Warhammer 40k: Shattered Steel Soul

The fight with Tuchucha was filled with destruction of perception, disordered time, and tragic dispersion.

In a chaotic gap of transformation and turmoil, the black robe that Perturabo was holding tightly in his hands suddenly broke. The craftsman wrestling with the subspace engine fell into the torrent across space in an instant, and he and he fell into the milky white mist. The diffuse poles of the web.

His iron ring body was instantly cut with thousands of cracks that penetrated the green light of the Star God fragments, and his consciousness fell into darkness in the same microsecond that he was separated from the protection of Morse's curse.

And his awakening was a long process.

At first, the gravity sensing device in his body began to remind him that he had been captured by a stable gravity field, while the anthropomorphic senses such as vision and hearing were still dormant. He fell into a high-density liquid entity and climbed to the shore based on his analysis of the direction of the water flow and his limited but sufficient perception.

When Perturabo was taken away by an unknown armed force armed with broadblades and light armor with many spikes, he confirmed that his mechanical body was in the triple drift of the Warp, the Webway and reality. Suffered considerable damage.

His olfactory system returned to functioning before the rest of his senses.

Known and unknown chemicals spread from the surface of his still moist body with a strong hallucinogenic effect, and combined with the smell of putrid blood, they created a strong irritation that was even enough to burn out the nervous system of a more vulnerable person. This made Perturabo frown—it was at this time that he discovered that part of the bionic skin on his face had begun to fall off.

After being taken to the operating table, his hearing gradually recovered. Low and hoarse murmurs surrounded him in a low voice with an unfamiliar yet half-familiar tone. After several milliseconds of analysis, this language system finally corresponded to a type of text that Morse once mentioned.

Eldar language. A unique and complex language, where different letters have different meanings in different situations, and where body parts and expressions can be written.

Morse mentioned that he could speak this ancient alien language, and Perturabo began to regret that he should have learned it earlier.

But where is Morse now?

When his visual perception bionic nerve finally completed self-repair, he looked at the pale and thin pointed-eared being. Its body had been complicatedly modified. The dark blue medicine was pierced into the body along the direction of the bones. The spine was incorrectly elongated and started from the tail. It rises and finally wraps around the neck, and is set on the shoulders together with many luxurious and different jewelry.

The Eldar commanded the combination of flesh and blood and alternative machinery to inject different medicines into his restrained body, and one of his fingers that had already been about to fall off during the wrong transmission was removed.

The white eyes turned blue and stared at him intently, trying to grab more painful essence from this rare giant as a condiment to assist mental intoxication and sublimation.

What must be said is that in the reflection of those strange eyes, Perturabo saw that his frowning eyebrows had relaxed, and the remaining bionic skin on his face pulled out a half-hearted smile.

After all, he could even feel how the medicines were guided by gravity along the gaps between the metal structures in his body, falling to the bottom of his body, and then gradually dripping onto the floor along the several cracks that had been cut during the chaotic transmission. superior.

There is no pain at all in this iron body made of iron.

He began to think about escape, missing his powerful Primarch body. He tried contacting his subject, but of course, losing the dialogue system that was actually powered by Morse, the attempt didn't work.

Perturabo began to learn the grammar of this ancient race from the chaotic language of the Eldar in front of him, and judged and identified the achievements of science and technology here in the operation of flesh and blood machinery.

This was a slow and difficult process, a new knowledge that was completely outside of Perturabo's innate knowledge base.

He was learning about this strange alien world like an ignorant mortal. In this process of facing the unknown, Perturabo's strange peace made him suddenly feel grateful for Morse's teachings back then.

The opportunity to escape came sooner than he expected. After a needle penetrated the gap between the steel sternum and completed the puncture, the silent fragment of the Star God was finally touched enough. An explosive force instantly dismantled reality into a quantum network of virtual clouds, and then It is a tampering with the entanglement laws of tiny particles, and a large-scale explosion of energy in this process.

