Warhammer 40: Shattered Steel Soul

Chapter 410 The Second Primarch
"When we say 'believe', it is often based on the promises made by others. However, if we understand it in the usual way, thinking that it is just faith in salvation, then it is very wrong. Our 'belief' is trust and entrustment." - "The Book of Lorgar"

Jack recognized Kroger and Hammer immediately.

This is quite strange. First of all, after not seeing each other for a few years, they both changed their helmets and updated their armor with several large armor blocks. They were wrapped tightly in that iron shell.

And when the hatch just opened with steam, the limited light and restricted field of view were not enough for the Luna Wolves to see the less conspicuous warriors mixed in with the Iron Warriors - the throne knew that none of these Iron Warriors were tall enough, and Hammer was even shorter.

But Jack just knew that the one in the front was Kroger, and the one behind was Hammer, two glorious team leaders, each leading a dozen people, squeezed into the same transport cabin as them, bumping into each other with the rise and fall, until they all fastened themselves with magnetic buckles.

He hesitated for less than two seconds before deciding to say hello to his brothers.

He had lost control of his emotions before and had discussed separation with the Iron Warriors. Later, he thought that it was unnecessary. A qualified warrior should not take his anger out on his combat brothers. However, he never had the chance to see them again, so the matter was left alone and passed.

Now that they met again at the critical moment of the battle, Jack didn't want to squat on the shore and wave his handkerchief by himself like the sailor's fiancée in the classic Terran drama who sighed in despair.

He happily tapped into the built-in communication channel.

"Iron Warrior, I'm Jack, the captain of the Luna Wolves. Long time no see."

"Twenty-third Company, Kroger received. What is it?" A deep voice answered, followed by Hammer.

Their voices were richer than those of the previous two years, with a greater inner fire and desire to fight. Some warriors really could draw nourishment from fighting, Jack thought, born Astartes.

"No problem, just saying hi to you guys," Jack said cheerfully, hearing his own voice echoing over the intercom.

The Iron Warrior's voice changed slightly. "Don't occupy the channel line." Kroger warned, and there was a familiar helplessness hidden in his seriousness.

Jack laughed softly and leaned against the bulkhead behind him. A sense of satisfaction and relief that he hadn't felt in years surged into his heart.

After confirming that he was not in a hurry to land, he simply left the Moon Wolf channel temporarily to avoid this group of nagging and curious guys asking him endless questions and disturbing his own time to savor the situation.

After landing on the ground, mixed in the flying blood and mud, Jack no longer had the mind to think about these trivial matters that had nothing to do with the battle.

Gathering with the company commander and other brothers in the entire company in a crude temporary forward base where the ground had been made hard enough by flamethrowers, they took a short rest, followed their respective orders, and began to advance in different directions on the soft and sticky flesh and mud.

Kroger was assigned to the same side as him again. This was not an accident, but the Iron Warriors intentionally made them work together again based on their outstanding performance when they had worked together before.

"Get out of here, damn it..." Someone suddenly shouted, then shut up immediately. Jack called his name, "What's going on?"

"That echo," Gregory said, answering for the brother, following Jack to the other side of a raised hill of flesh. "The echo of the mind, and I saw some flowers and plants, too."

"All confirmed analysis systems have been turned on," a reminder came from the Iron Warrior.

"Of course," Jack responded.

The attack has begun, artillery fire and bullets exploded everywhere in the chaotic land. The sound of the explosions drowned out the silver angel's laser weapons, but their effectiveness was far from enough.

There were a lot of charred bones and flesh structures rolling all over the ground, and there were tumbleweeds fluttering gently in the wind, or the sound of water falling down a waterfall. When Jack heard the sound behind him, he immediately raised his vigilance to the highest point.

His psychic talent is quite poor. If even he can hear those long-lasting whispers in the wind, it can only mean that the psychic recollection environment here is so strong that it is almost tangible.

"Peter... I might have to extract an ounce of bone fragments from your leg..." Someone in the team began to mutter to themselves, and then quickly woke up with the assistance of the Iron Warrior's in-helmet detection system. The syringe injected the prepared medicine to deal with the erroneously increased hormone levels.

This is when a psychic idiot like him is needed, Jack thought. Sensitives can taste the metaphysical fluctuations brought by every trace of spiritual power in the air, but he can only smell the strongest traces.

After half an hour of advancing, they encountered the first round of attack by Silver Angels. These creatures floating in the air were several orders of magnitude smaller than their counterparts that could ascend into the universe and engage in void warfare. Each one was no larger than three Space Marines combined, but on the ground, they rushed over in groups, continuously firing short-range bone bullets, psychic bullets, or making rapid cuts with the blades at the tips of their wings.

