40k: Midnight Blade

Chapter 473 194. Interlude: Across Ten Thousand Years (Part 2)

Cassidorius woke up from his sleep with a splitting headache and a strange smell on his tongue.

He stood up unsteadily, his eyes darkening. Of course this was not a normal phenomenon, but he was in no mood to pay attention to it. He just dragged his tired body and sat by the fire.

Van Cleef raised his head from his thoughts, glanced at him, and said nothing more.

The first company commander was always like this. He hardly spoke unless necessary. He seems to believe in the law that silence is golden, or perhaps he simply believes that doing is more important than talking.

Cassidorius sighed and turned back to grab his gun from the rock wall. His whole body was numb and he was dizzy. Even if he was sitting next to the fire, this phenomenon did not get any better.

That's why he chose to pick up the gun.

He knew what this was a sign. In other words, he knew this was a precursor to something to come.

The cold wind outside the cave was howling and tearing at his hearing. Snowflakes fly into it from time to time, but they melt quickly. This place once belonged to a hibernating bear, but now it is just a temporary resting place for two travelers.

After a while, Cassidorius stood up and walked to the front of the cave. Since there was no shelter, the ground was wet and cold, and the melted snowflakes stained his steel boots.

He looked down at his boots and saw that their surface had become very mottled. The journey they experienced had chaotic time, but chaotic time was still time, and it still left traces on this set of Mechanicus' ingenuity.

Cassidorius didn't know how long it could last. The priest named Caul who was interacting with him said that it could run for 8,300 years without maintenance or excessive damage. time.

This statement is very strange. Eight thousand three hundred years is neither a general number like ten thousand years nor a few thousand years, but a specific number.

It's like the priest did an experiment.

An experiment that lasted eight thousand years?

Cassidorius stretched out his hands outside the cave, and after a while, he received a handful of snowflakes. He stuffed them haphazardly into his mouth and started chewing.

The temperature in his mouth failed to melt the snowflakes quickly. In fact, on the contrary, his mouth was the one that was quickly changed.

The temperature disappeared quickly and he became numb. He spit out the snow water and saw a little blood. There's probably a cut somewhere in his mouth, or frostbite.

Cassidorius frowned.

The forest in winter is not a pleasant place to live, and it's still snowing heavily. Even predators that are not ready for hibernation will not wander out in this weather, looking for impossible prey.

However, he heard a soft and detailed sound of stepping on snow outside the cave. He looked into the darkness, trying to see some outline in it.

He is now an experienced old hunter, and he is proficient in the animal habits of various ancient Terra periods. The interesting thing is that this knowledge is usually completely different from what he learned from books.

He stared into the darkness, speechless and silent.

What is trampling on the snow?

The cold wind howled and the snowflakes drifted, turning into sharp knives that could cut the cheeks in the wind, but there were continuous and detailed sounds coming from the darkness all around.

Something is peering.

A hungry predator? Or those evil monsters from Terra's ancient legends?

It's neither, but something else, something more evil than all of them combined.

Cassidorius slowly raised his gun.

In addition to wild beasts, he has also killed many monsters, including Wendigo, man-eating beasts under the moonlight, and alien monsters that only exist underground. If seeing is not believing, he really can't believe that there are so many on Terra. A monster that shouldn't exist.

Cassidorius pointed the gun at the darkness, slowed down his breathing little by little, patiently and meticulously, began to wait, and even began to clear his mind. He is experienced and he knows what to do now.

After a while, the sound in the darkness finally stopped, and what appeared next was a pair of slender, thin, frostbitten hands. It reached out from the darkness and grasped the muzzle of Cassidorius's gun tightly.

"Hello, hello, lost traveler" the thing began to speak in the snow, spitting out waves of wet and smelly whispers. "Can you give me some water?"

Cassidorius let go and let the thing take the gun away. The sound of treading on the snow sounded again, and a strange sound of swallowing and crying came from the darkness.

"How could you do this? I asked you for water, but you gave me a weapon of destruction."

'Knowledge' pulled out a short animal bone knife from his armed belt, and he held it and moved forward slowly.

The sky was dark and dark, not even a single star could be seen. Snowflakes fell on the top of the head, bringing a moist chill, and the cold wind continued to blow. But the thing's voice suddenly sounded from behind him. It was soft, thin, and fragile. Every syllable sounded like glass being trampled to pieces.

"What year is it now, what year?" it began to chatter. "What age, what era is it now? How long can you hold on, lost one?"

"How long can you travel a long distance? Look back, your boots are already stained with blood. Look back, traveler, you are in a maze full of mirrors. What you are about to face and what you will see will be You are killing your own reflection. You think you are doing something great? No, you are slowly killing yourself. When the journey ends, your life will also come to an end."

Cassidorius turned around and inserted the animal bone dagger into the chest of a body. That thing had a pale face. It couldn't be said to be handsome. At most, it could only be said to be human-like.

His eye sockets were sunken deeply, and the eyes sunken inside were covered with bloodshot eyes and dark spots. There were two lines of blood hanging under his nose and flowing across his black lips. His face was covered with swollen wounds, and he was filled with an expression of extreme panic and uneasiness.

This face was familiar to Cassidorius.

He drew the knife and it fell screaming, its eyes a pair of yellow lanterns.

Screams began to echo through the forest, and Cassidorius closed his eyes and staggered to the snow.

——

Probably another seven hundred years passed.

Maybe it's seven hundred years, maybe it's eight hundred years. Time has lost its meaning. Walking repeatedly in the reincarnation of history, so everything is meaningless, everything is nothingness. You can't communicate with others, you can't communicate with others, you can't stop, you can only move forward - never ending, never ending.

