Warhammer 40k: Shattered Steel Soul

Chapter 377: The Emperor’s Children: Chapter of the Lion and the Wolf (Part 1)

Oleg opened the leather satchel he brought back to Terra from Fenris, took out the manuscript paper inside, placed it on the table, aligned the edges, and pushed it to Melka opposite.

"Remember to buy me coffee, Mei," Oleg said. "I want authentic plant-based coffee, not those dark shabu-shabu water."

Melka adjusted her prosthetic eyes and focused on the manuscript paper Oleg handed her. With the assistance of the Mechanicum's technology, she quickly read the scrawled handwriting of her colleague.

"Of course, no problem." Melka said, "By the Emperor, I really can't stand it... Really, the Caliban information I spent several years getting from the Dark Angels is not as good as the information you got from the Wolf. The king got a lot! I feel like a fool who keeps chasing a lion and keeps losing it..."

"Hey, keep your voice down, this is the First Legion after all. What if a winged helmet suddenly emerges from the wall and is eavesdropping?" Oleg lowered his rough voice, "Anyway, the Wolf King is quite happy for someone to take the lion's The story is written.”

"Wait, is it really the Wolf King himself who told you the story?"

"Then what else? Make up your nonsense, Mei. If we wild wolves have a mouthful of meat from now on, you will have to drink a bottle of motor oil and eye drops."

Melka rolled her mechanical eyes, glanced at Oleg, simply folded the manuscript and put it into the rucksack she had used for many years.

"Let's do this," Melka said. "Let's compete in drinking the mead of the Space Wolves to see who can drink more. Since you consider yourself a wolf, I suggest you start with the first sip."

——

Eric and Laurentum chopped down a giant tree with their chain swords. The giant tree fell to one side, and was halfway supported by the branches of another dark giant tree that was solid and covered with parasitic vines. , the crowns of the trees are entangled with each other, the shadows of the leaves are swaying, whispering the secrets that only this forest planet can understand.

Eric scratched his beard and thought about how to get the giant tree down so that the trunk lay flat on the ground. Laurentum warned him not to touch, not to become the seventh battle brother foolish enough to be crushed under a tree trunk.

When Wolf King Leman Russ passed by, Laurentum was already pinned under the giant Caliban tree about five meters in diameter, with only two legs with silver storm gray armor exposed. He gave up kicking, Waiting for rescue.

Eric was using his lifelong ingenuity and decided to saw off the tree on both sides of Laurentum's body first to make it easier to move a small section of wood.

Ruth laughed loudly, waved his hand for Eric to get out of the way, squatted down, and buckled the gauntlets and arm armor of both hands directly into the giant tree. The muscles under the armor tightened, and with a shout, he lifted the giant tree in one breath.

Eric hurriedly dragged Laurentum out from under the tree trunk by his feet, and then Ruth threw the giant tree down with a bang and clapped her hands symbolically.

"Be careful, children," the Wolf King said gruffly, "don't tell me that the heat in Caliban is making you dizzy. Come on, Othern, and let's go on and see how many more woodchoppers there are. They are all useless wolves."

The Wolf King's guard patted the ax on his waist and laughed with the Wolf King: "Should we ask the knight family to borrow a few knights to chop down trees, sir?"

"Oh, which knight are you talking about, the Knight of Caliban?" Russ said, "Let's get out of the woods first! We are almost lost in the lower world, so we really give the Emperor face, right?"

At the end of the sentence, Ruth burst out laughing with great energy, showing his fangs.

Caliban is indeed a very evil place. When they looked down from the track, they just felt that there were lush trees and dense vegetation, and some of them should be castles according to the auspicious signs. The ecological environment was probably very good. The basic conditions can compete with Perturabo's carefully cared for Olympia.

But when they landed in a clearing and decided to search the entire planet for traces of the Primarch, Caliban began to cause trouble for them. Even if the Space Wolves were born in ice and snow, and they no longer know the characteristics of the forest landscape, bumping into all kinds of evil monsters every day, and even getting lost in a living forest, it is a bit too much.

"This place is literally alive," Othern said. "When will we see another Primarch?"

"I don't know, I don't know, who knows? Maybe we have to wait until our big brother is ready to see us. How is he doing here? As the eldest son of the emperor, could it be possible that he will become the King of Knights?" Leman Lu Si said, shaking his head.

"Or the head of a separate Caliban family, I guess."

"I guess it depends on his character. If he is as serious as Perturabo, he is probably the Lord of Caliban. If it is another Magnus, then we might have to find it in a library. he."

