Chapter 227: Hello, Xenos, Your Scourge Has Arrived (End)
The good news was that they had reestablished contact with Hades; the bad news was that there was no signal from Mortarion's side.
Aboard the Endurance, Garro stood in silence, countless data streams flowing across the command console. Based on the latest developments on the battlefield, Garro cautiously maneuvered the legion.
Except for micro-management monsters like Perturabo, command of a legion was usually a complex and cumbersome process, requiring close cooperation with mortal crew members.
And now, those crew members were reporting to Garro that the signal from Mortarion's side had been lost—
[Endurance, this is Hades, requesting air support units. The main city can still be held.]
Garro took a deep breath, signaling to the mortal crew with his eyes that he had understood.
[Endurance acknowledges. Hold for another half-standard hour, and we can open the first breach.]
[I can also disable the Mechanicus air defenses here. Uploading the air-defense zone map.]
[Endurance acknowledges.]
Ordinarily, the conversation would have ended there, but... perhaps because Hades had some free time on his hands, this Death Guard, who always liked to keep the mood lively, added another line.
[Garro? Why are you handling commands? Where's Mortarion?]
[...]
Garro did not wish to distract Hades, who was still on the front line, but hiding the truth was also unacceptable.
[Rust corrosion has spread to some units' armor. The Primarch has led the Zero Company to investigate.]
[The Death Guard has already quarantined those infected units.]
For a rare moment, the channel fell silent on the other end, but then Hades's voice came back, mixed with the static noise of the comms, sounding almost cheerful.
[Ahaha, good thing I left them behind.]
[Garro, contact Lantern Bearer Ugo. Listen carefully, if he says he feels warp fluctuations destabilizing aboard the Endurance, then immediately take the fleet away from Rust Prime.]
At present, because of the war and the slaughter, Rust Prime was still the weakest point of the barrier.
[Use fire as much as possible, take breathing apparatus, and send the most strong-willed veterans in first.]
Garro was stunned. He wanted to ask something but found there was nothing he could say.
[Hades, you—]
[This day was bound to come. Warp entities aren't some kind of special case, at least for now, the Endurance is still our turf.]
That was a lie. Hades was, in truth, panicking, but no matter how scared he was, he could not immediately return to the Endurance. Besides trusting them, there was no other thing he could do.
Sooner or later, this day would come. Even if it wasn't the Death Guard, the tentacles of the warp would still reach inside eventually.
Garro exhaled slowly.
[Understood.]
[Garro, stay in constant contact with me. If anything feels wrong, report to me immediately.]
[Garro acknowledges.]
A temporary team, mixed with the Pallbearers, was quickly assembled and dispatched to the third quarantine zone—precisely where the signal had disappeared.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"My lord, the signal is lost."
Mortarion glanced at Leo, the Apothecary behind him, then pointed to three men, ordering them to go back and report the situation.
"Try to reconnect."
Their footsteps stretched out long and echoing in the corridor—a tall, empty, and dim hallway, the kind you might see in a horror film.
The Endurance is a Gloriana-class Battleship,
What does that mean?
It meant The Endurance contained countless hidden rooms and passageways; the ship's dark spaces were the best places to harbor filth and corruption,
The Legion, the master of the ships, could never fully explore a Gloriana-class Battleship, just as humans could never fully root out the cockroach nests in their own kitchens.
And the isolation chambers allocated to the Apothecaries were typically placed in the most remote corners of the ship, to prevent any contamination from leaking out.
[My lord, there is indeed a warp fluctuation.]
It was Magos Korklan, who often stayed at Hades's side, who spoke with an unquestionable certainty.
Mortarion took a deep breath and tightened his grip on Silence.
[You were the one who followed Hades during that previous crisis, right?]
[Yes, my lord, we faced a daemon directly.]
Mortarion looked toward the deep gloom of the corridor ahead, at the very edge of what the naked eye could perceive, where a faint phosphorescent glow could be seen.
[The first time you saw a daemon, what did you feel?]
[Panic. Shock, my lord. Without hesitation, I can say it was the greatest fear I've ever felt in my life.]
[My worldview collapsed, my lord. All the things that had formed the tenets of my life were shattered.]
Mortarion continued moving forward, holding his scythe, not sparing even the slightest attention to the Magos behind him.
[And then?]
[...Lord Hades brought truth and hope.]
Mortarion raised an eyebrow.
