Chapter 185: Within the Blade

They sat down in the middle of the street of RA-124. The mud mixed with flesh and bone fragments were crushed by the ceramic steel armor, and some dark fragments were stuck in the gaps of the armor under the pressure.

"The Primarch Rogal Dorn has left." Jaeger said in a low mood. "I think... have we done something wrong? Are we violating the will of the Emperor and my father?"

Several World Eaters looked in the direction of the street at the same time, extending their sights in the ruins, deep into the rain of blood and fire falling from the sky in the smoke and dust, all the way to the dark technological fortress composed of steel and non-material energy with the collapsed walls on the horizon.

Just now, after Rogal Dorn gave a speech, he walked towards the collapsing fortress, and the nameless golden skull and the recently replaced giant chain saw sword "Storm Fang" were hung on both sides of the giant's body. The primarch in golden armor left his dazzling light in the blood mist of burning sand. Even though he had walked out of the sight of the World Eaters, his figure seemed to still be there, bright, constant, piercing into the mind through the senses, and lingering for a long time.

"Father." This word, which is crucial to an Astartes, tasted bitter in Magor's mouth. The iron cloak given to him by the former legion commander spread out behind him and hung on the ruins.

"We should think that father does not want us to kill without honor. Maybe we should start to change."

"Like you have always advised, Centurion?" Hanno asked. "Seek honor in fighting rather than killing?"

Magor nodded and stabbed the axe blade into the soil beside him. He was actually the one who opposed the aimless slaughter, but he did not defend himself in front of Rogal Dorn.

"Magor." Garan Surak called the centurion's name. He stood beside several people and did not sit down.

He was undoubtedly the elite among the World Eaters' apothecaries. Some say he was the apprentice of a pharmacist named Fabius Bayer, one of the few surviving members of the Third Legion, while others say there must be a personal grudge between them. In any case, his professional ability is beyond doubt.

"What do you think?" Margo asked, looking up at the pharmacist.

Garland's helmet was held in his hand, and the smile on his broad face seemed false because of the twitching of his mouth: "Are you still pursuing glory, Centurion?"

"We are the hounds of the Sky Eagle." Margo said calmly. "You brought the arena into the Resolute Resolve. Isn't that a manifestation of your pursuit of glory?"

Garlan laughed: "Hounds of Skyhawks? Margo, do we look so noble? No, we are just a group of creatures based on mortals, blessed by technology, and improved by technology. We are accessories of mass-produced technology and miracles. We don't have any inherent glory."

He pointed to the fortress in the distance: "We are the same as those fortresses. Creations of technology. Weapons of war. I don't understand what kind of glory we need to pursue."

"Primarch Dorn's speech didn't touch you at all? Garlan?" Margo said in the armor. Frowning, he rubbed his hand on the axe handle. "You really went crazy in the laboratory. Those halls were approved for you by our father. You dismantled six cabins, threw our military goods out of the room, replaced everything with your chattering thinkers and cold and disgusting jars, and let Martians and medical slaves accompany you. What on earth are you thinking about recently?"

"What about you, Centurion?" Garland raised his eyebrows, "Are you going to use words to stop the pharmacist's normal research and use your axe to kill your fighting brothers?"

"I will report all this to Angron." Jager reminded, his eyes fell on Garland when he spoke.

"Then do it, Jaeger." Garlan replied coldly, regarding Jaeger's words as a blatant threat, "Then let the Primarch ban my research. I have long known what kind of cowardly father we have unfortunately encountered."

"Some insults are not easy to say, pharmacist."

"Oh, Jaeger." Garlan said, "You are so old-fashioned that you dare not even listen to a bad word from Angron. Are you agreeing in your heart?"

Jeger jumped up and slammed Garlan into the ruins, his heavily armored arm pressed tightly on the upper part of the pharmacist's chest, and shouted to him face to face: "Apologize! Repent!"

Garlan coughed heavily, looking for an opportunity to break free. Then the handle of Margo's battle axe pressed on his hand, forcing him to stop.

"What did I say wrong?" Garlan said coldly, "A father full of troubles, bound by absurd morals, and blinded by weak fantasies, is this what you want?"

