"In life, war. In death, peace. In life, shame. In death, redemption."
— The final lines of the litany of self-sacrifice recited by Death Korps guards before an attack.
The winds of the warp tore the universe apart, but this time they did not disturb either the future or the past. Tzeentch did not demand anything from me, he only wanted to teach me a lesson for all the insolence, frivolity and arrogance I had shown before. So to speak, God showed his true nature, which he tried to hide until my stupidity was necessary for the subsequent passage of Mordred's life cycle.
Had I gained any valuable information, or had my actions helped me see the situation from a different angle? I couldn't really tell, since either outcome could have driven Tzeentch mad. But one fact remained. Something had been hidden from the Dark Gods by a blinding will that day, be it a shameful fall from grace or the beginning of a secret plan whose outcome frightened Tzeentch with the unknown. And replaying the past with different inputs to determine the full spectrum of possible futures had not yielded the desired result.
Either way, my soul was nearly torn to shreds. Tzeentch didn't move me neatly into a new body, it was as if he had thrown me off a cliff into a raging ocean, kicking a battered kitten into the warp. It left my psychic wounds so terrible that my mind was exposed and vulnerable. I was one chance away from becoming the puppet of some random creature in the warp.
But a non-random creature could not subdue me. I am talking about Birdie, who was also subjected to anger and showed almost no signs of life. Breathing weakly and absorbing mere crumbs of energy, she was silent and tried to recover. This process was incredibly painful and could only be compared to the pain experienced by the previous owner of the body I ended up in.
The pain was so strong and incredible that it even began to be forcibly blocked by the brain along with the memories. Belt, battery, death. The young man did not try to cut himself ostentatiously, he did not look for easy ways and was brought to maximum despair, which eventually burst out one day and with all its pressure finally and irrevocably broke his will and soul. Without further ado, he silently went here, because he could not stand it for another minute.
He didn't look for the chandelier, he didn't need a rope or soap, in such a difficult case, in general, there was little that could help him. He died not from lack of oxygen, but from the fact that the belt blocked the blood supply to the brain. At any moment, he had the opportunity to fix everything, come to his senses and remove the tie on his neck. But he didn't care anymore, he wasn't afraid of death, he was afraid to live on. And this fear was so strong that the prolonged depression simply killed the instinct of self-preservation.
With shaking hands I took off the belt, trying not to think at all about how it happened. A young man, a very young cadet, he should have lived and lived, but that's how it sometimes happened. And Lex also killed himself, but at least he did it on a good note, at the best moment of his life, and this... this was some kind of horror. I have never felt such despair even from the followers of Nurgle.
- Br-r-r... - I started to shudder, but I was already running along the dark corridors, following my intuition.
I barely managed to make it to the line-up, after which I took my place among the other cadets. And then the colonel began to give a speech:
— Today you will go to the surface! You will dig trenches under radioactive rain, demining ancient territories, learning to survive in the conditions of our dead world! I will say frankly, many of you will not survive this! Rather, I would even say that none of you will survive this! — the colonel spoke loudly, but there was no emotion in his voice. — You have the worst results and problems in your cadet corps appeared at the first stages of training! Therefore, it was decided to make your company experimental! Those of you who are different will be able to transfer to other formations and then become guardsmen who will die for our sins in the name of the Emperor! Those who break in the process of using the most radical and experimental training methods will be replaced by other worst cadets from other corps. The most infamous company will begin using these methods, if there are prospects, the methods will be transferred to other companies! In the absence of ... those who died will serve the Emperor in one way or another, at least in this. I repeat, these will be extremely cruel methods even by the standards of the Dead World! STEP FORWARD, WHO WANTS TO LEAVE RIGHT NOW AND GO TO A MILITARY FACTORY!!!
But no one took a step, because the dream of every Krieg boy was to serve in the army and become a guardsman, to save his soul and the memory of his ancestors. For the sins of his world, Krieg shed blood and the only purpose of their existence was death in His name. They lived not for victory and glory, nor for humanity, but for a valiant death and redemption.
And even now, after our cadet corps was directly called the worst, no one moved. Let the command start testing deadly additives or drugs on them - no one will care, because from birth these children were processed ideologically, psychologically and physically. Even if for some reason they failed to become the best among their own, this did not cancel the fact that with incredible zeal each of these youngsters would jump on mines with their chests if such was the order.
