11. Source of Anger

Roboute Guilliman frowned as he stared at the twitching face.

He glanced worriedly at the braided steel cables that had created horrible bumps and jagged edges on his brother's scalp. The swaying of each protruding cable was torture, but Angron seemed to have grown accustomed to it.

He was breathing relatively calmly, sitting on the medical table with his hands supporting the edge, trying hard to remain calm, but he couldn't stop trembling because of the pain caused by breathing.

"Hello, Angron," Karyl spoke first.

Now, only the three of them remained in the medical room; everyone else had left. The Lord of Macragge's orders were absolute, and no one would disobey them.

"."

Angron didn't answer, only breathing heavily. His wounds had all been stitched up and would be fully healed in less than an hour. But the pain wouldn't let him go; after all, he had refused anesthesia.

After a while, he finally spoke, his voice still sounding like two files rubbing against each other.

"I'm sorry," he said in a low voice. "I didn't want to hurt you, or them."

He looked up, glanced quickly at Roboute Guilliman, then looked at Karyl: "Does he understand me?"

"He doesn't understand," Karyl said. "But I can translate for him."

Please.

Before Angron could finish speaking, his lower left eyelid began to twitch, causing half of his cheek to tremble uncontrollably. Left with no other choice, he gritted his teeth and took a deep breath.

The Butcher's Nails behind his head began to writhe as if it were alive, and Roboute Guilliman clenched his right fist, a sudden urge rising within him to tear it all out.

He had to admit that watching his brother's life being devoured by this thing was absolutely awful.

"Please tell him that I'm sorry for hurting those people." Half a minute later, Angron finally finished speaking.

But Karyl didn't immediately relay the message to Roboute Guilliman. Instead, he asked in Nuceria, "Do you know what their relationship is with him?"

"I don't know, but their armor all has the same emblem, like the triumphal ropes we gladiators possess. And he's clearly someone special; they all listen to him, I can tell."

Angron answered very quickly, his voice muffled, as if he had just bitten his tongue, with a little bit of scarlet blood oozing from between his teeth.

Karyl turned to Roboute Guilliman: "He's apologizing for hurting your four soldiers."

Roboute Guilliman looked at his brother, Angron, sensing his gaze, raised his head again, his eyes darting back and forth between Roboute Guilliman's face and armor, never meeting his gaze.

Lord Macragge sighed softly and said, "There's no need for that, brother. I could tell you were deliberately holding back."

Angron looked at Karyl.

"He said there was no need to apologize, that he knew you were holding back. But I want to ask you, how did you do that, Angron?"

"What?" Angron swallowed the blood in his mouth and asked indistinctly, "What did you do?"

Karyl watched him patiently and made a gesture. "Butcher's Nails."

He didn't say anything more, but that was enough.

And then Angron smiled.

His laughter was even more terrifying than his silence; the muscles in his face twitched, making what should have been a gentle expression appear incredibly grotesque.

"I've been fighting it."

"It wants me to submit, I know," the gladiator said in his broken voice, a calm resolve that starkly contrasted with his current appearance. "But I will not stop until I am truly dead. It is not worthy of my kneeling."

Karyl nodded slowly.

He turned and relayed to Roboute Guilliman, word for word, what Angron had just said. Guilliman's expression quickly shifted from dark anger to a subtle shock.

Angron looked at him, taking in his expression, and his smile grew wider and more menacing. It looked like a threat, but Roboute Guilliman could see the underlying goodwill within it.

"Angron." The gladiator looked at his brother and introduced himself in his language, his face contorted in a ferocious twitch, but his voice remained calm. "My name is Angron."

"I know, Angron," the nobleman's son replied softly, his High Gothic difficult yet refined, his expression concealing a furious anger born of sympathy. "My name is Roboute Guilliman, and I am your brother."

Karyl shook his head.

He reached out and placed his hand on Roboute Guilliman's shoulder, a fleeting, chilling blue glint in his eyes.

