40k: Midnight Blade.

Chapter 790 11. The Limit of Hatred (Part 7, k)

He didn't know where he was, nor could he recognize the surrounding scenery. He only felt that the sky was as red as blood, but he actually had no eyes. He had lost his sight and hearing since a long time ago. Despite this, he knew that someone had placed a mirror in front of him, and in the mirror was a shrunken skin.

This skin was very strange. It had hands and feet but no face. Its chest was wide open but its heart was not visible. It was tied up with something like a torture device and was kneeling on the ground, unable to move.

As he looked, he suddenly realized: it once had these, but they were all taken away.

Who did this? Who took these? he wondered.

No one answered, but the skin in the mirror slowly raised its head. It had no eyes, but he felt it was crying; it had no mouth, but he felt it was screaming.

It was all so confusing. He didn't understand, he didn't comprehend, he didn't even know how long he had been here.

He turned away from the mirror and looked toward the world, but it was nothing. The sky was blood red, the ground was bare, no vegetation was visible. Everything that had ever lived was gone, and so was everything that had never lived, even death itself.

There was nothing here but him and it.

So he had to turn back and look at the mirror again.

The thing in the mirror was still looking up at the sky. The heavy shackles dug deep into its wrists, the dark spikes that were close to its ankles pierced through both of its feet, and the cold collar, which was full of spikes, was stuck around its neck, leaving it covered in blood.

The skin trembled.

It had no eyes, but it was shedding tears; it had no mouth, but it was screaming. And he saw it and heard it. An indescribable feeling gradually spread from his fingertips to his whole body. Every bone, every blood vessel, every inch of his flesh and blood was truly saturated with this feeling.
But, my God, how could he describe it, how could he describe it?

In just a moment, he was defeated. Like the skin bag, he also fell to his knees, staring at the sky, and let out a silent howl.

Then he woke up.

The firelight shone on a man's face, a bloody, exhausted face with a gleam of gold between his brows. He spoke to a dozen other men in similarly gray armor, and around them were hundreds of ragged, dusty dwarves.

Compared to them, the dwarves looked so small that he almost didn't notice them at first, until one of the dwarves clasped his hands and began to mutter to himself, and that sound attracted his attention.

"God Emperor, Lord of Mercy, please save us. Please free us from this sea of ​​suffering, bring us back to your light, and make us—"

"--Praying is useless." The man with golden marks carved between his eyebrows turned his head and said to him.

He stared at the man, then walked towards him. The crowd parted to make room for him, allowing him to walk unimpeded to the man.

They looked like two completely different creatures, and the contrast was so terrifying when they faced each other—one was tall, the other was short; one was strong, the other was thin; one was extremely calm, the other was trembling with fear.
"The Emperor cannot save you." The man spoke very calmly and patiently. "He is not here now. He is fighting the darkness for us in a place far more terrifying than here. Therefore, he cannot save you. Now, there is no God here. There are only demons and traitors in your hometown. What are you going to do?"

The man looked at him with a blank expression, his mouth slightly open, as if he had no idea what he was saying, so he patiently repeated it.

"What are you going to do?"

He asked, then reached out and grabbed the man's right hand, gently exerting force to open his clasped palms. The action was very gentle, even too gentle, and he treated the man as if he were a fragile porcelain.

"me"

"You don't know the answer, so let me tell you: You can only fight or surrender. There are only these two choices, do you understand?"

He continued to explain to the man in a heavy tone.

"But you should know what will happen if you surrender. You've seen how those traitors treat them. They have prepared thousands of different tortures to torture you. If you surrender like those people, do you think they will let you go? No, I don't think so. So, what will they do? Hang you up and drain your blood, or skin you and throw you into the fire to burn you to death? I don't know the answer, because they can do anything. To put it bluntly, they hate you."

The man's legs trembled at what he said, and he almost immediately wanted to kneel down and beg for mercy, hoping to win the forgiveness of the man in front of him - but this was not what the man wanted, so he reached out and helped the man up, forcing him to stand up straight and stand in front of him.

"They hate all of us," he whispered. "They want to kill us all. So there's no point in surrendering."

His words seemed to inject a false hope into this trembling, humble, wavering man, a question stuck between his shaky sanity and his throat that was about to vomit, and it kept echoing.

Finally, it became a shuddering, tiny sound that echoed in the darkness.

"Fight?" the man asked cautiously.

The man shook his head mercilessly.

"We will die as well. The traitors have tens of thousands of times more power than us, and they have captured the last bastion on your world. This means that we have nowhere to stay. No more strong fortifications, shelters, routes to retreat, and no more support. In fact, I think we are the last ones left alive."

In just a moment, the man collapsed, as if all his bones had been pulled out.

