Hades raised his axe and glanced into the distance with a pout.
The last full sun slowly set in front of him, and the cold wind blew his messy hair. Hades remembered Magnus's instructions that he needed to continue "WAAAAAGH" and be alert to his surroundings.
But unfortunately, maybe because Hades killed too many people before, no greenskin is asking for trouble and running to fight Hades WAAAAGH.
Hades had no choice but to sit on the small mound bored. He controlled the black domain and carefully touched the psychic boundary created by Magnus. If there was anything wrong, Hades would immediately terminate the ceremony.
"waaagh..."
Hades whispered, and kept looking back at the distant horizon. On the straight and boring line, the night fell, and Magnus's bright red could be vaguely seen.
[Black Butcher,] Magnus cleared his throat, [I need you to concentrate on Mortarion, remember, don't think of...] Magnus lowered his voice and glanced nervously in the direction of Hades, [Don't think about the dead, I know this is very difficult for you, but the great psyker will use his psykers to help you.]
Blake in front of him stared at Magnus for a moment, then said hoarsely, "Are you sure this is reliable?"
Magnus smiled as expected, "You don't believe me, but you should believe your father," Magnus stood up, "He knew that even if I failed, he could immediately rescue us from the Vast Ocean."
In other words, as long as you ignore the dark realms that make psychics scream, vomit, faint, or even die, Hadesgrin is actually a very good tool to assist psychic spells.
After all, many spells are caused by casting errors and being unable to pause.
Thinking of this, Magnus laughed again. "I know, little Ogryn, you don't believe me," Magnus said proudly. "People can question my judgment - but believe me, Magnus never fails in a spell."
What's more, the three greatest psykers in the empire, now... Magnus's face suddenly darkened again.
Malcador... He still doesn't know the whereabouts of Malcador.
But Magnus was certain that he had caught a glimpse of Malcador's psychic energy over the ages.
Magnus blinked rapidly, clearing his mind of distracting thoughts; the most important thing now was not the cunning mortal psychic.
Sure enough, after Hades was far away, Blake looked much more reliable.
After reminding Blake of the precautions and procedures again, Magnus left the altar and his shadow floating in the air fell, raising a small gust of dust around his bare feet.
[Begin, Blake Butcher,] Magnus said seriously.
Hearing this, Blake, who had already taken off his arm armor, knelt on one knee, holding a dagger in his hand, and raised his hand towards the southwest.
"Black Butcher, the new blood of the Death Guard, the son of Hades, with the death of 77,777 aliens, please take a look at your offspring."
Blake said sincerely, the dagger in his hand flashed with a cold light, Mingzi raised the dagger without hesitation and slashed at his arm, cutting seven times, seven wounds, dark and thick blood flowed in the deep night.
Following the curve of his arm muscles, drops of blood splashed onto the silent corpse beneath him. Beside him, the red figure of Magnus became blurred, and the Red King whispered those strange tones.
Wind, a hurricane whistled past Blake's ears. Following Magnus's instructions, Blake closed his eyes tightly. He pictured the appearance of the Lord of Death in his mind, and then he realized that the sound in his ears was not the sound of the wind.
The rapids of the deep sea rushed past his cheek, shouting, bitter, rough and intermittent, no... no...
… This is the subspace.
When he realized this moment, Blake suddenly found that he was no longer standing on the ground. His body's senses were deceiving him and squeezing him. He was falling at a very fast speed!
Don't open your eyes, Blake... Mingzi tightly restrained his instincts. He closed his eyes and called out to the Pale Lord, immersing himself wholeheartedly in responding to the Lord of Death.
In the distance, Magnus stared at Blake in the center of the altar. Mingzi, who was kneeling with his eyes closed, would not notice that his blood had already flowed like a thread along the shape of the altar.
Finally, the end of the blood line paused at Magnus' feet.
Magnus stared at Blake closely and stretched out his hand. Blood beads floated up and trembled and paused in his palm.
Magnus took a deep, trembling breath. Things were neither getting worse nor better. It was not enough to rely on Black alone. The brat had never learned how to search for people in the warp.
Magnus opened his mouth slightly and shuddered. [Hades, remember to block the beliefs of the alien race.]
By calling on Hades, Magnus successfully hid his own special psychic aura temporarily.
The Primarch clenched his fists violently, and blood began to flow from Magnus's shadow like newly born veins. Magnus recalled those ancient chants, usually mixed in with incomplete ancient books, describing corruption, life, and death.
Lowering his head, Magnus immersed himself in the vast ocean.
roar!
A violent roar exploded in front of Magnus, pushing him like a storm. The Primarch felt the roars of two emerald beasts, but he said nothing. The tentacles of his soul pointed to the dark void not far away, breaking off a strand of bait.
