Warhammer 40k: Shattered Steel Soul

"People are always afraid of attributing a character that is not good to the Son, but we need to know that the Son is also tempted and challenged. He is afraid like us, but he is not guilty." - "The Book of Lorgar"

𝟞𝟡𝕤𝕙𝕦𝕩.𝕟𝕖𝕥】

Standing on the edge of the barren grassland, the pedestrian felt that the things in his body were flowing away to the sound of the wind.

The wind carried a strong metallic smell. It had rained recently, and the moisture made the metallic smell resemble biomass that was constantly being lost and splashed. However, a kind of prior knowledge told him that the smell came from the shedding of metal, and the rust in it. It happened in the rain, and the iron filings followed the wash of the rain across the river beach, scraped the ground, and then fell into the river, sinking into the mud after a long time.

The silt dries up. Becomes sand. But the rain is still falling and the grasslands are still green. In the echo of the years composed of these times, water droplets rise from the memories of countless souls fearing the blending, forming a rain cloud, and falling again. When they tap lightly on the backs of souls, they accept the lonely oblivion in the bustling coexistence.

The pedestrian lowered his head. There was no way he could move his head that much when he was wearing armor. His lower jaw will be trapped by the carapace, and this restriction comes from protection. He was still wearing armor, pitch black, with a sharp sheen flowing on the iron feathers. But he lowered his head and saw the remaining holes in his torn plastron.

The edges were smooth and cut, just like the other holes that pierced his body. The remaining blood stains were like an inharmonious decoration, existing on his body without any pain.

"I didn't get that honor," the pedestrian thought vaguely, "The soul is gone..."

He didn't quite remember his next words, but the breath of the grassland softened, and the cold and lonely touch sank into the river water, and the mist floated, caressing him gently.

Through the rain curtain in front of me and through the gaps between the climbing vines on the rising forest trees, I saw them drinking water by the river. Then, they moved their hooves and walked upstream along the flow of the river. I followed the river and walked with them on the other side of the river.

I have two legs and a heavy black armor.

They poked at the dirt with their mouths in the grass, then raised their heads and bit off some flowers from the vines. Then they began to play and play, touching each other with their hooves and tails. Then they stopped and called me. I looked at their expressions. They looked relaxed, chewing the flowers in their mouths, and some dark red juice flowed out.

"Come here," one of them let out a long whistle, "let's go see the mountain running down from the top."

I stepped on the water and the river was not flowing fast, so I still swam for a while. I feel like I don’t quite feel like myself.

"Look at you, swimming so slowly." Sridge said, "Come here, before we go to that gray mountain, there are still some alkaline flowers to eat. Stop dawdling, you are always like this, three It was like this years ago, and it was like this thirty years ago.”

They waited for me to come over and left me a few alkaline flowers on the vine. The petals drooped in the rain and became very dark in color, reminding me of the way the sun above them looks when it sets.

"I'm not hungry," I heard myself say, and a small flying dark blue bird landed on my right shoulder, maybe on my black armor, maybe on my light orange fur.

I fanned my dark blue feathers. I saw the wingless horses below walking forward. They had just finished eating the crimson flowers on the vines, and their mouths were full of juice. Juice is not good for flying, but they don't have wings. I knew everyone was going to see the fishtail bird fall from the sky, even the stupid wingless horse. The fishtail is beautiful, and he's alive.

I landed on the shoulders of a wet wingless horse, which was so annoying that it slapped me off with its tail.

I swatted it away with my tail and followed them, passing through every tree in the forest.

These trees don't belong to us, we don't know whose they belong to, and in any case, they have nothing to do with our current progress.

We followed the river to a point where we could see the mountain falling from the top. It is huge, with a shape we have never seen before, and its color is very similar to when the sun first comes up from below, gray and a little whitish. It has symmetrical wings like a bird, and like the things in the river, it has only one soft hoof.

A few of us whistled happily, and one of us hummed. I knew it would be a pity that the alkaline flowers were not eaten.

We clung to each other's waists and approached quietly. The ground was soaked soft by the rain, which made my ankles full of mud. "I want to wash my feet." I said.

"You're so squeamish," Srich said. "Go ahead, but we won't wait for you."

I was not very happy when he said that the gray mountain that fell from the top would not move away. I could wait for a sunny day to find it myself. I jumped away and passed by the alkaline flowers they left for me, but I was angry and didn't eat them. I went to the river and washed my feet, and then walked forward in the river.

