Warhammer 40k: Shattered Steel Soul

With Mortarion's permission, the Emperor bent down so that his tall golden form could enter the chamber. In order to drag the object he held with his golden claws into the house, a piece of earth and stone around the door frame was knocked off and scattered on the ground, raising a lot of mist-like dust.

The dust fell and the thing took shape. Morse raised his eyebrows and looked up at the Emperor.

The Emperor blinked. The last time he showed such vivid eyes was on world 154-4, playing the role of mortal Fath in front of a bunch of Primarchs.

+Good. +The Emperor's expression remained unchanged, and a brief psychic message flashed by.

The Primarch Mortarion, who was very sensitive to this, was aware of this and uneasily let his alert gaze rest on the master of witchcraft Mors in his eyes.

Morse sighed exaggeratedly, "What do you want with this, Emperor?"

He made a motion to observe what was in the Emperor's claws.

Judging from the strength of his psychic powers, he was also a sorcerer overlord, but he was not Mortarion's breeder, Naklay.

His limbs were cut off, leaving only the main body of his body and an ugly head in a coma. Looking through the undigested parts of his digestive organs, one can see that before being suddenly snatched away by the Emperor, he was eating some kind of leafy green vegetables mixed with sliced ​​meat and sauce, and drinking something suitable for drinking when the afternoon sun was shining on the garden. brown tea.

"It will be our enemy," the Emperor replied, speaking simply.

Perhaps from his son Rogal Dorn, the father also learned how to reduce the possibility of angering others with inappropriate language.

"We are new here, how can we have enemies?"

Mors pinched his chin and walked around the room casually, blocking Mortarion's view of the sorcerer overlord.

Sure enough, Mortarion took the initiative to change his angle and began to observe the Emperor's prey probingly.

He has almost never met any witchcraft overlords other than Nacre. With a few exceptions, Nacre used him as an exhibit to show to other overlords who maintained superficial peace with him because of their own interests.

But Mortarion could recognize the filth and evil that he abhorred.

The original body asked blankly: "What is that..."

Mors pretended not to hear Mortarion's words. Additionally, he discovered that the name Perturabo had given him shared the same prefix as Mortarion. He wanted to laugh a little.

"We are also people who use witchcraft," Morse continued, his face sinking into the shadows of the room, a crimson flame on his fingertips appearing and disappearing. "As for killing, you still need me to calculate for you how many tools there are. Are the bones trampled by the hooves of the Great Crusade?"

"We do not come for slaughter." The Emperor threw his captives to the ground, standing opposite Mors instead of side by side. "Every enemy of mankind is our enemy. The annihilation that has just occurred, This is also why the human souls here are not desecrated and insulted by sorcery.”

"Tsk, that's just your dream——"

"Why did you catch him?" Mortarion said hoarsely, standing up staggeringly with his scythe on his back.

A pair of eyes in his pale face first glared hatefully at the unknown sorcerer overlord on the ground, and then looked up at the emperor, his disgust beginning to be mixed with other emotions.

The Emperor replied with a calm face that seemed to remain unchanged from time immemorial: "He is the enemy of mankind."

"Lies," Mortarion spat with bravado, "Witchcraft is the greatest threat to humanity."

"Here's the Star Torch, he's right, Emperor." Mors chuckled, and this burst of laughter was like a steel needle on the experimental table, stimulating Mortarion's nerves. "In the eyes of some... extremely intelligent people, aren't you also an enemy of mankind?"

When the emperor faced Morse, he did not open his mouth to defend himself, but only looked away, with a sense of loss and sadness between his lowered eyebrows.

"How...are you going to deal with this person?" Mortarion's sickle blade drew across the ground, the tip pointed at the unconscious unknown sorcery overlord.

The Emperor put away his fleeting display of true feelings, and his body language returned to coldness.

On the surface, he seems to be just a king.

However, people who are sensitive by nature often especially like to deny a person's mask-like appearance. If kindness is on the surface, malice must be on the inside. vice versa.

"Kill," the Emperor declared.

Morse clapped beside him: "Come on, my emperor. You can dig out his heart."

The Emperor did not listen to Morse's words, and his dark eyes filled with golden light stayed on Mortarion.

Then the Emperor asked.

"Do you want to kill him?" the Emperor asked Mortarion.

"I don't know if he wants to, seeing as he's holding a farm implement..." Morse said softly, the consonants hanging in the air.

Before he finished speaking, Mortarion had already thrust his scythe forward. In an instant, the tip of the knife penetrated the back of the sorcerer overlord's neck, hooked into his head, and then lifted it up, from the face. When it was stabbed out, dirty blood flowed along the blade.