The darkness slowly and foolishly reached out, scaring away some of the gazes, and Magnus took the opportunity to go deeper.
Large masses of emerald green death were like bubbles rising from the bottom of the sea, dragging their consciousness higher. Magnus touched Blake's fragile and tiny breath, and the Red King quickly tied up Blake to prevent the little guy from getting lost in the warp.
He didn't want to get in trouble with the little guy's father.
In the vast ocean of chaos, disorder, strangeness and beauty, Magnus's soul sang, shone, and screamed -
He pulled Black tightly away from the area, leaving the chaotic and violent green behind. Magnus swung his psionic energy towards the previous position, and then watched with satisfaction as the black and green entangled.
He withdrew his attention and no longer looked at the areas that made him subconsciously shrink. They were completely immersed in the chaotic and disordered area. Magnus pulled Blake, and Mingzi's soul would guide them.
The great Magnus carefully manipulates every bit of psychic energy, not wasting any bit of death - even if it is tainted with other auras.
As night fell, a light mist gradually rose around Blake, who was half-kneeling on the pile of corpses.
At the edge of the altar, the blood-stained red stone lay on the ground, flashing a dazzling red light.
"WAAAAAGH!!!"
In the distance, a faint shouting sounded, but it sounded like Hades was shouting.
Found it…
Magnus reached out, and the closer he got to the concrete concept - the more concrete they became.
Walking barefoot on the ground.
The dead plants hung their heads, and the ground was covered with a light mist. In the distance, Magnus heard the buzzing of bees and butterflies.
He looked back and saw Blake, who was almost unable to hold on. On Blake's feet, a pair of green shackles were tied. The chains connected Blake to a distant place.
That was the homecoming Magnus made of his greenskin deathpacks - and the source of their power.
Magnus also has something similar on his body, but it is not shackles, but a green stone similar to a red stone.
+waa—No,+Magnus said, he half-knelt down and took something out of Black's body,+You can go back now. +
Magnus said, patting Black, the Crimson King's psychic energy flickered on Black's body, the Son of Hades gritted his teeth and tried to say something, but was slapped hard by Magnus and quickly fell out of the earth.
Because he gave some power to Blake, Magnus had less of his own color. Without hesitation, Magnus waved his hand and mixed in the aura borrowed from Blake.
The Primarch tried to hide himself as much as possible. The red skin of the Red King became dull and his figure became thin and short. He did not want other beings here to notice his uninvited guest.
The Pale Lord was within the gardens - Magnus surely knew why the Death Guard's summons had failed.
The garden isolated them from the rest of the world, and if they wanted to find Mortarion, they would need to enter the garden.
Magnus is certainly not a fool. He is well aware of the danger of this journey, so the Red King only released a part of his power. Now, most of Magnus' power here still comes from the greenskins.
He had no intention of sending this part of his spiritual energy back. Now, only a little bit of the spiritual energy that makes up Magnus needs to go back to convey the message.
He was already a fragment of a fragment, and Magnus had already become very skilled in splitting his own psychic energy.
Magnus's figure continued to shrink until the dead grass at his feet turned into a lush jungle. He was completely hidden in the weeds, and the scent of Magnus was covered by the scent of Black and the greenskins.
Magnus took a deep breath, and he carefully felt the guidance from the Black bloodline, deep in the jungle... The Primarch raised his feet and headed towards the garden.
—————
Pain, pain, pain.
Crying, begging, puzzled, begging, praying, collapsing, praying, holding on, roaring, unyielding, holding on.
anger.
The fog was lingering, and the giant beast in the shallow swamp was silent. He was a corpse, collapsed in the pond.
Rotten flies were crawling over his pale, lifeless eyes. The dirty water that just covered his mouth and nose was icy cold. From time to time, rotten meat and insect corpses were pushed to his side by the water and then slowly moved away.
The hem of the clothes that has been corroded for thousands of years is crumbling, but it will never turn into nothingness.
Even as He was torturing His surviving offspring, He heard their collapse, confusion, begging for mercy, and anger...
But he never compromised.
Time is but eternity, and he can remain silent, just as He is.
As long as he did not yield, He would continue to be in pain and would never be healed - he was His wound, and He would suffer forever, just like Him.
The pain made His hands reaching out to humans shrink.
This will last forever, and the end is already decided. He knows how many lives his perseverance has saved, but he is also unwilling and angry - he could have saved more.
But now I'm trapped here, with no end in sight.
He felt unwilling, but those emotions drifted away with the water, leaving him with only death, pure death - death belongs to corpses, not to any living, moving being.