After a non-existent time gap passed, he rolled off the operating table and witnessed that a large amount of material in the Eldar noble's mansion was destroyed by the burst of energy from the C'tan fragments.

He tried to figure out the local language system from the books he could find and made plans for future actions.

The remaining records of vicious and horrific skills here did not touch his soul. In his past conquests, the technologies inherited from the ancient dark technological era always had techniques similar to the murderous techniques regarded as treasures here.

What shocked him were the many prophecies about the doomsday preserved locally, and the hints about the fall of the entire territory in the gorgeous writings. In these records, the birth of an evil god becomes traceable.

Perturabo read what he could until he was approached by a servant clad in various leathers, his bones so modified that they were missing and the skin hung loosely around them. He held something valuable in his arms, and his cautious actions contained a disgusting humility and surrender to the strong and the pain.

He reconfirmed his location from the mouth of his servant: After the birth of the hungry her, Gemo, an important port of the Ancient Spirit Empire, is now plunged into large-scale ownerless chaos. Conflict and fire are everywhere. Careers take the opportunity to seize the opportunity in the decadent city. Fight for a cold place in society, and this place is a small subsidiary area outside Kamau.

In addition, this is the mansion of the Wyatt family. The owner of the house who is dead and no one seems to be resurrected has interacted with a small organization called the Cult of the Awakened among the many existing churches in Commorragh. Good to avoid getting involved in large family-church conflicts.

"Bring it here."

Perturabo got the church treasure he kept from his servant and found that it was a unique handicraft, similar to a precision weapon made by a blacksmith himself. It fired the built-in chip with a simple mechanical structure. Compared with actual combat equipment, The moon shape and long knife logo engraved on the shape prove that it is indeed a work of art.

"This is..." Perturabo hoped he was not mistaken about the beliefs of these Eldar.

He found that there seemed to be two different belief systems among the Eldar here: one important school was the worship of the Dark Muse, which was based on the many forerunners who had gone too far in pleasure and indulgence, imitating their evil deeds and cruelty; and the more ancient one was The worship of the Eldar gods was largely scorned when the Thirsting Ones were born - because the once pantheon was too weak to protect a race.

"Shaymesh? Veles? Innis? Who does your church believe in?" Perturabo asked.

"No," the servant replied uneasily, "they are not the same."

"Explain this inscription." Perturabo asked the servant to come to him, threw the work to him, and continued to peel off the irregular skin.

He would rather remove all the bionic skin used to maintain appearance in human society, rather than hanging around with a bunch of troublesome obstacles.

"The moon of Vaal will give birth to dragons." The servant said, glancing at Perturabo's metal body from time to time, with a rising enthusiasm shining in his eyes that were used to absolute obedience. His perception of Perturabo seemed to be changing.

Perturabo was silent for a moment. Val, this term only appeared once in a wild history book he found, and was described as "the blacksmith who brings the secret of spiritual bones."

His mind came to the conclusion in high-speed derivation that the Church of the Awakened still rarely believed in an ancient Eldar craftsman god, and his own steel body that now contained an extraordinary energy source seemed to be similar...

He didn't want to think about it any longer.

But if he has to live in this dark and depraved strange city in his current weak and penniless state until he finds the Empire, or Morse finds him, then maybe he will have to use some of the alien power.

"My lord," the servant called to him, and with each word that came out of his mouth Perturabo learned more about the Eldar language, "I have one more message to report."

"Say." Perturabo nodded.

The servant swallowed a sip of saliva, and his expression added a different kind of excitement and light, "There is talk in the church that some Haemonculi recently seem to be collaborating with a strange... small organization called the Cabal. It is said that a man named The monster called the Bloody Marquis is flying among the spires just for this reason.”

"Okay." Perturabo calmly memorized these brand-new terms in his mind. "This matter will be discussed later. First, I want to see the church you are talking about."

