Warhammer 40: Shattered Steel Soul

Chapter 463: Crimson King (Part )

Rogal Dorn stood on the ramparts between the passes, looking down at the thick walls that had been worn down by generations of battle, concrete and steel that had been woven together and lost to time, blending into the mountains themselves, along with the bodies, armor, arrows, and smiling heads of all who had died before them.

In a sense, this wall is more indestructible than when it stood alone outside the mountain, even though that part of the wall has been shattered by the torrent of history and war.

"The Word Bearers disappeared one sector away from the Solar Sector, my lord. They are not accepting communication requests, and they have gone deep into the Warp Channel." Akamus reported, walking up the remaining steps of the city wall.

The mountain wind suddenly whistled up, passing through the forests, crossing the canyons, and rustling along the mountain ridges. Rogal Dorn frowned slightly in the strong wind, but his voice was still clear.

"We have nowhere to pursue." Rogal Dorn nodded, "I need an answer from Terra."

"Still no response. The astropath reported that Terra's soul sea is in chaos and touching it will lead to death. In the last round of attempts, three astropaths died. The navigator also said that it is impossible to go to Terra at this time."

Akamus answered briefly. He knew that the three astropaths had died in extreme fear by smashing their own heads, strangling another companion, and being torn into pieces in a psychic explosion, but all this was of no help to the situation and there was no need to introduce it.

Dorn glanced at Akamus. "Then we will not be able to take command of the Solar Sector's defense system. At the same time, we have no way of knowing the location of the Word Bearers, and the Iron Warriors or the Thousand Dust Suns cannot provide further assistance. Perturabo and Magnus are out of range. In addition, the World Eaters are far away in Nuceria."

Akamus could hear the parts of his combat prosthesis creaking in the fierce wind.

"Exactly so, my lord."

Dorn turned his head slightly, his thoughts were silent, hidden behind an invisible solid wall, and could not be detected.

"Go to the nearest large open Webway entrance," Rogal Dorn ordered, a cold light like lightning flashing across his golden armor as he moved. "We need to evacuate the Iron Warriors troops still inside the Webway and use it to reach the Throne World directly. I will give you ten hours to reorganize the army and plan a route. After that, I need the Mountain Phalanx to set sail."

Akamus swallowed the worry that the webway map was still stored in the Terran Palace, and the occasional blockage of the warp channel in the Jeremiah Fragment Belt, and knelt on one knee: "Yes, my lord. For the human empire."

In the strong wind, Dorne's voice came from far away, like the echo of the rolling rocks themselves.

"For the Empire of Man," Dorn answered him. "In death we tryst."

He paused for a moment, then gave a new, unrelated request that Acamus had not expected. "Also, contact the Alpha Legion. I need to confirm their movements."

-

The mist spread deeper into the passage, like liquid amber half-solidified on white silk, flowing slowly under Magnus' feet. The temporary door lost its light behind him, turning into a slightly warm light golden stone, falling to the ground and breaking.

He returned to the Webway again, without any of the Astartes.

Even Azak Ahriman's knowledge of the mysterious pathways that permeate the galaxy was not enough to help his Gene-Father here. It might not be pleasant, but they would be a burden rather than a help.

So Magnus stepped out into the Webway alone, holding in his hand the Emperor's Tarot that he needed for his divinations.

The Pilgrim card was hot in his hand, half of it soaked in black ink. The rest of the cards had not changed much: the High Priest flickered, the cracks on the Lightning Tower worried Magnus, the Knight of the Mission was as solid as a rock, and the Jackal card that once belonged to Perturabo had been reduced to dust, representing a complete loss.

He took a deep breath and let the Emperor Card float ahead, guiding the way to the throne world.

The Webway is not empty, but today, the environment inside the Webway is particularly treacherous and changeable.

In addition to the various node cities, secondary realms and abnormal spaces attached to them, a certain chaotic atmosphere between life and death, moment and eternity comes to the face, and the phosphorescence that should not exist stands out against the particularly dim background of today's colors.

