The gods watch over their agents on earth.
Their agents also watch over Them.
Now, they echo each other from a distance.
He is here.
—————
He imagined that the bow of the Iron Blood was reflecting the confusing and strange light of the Eye of the Star, and the waves of the Warp were far brighter here than at Mandeville Point.
No one believed him.
Perturabo thought silently.
The last conversation was with Fenu Manus, in which he posed his puzzlement to his similar counterpart, but was ruthlessly interrupted.
The Lord of Medusa was unwilling to acknowledge the strangeness of what Perturabo saw, just as no one else did. No one, not even the Primarch - could see what Perturabo saw.
That eye.
He is different.
Unlike his other brothers, Perturabo had lost his memories of his childhood. From the moment he regained consciousness, he found himself standing on the top of a mountain with tears on his face. The sky was looking at him, and he responded to its gaze.
Eye of Terror.
After another failed conversation, Perturabo named this galactic rift himself, no matter where he was, in the deepest cellar of Olympia or in the depths of Terra's Imperial Palace; no matter where he went, leading the Iron Warriors into the warp or the entire fleet resting in the Tempest Segmentum -
He could feel its gaze.
The Lord of Steel's intuition told him that this was a wound big enough to tear the entire world apart. This was Pandora's box, hiding within it existences that were unimaginable to any intelligent being.
But no one paid any attention to him.
The Empire cheered the appointment of the Warmaster and was surprised by the hasty end of Nikaea. Even conspiracy theorists would focus on the sudden fall of a perfect city - rather than an as-yet-unnamed celestial phenomenon.
For the sake of the Empire's expedition, Perturabo and his Iron Warriors have been busy fighting everywhere. Rest is obviously something the Lord of Iron cannot tolerate, 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 below it, and it only took a short jump... He could take a closer look.
New orders had not yet been issued. The Emperor had returned to Terra, and the Warmaster seemed to have been held back by the Archangel of Baal. The Wolf God was busy dealing with the various affairs that came his way, and for the Iron Warriors, who were always silent and reliable, the Wolf God simply let Perturabo decide on the expedition on his own.
Perturabo remained silent about how much had happened in the Empire while he led his armies to fight in various remote star regions.
The Lord of Steel had always been on good terms with the Scarlet King, but when Perturabo finally burned the unruly green creatures, he discovered that Magnus had been condemned as a criminal.
…
And there was Lorgar. Perturabo had been worried about Lorgar's condition after the burning of the Perfect City, but it seemed that Lorgar had fallen into an abnormal frenzy.
And Dorn... The Imperial Fists were appointed as the defence legion of Terra.
Perturabo took a deep breath, he felt the anger rolling in his heart. When he and his descendants were thrown into various remote battlefields, the center of the empire had already been turned upside down. They were the forgotten, the abandoned, and they were excluded from the center of the empire.
The Primarch's big hand moved, and he crumpled the letter of commendation with the magic symbol of Malcador in his hand.
His thoughts were as chaotic as the crumpled paper.
Hollow fur.
Perturabo thought,
Now he's off to do some of his own stuff.
———
+According to the contract, you cannot escape without permission again. +
Steam roared, electric arcs leaped, the blasphemous body of steel and iron hunched over, and blood mixed with engine oil flowed out from under its feet.
Vashtor supported its heavy hammer and stood on the dry earth. In the distance, the black spires stood silently on the plain.
Laton, the pharmacist who defected from the Death Guard, stood beside the Forge Master. His originally pale power armor seemed to be soaked in mucus and began to seep out green from bottom to top. Some cute little mushrooms grew out of the cracks in the power armor.
He slowly stroked the local's head in his hand, which he had just picked. The savage's purple eyes seemed inorganic.
"No."
He said slowly, and then carefully tied the head around his waist.
"Have you really made a pact with my Lord?"
Laton asked cautiously,
Vashtor lowered his body, and looked at the little pharmacist with hatred in his eyes full of fire.
+This concerns the fate of the High Heavens - there will certainly be intrigues and wars, but the prerequisite for launching the War of Celebration is the death of the cursed. +
+No creature of the Warp would be ambiguous on this matter.+
"But you still didn't answer my question."
Vashtor moved, and the jagged metal wings on his back spread out.
+No,+
It says,
+They have invested enough capital in the death of the cursed, far more than you know, and they are willing to give up their own little interests for this... They hate to be out of control, but this must come at a price. +
Vashtor seemed to be talking to himself, his voice gradually became lower, his bone wings flapped, and after a distortion of space, the Lord of Fire left.