Angron let out a low growl, his body contorting, yet he still managed to restrain himself. Roboute Guilliman stared in astonishment at all this, wanting to speak, but a strange instinct within him urged him to use another language.

So he blurted out, "What have you done, Karyl?"

"I taught you Nuceria." The instigator gazed at Angron and answered Roboute Guilliman's question softly.

No, I meant --

"--I'm fine." Angron said, head bowed. He was panting, the steel cable behind his head gnawing at him, Roboute Guilliman could see it, and he could even hear the faint squeezing sound.

"That thing is sensitive to psionic energy," Karyl said thoughtfully. "I suspected something from the beginning, and the information you've gathered confirms my guess."

"Then why did you do it?" Roboute Guilliman asked rapidly.

Karyl didn't answer the question. He simply pursed his lips, shook his head, and said softly, "I'm sorry, Angron."

"I'm fine," the giant said, his head bowed. "I'm used to this kind of pain."

Roboute Guilliman frowned sharply. "This kind of pain?"

Angron raised his head and grinned. His face was contorted, but his eyes were calm.

"They call me Angron Tal. But I don't like that name. Angron is my first name; I don't have a surname, just like all the other gladiators."

"The Talco Family owns the Desh'ea Colosseum; they own it, and the reason they gave me their name was simply to assert their sovereignty. I despise this, so I have always resisted."

"A normal gladiatorial match takes twenty minutes to an hour to allow those damn spectators to vent. But I'll only take two minutes."

"Gladiator combat requires me to kill, but I will only make my opponents go all out, then take their weapons one by one and throw them into the sandpit."

"Sometimes I fight ferocious beasts, some captured like us, others created by slave owners. I render the former unconscious and let the latter rest in peace."

"The Talco Family was already quite unhappy with me back then, but they didn't do anything because of the money I brought. That is, until Oenomaus and I decided to unite everyone and start a rebellion to fight them before the next gladiatorial contest."

Angron paused for a moment, breathing heavily, the nails wriggling, urging him to use violence. He stared at the floor of the medical room, a look of emotion quite different from anger.

Sad.

Although it looked so out of place on his face, it was there nonetheless.

"That was seven months ago, and it was my sixteenth year in the arena."

After a moment of silence, Angron spoke again in a low voice; he was able to recount them. In calm moments, he still possessed the capacity for thought, though he would incessantly gasp for breath between sentences, the pain tormenting him evident to everyone.

Even a blind person could discern the extent of the owner's suffering through that terrifying sound.

Roboute Guilliman could see more, for example, that Angron rarely spoke at such length, and there was plenty of evidence to prove it, the most obvious being the pauses Angron made between each sentence.

He wasn't just resisting the Butcher's Nails; he was also thinking about what would bring even greater pain.

Roboute Guilliman gritted his teeth in anger. Did that nail not even allow him to think?

"But this was leaked." He paused again. "A traitor, Radalio. No, perhaps I shouldn't call him a traitor; he was the slave owners' man from the beginning, a villain planted among us."

A sinister smile appeared on his contorted face.

"He told the Talco Family about it, and the scheduled gladiatorial combat was canceled. I sensed something was wrong and wanted to fight back, but the guards had already captured all my brothers and sisters with their Silvervine."

"I remember that day; it was a bright, sunny day. They demanded that I fight two Ogryn alongside Oenomaus, and that we kill them. For the lives of my people, I did it, and then, after that..."

Roboute Guilliman waited in silence, refusing to utter a single word. He simply remained silent. Karyl remained silent as well, but with a slight difference. He kept his eyes narrowed, his arms crossed, and tapped his left forearm with his right index finger.

"They demanded that I and Oenomaus fight each other, and that one of us must die," Angron said calmly.

He spoke of it as if it were none of his own life, as if he were recounting someone else's story. But his face told a different story; his twitching, trembling, and cruelly mutilated face was filled with extreme sorrow.

