Warhammer 40: Shattered Steel Soul

Chapter 490: Tower of Babel (Part )
The nearby river was gradually thawing, and the ice near the shore was gently breaking up and breaking into floating ice. The weather was still cold, but it was almost noon and the stars were getting warmer.

Batusa Narek sat down on a rock lying on the shore and took out a sketchbook from his robe. The pen in his hand wandered on the paper for a while, determined the framework of the picture, and then began to sketch the outline of a tall tower.

After a while, a young girl came over from the village path holding a wooden basin of shirts and coarse linen robes. Her face was hard and fierce. Her long white hair was braided into two braids, one in front and one behind, falling on both sides of her shoulders. She glanced at Narek and raised her light eyebrows: "Priest, you are here."

"I am here," Narek replied, twirling the pen between his fingers. He had nothing to offer this mortal. If he were in the village, he might have given her a pair of woolen gloves he knitted in his spare time. "Good morning, Alyona."

The girl squatted down a few meters away, broke the ice, and soaked her clothes in the water. Narek stared at her hands, which were not even frozen. The people in this semi-wild world have very good physical fitness. If they were allowed to do some training, they would probably be able to run directly to the company to drive tanks.

"I still don't understand what you said yesterday," Alyona asked after a while, "You told us that the God-Emperor is indeed outside our world, but you told us not to believe in Him casually. I don't understand, priest."

"You don't sound like you understand," Narek smiled, "We do have to believe that there is an ultimate justice in the universe, but that is not..."

"Don't say that, priest," Alyona shook her head, threw back the braid that had fallen in front of her, and took out a little girl's lambskin petticoat with fine stitching from the basin.

"I'll give you a suggestion. I'm one of the smartest people in the village, but even I can't understand your logic from the bottom of my heart. You should tell us more about your -" She waved her hand, and a string of sunlight folded colorfully in the rising water droplets, "those 'old stories'."

"Then you have to wait until I have a dream," Narek said, glancing down at his sketchbook. "I have no story of my own, and no past to speak of. I am only speaking for Him. Only when He allows me to see can I tell you those historical stories."

"What's the big deal?" Alyona laughed heartily, her light-colored eyes bright as a newborn wolf's. "I don't like to listen to sermons. I like stories."

Narek sighed and carefully considered his next words. After a while, he spoke, and the wind carried his voice along with the damp water vapor and the astringent smell of grass on the wet soil. "Like yesterday, I saw a few new pictures and I was painting them. You wanted to hear them, so I told you in advance."

-

It was a harvest night, and the boy had gone out hunting with his uncle and father in the morning. The two adult hunters threw their spears into a lone cub in the herd, and the boy's movements were very agile, and he used the stone-ground knife to draw a cold arc in the air, nailing it on the back of the small mammal with shiny fur.

He ran over, plunged his knife into the animal's veins and bled it out, and the scarlet fluid covered his hands.

Finally, the adults picked up the animals by their four legs. They had run too far during the day, so they went to a nearby stone cave and rested for the night. Someone had been here before, and near the edge of the cave there were piles of fluffy hay and branches, as well as things like broken bone powder.

It would get cold fast, and they hid themselves in the shadows deep in the cave, as if there was warmth in the shadows. No, they just huddled together, and there was no wind, so it wasn't so cold.

The boy cut open the animal's belly, thrust the knife in hard, cut the fat, tried not to break the bag that held the bad smell, and then took out some of the stuff inside. He could also curl up in it to sleep, he was not big.

Finally he got inside, facing a stone wall, even though the night made the edges and lines of the stone blurry. He was quickly soaked with blood, and he pulled the heavy hide tight around the animal's belly, and for a while he just lay there, listening to his father and uncle start to argue, not interested in either of them, as if it had nothing to do with him.

He stared at the stone and heard the rain outside, the rain was as loud as if it was vomited from the sky. Soon after, there was lightning, and the rain gradually stopped. From time to time, the light suddenly exploded in the night, until he gradually heard a crackling sound like breaking branches under the feet.

Then, a warmth approached him, spraying on his arm like the breath of a wild animal. There were also some bright things, like the flickering fragments when there are waves in the water during the day, shaking and shining over. He opened his eyes wide, and the heat was getting closer and closer, as if the lightning was contained by something, stored or imprisoned in something, and transformed into a more stable source.

What was that thing, emitting an unstable red light, shining on the stone wall, outlining the uneven contours there, sometimes bright and sometimes dim?
The boy was so transfixed by the light that shouldn't have been there, its perfect heat and brightness, which shone brighter than the eyes of any newborn animal, that he ignored his father and uncle as they stopped arguing and stepped away from the fire in fear.

Here, only this bright thing was tempting enough, it fluttered like a bird, heated like an animal, and exuded the power of life itself.

The boy reached out his hand, trying to catch its shadow on the stone wall. He seemed to understand what was going on. He felt that he had thought it through and understood how to create it. His heartbeat quickly calmed down, and the steady beat in his chest drove him to stand out and approach the object that was emitting light and heat.

He was wrong. There was something else in the shadow, a towering, mountain-like existence, quietly reflected in the light. He seemed very old, but still very young, and nothing could make him old. He was there, but he didn't seem to belong to the current era, but came from somewhere else.

As soon as he saw him, the boy felt as if he should be very familiar with him. His pulse quickened and there was a dull pain in his blood vessels. The speed of the world seemed to suddenly speed up, and then slowed down into a long river, faintly wrapping around him warmly.

