Warhammer 40k: Shattered Steel Soul

Chapter 240 Conrad Coates

Conrad Curze's question caused Perturabo to fall into an unanswerable silence.

He didn't really know how a Primarch ended up in an Eldar port city deep in the Webway, but it would be an irresponsible lie to say that he knew nothing about it.

The steel puppet believed that he should tell the truth about what he knew in his memory, and that a brother who might have been unintentionally harmed by him had the right to know everything.

“In my memory,” he said, running his mechanical sound-producing structure in the universal Gothic language of mankind, “my mentor, Morse, and I were trying to capture a powerful non-human being a few days ago. Reality creation. This caused the wrong warp travel, and I vaguely remember..."

"You hit my nursery." Cozz said softly, the corners of his mouth raised slightly strangely, and that strange frustration was quickly being replaced by another, softer and subtle emotion. "I remember that day, the whirlpools and ripples shook violently outside my metal cabin, and the world receded from my unopened eyes..."

He suddenly stopped, cut off the remaining gorgeous description, and turned the topic back to a more objective narrative. This gives him a contrasting docility.

"You bumped into me and sent me down to the bottom of Gomor, the psychedelic river of the Spiral Labyrinth, until someone fished me out of the mire."

"I think I should tell you..."

"No!" Curze shouted sharply, and then his tone dropped back to a low whisper. "I don't want to hear any apology, Perturabo. I want to thank you, my blood relative... If it weren't for the coincidence you brought me, how could I have enjoyed this delicious feast at Gomo?"

He laughed infatuatedly, the twitching of his cheekbone muscles showing a kind of pain, while the emotion brewing in his dark eyes was intoxicated and alienated.

"If you really think so, brother." Perturabo looked at him deeply, hoping that his mechanical side could fully express his feelings.

"You have a soul that weeps for blood relatives in winter," Morse said, trying out the Eldar language, paired with some deliberately selected Eldar cultural idioms.

"Don't use that tone," Curze snorted, "the tone of those cowards who fled according to the prophecy, those fools who dare not face their fate."

He then added an explanation: "In case you are not clear. Before the Great Fall, several Eldar groups fled in advance to the ark world they created according to their own craftsmanship in accordance with the prophecies of destruction."

"Are the Eldar left behind more worthy of praise?" Perturabo asked disapprovingly. "Stay and wallow in murder and orgy?"

"I do prefer them, they are more numerous and therefore more likely to provide a sufficient number of deaths..." mused Konrad Curze, "weep bitterly for the ruthless extermination of civilization in its prime, Then I started thinking about what kind of survivors the disaster would breed that should not have survived..."

Without any triggering conditions, he suddenly began to bow and laugh. The two shoulder blades protruding from the back of his thin back pushed up the thin, close-fitting leather jacket. Afterwards, Cozz stood up again, with a hint of fatigue in his expression.

He shook his head.

"Let's go, now that you can see that this is the front hall that is isolated from my residence. I will take you to see... my nursery pod. I found it."

Perturabo glanced at Morse, and the craftsman crossed his arms over his chest and nodded to him.

"Let's go." The steel doll said briefly.

They followed Conrad Coates, opened hidden doors one after another, and shuttled through complicated passages. They felt that this place was more like a simple shelter than a residence.

There are a large number of pipes and wires scattered along the corridor, extending to hidden compartments behind the soundproof walls. Perturabo decided to pretend for the time being that he could not hear the faint wail coming from behind the wall.

Konrad Curze led them carefully through the too-narrow corridors. As a Primarch who had some knowledge of architecture, Perturabo could easily tell that the stone walls of these corridors had been re-carved in recent years. Done.

He couldn't help but guess what the real wall behind the stone wall was.

"I... hope you get used to this messy place." There was an indelible sarcasm in Kurtz's words. "Better than those shadow realms where Mandela lived, isn't it?"

They entered an open courtyard deep in the darkness. From here, they could even glimpse a dark sky high in the sky. The faint twilight brought by the black sun slightly illuminated this deep darkness. The chaotic outline of a half-collapsed, unrepaired mansion appeared before them.

No matter how luxuriously decorated and respectable the building once was, it has become synonymous with being stained and damaged, with the base of the carved stone statues torn apart, used to fake pure whiteness and degenerated into the ancient and horrific bloody symbol of dismemberment.