- EXCELLENT!!! - Colonel Kreiser roared. - TO THE LEFT!!! ACCEPTING MARCHING FORMATION!!!
For some reason, these cadets had a lot of problems. It happened, because the system was not perfect, but the goal of the command was to study this error. Krieg's pedantry could not turn a blind eye to even one defective out of a thousand perfectly trained soldiers. There had to be a hundred percent success, because every mistake is another wound for the Imperium and pain for the Beloved of All.
And so even those who had not yet reached the required level of quality and who were unlikely to reach them in the future were still trained, using methods that even in Krieg were considered too... cruel. After all, even a cadet who could not become a guard would still be useful in the process of training other cadets. And of course, there were dangerous genetic experiments that even Terra preferred not to talk about, because they violated the laws.
But why? Why did Holy Terra itself allow a world to break the law? Because Krieg was a strategically important planet, on whose blood the entire Imperium was largely based. However, it was not always so.
— In 433.M40, vile traitors, overfed leaders and autocrats driven mad by power finally and irrevocably fell into heresy! — as we walked along the giant corridor with the entire cadet corps, either prayers or ideological moralizing stories were constantly playing from the loudspeakers, listening to them every day a soldier turned into an ideal instrument of war or broke down, after which he was disposed of. — Against the will of the people, in secret from everyone, they stopped paying tithes, invested money in their own defense, and then declared independence! Vile traitors and heretics!
I was surprised to discover that despite the incredible mental weakness of the echo of the soul of the previous owner, the mechanical memory was monstrous. I marched perfectly, step in step, as if I had been doing this all my life. Eternal drill had brought the reflexes to the limit of this young man, taken into the cadet corps as a child.
— Only the Adeptus Mechanicus and Adeptus Arbites present on Krieg put up serious resistance, for they served only the Holy Land, Holy Terra and the Emperor, but not the fattening planetary rulers! But they were few and only one hive city, Ferrograd, was able to remain loyal! Tens of billions of people fell into heresy, but there, in Ferrograd, Colonel Jurten and his 83rd Regiment quickly seized the initiative, taking power into their own hands through a decisive military coup! They are the heroes of Krieg, who in the day of great darkness were able to find the path to the light! Their thoughts were pure and their souls shone with fire in the darkness! — the voice from the propaganda megaphones was heard under the eerie church choir, and even for a moment it seemed to become quieter in the military workshops: everyone had heard this story thousands of times, but each was as if for the first time.
We continued marching and now we came out of a spacious tunnel into an even larger tunnel, a hundred meters wide. There we were joined by equipment, all of them were not guards, but cadets who had not lost their names and had not yet earned the right to go and die on other worlds in the name of the Emperor. But soon this will change and those who survive, sometimes in not at all training battles among themselves, they will become even stronger and perhaps become what they must become for the forgiveness of their sins.
— The entire planetary defense was in the hands of vile heretics! Tens of millions of soldiers who forgot their duty surrounded the forces loyal to Terra! They were divided and surrounded, a brutal siege was supposed to crush the last pockets of resistance! Colonel Jurten understood that his forces were not enough to defend, but from the very beginning he knew that the Lord Commander of the Segmentum would answer him! — the voice and music seemed to be trying to immerse everyone in a trance, and it worked out very well, because the monumentality of what was happening struck me to the depths of my soul: the gloomy entourage of the underground city, tens of thousands of soldiers marching in step and the hum of equipment gave birth to an understanding in the mind of everyone of their involvement in something great. — A fleet of terrifying power was needed to break through the planetary defenses of a multi-billion hive world! It was impossible to assemble such a fleet for a breakthrough and deblockade of forces loyal to the Imperium! And so, soon Colonel Jurten was given an order that was as simple as it was impossible to carry out!
To the accompaniment of a choir and the howling of megaphones, we were already passing through one of the underground cities. Houses and fortresses hung directly from the ceiling, giant factories worked around the clock, giants of metal walked among them, carrying heavy loads and no one dared to rest. Bells rang in Gothic churches and numerous townspeople looked at us from everywhere, seeing in us the salvation of all damned souls.