"Look at Rogal Dorn, how he ruthlessly rebuked us! Look at Perturabo, how he made one-tenth of his descendants disappear out of thin air like using tools, making full use of our role and value! The Imperial Fists, the Iron Warriors, these two legions, they are the conquerors who truly accomplished the Emperor's great cause! And what about us? What kind of liberation game do we have to play, following a slave..."

Jegger was furious, and punched Garlan's head between the wooden boards and mud of the ruins. In an instant, dust flew and blood splashed. Garlan's fingers twitched, and he was grabbed by Margo and pulled out of the ruins. The whole person was thrown to the ground, and his head was covered with blood.

"You deserve to die!" Jaeger roared, and rushed to Garlan again, and was forcibly pulled by Margo. "Calm down, Jager, let's leave and stop the killing. From today on, Garlan Surak is no longer our brother."

Garland lay quietly, letting the blood flow out, his face twisted into a contemptuous sneer: "Pause? Remember why we are killing? The ruler we are chasing comes from a planet full of witchcraft energy, and the air here also has the potential for witchcraft... It's too late, brothers."

The pharmacist looked up at the sky, the scorching air trembled continuously, the last wailing of the dead echoed in the rain of fire, the flesh and blood ruins burned again, and charcoal and brass spread in the blood.

Jegger and Margo suddenly stiffened, and Garland could see the shock and regret of the two centurions from the performance of their armor.

The conflict between them and Rogal Dorn caused a small amount of information between the two parties that did not affect the overall situation. Letting a Primarch face the old night technology and witchcraft tricks alone without knowing anything about it was almost a betrayal.

The centurions turned on the communicator and tried to contact Rogal Dorn. After a few seconds, Margo nodded to Jaeger, took Hanno and started running wildly, praying that the Primarch did not run, and tried to catch up with Dorn.

In the distance, eight dazzling red lights suddenly lit up in the collapsing fortress. An extreme anger and desire to kill rose from Garlan's heart. He enjoyed this perfect sharpness and purity, and gladly accepted this rage that seemed to conquer the world.

In the laboratory of the Resolute Determination, he tried many times to imitate the Butcher's Nail. This was the one he was most satisfied with among Nuceria's many technological inventions: pure anger was enough to offset the existence of all superfluous humanity and useless conscience.

This will help them become the best tools to command the galaxy, and he believes this is what the Emperor wants. Glory and honor are built on the foundation of victory. There is no justice without conquest.

Unfortunately, his attempt never succeeded, and there were many factors blocking his research path; if he was given more time or more experience, he would definitely be able to better use this tool to drive away unnecessary pity and make up for the incompleteness of Astartes. He felt sorry.

"You can't leave." Jager kicked Garland who was trying to stand up, his voice filled with barely suppressed anger.

The next moment, Jager fell down in a dizzy state, grabbed a brick to prevent himself from kneeling, pulled a thin needle injected with black potion from his neck, and felt his heart melting.

Garland put away the needle gun. "The last time the annoying Fabius met me, he gave me this thing. Goodbye, Jager."

——

The bloody figures and copper-like black clouds increased in front of Dorn, and flames burned on every collapsed house. Corpses were scattered on the streets, some wearing pedestrian robes and some wearing armor. The smell of gunpowder in the air became thick, strange and familiar.

He remembered that he had smelled the same bloody, fiery metallic smell while waiting for the execution of the rebellious aliens in the orbit of Genna. In the later battlefields, he would smell this smell from time to time after he ordered an attack.

Rogal Dorn was not sure if this was the same hallucination reappearing. He walked forward.

The crumbling road gradually turned into a dark red like a furnace, and some of the burned materials turned into white-hot flowing metal, shining with the light of disaster. In the distance, the half-collapsed tower burst into an expanding red blood light that could not be looked directly at. The cooled mud under his feet began to heat up, and the crystals and metals on the surrounding buildings and facilities that were once used to fix some non-material energy had a collective resonance.

This planet is undergoing a certain transformation, from a battlefield ruin to a conceptual miniature of countless battlefield ruins. Another scene is like a thick cloth, covering the original surface of the world, adding a new bloody image according to the original outline. Red sand spilled under his feet, and everything from the wreckage of a chariot from tens of thousands of years ago to the detached hatch of a recent stormbird carrier was distorted in the dust and fire.