The Primarch grabbed hold of the sorcerous overlord's torso and pulled the scythe back, tearing off his head with ease.

He wiped the blood from his face, held the sickle, and looked at Morse gloomily.

Morse laughed, and this time the laughter was indeed genuine. "I lost, Mortarion. You won."

Mortarion looked away and tossed the remains of the Sorcerer Overlord at the Emperor's feet. "I killed him," he said, lifting his chin.

"Do you want to kill more?" the Emperor asked.

Mortarion did not give his answer directly. The smell of scorched earth and the putrid smell of the dead, along with the poisonous mist, eroded his respiratory tracts, causing a long tug-of-war between the Primarch's resilience and the backlog of trauma.

He completed an execution without any real sense of accomplishment.

Mortarion looked around. Nearly a hundred villagers once lived here. They were poor, hungry, and technologically backward, but they took him in, their kindness overriding their fear and giving him hope for a new life, showing others what they could live for.

A home. Mortarion thought dazedly. There is only this one.

Today, the village has been unforgivably destroyed, and his own enemies still overlook the land of Barbarus from the foggy mountaintops. Nakre sneered and planned the next round of shameless plunder, as if he dreamed that he would once again fall at the hegemon's feet.

Even if Mortarion knew rationally, the death of this sorcery overlord already symbolized the blood revenge of many lives that had nothing to do with him. But Mortarion was not happy.

"What about you?" Mortarion asked. "Are you going to kill more?"

"I have seen how many stars can be destroyed by witchcraft and aliens," the Emperor breathed slowly, his chest rising and falling regularly. "On each planet that has been corrupted and destroyed, there are billions of humans living there. Death. Everywhere, some are necessary and some are not.”

"Then why do you continue to use sorcery?" Mortarion became excited again.

One of the targets of the resentment he harbored for years was the sorcery that led to Barbarus's fall into the hands of the alien overlords and his years of torture. With every broken bone and torn tendon, as he languished miserably in prison, his hatred of witchcraft and cruel tyranny deepened.

Silence spreads through the hut, floating along with the crumbs of earth that have fallen off the roof. In this narrow space crowded with three people, Mortarion felt an unreasonable loneliness.

He didn't want to appear intolerable. You don't want to look like you're giving in, becoming weak.

However, however...

He wanted the golden-armored emperor to give him an answer.

"I am only a human," the Emperor said softly, as if those words explained everything.

Another shadow flashed past him. It was an old man wearing a gray robe. His face was tired and marked with the scars of time.

Mortarion continued to look at the Emperor, trying to see the true shadow clearly. At this time, he could only see the splendor and majesty on his surface.

He couldn't just be an overlord. Mortarion concluded.

"He can't say he's 'just' a human." Mors twitched the corner of his mouth. "This is true, Mortarion. I sincerely advise you not to think that the Emperor is such a perfect good person. ”

"Morse is right," said the Emperor. "I will conquer the galaxy to protect the entire human race."

"Oh, sorcery overlord..."

"He is not," Mortarion blurted out, decisively rejecting Morse's sarcasm.

With no time to be surprised that he had even spoken these words, Mortarion continued to address the Emperor: "I want to kill more sorcerers, Emperor," he said awkwardly as he addressed the Emperor. , "But I have to rely on my own strength."

The Emperor looked at him quietly: "I need a general."

Mortarion said nothing. Memories of Naklay grew noisy in his mind.

The Overlord had told him that he could be his general, his most trusted subordinate, and heir to the kingdom he ruled with fear. While being tortured like a plaything, he was forced to learn martial arts, conspiracy, and the use of fear and extermination. And the more joyful Naklay was, the more disgusted Mortarion became.

When he escaped from the castle on the mountain, he watched the dismembered humans being stitched back into driven monsters by the witchcraft of death, and watched Barbarus being enslaved, oppressed, and crushed by the nightmare of witchcraft. Under tyranny, everything is crushed.

Sympathy for humans and hatred for everything that happened to him were superimposed. Mortarion had long decided to kill the overlords one by one and purify this filthy land.

The village's acceptance delayed his revenge, and as soon as he figured out how to accept a family, his new home was torn to pieces by his past.

There is no room for emotion or hope under the rule of a tyrant.

"I will not serve another overlord." He said stiffly. This was no longer a sarcasm against the emperor, but an implementation and emphasis on his own will. "I can't be your lackey."

"A tool." The Emperor tried to correct him intently, "I don't need lackeys."

Mortarion had just felt a stinging discomfort, but this emotion was extinguished by the cold face of Mors, who was holding his arms next to him.

"You heard me, Emperor," Mors said. "He doesn't want to go with you. We might as well go to Baal."

