40k: Midnight Blade.

Chapter 634 17. Interlude: Gods and the Dead (I)

There was a time when Trazyn wished very much that he still possessed the precious treasure of 'feeling', but he never revealed this to anyone.

That wouldn't be necessary, would it? His fellow Necrons would laugh at him, and the barely polite ones would pat him on the shoulder after they finished laughing and tell him -

“We’ve always had that feeling.”

Trazyn chuckled as he uttered these words, shaking his head in a very sarcastic tone.

"Yes, yes, there is always a feeling, but it is just a feeling that is simulated in the neural pathways using various complex signals. In essence, how is this different from deception, Orikan?"

Lying on the side, still twitching, the astrologer muttered a single word: "No."

Trazyn looked at him in surprise. He didn't expect that the astrologer would reach a consensus with him on something so easily.

In the past, this would never happen so easily. The debate between them could even last for centuries. Moreover, the best result was just a bad ending, with no one convincing the other. When they met again, the debate would happen again.

Thinking of this, Trazyn couldn't help but sigh: "This is really sad."

"what do you mean?"

"All of this." The Infinite One shrugged. "When I think about the fact that our empire, and even the rise and fall of our entire race, has to be forged by a fool like you and me, I feel that we are really hopeless."

Hearing his words, the astrologer immediately let out a few sarcastic sneers from the voice generator that was still under repair.

"Don't compare me to yourself, great Trazyn."

Great Trazyn looked at him expectantly, wondering what fresh taunts his crippled old friend would utter with his cadaverous voice--and he was disappointed, for Orikan's arguments remained the same, without any change.

"Although I am not very popular like you, at least I did not shamelessly steal the bodies of my compatriots, use them as substitutes, and then take away everything in their dynasty."

Why should I expect an old dog to learn new things? Trazyn thought regretfully as he listened to him. Then he laughed and didn't even refute.

Now it was Orikan's turn to be surprised. Miraculously, his face, which was far less human than Trazyn's, revealed a visible suspicion, and his single eye began to flicker.

Finally, the astrologer asked suspiciously. He couldn't help it. Trazyn's abnormality aroused his curiosity: "What tricks are you playing?"

Trazyn smiled happily, suppressed the urge to laugh at him, and spoke slowly in a very gentle tone.

"Hey, give me a little credit, ok, old friend?"

Orikan looked at him coldly, then raised his arm. His hand was still healing, the living metal trying hard to repair the fracture, Trazyn had not held back before, which made their work a little difficult.
Trazyn ignored the pitiful situation of the victim displaying himself to the murderer, chuckled and shook her head.

"How could I possibly make you lose face at this moment? It would be of no benefit to our meeting in three hours to undermine your self-confidence."

"Also, by the way, you'd better always remember one thing: that god is very partial."

"eccentric?"

"Yes, he is firmly on the side of humans."

Orikan immediately frowned. Apparently, this answer went beyond a certain limit and he could hardly endure it any longer.

Trazyn, who witnessed his expression at the moment, was too lazy to care about his emotions. What he wanted to do most now was to take a picture as a souvenir - again, the astrologer's face was far less human than Trazyn's.

Most of the time, Trazyn thought his friend looked like a cold, one-eyed iron shell, shrouded in green light, floating cross-legged sitting posture and a series of strange gestures, absurd and ridiculous.

In front of him, the cold one-eyed iron shell growled and spoke.

"Don't tell me that He is as fascinated by humans as you are!"

Trazyn laughed again, not just out of ridicule, but because he understood what Orrickan meant by this.

He shook his head meaningfully. "It seems that you really have erased your memory, old friend. It is really commendable that you astrologers actually allow memory surgery."

"What?" Orikan looked at him suspiciously. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing, I don't want your hard work to go to waste. Let's get back to the point - you'd better correct your adjective, Orikan. He is not fascinated by humans, he just thinks..."

Trazyn paused noticeably. "Well, he thinks he's human, you see?"

Orikan looked at him in silence.

"I'm not kidding," Trazyn added at the right moment, as if she was afraid that Orrickan was not dead yet.

"I'd rather you were kidding me!" The Astrologer growled again. "A being of that level actually thinks that he is a ridiculous, insect-like race like humans?!"

"I don't accept this absurd statement! It's understandable that an idiot like you would be fascinated by them, after all, you are just as stupid as they are, but He would never be like that!"

"It's him."

"what?"

"I am correcting your wording. You should use he, not him."

Trazyn corrected him word by word. He didn't know when the smile disappeared from his face. Instead, he had the deadly coldness that metal should have.

Orikan was extremely puzzled by this. His reason told him that Trazyn would never cheat or joke at this time, but
Trazyn's voice interrupted his thoughts.

"Is it difficult for you to accept reality, Orikan?" The Endless asked sincerely.

"You--" After a sigh, Trazyn began: "Put aside your arrogance, my old friend."

"You know, the insect in your mouth now has the protection of two real gods. Besides, even if you ignore all that, how much worse is their empire compared to ours?"

"Yes, I know what you are going to say—you are just going to say that they are short-lived and superstitious, vulgar and ignorant, and even deeply proud of it. You have made your point so many times that my ears are rusty from hearing it."

"But, you know, Orikan? I've noticed one thing for a long time. Whether it's you or our compatriots, you all have a strange sense of self-importance."