As Magnus noticed them, a poisonous, malignant sheen began to seep out around him, rising and falling like a tide, filled with some kind of eager, ghostly will that climbed up his calves, as if trying to take a part of him and use it as food.

The smell of burning rocks and obsidian sand was quietly becoming stronger, and some kind of malicious thought was lodged in it, but this did not give Magnus the sense of life - all the warp demons he had seen were more alive than this existence.

Here, between this trance layer outside of time and space and the dreamlike cosmic cracks, there are no humans, no aliens, not even insignificant mosses, insects and microorganisms... There is only scorched earth and death, and the great terror that death itself brings to life.

He wove an elaborate red-gold checkered shield around his body, blocking the aura as much as possible from the rotating red-gold cage. This was almost exactly the same as the way to block the energy of the warp, and it was this similarity that made Magnus' thoughts chaotic - this kind of dark and destructive power should not penetrate through the outer wall to the inside.

Even if it was coming straight at him from within the Webway, it meant that the Emperor was still in control.

He continued to move forward, whispering more spells. The black mist gradually entangled into threads, staining his outer robe and red hair. His empty eye sockets began to bleed again, and pain drilled into his brain along the black threads. His feet kept tripping, making it almost impossible for him to move forward. Every step was a huge test of his spiritual power and physical strength...

Suddenly, the Emperor Card that was floating in front of him and guiding the way suddenly burned up in black flames. Everything happened in a gap shorter than a heartbeat, but the subsequent heavy blow like a hammer on the head had a more long-lasting impact.

Magnus felt dizzy and all the directions he knew were confused in a short period of time. He staggered a few steps and looked ahead again.

The situation in the webway seemed to have changed. Countless channels seemed to have randomly reconnected. The darkness became thicker. The light spots were identified as the faint phosphorescent lights floating in the upper layers of the mausoleum. Some kind of whispers and hisses could be vaguely heard, lingering at the edge of the perception range...

Magnus took a breath, stroked the heavy tome hanging around his waist, resisted the external panic, and struggled to open part of his consciousness to the darkness before him, hoping to regain the sense of Terra's direction.

After countless calculations, the Crimson King derived only one law from the vast amount of deductions.

Whatever dark force or cruel wheel of fate itself seeks to crush the human race, no matter who stands in their way and where their true doom lies, there is only one person at the center of all the unknown storms: the Emperor.

Only the Emperor knows the full extent of the struggle that lies within the dark side of the universe, and only he is powerful enough to keep the threat of Chaos out of the borders of the Imperium of Man.

The Emperor's power determines his absolute status.

Therefore, what they need to obey is still the Emperor's words, and what they need to protect is only the Emperor's safety. Just like the king on the chessboard - if they lose the Emperor, they lose everything.

So Magnus had to find the Emperor, meet him in person, and do everything he could for his father. This was the first step to solving all the mysteries.

Besides this - besides this, Magnus thought, he remembered that there were still tens of thousands of Iron Warriors in the Webway, and they had not yet evacuated. Unlike the green-skinned orcs, they could not truly become the cornerstone of the Webway, and their fate was in the steel of the real universe.

The dark road split before his eyes, from one path into three, then five, seven… some extended forward, some eventually formed loops, and all the forks in the road were constantly reorganizing, trembling and twisting uneasily under the cover of the dark aura.

Sometimes, some special obstacles blocked Magnus from entering, such as the blocking and rejection of objects with high content of the Warp, or some suspicious traps, leading to those endless gloomy tributaries, until he was lost in the depths of the Webway, or fell directly into the cold depths of reality and was destroyed by the universe itself...

He even passed by Wigberach again - the end and endpoint of time, where countless lost souls intersected and coexisted at this crossroads, from the past, present to the future, their projections were reflected at the end of this incredible path, until the projections themselves became their only existence, and continued to wander in the disordered stagnation and chaos.

Magnus often stopped and patiently determined where he was, whether he was far or near from Terra's current time and space, and whether his next step would throw him one light year or a hundred light years away, or directly step into the depths of the void...