In the eyes of the Eldar themselves, they are recorded as beautiful and light, advanced creatures with keen senses and long lifespans. From art to technology, from aesthetics to morality, and even the essential perception of the cruel nature of nature, when compared with other races, They are just like adults facing children, they are not on the same level.

When this understanding gradually deepens, it also means that a long decline has begun.

Conrad Coates’s house is the condensation and reflection of this historical character. The Eldar fell into the agony of ruin and endless quarrels, while the wheel of destiny in the universe rolled past them.

His nursery cabin was surprisingly well preserved, with the conspicuous Roman numeral "eight" engraved on the front of the cabin door. Apart from the collision during the drift, there was almost no meltdown or deformation.

The thick and unfathomable mud at the bottom of the Comor River accepted the baby's cradle and took him into the depths of a sinful city.

"Primarch Eight," murmured Perturabo, "I am pleased to make your acquaintance."

"Me too, my brother." Conrad said softly, drawing his nails across the numbers on the nursery cabin, cutting a mark across the center of "eight", as if he wanted to cut the number in half. "Nice to meet you, Primarch Four."

"Where do you know all this?" the steel doll asked seriously.

"Which 'everything'?" Conrad looked at Perturabo curiously.

"My name. My serial number. The Human Empire. How much do you know?"

"Oh... maybe I know nothing, maybe I know everything - except you, Morse."

Conrad changed the subject and squatted down in front of Morse, approaching him as coldly as a large carrion-eating animal, staring at the craftsman with too dark eyes.

"I haven't heard of you, the temporary one-man...human."

"What a pity I have heard of you. Gifted Visionary," Mors said, stepping back calmly, refusing to get too close to an unfamiliar Primarch.

"Vision? Are you also a visionary?" Conrad Coates stood up with an indifferent expression. "You don't know my fate, so you dare to provoke me?"

"Are you telling me that you were giggling at the false emperor, stabbed to death by a mortal man twice, with bones scattered all over the galaxy, and the finger bones were taken away by a genetic descendant and used to transform into a pipe for inhaling hallucinogenic products?"

"I……"

"Stop, you two!" Perturabo roared. The excessive shock and confusion rarely allowed the usually steady Lord of Steel to have an illusion about whether he was really in the real universe.

His mechanical eyes and simulated human eyes showed equal confusion: "What kind of false emperor? Why was he stabbed to death by a mortal?"

"I was not killed by a mortal—" Conrad choked back the second half of his sentence. He suddenly lost the motivation to explain why he was willing to be killed by a mortal assassin.

"Yes," he leaned dejectedly on his nursery cabin with a casual attitude, "I saw the end of me being killed by mortals from the beginning, until I discovered that the first living creature I saw when I opened my eyes had multiple modifications. arms, half holding a short knife, the other half holding an injection..."

Blood Marquis Conrad lowered his eyes, leaving time to the heart that was beating against his chest in his torso.

After a moment, he gathered his energy, applauded himself twice, picked up the tarpaulin covering the nursery cabin, turned around, and flicked the tarpaulin lightly like the creator of magic and miracles, letting the snow-white cloth cover the huge cabin again. metal casing appliances.

"Come on, Imperials. Please come and drink two glasses of Comor's wine." Conrad Curze bowed exaggeratedly, as if he was about to fold his body in half.

——

"We all have a lot of questions we want to ask each other," Conrad said, shaking the bottle of wine casually in his hand.

He did not look for redundant ceremonial items such as wine glasses. He simply took out three bottles of purple-red, low-alcohol red wine from the storage cabinet, threw them to Perturabo and Morse, and watched with a low smile as the mechanical doll drank. The unfulfilled wine was placed on the ground, and there was a hidden helplessness in his movements.

"Outdated prophecies continue to bring us a blinding fog that obscures the future." Morse knocked on the bottle mouth, and the cork disappeared into thin air.

Elsewhere, Conrad Coates broke the slender neck of the glass with his knuckles and drank from the shards of his bottle of red wine.

"Sometimes prophecy can bring us salvation, or disaster, there is a time..."

Curze muttered trivial words like a whisper.

"But we will eventually face the darkness of the end. These Eldar, they have given the answer time and time again. They are torn between resisting the prophecies and obeying their fate, all of which push this once glorious race towards its end. The end of being immersed in the ocean.”

He chewed on the shards of glass, letting the inorganic shards crunch in his sharp teeth.

"But I love prophecies, Imperial. I love stories that are not mine."

