Warhammer 40k: Shattered Steel Soul

Morse sat on the top of a pile of earth, half-burnt wood and linen, rubbing his thumb casually on the body of a gold pen, his eyes lingering on the mist in the distance.

Through the dense fog of Barbarus, the cliffs of the mountain range where the sorcery overlords are entrenched are like a vertical door to the sky, dividing a dark shadow.

A little closer, an airdrop capsule crashed into the soil. The drop pod's armor plates, steel bars, and rivets had been severely twisted by the previous impact, turning into a pile of mixed metal debris. In a way, it's like a piece of fruit pie falling on the floor and smashing.

At the bottom of this pile of scrap metal were some alien creatures that had the misfortune to be crushed into mincemeat. In fact, there were still pools of blackened demon blood, the demons themselves having been banished by the Emperor.

Not to mention their species classification, and their crimes of attacking human villages before the Emperor's arrival; for their sacrilegious attempt to attack the sacred drop pod carrying the Emperor of Mankind, these things deserved to die in the Golden Flame. middle.

Morse changed the leg on top and tapped the gold pen with his fingernail to make the black ink in the ink tube flow more smoothly.

Then, he continued to write: "... Therefore, after arriving in Barbarus, the first thing your father did was to use his glorious golden flame to burn or drive away these aliens and demons one by one. Then, he Proving once again how good he is at timing.”

There was a sudden noise from below, disturbing the quiet air where Morse was. First there was the desperate roar of a Primarch, and the sound of swung weapons piercing the air as he tried to rise up and resist.

Morse turned sideways and looked behind him.

The dead tree-like original body had been pushed to the ground by the Golden Armored Emperor, pressing the back of his neck, making it difficult to break free.

"I did not massacre your family members," the Emperor said lowly. "When I arrived, it had been..."

Mortarion's respirator was loose and some dirt got stuck in the gap. He struggled and shouted: "Lie! You witchcraft overlord——"

The Emperor's psionic hand struck Mortarion on the back of the head, and the primarch fell into coma again.

Then the Emperor silently lifted Mortarion from the ground, positioned him against the outer wall of a low house, and placed his scythe in his hand, awaiting the Primarch's next awakening.

Morse shook his head, moved his shoulders, then turned back to his letter.

Mortarion was a problem that the Emperor had to find a way to deal with, and it obviously had nothing to do with him being an idler.

What he wanted to do now was to prepare a letter that he hoped to share with Perturabo. When he was about to find someone to share it with, Morse discovered that excluding those old friends of the Eternal who had disappeared, he The only person he wrote to was Perturabo.

"Luck is really a magical thing. It will give you a slap in the face at any time. It is like this for these attackers, it is like this for this village, and it is like this for you. I don't know what you are thinking, but you probably really want to give him a new child. The same goes for the emperor who leaves a good impression."

"I think he did have a plan for how to deal with Mortarion, but it certainly didn't start with being mistaken for burning down his village."

Morse folded the letter, threw it into a suitable empty space, floated down the pile, and stood beside the Emperor.

In response to one of the Primarchs, the Emperor had enlarged his body to the size of the Emperor of Man's golden armor. With the bright golden flames at the edge of the village as the boundary, the poisonous mist inside the village has also been swept away by the Emperor.

Within the confines of the village, perhaps there has never been such a clean day in thousands of years.

"What are you going to do?" Morse asked, "Continue to repeat this process of knocking out - waking up - explaining - knocking out?"

"I could go on doing this for a long time," the Emperor said.

Before Morse could be startled by the Emperor's rhetoric, the Emperor continued: "But it is not wise. It may be months, even years, before he is tired enough to listen to me."

"It's only a few years, so you can take your time. I'll go back to the ship to find Conrad Coates and we'll go to Baal together, and then I'll come back to see Barbarus. What do you think?" Morse looked at the emperor. The emperor's troubled expression.

The Emperor pondered. Morse didn't know what complex thoughts were swirling in his mind.

"Wait here," the Emperor said soon. The shadow of his long sword wrapped in flames appeared in his golden hand armor. "Look after him."

Morse nodded indifferently.

The Emperor turned and left, swung his sword towards the fog once, and a golden flame burned away the fog in front of him, opening up a long and narrow passage.

As the figure of the golden-armored giant gradually faded away, the fog on both sides of the passage merged with each other again, gathering into a thick thick fog.