Similarly, he sometimes saw illusions of battlefields he had set foot on, and these disturbing phenomena would disappear around Perturabo. Dorn thought that this might be born from the same aversion to battlefields as Angron's disturbing hallucinations, so he overcame it all in silence. He now realized that it was not a psychological effect. He might have been secretly watched by some power.

Dorn believed that he would be able to effectively distinguish this abnormality the next time he encountered something similar.

Atomized sulfuric acid and dirty fireballs rose from the glittering metal wreckage around him, and the wild and ferocious noises burned primitively like flames, sulfur and black fire collided on the soles of Dorn's boots, and sharp ringing and roaring seemed to be summoned, and the impact force was sweeping the world.

He didn't know where this was. He didn't like it here. But Dorn was still moving forward.

As far as he could see, the number of bodies with twisted spikes on their armor was increasing. He saw several bodies chopped to pieces by axes and blades, scattered among the upright flagpoles, the broken blood-red flags, the black wooden wheels of the chariots, and the piles of spiked wooden stakes pierced into the sand. The dry bones were pierced, torn, and fell together with the bolts and rusted copper sheets. The more intense and sharp blood smell baked all the dead bodies, statues, claws and leathers. Then, to his surprise, the dry bones began to gather from the broken pieces.

First it was a hand bone, picked up the round shield wrapped with copper edges, and pieced it with the round shield on the upright skeletal body. Then, when he saw the deadly red light in the eye sockets of more dry bones, Dorn raised his sword.

Rogal Dorn had not been in combat for some time. In fact, his last bloody fight was chasing after orcs. This was not only because he was in command, but also because his son Sigismund always stood guard in front of him with a sword.

But his strength would not be weakened.

Stormfang swept away a piece of skeleton bones, and they gathered again after a brief scattering, revived from the thick dust and firelight. Their jagged blades slashed at him. Dorn calmly smashed the skeleton again, trying to open a path in these ever-gathering eternal weapons. He didn't know where to go, but he would not stop.

Unhappiness came to him faster than fatigue or anger. When a skeleton hit the golden skull on his waist, Dorn frowned. He untied the golden skull from his waist and held it in his palm, protecting its exquisite appearance, the shape held by the palm, and the oval gold-copper gem that actually drove the skull.

Then, he found that the golden runes on the gem had begun to flicker on their own.

"Your skin is burning with war." The steel head was embedded in the gilded palm of the stone sculpture, and the upper and lower jaws of the head vibrated, and the teeth clattered, saying the same words that Perturabo had joked with him before coming to Nuceria.

Dorn looked at the skull and replied: "But Invet is a world of ice and snow."

The voice it used was a combination of Perturabo's voice and his own voice, a duet of steel and stone, complementing each other in all the stresses and long sentences, making each other complete.

When Rogal Dorn heard this voice, a certain stable and cold calmness supported his consciousness, like a sweet rain, making him feel a kind of coolness and tranquility from the inside out in this world of brass with a blazing fire.

The complex runes worked faithfully, and in the cold golden light emitted by the golden skull, the brown and yellow bones that Dorn had chopped off took three times the time to revive again. The cold and clean air blew over Dorne, and the flames and flowing lava under his feet cooled into a tiny void and darkness, just enough for him to stay.

The gift given to him by Perturabo and Morse played a strange role inadvertently. Dorne knew that he would thank them for this after he left this area.

"You are me," Dorne said to the skull. "You are my other voice."

"You want to hear our voices," the skull said. "Through me, you talk to yourself."

Dorne held the skull with his left hand and held the sword with his right hand. The tail feathers of the eagle made space outside the hilt to protect his limbs.

"I need to leave here," Dorne said.

In the frenzied light, some thin but muscular bright red monsters holding black blades and iron-like horn-shaped blades passed over the primary dry bones and rushed towards him in groups. These monsters flash with blazing fire, riding beasts that are a combination of demons and machines. Flames, not blood, support their bodies, and turn into thunder to become the sound of their charge. The erosion of hatred and violence follows their charge.

"Then fight." The skull replied, using the voices of two primarchs.

I originally wanted to write about the war in Dorne, but this is really included in the newly released Death's End 2, so I won't teach you how to do it.