Warhammer 40k: Shattered Steel Soul

Lion El'Jonson's anger was extinguished in an instant, turning into a bleeding wound in the torrent of sadness. The anger still existed, but it no longer burned his heart; on the contrary, the more practical pain in his chest became more and more intense.

No matter what, he had to leave here.

Most of his body was wrapped in a soft flesh and blood structure. He could vaguely feel some thin tubes connecting him, and this disgusting feeling became particularly obvious near his chest. In addition, a kind of weakness and powerlessness was entangled in him.

All kinds of conditions made it impossible for him to exert his strength - except for his right hand. The long sword was still in his hand, held tightly by him.

He gritted his teeth and poured all his strength into his arms and shoulders. The sharp blade relied on brute force in the soft but heavy flesh, slowly cutting horizontally...

"Don't, Lion..." The voice came back, close to his ear, whispering and admonishing him urgently.

"Shut up." The Lion roared coldly, and the roar penetrated the room and was completely absorbed by the surrounding flesh and blood walls, as if falling into a silent black hole, without a trace of echo.

While trying to break free, he stared at the darkness at the end of the hall, trying to distinguish the specific outline of the huge statue. The eyes of the Primarch should help him see the night as day, unless there are other interferences in this darkness.

And now, the situation is exactly the latter.

"Lion, you can't leave this place, it's for you..."

"You are lying." The lion said, "I don't want to hear it."

"Lion!"

"You don't know what you are doing!" The Lion roared.

The flesh and blood structure cracked around his body, and some of the stretched fragments squeezed out and poured out in a semi-fluid form. They seemed to be retreating around, resisting the real harm to Lion El'Jonson.

The pain in his chest became more and more intense, and at the same time, Lion's head began to swell, and the chaotic information convection washed through his nervous system, causing the world in front of him to have wrinkles and curls that should not appear.

The more he was separated from the flesh and blood of the moment, the more serious this sense of confusion became.

"Lion!" The second Primarch called with a heavy warning, "I know every word I said and every action I made. I know I am still Duncan Ihe, I am--"

With a heavy sound of armor colliding, the lion forcibly peeled himself out of the restraints, climbed out of the pit, took half a step, and fell to the ground, spitting out blood.

Lion El'Jonson's limbs kept spasming, and the pain in his nerves was far stronger than when he was still in the restraints, depriving him of all his ability to move, and his consciousness quickly left him, until the new, warm flesh on the ground began to grow again, gently wrapping him in it...

Analgesic substances began to be secreted, protecting his weak spirit.

"They feel it..." A sigh.

——

Jack is dead.

For Kroger, if this news appeared on any morning in the past few years, he would not be surprised. Soldiers will eventually die, regardless of their choices before death. Fighting is the only task they need to complete.

But Jack died. On the first day after they reunited after many years, a few hours after they separated again.

First, the entire Moon Wolf team fell into silence, and then, the positioning point symbolizing Jack moved in the silence of the channel until the positioning stopped inside a terrain.

Then, Jack's already chaotic life signs disappeared.

This really made the Iron Warrior feel uncomfortable - he couldn't find a suitable word. Uncomfortable, unwilling to accept, and unlikely to happen... The innate weakness of humans began to show signs in him. Krog gave up thinking about these things and focused on the artillery in his hands.

After a certain point in time, to be precise, two hours after Jack's sacrifice, suddenly, the world seemed to have undergone some potential changes.

The planet was experiencing some dangerous tremors, and the land covered with flesh and blood was constantly producing slight ups and downs, as if some kind of internal wave was rapidly gestating, or some monster was slowly awakening.

From time to time, combat teams on the ground would warn other teams that a large number of Randan aliens, different from the Silver Angels, suddenly appeared around them and launched terrible attacks on them. Sometimes, the ground destroyed by them would suddenly begin to repair itself, or swell like a boil, creating different kinds of crises.

Shortly after they sent the signal, a new batch of life coordinates went out one by one like candlesticks blown by the wind. This unexpected change made the combat brothers who were still fighting feel the pressure on their bodies doubled.

