Warhammer: In the Name of Ashes

Between a dream and an awakening, on the Endurance far outside the Gothic galaxy, Mortarion seemed to feel some kind of call, and fell into a state of meditation under the gaze of many Chaos Lords.

"Let him die!"

"Let him die!"

Waves of shouts came from beneath his feet. Mortarion looked around in a daze, his cloudy pupils shrinking slightly for a moment.

"Stop shooting!" He was still familiar with everything in front of him, but his body had already made his own voice.

The necrotic nerves on his face were twitching the muscles. He looked at the back of his raised hand and clenched it into a fist, where a distorted smile was vaguely reflected on the mottled mirror.

"This is where?"

Mortarion thought subconsciously, and memories opened to him like old, corrupted books.

"Oh...Marquez?"

He thought hesitantly, and then was tortured by another question - why am I here.

However, questions do not always have answers. The moment his order was issued, a voice that disgusted him from the bottom of his bones had already challenged him with an attitude that made him anxious.

"Why! Why did you order a ceasefire!"

"Tai...Fon...Si? Aren't you dead?" Mortarion slowly turned his neck, and the muscles wrapping his spine were as stiff as steel wires.

And as if he didn't hear his question, this guy who had been by his side since Barbarus once again offended him countless times in all the legions. The warrior defied his authority.

"You want me to ask again? Why! What! What! Stop! Fire!"

The source of the voice was still unrelenting, but all that caught Mortarion's eyes was a blur of images.

It was covered with mosaic-like shadows, and almost only sound could allow Mortarion to confirm his identity. What made Mortarion feel a huge uneasiness was that even though he was very close to him, he could not feel any of his features except his voice:

It's like... it's like it was interfered with and erased by some extra force...

But who is it?

Who could bring this rebellious and flamboyant guy to such an end, with even traces of his existence being traced and erased?

You know, this guy in front of him has always been claiming in front of him, and even in front of all the legion soldiers, that he is the true choice of the God of Decay.

What makes Mortarion fearful is that behind such arrogant and rebellious remarks, there is actually a certain truth hidden behind it.

who is it?

Wait, why did I say the end?

Mortarion's brain was as chaotic as his soul, and the out-of-sequence memories seemed like countless fleeting Nurglings, screaming and noisy, and then disappearing instantly before he could catch them. He was left without a clue for a while.

But the roars of the legionnaires at his feet and the endless provocations of Typhons beside him made him feel even more violent inside. He almost ran away, roughly clearing the information in his brain, and then focused on reviewing the current memory.

"Because I want to!" Mortarion answered Typhons with these words, and even though the captain of the First Great Company wanted to continue to protest, he just waved his arm, suppressed the conflict, and fixed his gaze. The figure firmly locked on the ground.

That gray figure.

"Mortarion!"

Calvin watched Gallo running. Under the tall and broken gable of Marquez, his roar penetrated the clouds, like a giant rushing towards the sun.

The Death Guards in front of the fortress stopped when they heard the sound. Although their positions were different, no one was willing to stop the figure, and the original body's order happened to fall, so these people who were enslaved by the God of Decay also had a moment of clarity.

"Mortarion! In the name of Terra and the Holy Emperor, I challenge you by name, you traitor!"

Garro ran and roared, as if he had been waiting for this moment all his life, ever since he answered the Emperor's call to become a glorious Astartes warrior.

And whether he was selected and assigned to such a legion, with the return of Mortarion, the Barbarians gradually marginalized the Terrans in the legion, and then deliberately consumed them on the battlefield; With Mortarion's deliberate connivance, Fons continued to use words to test and undermine his loyalty to Terra.

He had been patient and sitting back and watching.

It wasn't until those familiar faces left, until Isstvaan III's shameful betrayal, that he truly had no hope for Mortarion at all.

But this time, he wanted to seek relief for himself, and also to seek an explanation for all the Terran veterans abandoned by Mortarion.

He emerged from Marx's fortress alone and challenged Mortarion. And this seemed to Calvin, although crazy, still understandable.

Calvin didn't know the ending of Garro in the original timeline, and just silently channeled his power of order here as much as possible, hoping to briefly inflict damage on Garro before he truly faced Mortarion. shelter.

"Traitor?" Mortarion was condescending, chewing on the latest title Gallo gave him. At this moment, he was vaguely aware of Horus' final failure, but when the former captain of the Seventh Great Company reprimanded him, even though he no longer believed as firmly as before, he still would not admit it frankly. mistake.

Frankly, that was never a quality he possessed.

After nearly ten thousand years of erosion, the God of Decay has subverted from the bottom of his bones the cognition that he once belonged to ordinary people.

"Betrayal, so what?" Mortarion muttered to himself mockingly, but these words were completely inconsistent with who he was ten thousand years ago, which surprised Typhons beside him.

This is not his answer when he was in Marx, this is Mortarion's true understanding of himself from ten thousand years later.

But this is also his flaw, because no matter it is the 14th Legion or the current Death Guard.

The tacit understanding shared by all his Chaos Lords and the consensus of maintaining the Legion did not allow him to say these words openly.

And after he and Calvin started a conceptual war over "The Unbreakable", he should not have spoken words that violated his oath.

Oathbreaker, this is the conclusion that Mortarion and the Death Guard Legion made about Garro after his death. It is also the proof that they have always believed that they have not betrayed their oath!

But when the betrayal was admitted by Mortarion himself, his curse on Garro, and the oath jointly sworn by all the legion generals due to this curse, were also distorted for thousands of years. There is a hint of correction!

"That's it!" Calvin caught this trace of looseness in an instant, and used this little trace to deduce the timeline in the information forward again.

He could already see the end of that timeline, where the "Unbreakable One" was truly born. But the decisive battle that was about to happen in front of him made him forcefully suppress his eagerness to wait.

Although, this is already a story with a doomed ending;

Although, all this is just a reflection of the past.

But Gallo's quality made Calvin feel that he deserved this support.

More importantly, he wanted to see if he could do anything for this warrior who had been loyal to the Emperor and himself from beginning to end when this drama really came to an end.

"Want a drink?"

When Calvin pulled away from his thoughts, what he heard and saw was this scene:

Mortarion, who was as tall as a demigod, was showing a heartbreaking depravity in front of Garro.

And facing Mortarion's outstretched hand, and the poisoned wine in his hand that symbolized the last hold on, the former Twilight Raider, the son of Albia and Terra, the captain of the seventh company of the Death Guard, and the last knight errant, Nathaniel Gallo, under Mortarion's expectant eyes, resolutely reached out to take the wine glass, and then threw it to the ground!

"Children of the Emperor will not drink with traitors!"

renew.