At this moment Magnus regretted: he should have calculated the chaos inside the Webway in advance and warned his other brothers not to come in.

The situation on the webway was much worse than he had expected. The fragments of time here were definitely not something any of them could grasp. They might go through the same period of time a hundred times, or take the intermittent time as a continuous reality.

At a certain moment, the darkness seemed to become thinner, and the border of the webway became transparent. Fiery blood-red and gangrenous green light rolled and washed wildly outside the border, the curtain revealed a sickly bright rainbow luster, and the nebula began to bloom from the inside with a strange blue color, its existence itself could bring an evil sting and nauseating feeling.

"Hmm..." Magnus muttered to himself, wiped the left side of his face, squinted his eyes, and avoided the dangerous energy infiltrating from the outside.

This was undoubtedly a weak spot somewhere near the outer border of the Webway, where the ocean of the Warp was constantly slapping against the bubble-like Webway wall. He would go back another way and find his direction again until he sensed the brilliance of the Thutmons formation - that would be an excellent landmark.

"...Magnus?" A call came from near him, and Magnus had to look back at the dangerous border defense layer.

The figure squatting behind a pillar-like shelter gradually emerged, which made Magnus feel deeply surprised, followed by worry and anxiety.

"Why are you here!" Magnus shouted, "Alpharius or Omegan, you are... yes, Omegan!"

He looked around, gritted his teeth and moved closer to Omegan's position, observing his damaged silver-blue armor, his broken spear stained with blood, and his haggard face caused by days of being trapped.

"Why are you here!" Magnus asked, "It's too dangerous here, you have to leave... Well, I remember you do know the webway, and you fell in once. Oh, that's terrible, this place is hundreds of times more dangerous than when you came here! Did you come here on your own accord?"

Omegon waved the broken spear in his hand listlessly. Even his usual thoughtfulness and caution were overwhelmed by fatigue, and he felt as weak as if he had been struggling in a swamp for a month.

"I was fighting," Omegan answered, "and some runes were triggered, and I fell here."

He gasped, a low choking sound coming from his throat, as if this short sentence was enough to drain all his strength. "How long has it been outside? No... What year is it now, Magnus?"

"The first year of the thirty-first millennium," Magnus answered quickly, looking at Omegan with concern, trying to judge his brother's physical condition from a distance. The invisible barrier behind Omegan seemed to become weaker, and the sickly light pierced through the barrier structure like long needles, causing pain all over the body.

The Primarch, who was not as familiar with psychic energy as Magnus, still squatted there weakly, enduring the discomfort, and glanced at Magnus expectantly.

"Thank you, I didn't miss it for long," Omegan said. The chaotic energy activity attached to the slope of the protective layer behind him continued to intensify, and the claws of the Lifeless occasionally cut through the barrier, leaving burning marks.

The cursed aura had already taken advantage of the opportunity to enter, and any slight movement could cause Omegon to fall into the void, and the Primarch who had strayed here seemed to be unaware of this.

"Don't stay there, you have to come here," Magnus said, untying the ring decoration wrapped around his right hand, melting it into a long rope, and throwing it to Omegan, "Come here and talk, Omegan."

Omegan took a deep breath, then reached out and grabbed a section of the long rope. "Give me a hand, too, Magnus."

Magnus slowly reeled in the rope, helping Omegon to escape from the dangerous edge of the curtain. The brilliant and sickening colored lights scratched the wall unwillingly, devouring each other in frenzy and anger, and the flames chased the departing Primarch.

When they were close enough, Magnus reached out and tried to grab Omegon directly.

Omegan raised his head, and his broken spear thrust upward from below, piercing Magnus' chest like a venomous snake.

And then it failed.

The broken spear fell into the afterimage, and the poisonous blue-green light at the tip of the spear drew a bright but useless short line.

Magnus had stood to the side without him noticing, and the heavy tome in his hand, carrying all the rage of the Crimson King, smashed towards Omegan's back.

(End of this chapter)