Chapter 807 Plague Star
Outside of the Plague Planet, people don’t mention much about the Death Guard’s mansion.
Aside from some vague rumors of a large and impressive scale, even most within the Eye of Terror know very little.
In fact, outside the boundaries of this hell, few people truly understand it.
For the people of the Empire, the name Mortarion only represents a reminder of the past and has no meaning beyond that.
And this is exactly what the Lord of Death wishes.
To understand this, one must first understand the character of the Primarch, a complex man even among his fallen brothers.
He cannot be described directly as angry, unlike people who can directly describe Angron, the King of Slaughter. At the same time, he does not have the desire for control like the Priest King Lorgar.
Mortarion carries more of his past than most of his brothers, and according to him, it all came too late and too hard to accept.
He was the last Primarch to succumb and convert to the Dark Gods, and the last to arrive on Terra to take part in the siege.
According to widely disputed rumors, he was also the last Primarch to evacuate Terra.
For Mortarion, more than anything else is contradiction, conflict and opposition. His heart is full of hatred - for his father, for his experience, for the Empire, and for himself.
The world in which he was fostered was so poisonous that even if the Emperor treated him differently, it would not erase the scars in his heart.
Ngartar, the Deathstroke Herald, knows these things. This is not a secret in the Legion, and it does not diminish Ngartar's respect for his master in any way.
In his faith, "hurt" is not something to worry about - it should be celebrated, nurtured, and if possible, amplified.
They understand that attempts to stem the corruption will only bring about the greatest disappointment, and those of the Corpse Emperor's lackeys cannot understand that there is no need to shut it out. Learn to embrace it, learn to use it, or you'll be stuck in a long and tiring process of failure.
Nevertheless, Ngarta was anxious.
A long time has passed. Although the passage of time in the Eye of Terror is strange, if measured by the rotation of the Plague Planet, it has been at least several centuries.
Legion has become accustomed to silence, accustomed to doing their own things.
Typhons, that intolerable figurehead, became the figurehead for many of them during the empty years, although his many successes never offset the excitement he inspired among the older generation doubt.
"We know exactly what you did to us."
Ngarta thought as he walked.
"We will not forget it."
He walked there with the ferryman Mawson, which took them a long time because the terrain was deliberately designed to be rough.
They wound their way along the steep shoulders of the steeple, sometimes, forced down, where the air was thick and the mutants drove scores of mortal slaves.
They strode past the rotting altar, squeezed through the squirming flies, saw the ever-turning mill wheels, and saw bones strewn on the wet ground beneath their feet.
After a long time, the terrain began to rise, the black soil glistened with moisture, and dark leaves spread around them.
Demons hissed at them from the warm shadows, a pool of stagnant water boiled uncomfortably, and a huge monument swayed by the roadside, badly blown by the corrosive wind that kept blowing wear and tear.
Finally, they saw an extremely heavily defended castle.
The steep side walls of the fortress rise hundreds of meters high from the green-lit deep valley, without handrails.
The place was like a mountain, its terrain rising far beyond all practical considerations to the point of hubris and madness.
Rising spiral towers crowd each other, lanterns hang from the spiers, and stone steps wind around the sloping wings of the hall, sometimes leading to somewhere, sometimes ending in mass graves or smoke-filled places. .
Here is the decaying church of God, empty of people, rising from the ground like an abandoned tomb, in the air mingled with incense and the sweet smell of the dead, the dying and the risen. "You can never quite get used to...how huge it is."
Deathbringer sighed, looking up at the fortress.
"It is said that it is still getting bigger."
The ferryman echoed, not seeming to be very interested.
"Only God knows what is going on."
This is the palace of the Lord of Death, full of supplicants, messengers, wizards and prophets, on the battlements that stretch for kilometers, Countless mutants and demons crouched.
Pilgrims filed towards the lock, so numerous that they filled the causeway across half the continent.
The priests of the corrupted god preached to them endlessly, their shrill cries punctuated by the tolling of broken bells.
The Pilgrims peered out from their battered hoods, hungry eyes waiting for one of their brothers to fall so they could chew a little gristle that night.
Over their heads floated spaceships and gunboats, leaving wisps of smoke in the blazing auroral night sky.
Otherwise, there was only the sound of the floating shroud, as eerie as that of a whale, shimmering like a mysterious midnight ghost.
Engarta does not need to emphasize his presence here. When he and the ferryman walked towards the gate, the crowd spontaneously stepped back and made the gesture of three on their chests. The infected whip demon also stopped and stared at the Deathstroke Herald.
The blind haulers shuddered to a stop, the vans filled with mushy fruit rocking on greasy axles, and the mutants stared at them with big shining eyes, panting and spitting out strings from their fanged mouths. Strings of saliva.
"Is the scale always this big?"
Ngarta asked, looking at the crowd with interest.
“Yes.”
The ferryman said as he walked slowly to the gate.
"I never knew exactly why they came."
"The same reason as us."
Engal Tower sent a signal to the guards in the distance, and then the iron shaft began to rotate.
“But only we can get in.”
The gate, like everything here, is a parody.
They are said to be only seven centimeters taller than the Eternal Gate on Terra.
Mortarion did many similar things - basically trivial things, as a mockery of fate, such as the turret being slightly higher than the Imperial Senate, and the city walls being steepened by seven degrees.
Nonetheless, the effect is impressive.
The fake door was held by a group of mutants with chains, and it took ten minutes to open it.
Only then will the dark interior of the mansion become apparent.
A pile of crumbling, half-ruined rotten stones, piled together in a haphazard manner, getting higher and higher, interconnected and intertwined, forming a fragile, bloated city, like a nest of thorns stuck high in the clouds .
A thin mist surrounds its foundations, boiling over the black surface and leaving stains on the rocks.
The great demon roared from the arcane prison buried deep in the magic tower, shaking the wet earth all the way to the center of the world.
(End of this chapter)