Warhammer: In the Name of Ashes

"What about you? Where are you going?"

Among the piles of blue-gray rocks, Marsh was leading his team towards the back of the canyon. An icy stream flowed unobtrusively not far from the team, and the stone edges crushed by the sliding glacier scratched the paint of the ceramic armor from time to time. layer.

The high-altitude landform brings a changeable climate, and also breeds a rich ecological environment in the entire Fermara Mountains. Half an hour ago, it was a sunny canyon, and now a few snowflakes have fallen.

Marsh, who was at the front of the team, occasionally looked up at the glaciers in the distance, but in his heart he was still recalling the conversation just before they separated.

"Us?" Helm raised his head and looked at his comrades around him, then looked at Luger and said to Marsh:

"We? Of course we have to stay as bait! Otherwise, how could they continue to invest troops?

There won't be many enemies where you go, but the loopholes in that fortress must be plugged before the company can send reinforcements. "

Helm's words stood out in front of him, but Marsh had deep doubts about them.

Will there really be reinforcements? Marsh had no hope.

After coming into contact with the command data links of the hunting group and the company, he already knew that they themselves were the last unit to provide mobile support...

But this is still a secret to the soldiers, and the veterans in the hunting group do not want this information to spread among the soldiers, so Marsh cannot discuss it with his comrades, and the burden of this emotion should not be on the wolf pups. responsibility.

Ha... Marsh shook his head slightly and laughed at the changes in human nature.

He was only two hours away from being promoted, but at this time, he was looking at this issue from a critical and protective perspective, as well as the comrades around him who were once Blood Claws.

Snow flakes were still falling quietly, and Marsh watched the crystal clear ice crystals falling and melting on the power armor as he walked, thinking about these complex issues in a trance.

"Someone has changed..." Mitchell's voice broke the silence in the team's communication channel more than ten meters behind him. Also a Bloodclaw, he was Marsh's partner in the Wolf Fang era, and was also the main force responsible for close combat in this makeshift team.

"Yes! Yes!" Alyochev, who was further away, echoed Mitchell's words and was leaping over a boulder with a heavy bolter on his back.

"I'm so envious!" Burrows also picked up on the ridicule of Marsh from his comrades. He kept the heavy ammunition box he was carrying at his feet and simply stopped and shouted loudly in the valley.

Marsh looked back with a smile. The rocky beach in the canyon was sharp and ferocious, just like the fate they faced, and the queue of comrades was like a thin line, connecting each other in this cruel environment.

Further away, there were five small figures advancing in the canyon, and together with Hobson who was nearest behind them, they were the entire team.

Hobson, who was also a Gray Hunter, was as shy as ever, just smiling and watching his comrades use activity to ease Marsh's mood.

He was much older than Marsh, and naturally he was not recruited at the same time as these Blood Claws, but this did not hinder his understanding of the new recruits.

Just like the countless hours he spent with his brothers in Fenris:

The wind and snow outside Wolf Fang Castle will never stop, but in the corner of the castle where the wind and snow are howling, the wolf cubs drink alcohol from the campfire and fight among their companions, which always makes people feel a little warm.

It wasn't until Marsh looked at him that the silent warrior asked softly:

"So, what is our Lord Marsh worried about? Isn't an early promotion enough to make you happy?"

"Of course not, I just..." At this moment, Marsh returned to the state of a new recruit. He tried to defend himself with a little embarrassment, but he couldn't reveal his true feelings to the brothers who grew up together.

And how could Hobson embarrass his colleagues?

His goal has actually been achieved. Although he can't be as close to Marsh as his brothers, it is always a good thing to make Marsh feel more relaxed through dialogue.

"Oh, then don't explain." Hobson did not pursue him, but while walking around a stone the size of an armored personnel carrier, he pointed at a medal held tightly in Marsh's hand and asked:

"Compared to your expression, I am more interested in that thing. Do you know what it does? Where did dad get this thing?"

"I don't know..." Marsh looked at the huge stone medal in his hand and fell into thinking and doubt. This thing, like the power sword behind him, was given to him by Captain Rook and his father Helm. Gift before leaving.

"Dad just said that this thing was given by the brothers in Shining Armor. If we have a situation that we can't handle, we can try to use it to solve it."

"Hey! It's so mysterious! Isn't it?" Mitchell joined the conversation in the communication channel in the distance, and Alekchev and Barros followed immediately.

"Have any of you heard of them? I heard that the alpha wolf has seen their leader, and..." Barros asked the other brothers with a mysterious look.

"Don't hear about it!" Hobson was much stricter when facing these Blood Claws. Especially when it came to the Gray Knights, many issues became particularly cautious.

And they were still in a battlefield environment, so after noticing Hobson's rare seriousness, Burrows also shut his mouth.

The group of people are all Astartes who have undergone transformation surgery, and their walking distance is naturally not comparable to that of ordinary people.

It only took a little more than two hours to cover the distance of tens of kilometers. As the sky was getting dark, the huge outline of the glacier was already in front of us.

