Warhammer 40: Shattered Steel Soul

Chapter 491 Tower of Babel (Part )
"Wait a minute, priest, is the man you are talking about the same person as the child before?" Alyona asked curiously, standing up and walking to Narek, glancing at the sketch that was almost finished.

The unfinished tower was completed in the upper part by thunder and lightning, like a long pillar of light connecting the sky and the earth.

"I'm just a narrator," Narek said. "I don't make mistakes in interpretation, or I try not to."

-

The man wearing the crown turned his head in the hall of the tower, his face blurred by the air convection, some tiny scars left on his dark skin, like cinnabar, mixed with the ash of the smoke and rolled onto his robe. His face was very strange, perhaps because of the distortion of the flames, that cold and determined expression was no longer unshakable.

"Is it over?" the new man said, his face dripping with sweat and his armor stained with battle scars. "It's time to tear down this tower."

"Not yet," the crowned man mused. "My friend, these tools have not yet fulfilled their role in the service of mankind. We still have much to do with them before we abandon and destroy them. This is what we have taken from what fate has given us, and we can still use it to ask for more."

The new man shuddered, as if the words of the crowned man had turned into the broken blade of a sword, slicing through his body. Maybe he was a general, or maybe he was just a soldier.

"No," the soldier said in vain, "this is not a power we can possess."

"The second vision that looks into the future," the Crowned One said, raising his dark hand and then clenching it into a fist. "The strong chains that bind the demigods, the spear that kills the lifeless forces... this is our armor and blade against fate. This powerful text..."

"Why are we here?" The soldier interrupted him. "Isn't it because of the arrogance of the people in this tower? They think they can unify the entire human race and bring us all to a higher realm, so they spread their culture, creed and truth. Are we going to be the next people in the tower?"

The crowned man looked at the weapon in the soldier's hand, the weapon that had been used to kill their enemies and protect his life. His eyes flashed with foresight, and even the soldier did not know the future that the crowned man was seeing in him.

After a moment, he spoke calmly: "O'er, did you see it?"

The soldier looked around at the walls in confusion. Apart from the mysterious words and the dead bodies lying on the ground, he didn't know what the crowned man was referring to.

The crowned man shook his head, smoke rose in the room, and the words swayed in the smoke, as if steaming with the soul of the flame. He stretched out his hand, and the smoke above his palm gradually condensed into a line of ancient, shadowy handwriting - different from the strange words that existed before, this line of words was a universal language that they all recognized.

"How many times will the Tower of Babel collapse?" the Crowned One murmured, the fire in his eyes growing brighter once more. "How many times will humanity repeat the same mistakes?"

The soldier listened to his words in confusion, realizing that these were the words suspended in the shadows.

The air grew hotter, and a cruel smile appeared on the face of the crowned man, which was then vaguely warmed by the temperature in the tower into something close to tolerance.

"I see his language," he continued, "I see him warning us that there is no turning back, I see our future coming to us from the end of time... There should be no more self-destructive paths."

His eyes moved downward. "Give me your dagger."

"Why?" the soldier asked, unconsciously handing over the knife in his hand. This didn't seem to be the fate of the knife, but when he made this choice, he was very happy in his heart.

"I bring you another plan," said the Crowned One. "Since I saw it, I must choose it. As it says, I will recreate many, many things."

His dark-outlined face was raised upwards, the wind howled, lightning swirled upwards and twisted into an invisible spiral, forming a golden spire for the tower, and gloomy thunderclouds suddenly expanded in all directions to form concentric waves.

-

"I've heard that story," Alyona said, her lips curled up stubbornly as she thought. "The Tower of Babel, isn't it, priest?"

"I almost thought you had long since severed ties with human history," Narek joked.

"How can we be so isolated? We also came from a distant home planet. We miss Earth, but a lot of history has been lost. Just like the story you told, we thought the tower had collapsed, but it turned out that it wasn't the case."

"I can't give you an answer, Alyona. Neither of us has seen the truth of history. I don't know any more than you do."

"But you are a priest."

"What can this decide? I don't even have my own tongue," Narek nodded to the white-haired girl, "Go back, I have only seen this much. Maybe I will see some new stories today. See you in the chapel."

Alena turned around regretfully, her figure disappeared in the shadows of the trees, the dense and tough long leaves blocked her back. Narek was not sure whether she looked back on the way and glanced at him thoughtfully.

-

The rigid nerve knots of the Space Marines overlapped their dreams with reality. While Narek's still alert logical mind was still listening to the sounds of the surrounding environment, the other half of his mind had already fallen into a war zone in a daze.

His feet were in a thorny forest and crimson storm. The guns and branches around him were like a fragment of images in a broken data board, switching and disappearing from time to time. In the distance, there were some tall steel machines, raising their arms with heavy gun barrels, putting each other within the firing radius and starting to shoot without aiming.

He crawled out of the broken transparent glass and mud, pried open the melted mesh baffle, and gasped softly. When a shell flew and hit the right side of his body, stirring up the mud on half of his body in an environment with multiple gravity constants, his heartbeat was as calm as before.

The storm gathered ahead, the continuous fire of the heavy logging interrupted the dense forest, and the thick red fog was morbidly suffocating on the horizon. He seemed to be running into a furnace without hesitation. A string of occult hexagrams and small wooden statues were randomly nested together and hung on his belt with a leather rope.

Suddenly, he spoke, and a vague and hard language came out of his mouth, burning in the jungle along with the stench of melting plastic steel. "Again," he said calmly, the intense exercise had no effect on his breathing, "The first..."

