40k: Midnight Blade.

Chapter 680 62. Interlude: Wolf-Lion God (IV)
The annoying yet respectable Fenrisian was humming a low, long, and gentle song, but it sounded like he was holding a sharp blade and rubbing someone's neck.

His voice was not clear, but it was loud enough to penetrate the surrounding snow and reach the king's ears. In fact, to his hearing, the sound that Leman Russ was constantly making with his throat could hardly be blurred by anything.

He heard every syllable and pause clearly, but he was not happy about it because the song was really strange.

The king had certainly heard many songs, some soaring and some mournful, and he was familiar with all styles, including those primal howls that flowed from Fenris to the Milky Way.

The Fenrisian he knew had sung a few songs himself at a feast, before his memory was soaked in blood. They were strange enough, either from the prayers of priests or the roars before battle, but they were nothing like the song he was listening to now.

It should not be sung, nor heard. The king thought so, and a real chill spread in his heart, forcing him to hold the sword more tightly.

Coincidentally, the hunter also dislikes this song, but he accepts it - the reason? The reason is simple, because this song can help him kill better.

The steaming, smelly blood had already covered his entire body, except for his eyes, which were still bright. His blood-stained golden hair occasionally shone in the snow, like ten million sharp swords piled together, dancing ferociously with his movements.

And he felt at this moment as if he had returned to Terra, to the place where everything ended with blood flowing and corpses buried in the ground.

His senses were screaming, honed by countless moments of life and death to the point where they could no longer be more acute, transmitting every detail of his surroundings to him.

The shaking of the ground, the low roar in the snow, the smell, the footsteps, the sound of the wind - the hunter turned his head suddenly, and the five fingers of his right hand tore the air and the snowflakes into pieces, and finally embedded them deeply in a warm and moist eye socket.

The hunter clenched his fists, causing blood and flesh to splatter everywhere. The monster he injured wailed and bent over. There was no muscle on its body that looked weird because of its excessive thinness, as if it was just skin wrapped around bones.

However, even so, it was much taller than the hunter, which was completely different from the demon hit by his bone spear. The hunter did not want to delve into the difference at the moment, he just wanted to kill it as quickly as possible.

Then the blade entered the body, and the sharp blade used specifically for skinning was inserted cruelly from the chest, all the way up, cutting everything in sight along the way.

Once again, hot blood splattered all over his body, and the monster, who had been hurt by him countless times, turned and ran away, using all four limbs and carrying his last knife, wailing and screaming like a stupid child who had been hurt.

The hunter stopped tracking, bent down, grabbed a handful of snow from the ground and wiped it on his face, then walked back with a sullen face.

He had no weapons left.

"I can't kill it." He said this very decisively and then looked at Ruth.

The latter obviously knew the truth about this, but he did not give any answer and remained focused on the work at hand - he was carving some patterns in the snow with the handle of the small axe in his hand.

A small diamond with four lines on the outside and the fifth line dividing it into two, like a simple and abstract eye.

Hunters have seen this pattern on many dead Sixth Legion warriors. They call it an amulet and regard it as a force that can resist or protect them from Chaos.

But the Hunter had launched an investigation, and through the research of the think tanks in his legion, they finally concluded that the exorcism talisman is a kind of endless power in the warp.

In other words, it is no different from the evil powers of Chaos. The Hunter was worried about this, but only for a moment, because he remembered that the Fenrisian who wore this rune on his armor had stood shoulder to shoulder with the Emperor.
He will always remember these things, and now he is the only one who remembers them, so he cannot forget them, not at all, even though every time he remembers them it makes him live again and again.

The hunter's head began to hurt.

It forced him to stare at the face of Leman Russ, a face that, by the Emperor's grace, looked very much like the man he had known, but the man he had known was dead.

They are all dead.

The hunter exhaled a trembling breath of hot air mixed with blood foam, half-knelt in the snow, reached out to grab them and smeared them on his face, without caring about his image at all.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you." Ruth said casually without even looking at him.

He was still concentrating on the task at hand, not slacking off at all, or rather not daring to slack off at all. Every rune that fell glowed slowly, flickering continuously as if it had life.

"What do you mean?" the hunter asked in the coldness brought by the melting snow.

Ruth finally turned his head with a smile.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you." He shrugged. "Well? Do you understand?"

".not yet."

"Well, big guy—"

Ruth couldn't help but smile, and when he spoke again, his voice became serious and earnest.

"——This snow is not the natural reaction product you know. You can use it to calm yourself down now, but after a while, it will drive you crazy. You will lose all your sanity and attack all living things around you until you die, or all living things are torn to pieces by you."

The king interjected grimly, "But we have all been wet by the snow."

Ruth grinned happily and nodded at him: "So now you know the point."

The king took a third deep breath.

"Why?" he asked very briefly.

Ruth waved his hand, lowered his head and went back to his own business, his voice becoming a little absent-minded.

"That's a long story, you're asking me to give you a course in Fenrisian history and mysticism - I'm not a very good teacher, so I'd like you to shut up for a while. You can either try to kill it like he did, or you can stay silent. Do you understand? Shut up until I'm done, my king."

The hunter looked at him, then turned his head to look at the livid king, and uttered a rare mutter of pleasure. Although his rough face remained expressionless, the king could not hide his emotion at this moment.

He raised his sword angrily at the hunter and threw it away.

The hunter reached out and took it, feeling a little surprised.