In any case, each turret was still working as hard as it could until it fell apart; every battle ended in blood. The explosions were pouring down like rain, venting the anger of the Space Marines. Gun smoke, oil mist, dust, shrapnel, as well as charred flesh and carbonized bones, the fire was burning everywhere, devouring all the debris in the hot air.

Krog heard on the channel that a squad leader had died, hit in the chest by the Randan alien's light cannon, and his two hearts were instantly vaporized. He continued to shoot and threw a grenade. The armor-piercing shrapnel cut into the body of a giant beast in front of him, cutting out countless splatters of blood and flesh.

Another person died, a captain of a hundred-man team. He was the last one to die in his team. A tentacle with sharp serrations on it broke his waist. At this time, Kroger had just smashed the head of an alien with a grenade gun and tore off one of its wings. The bloody smell splashed on his head, and then quickly turned into an unpleasant burnt smell in the following battle.

"It's still increasing..." said the captain of his front-line company. There were more and more Randan aliens blocking their way, and their number had already surpassed the silver angels. In fact, the silver angels seemed to have suddenly disappeared in a certain moment and never came up to block their guns.

"Go to Bone Mountain." This was his battalion commander, who received a transfer order after a battle three years ago. It was said that he was only one step away from the war blacksmith.

In the fierce battle, the battalion began to move towards the last positioning direction sent by Jack before his death. They did not all fight in one place, but surrounded from all directions, like a team of loyal worker ants, setting the only destination on the low bone mountain.

More people fell, and Kroger didn't listen to who they were one by one.

Strangely, every dead person could remind him of other names. When he heard that a soldier of high rank died of a cut throat, he thought of Hashem. When the whole team fell into silence, he recalled Jack, and there were more deaths. Each death seemed to correspond to the sacrifice that had come to him across time and space.

He quickly put all his attention back to the battle itself. Combat orders were sometimes sent to their ears through the internal channels with fewer and fewer people. As a squad leader, he sometimes needed to pass his orders down.

During the battle, this was a busy additional work. Kroger didn't really like this job. He tended to participate in the killing itself rather than take the responsibility of command - well, since the squad mission many years ago, he had been forced to take charge of the command work.

He raised his bolter. Another soldier in front of him was torn apart by the claws of a Randan alien in the fight, split open from the chest. He wanted to knock down the alien with the bolter, but it seemed that he was a step too late.

The closer the Bone Mountain was, the more new aliens there were around. Kroger found that his team was not the first group of soldiers to arrive at the Bone Mountain. They saw the dead who had just sacrificed at the foot of the mountain, including the Moon Wolves, Iron Warriors, and Word Bearers, but the most were various Randan aliens.

Some were the final angel forms, while others were ugly and twisted in their own ways, with twitching fresh organs, deeply spreading nerve tentacles and dangerous poisonous droplets, as well as extremely strong mental appeal - flesh and bones, spirit and will, all of which produced a strong tendency to merge into one, and eventually returned to chaotic mumbling and a crazy crimson ocean.

Of course, there were also angry flames erupting from the muzzles of the soldiers who were still fighting, and dazzling flashes that cut through the blood mist and gray-yellow mist. It was the battle that kept them awake. Fighting is all that remains for an Astartes.

Kroger waited for a signal to continue the attack, to follow the troops along the path left by Jack.

He fought and waited at the same time, until he realized that he had been waiting too long.

A beam of laser passed by his helmet, and a giant proliferating bone structure fell from above. Kroger dodged the attack and counted the names of the superiors who had the right to issue orders in this group of troops one by one in his mind.

Ovi, Jos, Frost, Mare, Guraiel...

The count ended quickly, and Kroger realized a bad fact.

He continued to count, Silio, Ward, Zadi, Sidon... These were his peers, other captains.

Then, he got a shocking answer.

All his superiors had died. And among his peers, only he had reached the vicinity of Bone Mountain.

This fact echoed in Kroger's mind, arousing a sense of inexplicable anger and a kind of pain - empty pain. At the same time, he had realized his responsibility.

In the dripping blood mist, roaring explosions and whistling air currents, Kroger became the only one who could give orders.