[What do you mean?]
[In the face of that most blasphemous creature, Lord Hades showed no fear whatsoever. Even the most precise instruments could not measure a trace of hormonal change signaling fear.]
[He told us, and taught us, that daemons are not terrifying.]
"Yes," Mortarion spoke, his voice echoing in the empty corridor,
"A daemon is merely a warp entity. They carry concepts any rational being would loathe, but we can still drive them out."
"They can be harmed with bullets and blades, they are not invincible. When their physical forms are broken, they cannot continue their howling."
A roar came from the knights behind the squad, as if in agreement with Mortarion's words.
"...as long as we can hold the walls of our minds."
As long as they held the walls of their minds—for collapse always began with doubt.
Mortarion murmured, his fragmented voice swallowed by the breathing inside his mask.
"...ignorance will be our greatest disadvantage. But why does he cling so tightly to the Imperial Truth?"
Those scrolls inscribed with maxims, the laurels of science and humanism shining brilliantly—if Mortarion had never witnessed the deepest nightmare with his own eyes, he would have been the staunchest follower of the Imperial Truth.
But it was all a lie.
Daemons existed, gods existed, the warp held power, and psykers were not as gentle and harmless as they appeared.
Mortarion had tried to replace words like "daemon" or "god" with "warp entity," but even so, it could not explain away the Imperial Truth.
In the end, Mortarion had to attribute this to the power of language and thought—perhaps once people knew of daemons, the possibility of madness would arise, just as it had in the past.
But Korklan's words just now made Mortarion realize: he had faced daemons and did not go mad.
Did this mean that the power of language and thought was not as great as Mortarion had once imagined?
Mortarion pondered this, but the warp incidents he had personally experienced were still too few to let him draw an absolute conclusion.
In the end, Mortarion temporarily attributed it to Hades being present at the time.
"My lord."
The salute of two duty Apothecaries brought Mortarion's thoughts back. Leo stepped forward to inspect the two of them, while a burst of static sounded in the comms channel.
[...My lord, all is normal.]
Mortarion stood in silence, motioning for the Apothecaries to take them over.
Through the observation window, mottled rust-yellow patches covered the entire floor, and the chamber's alloy construction only made things more troublesome.
In the outermost quarantine chamber, the Apothecaries were busy spraying chemicals, the ventilation ducts roaring as they flooded the area with inert gas.
By relying on these chemicals and the inert gas, the Apothecaries could barely contain the rust in this place.
Mortarion frowned—the Primarch could see rust seeping out into the corridor.
"Status."
"My lord Primarch, we have currently contained the rust within this sector, but due to the extremely rapid growth of the rust, fourteen internal quarantine chambers have already been infected."
"At present, all the inner quarantine chambers have been filled with helium gas, which has temporarily suppressed the growth of the rust."
It was precisely the incredible speed of the rust's spread that had caused this seemingly trivial report to reach the Primarch.
A Primarch did not deal with minor matters—especially during wartime.
[My lord, it's psychic in nature.]
[Can you contain it?]
[Yes.]
Mortarion raised his hand, signaling the Apothecaries to step back, and ordered the Deathshrouds and the Blanks to lead the way, with two Knights following behind.
The Knights were really too large for a space like this—if they had to be used, they would have to be prepared to destroy the entire compartment.
Mortarion called the Knights over mainly to suppress the psychic presence, not to fight directly. The Wraith Knights had fought alongside Hades on several occasions, and were more experienced than most.
The Primarch keenly noticed that once the Blanks entered this area, the rust immediately began to wither.
The Apothecaries saw it too, and quickly, despite the suffocating nausea that the Blanks' aura brought, rushed forward to sterilize the rust.
Things seemed to become simple and smooth. As the Blanks advanced, the rust receded one by one, leaving only dry traces like tear stains.
But as they moved deeper in, the rust began to turn thick and sticky, the bright yellow matter becoming vibrant and alive, like some kind of unknown slime mold.
Eventually they reached the central chamber, where several "corpses" lay—these were the original contaminated sets of armor.
The entire room looked as if it had been consumed by slime mold, the rust creeping and twitching like mycelium. In the center of the room, a humanoid figure was being twisted together by fungus—
"Good day to you, Lord Mortarion."
Mortarion raised his weapon and fired at the fungus mass that was slowly taking shape, but it had no effect; those things appeared immune to physical damage.