The people in the team had begun to get nervous because they didn't know if enemies had appeared here. To be on the safe side, the team entered combat mode during the last twenty kilometers.

After the ten-person combat team assembled, they began to move forward in parallel according to the firepower configuration. At this time, Marsh was unable to grasp everyone's position and could only confirm it from time to time through tactical habits and communicators.

Hobson has also disappeared long ago. This is how the sniper wants to enter the edge of the battlefield in advance. The optical camouflage cloak barely revealed any trace against the dusk, but Marsh still instinctively knew his general direction.

The forwards kept exploring but found nothing unusual. As time went by, the team's position got closer to the spire of the glacier. Except for the occasional password confirmation, the only sound on the silent communication channel was the breathing of the helmet's air grille.

"Nothing unusual!" Barrows, the leading soldier at the front, reported. His tone during wartime was completely different from his usual chatter.

Marsh could hear the doubts and uneasiness in his words, because this uneasiness came earlier in his heart...

The snow had stopped, but for some reason Marsh's heart became even more nervous.

boom!

Under the sudden roar of bolters, all team members instinctively moved closer to the bunkers around them.

A special bolt shell with a purple flame tail was shot into the sky from the blind spot of fire on the left front of the team.

The visual enhancement nerve allowed Marsh to track the trajectory of the bullet throughout the entire process, but the bullet in the eyepiece had no effect other than emitting some obscure radiation.

"Fluorescent bomb No. 559!" Hobson's voice sounded in the communication channel, but then fell silent with a cry of pain.

559? Fluorescent bombs? what is that? The unfamiliar information caused Marsh to pause momentarily. And a bullet aimed at his head was dodged because he stopped unexpectedly.

The text on the eyepiece screen is displayed line by line. The servo that used to feel like there was no delay now seems cumbersome and laggy.

The automatic identification system was still retrieving information from the database, but Marsh, who was fighting back and dodging at the same time, felt a bone-chilling coldness overflowing from his soul while reading this information between battles.

No. 559 special fluorescent bomb, a special ammunition used by a few legions during the Great Expedition and developed and equipped by Mars under the needs of infiltration and counter-infiltration operations.

This ammunition has only one effect, and the effect is extremely difficult to achieve.

Its principle is to use the radiation emitted by special radioactive elements in the projectile to conduct large-scale battlefield identification of units carrying or contaminated with certain media.

The environmental conditions for this medium to be effective are so harsh that during the Great Crusade, legionnaires rarely found an atmospheric environment that met the conditions for use.

Therefore, in the last ten years of the 200-year Great Crusade, the entire production line of this ammunition was dismantled, with the consent of all the Forge Deputy Superintendents, personally presided over by Harbor, the then Forge General of Mars.

Due to conflicts in combat modes, the Astartes Chapters on the Imperial side rarely have stocks of this ammunition. Especially after the Raven Guard left, this ammunition has long disappeared from the Empire's weapons list.

But now they met, and the user of this ammunition was obviously not a friendly force.

What frightened Marsh the most was the end of this note:

A line of red Gothic font clearly states the chemical properties of this medium - water-soluble and volatile (it will expire in 30 seconds if the temperature is above ten degrees Celsius).

This is such a simple and cold word. It not only answers Marsh's doubts, but also erases the last bit of luck in his heart.

He instantly understood the battlefield logic of this ambush - snow!

It was the snow that covered the entire canyon! The remaining sanity in Marsh's brain was almost defeated by this news!

This inconspicuous snowfall turned out to be a trap prepared by the enemy for them, but he knew nothing about it and actually led his brothers into the center of the trap!

Hoffman's injury has a reasonable and cruel explanation here. After a long journey of dozens of kilometers, the power armor of the entire team, without exception, was covered with snow water containing this medium.

And Helm and the others!

Can they detect the conspiracy behind this snowfall?

Can they react in advance from this hidden malice?

30 seconds, a short but fatal time.

Marsh instinctively sent this message over the communication channel, and risked being locked out of the communication channel to send a clear warning to the rear positions.

But he also clearly understands that in a confrontation with Astartes supermen of the same level, these few seconds are the key to life and death, victory or defeat...

It was too late, even if the number of enemies was not much different from them.

At the first sight of the battle, half of Marsh's teammates fell. Although the remaining soldiers escaped the fatal sniper kill, they were also injured per person.

The icons of his comrades in the communication channel were extinguished one by one, but he could only use the weapon in his hand to fight back in vain.

Barros was the first person to fall, and whether it was luck or misfortune, he used the melta bomb in his hand before he died to bring the same death to the sneak attacker.

Marsh had no time to mourn for him, even though he knew that with the rise of the plasma flame, he would lose this brother forever, and it was impossible to even retrieve the gene seed.

Then there was Mitchell. He tried to get close to the enemy, but was hit by multiple bolt rounds during the charge. The honeycomb-like breastplate couldn't stop his heroic roar, but a burst of red plasma completely melted his head.

His headless body fell heavily on the glacier of the Fermara Mountains. He will never return to the snowfields of Fenris, and will never make that kind smile to Marsh again. .

