40K: When evil spirits appear

Logan returned to Etri almost two Terra hours later, and he was surprised to find that the old fearless man had been waiting by the pit the whole time, and had immediately asked him a question in a deafening voice as soon as he saw him.

"What did you find down there?!"

Logan nearly stumbled back from the sheer volume of the roar. He grimaced, raised his hand, patted his ears, and showed Bjorn the wooden box he held. Fearless took a human-like step forward, bending down to examine it closely, and then roared again.

"What is this thing?!"

"It's a box," Logan replied blankly, rubbing his more severely damaged right ear.

"Duh! So what's in this box?!"

The current alpha wolf groaned helplessly and immediately decided to recount his discovery on the spot. He told Bjorn his findings completely and clearly in less than twenty breaths, while the latter listened with unusual quiet, not uttering a single word. Unfortunately, as soon as Logan finished speaking, he immediately resumed his roaring.

“This is all too much of a coincidence!” Bjorn roared through his megaphone. “Kaspel was shot down by me upon arriving at Fenris, and this box was the only thing he carried that survived… and it even lasted ten thousand years to provide us with revelation. There must be something wrong with this, Logan!”

He must be doing this on purpose! The alpha wolf thought angrily. That old bastard is deliberately torturing my ears!

"Of course, old man, how could there be no problem?" Logan gasped. "If there were no problem, I wouldn't have jumped into that bottomless pit."

"Oh? Are you complaining?"

"I will correct my mistakes..."

Fearless let out a booming laugh, then turned and stepped into the darkness, leaving only his echoing voice behind.

"Do as you please, kid. This is your problem now, and I'm just a remnant of an old era. I'm going back to sleep. You can continue with your work, but I have something to remind you."

His thunderous footsteps suddenly paused for a moment, and the synthesized sound became calm and low.

"I think that soldier... he's been here for a long time."

Logan watched him leave in silence.

-----------------

"I need a team," Logan said to his chief wolf priest.

"Which team?"

"I don't know, maybe it's an expedition team," the alpha wolf, still rubbing its ears, replied. "Do you remember those ancient city ruins deep beneath Fenris?"

Upon hearing this, the massacrer Ulric slowly raised his head from beside the long table paved with stone slabs.

He told Logan seriously and earnestly, "Don't even mention that you plan to send people in there. Don't you know those places are cursed? They've been haunted since ten thousand years ago or even longer... The ghosts should have gone to the mortal realm, but those in the cities obviously haven't. They are wandering spirits, and they harbor great hatred for us."

Logan neither confirmed nor denied this statement, which was somewhat superstitious even for a wolf pack. Instead, he changed the subject to something that seemed completely unrelated to the current topic.

"In early summer this year, the earth's crustal movement was exceptionally violent, old man."

The killer frowned. "Yes, so what?"

Logan grinned, slowing his speech. "Remember that child? She was the first to see our prisoner. In her description, he didn't initially appear as imposing as Draco later did. The rune priests extracted her memories, and I saw the psionic projection. He looked like a dried-up corpse, but he was wrapped in a shroud. There's no mistake about that, unless ancient civilizations liked to dress like that, so he probably crawled out of the tomb and all the way to the surface..."

"A pipe dream," Ulric retorted coldly. "To crawl to the surface from almost the earth's core?"

Logan curled his lip, then spread his arms wide and shouted at him, "Then you'd better give me a better explanation, old man?"

"I have no explanation for you, and I don't care to!" Ulric retorted sharply. "All I know is that those cities are not places for the living to set foot in!"

The alpha wolf stared at him for a while, not angry at this offensive attitude, but rather narrowed its eyes with curiosity.

Suddenly, he asked, "Why are you so concerned about this?"

Ulrik snorted and lowered his head, turning his gaze back to the stone slab. However, he could not ignore the alpha wolf's question, so he remained silent for a moment before reluctantly speaking again.

"...I went there when I was young."