This time, Mortarion did not contradict Morse. Although he pursues the execution of other witchcraft overlords, it is not absolute. Only Nacre's deformed and ugly twisted body must be killed by him himself.

That's his mission, his purpose. That was the only thing he could cling to after the people in the village died.

"Your strength proves that you don't need me as your help, Emperor." Mortarion's face was expressionless, as if his emotions had been overwhelmed and destroyed by Barbarus' poisonous gas, drowning in the ominous swamp and dim fog. middle. "Go conquer your universe and leave Nacre to me."

universe. What a lofty word. In his cognition and memory, the endless starry sky was out of reach. He does not understand it, nor does he want to understand it.

The arrival of these two extraterrestrial visitors suddenly opened a new door for him. Witchcraft and aliens burn the stars, and hundreds of millions of mortals gather on them.

Those endless things did not belong to him, and his family had died in Barbarus. He is at odds with the stars, and Mortarion belongs to the land of Barbarus.

"Leave Naklay to you?" the Emperor repeated. In the reflection of the dazzling golden armor, his face was reflected like a piece of golden tissue paper. The paper was hard and cold, but not thick enough.

"Wait for me," the Emperor said, turning and walking away again, walking into the thick fog, leaving the stunned Mortarion behind.

"Sit down a minute," Morse said, leaning against the wall again. "I see you hunched over in the room. It's not good for your waist."

"That's enough, wizard." Mortarion said coldly, with a hint of contempt in his tone. He coughed twice and walked out of the room, silent.

Morse followed him out of the room and looked up at him. Each Primarch may have differed in height, but they were all taller than Morse.

"Ten minutes ago, the Emperor and I said the same word," Mors said, laughing. "'Enough,' you both said. And I just advised you to sit down and rest."

Mortarion fell silent again. This habit of accumulating anger in silence reminds Morse of the young Perturabo forty years ago.

The difference between the two is that Perturabo cut his neck out of anger on the first night, expressing his anger at everything. And Mortarion allowed the silent fire to turn into putrid poison, eating away at his own mind.

"What are you thinking?" Morse asked calmly. "Wondering why you would reject a path that would free your people more quickly? At least that's what I'm thinking."

I couldn't risk handing Barbarus over to another tyrant. Mortarion said in his mind.

"Why does he need me? What does he want to use me for?"

"On the one hand, liberating the entire galaxy requires enough help. He will be alone and unable to support himself." Morse said, "On the other hand..."

He suddenly stopped talking, glanced at Mortarion, and snorted dissatisfiedly.

"What is it?"

"The respected emperor has not spoken, how can I cross his lips?"

"Tell me!" Mortarion roared, slamming his fist against the wall, finally destroying the entire crumbling house.

The smoke dispersed, and Morse shook his hair, letting the gravel fall from his hair.

"Because the Emperor is a fool who lost a lot of his sons, and you are his blood son," Morse's black robe corners fluttered in the wind, and the annoyance on his face did not seem to be fake, "Damn it. ! Who else would create twenty children at once?

Suddenly, a terrifying wind surged through Mortarion's mind. He took a step back in confusion, and something new was touching the surface of his heart from the inside out.

"He didn't say..."

He can use this bloodline to control me, use me, bind me with the shackles and ties of family affection, order me, use the power of witchcraft to coerce me, and lock me.

But he didn't.

"Because he cannot promise you the affection a father should have for his son, Mortarion," Morse said, his expression calming.

"First of all, he is the leader of the Great Crusade, the Emperor of the Galaxy. He is the master of all armies, the father of all people, the eternal king of all ages. And in the end, he is the father of a son ”

"After a long time, you may find that today you have misunderstood him, overestimated him, mistakenly thought that he was worthy of sympathy or too glorious. You may feel angry and silent in regret. But at the same time, you will also find , there are no lies here today.”

A complex torrent surged in Mortarion's chest.

"How could he have a subordinate like you?" the Primarch whispered gloomily.

"You have to ask him, the Emperor's child." Morse nodded, "Look, he is here."

The emperor's golden armor emerged in the thick fog, and the power gathered on this spiritual projection was reduced by another level, reflecting his spiritual energy consumption. His golden light further converged, changing from a soft halo to a certain degree of dimness.

He dropped another body of the sorcerous overlord at Mortarion's feet. Likewise, the Emperor incapacitated his prey but preserved his life.

"A gift," the Emperor said. "Not a Na'klay. Do you want more?"

Mortarion pursed his lips, the edge of the scythe flashed, and another overlord was executed by him.

Without saying a word, he turned and walked away, his pale figure disappearing into the thick fog of dusk, leaving behind him the dead village, the corpse of the witchcraft overlord and the two extraterrestrial visitors.