Warhammer 40: Shattered Steel Soul

Chapter 464: Crimson King (Part )

The heavy edge of the book fell like a sledgehammer with a force like a gust of wind and thunder, clanging against the silver-blue armor behind Omegan. A crisp crack sounded, and the red energy burst out along the invisible runes attached to the thick cover of the book. Countless curved arcs were like tangible pieces of gold, which broke after being formed along the outline of the runes and scattered in the mist of the webway.

Omegan rolled away in pain, his face hidden in the shadows, leaving only the cold arc of his jaw. The broken spear in his hand suddenly grew a complete blade and handle, and the cut arc appeared blurry in the web space, as if it was traveling between the gap between the previous second and the next second, with no fixed shape.

"Omegan," Magnus gritted his teeth and glared at the Primarch standing opposite him, "What have you done?"

While speaking, Magnus, through the third eye of analysis constructed by a high-level state of mind, observed the battlefield between the two from another perspective, and quietly set up a favorable environment on the battlefield.

Magnus saw his blood flowing, and numerous runes were flying like a blizzard in the bright light, flashing a dazzling golden-red light.

Omegan's outer armor was covered with a layer of hazy warp fluorescence, and snake shadows moved across the scales, undoubtedly accepting some kind of blasphemous gift - even if the degree was not serious, the defilement still greatly angered Magnus.

"I am here for you, Magnus," Omegan twirled the pale spear in his hand, watching Magnus's movements.

When Magnus rushed towards him, the holy book covered with delicate patterns was quickly transformed into a meteor hammer with a chain under the suddenly elongated light. He twisted the hinge of the holy book with his spear, and the chain changed its shape in an instant, extending out at the other corners. The spear blade wielded by Omegan changed its position accordingly, flashing like lightning in the space, and quickly resisting Magnus' attack.

Magnus looked indignant, and his remaining eye instantly turned blood red.

"Nonsense!" he scolded, pushing Omegon back.

His own speed may not be comparable to Alpha's venomous snake, but the flowing light and shadow covering his feet are like invisible red wings, splashing crystal fragments on the thin wall of the net on the ground, continuously helping Magnus to move forward. Several flying knives formed around Magnus, and the moment they were fixed, they ignored the barrier of space and directly arrived at Omegan.

Omegan turned his body and used his spear as if he knew what was going to happen, piercing the flying knives one by one through the blade, and a shower of broken crystals burst out. Under Magnus's coercion, he stepped back step by step, and in a blink of an eye, his still aching back was against the fragile side wall of the webway.

Just one blow, one furious smash or one flaming bite, and the wall would crack.

A fierce red arc of light came at him with devastating force. Omegon ducked to avoid it. The moment the arc of light touched the wall of the webway, it began to vibrate, but it was not the webway itself that was vibrating.

A layer of delayed spellcasting source that was deployed here at some unknown time was stimulated by the second energy, and at the same time of the explosion, the shock wave was completely bounded to a one-way forward angle. Omegan's helmet cracked from back to front, and blood flowed into the inner armor with a sticky texture, while the heavy tome with adamantium horns met his head. Magnus's third rune eyeball extinguished after doing its job.

"Magnus!" he screamed. "The Emperor's plan will not succeed, and Mankind will gain nothing from the Emperor's rule—"

His words were interrupted by Magnus. The Crimson King opened his left hand, and a curved sickle sword took shape in an instant, sliding along the shaft of Omegan's spear and piercing into the palm of Omegan's hand holding the spear, splashing blood. Omegan drew back the spear under the laceration, and the pale spear drew a cold horizontal arc downward, piercing a bloody mark above the side of Magnus's knee armor, and blood flowed out along the crack.

"I don't want to hear it!" Magnus answered bluntly. Mentioning the Emperor's backup plan still made him feel painful, but if everything was necessary, he would not regret his choice.

"We can change this plan..."

"Where did this begin? Tell me, Omegon! When did it begin? Aurelion? Horus? Nemesis Blade? Shadow Prison Nemesis Blade, Shadow Prison - it was you!"

The weapons of the two Primarchs kept meeting and separating. The holy books had long been transformed into heavy objects as hard as adamantium by the runes, used as the hammer heads of heavy hammers or short-range hard sticks, colliding with the spear blades. Omegan changed his position, and his broken armor broke in the thick fog, flickering with the phosphorescent fire.

"My brother--" Omegan began, and the change of address in this sentence immediately confirmed Magnus's guess.

Extreme anger instantly overwhelmed his brief confusion, and the skin of his left hand was completely torn apart by the surge of supernatural energy. Blood thorns emitting golden light pierced through the surrounding thick fog and penetrated Omegon's body directly as if they were not restricted by matter.

Omegon tried to step back and move away to bypass the thorn net that was causing countless painful bleeding holes in his body, but the surging blood in Magnus' body turned into blazing sparks that exploded simultaneously in the space and in a short period of time before and after, forcing Omegon to be nailed to the spot under the powerful impact.

