40k: Midnight Blade.

Chapter 691 73. Belated Judgment (Thirty-one)

Fighting the Emperor is like picking up rocks and throwing them at a giant whose shoulders tower over the clouds. You might get a little attention on the ten thousandth rock you throw, but that's about it.

He will see you from heaven, and you are smaller than a speck of dust.

The Chaos Wizard took a brief moment to take stock. He knew he wasn't the one who threw the stone, he wasn't that insignificant, but the truth wasn't much better.

At this moment, he saw the Emperor, just like looking at flowers in the fog, only a hazy outline but no specific shape. If the Emperor was the enemy he wanted to fight, then this situation would be fatal.

But not the Emperor.

The Chaos Sorcerer had known from the beginning that he was not the enemy. The Emperor would kill him, that was certain, but the Emperor was not his enemy.

"You are wrong." The Lord of Mankind said, his voice calm but ruthless.

The wizard looked at him.

"I am no enemy of the Dark Angel Serafax, for he has no sense of your sins. He knows not what you have done, nor has he been twisted by the knowledge you possess."

"Every second he came to Terra was torture. The ruthless gap between reality and the imagined ideal kept tormenting him - he was still loyal, wizard, but you were different."

The wizard whispered in his mind in reply, knowing that the Emperor could hear him.

He thought that loyalty was a broad concept. Self-righteous loyalty or foolish loyalty was far more terrible than any evil. People who were caught up in these two would destroy everything with their self-righteous goodwill.

"You are no different from the former you mentioned."

Maybe, or maybe I'm just not loyal. But I know of some fervently religious worlds that keep lists of heroes and saints from their own history.

They will send the list to the state church, hoping to get recognition and canonization. But the state church almost never responds. As far as I know, since you took office, the state church has only officially dealt with such religious affairs three times. And they did not respond with good intentions.

"The State Church declared them heretics," the Emperor said slowly. "I know. The State Church considered them disloyal and insincere, perfidious and traitors. Not only did they not confer the title, they dispatched fleets to wipe out everything on those three worlds."

They caused a catastrophe for this, the wizard thought. An entire sector was stained with blood, a great horror. I saw it with my own eyes.

"How great?" the Emperor asked. "Greater than the bloody evil you have wrought yourself? How many have you slain, wizard? How many Calibans have burned in your machinations?"

I can't remember. Maybe a thousand, maybe ten thousand, what does it matter?
The wizard frowned.

He thought that these were just things that happened in another timeline. They were just stories, like the stories parents would tell their children when they were young, unreal and distant.

The Emperor shook his head.

"You don't understand," he whispered, more sad than angry. "You don't understand what you've done."

At this point, the wizard finally felt a little confused, but he did not let this confusion affect what he wanted to express.

What I did did not affect here. I did kill many people, but they do not exist in our world. Their deaths are of no consequence to you.

"—irrelevant?" the Emperor interrupted.

The wizard was a little surprised.

This was not his first time dealing with gods. He had seen these beings display their powers, and he had also seen them have moments of joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness like humans. The latter was rare, but he had seen them. Therefore, he knew that gods and humans had a small number of similarities.

They have emotions, but these emotions come from human suffering. In other words, gods laugh, get angry, and cry, but the reasons are incomprehensible to humans, and the manifestations are as distorted as nightmares. If you want to find out the root of it, you can only fall into boundless madness.

But it's different now.

The Emperor's face was filled with disgust and anger, real and authentic, neither abstract nor supernatural. His emotions were real and the reasons were understandable, just like those of ordinary people.

The wizard began to think about this.

He had always regarded the Emperor after the Great Heresy as a pure god. He believed that although He was still protecting mankind, His essence could not be as pure as that of the Lord of Mankind ten thousand years ago.

He had thought that such an Emperor would gladly accept the pure energy he brought and use it in the Eternal War, just as he accepted the psykers who were ignited by the Astronomican.
In that case, even if he died, his goal would be achieved - humanity would win.

The Emperor's disgust became more and more obvious, but he still gave the wizard a firm denial. His voice was like thunder, and his face gradually became blurred, filled with golden light.