He fell so fast that he made almost no sound when he landed, like a feather. He opened his eyes wide in sorrow and despair, fell to the ground and curled up, covering his face and sobbing like a baby.

why?
Broken words came from behind his tightly closed palms, but the man ignored them. He bent down ruthlessly and pulled the man up again.

"Because I don't want to see your souls devoured."

He said this, then looked around, his eyes like lightning, scanning every face covered in dust and blood.

"To surrender is to die, to fight is also to die. You may ask, what is the difference between the two? The difference is here, citizens of the Empire of Coranda IV. The difference is here. If you surrender, you will die in torment and torture, but death is not the end."

His voice suddenly became louder.

"chaos!"

—He shouted the word like thunder.

It gradually spread out among the rocks and darkness, losing its original form bit by bit. People were surrounded by it in fear, listening to it slowly distorting, becoming neither human voice nor any sound that could be produced in nature.

The word thus became a third type of existence.

"The Chaos Enemy will devour the souls of all of you, and none of them will be spared. I pledge my name to you that none will escape or survive. Death by surrender is not the end, but only the beginning of another eternal torment."

The man retracted his gaze and focused on the man again.

He stood there with a pale face. The cold sweat had stopped flowing, and neither had his tears. He just stood there stupidly, leaning on the man's arm, like a soulless and mindless puppet.

So the man lowered his head, approached him, looked him in the face, and was going to continue. He did not give the man any chance to recover, and his actions were more cruel than their enemies, designed to completely destroy the man's will and desire to live.
But what he said was completely the opposite.

"Go and fight," he said word by word. "It is true that the Emperor loves the brave, but it is also not entirely true. He is watching us, but the universe is vast, and He has more places to look after than you and I can imagine, so you must find a way to let him see you."

"Some people use devout faith, some people use fearless dedication, but I see that you have neither, so you can only fight. This is the only way. You fight, you die, and your soul will be watched by him and ascend to his throne to obtain peace and protection."

"But, but I was just a clerk before, I didn't know how to--" the man said tremblingly.

"——It doesn't matter."

The man told him calmly, then pulled out a dagger from his waist and put it into his hand. To him, it was a dagger, but to the man, it was simply a machete.

"what's your name?"

"Ogson," the man answered timidly, his hands unconsciously grasping the dagger tightly.

"Very good, I am Angor Tai, the Chapter Master of the Last Sons." He nodded slightly. "Now listen to me, fighting is human nature, one of our instincts. It exists in your body and blood, you don't need to know how to fight or learn it, you should be born knowing how to fight. From ancient times to the present, we have always survived by fighting."

"If you really can't, then think about what Miranda 4 was like in the past. Think about what the world was like eight months ago. Think about your family and friends, your lover and children, everyone you know."

The man who called himself Angel Tai suddenly spoke in a louder tone, almost like a roar.

"And now they are all dead, Augson! All of them are dead! They were skinned, beheaded, disemboweled, their organs ripped out, their bones broken, and they died wailing in the flames of hell! Even their souls cannot rest in peace! They will suffer forever in the torment of demons and nightmares, and cry out forever!"

He slowly exhaled a breath of cold air, and in silence, slowly raised his hand and patted the man's shoulder.

".But you can avenge them. Even if you only kill one traitor, their souls can be comforted a little."

Augson's face flushed so red that it seemed as if his blood vessels had burst. He ground his teeth with a clattering sound and nodded heavily.

The crowd fell silent, and after several seconds, someone joined him. It was a woman, thin and withered. She bent down and picked up a stone from the ground, holding it in her hand, not caring at all that its sharp edges had cut her palm.

Blood flowed out, blurring the dark surface of the stone, and the woman raised her right hand silently.

The second hand soon followed, and then the third, and the fourth.
A few minutes later, the man who called himself Anger Tai led the people wearing armor like him out of the dark place first. The short people followed closely behind, they were still scared to death, some of them couldn't even walk steadily, but none of them stopped.

And he watched it all in confusion, still not understanding.

Frankly speaking, these things and words even frightened him—instinctively frightened—as if once he understood the true meaning, something horrible would happen. Seeking benefits and avoiding harm is one of the instincts of living things, so he didn't want to read on.

His voice seemed to be heard, and in the blink of an eye, he was back under the scarlet sky again. The mirror was still there, but the object in the mirror was more violent than ever before.

It struggled violently, ignoring the torture of the instruments on its body, and swung the chains that bound it, making a loud bang. The horrible spiked collar made a strange creaking sound to punish it, like a twisted laugh, and the rusty spikes followed closely and drilled into the body of the leather bag, constantly rotating and starting to hurt it.
Blood and flesh splattered, and it was in great pain, but it still stood up regardless - it resisted, endured, and persisted, walking step by step to the edge of the mirror and facing him with its featureless face.