"Okay... I still don't understand, but have a nice day."
Laton muttered as he picked out the potion from his waist. The small red rust color was particularly beautiful in the glass bottle. After countless improvements, iterations and blessings, it had become a pretty good gift.
"Out of control?"
He muttered quietly,
"So... who's going to be free?"
————
The plague struck the Iron Warriors' fleet.
The last jump to the Eye of Terror failed. The navigators of all the ships strangled themselves to death amidst the shrill wails, and those whose hands were torn off by the Iron Warriors in time bled to death from all their orifices.
The ship that lost its navigator was drifting in the warp. Originally, they could rely on a series of complex and precise mathematical coordinate calculations to complete an emergency jump, but the chaotic psychic field near the Eye of Terror made this difficult.
This is not a plague against people, it is a carnival against steel and iron.
The blood-red rust climbed up the Iron Warriors' ship like a living thing, the exhaust fan stopped rotating hoarsely, and the engine stopped abruptly after a mournful cry.
When the maintenance people removed the fragile outer shell, they were surprised to find that the delicate structures inside the machines had all been corroded by rust and turned into fertile mud.
Turning war machines into fertile soil might be the dream of a pacifist, but it is definitely not what the Lord of Steel wants.
The rust spread rapidly, and the longer the time passed, the weaker the Geller field that protected the ship from the turbulence of the warp became.
When Perturabo was finally called out of the workshop by his panicked sons, the sudden and rapidly spreading epidemic had already stranded one-third of the fleet in the rivers of the Warp.
The important structures of the ships were corroded by rust, making it almost impossible for them to complete the jump out of the warp. When the Lord of Steel realized that humans could also carry the disease to the ships, he decisively ordered these ships that could not be saved to move away from the main force.
The abandoned ships had to find their own way out. They helplessly tried to follow behind the main force, but most of the fleets whose protective force fields disappeared disappeared in the turbulence of the warp in the next moment.
Perhaps the plague had already infected the entire fleet of the Lord of Iron, and the previous lack of hindrance was merely a long incubation period of the plague. The warm and humid warp near the Eye of Terror made these diffuse spores realize that it was time to grow and multiply.
No matter how hard the steel is, it will be corroded. The abandoned Iron Warriors, the Iron Warriors who witnessed their comrades being abandoned, and the people who witnessed the decay of all metal, the fear in their hearts began to ripple in the warp, which further accelerated the carnival of the rust spores.
This is a long imprisonment with no end in sight.
Initially, Perturabo maintained his stern attitude as he decisively removed most of the infected, hopeless fleets. However, after realizing that this was still not enough to eliminate the source of the infection, he began to order the main force to fire at those ships that were unwilling to leave. This caused a small commotion within the Iron Warriors, but was suppressed by Perturabo with his usual iron fist.
During the suppression campaign, the Lord of Iron accidentally discovered that fire, smoke and blood had a slowing effect on the spread of spores.
Then the remaining, still seemingly intact ships began to pour their ammunition inside, and smeared the rust with the blood of their mortal servant crews.
The Iron Warrior's originally neat and tidy cabin began to become chaotic, with rust, gunpowder smoke and dried blood everywhere, like the beginning of some grand sacrificial ceremony.
But the futile struggle still could not stop the rust from slowly devouring the metal heart. The lack of mortal servants and the spread of rust caused problems with the ship's internal communications. Some Iron Warriors could not even contact their superiors, and the last time Perturabo 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 studio again. Perturabo once again picked up paper and pen, trying to calculate the next time the fleet could jump out of the Warp turbulence.
Time and again, Perturabo agreed to the Tridents' request to imitate him and cut off the infected fleet. He calculated irritably, which was what he was best at, but despair, madness, and irritability interrupted him again and again.
Perturabo couldn't imagine what others would think when he appeared with his fleet again. What would they think of him? How would they see him? A stupid warp voyage caused the entire fleet to lose a third of its fleet
Thinking of this, the Lord of Steel felt cold all over, and his hand holding the pen stopped.
No, Perturabo thought quietly, he should have been calculating without distraction, this should have given him peace, but now, under the curse of his forsaken scion, the Lord of Steel could hardly do the work he was best at.