Morse felt a fierce sound of wind coming from behind. He threw a rune, and the air that the scythe passed through was immediately stagnant. Based on Mortarion's tired experience of being knocked unconscious and revived by the Emperor a total of thirteen times. To put it bluntly, this Primarch really couldn't break his runes with brute force.

Mortarion had already supported his body to stand up. After seeing clearly that the person standing in front of him was no longer a giant emitting the golden light of witchcraft, he seemed to have regained a little calmness.

Morse turned back to face him. The Primarch's skin had been turned pale by the poison of Barbarus. If the Primarch's extraordinary charm was not taken into account, Mortarion was somewhat terrifying in a sense.

His eyes were fixed on him, as if he was ready to turn the pain of losing his companions into the motivation to swing his scythe.

"Are you Mortarion?" Mors asked.

"Where did you know this name?"

"Don't be so excited, just like when I killed your villagers." Morse waved his hand, "To take a step back, even if you mistakenly think it is a good thing done by the emperor, there is no need to aim the sickle. I."

Using a few spells, he dug an attacker's arm out from under the drop pod and tossed it to Mortarion in the air.

The latter subconsciously swung the knife and cut the arm in half. A pool of blood flew out, and then the two arms fell to the ground with a "snap".

"What is this?" Mortarion asked hesitantly, his pupils narrowing.

"What do you think?" Morse replied sarcastically. He didn't like arguments. After all, arguments aimed at convincing the other party were the furthest way to reaching consensus. "You can choose to pretend not to recognize the minions of the sorcery overlord. Blindness and self-deception are the two options."

"This is your trap." Mortarion gritted his teeth and swallowed his angry roar, filled with shame: "You want to pretend to be the protector of the village to gain my power? Which mountain did you come down from? Wizard!"

"Himalaya," Morse said, "If you want to know. Seriously, if you have anything to say, go talk to the Emperor, that golden guy. There's no use talking to me."

Mortarion couldn't bear it and swung the scythe out at extremely fast speed again. Perhaps his speed was not as fast as those of the Primarchs who were famous for their speed, but to a mortal, it was indeed as fast as thunder.

Mors took a step back, weaving another rune in his hand, and pushed Mortarion back. The Primarch smashed through one wall, was caught by a second wall, and fell heavily to the ground.

"Witchcraft!" Mortarion roared. Morse's use of extraordinary spells one after another simply exceeded the limits of his tolerance.

"The last time I was called a master of witchcraft can be traced back to more than twenty thousand years ago, when humans still believed that voodoo and curses could be recited by any mortal who was familiar with black magic books." Morse paused. He said, "Oh, there are also some entertainment reality shows. Every week the program team sets up a challenge project to test the spiritual power of the contestants, eliminate one contestant, and finally choose the person with the strongest spiritual power to be the champion."

He shrugged regretfully: "I can guarantee that among all the people, I am the only one who is really psychic, but the show team doesn't seem to like my speaking style, so I was the one eliminated in the first week."

"What are you implying?" Mortarion climbed out of the ruins, his voice filtered by the respirator and became hoarse. "Suggesting that I am no different from someone who believes in black magic and witchcraft?"

He clutched the scythe like it was all he had left - and maybe it was.

"I don't know. You don't have water here, and I don't want to talk." Morse found a reason to stop talking, and began to wish the emperor to come back soon.

As far as the strength of the spiritual energy carried by the Emperor's projection was concerned, unless he ran out on the spot and announced that he wanted to fight the witchcraft overlord of all Barbarus, nothing could hinder His Majesty the Emperor's golden boots.

Mortarion was about to say something more, but whether it would be a painful question or an angry roar, he was defeated by a violent cough.

He still didn't let go of his sickle in his hand, and the agricultural tool made by a mortal was on the verge of breaking.

Mortarion reached out to grab the clothes on his chest, and then switched to strangling his throat, gasping for breath, trying to suppress the violent cough caused by the continuous pain in his lungs.

Then, blood began to flow from his mouth and nose. Blood seeped from the sides of his breathing mask.

He tried to endure it, but could not overcome the resistance of his physical condition.

Before he could crush the scythe's wooden handle, Mortarion let go of it and let it hit the ground with a clang, preventing it from breaking.

"I swear other Primarchs didn't react this way when they were hit against the wall," Morse frowned and muttered to himself. "Throne, next I have to explain in front of the emperor that I didn't make you vomit blood."