Logan suppressed the urge to burst into laughter, nodded seemingly seriously, and pressed on, "And then?"

Ulric braced himself on the table with both hands and answered, word by word, "Twenty of us went down, and I was the only one who came back. Everyone else died, Logan."

"What?"

The killer looked at him expressionlessly: "You heard me, they're all dead, and I don't even know why... You can take what I just said as superstition, that's fine, but you must understand one thing: I don't lie."

The alpha wolf narrowed his eyes, rose from his chair, and began pacing back and forth in his private meeting room. The room largely retained the decor favored by the previous alpha wolf; his spoils of war still hung on the walls, untouched. Finally, he stopped in front of a longsword, abruptly wiping away a thin layer of dust from its surface.

With his back to Ulric, he spoke slowly, his voice extremely calm.

"Nevertheless, I will still send someone. I don't expect you to understand me, Ulric, but I have a gut feeling..."

"What?"

The alpha wolf turned its head slightly, its golden eyes gleaming in the shadows.

He didn't answer, but he didn't waste any time either.

After yet another Terran era, a bizarre expedition found itself at the very bottom of Etter. The team consisted of only two people, one of whom was, remarkably, a mortal… or at least appeared to be, a mortal. That Astartes was none other than Logan Grimnner himself. The Slaughter vehemently objected, but the Alpha Wolf silenced him with a single sentence.

"If you're right, then this expedition will at least rid the pack of a foolish wolf who wouldn't listen to his chief priest's advice. Isn't that a good thing?"

The killer stormed off in anger.

The alpha wolf chuckled and turned to look beside it. There stood a tall mortal clad in a frost wolf skin, his expression somewhere between focused and serene, as if deep in thought.

Logan lowered his head slightly and asked softly, "Do you know where we're going?"

The mortal looked up at him but said nothing.

Logan patted him on the shoulder, turned and strode forward, where a small passageway leading downwards awaited them.

Before today, it had been sealed away for centuries. Ulric's exploration was the last time the wolf pack showed interest in the ancient underground city of Fenris... In fact, the wolf pack had a consensus, at least in Rus's time, that this sleeping place should not be disturbed, but the old wolves always die, and the new wolves are always too reckless—humans always make the same mistakes and then claim that they have learned from them.

But we are different; we admit our mistakes and correct them. Logan thought with a smile.

He heard footsteps behind him.

The next period was remarkably quiet, save for the sound of footsteps and the pervasive toxic fumes emanating from deep within the earth's crust. The passageway was shrouded in darkness, yet Logan's every step was precisely planted on the descending stone steps. These steps, their age unknown, still held the weight of his armor with remarkable stability—a true miracle. But he knew that the truly astonishing thing was yet to come.

He used his sense of touch to measure the depth of his descent, slowly calculating as time ticked by and the depth steadily increased. At first, it was three thousand meters underground, then five thousand meters, seven thousand meters...

They continued descending, the steps seemingly endless, stretching downwards. Had Logan not been extremely confident in his senses, he might have begun to suspect he was under some kind of sorcery. Thinking this, he glanced back and found those crimson eyes still calmly floating behind him.

Logan stopped, so he stopped too.

"Hey," the alpha wolf murmured, his voice carrying through the darkness. "How does this place look? Does it seem familiar?"

As was customary, he received no answer. The alpha wolf chuckled softly at his own actions, shook his head, and continued descending. However, when he reached a depth of approximately 12,000 meters, a voice came from behind him. It sounded unusually hoarse, as if two flints were rubbing against each other.

"I don't know, I have never visited this place."

Logan turned his head sharply, but the man continued.

The language he was speaking was Yuvik, that was true, but in details such as grammar and pronunciation, it differed considerably from the language commonly used by the wolf pack and the Fenris, sounding almost archaic.

"This fur is very warm, thank you for your gift." The man picked up the fur, wrapped it around his body, and said thoughtfully, "But, from what unfortunate beast did it come?"