The Primarch stepped aside and gave a signal—the roar of a massive chainsword echoed from behind the squad, a faint light dancing across the Wraith Knight's hull.
[Acknowledged, my lord!!!]
The Wraith Knight smashed into the room with brutal force, slicing at the fungus, and it worked—even though it was like cutting empty air, its mere presence severely damaged the entity.
Once the room stabilized, Mortarion signaled the Deathshrouds to bring in the Blanks to secure the physical barriers of the area.
As if encountering a natural predator, the rust that had filled the chamber rapidly withdrew, vascular networks retreating to the corners of the room, and then—
It exploded!
A hazy yellow mist instantly filled the entire space, a twisted humanoid form faintly visible in the fog.
"My lord, you should face your true destiny instead of blindly running away."
"Resisting the gods will only make you and your sons suffer an even more unbearable fate."
The dim light fell upon Mortarion's armor, corpse-like, pale, powerless, rigid.
Mortarion silently opened fire into the mist.
Useless—it only disturbed the fog.
The Magos hiding at the back of the squad poked his head out.
[My lord, it will dissipate on its own.]
[...]
The Primarch still resolutely kept firing shot after shot at the shadow within the fog.
"You should not struggle. Of course you will not die, but every struggle will cost the Death Guard itself."
"Your and the Death Guard's fate has already been decided. Did you truly feel nothing in your contacts with the other Primarchs?"
"Only you—only you descended upon that vibrant, living world. That was the richest seedbed chosen for you by Him!"
"Shut up!"
A fierce light flashed in the Primarch's eyes as he glared straight at the figure, shouting:
"That was my trial! I conquered it! I changed it! Barbarus was never your domain—it is mine! It belongs to the Death Guard!"
"Hiding behind the warp, a worthless coward playing with witchcraft—how could the Death Guard ever produce a traitor like you!"
"Wrong, wrong, wrong, my lord. You are the traitor—the one who betrayed destiny, the one who betrayed everything,"
That voice interrupted lightly, and for this conversation, it had even borrowed some psychic power from another that should have been destined for someone else in this sector—otherwise, with so many Blanks present, it could hardly maintain itself.
Even a simple projection was extremely hard to stabilize in the presence of so many Blanks.
"Only cursed wanderers can avoid the consequences of destiny's correction. But for one who was born within destiny itself, how could there be any good ending?"
"Your struggles will only bring misfortune upon others—"
"Get out!"
Mortarion roared, his knuckles gripping his weapon turning white,
"Everything I have done is my fate! How can there be talk of betrayal or change!"
"What I have done is my fate!"
"Get out!"
Sensing the Primarch's rage, the towering Knight roared within the chamber like a caged beast, its anti-psyker field reaching its peak.
The faint, nearly dispersing psychic energy finally dissipated along with the fog, and in that last moment—
In a single instant of time, a glimpse of fate—Mortarion saw... he saw reflected in those dusky amber eyes [Destiny] [Future] [Lies] [Truth].
He stood lonely atop a chaotic sky, with no one by his side.
No Death Guard. Nothing.
Time seemed frozen for eternity.
Hiss— the Primarch's scythe scraped a gouge into the floor.
Mortarion's mind wavered for a moment, and then he was back aboard the Endurance, dim lights shining down on him, making him dizzy and faint.
People were looking at him with awe.
The Primarch felt the eyes on him, mixing with an emotion Mortarion loathed, one that made him nauseous.
Mortarion took a deep breath, his mouth full of bitterness.
No, it cannot be like this
That was a lie, an illusion—Mortarion had seen many of them before, he should have no fear left, he was beyond fear now.
No, it cannot be like this, he was already accustomed to all of this, already accepted a gray future. The war was still ongoing, the Death Guard still needed his leadership.
Hades was still fighting on Rust, Garro was commanding the Legion, every Death Guard and Grave Wardens was bleeding—he could not, he could not allow himself to be disturbed here.
Perhaps this was the enemy's tactic in itself—he needed to adapt quickly.
Mortarion turned in silence, making sure there was nothing unusual about him,
"...It seems your anti-psyker field strength was not up to my expectations."
He spoke again, returning to reality.
At this, people no longer looked at him with that unsettling gaze, and obediently lowered their heads.
Crisis resolved, Mortarion strode out of the chamber, his gray cloak fluttering behind him.
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