"No, you are missing a fundamental fact."

What? The wizard frowned. What did I miss?
"We have not lost," said the Emperor. "The victory of the Battle of Terra was won by Humanity, and therefore there is nothing more we need to do."

"But you have never faced this war squarely. In your perception, humans are the losers, which has led to the rigidification of the empire, the numbness of the people, and the prevalence of darkness."

"You are wrong. The facts are exactly the opposite of what you know. We are the winners. Therefore, there is nothing here for you to change or reverse. Your knowledge and plans have been firmly in the hands of Tzeentch from the beginning. You are just a puppet."

The wizard took a deep breath and finally spoke in his own voice.

"The Astartes and the Auxiliary Army were once willing to serve as pioneers in the establishment of the empire. They followed your orders and crossed the star sea to completely unfamiliar places to expand territory and recover lost territory, even if they had to face countless wars."

"Why? Is it just based on faith in the Primarch, faith in you?"

"That's not the answer. They are willing to sacrifice themselves because they got a new ideal from your words. One that can unite the human race as a whole, so that there is no longer the possibility of being naked, hungry, bullied, oppressed, or even enslaved by aliens."

"But in the ten thousand years since the war, every world I have seen has been filled with pain. The glory of the Great Crusade has faded, and no one lives by the same principles anymore."

"I saw corrupt bureaucrats and administrative systems, I saw civilians starving to death, freezing to death, and dying of disease, I saw the strong and healthy fighting each other in the fighting cages set up by the rich, beating their brains to pieces, just to get a little change that they sprinkled from their fingers."

"We have defeated them before, but they are back again, and they are more deeply rooted than before. Not only that, but aliens are all around us, and there are also demons and evil gods who are greedy and watching us. Is this situation, which is not even as good as before, enough to be called a victory?"

The Emperor looked at him calmly and nodded.

"Why?" the wizard asked sincerely. "By these," said the Emperor.

He raised his right hand and showed the wizard a picture - a picture of war, a collection of victims, every one of them included, without omission.

From Calth to Macragge, from Nostramo to an unnamed asteroid belt, from the far ends of the solar system to the tech labs of Mars.
Finally, there's Tyra.

Uncommanded armed servitors stood in front of the priest to delay time until they could upload the self-destruct protocol to the server terminal.

Explosions sounded, messages were delivered, and a wounded messenger ran across the trenches with difficulty, bringing the order to retreat to a position where no one could stand up. He raised his gun to take over their responsibility, not knowing that not far away there was a squad that swore to live and die with the tank.

Seven minutes after the messenger's death, they were burned to death in the tank by the hellfire summoned by the cultists.

Similarly, the tank crew did not know that at the moment the hellfire was ignited, a pilot who had performed dozens of consecutive missions had flown over their heads.

He had injected too many cardiac stimulants and stimulants, and finally, under extreme fatigue and the warning of fuel exhaustion, he merged with the machine soul and crashed into the ground with the determination to die, causing an explosion and creating a small vacuum in the magic tide.

The waves caused by his death gave the Sisters of Silence a respite, and also allowed them to break into another battlefield. Here, the Eagle of Chogoris and the Sons of the Savior were fighting with no ammunition or food.

The styles of the two legions in the past were different, but they could generally be attributed to winning by speed and bravery. But now it was different. In order to stabilize the front line, they were willing to abandon their past beliefs and fight to the death on the battlefield until the last person was drowned by the demon tide.

Eleven hours after their death, two guards from the Ten Thousand Guards arrived here. Their armor had been damaged in many places, but they were still full of fighting spirit.

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One of them picked up a flag, a united flag, with the marks of the Fifth and Nineteenth Legions. He raised it again from the blood and corpses, and another took the eagle emblem from his belt and hung it on it.

They held there for the next three hours, until the flag fell again, was broken by the devil's claws, and was trampled under the feet of hind hooves covered in human flesh and blood, and crushed hard until it dug into the soil.

But it will be found, and it will be raised again.

One of Terra's defenders, the Lucifer Black Guards, found it and took it back to their own positions to be repaired. The White Scars' symbol was not replaced, nor was the eagle emblem, which was simply given a black and white background.

