Chapter 387 1.1 The First Betrayer
The gods watched their representatives on earth.
Their representatives also watch them.
Now, they are in touch with each other.
he came.
——————————
He imagined that the bow of the Iron Blood was reflecting the confusing and strange light of the Eye of the Star. The waves of the subspace were far more brilliant here than at Mandeville Point.
No one believed him.
Perturabo thought silently.
The last conversation was with Phaenusmanus, who raised his confusion to his similar counterpart, only to be mercilessly interrupted.
The Lord of Medusa was unwilling to admit the strangeness that Perturabo saw, and like others, no one, not even the Primarch, could see what Perturabo saw.
That eye.
He is different.
Unlike his other brothers, Perturabo lost the memory of his childhood. From the moment he became conscious, he was shocked to realize that he was standing on the top of the mountain with tears on his face, and the sky cast his sight down on him. He returned its gaze.
The Eye of Fear.
After another failed conversation, Perturabo named this rift in the galaxy. No matter where he was, whether in the deepest cellars of Olympia or deep in the palace of Terra; no matter where he went, he led
He could feel its gaze whether the Iron Warriors leaped into the warp or whether an entire fleet took up residence in the Storm Sector .
The Lord of Steel's intuition told him that this was a wound that could tear the entire world apart. This was Pandora's box, which contained existences that were unimaginable by any intelligent being.
But no one paid any attention to him.
The Empire cheered at the appointment of the Warmaster and was shocked by the hasty ending of Nicaea. Even conspiracy theorists would focus on the sudden fall of the Perfect City - rather than an as yet unnamed celestial phenomenon.
For the imperial expedition, Perturabo and his Iron Warriors have been busy fighting everywhere. Stoppage is obviously intolerable to the Lord of Iron, and he will not stop the operation of an entire legion just to satisfy his curiosity.
But now he was very close to the Eye of Terror... Ullanor was just a little below the Eye of Terror, and it only took a short jump... to find out.
The new order has not yet been issued. The Emperor has returned to Terra, and the Warmaster seems to be held back by the Archangel of Baal. The Shepherd God is busy dealing with the various affairs that are coming. For the iron warrior who has always been silent and reliable, the Shepherd God The Wolf God just let Perturabo decide on his own expedition.
Perturabo was silent because when he led his troops to fight in various remote sectors, so many things had already happened in the empire.
The Lord of Steel and the Scarlet King had always been on good terms, but when Perturabo finally burned away the rude green creatures, he found that Magnus had been condemned as a sinner.
...?
There is also Luojia. Petulabo was originally worried about Luojia's state after the city of perfection was burned, but it seems that Luojia fell into an abnormal fanaticism.
?
And Dorne... The Imperial Fists were appointed as the defense legions of Terra.
Perturabo took a deep breath, and he felt the anger rolling in his heart. When he and his descendants were thrown to various remote battlefields, the center of the empire had been turned upside down. They were the forgotten, the abandoned, They were excluded from the center of the empire.
The original body's big hand moved and crumpled the letter of commendation with the mark of Malcador in his hand into a ball.
His thoughts were as confused as the crumpled paper.
Hollow fur.
Perturabo thought that
now he had to do something of his own.
——————
+According to the contract, you are not allowed to escape without authorization again. +
The steam roared, the electric arc jumped, the blasphemous body of steel and iron was hunched, and blood mixed with engine oil dripped from its feet.
Vashtor supported its heavy hammer and stood on the dry earth. In the distance, those black spiers stood silently on the plain.
Pharmacist Raton, who defected from the Death Guard, stood beside the Forge Lord. The originally pale power armor seemed to be soaked with mucus, and began to seep green from the bottom up. Some cute little mushrooms emerged from the gaps in the power armor. grow out.
He slowly stroked the head of the native in his hand, which he had newly picked. The wild man's purple eyes were like inorganic matter.
"No,"
he said slowly, then carefully tied the head to his waist.
"Have you really made a contract with my lord?"
Raton asked cautiously.
Vashtor lowered his body and looked at the little apothecary with hatred in his fire-filled eyes.
+ This is related to the fate of the highest heaven - -Of course there will be intrigues and wars after this, but the prerequisite for the Celebration War is the death of the cursed person. +
+No creature of the Warp would be vague on the matter. +
"But you still didn't answer my question."
Vashtor moved, and the rugged metal bone wings on his back bloomed,
+No, +
it said,
+They cast for the death of the cursed person. Enough capital, far more than you know, that they are willing to abandon their own small interests for this... They hate being out of control, but there must be a price for this. +
Vashtor seemed to be talking to himself, his voice gradually became lower, his bone wings flapped, and after a burst of spatial distortion, the Lord of the Hearth left this place.
