Warhammer: Start with a dog.

Chapter 354 Going Home

When Geratos opened his eyes, embracing his collapsed, broken and grief-stricken soul, a snowflake was swaying and falling from the lead-gray sky.

It fell just softly into his eye socket.

The hexagonal cold crystal was immediately melted by the extraordinary person's body temperature and turned into a crystal drop of water flowing from the corner of his eye.

Everything he had been so passionate about had collapsed.

The idol he once believed in wholeheartedly has completely denied the meaning of his past existence.

If everything he had been sure of had collapsed, were the crimes he had committed truly "just" as they had always believed...?
They never became adults. The boy used his faith as a grindstone to grind away all his rationality and humanity, and polished himself into a complete weapon.

In this way, when you swing a weapon at any target, you will not question the meaning of swinging the weapon to hurt others.

You can tell yourself that everything will be taken care of by a higher being.

Just give yourself completely.

Just hand it over.

The weapons of the gods require no self-will.

The last thing the Empire needs in its weapons is human.

In a trance, he recalled the roar of the first Night Lord he had killed before his head was cut off.

"You slaves of lies! Idiots! That's just a throne of lies!"

*
so tired.

An unprecedented feeling of fatigue swept over Geratos' soul.

*
The priest closed his eyes, and more and more snowflakes began to cover his eyelashes.

He lay here quietly waiting for the end and death.

If everything was a lie and their existence was meaningless, then let his own ridiculousness end.

*
"Hey, you can't just lie here."

A boy's voice sounded near Geratos.

The priest did not move, he was annoyed.

But he didn't even have the energy to raise his bolter to fire a burst of bullets at the disturbing young mortal.

His muscles were as strong as ever, and his witch-hunt bombs were fully loaded, but he no longer had the will to move a single nerve.

Just like that, after a while, this ungrateful mortal child will lose interest and walk away on his own.

"Get up. Stand up. You can't just lie here."

The boy repeated. "You'll be dead soon—even with your heavy armor. The deadly night is coming, and thick metal won't do much to keep you warm."

After a few seconds of silence, the Black Templar still had his eyes closed, but he spoke to answer the boy.

"I'm fine. My power armor can provide heating. Since the polar night is about to fall, you should leave quickly and leave me here alone."

He paused, and a faint flame of impatience ignited in the embers of his almost cooling heart.

The Astartes' fingers moved an inch and fumbled for the trigger of the bolter.

"Go away. Leave me here and leave me alone."

The boy should have noticed the huge and deadly weapon of Geratos, but there was no flinch in his emotion.

"Then you have to get up too. And you'd better get up quickly. Who let me see you? You are so strong and solid, you must be a good hunter. Without your big house, it will be very difficult to get through this polar night."

"No, I don't belong to anyone. I...I...no one needs me now."

The bitter and sour taste once again filled the Astartes' tongue. It tasted like the adrenaline battle potion injected into their blood through the syringe built into the power armor before every battle.

"How is that possible? No one here would need a strong man like you. But I have never seen you before. If I had, I would definitely have an impression of you. Are you a wanderer? That's really rare. Any wanderer here cannot survive the first polar night. A person must have a place to return to in the darkest and coldest times - with water, food, and a place to sleep by the fire." The boy shrugged, squatted beside him, and touched the coating with the Templar Cross on Geratos' shoulder armor through his thick animal leather gloves with a rigorous and restrained curiosity.

"So, I can't wait for you too long. I have to leave before the polar night starts completely. You have to get up quickly."

"Get up? Where to go? I have nowhere to go."

"Is that so? You can come with me there." The boy stood up and pointed to a line of light on the distant horizon.

"Go to the House."

"The House? To whom?"

"There are many. The Dornes, the Lanes, the Pollacks . . . but the one I'm showing you is mine. It's the closest."

A special name vibrated his auditory nerves, restoring some vitality to Pastor Geratos's limbs and driving him to stand up.

The Black Templar sat up, and the frost and snow that had begun to form an ice crust began to crack and slide down from the surface of his armor.

"Dorn... Family?"

"Yes, it seems you know my family."

"House Dorn... is your family...?" The Black Templar Astartes turned his neck stiffly and incredulously in the boy's direction.

The person who came into view made Geratos involuntarily let out a sigh of disappointment:

He was a boy wearing a windproof jacket and warm clothes made of various animal furs sewn by hand with needle and thread. His head and face were tightly wrapped in multiple layers of woolen fabrics, and even his eyes were protected by a large primitive sunglasses half mask.

The boy's head was so thickly wrapped in outer fabric and fur that Geratos could not discern any features.

But judging from his height and build, he was a mortal boy with no extra mutant limbs, probably in pre-puberty. He was holding a sled with some unidentifiable cargo on it. Two large sled dogs with thick fur were harnessed to the sled, staring at the tall stranger in black armor with their teeth bared but their tails between their legs.

The boy looked up at him from behind his sunglasses. "Oh my god! You're so tall!"

The mortal child didn't seem afraid of him at all, and Geratos wondered if that was because the mortal had never seen a Space Marine in his short life, nor did he know what they stood for.

For some reason, this made him feel strangely at ease.

No one here knows him...

"Let's go! Hurry up." The boy urged again, "The polar night is really coming!"

He walked forward, grabbed Geratos's gauntlet, and led him, one step deep and one step shallow, towards the lighted place in the increasingly heavy snow and wind.

----------

"Hi? Hi? Magna?"

Ramizane waved his hand in front of Magna, who suddenly froze. "What happened to you? Are you okay? Is it down? Is the Destiny Steel okay?"

"How could it possibly go down? Its main processing array is not even running at 50% of its capacity, and we don't have any combat or high-energy real-time data to process right now."

Perturabo flicked his furry tail, jumped off his desk and came over, then jumped onto Ramezane's arm, stretched his head out, and looked closely at the death mask of Rogal Dorn, which he had cast himself, on Magnar Dorn's face.

The dog's paw flicked open some hidden maintenance switch, starting the test code.

"No problem, weird."

Perturabo's bright brown shepherd's eyes stared sternly at the white-blue electronic bionic eye of Magna Dorn.

"You shouldn't be..."

The other person blinked, immediately hugged his teacher, and rubbed his cheek against the collie's fluffy, warm fur.

"Tsk, it seems it's not him."

Perturabo wagged his tail and began ordering his flagship machine spirit around.

(End of this chapter)