"Understandable," Morse replied, sniffing the scent in the bottle. "Even though I don't like it."

Coze shook his head regretfully: "It's a pity, Stranger."

"Perhaps what you see is the illusion of error, Primarch," said Morse.

"Ah, do you know Nostramo?"

"Never went there," the craftsman said, explaining to the mechanical figure sitting next to him: "Before we crashed into Gomorr, your brother was floating above the orbit of Nostramo."

"Indeed." Conrad took a sip of red wine and took out a white handkerchief from his leather coat pocket to wipe it away before the wine spilled over his thin lips.

"If you really don't want to hear the relevant discussion, I won't insist on apologizing unnecessarily." Perturabo finally found the opportunity to speak.

He had just gotten the answer, from a conversation between Morse and Konrad Curze, that the Eighth Primarch was a strange seer.

In this way, Konrad Coates has the answer to his understanding of the human empire.

Although he still wants to know who the "false emperor" refers to.

Curze shrugged indifferently, and the steel doll continued: "My brother, during my more than ten years of expedition, I have brought back four of our blood relatives to the human empire..."

"You want to know my opinion." Curze suddenly interrupted him almost rudely. Perturabo's invitation to return to the Empire aroused a strong hostility in him without any warning.

"You want to ask me when I will go to your empire, take over a legion, and then wait for the legion to be corrupted by criminals and gangsters, become a laughing stock in the struggle for power, and split into several claws in absurd jokes."

Perturabo looked at him and changed his words: "You are filled with hatred for the world."

"No, I'm not blind." Conrad roared angrily, his dark eyes glaring coldly. The wine bottle was crushed in his hand, and the glass fragments and remaining wine fell to the ground, forming a map-like pattern. .

Then, he took a deep breath, pressed his long-nailed fingers to his forehead, remained silent for one to two seconds, and then released his hand: "I am not blind." He repeated.

"I see images of the world reflected in my eyes. I see many different events," he whispered, aggressively taking control of the conversation. "I can see clearly how the fire of sin burns in all living things. On the wings of existence, I was able to make my choice.”

"I know what I am doing, Imperial. Don't persuade me to return to the human kingdom so easily. I am not blind and cannot see the path under my feet..."

"Respect," Morse said. "That's what you want."

Curze closed his eyes, his silky hair hanging down on both sides of his haggard face, and his head swaying gently from side to side, as if secretly matching the rhythm of a music that only sounded in the ears of this Primarch.

"I saw a world when I was in the incubation chamber. An eternal night star filled with blood and sin, a corrupt skin covered with expensive metal. I accepted my fate, my pain, and knew It will all end when I fall in Tagusa..."

He chanted hoarsely, resting his head on his right shoulder, half lying and half curled up on the seat. Life among the Eldar gave his language additional tunes and rhythms.

"When I opened my eyes, I saw a city, equally filled with blood and sin, with corruption growing on gold, silver and jewels, and corruption growing on past glories. I floated up from the river, and the corrosive water invaded me Both ears..."

"The one who found me was a Haemonculus, Hexakeris."

He twitched painfully, his head falling on his shoulder, his eyes suddenly opened, and his rapid breathing gradually returned to calm.

Marquis Xue sat up straight again in his seat, his expression particularly cold and self-controlled. He became no longer like a crazy executioner who would rush into the banquet crowd and kill, but a criminal leader and a cruel king.

"It took me twenty years to get to where I am today. I found relief from the pain caused by the prophecy, gained my name, established my prestige, found my allies, and agreed to rule together with his conspiracy in the future. The City of Darkness.”

"You don't want to give up your existing achievements, Konrad. You want to unify the place where you... grew up, and then think about the empire later. Is this what you want to express?"

Perturabo swallowed the word "homeworld," unsure if it was appropriate to refer to Go'mor as Konrad Curze's homeworld.

He gets the first answer to his question from Curze's words, and at the same time, he also gains an unsettling possibility.

"And," he said, "are you sure you've been using it for twenty years?"

"If I didn't make a mistake in learning the human calendar, yes." The Blood Marquis responded calmly, "Is it because my speed is too slow that it disappoints you, my blood relative?"

Perturabo took a deep breath, and ritually put the air from the bottom of Gomo, which was still smelly no matter how clean it was, into his mechanical chest that did not need oxygen, and reluctantly suppressed his concern for time. The passing shock.

