Warhammer 40: Shattered Steel Soul

Chapter 414 Chain
The anger of Lion El'Jonson was extinguished in an instant, turning into a bleeding wound in the torrent of sorrow. The anger still existed, but it no longer burned his heart; on the contrary, the more real pain in his chest became more and more intense.

No matter what, he had to leave here.

Most of his body was wrapped in soft flesh and blood, and he could vaguely feel some thin tubes connecting him, and this disgusting feeling became particularly obvious near his chest. In addition, a feeling of weakness and powerlessness was entangled in him.

All these conditions made it impossible for him to exert his strength - except for his right hand. The long sword was still in his hand, and he held it tightly.

He gritted his teeth and poured all his strength into his arms and shoulders. The sharp blade relied on brute force to slowly cut horizontally through the soft yet heavy flesh...

"No, Leon..." The voice came back, close to his ear, whispering in a low and urgent voice.

"Shut up." Leon roared coldly. The roar permeated the room and was completely absorbed by the surrounding walls of flesh and blood, as if falling into a silent black hole, without a trace of echo.

As he struggled to free himself, he stared into the darkness at the end of the hall, trying to make out the outline of the huge statue. The Primarch's eyes should have helped him see the night as day, unless there were other interferences in the darkness.

Right now, the latter is the case.

"Leon, you can't leave this place. This is bad for you..."

"You are lying," said the lion. "I don't want to hear it."

"Leon!"

"You don't know what you are doing!" Leon roared.

The flesh and blood structure cracked around his body, and some of the stretched fragments squeezed out and flowed out in a semi-fluid form. They also seemed to retreat around them, resisting the real harm to Lion El'Jonson.

The pain in his chest became more and more intense. At the same time, Leon's head began to swell. Chaotic information currents washed over his nervous system, causing the world in front of him to wrinkle and curl in ways that shouldn't have happened.

The more he detached himself from the flesh and blood of the present, the more severe this sense of confusion became.

"Lion!" There was a heavy warning in the Second Primarch's call. "I am aware of every word I said and every action I made. I know that I am still Duncan Aihe. I am -"

With a heavy sound of armor colliding, the lion forcibly freed himself from the restraints. He crawled out of the pit, took half a step, and then fell to the ground, spitting out blood.

Lion El'Jonson's limbs continued to spasm, and the pain in his nerves was far more severe than when he was still bound, depriving him of all ability to move, and his consciousness quickly left him, until new, warm flesh on the ground began to grow again, gently wrapping him in it...

Analgesic substances began to be secreted, protecting his weak spirit.

"They feel it..." A sigh.

-

Jack is dead.

For Kroger, if this news appeared in any morning in the past few years, he would not be surprised. Soldiers will die one day, regardless of their choices in life, fighting is the only task they need to complete.

But Jack died, hours after they separated again, on the first day after they had met again after so many years.

First, the entire Luna Wolves team fell silent, and then, the positioning point symbolizing Jack moved in the silence of the channel until it stopped inside a terrain.

Then, Jack's already disordered vital signs disappeared.

This really made the Iron Warrior feel uncomfortable - he couldn't find a suitable word. Uncomfortable, unwilling to accept, and unacceptable... The innate weakness of human beings began to show in him. Krog gave up thinking about these things and focused on the artillery in his hand.

After a certain point in time, to be exact, two hours after Jack's death, suddenly, the world seemed to have undergone some potential changes.

The planet was experiencing some kind of dangerous tremor, and the flesh-covered earth was constantly producing slight ups and downs, as if some kind of internal wave was rapidly brewing, or some kind of monster was slowly awakening.

From time to time, combat teams on the ground would warn other teams that a large number of Randan aliens, different from the Silver Angels, suddenly appeared around them and launched terrifying attacks on them. Sometimes, the ground they destroyed would suddenly start to repair itself, or swell like a boil, creating different kinds of crises.

Soon after they sent the signal, a new batch of life coordinates were extinguished one by one like candlesticks blown by the wind. This unexpected change made the fighting brothers who were still fighting feel the pressure doubled.