My broken reflection in the water was a strange black thing. It looked very bulky, with only two legs, and the black patches all over its body made a noise noisier than the river water.

I still went back to them because I didn’t want to be asked one by one by many mothers in the tree why I didn’t play with them. When I went back, I saw them all fall down, their bright orange fur falling into the rustling leaves, and a lot of crimson blood flowing out of their fur, just like the alkali flowers they had eaten were blooming again. on the ground.

I froze next to them, I called their names, I didn't know what was going on. I felt like I had a headache, like I was sick from eating a lot of cold grass, and then my whole body started to hurt, and my nerves felt like they were on fire. Soon, I too fell.

Then we stood up and rubbed each other's heads with lingering fear.

There seems to be something different about the surrounding environment. We all seem to be standing in the grass, surrounded by thousands of other companions, birds, or other creatures. There was no pain on our bodies at all.

I found Reem who had finally come out of the river. "Are you okay," I asked. "You're really noisy today, Srich," he said.

We looked up and saw that the fishtail bird was dead, but when we came to see it, it was still alive, its eyes were open, and it looked tired and didn't know what to do next.

It has lived like this for a long time, coexisting with us for more than three hundred years. We put part of what we have into the soil to create new generations. In order for them to move more easily, we proposed to make them four claws, and the fish-tailed bird agreed. It is gentle and always easy to talk to.

Very suddenly, the grassland disappeared, the river was nowhere to be found, and everything turned into a small, black, gray and fine thing, like dry soil. There was a strange creature standing in front of us. It was heavy, had only two legs, and its black hard fur made a noise noisier than sand. Flashes of lightning flashed in his hand toward the bones of the fishtail bird, and continued to flash until the rain began to fall again.

"I'm not you," he said, and he yelled. His scream was so high-pitched that it made my throat hurt, as if he was being killed.

He must be crazy and taking the wrong pain reliever, it makes us crazy.

"Stop shouting." I couldn't help but say, my voice coming out of his mouth.

He was stunned for a moment, and then roared even more desperately, as if he wanted to roar out all the internal organs and blood in his body. The lightning in his hand seems to never stop, shooting at the fishtail birds in our world.

None of us wanted the fishtail to die, so no bolt of lightning harmed it.

"Who are you?" the fishtail bone asked him, its voice as beautiful as the ones we have remembered over the years.

"Gerry-Grice Sean Georgiev Pat O'Sullivan—" the black man roared, "let me go!"

The gelatinous gauze wings on the fish-tailed bird slowly opened, wrapping the black man in the gauze and hoisting it into the air.

“Look at where we are now,” said the fishtail bird, along with a thousand of our children, and its voice grew so loud that our world began to fade back into the gray world of the fishtail bird’s eyes.

We all look down. There are four creatures that look like black people. They have heavy and hard skin, but the colors are different.

They also have lightning in their hands, and every time they kill one of the thousand children we create, our world collapses a little bit. Our collective memory echoes in every piece of flesh and blood in our existence.

"Will we survive?" asked the little dark blue bird.

"...Yes," the fish-tailed bird said, its voice suddenly becoming so distant. And in this blink of an eye, our world seems to suddenly expand greatly, passing by a higher and more distant world, and being briefly connected in the process.

——

Gerry grasped the net made of gauze wings and looked at the tilted world ahead.

He had just barely recovered from the state of being almost integrated into the entire spiritual world. The feeling was like digging out the pieces of himself from his dissected body and piecing together a brand new self. He was trembling all over, his hands and feet were already numb, and the flames of pain were raging in every wound on his body.

He relied on instinct to roughly complete the piece of work, a process that reminded him vaguely of the experience of completing the genetic surgery of the Space Marines - another new life.

There are some broken memories that cannot be retrieved. Perhaps they have been included in the memories of all lives in this spiritual world, and have been broken down and disappeared. They can only emerge from the consciousness of any soul like a breeze at some accidental moments. Flashback.

In a sense, he didn't even know if he was still the same Grigrith he once was, the Deathwing warrior loyal to the Emperor and fighting for Leon El'Jonson.

From the position of the Space Marines that could be seen from this perspective, and the location of the alien wreckage of the Randan biological ship that he had previously learned, it could be deduced that the scene in front of him was the perspective from which the head of the huge alien could be seen. But his companions are fighting bloody battles, fighting endlessly amid numerous crises, and the sound of gunfire is endless.

