Chapter 270 Interlude: Angels and Night Ghosts
Chapter 270 Interlude: Angels and Night Ghosts
Sanguinius walked alone into the depths of the desert.
Yellow sand rolled over his boots and white robes, and gravel swept across every feather on his pure wings. He shook his wings to shake off the fine sand buried between the feathers, but new sand soon returned, making his wings heavy.
He looked up, and the sunlight made his smooth face look like snow-white plaster. He closed his eyes under the scorching sun, letting the hot spots of light remaining on his retina flicker in the dark vision.
It's time. Sanguinius thought. He will hold up a particularly brilliant piece of those illusions.
When he descended on this hot sand with the small decoration on his back, he had already picked up a part of the illusion that was about to come true at this moment.
Three weeks later, he learned to walk, run, and fly, and as he unarmedly defeated the tribe's dinner ingredients from the fire scorpion's nest, he thought about how the creator of his gift would view his life.
A year later, he walked under the fiercest sun, soaring in the sky with his brilliant wings, looking down from the sun's perspective at the sand plains and stone cairns below, watching the mutant tribes that he would disperse in the future, and he wondered if he would also witness this scenery on the earth when he came.
When He came.
He opened his eyes and greeted the small black dot on the incandescent horizon.
Sanguinius reached out and felt the direction of the wind today.
Then, the angel flapped his wings.
The wings rode the strong wind on the hot sand, helping him soar up and across the sky; like a rustling meteor, the angel streaked through the sky, quickly approaching the enlarging black dot.
It would be golden. Sanguinius thought, and in a trance, he felt the sand under his feet retreating, merging with the repeatedly overlapping sand in the broken illusions of every day and night.
And that spaceship, a huge aircraft that he had never seen before but had seen thousands of times, its armor would shine brightly under the scorching sun, shining golden, with an extraordinary beauty that contained absolute aggression.
Its unparalleled figure broke into the realm of Baal, symbolizing an uneasy judgment.
The yellow sand caressed his wings, bringing a sting that should not have existed.
He closed his eyes again, and his thoughts temporarily shifted to his wings, feeling the roots of the feathers trembling uncomfortably. His blood turned cold under the scorching sun.
Soon, Sanguinius gave himself a smile. He looked straight ahead again and went with the wind.
The landing aircraft expanded in his eyes, and the moment he saw its color clearly, Sanguinius was slightly stunned.
In the dust, a storm bird as dark blue as the night sky outlined a deep outline that could only be seen after nightfall. When the sun shone on the aircraft, even the golden shadow was equally swallowed up, turning into a dark noon.
The false reality touched Sanguinius's mind...
No, he pursed his lips, and a new feeling sprouted in the angel's heart.
The real reality touched me, he thought in a trance.
The door of the storm bird opened, and eight Astartes warriors lined up beside it, waiting for the appearance of the father of genes.
Then he.
The surface of the dark blue armor flashed a layer of ghost green, and the bright blue highlights depicted every edge and spike of the armor, and like thunder and lightning, it ran through the chest armor, waist armor and hard leg armor. His right shoulder armor was decorated with a relief of a skull blood bat, and the left was painted with a piercing black blade.
He wore a pair of huge and brand new lightning claws on both hands, and the dark blue fluorescent light also flickered on them, almost cutting through the air.
The scarlet drape behind him was divided into two groups, one group was raised from his shoulders as a cloak, and the other group was sewn under the weapon box of tools and weapons at the waist, as a double-layer lining, fluttering in the wind in the yellow sand. A closer look reveals that the original material of this set of dyed cloth seems unusual.
Sanguinius did not continue to stare at the large number of stitching seams on the inside of the visitor's cloak, but moved his eyes to the visitor's face.
He saw the extremely pale face framed by smooth black hair, the oversized pure black eyes embedded in the face, and some kind of seemingly cold smile. It seemed that this face alone was enough to bring the entire midnight into the scorching sun of Baal.
"Welcome to Baal, traveler." Sanguinius said in the local Anokan language.
Somehow, he thought the man across from him, the man who had also appeared in his visions so often, but who was always slightly and decisively different from his present reality, might understand him.
But was he really…
“Sanguinius,” the man began, speaking his name directly, but in a way that was strictly High Gothic. He stepped out of the shadow of the Stormbird, his conspicuous cape billowing behind him.
Sanguinius’ heart beat strongly, his wings pulled back, slightly folded. “I am,” he said.
But that was the name his people had given him. A gift of the soul from the blood-worshipping tribe. And a name that should not be known to outsiders.
Of pure blood. Sanguinius.
The man had learned his pronunciation. “I am,” he said in the same Anokan language, and then added his own name: “Conrad Curze.”
So it was him. A brother, Sanguinius thought, not a father.
But was it really him?
Konrad Curze walked towards him, his clean body washed every day with only a little unavoidable metallic smell of armor. He surrounded him, stretched out his lightning-clawed hand, but only extended an index finger, and let the tip of the claw rest near his wings.
Their eyes met.
"Yes," Sanguinius said softly, his wings quivering, then opening.
The tips of Conrad Curze's claws gently followed the path of his feathers, combing them as if he were carefully wiping the surface of a work of art.
"I have seen them," Coze said, still using the Gothic language commonly used in the empire, but with a slightly flexible and smooth accent. "In the palace, they were penetrated by dark spikes, and blood flowed out. , falling on the pure white feathers..."
Sanguinius' wings snapped back, blood beating against his eardrums.
"Why..." he whispered, and a kind of hallucinatory sadness suddenly passed through his mind.
Curze withdrew his claws, and Sanguinius turned to him. Two pairs of eyes that penetrated the fog and looked into the future met at this moment, in a time section that should not have existed.
"Prophecy creates prisoners of the future." Coates said, "The only path brought by prophecy is built in the fear of the past... This is what the place where I grew up called prophecy."
He couldn't help but laugh. The laughter was sometimes strong, sometimes weak, until it came to an abrupt end.
"Why don't you laugh?" Cozz said suddenly.
"That's not funny," the angel replied politely.
Curze studied him, then he looked away.
"That's the difference between you and me, Sanguinius," he said softly, a sting that was not malicious in his words, "and you were always the better of us."
"No, that's not it. Don't laugh like that," he continued.
The angel put away his warm and flawless divine smile. That smile that made the people of Baal worship him.
"So, how?" asked the angel.
"Your legion is not ready, and neither are you. Unfortunately, my legion is also not ready... The old gene seeds, and the gene seeds that my current blood can provide, have almost become two unrelated things. of genetic origin.”
He paused. "They are dying. I need time to readjust the fitness of my genes."
"It seems I'm not supposed to understand these terms, Conrad."
"Then, you can choose to find someone to introduce you to him within the next three years." Coz looked at him and said. "According to the destiny, the ardent Horus Luperkar, Lord of the Luna Wolves, will welcome you with all his heart, great angel."
"Am I supposed to assume that you tolerate my presence?" Sanguinius asked, his tone becoming a bit sharp and full of hidden power.
Curze looked at him, then held out his right hand.
Sanguinius took hold of his lightning claw.
"Then peel its skin and drink its blood together," Coates said. "Of course, I mean..."
Sanguinius smiled.
"Destiny," he replied.
What is not surprising is that the descriptions of angels meeting the emperor in Index and "Echoes of Eternity" cannot be said to be exactly the same, or they can only be said to be completely unrelated.