"Okay... I still don't understand, but I wish you a happy day."
Laton muttered, and he picked out the potion from his waist. The small red rust color was particularly beautiful in the glass bottle. After passing it countless times, After improvements, iterations and blessings, this has become a pretty good gift.
"Out of control?"
he whispered,
"Then... who is going to be free?"
—————
The plague attacked the Iron Warriors' fleet.
The last jump to the Eye of Terror failed. The navigators of all the ships strangled themselves to death amidst piercing wails. Those whose hands were pulled off by the Iron Warriors in time died of bleeding from their orifices.
The ship lost its pilot and was floating in the subspace. Originally, they could complete an emergency jump by relying on a series of complex and precise mathematical coordinate calculations, but the chaotic psychic field near the Eye of Terror made this difficult. . Just as the Lord of Steel locked him in his tool room and concentrated on calculating the subspace coordinates, a strange plague began to spread throughout the fleet.
This is not a plague against people, this is a carnival against steel and iron.
Rust as red as blood climbed onto the Iron Warrior's ship like a living thing. The exhaust fan stopped rotating hoarsely, and the engine suddenly stopped after a mournful cry.
When the maintenance personnel removed the casings that broke at the touch of a touch, they were shocked to find that all the delicate structures inside these machines had been corroded by rust and turned into fertile sludge.
Turning war machines into fertile soil may be a pacifist's dream, but it is definitely not the result that the Lord of Steel wants.
The rust spreads rapidly, and the longer the time goes by, the weaker the Geller force field that protects the ship from the turbulence of subspace becomes.
When Perturabo was finally called out of his workshop by his panicked heirs, the sudden and rapidly spreading disease had completely stranded a third of the fleet in the river of warp.
The important structures of the ships were corroded by rust, making it almost impossible for them to complete the jump out of subspace. When realizing that humans could also carry diseases and spread to ships, the Lord of Steel decisively ordered these ships that could not be saved to The ship moved away from the main force on its own.
The abandoned ships had no choice but to find their own way out. They tried helplessly to follow behind the large force, but most of the fleets whose protective force fields disappeared disappeared into the subspace turbulence in the next instant.
Perhaps the disease had already infected the entire fleet of the Lord of Steel. The previous unimpeded was just a long incubation period for the plague, and the warm and moist subspace near the Eye of Terror made these diffuse spores realize that it was time to grow and reproduce.
No matter how hard the steel is, it will corrode. The fear in the hearts of the abandoned steel warriors, the steel warriors who witnessed their comrades being abandoned, and the people who witnessed the decay of all metals began to ripple through the subspace, which further accelerated the process. The carnival of rust spores.
This is a long, indefinite imprisonment.
At first, Perturabo still maintained his cold attitude. He decisively removed most of the infected and hopeless fleets. After realizing that this was still not enough to eliminate the source of transmission, he began to order the main force to attack those ships. The unwilling ships opened fire, causing a small commotion within the Iron Warriors, but Perturabo suppressed it with his usual iron fist.
During the suppression campaign, the Lord of Steel accidentally discovered that fire, gunpowder smoke and blood had a slowing effect on the spread of spores.
So the remaining, still seemingly intact ships began pouring their munitions inside and smearing their rust with the blood of their mortal servant crews.
The originally neat and orderly cabin of the Iron Warrior began to become chaotic, with rust, gun smoke and dried blood everywhere, like the beginning of some grand sacrificial ceremony.
But the futile struggle still couldn't stop the rust that was slowly devouring the heart of metal. The lack of mortal servants and the spread of rust caused problems with the ship's internal communications. Some Iron Warriors couldn't even contact their superiors, and Pettu The last time Rabo himself appeared in person seemed to have been a long time ago.
After scolding the Trident for interrupting his calculations that would allow the entire fleet to jump out of the Warp, the Primarch locked himself in the workroom again. Perturabo once again picked up paper and pen and tried to Calculate the next time the fleet can jump out of the warp turbulence.
Time and time again, Perturabo agreed to the Tridents' request to imitate him and cut off the infected fleet. He calculated irritably. This was what he was best at, but despair, madness, and irritability came over time and time again. interrupted him.
Perturabo could not imagine how others would look at him when he appeared with his fleet again. What would they think? What would they think of themselves? A stupid warp voyage that cost a third of the entire fleet?
When he thought of this, the Lord of Steel felt cold all over, and his hand holding the pen stagnated.
No, Perturabo thought softly, he should have been calculating without distraction, this thing could have made him feel calm, but now, under the curse of being abandoned by his heir, the Lord of Iron found it difficult to complete his original plan. The most comfortable job.