Cassidorius looked at the river, silent. There was a scream behind him, and a chain sword was stuck in a certain body, constantly creating broken flesh and blood.

The thing didn't resist, but kept shouting Cassidorius's name, as if they had known each other for a long time. They are friends, family, close lovers, and like-minded partners.

Its screams continued uninterrupted, and so did the roar of the chainsword's motor.

Until it stops screaming.

"Are you still crazy?" Van Cleef walked over slowly and asked. "How long has this been going on?"

Cassidorius remained silent.

"How many times has it been here?" Van Cleef continued to ask. "I haven't counted, Cassidorius, but you should have. You remember these things instinctively when you were crazy. You are a born recorder. Maybe you should have been born in the era of the Great Crusade, I The Legion will welcome someone like you."

He slowly sat down, picked up a handful of water by the river bank, and began to clean the blood on the surface of his power armor. They disperse into the river, attracting a swarm of greedy fish.

Van Cleef allowed these fish to lick away the blood without any reaction. That thing was illusory, and its blood was no different from river water.

He began to wait, but unfortunately, until more than ten minutes later, Cassidorius still did not choose to speak, so Van Cleef lowered his head and looked at the water curtain, sinking into memories little by little.

"The Great Crusade was not a great era. I'm serious, Know-It-All, it was not a great era."

Cassidorius still refused to speak.

His lips quivered and he stared blankly at the water passing by. His face is the embodiment of dullness and idiocy. He has not been awake for a long time.

"All the achievements we have achieved are actually stepped on numerous bones. Each of us is a glorious executioner, a butcher who receives glory and is praised by others. This is really ridiculous. I only learned about it after many years. Be aware of this."

Van Cleef narrowed his eyes as he spoke. His face looked like a ceramic toy that had been broken once before. It was full of cracks, and fine ash hung upside down from the cracks.

Don't know where they are going.

"But both Mankind and the Imperium need our evil deeds," he said slowly. "Yes, we are a necessary evil. Without us, mankind would not unite so quickly - of course, you also know the final result."

"Everything was burned to the ground. All the achievements, hopes and expectations of cleansing sins were turned to ashes in the shattering of Terra."

He shook his head, and a mean sneer suddenly appeared on his face.

"Imperial truth." He suddenly mentioned this term. "You've probably heard of it, right? I don't know if the Mark Master continues to preach it. I guess it's gone."

Cassidorius suddenly closed his eyes.

"In short, the Imperial Truth is a lie that teaches people how to use reason to view everything dialectically, but it is also a fragile protective shield. However, I don't think that things like reason can protect those of you ten thousand years from now. . I don’t believe that light can defeat darkness, I am pessimistic, I think”

He stood up, turned around, walked to a corpse, stared into its yellow eyes, and uttered the last words.

".Actually, in the end, it's just darkness swallowing up darkness."

Two dim red lights lit up in his eyes. He pulled the chainsword from its body and dismembered it with a swing of the sword. The flesh and blood twisted on the grass, covered in angry flames, and turned into ashes bit by bit.

One thing is interesting - Van Cleef never continues to remain silent when Cassidorius is silent.

——

"Faith is the first thing to come, and gods are just the by-products of faith. Of course, there are also nonsense like salvation, blessing, and eternal life after death." Cassidorius spread his hands and said to the blind prophet. "I tell you, Prophet, there is only one God."

The blind prophet shook his head, not angry at his disrespect: "How do you know? Did a god come down from the sky to tell you this?"

"That's not true. That god said there is no god in the world." Cassidorius said. "And He told me not to believe in Him."

"Which god?" the blind prophet asked in surprise. “This is too”

"None of these, old prophet." Cassidorius shook his head. "This god was once a man, but now he has ascended to the temple of the gods for all eternity and is tormented forever. Are you breathing, old prophet?"

"certainly."

"Then, let's calculate it according to the time it takes you to take a breath. This is called one second. Do you understand?"

Cassidorius patted him on the shoulder, pulled the old prophet to sit down, and talked on the floor. Van Cleef swings his sword behind them, fighting a monster.

"Put sixty seconds together and that's a minute. Put sixty minutes together and that's an hour. Twenty-four hours is a day, a full day. And he was going through it. Eternal torture, do you know what eternity is?”

"I don't know." the blind man replied sincerely. "Who dares to speak of eternity?"

"Stretch one second to five hundred days, five hundred years, five million years, five million years plus another five hundred five million years. This is an eternal moment. Take this moment. Extended to an extreme that you can’t imagine, then one minute of eternity has passed. He didn’t have to, but He was willing to endure this pain for us.”

"We?" the prophet asked doubtfully.

"We," Cassidorius repeated. "Humanity."

He changed his position, touched his knees to the ground, and knelt before the old prophet. He held up the withered hands with both hands, feeling its roughness. Then he lowered his head and began to whisper in a voice as thin as a mosquito's fly.

"what should we do?"

He calmed down, and after a short moment, something slowly entered his mind. The power was very restrained and cautious, and it flashed through his mind.

The old man suddenly held his hand tightly.

"What should we do, prophet?" Cassidorius raised his head and looked into the golden eyes. "We can't find the way, we're lost, how long do we have to go until we reach the end?"

The old man slowly shook his head and reached out to pull up a gem hanging on his chest. It lay quietly in the old man's hand, without shining or trembling. Cassidorius stared at it as if he were looking into a mirror.

In the mirror he saw another messenger, also traveling a long distance, equally bruised and suffering.

"As you said, there is no god in this world, Cassidorius." The old man said. "Faith can't help you, gods can't help you, nothing can help you. There is only one power in the world that can allow you to cross this dark sky."

He let go and let the gem return to his chest.