No matter what, each turret still worked as hard as it could until it fell apart; each battle ended in blood. Explosions rained down, venting the rage of the Space Marines. Smoke, oil mist, dust, shrapnel, charred flesh and carbonized bones, and fires burned everywhere, devouring all the debris in the hot air.

Kroger heard on the channel that a squad leader had died, shot in the chest by the laser cannon of the Randan alien, and his two hearts were instantly vaporized. He continued to shoot, throwing a grenade, and the armor-piercing shrapnel cut into the body of a giant beast in front of him, cutting out countless splashes of blood and flesh.

Another person died, a captain of a centurion, he was the last one to die in his team, a tentacle with sharp serrations on it tore his waist. At this time, Kroger had just smashed the head of an alien with a grenade launcher, and then tore off one of its wings. The bloody smell splashed on his head, and then quickly turned into an unpleasant burnt smell in the following battle.

"There are still more and more of them..." said the captain of his frontline company. There were more and more Randan aliens blocking their way, and their number had already surpassed the silver angels. In fact, the silver angels seemed to have suddenly disappeared in a moment, and no longer came up to block their guns.

"Boneless Mountain." This is his battalion commander, who received a transfer order after the end of a battle three years ago. It is said that he is only one step away from becoming a war blacksmith.

In the fierce battle, the camp began to move towards the last positioning direction sent by Jack before his death. They did not fight in one place, but surrounded from all directions, like a team of loyal worker ants, setting the only destination on the low bone mountain.

More people fell, and Kroger did not listen to who they were one by one.

Strangely, every dead person reminded him of other names. When he heard that a soldier of high rank had died from a slit throat, he thought of Hashem. When the entire team fell into silence, he recalled Jack, and there were more deaths. Each death seemed to correspond to the sacrifice that had befallen him across time and space.

He quickly returned all his attention to the battle itself. Combat orders were sometimes sent to them through the internal channels with fewer and fewer people, and as a team leader, he sometimes needed to pass on his orders to the lower levels.

This was a busy additional task during combat. Kroger actually didn't like this job very much. He preferred to participate in the killing itself rather than take the responsibility of command - well, he had been forced to take charge of the command work since the squad mission many years ago.

He raised his bolter. Another soldier in front of him was torn apart from the chest by the sharp claws of a Randan alien during the fight. He originally wanted to knock down the alien with his bolter, but it seemed he was a step too late.

The closer they got to the Bone Mountain, the more new aliens appeared around them. Krog discovered that his team was not the first group of warriors to arrive at the Bone Mountain. At the foot of the mountain, they saw the dead who had just died, including Luna Wolves, Iron Warriors, Word Bearers, etc., but the most numerous were various Randan aliens.

Some are the final angelic forms, while others are ugly and twisted in their own ways, with twitching fresh organs, deeply spreading nerve tentacles and dangerous poisonous droplets, as well as extremely strong mental appeal - flesh and bones, spirit and will, everything has a strong tendency to merge into one, and ultimately turns into chaotic mutterings and a crazy crimson ocean.

Of course, there were also the angry flames erupting from the muzzles of the warriors who were still fighting, and the dazzling flashes that cut through the blood and gray mist. It was the battle that kept them awake. Fighting was all that was left for an Astartes.

Kroger waited for an order to continue the attack and followed the troops along the road left by Jack.

He fought and waited until he realized he had waited too long. A laser beam brushed past his helmet, and a giant bone structure fell from above. Kroger dodged the attack and counted the names of the superiors in this group of troops who had the right to issue orders one by one in his mind.

Ovi, Jos, Frost, Mare, Guraier...

The count was soon over, and Kroger realized something ominous.

He continued to count, Sirio, Ward, Zadi, Sidon...these were his peers, the other team leaders.

Then, he got an answer that shocked him.

All his superiors had died, and he was the only one among his peers who had reached the vicinity of Bone Mountain.

This fact reverberated through Kroger's mind, stirring up a wave of inexplicable anger and a kind of pain - empty pain. At the same time, he realized his responsibility.