The long time consumed him and disintegrated him. When Perturabo raised his head again, he was shocked to see the last Iron Warriors ship on the Bird Servant - the Iron Blood. The master's cold appearance finally cracked without leaving a trace.
He opened the door of the studio in disbelief, and his scattered descendants were lying in the empty corridor. People were at the blurred border between life and death, trapped in place by their completely rusty power armor. Unable to move.
【Falk? ]
The Primarch called to the last trident who communicated with him, but there was no answer.
His hoop machines were also trapped by rust, and after a brief hesitation, the Primarch abandoned them.
Perturabo raised his feet and walked forward. The Terminator Armor walked on the thick red rust, as if stepping on the thick snow of Olympia. As if inspired, he walked straight to the deck of the Iron Blood. .
Because of Perturabo's own request, there was no observation window on the Iron-Blooded. He walked in a long, dark, warm and humid corridor covered in the blood of his heirs.
The death, trapping, and torture of his offspring did not bring much emotional impact to Perturabo, but it did mean that his dereliction of duty, incompetence, weakness, and frustration began to creep up like rust. In Perturabo's heart,
the original body was naturally aware of the wavering in his heart.
The fluffy rust spores on the floor muttered dissatisfiedly and
were unkind.
He said.
He walked to the deck, and the weird light of the subspace enveloped him. The Iron-Blooded's Geller force field had been completely broken at some point. It stands to reason that creatures exposed to the turbulence of the subspace would die, but Perturabo Still standing on the deck of the Iron Blood with its surface intact.
The free-flowing Iron-Blooded had already drifted into the interior of the Eye of Terror. Now, Perturabo was trembling, with tears streaming from his eyes as he looked directly at the Eye of God that he had seen for the first time since he became conscious.
The god looked at him.
In the distance, the roar of engines sounded, and Perturabo saw the ships that he had decisively abandoned before sailing out of the strange stream of light. He stared at them tremblingly.
The rust was no longer there, and the flames of hell were blazing. He smelled the special burning smell next to the stove. The monster composed of iron and blood stood on the front of the ship, and the sparks of forging burst out from its eyes.
+I am the Master of the Forge, Vashtor. +
The friction between iron and iron made a clanging sound, and the bone wings made of fine steel cables flapped. In a moment, Vashtor came to Perturabo.
+Do you wish to be reforged, Lord of Steel? +
The huge mechanical monster stretched out its hand to the original body,
Perturabo's pupils trembled,
[It turns out that all this is just-]
+No,+
Vashtor interrupted him, it said truly,
+I I have come here, Perturabo, to wish you freedom from all shackles and nightmares, and that in the name of the Lord of the Forge, you will be reborn. +
【What do you want? What will it cost me? ]
Perturabo said simply, which actually made Vashtor's eyes light up with electric arcs of pleasure,
+ Yes, this is why I chose you and why I recommended you. +
Vashtor coughed lowly, and fire spewed out of its mouth,
+I will show you the truth, and you promise me that you will plunge the entire empire into disaster. +
Perturabo frowned. He held his weapon, his muscles twitching involuntarily.
[No...] He said softly, [subspace thing, if this is your motive, then get out of here. I would rather die here with the Iron-Blooded. ]
Vashtor stared at him calmly,
+ I thought you were abandoned, so I came here to invite you... +
The Lord of the Forge turned around and was about to leave.
Perturabo stood on the bloody rusty moss, and he stood alone on the ruins of the Iron Blood——
[Wait, abandoned? 】
He spoke suddenly,
"What are you talking about? Answer me." 】
Vashtor slowly turned around,
+You are a little too rude, Lord of Steel. +
Vashtor said unhurriedly,
+The Perfect City fell, Prospero burned, Lord of Steel, you are now sent to the Obscure Star Territory, isn't it his will? +
+He captured and distorted your essence without authorization, and then abandoned you when he didn't need you. Magnus's tragedy is regrettable, but I can't tolerate people who share my interests being abandoned in a corner. +
Vashtor paused for a moment, and the monster sighed. It watched with satisfaction as Perturabo trembled without a trace. Rusty smelled his wavering and began to gather around the original body...
Vashtor He hammered the ground with his war hammer, sparks burst out, and the rust slowly faded away.
Perturabo lowered his eyes and looked at the rust marks. He looked up and saw that there were no scattered rust marks on the abandoned ships.
Vashtor's voice sounded again,
+So be it, I will take you away from this area, but as a reminder, I want you to take a look at the truth. We cannot afford another Primarch to be abandoned. +
Perturabo stared at Vashtor,
[Okay. ]
he said.
Big chapter, no more today
(end of this chapter)