The Astartes rushed to fight, and after a while, Hammer contacted him - or maybe it was just a mass message.

"Just now, I felt like I was a resurrected warrior from the Second Legion," Hammer said calmly, "hunting other flesh monsters that wanted to kill me."

"And then you killed a half-silver angel in one go," Jack said in amazement, "It's a nice illusion, like divine intervention, isn't it?"

“No…” Hammer thought for a moment, and at the same time used a series of explosive shells to repel the small silver angel that rushed towards him, breaking it in half and shattering it in the red and gray-black smoke of the explosion. Light yellow blood and silver fragments like iron filings fell like rain. “That seems to be its memory.”

He fired another shot, indicating who he was talking about.

"Oh, well," Jack replied, "not a bad story."

Shadow Moon Wolf's hand suddenly felt a pain, and in an instant, the pain reached a burning peak, and every nerve was burning in the flames, which was simply maddening. He swallowed a scream, his face twisted, and cold sweat rolled down his back.

The severe pain disappeared in an instant, like a bird flying across the lake of consciousness, leaving only a simple conclusion in Jack's mind: it was very fresh and had happened so recently that it still retained its original intensity.

"I'm feeling something new, too," Jack said, his breathing still ragged, to whoever was listening in. If it weren't for the power claw in one hand and the bolter in the other, his hands would have been balled into fists.

"You?" Kroger answered him, "Are you sure?"

He understood what he meant. Jack thought that any psychic signal that he could sense could be called a clue to lead the way.

A second wave of pain grazed his scalp, and he seemed to be tripped and fell into flesh and bone. The feeling of broken bones and the unique psychic spears of the Silver Angel flew past his buzzing power armor helmet, swallowing part of his scalp and a small amount of skull into the immaterial darkness.

The continuous explosions woke Jack up again. He looked around, stretched out his claws, and embedded his power claws into the wings of a silver angel flying by. He deeply latched onto the gaps in the hollow bones, and then used explosive bombs to smash the enemy's chest and abdomen at close range.

Several of the surrounding battle-brothers whimpered in the tide of grief that followed the Silver Angel's spirit being shattered, and Jack held onto the Silver Angel to block a series of volleys of ammunition until the wreckage in his hands burned through.

"I am sure of it," he cried, "fresh memories of angels. Dark angels, though."

"Direction!" Kroger yelled as he pulled the trigger.

"One hundred and ten degrees!"

Their superiors were also in the channel. Jack heard Kroger begin to vouch for the Iron Warriors, while he himself began to communicate with the captain of the Luna Wolves.

Jack had always been trustworthy in his reports and evaluations, and in the end, the proposal was quickly approved.

Most Iron Warriors and a few Luna Wolves will continue to sweep the Silver Angel base world in the direction they are heading, while some Luna Wolves, including Jack, will perform detection and exploration missions and report the information they obtain at all times. The smell of a lion, Jack thought, as if he could hear the voice of the First Primarch lingering in his ears.

Had Lion El'Jonson been following the scent of the wolf when he had tracked him and Hashem years before? Now, too, the wolf was seeking the lion.

-

I don't have... I don't have that many words, and half of my thinking has left my body. My thoughts are not - connected in a line. I am still using my thinking, my, the part inside the head - my brain.

Once again I forgot the vocabulary. The language. I forgot many of the rules of the language, I had very little left, but my brain didn't feel anxious, it was moving very fast, very smoothly, like it was back to the way it should be. Not limited by a finite pattern. Not bound by the framework of language.

My only obstacle is...

My name was lost along with my language. A loss of identity. A loss of a vocabulary of proof. Like...

What I can control is no longer myself.

But in the end, I am still me. A life...different from other existences.

I looked around. I was the tallest of these beings. They were similar to me, all wearing the same outer garments. Their outer garments were also similar to mine. They surrounded me, one by one, by my side.

Very quiet. I thought. Everyone, so quiet, raised their heads and looked at me. I dare not say how much joy I felt when I was surrounded like this. They were expecting me. Expecting my answer.

I opened my mouth and let out a howl, deep and distant, echoing in the world around us. There was a - a crash? a growl? an uneasy ... sadness?
Sadness. This word caught me. Through this gap, all words returned to me, wrapping me again in the framework shaped by humans. I found my name - our name - from the origin of nature and wildness.

Our respective names.

Lion El'Jonson's longsword clanged out of its sheath, and in an instant it was pointed at the throat of the man standing in front of him, the tip of the sword piercing half an inch in. A stream of bright red liquid seeped down the silver edge until it stained the deep red ruby ​​at the tip of the blade.