"Magnus!"

Magnus grabbed Omegan's left shoulder and threw him heavily to the ground. After a dull thud, the adamantium horns on the heavy holy book smashed heavily into the severely damaged silver-blue outer armor.

With a crisp snap, Omegan's spine erupted with a terrible tearing sound. The severe pain instantly pierced the Primarch who fell into the thick fog. Omegan tried to stand up again, but his limp legs refused to obey his command, and blood gushed out of his mouth. He trembled and squeezed out more syllables from his panting: "You... Terra..."

"Tell me, Omegan..." Magnus crouched beside Omegan, then knelt on one knee, the psychological struggle brought about by the fight with his brother suddenly flowing back like the ebbing tide of the past.

"Why?" he asked anxiously. "Why, Omegon!"

Dizzy from the intense physical exertion, Magnus felt that the surging environment around him had become particularly severe during the battle. The dark power of Chaos washed over the outer wall of the Webway again and again without stopping - that was not an attempt to tear the Webway apart, but a preset energy anchor point, attached to the outer wall of the Webway in a seemingly gentle but actually strange way, waiting for the moment to play the role expected by the Chaos Gods.

...Why not destroy the Webway?
Magnus' mind was full of thousands of thoughts, and he was instantly brought back to the present when Omegan spoke. Omegan's face was immersed in the thick fog, and his voice sounded like the hiss of a venomous snake: "...It is humanity's own darkness that will destroy humanity, not..."

"Finish your words!" Magnus no longer cared whether he sounded exasperated or not. He glanced anxiously at the outside of the webway, where the chains wrapped around the Codex Nikea turned to bind the seriously injured Omegon.

He didn't want to do it himself, for one thing he was afraid that when his rage faded he would not be able to effectively restrain a brother, and for another he had very little supernatural energy at his disposal, which was the source of his strength as a scholar that enabled him to outperform many of his brothers in combat. He couldn't show his weakness.

The wounds he inflicted on himself were even greater than those inflicted by Omegon's spear.

"Instead of..." Omegan repeated, his voice getting weaker and weaker. The pool of blood under him had already submerged Omegan's chest. Magnus turned him over and discerned the opening and closing of Omegan's lips in the thick fog.

Omegan stared at him with cold eyes, as if he wanted to say something, but Magnus pushed him away in the blink of an eye and stepped back a few steps. His vision went dark due to his sudden rise. A red-gold light shone brightly in the mist, like a surging lightning that penetrated the web up and down, almost forming some kind of destructive pillars that would kill anyone who touched it, sealing the passage tightly.

Almost at the moment before the red-gold lightning formed a curtain wall, a whistling and changing light lit up from Omegon's body, and in an instant, the shadows of nearly a hundred poisonous snakes appeared, forming some kind of poisonous void scene on the inside of the webway.

The saliva dripping from each snake shadow reflects the illusion of an entire unrestrained and brutal world, where worlds, truth and falsehood infinitely replace and overlap each other. Fractal patterns spread outward along each pattern inside the illusion, and their unpredictable changes are enough to destroy a mortal's entire understanding of reality and drown reason in a nightmare-like terrible sensory impact.

Magnus immediately closed his remaining right eye, restricting his perception to a limited range, just to ensure that he could make an appropriate counterattack.

His heart trembled in terrible despair, a pain even more real and piercing than when he had previously calculated the deaths of the seventeen Primarchs that the Emperor had planned.

What was presented to him was no longer a Primarch, no longer the paragon of humanity and superman created by the Emperor two hundred years ago.

Since when, some of the relationships and fundamental factors of Omegan's existence have undergone a complete transformation, whether this change is due to active choice or passive accident. In any case, this new creature is just trying its best to imitate the shape and shell of the past, using the discarded residue to rebuild a fragile original shape.

And that can only mean one thing.

One of his brothers had chosen to fall. And he would fight him - and even kill him.

One Primarch, killing another Primarch? Magnus thought, where in the entire galaxy could such a thing happen? And today, in this gap between time and space, two brothers connected by blood are going to do this?

It was not a ceremonial fight on the dueling arena, not a drill in the Court of Narni, not a dancing sword fight in the restricted arena of the Phalanx, but a real heart pierced by a spear, a head smashed with a sledgehammer, gnawing with red-stained teeth, and tearing with sharp nails, until only one person's heavy breathing was left in the webway.

Is that right?

As the two-colored flames entangled in a confrontational manner in the narrow web passage, he still felt a kind of delirium of disbelief, feeling the moment of clarity brought to him by the inner turmoil and pain.

For a moment he seemed not to understand what he was doing, as if some evil, teasing trick had brought about the current brotherly slaughter, and some being in the highest heaven was laughing shrilly, taking away the new harvest it had gained in exchange for its previous sacrifices...

The deformed snake head bit towards him, its teeth brimming with terrible venom. Its shape was fixed, with only two heads left, and the neck of the third head had been severed at some point, leaving traces of burns from artillery fire.