Russ said, breaking off a few branches that were blocking the way. After thinking about it again, he simply patted his scabbard comfortingly, then pulled out the long sword and chopped the branches in front of him with overkill.

"I was thinking," he muttered as he knocked off two withered brittle branches with the hilt of his sword, "he is dressed in brocade robes, wearing a crown on his head, and holding a sharp blade inlaid with dozens of multicolored diamonds in his hand. I don't have a problem with being as strict as Konrad Coze and refusing to let me come within ten meters of him without taking a shower, but it better not be another Horus, otherwise I won't be able to handle it and can only shout. The emperor comes to take a look."

When he first met Horus on the Bucephalus, the other man's unlucky face and the pair of eyes staring at him were quite unforgettable.

Othern answered cheerfully: "My intuition says that Caliban's knight fortress and monastery cannot breed such people. Maybe our uncle is relatively simple?"

"Hey, who knows. Let's leave the forest quickly, find a knight's territory, and ask if there are any families that have suddenly risen in recent decades. It would be better if there is a handsome giant more than three meters tall among them."

Ruth shrugged his shoulders and let out a long sigh.

If it were located in the wilderness snowfield of Fenris, this long cry would sweep across the blue and cold snowfield, penetrate the icy wind, and transmit the cold and long howl to the end of the Snow-capped Storm Silver Mountains. But here is Caliban, with towering green trees, dense thorns, and thousands of vines entwined with each other. Evil beasts are densely packed in the depths of the shadows, making the deep and stagnant shadows ready to move.

Therefore, the most likely result of his behavior is to make the mist in the forest move automatically without wind, attracting the deep snoring of any animal.

Ruth expected this, and even looked forward to it. After wandering in the forest for a long time, his sword and ax were really hungry for something new.

"For the noble eldest son of the Emperor, whether he is a knight king, a lord, a warrior, a scholar, or a winged cherub, let's kill something, wolf cubs!"

——

The language has yet to take shape.

The ideas that swirled within one of the greatest and most complex minds of the Empire had not yet found a way to carry them, to give them form. Words have not yet come into contact with the mind, which is free from hindrances; the words, written by man's limited faculties, to delineate the pattern and appearance of the world, have not yet come to limit this innate faculty of perception and description.

Therefore, everything that follows is a boring cross-section of the real world, painted with barren brushwork and limited colors after language was given to him.

The outlines of the trees resemble rough, wrinkled paper, and the light that briefly penetrates the dense forest appears as a fragile strand. The sky is almost invisible in the deep dark green shadows. When it occasionally appears with light, it is a transparent bright blue like broken glass, which seems to be separate from the thick green tree shadows on the ground. In more places, cold dark light seeps out from around the trees themselves, passing among the green shades, shrouding the tree trunks, weeping vines, tangled grass and rustling insects in a holistic darkness. within the environment.

He was running, grabbing the vines, hugging the tree trunks to turn, locking the direction with heavy breathing, and listening to the endless echoes of roars and cries that the forest gave him.

He doesn't know where he comes from, has no name, doesn't care about his identity, and never thinks about the past. He was born to be familiar with the smell of trees and earth, and was accustomed to the vivid feeling brought to him by this seemingly endless forest - a forest that couldn't wait to hunt anything in it, and it thirsted for brutal killing.

And this is what he is good at, or in other words, the only thing he can do.

He grabbed a long bone and took it from the beast he killed with his bare hands. The tip was sharpened enough with a flat stone. Combined with his natural strength, he could easily penetrate the thick and dirty fur like a thorn. It penetrates fat like mud, and penetrates muscle like a giant tree.

Then there is blood, which sticks to the long bones of the giant beast with a black luster under the dim light, dripping in series like a stream of life. Finally, in the sultry weather, the dead body will rot quickly, and the forest will end it with its own hands. 's heirs.

His enemies are everywhere. Small beasts lurk in the shadows, lying on tree trunks, their bright eyes piercing the green light. They will chase the giant beasts and cling to them as they begin to gnaw at their prey, sipping the gurgling fluids and blood of the dead.

The terrain bulged upwards, and he used his hands and feet to climb up lightly and quickly against the ground. The mud clawed at his bare feet, and the thorns kept trying to hold on to his ankles. The forest itself is also his enemy, and its malice is also trampled under his feet.

Suddenly, he stopped hesitantly, and the constant whispering in his ears was replaced by a distant roar falling from the sky. Those unfamiliar noises slid across the top of the forest, rumbling to shake his heart, and then left quickly, like the dark clouds before the downpour.