To achieve this goal, Krieg put into production not only soldiers, but also all the equipment they needed, from lasguns to tanks. Without seeing the sun, workers sometimes toiled around the clock, because this was their only chance to earn forgiveness for the sins of their ancestors. But no one complained and voluntarily sought to exceed the plan.
- ATTACK THE ENEMY, CRUSH HERESY AND WIN VICTORY!!! - Another voice thundered, drowning out even the choir and voicing the short order given to Colonel Jurten. - MAY THE EMPEROR HELP YOU!!!
And the roar of sirens mixed with the sounds of thousands of explosions, tearing the eardrums of all the inhabitants of Krieg, everyone felt the vibration and even the deaf could not forget what happened on the darkest of days. It seemed that the earth itself trembled, but this was only an obsession caused by the story, although in the hearts of many very hardened cadets something still skipped a beat from the endless roar of air raid sirens. After all, on that day Krieg died, died to be born again.
In one moment, all the atomic weapons under Jurten's control soared into the sky. Megatons exploded around Ferrograd, destroying all the enemies of the Emperor and their fortresses. Heretics and those who were foolish enough not to see the traitors in them burned in the righteous fire. In a matter of moments, the surface of the world was destroyed, tsunamis demolished cities, incredible storms destroyed climate domes, and the earth shook from incredible power, because in response, Ferrograd was also struck by atomic weapons.
Billions died in the first hours of the civil war, but even more will die after, because the execution of the order will take five centuries.
— Five centuries of ceaseless war! War with the planet itself, building new cities and surviving underground, brutal battles with traitors and incredible sacrifice for the fact that on the day of great darkness only one regiment of Krieg remained loyal to Terra! However, this regiment was worth a thousand times superior enemy forces! After all, on its blood and sacrifice the struggle continued, which was brought to its inevitable conclusion! THE ORDER WAS EXECUTED!!! — and suddenly the choir disappeared, and the voice spoke without any accompaniment. — In 949.M40, Krieg was returned to the bosom of the Imperium. Our planet had accumulated debts and even the terrible state of the planet was no excuse not to pay them. The Departmento Munitorum imposed a new tithe on Krieg, asking for one regiment, but imagine their surprise when Krieg provided twenty regiments for immediate deployment, all formed, trained and equipped, and each commander asked to be sent to the most dangerous war zone! Since that day, Krieg has supplied dozens of regiments every year, and our soldiers are as relentless as the factory assembly lines that created our weapons! And as ruthless as our radioactive world, whose fate we wrote with our own hands, covered in blood and atomic dust.
- One, two! - and our company stopped, standing at the very end of the giant column, which was gradually raised to the surface by monstrous elevators.
Thus began the incredibly brutal training that forced everyone to be at the limit of their capabilities and push the boundaries of their own potential further and further. It was not only about physical parameters, which were enhanced by various food additives and genetic experiments, but also about mental ones. The mind of each Krieg had to turn into tempered steel. And it did, cracking at the seams and breaking, but it did.
However, despite all the cruelty and ruthlessness, the suicide rate was lower than in the army of my home world. For all this time, the previous owner of the body was the only one and the matter here was rather in the peculiarities of the owner of the body himself. After all, each inhabitant of Krieg had one thought hammered into his head: death in the name of the Emperor is the main task for everyone. Only by dying in His name can one earn final peace and a better life in the afterlife near the Golden Throne.
And even if the military machine sometimes malfunctioned and out of a thousand soldiers there was one who was not destined to reach the incredibly high quality level, even then he was not disposed of or thrown away, he was simply sent to the same military factories. Everyone had a use and no one dared to personally deprive the Emperor of his own life.
But with all this, the percentage of deaths during training was off the charts. The radioactive surface of Krieg was an extremely dangerous place, and the training was designed to eradicate all weakness, which is why injuries were the norm. And yet, despite the titanic workload, despite the fact that during a month of training I lost consciousness thirteen times due to lack of oxygen due to constantly wearing a gas mask, I continued to move forward and did not even think about the next reincarnation, clinging to this life with my teeth.