Magnus held up the holy book, and the preset runes engraved in the book flickered, injected with fresh life by the flowing blood, and burst into blazing flashes, like a pure star-lit lamp, hanging high in the endless changes of the terrifying darkness...

The chaotic energy outside was surging more and more, and the strong colors finally intertwined into a dark light. Magnus cursed loudly, yelling out all the words he didn't understand, and waved the weapon in his hand.

All his strength went into the next blow, and then the one after that, as if he was holding a heavy stick or a fierce heavy stone... He roared, grinning, baring his teeth at the giant snake that attacked him, just like the human beings tens of thousands of years ago who were furious at the beasts that had bitten their brothers and sisters...

But his sanity still existed, and his spells still coordinated his battle: a battle fought alone, a battle unknown to anyone, a battle in the depths of the Webway with no help or assistance except himself, and this battle was a duel between Primarchs...

Those dreamlike moments, that long, bright world filled with laughter and the bright light that never sets, a colorful world like a dream, laughing dreams, shoulder bumps and chest-hugging arguments, small music box puppets dancing on the table, strong liquor that can make you feel good, those faces that are like white stone sculptures under the golden light... all walked into the darkness at the edge of the web, just like fate walking back to its original direction, returning to its hateful original path after wandering for too long...

"I'm going to kill you," Magnus screamed. "You're going to - ruin this -"

Kill who? What is all this? Is he going to kill Omegon? Is this all about the Webway they are on? Is that all? Or is that all?
The red flames burned fiercely until a huge cracking sound shattered all the noise that was not loud enough and brought unparalleled silence to this limited space. Magnus took a step back and fell to the ground.

In front of him, the red spear had pierced the giant snake's head. Blood oozed out from a ring-shaped wound, and finally, the snake's head fell from a great height to the ground.

"I killed him..." Magnus murmured. "Really?"

The snake's body also crashed down, slowly at first, then quickly accelerated, and slammed heavily onto the ground of the webway. The dark mist immediately surged up in joy, turning into flowing, pipe-like filaments that drilled into Omegan's remains...

The fog was blown away by the air currents, and the image of a Primarch reappeared. His headless and broken-back corpse lay in the bloody fog, with his head next to him. His mutilated cold eyes were still looking at Magnus, and there seemed to be some kind of ruthless smile in them.

Magnus stared at Omegon's dead form.

Yes, death. The fact of death was pushed back upon Magnus, bloody and irresistible, telling him that just now, on the other side of this unknown world, in the depths of the Webway, one brother had murdered another.

The Crimson King panted, his exhaustion preventing him from moving, drowning in the horror that still existed and constrained him.

Really? Did the Primarchs begin destroying each other in the first year of the 31st Millennium? First Horus fell, then Lorgar Aurelion and Perturabo split, and now it was his turn? Did Magnus, the fifteenth Primarch, Magnus the Proud, kill a Primarch of the Alpha Legion?

He stared at Omegon's body until his will returned to his soul.

Well, that's what happened, one Primarch was involved with Chaos, and they fought until one of them died.

This is what happened, it's all clear, so how would he describe this whole murder and counterattack to others?

He could not deny that he had attacked a brother. Maybe he had the choice not to kill him, but he took the whole thing to the last step... How could this be?

Magnus stood up and observed the surging storm outside the transparent web again. They seemed to have subsided a little, perhaps retreating in disgrace, or perhaps achieving their goal.

The question returned to Magnus' mind: Why didn't the Chaos Gods directly try to break through the closed layer of the Webway? If they really wanted to do so, they could do it if there was still a node vacant. Even - this was not the core area of ​​the Webway, and their invasion could be easily completed.

Magnus shook his head and decided to take Omegan's body with him. He couldn't leave a Primarch dead here. He stared at Omegan, stood still for a few seconds, then hung the bloodstained holy book back on his waist and pulled Omegan up.

He soon realized that Omegan's body was extremely light, as if all that was left here was a hollowed-out paper shell that could be blown away by a gust of wind.

After the death of this Primarch, something within him seemed to have been lost without his knowledge, or absorbed, and transformed into the power of some impatient Other...

The next moment, waves of darkness surged out of Omegon's empty shell.

This end and destruction, which had suffered the final sacrifice required for its birth, pierced Magnus' soul directly at close range, with the prelude to the bone-chilling fear that would accompany its first cry, which was enough to tear the entire universe apart.

...The day of reckoning will come...Darkness...Destroy the realms...

A flash of thought flashed through Magnus' desperate mind - purpose.

It is not about destroying humanity. It is not about plunging the world into a one-time catastrophe.

It's not fear of battle. It's not resistance to competing with the newborn destroyer. It's not suppression of the birth of the new king. No. No. Wrong.

This is the purpose of the Dark Gods. This is the purpose of the Ancient Four.

Come.

The coming of the fifth god.

At the eternal card table, a new empty throne has been waiting for ten thousand years.

(End of this chapter)