It was a strange thing whose content he had not known in his countless life, and his muscles tensed and his mouth growled alertly, sending out cautious warning signals.

Could that have anything to do with the giant beast he's hunting? Is it another trick played by the forest, a deceptive grimace created by a creature to survive and hunt? Or had he just been bitten by some kind of fly lurking under the bark of the tree, causing him to fall into an unknown hallucination?

He held the long bone, crossed the ridge of the terrain, and moved downward carefully to avoid rolling down a large distance at once, falling into thorns and shrubs, and causing more scars on his body.

He was hungry and hungry, and his physical strength was not enough. He needed to save it and use every ounce of it to knock down the giant.

The smell began to change, and he sniffed, sensitively smelling the fishy smell and restless heat in the air. It's close, and he needs to be ready.

When the huge beast appeared at the edge of his vision, he changed the way he grasped the long bones, climbed up the branches lightly, and skillfully approached from a high place, becoming one with the noise that already existed in the canopy. It's close, but it doesn't notice.

His throat rolled and he swallowed the hungry saliva.

He wants to drink its blood to replenish the water he lacks; eat its flesh to regain the strength taken away by the forest; peel its skin to cover his hairless body; sleep inside its eviscerated corpse to use Come and have a good rest. Otherwise, he might have to rely on the solidified blood and mud all over his body to survive the increasingly cold weather in the coming seasons.

He was already on top of the beast. He grasped the long bones with both hands and jumped down.

——

"Father, what kind of task are you giving me?"

Russ muttered words that matched the rhythm of the Fenrisian music played by the Legion at the edge of the castle. The poets of the Third Dalian Company played tricks and played their horn flutes and bronze trumpets here.

"Where are my brothers? Where are the Emperor's children? Alas, how many rivers have we crossed, how many forests have we crossed, how many fortresses have we visited... Tolston, don't throw your hat on me. !”

Thorston rolled away with the lute in his arms.

Russ continued to hum his tune, leading his group of warriors around the clearing. The color of the wolf's armor is similar to the gray-blue storm sweeping across the ice fields above Fenris. Placed between the deep green shadows of Caliban, it is as strange as if it has run into the wrong place.

In any case, this does not affect the good mood of the wild wolves. Some Caliban beasts taste really good after all.

Several Caliban natives in dark armor came clanging over and gave Russ their local knightly salute. Ruth waved nonchalantly in response, leaned forward and asked, "What's up, little warriors?"

"Sir, we have found a legend from the old manuscripts that matches your description, but there are still some minor problems in it..."

As soon as he heard the question, Leman Russ could guess that the legend was probably quite different from the "inspiring local legend" he was looking for.

He laughed loudly and turned the barbecued leg on the iron weapon stand: "Okay, let's talk about it."

"Legend has it that in the ancient kingdom of knights, the land was occupied by various spirits and ghosts, and the human tribes lived a difficult life until a king left the settlement on horseback and went to the forest to seek enlightenment..."

"Interesting," Russ commented vaguely, waving his hand to silence the Space Wolves.

"In the early morning, a miracle came, ripples appeared on the mirror-like lake, and an extremely beautiful girl walked out of the lake. She was the kind-hearted Lake Fairy, who gave blessings to the Holy Grail Knight..."

"Huh? No, right...ahem..."

"Can you please stay away from me with your coughing from the barbecue, Thorston?" the Wolf King said in disgust.

There was a low laughter among the wolves.

The knights of Caliban also snickered in their helmets and continued: "After receiving the blessing of the fairy in the lake, the knights held high the banner of the goddess and won one battle after another, establishing the Caliban Empire with the virtues of the knights. Liban’s first kingdom in history.”

After finishing speaking, Caliban bowed comically and tried to imitate the appearance of the knight in the legend painting book: "This is the legend that best meets your requirements, my lord."

"There are miracles and warriors. It doesn't sound like something that humans can do... It's just that the timeliness is a little lagging, and the gender... Wait, what if our eldest brother is as beautiful as Fulgrim and Caliban admits his mistake? Where is it?”

The wild wolves shook their heads and sighed.

After Russ finished speaking, he picked up the sizzling and oily barbecued leg and tore off a large piece with a satisfied smile on his weathered face.

"Okay, warriors, in any case, the Emperor's eldest son may not be in these dark castles. Then we really have to go back to the forest to look for him."

The Space Wolves howled suddenly, they had had enough of Caliban's jungle.

Ruth narrowed his eyes and said with a smile: "Stop howling, let's go find the Fairy of the Lake, but we have to leave a good impression on the goddess, right? Pack your things and get ready!"