When my legs gave out and I physically couldn't stand up, because of which my comrades had to even drag me, I still tried to do everything to recover during the night. Because of the wounds received from Tzeentch, my psychic potential dropped to almost zero and only now I realized how much the warp gave me and how much it increased my physical strength, endurance, agility. It was unpleasant, as was the constant dirt in my boots, the cold and the aura of death, because accidents happened every day.
But I endured and steadfastly endured the hardships, adapting my mind and concentrating only on carrying out the order. Even though I was the worst at it, I crawled through the mud under the barbed wire, breathing and wheezing like a tuberculosis patient and seeing almost nothing because of the fogged up gas mask.
- BELOW YOUR HEAD!!! - Colonel Kreiser shouted, shouting over the machine gun fire whistling over our heads.
A hellish obstacle course, two hundred meters of crawling in the mud, then a forced march with dashes between shelters and working in pairs, then throwing a grenade into an enemy bunker with a cry of "FOR THE EMPEROR!!!", then digging a personal trench from a prone position with an infantry shovel, a mining standard, where you need to bury an anti-personnel and anti-tank mine, while hiding it so well that the next soldiers passing the mine clearance standard blow up. Then a dash towards an imitation of an enemy trench, while fifty meters away from you, allied mortars will fire aimed fire, whose mistake will cost several lives at once. Each element was imbued with colossal stress in order to make the fighter resistant to any shocks.
It was hell, where everything was done to break the soldier's personality, if it somehow survived to this point, and then make the mind stronger than steel. And even just physically keeping up with such a pace was incredibly difficult, but some real monsters, my peers and the same young men, managed to set records even in such seemingly impossible standards.
Once again I began to lag behind the others, which did not go unnoticed by Kreiser, who never sat back at headquarters and even during the radioactive rain stood somewhere nearby, covered in dirt and dust from his home world, and watched from the front row as the cadet corps assigned to his control underwent training.
— How do you understand this, fighter? Why are you always lagging behind? Isn't the Emperor worthy of more zeal? You can't cope! You have the worst results in the entire company! How the hell did you even pass the selection?
"I can't know!" I answered, shouting with all my might, but my voice still sounded muffled from the gas mask, which is why it was lost in the roar of mortar salvos and machine gun fire.
— You can't know⁈ So maybe I should send you to the rear⁈ Or… — Colonel Kreiser suddenly pulled out his pistol and pointed the barrel at my forehead. — Dispose of you as useless⁈ Without zeal, you'll be worse than others at assembling a lasgun! Why waste resources and time on you then⁈ WHY ARE YOU HERE, CADET⁈ YOU CAN SEE YOURSELF THAT YOU CAN'T DO ANYTHING AND STILL STUBBORNLY BANG YOUR HEAD AGAINST THE WALL!!! HAVE YOU REALLY BEEN FEELING LIKE THE PRIDE IN YOUR HEART, LIKE THE TRAITORS WHO DESTROYED OUR WORLD⁈ ANSWER!!!
— NO WAY!!! I AM HERE BECAUSE I KNOW THAT YOU CAN TEACH ME TO KILL HERETICS, XENOS AND DEMONS!!! LEARNING TO DO THIS IN THE NAME OF HUMANITY IS MY HIGHEST GOAL, FOR WHICH I AM READY TO DO ANYTHING!!! AND I AM READY TO PART WITH MY HEAD RIGHT HERE AND NOW, BUT NOT TO BE DEPRIVED OF THIS OPPORTUNITY!!!
I tried to formulate my thought taking into account the ideology of Krieg, but in the end sincerity still suppressed everything else and the answer turned out the way it did. There was simply no strength, either physical or willpower, left for lies or hypocrisy. However, even the answer, not quite exemplary by Krieg standards, more than satisfied Kreiser, who silently returned the weapon to the holster and headed towards the other "distinguished" cadets.
Because my answer, one way or another, contained something that is extremely important for any Kriegman and that I had even more than others, which Kryzer immediately noticed. It was about incredible hatred for the enemy, whom I wanted to crush with all my heart and therefore endured all this. And even if Tzeentch thought to punish and break me in this way, but personally I saw in this rebirth an opportunity to become someone whom even daemons are afraid to meet.
And the Death Korps of Krieg was the best place to achieve this goal.
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