Death belongs only to the corpse.
He plundered death, and was devoured by death.
He needed life, or something.
Other forces that can help him break free and break this stagnation.
Get back into action.
He rejected every bit of the death of his descendants. The living were still alive, generating emotions, both positive and negative, that slowly flowed toward the corpse, allowing him to still remember the feeling of being alive.
Remember why you didn't compromise.
He wants to kill God.
He wants to take away God's authority.
He wants to complete the journey left unfinished by his comrades.
He wants humans to truly live in a world where wizards do not exist.
He wanted to let the beings in the Warp know that humans were not something they could toy with at will - even though they had sneered at him time and time again.
He succeeded and failed.
This living garden breathed laboriously, neither born nor dead, just rotting, rotting, rotting endlessly, and He had to slow everything down to its fullest, eternity.
And so everything decayed forever.
Including himself.
His huge sickle still lay quietly in his clenched hands, but the sickle handle made of the hard wood on Barbarus had long since decayed. A handful of rotten soil softened in his palm, slowly dissipating with the water and flowing into the distance.
Flies buzzed around him. He was pale and lifeless, but still looked as if he had just died.
Just because he decays so slowly.
He refused to rot.
He knew this was the end, that all beings were trapped including the treacherous fools, that the Garden of Nurgle was eternal... and nothing could break it.
The power of the Corrupted Heaven is as vast as the sea, and there are few beings in the Supreme Heaven that are not incompatible with Nurgle.
Perhaps his former comrades could break it... But he scoffed at such fantasies of gaining something for nothing. He had already embarked on the road and reached the end. He had no regrets about his decision... But he was angry at the stupidity of the aliens.
He failed only because he reached the end of his life but did not complete the path his comrades had taken, nor did he fulfill his own expectations.
But he will continue to hold on to the finish line.
Waiting... waiting... waiting for the next star to slowly rise among humans and illuminate the universe.
He never compromises.
He felt the coldness of the painful swamp water, the flies crawling on his skin, and every minute and every second. He might have fallen asleep and caught a glimpse of his past hallucinations in a dream.
He slowly recalled the past, the fear and determination of those years, the first illusion, he was lying in the garden, no different from this, but as a slave.
No... He would never kneel.
I would rather die for billions of years.
He was in pain and despair every second, but he also knew that He was in pain every second, and their time was the same, on the same track, and harmonious.
He and the false god are in the same long river of time.
He tortured him, hoping that he would give in, but He also tortured Him—He simply wished to torture Him.
He was like a thorn, piercing deep into the garden. With him as the center, the earth swelled and took on an abnormal luster. The blood of the Death Guard turned it into a sickly red, like a real scar.
He listened to the sound of running water, the humming of water, the sounds of the spawn still fighting. Nurgle had hidden him, and his spawn, who still held on, had not found him for a long time.
He might sigh sometimes... He should probably ask his old friend who once knew about witchcraft to come, so that they might find his body, and then fight before him and finally fall.
There was an abnormal rustling sound in the corpse's ears.
He did not react at all, his eyes covered with white mist staring blankly at the place where he fell. He saw the weeds that had not been blown by the wind for thousands of years tremble, and a pair of small, almost invisible hands stretched out from among them.
He still lay quietly.
He saw... his soul came alive... he saw Magnus.
A miniature green Magnus.
+Mortarion? !!!+
How did he get here
Why did he come to find me
Until Mortarion felt the aura from Magnus that was completely not of Chaos.
That's... a greenskin?!
Three question marks appeared on the corpse.
+Mortarion! Next!!!+
Magnus, one of the greatest psykers in the Imperium, faced Mortarion, the man known as Death, with a decision to make.
Countless rotten vines entangled the stumbling Magnus. Magnus' breath was rapidly disappearing. Magnus took out the stone condensed from the greenskin's power and attached most of his remaining power to it.
Magnus threw the Greenstone at Mortarion.
+Mortarion! What more do you need?! +
As the Red King screamed, the corpse in the swamp watched Magnus turn into ashes.
A green stone fell in front of him, splashing water, and the green light flashed and then went out in an instant.
But in a corner where no one cared, the light in his eyes flickered.
He believed he had made his point clear to Magnus.
[Ah ...
Magnus screamed with cold sweat on his forehead. In his blurred vision, he caught a glimpse of Hades in front of him, holding Blake with a worried look on his face.
[Don’t stop!!!]
Magnus roared in ecstasy, [Don't stop! He said—Don't stop!!!]
"What the hell, don't stop?! Little Mag, have you found Lao Mo?!" Hades also shouted.
What a surprise...
He thought, and his heart, eager to fight, began to beat again.
(End of this chapter)