Standing at the bottom of the steps, gazing upwards, Logan Grimner decided to give an answer.

"Frostwolf".

"Frost...wolf?" The man repeated the word with some difficulty, as if he had never heard of it before.

“Yes, a Frostwolf.” Logan sized him up discreetly. “A giant wolf with snow-white fur, very intelligent, born knowing how to hunt.”

Do they eat people?

"This one doesn't eat like the ones we raise."

The man nodded and wrapped the fur around himself even tighter: "That's a good beast, and I won't let it down."

"Then it will feel honored... Do you know where we're going?"

"I know." He nodded slightly. "But you shouldn't go any further."

Logan raised an eyebrow and asked, "Really? Why?"

Those crimson eyes darted from side to side, then a soft sigh escaped: "...Because I can now communicate with you, which means they're nearby."

"them?"

The man nodded, then suddenly took a step, passing Logan and heading straight down. He walked extremely fast, covering the hundred-meter distance in just a few seconds, finally stopping at the edge of a stone step, raising his hand to touch the wall on his right. The rough stone scraped against his palm, making a sound so harsh it hurt one's teeth.

Logan came up above him and watched him grope among the stones, eventually pressing one of them down.

Amidst the violent scraping sounds coming from within the walls, the alpha wolf asked, "Didn't you say you'd never been here before?"

"Yes, but I can sense them."

Before the words had even finished, the person had already stepped into the rising wall. Logan habitually squinted to avoid being suddenly blinded by a bright light in the darkness, but was caught off guard by a refreshing fragrance that wafted towards him. His keen senses quickly analyzed the composition of the scent; it contained no toxins, just some kind of mixed plant extracts... However, before he could even ponder why such a thing would be placed in this secret chamber, many skeletons appeared before him.

Human remains.

Wrapped in animal skins, they sat or lay peacefully, filling the secret room, with strange objects beside them, such as polished stones or animal bone handicrafts.

Logan glanced at it and came to a conclusion he didn't like.

"They came here voluntarily, and then waited to die?" he said calmly. "Is that so?"

The person standing in front of him knelt down.

"Yes," he replied softly, his right hand gently reaching out to stroke the cheek of the smallest skeleton closest to him. "They wanted protection, even after death."

"Protection?" Logan repeated. "Whose? Yours?"

"No..." The man's voice suddenly filled with overwhelming sorrow. "I'm just a weapon; I can't protect anyone."

The alpha wolf asked coldly, "So, who are you? Or rather, what are you?"

The man turned around.

In the darkness, two crimson dots emitted a faint, translucent light, no longer possessing their previous eerily calm demeanor, but rather a profound sorrow. However, in Logan Grimner's eyes, these eyes were nothing more than two fragile panes of glass, isolating a world-destroying volcano from humanity. The glass itself meant nothing; the volcano could erupt at any moment, engulfing and incinerating the world with its lava.

The question is, when will it do that?

"I have no name," the world-destroying sea of ​​flames whispered sadly. "I have already told you, I am merely a weapon."

The alpha wolf sneered: "Is that so? A weapon deserves such faith that these ancient people were willing to bring their children down with them to be buried alive with you?"

With a whoosh, he drew his two-handed power axe from his back. It was named Morkay, after the wolf god of Fenris mythology. Logan had seized it from a Chaos traitor and, after reforging it, made it his own. Over the years, it had drunk countless lives.

He raised his axe at him.

Tell the truth.

He didn't yell, nor did he slow his speech to threaten; he simply spoke the words calmly and gently, almost as if giving an order...

But the man just shook his head, becoming even more sorrowful.

"You shouldn't have done this in front of them." He stepped forward, his neck exposed, letting the shadow cast by the axe blade engulf him. "You really shouldn't have done this. They've wanted to hurt you for a long time... You gave them the chance."

What he said was true.

The next second, countless points of eerie blue flames suddenly lit up in the secret room, reflected in Logan Grimner's vertical pupils.

The alpha wolf looked back coldly.