He got some clues about the conversation from his surroundings, and raised his hand to wipe the sweat that was about to flow into his eyes, but his hand was blocked by the tan mask. He frowned.

"Don't tell you how many times it is?" he said, splashing the inorganic solution on the outside of his combat uniform. Before the hot white gas of the acid etching solution burned through his clothes, a flash of cold energy decomposed the dangerous solvent.

In response, he squinted his eyes and raised his gun, breaking some mechanical tentacles that simulated the shape of sea anemones. The spherical weapons expanded and floated upwards like real balloons, and then suddenly exploded.

Through his eyes, Narek saw some blurry, fast-moving shadows, the edges of which reflected an irrational light on the speeding tree trunks and the falling spacecraft gates, as if there was a strange light source somewhere, illuminating a visitor from outside this world.

He tore open the outer wall of a landing capsule, sparks of electricity flew everywhere, the cushioning layer inside suddenly caught fire under the strange flames, and air gushed out of the cabin.

He squeezed in, and the twelve scouts were blown into a pile of debris in an instant. The bodies slid down exhausted, pistols, grappling hooks and belts burned everywhere, and from time to time a quick bang exploded a cloud of thick fog covered with blood vapor, making the blood-red fog in the surrounding environment more squeezing.

Suddenly, he spoke again: "Warp? ...Aren't you a product of witchcraft? No..."

He jumped out of the landing capsule, and the entire narrow space exploded behind him. A ball of soft, sticky juice flew out and hung on his left shoulder. He hesitated for a moment, and then used his psychic power to isolate it.

"Be alert..." he said. The vaporized volatiles were burning nearby, but he ignored them and just looked up at a tiny black dot in the sky. It was a giant spaceship that had just jumped through the subspace to the outer orbit of this planet. Fragments and metal lights were like torn pieces of paper flying in the universe.

He kept looking there, his footsteps intertwined in the slippery ground, branches, bushes, fungi and blurred flesh and blood, as if stepping on the violent drumbeat, dancing a dance without accompaniment. He stretched his arms upwards, as if to say hello to the ship.

A few seconds later, the spacecraft exploded in the light of the ion weapon. The unbalanced pressure swept out all the electronic instruments, mechanical cantilevers, thousand-year-old antiques and sculptures, built-in prayer halls and oak dining tables, broken beams and a large amount of instantly frozen solidified volatiles inside the spacecraft... A flag fell from the spacecraft. No matter how many possible futures the emblem and family symbolized by the flag contained in this ancient era, they were all destroyed by the warrior's light wave of the hand.

"Impossible." The man flatly rejected the shadow who was talking to him. The gun in his hand was instantly melted into a short stick with a ball connected to one end.

Amid the sounds of metal tearing and burning, the entire environment around him began to emit brutal psychic light from extremely small units. Screams rose and fell in the distance, and then quickly disappeared. The concentration of the blood mist was still rising.

"Humanity still needs unity," he announced, and it seemed difficult to discern any emotion that belonged to a single person in his words. His thinking was solemn, silent, and rapid.

"Until we make the Galaxy the base for humanity's rise to power, until the Warp can be replaced, this power can never be abandoned," he said. "This is the second spark that a race can find, and it will drive a second fundamental change for the entire race."

Blood-colored water began to fall from the sky, bringing with it solidified diamond-like raindrops. Thin streams of water embedded themselves in the surface of the world and began to extinguish the flames on the earth.

The ashes of the jungle gathered around the warrior at his feet.

+Besides, for thousands of years, wasn't it you who advised me to never stop? You should have a name, from the visitors in the future. +
The warrior spoke, not with audible words. The voice of his soul roared like the waves.

+You are not as resolute as the last time we met. +He concluded. +Why? What hurts you? +
The wind blew up in the ashes around him, and the dark ashes rose into a vague shape, and the invisible words floated softly against the background of the setting sun in the distance.

The warrior listened, and finally, he nodded: + Then, I will be vigilant. And I will also advise you in my future and in your past. You will be ordered to never hesitate, and you will be warned that there is no way back. +
On the skyline, the setting sun suddenly accelerated and fell, hitting the land that was hostile to the soldiers. In an instant, the sea surface evaporated and thousands of square miles of buildings and palaces turned into scorched earth.

-

He looked to be in his sixties, but his real age was hard to estimate. He was wrapped in a grey linen robe, his body was no longer young but still strong, and his dark skin was covered with deep grooves. He seemed to be a man of few words, his lips like dry soil were closed, and it seemed that he rarely opened them.

When his eyes turned, a burning scrutiny was hidden in the depths of his lowered eyes. The soldier called Orr followed him with a look of disappointment, while the woman wrapped in blue gauze beside him didn't care and just smiled at him.

Behind them, there were a few people following far behind. The farthest and most leisurely one was a young man wearing a light-colored ancient robe. He seemed to have not yet realized what this journey meant.

“This is it,” the woman said, looking toward the cave.

The local knight family member who led the way nodded to them and confirmed the woman's opinion: "Be careful, no one who goes in here will come back. It's the devil's arch at the very end."

"Subspace?" asked the young man at the end of the line.

"Be careful, the subspace is not as dangerous as here." The leader advised.

"Of course I do," the young man said. "Well, you're not going to leave us all waiting outside, are you, Neos? Are you going to do that?"

The old man in the lead nodded, but there was no smile on his face that looked like an ancient rock.

The young man raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms over his chest. The old man's dark eyes examined him, like a mechanic examining the usability of a tool. This quickly made the young man frown, until the old man closed his eyes slightly, turned his head, and continued to walk deeper. His next command made the young man shrug and smile.

"The others stay. You come with me, Remus."

(End of this chapter)