He felt it was looking at him, so he stepped back in fear, trying to avoid this suddenly crazy thing.

Seeing this, the skin bag seemed to collapse. It shook its head in despair, and suddenly lost its energy. It was dragged back by the chain, and fell to its knees again, not moving anymore.

After an unknown amount of time, he approached the mirror again.

The skin bag slowly raised its head.

It had no eyes, but he felt it was staring at him. "What do you want?" he asked, suppressing his fear.

It doesn't speak - of course, how could it speak? It has been stripped of everything except this empty shell. Whatever it was, whatever it once was, it no longer exists.
Therefore, his question was not answered, and only a growing doubt remained. He stepped back in confusion, turned his back, and no longer paid attention to the mirror and it.

After a while, he felt a little tired, so he sat down and closed his eyes. Unconsciously, he seemed to fall into a state between consciousness and unconsciousness. When he opened his eyes again, the world had changed again.

He saw a familiar face - he had seen him not long ago.

"I'm going to die soon," said Angel Tay.

This time, he was not wearing armor, just a robe. He was standing in a room full of rivets and metal, which looked more like a cell than a place to live and rest.

He looked around curiously. Compared with the void under the blood-red sky, this place should be hundreds of times better. But his observation did not last long, because he suddenly found that there was also a mirror in front of Angel Tai.

Although it was much smaller than his own and did not reflect a strange and terrifying figure, he still immediately became alert and turned around to leave.

"I don't know if you can hear me or not. But I, I have tried my best."

Angel Tai's voice suddenly slowed down his running pace. He turned around, not knowing what was going on, and almost thought that the other party was talking to him.

The person in front of the mirror slowly raised his hand and pressed the center of his eyebrows.

"Please believe me, I really tried my best. I did my best to continue the Legion. Although I sealed up a lot of history, this is the best choice. With the hermits, some of them will always know the truth, even though that truth may destroy everything they believed in their previous lives."

He staggered and lowered his head, then raised his hands to the wall to support himself. After a few seconds, he raised his head, stared at the mirror, and spoke again.

"I have been a vessel for almost two hundred years. The bat warned me that blood would change me, and would gradually turn me from a vessel into a carrier. He was not lying. I can vaguely feel it now. If I don't take action, I'm afraid it will soon completely merge with me."

Angel Tai lowered his head. After a long while, a voice as soft as a whisper slowly sounded.

"So I must die," he said, raising his left hand and gently stroking his brow. "I can't live, or you'll never come back."

"I found a successor for myself. Don't worry, it's not Batusa, nor that old bastard the Hermit. His name is Hevolon Faan. I have observed him for seventy-six years. To be honest, even if he was thrown back to our time, there wouldn't be many people in the legion who could do better than him, at least not me. When I was his age, I was thinking about making achievements. He is far better than me. The Last Son will get better development under his command."

Angel Tai stood up straight, put down his hands, looked at himself in the mirror, and his expression gradually calmed down.

"I don't know if you can hear me." He paused. "Anyway, I'm going to die tomorrow. Just like that, I haven't let you down."

His figure and the room disappeared, and darkness swallowed him. The fear remained, but this time there was something else, but he didn't have time to think about them, because the next scene had already arrived.

"In the name of Aurelion!" a voice roared madly.

He looked in the direction of the sound in astonishment, not daring to believe that this was a sound that could be made by a human being - even though he actually had no idea what a human was, and didn't even understand why he had such a thought.
He found it, found the roaring man in a sea of ​​fire and brimstone and waist-deep blood, his face covered in blood.

The armor he wore was eight points similar to Anger Tai's, with only some changes in the paint, but it didn't matter now, because no matter how impressive it looked before, it was now covered with endless damage and blood.

"I despise your existence!" the roaring man continued. "You are a bunch of traitors, scum and cowards! You don't deserve to live!"

Who are you talking to? He was almost shocked because he was the only one left here besides this crazy person.
This man waded through the sea of ​​blood with a weapon in hand, looking for an opponent and roaring constantly - who was he so angry about?
Not important anymore.

Soon, the madman also disappeared. He had just memorized his horrible image, which disappeared into the darkness just like Ingres Tay before him.

But I don't know your name yet, he thought blankly.

It didn't matter anymore, it didn't matter anymore. There was always something more waiting in the darkness, and the light attacked him and dragged him to a place of splendor.

Where is this place? Of course he didn't know. These questions, these things that kept coming one after another, never stopping, and never stopping.
There are people.