"I disagree," the gladiator whispered. "But Oenomaus agrees, and wants me to agree too. Perhaps he already knew what the Talco Family would do to me back then."

"We were taken back into the cave, then dragged out again and locked in a cage in the middle of a sandpit. They held a knife to Oenomaus's neck, demanding that I agree to something. I asked them what it was, but they didn't answer, only producing a syringe. I asked them what it was, and they still didn't answer, only slowly drawing blood from Oenomaus's neck with the knife."

"I agreed, and then, when I woke up, Oenomaus was already dead."

He stopped talking, finally.

His words chilled Roboute Guilliman to the bone; he couldn't understand why the Emperor's son would be treated this way, and the story itself was torture for the listener.

The narrator himself slowly let out a roar from his throat, whether it was a mocking laugh or a sorrowful roar, it was hard to tell.

Roboute Guilliman saw that his brother's fists were clenched, and blood was seeping between the fingers of his hands. The Butcher's Nails were still wriggling and drilling inward, but their victims were bound tightly by an inexplicable willpower.

Roboute Guilliman looked at Karyl; he knew he had the answer. Karyl turned and glanced at him, his expression so complex that Roboute Guilliman could hardly comprehend it.

"I killed him with my own hands. After that, I wanted to kill them all, so I tore the iron cage apart and ran out, but I only managed to grab one of the guards by the neck before I was stopped. The pain made it impossible for me to continue."

He looked up and glanced at Karyl.

"Psionic abilities," Karyl said softly. "The Talco Family has Psyker, is that right?"

"I don't know what it is, but the pain is no different from the pain caused when your eyes are shining, only more painful."

Angron grinned and made a joke in his own way, which sounded almost reproachful, but Roboute Guilliman had a strange feeling that his brother didn't seem to care about it.

"You said you're used to it?" Roboute Guilliman asked in a low voice. "They often torture you with Psyker?"

"That's how it was for the next seven months," Angron said. "Whenever I refused to go into the arena, I would be in pain; sometimes I could resist, sometimes I couldn't. When I could resist, they threatened me with the lives of other gladiators."

"Gladiators don't live long; seven months is enough for most of the people I knew to die, but I know they don't deserve to be treated this way. So I always agree, but by then, I can no longer control myself."

After a long silence, Angron, his fingers trembling, uttered a number.

"Four hundred and seventy-one." He gasped in anguish. "I killed four hundred and seventy-one people. I only remember killing four hundred and seventy-one people."

--

"I will execute them all!"

Roboute Guilliman roared in anger, his voice echoing throughout his study.

"If you just want to vent your anger, you can play a few more simulation matches with me, Roboute."

Standing by the porthole, Karyl glanced back at the Lord of Macragge, his expression calm. "As for those slave owners, this is Angron's homeworld, isn't it? Capture them and hand them over to him for judgment."

"How could he possibly witness bloodshed now? That thing has already had an indelible impact on him." Roboute Guilliman slumped, covering his face in despair. "I should have left sooner. If I had come earlier, perhaps he wouldn't have..."

Karyl didn't answer him, but simply turned his head back. He gazed at the planet below the orbit, observing every observable detail, relaxing his thinking.

Then he chuckled softly.

"Let's notify the Twelfth Legion first," he said softly. "As for the Butcher's Nails, there are ways to deal with it."

"You have a way to solve this?!" Roboute Guilliman stood up incredulously.

"Yes," Karyl said. "But I need to go downstairs first."

What are you doing?

"Judgment."

The instructor from the Eighth Legion answered softly, his voice as gentle as a whisper in the wind. Watching his retreating figure, Roboute Guilliman suddenly felt a chill.

4.2K, I have 800 left to pay tomorrow.

Some readers are speculating whether Karyl will relinquish some of his power. Rest assured, that would be far too vulgar.