Chapter 272: A War Remembered
Scythe tore through flesh, flames licked dry bones, and after the gunfire, only ashes remained.
Mortarion pulled the pin on a grenade and hurled it toward the sorcerers who were trying to chant while hiding behind a heavy vehicle. Before they could cry out in their death throes, he grasped the chain at the end of Silence and flung the massive, weighty weapon straight at the damned vehicle.
With a screech of tearing metal that set one's teeth on edge, the Lord of Death ripped off the front of the carrier. Through the gaping wound, he could see the drivers inside, their flesh torn away along with the machine.
They were not dead yet, but terror and blood loss had already stripped them of the will to fight. They writhed in pain, curling and twitching on the cramped deck, as if trying to piece themselves back together.
Blood ran thick and greasy across the floor, mingling with engine oil.
Mortarion's bright eyes did not blink. He moved on decisively, leaving the task to the Death Guard following behind. Caustic phosphex would be poured over man and machine alike; the green flames would lick across, and nothing would remain.
The lurid green firelight flickered across Mortarion's pale, austere armor. He inhaled the stench peculiar to psykers, raised his hand, and fired. The primarch's The Lantern, fully charged, was like a small cannon. Brilliant light burst forth, scattering chunks of human flesh from the collapsing buildings, releasing the reek of burning fat.
On his map, Mortarion marked these locations for the troops that would follow, then pressed forward.
He advanced, always toward the target. The further he went, the narrower his field of vision became. The crowded shantytown had been flattened by Death Guard and enemy artillery alike. Thick smoke billowed everywhere, fires raged, and charred corpses lay across the roads like firewood sticks.
The area was vast, shrouded in smoke. In that murk, Mortarion received signals from other Death Guard drop-pods: they had not found Hades. So the Lord of Death pressed into the unsearched quarter.
The closer to the central zone, the denser the smoke. The shanties here had already burned to ash; the smoke rose from hastily deployed heavy vehicles and from the people inside, smoked like meat.
The place reeked of ill omen, yet Mortarion knew he was on the right trail.
At first, every two alleys he passed, he would see a heavy vehicle blazing. The escorting soldiers lay dead by its treads, their bodies either burned or suffocated—but none of these were the killing blows. They had died long before.
Deeper in, the carriers loomed like trees in a morning fog, emerging one after another from the smoke, endless in number.
Mortarion slowly walked through this man-made forest in silence, guided by the fire like sunlight at dawn.
No enemies remained. Anything worth shooting had already become sticks of charred flesh, easily kicked aside by a primarch's boot.
Most corpses were dead—by fire, by smoke, or crushed beneath their own machines. Some bodies still clung to faint life, hollow shells coughing weakly in the haze.
Mortarion knew that without their souls, these husks would soon perish, so he would not waste bullets here.
He had more urgent tasks.
Resisting his own instincts, Mortarion pressed onward, toward the direction he least wished to go.
At last, he saw the one he sought.
A figure sat silently beneath a carrier, flames curling around him. Behind him lay the wrecks of tens of thousands of silent, exploded transports. Before him lay a mortal, groaning faintly.
Mortarion recognized the mortal—the Blank Hades had brought on this mission.
Hades sensed Mortarion's arrival, but did not lift his head. He seemed to be trying to stuff the Blank's exposed lungs back inside, which made the wretch hiss horribly.
The Blank man groaned, whispering "Nina", his dying eyes fixed pleadingly on Hades, sweat beading on his face.
At last, he breathed out a frail, threadlike "please."
Bang!
Hades made a swift, decisive shot. There was no more struggling. He stood, wiping blood and mucus from his weapon on the wrecked carrier.
Only then did he turn to face Mortarion—unusually, without his helmet.
The flames burned quietly.
Mortarion kicked a corpse aside and strode toward him, signaling for Hades to follow so they could regroup with the main force.
After confirming the terrain data, the Lord of Death opted for a breakout first.
"I didn't expect you to arrive so quickly," Hades said as he manipulated the battered Battle-Automata to clear paths through the ocean of wrecked carriers he himself had created.
"I thought you'd waste more time negotiating with Guilliman."
"Though he cannot sense the warp, he can at least sense my foul mood," Mortarion said dryly.
Hades gave a small laugh.
"Well, when we return, you'll have to explain all this to the Ultramarines' primarch. I had hoped you'd at least brief him beforehand."
Mortarion gave a vague grunt of acknowledgment. Meanwhile, his armor's undamaged vox systems crackled back to life. The Death Guard searching the smoke for Hades began to reappear, slowly falling back. From time to time came the sound of gunfire or a scythe cleaving—Death Guard finishing off those still-living corpses.
Suddenly, before he even realized the words had left him, Mortarion spoke.
"That 'Nina'... what does it mean?"
"His sister," Hades replied carelessly, while checking in with a fresh communicator to coordinate the Zero Company's drop at key points. Fortunately, so long as they avoided the psykers' suicidal detonations, the Zero Company could handle purging them with ease.
"Where is she now?"
The Lord of Death's curiosity was unusual—something that is out of character. Hades, walking ahead, abruptly turned back, his face expressionless.
Mortarion felt the oppressive weight of the Black Domain's aura.
Then it faded. Hades stared at him, speaking slowly.
"I don't know. He was sent by Malcador. How should I know about his family?"
As he spoke, Hades casually leveled his pale weapon and put a coughing corpse out of its misery with a clean headshot.
"But I remembered it," he said suddenly, staring straight up at the sky.
Mortarion never got the chance to ask what exactly Hades meant by that—because at that moment, the blue-armored Ultramarines arrived, shouting 'Courage and Honour!'
And to Hades, their tactical questions were far more appealing than Mortarion's doubts.
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