Yet with every step, the air seemed to fill with more and more electric charges, strange auras crackled along the statue's fruits, and mysterious moans echoed around the Astartes.
As they approached the pile of corpses, Talos discovered that they were buried inside a giant spiral.
The sinuous lines are formed from a series of carefully crafted runes, each carved into the floor with a plasma torch and filled with coagulated blood.
The symbols stung his eyes, and when he tried to focus, it seemed like jagged needles were driving into his brain.
The longer he stared at the spiral, the stronger the effect became.
The surviving bugs had given up their frenzied attacks and retreated from the Astartes in an irregular circle, lurking just outside the range of the chainsword's attack, waiting for their chance.
The members of the squad continued their bloody work, carefully shooting the monsters with their bolt pistols.
The energy of death continues to fuel the vortex, further igniting the invisible flame.
Talos gritted his teeth, endured the increasingly severe pain in his head, and led his team forward step by step.
They were now ten meters away from the pile of corpses, and he could see that each corpse was painted with its own runes, coated with a layer of translucent slime that shimmered slightly in the strange energy flickering above them.
When the ball lightning flashed, the prophet caught a glimpse of some kind of mark on the edge of a statue more than ten meters high above the pile of corpses.
But before he could focus on what it was, the bugs suddenly turned around and rushed towards his team.
An ominous premonition gripped Talos.
"not good!"
However, before he could shout a warning, all the remaining bugs were blown to pieces.
The next second, their death energy hit the ether like a hammer, and the pent-up power in the room exploded.
When the barrier between reality and the ether began to collapse, Talos felt the sense of spatial dislocation sharply intensify. He staggered as his mental shock absorber was about to be overloaded, and spikes of pain pierced his brain.
In front of him, the pile of corpses seemed to be grasped by a pair of invisible hands and piled up into the shape of an arch.
At the same time, Talos finally sounded what the symbol was——
"…Blood Angels!"
At this moment, in the distant Baal Galaxy, Mephisto, who was reading a book with his head down, seemed to feel something, and suddenly raised his head. His pale and thin face had a corpse-like texture under the dim light of the candle.
This is the holy hall that belongs only to him - a grand anti-psionic hall. The huge plasma generator suspends tens of thousands of the most dangerous think tank banned books in the air. The hum of its operation stirs the air.
Like the engine room of a battleship.
He himself was sitting in a relatively quiet corner of the hall, with a brass desk in front of him.
The brass candlestick placed in the center of the table, its bright light will sweep away the surrounding haze and darkness - the flat surface of the desk that has been hammered for thousands of times shines brightly.
Suddenly, a blood slave appeared from the darkness. He was wearing a red robe, his face was hidden in the shadows, he bowed and whispered:
"Master Dante is here."
"Invite him in."
The bent blood slave nodded and quickly stepped back into the shadows.
Then, Mephisto turned his attention to the ancient book in front of him. This was a secret volume he accidentally discovered while sorting out the group's files. There was no signature on it, but there was a person who made him very uneasy.
symbol.
Although he didn't recognize this symbol, Mephisto's intuition told him that this thing was dangerous.
Then he looked through the ancient books and was surprised to find that an old event from the legion era was recorded in them. At the same time, he also realized what that symbol represented.
This secret volume is not without a signature. The symbol is its name. It has a very special status in the Blood Angels. Everyone usually calls it "Sanguinor".
Soon, Dante, wearing a robe, walked into the holy hall.
"What's up?"
After saying hello, Dante sat on the chair opposite Mephisto and leaned back into the chair.
Mephisto nodded and pushed the secret scroll in front of Dante.
"I was sorting through my files and found this."
Dante frowned and opened the secret volume. As he gradually looked back, the expression on his face became more and more astonished.
"This...there is such a thing!?"
"There are no records at all in the Chapter's history. Obviously the Primarch didn't want anyone to know about it."
The reason why Dante was so surprised was that this secret scroll actually recorded a demon, a powerful demon that was active during the Horus Heresy—Madel.
It turns out that in the late period of the Great Rebellion, the Triprimarchs Sanguinius, Guilliman and Lion, who met in Macragge, tried to break through the Destruction Storm and go to Terra. On the way, they encountered the "Road of Destruction" controlled by the demon Mardel.
, then fighting broke out in the Davin system, resulting in Sanguinius being trapped in a portal on the altar that caused Horus's fall.
In the portal, the Angel saw a vision of the Emperor congratulating him on defeating Horus and saving the Imperium, but the Angel defeated the vision.
After the ruse was exposed, Mardel gathered his Daemon army and tried to force Sanguinius into serving the Chaos God by force. They gave him a choice: replace Horus as the Chaos Warmaster, or he would die.
Sanguinius resisted the temptation and launched a fierce battle with Mardel. In the end, the battle was interrupted due to the intervention of the primarch Guilliman, Jonson and the Holy Blood Guard. The demon army was defeated, but Sanguinius
Si and Mardel were also severely injured and trapped in the portal.
At the critical moment, someone appeared and replaced Sanguinius in the portal, released Sanguinius, and disappeared with Mardel.
So based on the way this secret volume was written, it is obvious that this person is Sanguinor, and the book finally explains that it sealed Mardel back to its "original place".
"This place is..."
The last part of the secret scroll was a bit sloppy, and Dante read it for a long time without understanding the name of the place written in Baltic.
Mephisto leaned towards the copper table and summoned a holographic image with a wave of his hand: a detailed star map jumped into Dante's eyes.
"Peiling Star, a death world located in the Pandora galaxy in the extreme star field."
Dante glanced at the star map and tried to outline in his mind the distance from the Hades galaxy where Baal was located to the Pandora galaxy.
There is no doubt that the two are very far apart.
"Very good, this will be very useful information for the Chapter."
"Chapter Commander, this is not as simple as a piece of information."
Dante looked at Mephisto in confusion.
"Is there any secret in this?"
"It's not a secret."
Mephisto knew that Dante had just returned from a mission and had not received any news from there, so he took out a data tablet.
"The Astropath received a briefing from the Naval Sector Base a week ago, saying that something happened on the Pioneer Planet."