He connected to the sound array: "All team members, head to the beacon point."

——

It was the oath hall again.

Lion glanced around and saw Duncan Aihe, sitting next to his own statue, looking exhausted, so that when he pressed the blade of the long sword on his head, the second primarch did not move.

No, he raised his head. A line of blood was pressed out, rolling down the blade and his cheek.

"Why?" Lion asked coldly. "What is that?"

Duncan did not answer directly. "Look back." He said softly.

The lion continued to hold the long sword, maintaining a threatening posture towards the second primarch, moving his feet until the scene behind him came into his eyes.

The other end of the hall has been replaced by a transparent huge window.

Outside the slightly protruding vertical frame glass porthole, the first thing that floated by was a series of ivory-white tailbones, with tips as sharp as knives, connected to each other by scarlet muscles, casting wandering shadows on the glass window.

Then, the tail sank downwards, exposing the torso of the giant thing. Purple blood vessels loomed under the milky white sticky skin, forming countless gurgling pipes on the huge and boundless alien body, and then the outer covering. Scales, carapace, and pitch-black carapace with an oily luster cover the entire exterior of the porthole...

Suddenly, a huge eye, as tall as several Space Marines, appeared in front of the window. The teeth were embedded around the eye, and a large amount of filth accumulated on the inside of the eye socket, making the huge blood-red eyeball even more frightening and nauseating. .

A sour smell of allogeneic hormones and majestic psychic echoes complemented each other and came at the same time.

The next moment, the scene outside the porthole suddenly darkened, and Duncan's voice sounded. Just above Leon Al'Jonson, he was hung high by something and tied tightly.

And Leon's sword is no longer pointed at anyone.

"That's our enemy, us, me and you, and us and your warriors."

The Second Primarch was panting, as if he had just exhausted a lot of energy. A series of strange sounds of chains sounded from near his body, and they collided with every breath he took.

"What do you mean?" The lion could hear the uneasiness in his own words.

"Randan's dominant consciousness..." the second primarch said bitterly, "it wants to hunt you, Leon, not me."

A terrible realization swept through Leon El'Jonson's mind, shaking the foundation of thinking he had built in his heart. He pursed his lips and regained his momentum.

"Do not deceive me, Duncan. It is You who has bound me, killed my warriors, and imprisoned my will. It is my shame to be caught by my prey."

But he had thought too far, as a Primarch always could, their minds quick enough to deconstruct and reveal truths they did not want to accept.

Pictures flashed through Leon El'Jonson's memory.

Those real pictures. After he arrived on this planet, those real enemies, the various aliens that he cut off, the battles that the Silver Angel avoided, and that real injury, the flash that really penetrated his chest...

"It's not me," Duncan replied. "You are too deep in your core and too focused on fighting my warriors... You are injured, Leon. The sneak attack of the dominant consciousness has made your injuries too serious. So, you need to Rest here..."

He paused with difficulty, breathing rapidly, and after a few seconds, he slowly and tremblingly exhaled. A chain fell off his body and fell, dangling next to Leon's face.

It was a chain made of bones, as white as alabaster, with scarlet blood dripping from it.

In the dark shadows, there were still countless bone chains hanging from him, fixing the Second Primarch to it.

“We put you in the cradle, sewed your wounds with flesh and blood, brought you to this collective ocean, and let you sleep peacefully, so that it could not find you.

"No one invades your consciousness, Leon, no one. No matter how much we want to...

"You betrayed your trust, ignored our help, doubted our every move, and killed so many of us. We could have been partners, we could have cooperated! We did not fail you, Leon El'Jonson...

"...but you are still the Primarch of the Emperor, my brother...everything you do is out of loyalty..." Duncan said tremblingly, his tone becoming weak.

"You are protecting me." Leon said.

"Protection," Duncan answered, followed by more murmurs, an echo that lingered around the primarch's voice, forming a torrent of alien despair. "But you'd rather it see you again."

He paused, and then the two Primarchs looked out the porthole together.

"They are coming, my brother," said the Second Primarch, and the rustle of the chains echoed, cold and bitter.