Their position was eventually engulfed in flames amid the twisted forms of the Word Bearers, and then buried by the collapsed walls. Hours later, a group of Imperial Fists evacuating the lost fortress found it.

They guessed what had happened to the flag, and added a touch of yellow to it. They traveled a long way with it, and found a remnant of the Iron Hands, Salamanders, and Blood Angels. The flag was reforged.

The Iron Hands provided materials, the Salamanders lit a crude fire, and the Blood Angels painted the surface with blood. This army was eventually destroyed right below it. At the cost of death, they blocked enemies that were several times their own number and successfully delayed the support of the Heirs of Mortarion.

The Death Guard picked up the banner from the top of a small hill of friendly corpses.

They could detect the peculiarities of its material, which was very similar to the metals the Iron Hands were used to using. They could also see the forging marks left on the flagpole by the Sons of Vulcan. And on the surface of the flag, the craftsmanship of the Blood Angels would never be forgotten once seen.

Blood soaked it, making black and white, yellow and gray merge into one, and also dyed the eagle emblem with blood, making it scarlet. The soldiers of the 14th Legion swore to it that they would never let it be covered in dust.

The warsmith had struggled forward with it in his hand, throwing it just before the explosion in his breastplate activated. The last remaining Emperor's Child had plucked it from the corpse, laughing as he ran towards another beginning.

Wolves and warhounds once gathered beneath it, roaring their will. Ultramarines and Dark Angels once lifted it high, swearing on their homelands that they would let it - and the dead - see victory.
And now, it was floating before the eyes of the Chaos Sorcerer. It was still stained with blood and mottled, but the flag was much larger. It was placed in a transparent glass case, and all the troops who had fought in the Battle of Terra could find their emblems on it.

The wizard was silent, and the Emperor spoke again. His voice was as thunderous as described in the myths, and his face was also drowned in pure golden light.

You come to God, and you will get God.

"The victory of this war was forged by their fighting, bloodshed and sacrifice. You have never seen all this, so you think they didn't do well enough, so humans will lose."

The god roared in anger.

"But are you qualified to slander them like this? If you associate with darkness, you will fall into darkness sooner or later. The Dark Angel named Serafax died ten thousand years ago. What's left is just a body doing self-righteous hard work."

"But what have you done? Your hands are covered in blood, you slaughtered innocent people, robbed warships, sacrificed lives, summoned demons, and trampled on hope. Lose? Who is the loser? Don't you see clearly? Your master is the loser!"

"You have become His puppet in your own self-righteousness, using Him and usurping worlds for Him, allowing Him to recover from His injuries and reunite His power - and yet you are still so foolish as to not see the truth!"

"Do you think that what you did, the so-called energy you brought, and the souls of these innocent people can help us reverse the outcome of that war? Reverse what? Turn victory into defeat, and let the blood shed by the victims be wasted?!"

The wizard wanted to speak, but the gods did not allow him to. In a trance, he heard a few laughs and the sound of feathers scraping, which he was very familiar with.
Tzeentch seemed to say something, but he refused to listen. Everything in the past came to his mind, and the wizard indifferently searched for the key. He no longer had time to care whether he should feel shame, shock or sadness at this moment.

From the beginning to the end, he had only one goal. But now it seems that this method doesn't work.

Then let’s change it.

He spoke suddenly.

"The timeline of the Battle of Terra cannot be changed, right? Then why don't you kill me?"

Thunder roared and the gods answered.

The wizard slowly exhaled a breath of foul air.

"I see." He muttered to himself. "The Lion is the key, and the First Legion is also the key. Terra needs them to rekindle the Astronomican and allow reinforcements to arrive."

"Wrong, Serafax."

The golden light faded, and the god's ruthlessness and violence all disappeared, leaving only a face full of compassion.

"Everyone is key," the Emperor said. "Like you."

"Me?" The wizard looked at him in astonishment. This was the first time he showed such obvious emotion.

"How many dead Leons have you taken? Do you still have their essences in your hands?"

There was a loud buzzing in the wizard's head, but the Emperor was still looking at him meaningfully.

(End of this chapter)