Alyochev also died. With his heavy bolter that he had just cheated from his mentor, he was killed by the enemy's sniper gun while forcibly shooting at the enemy to cover Mitchell.

Although he successfully completed his revenge for Mitchell before his death, Marsh did not feel any satisfaction in his heart. Two ferocious Corrupted Astartes fell not far in front of him, but the anger brewing in Marsh's heart only grew more.

It was his fault, but he had to bear it with his brother's blood.

This was his sin, but fate allowed him to survive.

The angry blood pumped to the extreme in his heart, and the wolf spiral in his blood was violently shattering and reorganizing; the surging murderous intent burst the corners of his eyes, and bloody tears fell from them.

"Ruth!" A howl that didn't sound like a human voice came out of his mouth. It was unclear how much hate and how much love was in this call.

Marsh, whose muscles swelled with blood, jumped up from behind the rock, holding the big sword given to him by Luke with his arms raised high.

The two Word Bearers cautiously approached him at cross-shooting angles, unable to react in time to the huge change between their elbows and armpits.

There was only a gray shadow rushing in their field of vision, and in the pupils of the head that flew high in the next second, there was only an unprepared look of astonishment, and a ferocious face with lips propped up by canine teeth.

A dozen steps away, another Word Bearer was holding a plasma pistol and taking aim frequently, but no matter how many times he tried to lock the target, the gray figure always crossed the crosshairs one step ahead of him.

Bullets were still being fired at each other on the battlefield, and within a millisecond of fighting, people on both sides fell.

bass!

The decomposition stance cut into the metallic sound of the ceramite breastplate, and the Word Bearer's upper body slowly slipped from his waist.

Just as Marsh, who was gasping for breath after landing, raised his head and continued to look for the target, an extraordinarily tall shadow slowly walked out from the spire of the glacier, carrying a sniper bolter.

"That's interesting!" A growl-like roar came from the giant's mouth, but his alienated throat made his words more like a howl.

He casually threw the bomb on his waist at his feet, and his steps towards Marsh showed that he wanted to have some fun for himself at the end of the battle.

This is a giant with a height of over 2.8 meters, which is rare even among Astartes supermen.

The ferocious and twisted sharp horns extend on his helmet and shoulder armor that have been completely integrated with his body, and complement each other with his hands that are also twisted into giant claws.

But the Colchis text originally used to praise the emperor was now filled with blasphemous curses all over his body.

"Death!" Marsh brandished his heavy sword and fought with the Word Bearer.

The power swords and claws were waving, causing the two people's armor and power armor to be damaged at an alarming speed. Driven by electromagnetic muscles and demonic power, shoulder collisions, elbow strikes, knee strikes and even head cones were all struck by the two giant beasts. Use it without any scruples.

The difference in size brings absolute suppression in strength, and with the same experience and skills, the difference in strength means absolute suppression.

With a height of nearly 2.5 meters, Marsh was quite majestic among his companions, but he still looked weak in front of this enemy who was a head taller than him.

His wildness and anger allowed him to exert his martial arts to a super level, and this was only the reason why the battle could continue.

Finally, at a certain moment, the crackling molecular blade was captured by the giant claws in the cry.

In Marsh's yellow wolf eyes, tiny cracks on the power sword appeared at the same time as the enemy's other giant claw.

Boo!

A gunshot in the distance saved his defeat. Marsh took the opportunity to distance himself, and the giant put down the claws covering his face.

The twisted warhead smoked and fell from the back of the giant claw's hand. Hobson, who tried his best to fire the shot, used all his strength to remind his comrades:

"Use that medal!"

"Medal?" Marsh subconsciously reached for his hand to his waist, and the Word Bearer also noticed the inconspicuous stone.

The finger stained with the devil's blood felt a severe burning sensation the moment it touched the stone, and the cross-shaped medal that was stimulated began to emit an incandescent light from the inside out!

On the ridge dozens of kilometers away, the wild wolves supporting from the rear were moving forward with a small team of Gray Knights.

When the medal was activated, all the Gray Knights sensed it and stopped instantly.

The clear perception marked Marsh's location in the minds of the Gray Knights, and the demon standing not far from Marsh was instantly locked by the Legion's will!

Buzz!

A more dazzling light penetrated the barrier of physical space and shot from the medal to the demon, while the demon used the runes on its body to make its final resistance in the black smoke.

In the war at the soul level, it struggled to maintain its connection with the real world. When the confrontation reached its peak, even the source of its power was weighed on the balance of victory and defeat.

A cold gaze descended from the distant starry sky, making it instantly feel the fear of being stared at by a giant beast.

Countless souls condensed behind that gaze, and amid the rebuke of "You are a heretic", this miserable slave of Chaos felt the darkness at the end of his life.

"A little sleepy……"

These were the last words spoken by the fallen Marsh when the vanguard of the Gray Knights and Wild Wolves felt the battlefield.

Update, if you don’t want to delay the pace, let’s post the two-in-one together.