Amid the dripping blood mist, roaring explosions and whistling air currents, Kroger became the only one who could give orders.

He connected to the sound array: "All team members, head towards the beacon."

-

It was the Oath Hall again.

Glancing around, the Lion saw Duncan Ihe, sitting against his own statue, looking so exhausted that even when he pressed the blade of his sword to his head, the Second Primarch did not move.

No, he raised his head. A line of blood was pressed out, rolling down the sword edge and his cheek.

"Why?" Leon asked coldly. "What is that?"

Duncan didn't answer directly. "Turn back," he said softly.

The lion continued to hold the sword, maintaining a threatening posture towards the Second Primarch, moving his feet until the scene behind him came into his sight.

The other end of the hall has been replaced with a huge transparent window.

Outside the slightly protruding vertical frame glass porthole, the first thing that floated by was a series of ivory-white tailbones, with tips as sharp as knives, connected to each other by scarlet muscles, casting wandering shadows on the glass window.

Then, the tail sank down, exposing the giant's torso. Purple blood vessels were faintly visible under the milky white sticky skin, forming countless gurgling pipes on the huge and boundless alien body. Then came the scales, shells and greasy black shells covering the outside, covering the entire outside of the porthole...

Suddenly, a gigantic eye, as tall as several Space Marines, appeared in front of the window, with teeth embedded around the eye and a large amount of deposited filth piled up inside the eye socket, making the huge blood-red eyeball not only terrifying but also disgusting.

A sour smell of alien hormones and a majestic echo of psychic energy complemented each other and came at the same time.

The next moment, the scene outside the porthole suddenly darkened, and Duncan's voice rang out, just above Lion El'Jonson, who was hung high and tightly tied by something.

And Leon's sword was no longer pointed at anyone.

"That's our enemy, us, me and you, and us and your warriors."

The Second Primarch was panting, as if he had just expended a great deal of strength. Waves of strange chain sounds came from near his body, colliding with every breath he took.

"What do you mean?" The lion heard the uneasiness in his own words.

"Randan's dominant consciousness..." the Second Primarch said bitterly, "It is it that wants to hunt you, Lion, not me."

A terrible realization swept through Lion El'Jonson's mind, shaking the foundations of his thinking. His lips trembled, and he held his breath.

"Do not deceive me, Duncan. It is you who bound me, slew my warriors, and imprisoned my will. It is my shame to be the prey."

But he had thought too far, as a Primarch always could, their minds quick enough to deconstruct and reveal truths they did not want to hear.

Pictures flashed through Lion El'Jonson's memory.

Those real scenes. After he arrived on this planet, those real enemies, the various aliens he cut off, the battles that the Silver Angels could not avoid, and that one real injury, the flash that really pierced his chest...

"It's not me," Duncan replied, "You went too deep into the core and were too focused on the duel with my warriors... You are injured, Leon, and the sneak attack of the dominant consciousness has made your injuries too serious. So, you need to rest here..."

He paused with difficulty, breathing rapidly, and after a few seconds, he slowly exhaled a trembling breath. A chain fell off his body and fell, swinging beside Leon's face.

It was a bone chain, white as alabaster and dripping with scarlet blood.

In the dark shadows, there were still countless bone chains hanging him, fixing the second Primarch on it.

"We cradle you, mend your wounds with our flesh and blood, carry you to this collective ocean, and let you sleep so that it cannot find you.

"No one has invaded your mind, Leon, no one. Even if we wanted to...

"You betrayed us, disregarded our help, doubted our every move, and killed so many of us. We could have been partners. We could have worked together! We have not failed you, Lion El'Jonson...

"…But you are still the Emperor's Primarch, my brother…Everything you do is out of loyalty…" Duncan said tremblingly, his voice becoming weak.

"You are protecting me," Leon said.

"Protect," the Duncan replied, and then more whispers echoed around the Primarch's voice, forming a torrent of alien despair. "But you would rather it see you again."

He paused, and then the two Primarchs looked out the porthole together.

"They are coming, my brother," said the Second Primarch, and the rustling of chains was long and cold, echoing.

(End of this chapter)