Twenty years. he thinks. Perhaps he should be grateful that the person who followed Morse into the Perditus system was only a body based on machine structure, rather than the complete Perturabo himself.

He simply could not imagine the tragic consequences if the Iron Warriors were separated from their primarch for twenty years.

+Twenty years indeed. + Morse’s message added a rare sigh, + I simply didn’t dare ask the Emperor if he thought I had run away again. +

+What about the other me? +Perturabo suddenly wanted to ask.

+I don't know. +Morse replied stiffly.

"You are having a conversation with each other," Xue Hou tapped the armrest of his seat with his fingertips lightly, "I can see the time gap between your minds."

"Indeed." Perturabo admitted this, and there was no need to hide it. "I was surprised by the time span you mentioned. In my subjective consciousness, Morse and I only spent a few hours drifting through space. You rejected me once, and I want to ask again, Do you need me to apologize for your experience?"

"Do I need to thank you for the gift you gave me, blood relative?" The Blood Marquis changed two words, determined to expose this matter.

He said forcefully: "I have no intention of mentioning my past. This is not out of avoidance, but out of emphasis on the real moment. We still have many cooperation matters that need to be discussed urgently, and there is no time to waste time on my self-pity." I want you to see me as a rational person, not a lowly and crazy pathetic lunatic, understand?”

"Of course, Marquis." Perturabo noticed Conrad's choice of words, cooperation.

The brother's alienation from Imperial determination prevented him from taking any pleasure.

Perturabo changed his attitude silently.

He shouldn't have expected to easily bring all the new primarchs back to the empire with just a few words, but the success in the past still allowed him to subconsciously retain such expectations.

The Blood Marquis nodded calmly. When his face is neither angry nor smiling, it especially highlights the nobility of the Primarch.

"During the banquet the night before, with your wisdom, you should be able to see the trajectory of Asdubal and me. We borrowed the existence of the theater troupe to give a reasonable reason for the death of everyone in the banquet hall."

"If there is no such coincidence that day, I will only be able to assassinate a few people I particularly dislike. Maybe I will classify them according to the eye color of the Eldar in the hall."

He smiled deliberately to explain that his classification criteria were just a joke in the conversation.

"For this, I would like to express my gratitude to you in the name of Konrad Curze the Haemonculus, and on behalf of Asdubal Viktor, the leader of the Black Heart Cabal; at the same time, considering that I intend to bring Gomor into my order. , I hope to reach some possible collaborations with you.”

"What I can provide you with include some of the current Haemon's technologies, although humans may not need them, and some of the military and resources that will be available to you after you control Gemo in the future."

"So, what kind of support can you provide?"

"I will not waste the blood of the Imperial Expeditionary Force here, so it is just me, Morse himself, and our abilities." Perturabo replied, hiding the C'tan shard and the Tuchucha engine. . "As a Primarch, I believe you are aware of my potential; and my strengths lie in technology and command."

"If you have anything to ask me, I will tell you whether I can do it based on the situation." Morse said casually, "Also, if you have anything to ask the troupe, I can forward the information to you. Do you think we can cooperate with you enough? Blood Actor?"

Having said this, Morse put down a drop of the untouched wine bottle and leaned forward: "Oh, before that, I have one more request."

"You hope that I will return to the Empire, obey the Emperor's call, and lead the Legion to conquer the galaxy?"

"I'm not asking about this, Konrad Curze. What I want to ask is, as a race that relies on the Webway to travel, how much knowledge do the Eldar have about the Webway? Repair it? Build it? Know the way?"

The craftsman's question made the Xuehou's left eye blink in confusion. "A good question," he said. "An unexpected difficulty."

His eyes slid to the side, and after a brief thought, he gave an answer.

"Gemmor is attached to the webway, creating enclaves, connecting paths, and growing naturally. We have navigation with several areas, and ships come and go through the doors. As far as I am concerned, there are indeed some in my commonly used vehicles. Some of the maze routes around the Dark City, but I don’t have many more maps.”

"In addition, after the Great Fall," the mention of this word made him smile, "many of the original ancient passages have been broken in the storm. I am afraid that most of the old maps are also outdated. Can this answer make Are you satisfied, Morse?”

"Not bad." Morse said, "What about you?"

The Blood Marquis stood up lightly, his pale clothes wrapped around his pale and thin body, like a ghost from the midnight of death.