That... He thought about his name, Kroger... Kroger, yes, Iron Warrior Kroger led the team to carefully avoid the dangerous maw that opened from the ground, and shot and killed those who rushed near them. of alien descendants.

The Randan aliens shared their memories with him, and it nearly overwhelmed him. His strong resistance prevented the influx of memories, but some trivial knowledge still forced its way into his soul.

He knew that there were three hundred and seventy-one such monsters, half of which were weak due to insufficient organic matter replenishment, but any one of them was enough to tear through the ceramite of a Space Marine, cutting all the way to the black carapace with their poisonous claws. , the toxins will gradually make them lose their strength. If the fight doesn't end quickly enough, everything can quickly spiral into a downward spiral.

Who is that? Gerry thought dully, then grabbed his conscious body, broke a finger, and let the raging pain stabilize his independence. He panted, lying in the gauze, focusing all his energy on the battle that no longer belonged to him.

That was Hammer, he thought, silent and unobtrusive, but never vague about his marksmanship. He fired, and the muzzle erupted with bright red fire. good! Gerry yelled in his mind.

When the cluster of flames came into contact with the flesh and blood in the alien fish monster's carapace, a burning pain suddenly cut him open, as if he himself had been hit in the head by a burning battle axe. He was sweating heavily, and the scream that tore out of his lungs was stuck under his throat bone, twitching feebly in the gauze.

"Does it hurt?" Ran Dan asked him softly. The voice floated up from its hollow bones and penetrated into his ears. It was not any language that Gerry knew, and there was not even a direct language in it - it was an echo that struck directly into consciousness, without the constraints of words, more primitive, and more unrestrained.

"Does it hurt, Gerry?" it sang, "This is the pain our children feel, we are all one, so we share it."

Gerry let out a hateful laugh from between his teeth. Suddenly, he was knocked down by the second pain and collapsed in the gauze. The tsunami of pain set off bright red waves on his body. A heavy blunt blow containing endless anger and hatred. He felt himself being shattered, crushed from the inside out into a mud of blood and bone.

Well done, Word Bearers, he thought. That's... Hashem. He kept a promise to clean up.

Gerry has never said it in front of others that he actually dislikes the Word Bearers Legion. Their philosophy is unreasonable from a macro perspective and is full of obvious hidden dangers and dangerous fanaticism.

But observing individuals among them, such as Hashem, Gerry found that they were not difficult to get along with—as long as their chanting was ignored. Sometimes their kindness to their companions even benefits the Dark Angels.

Hashem's helmet was stained a greenish-yellow color by the alien juices, and his power hammer was stained with broken bones. With every open and close attack, more alien body fluids would flow along the weapons and outer armor of both parties, running on the exposed fish monster flesh.

It's pleasing to the eye, Gerry thought, as waves of black and red surged in front of his eyes, and each different burst of pain was enough to kill a Space Marine. He enjoyed it willingly, knowing that it meant the alien's defeat.

The world outside the gauze began to crack, and the illusion of paradise entered a countdown. The shadows of the grasslands and rivers continued to become dim. The memories that made up those scenes were dismantled as the alien flesh and blood suffered destruction, and finally turned into powder. Just like what should have happened when the Randan biological ship flew across space and arrived here.

The power of the fish-tailed bird is being weakened, and the biomass that this huge white skeleton relies on is dying in large quantities.

"We are going to die," the Randan alien told him. "Real death."

"I'm so lucky," Gerry said.

The gauze binding him broke, and Gerry fell back into the sand, gripping the ground with bloody fists and trying to make his coughs sound more like a fit of fearless laughter.

He raised his head and looked at the fighting troops. The Space Marines were growing tired and their movements were less swift than at first, exposing small holes in their coordinated operations. Team 23's cooperative tactics were built for five people, but now they've lost a terminator.

He was tense when his companions were about to be injured, and relaxed when they saved the day and turned around to avoid an attacking claw; he yelled for their attention when signs of quicksand subsidence appeared under their feet, and when they avoided bone spurs, Pounce, even grinning as he breaks off part of it.

After several failed raids, the aliens who were able to attack from underground were scarred and unable to move anymore. Gerry smiled. He knew it was the only one.

"Death!" a warrior yelled, his claws turned into a flash of silver, and the tip of his claws scratched the lower abdomen of a rising fish monster. His other hand wearing an animal claw stabbed into the enemy's throat. Rip the enemy's head from the middle. "For Gerry—fuck, last time for Norwood wasn't enough, was it?"