He tried to get closer to Mortarion, which aroused the Primarch's strong desire to resist. Mortarion coughed up blood and raised his fist, trying to restrain Mors's movements and resist the wizard's advance towards him.

The craftsman chose to continue to use the spell to restrict him, and at the same time took the opportunity to check the physical condition of the original body.

The Primarchs were the pinnacle of the Emperor's genetic engineering combined with unknown arcane technologies. Their genes have a certain degree of plasticity, and Morse often speculates that this may be related to adaptation to the local environment.

At least Mors doesn't think that if Leman Russ had not been born in Fenris, he would have been born with sharp fangs.

Mortarion's respiratory organs had adapted to the local poisonous gas environment of Barbarus, so that when he was in the Emperor's cleansed air for too long, his lungs found it difficult to adapt.

Or maybe it was just that his lungs were rotten by the poisonous bubbles, and the accumulated pain exploded at this time.

Morse thought for a moment and introduced a little mist from the outside world into the village, allowing Mortarion to take a breath of fresh poisonous gas.

Mortarion's symptoms immediately subsided, and his breathing gradually returned to normal.

"I... don't need help, cough... wizard!" Mortarion pulled off his respirator and sat on the ground trying to breathe. The respirator belt whipped him in the process, but there wasn't even a trace of red on his seemingly thin and fragile facial skin.

Well, he does have tough skin.

"This way, let's be objective. I am indeed a wizard." Morse stood against the wall, with a layer of rune-fixed air supporting his back to avoid direct contact with the unclean wall.

Everyone helped. Morse thought. Just say a few words.

Considering that he had just used his higher senses to detect and finally captured the emperor's location within a ten-mile radius, he reluctantly showed a little interest in talking.

"I can recite spells, draw runes, use fireballs born out of thin air, talk to the undead, and wear a black robe." Morse said, "In your unclear eyes, I seem to be involved in the attack on you. The destruction of the village is causing a physical threat to you that you cannot resist. So what’s next?”

He tilted his head. "What else do you think I can do to you?"

If the Primarch hadn't been sitting at about the same height as he was standing, he would have been crouching down at this point.

Mortarion stared at him, humiliation overwhelming his fear.

"Speaking of dialogue, do you want to say a few words to the dead souls here, Son of Death?" Morse asked. "There are some souls that have not gone far, but are fortunate enough not to be corrupted by the light of witchcraft. If you are willing to talk to me Such masters of witchcraft are in trouble, I can channel spirits for you and find the voices of the dead."

This is a true statement. The etheric aura that remains after the death of a sentient creature, or the mark composed of a collection of information, is not unsearchable for a psyker of his level.

By the way, another new master who has studied the soul is Magnus. Since he began to officially take over the task of maintaining the webway with the waaagh force field left by the green skin spiritual power, the Crimson Primarch is inevitable. Reluctantly, he began to explore soul-related matters.

"Damn it! You... don't use witchcraft to stain their souls." Mortarion said, his momentum weakened and his expression was a little hesitant.

Of course he wasn't trying to talk to the dead, but he was reminded once again that everyone around him was already dying.

It was like the seeds he had just picked up were flowing through his fingers along with the gravel.

Mortarion raised his head stubbornly, his eyes were bloodshot, and Morse's figure was reflected in his irises. After this conversation, Morse's dark shadow gradually became more hateful than the silent golden figure.

Morse raised his hands, his gesture of surrender not only careless, but also a kind of casual mockery.

"Forget about witchcraft, you know where you come from and what materials you use..."

"That's enough, Morse." A majestic voice interrupted Morse's words.

Cold and calm golden light poured into the room, accompanied by heavy footsteps.

The Emperor stopped at the door. The light was not as bright as when he left. It seemed to have been weakened in some way and became softer.

He was holding something in his hands, obscured by the wall that had not yet collapsed.

"May I enter?" the Emperor asked.

Mortarion was relieved to see the Emperor appear. By contrast, he found himself almost looking forward to the Emperor's return, to keep Mors away.

At this moment, he already understood that most of the people who attacked the village were subordinates of the sorcery overlord Nacre. Mortarion is not that stupid.

"Come in," he whispered to the Emperor, gritting his teeth in embarrassment at his surrender.

Morse shrugged. +You should thank me, Emperor. +