——

Morse considered a long walk in the Webway to be a foolish experience, especially when the walker had to drag a struggling warp engine with all his strength, stumbling through a time-inverted space. , try your best not to be dragged away by this inexplicable thing.

I don’t know whether it should be called lucky. After Perturabo separated from him, Tuchucha, who was no longer close to the fragment of the Star God, gradually returned to calmness, and finally fell into its original appearance, that is, a silent star. A huge perfect sphere floating quietly in the subspace.

Morse had found no way to shrink the ancient artifact to make it easier to carry, and even though the object gave him a rare surge of rage, he still didn't want to destroy its internal structure.

He resorted to a very crude method of dragging Tuchucha along the webway.

The roads here are unexplored, or unexplored by humans; some areas are narrow enough to allow only one person to travel, while others are large enough for an entire fleet to march in, and the terrain is so complex and difficult to distinguish that it is almost indescribable. Had he lost his bearings here, or had the Webway changed its structure the moment he turned around.

Chasing the trace of Perturabo who was unexpectedly separated, he could still sense the unexpected separation. He groped his way through the cobweb-like tunnels as quickly as possible - he could feel the passage of time. It was not normal, but under the premise of losing control Next, Morse couldn't tell how much of the elapsed time he had missed.

His progress ends with an encounter with a colorful group of weird aliens.

These Eldar are dressed in holographic suits with rainbow-like colors, bright jewelry, colorful sequins, clear-striped spotted patterns, and their graceful and graceful leaps, which combine to create an extremely dazzling visual effect.

The reason why he stopped was that these groups of Eldar were jumping off their brightly colored ships one by one and walking straight towards him, as if they had been waiting here for a long time.

The first Eldar to greet him wore a bone-white mask engraved with laughter lines and a high ponytail mixed with ribbons. Behind him, a slender Eldar wearing a sky blue hood, his face obscured by a reflective black mirror, followed lightly.

"In the past, our sect chanted silent words, weaved stars, spun threads and embroidered nylon, and ancient mysteries were revealed. You were destined to be an outsider..."

"Are you some kind of theater actor, Eldar? You can't speak when you get off the stage? I don't want to waste my time watching a poor performance." Morse interrupted the other party in the gap between words. He used the low Gothic language of the empire, knowing that the other party would understand it.

In a sense, he could feel the Eldar's observations hidden behind the masks, and the sentences that were deliberately programmed to be difficult to interpret were also part of the observations.

"Theatrical actor?" The leader of the Eldar tasted this word and stopped in place. He tilted his head, seeming to be quite interested in this new title. "This may be a road for the future. On the long road leading to the end, our dance will not stop."

He suddenly bent down and stretched out his hands slightly. His movements were as precise as a well-trained doctor, but as smooth and graceful as the fluttering wings of a butterfly or the swirling leaves. Behind the mask, a pair of heavily made-up eyes are quiet and straightforward.

"Please come with us, blank people of nothingness, we are about to leave the road and go to the dark city, to perform our new repertoire for our blood relatives, to play the echoes of the fall and the prelude of the catastrophe in the upper world. Deep in silence.”

"Do I know you, Eldar?" Morse asked.

"The demigod vessel you are looking for is in Gemo, the Void One." The Eldar leader said rhythmically, "And, yes. Follow the guidance of the Laughing God who escaped the fall. We have known each other for a long time."

Morse stood there, and for a moment, he threw out a phrase: "A message from Nuceria."

The leader smiled cheerfully and began to walk around him. His companions also followed his leader, some shook hands in pairs, danced briskly, and some were alone, with heavy but quick steps, walking around behind Morse; different actions combined with bold colors of clothing, naturally The ground forms a double-layered round dance.

When they stood still again, the strange airship with silver sails, blue lines and poker marks had opened its hatch in front of Morse.

"Where is this thing?" Morse nodded to Tuqiucha.

"You can tie it to the stern of the ship, Void. You are our honored guest." The leader playfully pointed to the tail of the airship, and led his companions to jump all the way back to the ship.