"When I rebuilt the mansion, I never took visitors into consideration, Imperials." He said, glancing at Perturabo's steel body, and his solemn face turned into a cold smile, "If you don't mind, , just use one of the unlocked rooms. I don’t think you need a bed or pillow.”

——

"Morse, you can contact—"

"Don't be impatient, big robot. I'm searching all over the galaxy to find where you are now. Do you think this is an easy task?" Morse lay half in the seat, his will touching the sea of ​​souls. shadow.

When he played the role of the hungry Him for the troupe, of course he didn't mind blowing up Gemo completely, so he boldly directly imitated the inherent impression given to him by an extremely small amount of Paradise in order to achieve a better performance effect.

But now, in order to avoid contacting Perturabo and accidentally summoning a bunch of various demons next to the person he was looking for, Morse could only slowly explore the depths of the warp bit by bit.

"There should be an occult connection between me and my other self..."

"Yes, so this one of you should not exist." Morse opened his eyes and turned to look at the steel doll wandering indoors. "Without the fragments of the Star God, a body that is disconnected from the main body should not move. I think you should thank Zahurash for his contribution."

"I might as well praise the Emperor, Morse." Perturabo stopped, and the hum of mechanical movement finally stopped temporarily.

"Looking at you like this, you might as well praise Om Messiah."

"Stop joking!"

"Okay." Morse actually stopped joking, which made Perturabo a little surprised.

The craftsman stood up, the seat disappeared behind him, and the only furnishings in the room were the chandelier in the air and an extra-long sofa. This was the empty room where they found the most furniture, while the other rooms were, almost literally, empty.

It is not difficult to imagine how Konrad Curze was driven by the pursuit of a high degree of cleanliness when he took over the Haemonculi lair, throwing all the original furniture one by one into the river or broken space outside.

Morse walked to the window and looked at the other spiers outside twisting on both sides of the road, the cracked railings falling from one of the tower's balconies into the sparkling black water, a demon with coal-black skin and long body A creature filled with sickly green taboo runes flashed past.

"I know you are worried about the state of the Empire, Perturabo. You don't know how the Imperial Crusade is going, what's going on with the Iron Warriors, you worry about the relationship between your brothers, and how far our Emperor's secret plans are progressing. But I think , you are not really absent from all this.”

"Give yourself more trust, Perturabo. Even without the additional multiple bodies, you can still do everything a Primarch needs to do." Morse said. "Whether it's you or this one."

"At least Alpharius went back and reported our whereabouts." Perturabo took a breath, wind flowing from between his metal ribs.

"So don't worry, droid." Morse happily used the new nickname he had just chosen for Perturabo. "We are just working for the Emperor, escorting the Tuchucha engine back to Terra. It's just that. The work took a little too long, and there were strange side branches growing up.”

"Emperor," the word brought back an unanswered question from Perturabo. Conrad Coates mentioned too many things that were difficult to decipher, but one term particularly attracted his attention, "I remember Conrad mentioned...'false emperor'? Who was he referring to?"

Morse leaned against the window frame and laughed. "Who else, Perturabo?"

"Why did he call the Emperor that?" Perturabo frowned in displeasure, and then he discovered that only half of the face of his machine body had eyebrows, so he interlaced the fingers of his two hands instead.

"I didn't realize when you started to respect the Emperor of Mankind so much." Morse turned back. "Remember, Konrad Curze was a seer with a bad eye. Apparently, in the world he foresaw, someone called the Emperor that way, and our Eighth Primarch thought it sounded too easy to pronounce. Or for some other miscellaneous reason, he started shouting.

"Conrad Curze." Perturabo said his name. "He is a……"

He searched for appropriate descriptions from his vocabulary, and finally gave a simple shake of his head, using his movements to cover more emotions.

Morse continued Perturabo's words: "A Primarch indescribably unique, a dramatic lunatic with eccentric tendencies and high self-esteem, a ghost haunted by pain, and a man who knew all about himself. The Midnight King of Actions and Purposes, take these words with you because..."

"...That's exactly what you were told." Konrad Curze murmured as he watched Mandela, who had sent him a message, disappear into the depths of darkness along with the emerald green runes all over his body, and threw out the dagger in his hand.

The tip of the knife was embedded in the middle of a painting that had been torn down to only half of the canvas hanging on the wall. The metal blade trembled slightly, and after a few seconds, it gradually became still along with Conrad's laughter.