"Go!" the king roared, and drew a dagger from his waist, his eyes seemed to be blazing with fire. "Since I am staying here to protect the dead man, it will be an eyesore to him, so forget it! I will go with you to meet the devil!"

The hunter said nothing, but waved his sword, nodded, and plunged into the snow, followed by the king. Their footsteps soon disappeared, and only then did Russ release the laughter he had been holding back.

One of the wolves—the one without the spear in its mouth—came over and nudged him with its head. The Fenrisian looked back at it, a little surprised. "Why? You think I shouldn't laugh at them?"

The wolf didn't speak. Its eyes were exactly the same as those of most of the Sons of Fenris, with dark pupils and golden eyes filled with a wild nobility.

Being stared at silently by those eyes, even Leman Russ had to make some concessions.

He sighed, and his sharp canines briefly protruded from his lips in the next few expressions, but eventually returned to where they belonged, without revealing a threatening arc.

"Okay," Ruth said. "You have a point. After all, they are not bad people. I will correct my mistakes and I will not laugh at them anymore."

The wolf shook its head in satisfaction and returned to Lion El'Jonson. It paced around him a few times and suddenly whined at Ruth.

The latter gave a low nasal sound without even turning his head, and the wolf then lay down, stuck out his tongue, and gently licked the skinny cheek of the dead lion.

Its body temperature seemed to be colder than the falling snowflakes, and each of them was rolled up intact by its tongue and swallowed into its stomach.

While it was doing this futile work, the other wolf also lay down, and carefully put the Spear of Dionysus in its mouth into the lion's right hand.

His muscles were already stiff, and it was impossible for him to bend his fingers, but this did not prevent the Spear of Dionysus from staying in his hand with its superior design.

The wind and snow howled, and the wolves whimpered quietly, as if in mourning.

Ruth said nothing, but his hand gripping the axe became tighter and tighter, veins bulging.

The exorcism talismans suddenly lit up in anger.
-
Caryl Rohals opened his eyes.

"You slept for less than twenty minutes."

A voice spoke to him, with a gentle chill. Then came a pale big hand, with distinct fingers, which should be used for artistic work, painting or playing the piano.
Khalil stopped his chaotic thoughts, sat up from the bed, took the black teacup held by the hand, tilted his head back to drink the scalding hot potion inside, and nodded without changing his expression.

Conrad Kozle stared down at him with a half-smile, standing beside the bed like a pale gargoyle.

"You're not going to ask me to learn those elegant arts at my age? These things should be learned early and when they are young, and I've been dead for ten thousand years now, old man."

He asked confidently and said it with no respect, not trying to hide the fact that he knew what Khalil was thinking. However, the person whose privacy was pried into did not get angry at all, but smiled sincerely.

"If you think you have no talent for this, Conrad, I think you can become a doctor."

"Stop talking nonsense, father—"

If you ignore the threatening tone in his voice, the word "father" is quite pleasant to the ear, Khalil thought.

His thoughts were met with an angry snort, but Conrad Kurtz continued speaking: "--How is the situation over there?"

At this time, his tone was full of worry again.

Khalil put down his teacup, stood up, took the judge's coat at the end of the bed and began to tidy up his appearance. He did not answer Curz's question first, but talked about another thing that seemed completely unrelated.

The light was still flickering outside the porthole in his room. The wreckage of the battleship frozen in the vacuum was undergoing its final judgment. The Dark Angels did not intend to allow any of them to remain, lest the power of chaos continue to endanger this area of ​​the universe.

It's cruel and tedious, but necessary.

"Sometimes, Conrad, I have to believe in the word destiny," said Khalil.

At this moment, he had fastened the last button of his collar, which was light gold, matching the blood-colored lining of his coat, forming a strange harmony. His voice was calm and cold—unusually cold, so cold that even the Lord of Night couldn't help but narrow his eyes.

The last time he heard this tone was ten thousand years ago.

“Although I have always hated it and the oppression it brings to human beings, I must acknowledge its existence.”

Khalil slowly turned his head and looked at him. His originally human expression gradually faded away, and the vitality that only belongs to a living person was quickly leaving this body.

The Midnight Haunter looked away, not wanting to look at the distressing sight, but the evil spirit that had existed since eternity continued his story.

Ice began to form inside the room, extremely cold, black ice.

"Countless coincidences, countless seemingly plausible details - who would have imagined that there were so many evil legacies on Fenris? Evil spirits that came to seek revenge in the dark night, corpses that refused to give up the fight, and shamans or priests who believed in primitive beliefs one after another."

His voice became lower and softer, and the beating of his heart in his chest also slowed down.

Conrad Curze finally growled in unbearable pain, forcibly ignoring the boundary between life and death, and grasped the shoulders of the ghost in front of him with both hands.

"Stop talking." The Night Lord gritted his teeth and took a deep breath. "Calm down."

His words seemed more like they were meant for himself, and, logically, this dissuasion should have no effect - but it actually worked.

Caryl Rohals twitched his cheek and gave him a weird smile, and then answered the question he had asked first.

"I think everything is going in the right direction," he said in a deliberately relaxed tone.

Koz lowered his head and stared into his eyes, then after a few seconds he let go of his hand and took two steps back.

"After this is over," he whispered, with a hint of pleading in his voice, "how about going back to Nostramo?"

“It depends on it.”

Khalil said, still smiling strangely, like a hollow shell trying its best to imitate real flesh and blood.

(End of this chapter)