Gerry put his hands on his throat, dizzily remembering who this was. Wolf... pearly white, Shadow Moon Wolf. his name? The feeling he gave Gerry was so familiar. Who is this?

The new sharp pain interrupted the coherence of his thoughts, and he spat, feeling the existence of his body disappearing quickly. Behind him, the bones of the fish-tailed bird trembled, and fine sand-like powder fell from the creator of paradise.

Who is you? Gerry raised his head, and there was almost nothing left in his field of vision except for large black and red spots.

Who are you?

The Luna Wolf strode forward, swung its claws into the crowd of alien monsters, jumped flexibly between sharp teeth, swung its claws ferociously, drove one alien into a desperate situation, and then turned around and hit another hard. A fish monster that was recovering its state then swept its deadly claws in a circle. The power of anger made the missing precision filled with overwhelming violence. Silvery arcs cut tirelessly in the air, stamping hard on the weak points of every monster, causing pieces of flesh to fly everywhere like uncontrollable and shattering puppets.

"Gerry..." The Luna Wolf growled, seeming to regard his name as the briefest war cry.

Gerry felt himself being split in half again. He still didn't remember the other person's name. That didn't matter, he was winning. They are winning.

At a certain moment, in a moment of silence, Gerry suddenly felt a strange silence after his last twitch. He lay on his back, listening to the sounds around him through the phantom pain that was still present.

"This..." Luna Wolf gasped, kneeling on one knee without any strength, and dug its claws into the sand beside Gerry. He looked around and asked, "...Is this all?"

"Stay on alert," Kroger replied, and there was no hint of fatigue in his voice. His gun was still ready to fire.

After five minutes of silence, Kroger spoke again: "That should be all."

The Iron Warrior's armor buzzed as he walked towards Gerry, stopped at a certain distance in front of him, raised his hand cannon, and aimed it at the alien's huge skeleton.

"How do we destroy it?" Hashem asked. "With what?"

"I wanted to scratch it with my claws." The Luna Wolf staggered a step and stood up again, "But it's too big. It will be enough for me to scratch it for the next thousand years."

Kroger looked at it for a moment, then put his hand back to his side.

"Call bombing support," he said. "There are no resources available here."

"Good idea," Hammer said.

The Luna Wolf bared its teeth at the skeleton in dissatisfaction and let out a loud sigh. "Let it be buried with you."

Kroger started calling on the channel. After dozens of seconds of communication, he terminated the communication: "Let's evacuate this area first."

The sound of the armor gradually faded away, leaving silence to the yellow sand covered with flesh and blood remains. The remains of the fish-tailed bird lay across the desert, with no trace of remaining life.

Gri-Gris closed his eyes and opened them again.

He found that he had not yet found rest.

The gauze wings of the fishtail bird covered him, so thin that it seemed as if a breeze could blow it away.

"We are going to die," it sang to him again. The message it conveys is half the semantics it intends and half the painful emotion itself.

"The moment I land here, I will lead to today's failure..."

"Oh." Gerry replied.

"In our paradise," the fishtail bird sang quietly, "I hear new people coming, new angels..."

"Who is that?"

"I left a long time ago, Gerry. Many of us left Paradise. What happened there? We probably don't even know...Do you feel pain?"

Gerry lay still. After a while, he asked, "Where are the other creatures?"

"Dead, left, destroyed by you, why-"

"Okay." Gerry said, raised his hand, and fired a shot at the fishtail bird. Without the obstruction of countless communities in the entire collective consciousness, this ordinary bomb went straight through the void and penetrated the fish-tailed bird's head in the spiritual world.

The alien voice stopped abruptly.

"It hurts a little." Dark Angel said.

Then, he ceased to exist.

In reality, a tiny crack suddenly opened in the center of Yingbai's skull. The crack spread rapidly within a few seconds, like broken glass, cracking and collapsing in all directions, turning into countless tiny particles of gravel and dust, spreading towards the sandy plain. Falling like long-lost drizzle.

In just a few minutes, the entire giant skeleton that stretched for more than ten kilometers and had existed for hundreds of years was completely wiped out.

In the distance, Team 23, who had just moved a short distance away, stared at all this with their mouths open, and then laughed happily.

"But we'd better call for a bombing," Jack said, shaking his power claw that had been modified by the Iron Warriors but could still be decommissioned, "just in case."

"Of course," Hashem said, "Nothing will be left behind."