Warhammer 40k: Shattered Steel Soul

"I told you, my beloved Brother Bai Yu, if they continue to use such lofty and hypocritical words as 'angel' to call me, I will adjust my blood wine formula."

Konrad Curze whispered, rising from his pale stone seat carved into the form of a skeleton, a simple act of greeting to Sanguinius.

In his right hand he holds a scroll of paper written in Baal's native language Anokan, and in his left hand he wears a sharp claw that sometimes has silver-blue lightning flowing through it.

Sanguinius had once thought he knew the names of the claws, Mercy and Forgiveness, a pair of exquisitely crafted lightning claws that held lofty aspirations but were ironically contradictory to their owner.

In fact, even in brief foreshadowing, this was simply the name given to the weapon wielded by their Primarch by the Night Lords of the Eighth Legion. He didn't really know the names Conrad Coates gave them.

But when Sanguinius intentionally or unintentionally asked about the names of these claws, his brother who broke the prophecy burst out laughing. His long, silky jet-black hair slipped past the pale leather cloak sewn on his shoulders, shaped like the middle of the night. The ghost among them.

——Guess, angel, I am particularly curious about how far you can understand this me and whether you can touch the boundary I named it.

Conrad threw the question back to him, apparently treating it like a puzzle game. Sanguinius smiled in return, not once guessing again.

The archangel walked towards Night Ghost and walked through the dark hall. The shadows cast by colored glass in the room were deep and strange, like the rotating patterns of a thousand-flower mirror, swirling on his white robes.

Curze's unique black-robed, metal-clad attendants brought him a backless chair for the angel to rest his broad wings.

The angel arranged his robe demurely, Shi Shiran sat down and folded his wings.

Conrad's squire gave him a cup of blood-smelled wine, and Sanguinius drank it with his eyes lowered, lest anyone notice the part of his soul that rejoiced in the sweet drink of blood.

And his genetic detection ability allowed him to taste how many kinds of delicious blood were brewing in this glass of wine. It was still the same ratio. The blood of three unknown aliens was blended in a ratio of four to three to one, creating an impeccable drink. The mellow taste flows between the lips and teeth.

"What did they call you again, Konrad?" Sanguinius asked.

"Midnight Angel, what else could it be?"

"What a pity, dear brother. How do you adjust your blood wine formula?" Sanguinius took his time, shook the wine in the glass, and took another sip with restraint.

"Naturally it is the nectar flowing in your Baal. The bright red juice contains the essence of life and forms a vital part of the wine in your glass..."

"I'm sorry," the angel said with a squinted smile, "the grapes of Ba'al have not been planted on a large scale yet. Maybe they must be used to supply the needs of the residents of Ba'al first."

Curze glared at Sanguinius, threw the scroll in his hand to the archangel, then turned around and returned to his white stone throne of bones.

"You know what I'm talking about..." he muttered, looking a little annoyed.

"Oh, I know?"

"That's enough, that's enough." Coates rubbed the eye sockets of the skull on the armrest of his seat with his fingertips, "Let us continue the issue that should be discussed."

A Night Haunted Space Marine emerged from the shadows at the right moment. Perhaps one of the Eighth Legion's talents was moving stealthily in the shadows.

"Show us the Archangel, Sahar," Curze hissed.

Saul Sahar took out a new roll of paper from the leather bag on the same side as the pistol on his waist and presented it to the angel.

This group of unruly warriors with their unique secrets and silence endeared themselves to Sanguinius because they would not obsess over kneeling to him like the Baal.

Sanguinius put down his glass, unfolded the scroll, and gave it a quick glance. Thor Sahar took the wine glass and disappeared into the darkness, leaving room for conversation to the two primarchs.

Konrad Curze's sharp sketches, this time depicting the Space Marine standing among the corpses, describing the madness, the blade and the lower half of the face are covered with thick blood.

"They are thirsty," Sanguinius said.

"In fact, they were angry." The fingertips of Conrad's hand wearing the lightning claw lightly scratched the armrest, leaving scratches on his seat, even though he didn't use any strength at all. "In this way, we complete the entire puzzle of what you currently have."

Sanguinius seemed unable to hear Conrad's hint about his ending. He just smiled: "You said that the Emperor's black-robed friends found ways to make them less thirsty."

"Suppress, not eliminate. The Emperor's genetic engineering is difficult to fundamentally shake. Otherwise, I wouldn't need to spend so much energy injecting gene-altering agents into my bone marrow three times." Conrad said calmly, " Morse crudely compensated for the genetic defects of the Space Marines - and it was still a compensation, and I don't understand why he didn't mention it to Fulgrim."

"Reputation can sometimes be synonymous with encumbrances," Sanguinius said. "It is not something that everyone treasures. Especially when this reputation comes from someone who praises someone who does not care about the recipient of the reputation."

"You have rich experience in this, the great angel of the empire. And although I don't desire it, I have never obtained it." Coze replied coldly.

"Oh? You clearly mentioned that after the Olympia Games, your reputation in the local area increased with the spread of the drama video."

Coze's lips moved in the shadows, and that was undoubtedly a word that could express strong feelings. These days, Sanguinius knew the mouth shape by heart, even if he didn't know what language it was.

"What's the content of your prophecy?" Coze said, changing the topic with serious business, "What legion are we in?"

"Sixteen, I think." Sanguinius' smile faded, this was one of the parts he least liked to talk about. "Under the conspiracy of the wolves, the capital of magic and knowledge, the white city of light, was burned between the dark iron and blood."

"Stupid wolf and arrogant scholar." Coze sneered from between his teeth. "Of course, this will never happen again. Are there any details?"

"I haven't seen as much as you." The angel said, "In addition, in my dream last night, I seemed to have obtained some new fragments about the Fifteenth Legion."

Coze nodded, waiting for the statement.

"I saw - it was just a brief scene. I saw Magnus living in the same room with two Primarchs, seeming to be telling some good news, or simple interesting things worth being happy about."

"Two?" Curze quickly compared the possible information he knew. In his illusion, Magnus didn't have many real close friends. The goshawk soaring over the grassland is one, and the fortress built with copper and iron walls is another.

"Jaghatai Khan? Perturabo?" he guessed.

Sanguinius shook his head slightly, the tips of his wings quivering.

"One of them is Horus Luperkar."

"Horus, he can talk and laugh with anyone, except maybe Corax." Curze commented coldly.

He distinguished the vision of Horus Luperkar from the real one so clearly that you could tell who he was referring to just by hearing the tone of his voice.

Sanguinius once again put on his standard smile, but this time, his smile was slightly different: "Conrad, the first thing I need to say is that the identity of the other person may be beyond your expectation."

"Who else could it be?" Coz didn't care and listed them casually, "Logar came to him to study the scriptures?"

"No."

"Robert Guilliman asked him how many copies of Hamlet he had collected scattered across the galaxy?"

"No."

Curze frowned. "It can't be Leman Russ who comes to him to discuss the mysteries of runes."

"It's not Russ," Sanguinius said, looking at Conrad, ready to see the drastic change in his expression at any moment. "You still haven't let go of your imagination, my brother."

Coates sat forward: "Don't tell me that's me."

"Mortarion," Sanguinius said.

Curze's face instantly turned into a stiff, pale mask.

"What happened to Mortarion?" he asked strugglingly.

Sanguinius sighed, his wings fluttering happily behind his back.

"Mortarion and Magnus were hunched over the same table covered with mathematical tools, and they had a long conversation around the same new handwritten article."