There were many people. Sometimes they were covered in wounds, sometimes they were fully dressed. Their appearance was generally similar, and they all had the same determination and decisiveness. They fought in many places, bled or died in many places. Sometimes there were good results, sometimes not.
A lot of the time there isn't.

Many times, they are just trying to save other people who have nothing to do with them.

Who are you? What are your names?
Questions like these filled his head, crowding out everything. The tearing pain gave rise to fear, and the fear came back, forcing him to scream unconsciously - what was this feeling? He felt as if he was about to explode, and in order to relieve it, he even began to kneel on the ground and repeatedly punched his head.

He didn't know what this feeling was yet, he didn't have the words to describe it but he could try.

In a trance, amid the dull sound of fists hitting skulls, he came up with a sentence that perfectly described how he felt at the moment.

A million times the pain.

What is a million times? What is pain? More questions came, rushing in, turning into blood-red spots floating in front of his eyes.

He screamed, tears streaming down his face - how could this happen? Stop, I beg you to stop.
The more he wanted to know the answer, the more he tried to think, the more intense the pain became. One million times, two million times, ninety-nine million nine hundred and ninety-nine million times.
Slowly, it reached its limit and then crossed it.

In an instant, everything came back to me.

He knelt on the ground covered in blood, looking up at the sky. He had no eyes, but he could see the blood red; he had no mouth, but he had to scream.

He remembered, remembered everything, but it was too late. This was just a drop in the ocean of countless reincarnations. He had remembered this countless times, but he would eventually forget it.
The mirror in front of him reflected a heartless body.

It’s me. It’s me. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

He thought so with his last remaining consciousness. He didn't even have time to shed tears.

Darkness came over him, engulfing him, and the torturers began to destroy him impatiently.

A few seconds or hundreds of thousands of years later, all of this was cleared, and a new him staggered across the void, seeing the blood-red sky and a mirror, and the skin in the mirror.

"What do you want?" he asked fearfully.

The skin didn't answer, the collar tightened with a creak, and the spikes laughed twistedly.
-
Angron opened his eyes and slowly turned his head.

"Did you see it?" he asked the mortal sitting next to him.

The latter nodded and hummed. His expression was calm, like a fake person.

Angron closed his eyes. He really wanted to look at this familiar yet completely unfamiliar man again, but he had to close his eyes for the time being. The nails were gnawing at him, venting his anger for what he had just done.

Over the years, even though he had stopped drilling down, it had become a part of him. During the last examination, the pharmacist was even shocked to tell him that the Butcher's Nail had replaced several of his vertebrae in disguise. He immediately asked the Primarch to perform more examinations to find out what was going on.

Angron laughed it off and told it off as a joke: I might have been walking on nails all these years.

He told it, but no one dared to laugh, and no one thought it was funny. This was a pity, but he could understand it.

The nails creaked as they closed around his skull, bringing a pain that was too familiar to be felt. He felt it carefully, and habitually recited some names in his mind.

No one responded.

After a while, he finally recovered and Nail let him go, but still gave him a warning - if you do it again, you will definitely feel more pain than now, you will go crazy, and you will become the crazy beast in the cave.
Angron ignored the incident and spoke slowly.

"So, he has actually been here all these years?" He tilted his head and asked.

"I don't know," said Caryl Rohals.

They sat against the rock wall, one huge and the other thin, the latter almost a shadow of the former.

This made the conversation very interesting, it almost looked like a giant man talking to a small shadow at his feet at noon, and the voice he used was even quite calm and a little inquiring.

"I feel like he's always there," Angron said thoughtfully. "He just doesn't know it, and he always forgets. How many times has this happened?"

"I don't know," Khalil said, still looking ahead.

Angron sighed, trying to contain his sadness and anger.

"Okay." He complained deliberately and even shook his head. "Ten thousand years have passed, and the world has changed. Even you have changed from the tall giant in my memory to this mortal body. But I want to ask, why don't you change this bad habit?"

Khalil turned to look at him, his expression finally relaxing.

"I am changing, Angron," he whispered. "I am definitely not hiding it as I have been doing before."

"Really?" The Lord of Red Sand asked in a very suspicious tone, then turned to ask another person in the cave. "Tell me, Sevatar, is this really the case?"

The eldest son of the night, who was called, nodded without looking away.

"Really?"

"Really," Sevatar said. "I assure you he is making changes - but we may have to wait another ten thousand years to see the effects."

Angron chuckled, propped himself up on one knee, and slowly stood up, like a mountain moving its body in the darkness. He was no longer bleeding, although the horrible wounds were still horribly fresh.

"Since he said so, I will let you go for now. What should we do next?"

Khalil reached into his bosom, pulled out a golden stone, and whispered his answer.

"There's nothing we can do."

(End of this chapter)