, these people are ‘blessed sons’. They were not opponents that could be killed in a few hits like ordinary Word Bearers. These people, or things, were dozens of times more difficult to deal with.

What blessing? I think it's more like a curse.

Sevatar spat on the broken bones mixed with blood, and stood up from the ground with trembling legs.

Two hours of guerrilla warfare need not have weakened an Astartes to this point, but he had another battle to fight besides guerrilla warfare. This happens every time you use psychic powers.

Panting, he stepped into the thick fog. He could hear bolter fire, which meant someone besides him was fighting in the forest.

Fifteen minutes later, he found the Sons of Aurelion who were fighting the Word Bearers in a clearing. Night Blade was fighting side by side with them. It was impossible to say which side had fewer people. Anyway, there were more enemies.

The crimson ocean was colliding with them, and the Sons of Aurelion and the Nightblades were nothing more than rocks submerged by the water. Moreover, there are at least four Blessed Sons among the Word Bearers who are killing people. Their movement trajectories are simply unpredictable, and every attack can cause casualties.

Seeing this scene, Savita sighed again. He thrust the chain halberd blade down deeply into the soil. It was hard to tell whether he had thought about the following scene while doing this.

boom! A large army of technical sergeants and night blades suddenly appeared from behind him, cursing him for not caring for his weapons, while using heavy firepower to send all those damn Word Bearers into the sky.

Well, he thought about it. But he also knew it couldn't happen.

During the heavy rain, Sevatar's eyes began to shine. He bent over in pain, and the spiritual light in his eyes was changing rapidly towards a darker color. A few seconds later, with a not very obvious roar, a bolt of lightning pierced the dark clouds, fell from the sky, and landed among the Word Bearers.

There is one more chapter.