Opposite him, a face that was similar to but different from his was staring back at him. The curve of its brow bones was exactly the same as his, while the downward-pressed lip line was slightly softer than that of the Emperor's eldest son.

He is of the same blood.

There was no tenderness in Leon's heart, and the cold anger made his nerves throb slightly. He leaned forward, injecting more power into his sword, but some opposing force stopped him and locked him in place.

"Huh..." The lion let out a dull roar from between his teeth. He suddenly retracted his sword, took a half step back, and observed the surrounding situation with the corner of his eye.

He concealed his surprise and made his face as cold as an alabaster statue.

The inside of a warship. Strange yet familiar, it is very likely to be a battle barge of the Empire, and judging by its exquisite decoration...

The Queen of Glory. Lion El'Jonson came to the conclusion silently. The Queen of Glory of the Second Legion, a huge ship that disappeared without a trace in the depths of Randan, is also one of the fundamental reasons why the four imperial fleets have arrived at Randan together.

But how did he get here?
There was a definite gap in his memory.

The previous moment, he was still surrounded by silver angels, searching for the trace of the head of the silver angels in the world of flesh and blood, preparing to bury all the silver angels in burning rest with his burning wings.

After years of psychic contact, Lion El'Jonson's hunter knowledge allowed him to confirm the fundamental source of this consciousness. As they go deeper into Randan, the dispute over life and death will eventually tear up the fragile cooperation treaty between the Silver Angels and the Dark Angels.

The next moment, he stood here, alone, surrounded by the Primarch of the Second Legion and his guards, his powers also bound by some kind of psionic energy.

Leon sneered. Although he was not afraid of the unknown, he was not a reckless man without judgment.

"Are you Duncan Aihe?" He accurately stated the name of the Second Primarch with a restrained and indifferent tone, examining every reaction of the other party.

The Second Primarch spoke slowly. "You are Lion El'Jonson, the First Primarch."

"You got my name," Leon said, noting that the other's cut neck had not yet healed, and the way the blood dripped was so consistent with the real conditions that he was even convinced for a moment that he was in reality.

The Second Primarch looked at him, circling him until he reached the side of Lion. He was unarmed, wearing a simple dark brown robe, dressed like a traveler in the wilderness. Tired, lonely, and with a deep indifference that didn't seem to belong to him.

"We can hear you," he said. "Your signals, some spillover radio. Occasionally, we've managed to get some delayed decryption, but we've never been able to catch up with the speed at which your internal signal codes are being updated."

Liar, Leon thought coldly. All excuses. The voice in his ears was the same psychic message he had heard over the years. His intuition was warning him, and he had no doubt about it.

The second Primarch in front of him was either a disguised alien or a traitor who had defected to the aliens.

Where is his Dark Angel and how did he end up like this?
Leon licked the tip of his teeth, "Why am I here?"

“You saw those silver angels,” Duncan said.

"I'll be honest with you. In order to leave here, we have to communicate with the only possible alien race and ask them to cooperate with the Empire's army - for their own benefit, and for our escape and being found. I'm good at psionics, and you, perhaps because our serial numbers are close, our similarities allow us to find each other."

He paused, "But you also saw, the Emperor's eldest son, that the Silver Angel still chose to betray in the end. Aliens cannot be trusted."

“The competition between life and death will eventually tear apart the agreement on cooperation.” There was a hint of anger in Duncan’s voice, and his words were surprisingly similar to Leon’s own thoughts.

"And then?" The lion narrowed his eyes. The other party directly admitted his mistaken cooperation with the alien, which made Lion El'Jonson waver for a moment. And he still didn't see the falsehood of his current environment.

He realized that he had to focus more on finding loopholes in the other person's language.

"A rift in space, created by their antimatter weapons. You've seen their power, haven't you? The principle is a rift in space.

"You fell into space, and we salvaged you back into the ship." Duncan said as he moved his finger toward the holographic projection next to him and pulled up Ran Dan's star map.

Leon immediately compared it with Perturabo's map and confirmed that the only difference between this star map and the map provided by the Lord of Iron was that this star map more completely depicted the inner core of Randan.

He was silent.

"Here," Duncan pointed to the center of the star map, "is the cosmic rift. We are all here, trapped in the gravitational vortex and psychic fluctuations. We cannot break out from the inside. We can only rely on possible rescue from the outside."

He raised his head, looked deeply at Lion El'Jonson, and said softly, "We have been waiting for you for many years."

(End of this chapter)