Then, the shadow that suddenly appeared shrank, but still stood tall, with his head lowered, as if the shadow was looking into the boy's eyes.

"Who are you?" the boy asked, speaking for the first time that night.

The shadow looked at him and he did not speak. Perhaps he was just a shadow and writing had not yet been born, so he had no words that could be conveyed without sound.

Soon after, the shadow stretched out a hand to him. His movements were not fast, but a warm touch like sunshine approached him. That warmth seemed to give the shadow a color, a warm color, approaching him gently. The boy crawled out of the animal's body and tried to grab the shadow's hand. The invisible light shone on his body.

Then the shadow knelt before him, half-kneeling, and his arms seemed to be around him. For a moment, the boy thought that this might be the shadow that was born with the light and heat that could be used, and he would be seen coming every time the light was turned on. Then, accompanied by a tired, sighing sound like wind, the shadow disappeared from the lighted cave.

When the boy woke up, he was still curled up in the animal's body. The light that had been on last night had long gone out, and what shone on his face again was the sunlight from the outside world, and the smell of dry soil after the rain surged in his nose. There was always an unpredictable fresh smell in the soil on rainy days.

He stood up and looked at the stone wall again. He began to think that the shadows from last night were all things that would happen in that chaotic world after they fell asleep. However, he suddenly began to look forward to it... Would he see that shadow again?

He walked to the edge of the cave and looked out at the fields. What had burned last night had turned into charred dust in the wind. It seemed that nothing had happened here, but something had changed. Perhaps it was more than a warm night could bring. The revelation of nature might be far more than a momentary shelter.

The boy squatted down, staring at the pile of ashes, reaching out to push away the impurities inside, as if he could find some shiny fragments. There was indeed something hidden here, and he touched it, and his hand felt like it was bitten. He thought, staring at the little bit of light that quickly dissipated, and a new term was brewing on the edge of his brain, and suddenly jumped out.

fire.

He stood up and looked back at his family. They didn't know what this meant yet, but the boy knew. Not yet, but the world would be changed by the fire, and that change would be radical.

-

"Fire," Alyona said, sitting down next to Narek. "It has a process of discovery."

"You are very perceptive, girl," Narek said. "Your description is more accurate than I thought."

"Of course, nothing has ever existed. Just as there must be someone who first knew that flax can be used to make silk..."

"fiber."

"Well, fiber. I would never have guessed that our clothes hadn't floated up from the river until someone told me I could do it." Alyona untied her hair and began to braid it again. "Just like someone must have discovered that your armor could be made of iron..."

"Tao Gang." Narek smiled.

"Oh! Priest!" Alyona pulled her hair in annoyance and pulled the three-pronged whip even tighter. "But you haven't talked about the tower you drew. You didn't say what the shadow was... Isn't this the witchcraft that the Imperial Truth talks about? Is the boy a wizard?"

"Officially, he is an uncertified psychic." Narek smiled, "If you must classify him."

"The kind of psyker that would be captured by the Fifteenth Legion?"

"I'm afraid not for a while. The Fifteenth Legion may not continue to be in charge of this duty for a long time, I guess."

"Well, I also want to meet the Space Marines. I've only heard of them, and they're all five meters tall," Alyona looked up. If she wasn't braiding her hair, she would definitely gesture. "They eat everything. They kidnap children, and treat the boys as armed monks, and eat the girls."

"Even the Word Bearers don't eat children," Narek said, his smile unaffected by the words that came out of his mouth, as if he no longer had any connection to it.

"I'll listen to you. You know a lot. Tell us something more, priest, about the tower, for example. By the way, if you are still willing to help us plow the fields, maybe we will be willing to believe in your religion. Really." said Alyona.

"My task the day after tomorrow is to help you drive the truck? Well, I don't have time to stay here all the time. I will go to the next place along the Glorious Road." Narek said. "But I still want to tell you a story."

-

An unfinished tower loomed above the plain, with countless dead soldiers lying beside it, illuminated by the flashes of lightning and thunder. The echoes of blood and screams lingered faintly around the tower, and broken limbs and melted and frozen armor fragments merged into a foul and brutal mass, piled up wantonly into a bloody battlement.

The crowned man, holding a bloody sword in his hand, stood quietly in the lobby outside the tower, gazing at the tower. Every column, every intersecting cornice and arch, and every broad and intricately carved vault was densely covered with countless words.

Around him, twenty corpses fell in the hall, their mouths burned through by an unknown force, their teeth and lips melted into a solidified mass. The cold frost sealed their faces and ended the words in their mouths. No matter how powerful the power was, no matter how much potential and possibility it had, it had ended at this moment under the vast power and ruthless slaughter of the crowned man.

The flame on the sword in the man's hand gradually died down, and the shadows on the walls around him twisted more and more wantonly and unrestrainedly, as if something was about to be born. This was not enough to stop the man from moving forward, but he seemed to suddenly think of something and his steps gradually stopped.

The frost seemed to have become a lens, creating a concrete shape on the wall. The man finally stopped walking. His robes were blown up by the wind, and he stared at the shadow on the wall intently, with some unknown expectation in his heart.

Behind him, a new visitor stepped into the hall, holding a dagger in his hand, and his eyes were fixed on the crowned man in front of him, unable to move away for a long time.

(End of this chapter)