"You saw humans as dirt or worse, but they succeeded us as the new masters of the galaxy, and they may even rise to greater heights."

"Sooner or later, their vast, ossified empire will be united and reorganized into an efficient collective that will surpass our every achievement and step on our shoulders to the outer reaches of the galaxy."

"So if they are lowly maggots, then what are we?"

Trazyn raised his chin proudly and looked at his friend, with only a cruel sneer that was close to hatred on his iron face.

He whispered quietly.

"Don't forget our essence. We were once great, but now we are just a group of decaying dead souls, trapped in the glory of the past and unable to move forward. We deceive ourselves into thinking that we are still alive. In your words, our destiny has been cut short."

"We who came out of the furnace of life are not a race, we are not the product of natural evolution, even a stone has more soul than us. We exchanged it for immortality, so we can no longer make any progress or get any light."

"If that is not enough, then please remember that the glory of our empire is but a veil that will rip at the slightest pull, and your strange self-esteem is so high."

"Ha, to me, this is more like a kind of self-deception that is unwilling to accept reality. How ridiculous."

The Astrologer trembled and clenched his left fist, which was still repairing itself, and hammered hard on the iron table top beneath him. Amid the huge noise, he roared in unbearable pain.

But it was just a roar.

There were no words, no rebuttals, only a helpless venting. He was breathing heavily as if he were alive, his iron body was constantly rising and falling, and the artificial sound source coming out of the speaker was really ridiculous and sad in Trazyn's eyes.

He wanted to laugh, but couldn't. Somehow, what he actually did was the opposite of what he wanted to do. He approached—Tarazyn approached Orikan and extended his right hand toward him.

"And now, we finally have a chance." Facing the gaze of the One-Eye, the Endless One spoke calmly. "It may even be our only chance."

After a few seconds, his right hand was grabbed.

"But how can you guarantee that this time won't be like last time?" his old friend whispered.

Trazyn did not answer the question, but laughed, a laugh that made it seem as if Orrickan was an idiot.

Time passed quickly amid the astrologers' annoyance. They adjusted their manners, put on new unnecessary decorations and cloaks, and stood one after another in the lower interior of the nameless ship.

The special properties of living metal have allowed Orikan to fully recover from the serious injuries of losing his limbs. He holds a starburst staff in his hand and leans it against himself without any threat.

Unlike him, Trazyn carried no weapons, and even though Orrickan had protested strongly - "You should at least pay attention to etiquette. It's too ugly to be empty-handed!" - he didn't care at all.

Being in front of a god doesn't mean you have to kowtow, at least that's what Trazyn thought. Moreover, the god he was going to see might not like to see others kneeling on the ground and worshiping him devoutly.
If possible, he would probably prefer to see his existence forgotten.

That's great. The Endless sighed to himself. If all gods were like this, how much trouble would we save?
"Have you ever thought about installing a light source here?" Orikan suddenly asked, with complaint obvious in his voice.

"Yes, but I temporarily turned them all off." Trazyn answered leisurely. "Don't ask why, you will know later. There are only fifteen seconds left."

The Astrologer snorted coldly and loosened his hand. The anti-gravity unit placed at the bottom of the staff began to take effect, causing it to float up and float behind him.

He bent down with great effort, trying to make himself look extremely humble under the torture caused by his unhealed injuries and the error in his neural pathways.

Trazyn sighed respectfully and almost wanted to kick him to the ground.

Never mind. He thought. Orikan has been so stupid for a long time anyway.
As he taunted them unspokenly, the darkness in front of them began to surge. The visual sensor units began uploading errors one after another without stopping.

The ground was frosted, and the temperature was so cold that even the basic functions of the Shroud-class cruisers began to shut down. Trazyn waited in silence—he didn't see any black flames, so he wasn't nervous, but he would be kidding himself if he said he didn't care.

He kept telling himself: You are ready, you know what you have to do, the future that the Necrontyr has cut off for countless years now rests on your shoulders, you must stay calm.
Then the gods appeared.

There was no sound, no movement, he didn't even appear from the darkness. He just stood calmly in front of Trazyn and Orikan, as if he had been here since morning and had never left.

There was a sudden and brief error in Trazyn's thought process, and an idea that did not belong to logical thinking slowly emerged.

He felt that the gods might have been standing here waiting even before the word time was invented and before the raw materials of ships were born.

Who are you waiting for? Me?

Following his old habit, Trazyn took a deep breath and spoke: "You are here."

The god nodded and said nothing. Trazyn was rarely troubled by this, but he continued: "I, Trazyn of the Necrontyr, and he, Orikan of the Necrontyr, would like to extend my sincere greetings to you."

I'm mentally ill, Trazyn thought after she said this. If I were still alive, I'd be a drooling lunatic rolling around right now - why am I making this pointless greeting?
He regretted it deeply, but the god didn't care and just made a direct gesture to continue. Trazyn understood what he meant and he also wanted to continue, but...how could he continue?
Under the weight of this doubt, Trazyn made a move that he himself did not expect - he turned his head to look at Orikan who was behind him, then slowly took a step back, signaling the astrologer to take over.

Orikan's single eye flickered several times at a high frequency, and then he spoke with difficulty: "We."

"Agreement." The god reminded considerately.

"Yes, the agreement!" Trazyn suddenly said loudly. "Oh, the agreement!"

He slapped his forehead.

(End of this chapter)