The long time wore him down and disintegrated him. When Perturabo raised his head again, he was shocked to see that there was only one Iron Warrior ship left on the aviary - the Iron Blood. The cold exterior of the Lord of Iron finally cracked without a trace.
He opened the door of the studio in disbelief, and in the empty corridor lay his scattered descendants, who were at the blurred boundary between life and death, trapped in place by their completely rusty power armor, unable to move.
[Falk?]
The Primarch called out to the last Trident that had communicated with him, but there was no response.
His iron ring machines were also trapped by rust, and after a brief hesitation, the Primarch abandoned them.
Perturabo raised his foot and walked forward, his Terminator Armor walking on the thick red rust, as if he was stepping on the thick snow of Olympia. As if inspired, he walked straight to the deck of the Iron Blood.
Due to Perturabo's own request, there were no observation windows on the Iron Blood. He walked in a long, dark, warm and humid corridor stained with the blood of his descendants.
The death, entrapment, and torture of his offspring did not bring much emotional impact to Perturabo, but this incident meant that his dereliction of duty, incompetence, weakness, and frustration began to creep into Perturabo's heart like rust -
The Primarch could naturally sense his own inner turmoil.
The fluffy rust spores on the floor grumbled in dissatisfaction.
heartless.
He said.
He walked onto the deck, the eerie light of the Warp shrouding him. The Geller field of the Iron Blood had been completely shattered at some point. Normally, any creature exposed to the turbulence of the Warp would die, but Perturabo still stood on the deck of the Iron Blood with his appearance intact.
The willfully drifting Iron Blood had already drifted into the interior of the Eye of Terror. Now, Perturabo was trembling, tears streaming from his eyes, as he stared directly at the Eye of God, the first thing he had seen since he became conscious.
The god looked at him.
In the distance, the sound of engines roared, and Perturabo saw the ships he had decisively abandoned earlier sailing out from the strange light stream. He watched them tremblingly.
The rust was gone, the flames of hell were burning fiercely, and he smelled the special burnt smell beside the furnace. A monster made of iron and blood stood on the front of the ship, and sparks of forging burst out of its eyes.
+I am Vashtor, the Master of the Forge.+
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 in front of Perturabo.
+Do you wish to be reforged, Lord of Steel? +
The huge mechanical monster stretched out its hand towards the Primarch.
Perturabo's pupils trembled.
[It turns out that all this is just—]
+No,+
Vashtor interrupted him, saying,
+I come here, Perturabo, to wish you freedom from all shackles and nightmares, and in the name of the Lord of the Forge, you will be reborn. +
[What do you want? What will I pay for it? ]
Perturabo said bluntly, which in turn made Vashtor's eyes light up with joy.
+Yes, that's why I chose you and why I recommend you. +
Vashtor coughed softly, and fire burst out of his mouth.
+I will show you the truth, and you will promise me that you will bring disaster to the entire empire. +
Perturabo frowned, his muscles twitching involuntarily as he gripped his weapon.
[No…] He said softly, [Thing from the subspace, if this is your motive, then get out of here. I would rather rot here with the Iron Blood.]
Vashtor stared at him calmly.
+I thought you were abandoned, so I came here to invite you... +
The Master of the Forge turned around and was about to leave.
Perturabo stood on the bloody rust moss, he stood alone on the ruins of the Iron Blood -
[Wait, abandoned?]
He spoke suddenly.
[What are you talking about? Answer me.]
Vashtor turned around slowly.
+You are being rather disrespectful, Lord of Steel.+
Vashtor said slowly,
+The Perfect City fell, Prospero burned, the Lord of Steel, you are now sent to the Misty Star Region, isn't it his will? +
+He captured you without authorization and distorted your essence, and abandoned you when he didn't need you. Magnus' tragedy is regrettable, but I can't tolerate people who share the same ideals as me being abandoned in a corner. +
Vashtor paused for a moment, and the monster sighed. It watched with satisfaction as Perturabo trembled imperceptibly. The rust smelled his hesitation and began to gather around the primarch...
Vashtor slammed the ground with his war hammer, sparks flew, and the rust slowly faded away.
Perturabo lowered his eyes and looked at the rust. He looked up and saw that there was no trace of rust on the abandoned ships.
Vashtor's voice sounded again.
+Well, I will take you away from this area, but as a reminder, I want you to see the truth. We can't afford to abandon another Primarch. +
Perturabo stared at Vashtor.
[good.]
He said.
Big chapter, no more today
(End of this chapter)