26. One-Day War (IV)

Roboute Guilliman looked at the fallen Ultramarines with a puzzled expression. The man lay on the ground, his face deathly pale, his eyes closed, and covered in blood.

Roboute Guilliman stared at the face, instinctively sensing something was amiss. His keen observation skills kicked in again—he knew the faces of everyone in the First Chapter, and this person...

Who is this person? Why does he have absolutely no recollection of them?

Roboute Guilliman lowered his head and looked again at the armor obscured by blood. After observing it for a while, he came to a conclusion that he himself could hardly believe. And at that very moment, the Apothecary Micia's diagnosis was completed.

"Primarch, Chapter Master Marius needs rest." Micia looked up at Roboute Guilliman. "He—"

" --Micia, what did you just call him?" Roboute Guilliman frowned, interrupting him.

The latter looked at him blankly, not understanding what his Primarch meant. So, after a brief silence, the other person took over the job.

"He is Lord Marius Gage, Primarch. Don't you remember him?"

With a sense of unease, Roboute Guilliman turned his head. He immediately recognized the speaker: Vlad the Arndt, a sergeant in the Third Company, skilled in suppressive fire and possessing a rationality far surpassing that of others.

He nodded to the sergeant. "Good to see you're safe and sound, Vladimir."

"I'm also glad to see you safe and sound, but why—" The sergeant gestured in confusion. "Don't you remember the Chapter Master?"

Roboute Guilliman lowered his head and looked again at Marius Gage, whom his descendants had mentioned.

He carefully observed the person lying on the ground with their eyes closed, when a sharp sound, like fingernails scraping against glass, echoed in his mind. The pain that had previously subsided returned in that instant.

The dagger-like mist surged up again, and Roboute Guilliman's cheek twitched involuntarily. He clenched his fists, trying to hide his pain, but to no avail.

A warm, sticky sensation rushed from his nostrils, and the sergeant charged forward. "Primarch!"

Roboute Guilliman weakly raised one hand, gesturing for him not to help him up.

He braced himself against the rock wall with his Hand of Dominion, the force of his Power Fist creating deep craters in the rough stone surface. Lord Macragge gasped for breath, soft gurgling sounds escaping his throat.

--Yes, Marius Gage, yes.

How could he forget? How could he possibly forget? Roboute Guilliman clenched his teeth in agony, more blood gushing from his nostrils, the bleeding unstoppable. He gasped for breath, trying to recall every detail about Marius Gage, every conversation.

These things were all preserved deep in his memory, and he and his descendants got along like friends, brothers, and relatives—the complex relationship did not affect the precious feelings between them.

Roboute Guilliman wrote all of this down; he was a pragmatist, but he still allowed himself to retain these precious flashes of insight.

And now, one of his treasures is his memory.

It's slipping away.

Time flows by relentlessly.

"No, no, I won't allow it!"

Roboute Guilliman whispered, and with a sudden burst of strength, the Hand of Dominion he used to support himself shattered the entire rock face in an instant. Stones rained down, falling to the ground with hollow echoes.

Vladimir Arndt and the others watched their Primarch cautiously, not understanding what was happening.

After a brief silence, Roboute Guilliman turned his head and looked again at Marius Gage, at his First Chapter Master —a face he had just remembered, but now completely unfamiliar.

He only remembered the name, he remembered Marius Gage, he remembered the First Chapter Master, but he couldn't connect the two names together. A wave of sorrow washed over him, his head snapped back, and Roboute Guilliman trembled uncontrollably.

The sergeant from the Third Company finally couldn't hold back any longer. He stepped forward and tried to speak with the Primarch: "Sir, what exactly—"

"--I've forgotten who he is," Roboute Guilliman replied in a low voice. "I've forgotten who Marius Gage is, and I have no way of remembering."

At that moment, Vladimir Arndt looked as if he didn't understand High Gothic, and he gave a weak response, while Roboute Guilliman turned to look at the Apothecary.

His gaze was so serious that the Apothecary immediately felt a painful sense of bewilderment.

Although he didn't understand what the Primarch wanted to do, he still straightened his chest and accepted Roboute Guilliman's inspection. A full half minute later, the Primarch of the Ultramarines finally spoke again.

"You're Apothecary, what's your name?"

"I—" The Apothecary's hands trembled, and he hesitated to give an answer. Roboute Guilliman's reaction was even stronger; the Primarch gasped for breath. The sergeant who had been standing beside him immediately supported him, but Roboute Guilliman tried to make him let go—the struggle was so slight that it terrified Vlad Arndt.

"I am forgetting you," the Lord of Macragge spoke slowly. "I don't know why, but I am indeed forgetting you—first Marius Gage, then you— the Apothecary, what's your name?"

"I—" Micia sounded as if she were already dead. "I am Micia, the Apothecary, the Primarch of the First Company."

"I've forgotten two people," Roboute Guilliman said in a low voice.

"Who knows if I've forgotten even more people? My memory is fading at an alarming rate. Just a few minutes ago I remembered who Micia was, and now I know nothing about him except his name. If this continues, I think I'll forget all of you sooner or later."

Silence, a deathly silence. In the end, it was Vladjani Arndt who, with his almost extreme rationality, forced himself to speak.

At this moment, the sergeant's face looked as if he had aged many years out of thin air, incredibly haggard. He gave a half-smile, half-crying expression and nodded to his Primarch: "This means we can't waste any time, right, Primarch?"

"."

"Primarch?"

Roboute Guilliman looked silently at the sergeant, and amidst the sergeant's twitching, desperate expression, asked him a question, "Who are you?"

Vladimir Arndtna, the source of his pride that once made him boast in his drunken state, "I am closer to the Primarch than any of you," had vanished, leaving him standing there on the verge of collapse.

Roboute Guilliman stood up, the sharp, incessant sound of fingernails scraping against glass ringing in his ears, one after another, never ceasing; it had never sounded so intensely before.

He looked at everyone present—some he still recognized, others he had forgotten. Some of the Ultramarines without helmets were as pale as their cousins from the Eighth Legion.

Roboute Guilliman was surprised by his own rationality at that moment: Why was I still paying attention to this kind of thing?

He had no answer; he only knew he was forgetting—non-stop, everything vanishing. A rolling fog swept in, bursting forth from the dark corners he couldn't see or touch, enveloping his face, layer upon layer, until he suffocated.

Roboute Guilliman collapsed to his knees, blood gushing from his nostrils, mixed with cerebrospinal fluid and brain tissue. The former could still be explained as a sequela of concussion, but the latter was almost impossible from a medical perspective.

Micia stared at it all, trembling, unable to react. Fortunately, the heavy thud of the Primarch falling to the ground startled the Sergeant, and Vlad immediately rushed over to help him up, but Roboute Guilliman did not react at all.

His blue eyes were empty now. After a few minutes, he slowly raised his head, and an inhuman rage coalesced on his face.

"Who are you?!"

Roboute Guilliman roared at one of his sons and flung his hand away. "Where's Captain Melothus?! Get him here with me, now!"

He stood up and shattered the rock with a swing of his arm—this was unlike Roboute Guilliman, who had always been able to control his strength so well that he could shake hands with a mortal without hurting him.

But what about him now? He looks like—like a moving...

Natural disasters.

"Send men to the Proanna Arch! And the Senate! Surround them! The rest of you, come with me to the Archon's Palace! How dare they rebel? How dare they attempt to murder my father?"

The Primarch howled these broken and chaotic words in despair and rage as he charged into the darkness. The Ultramarines did not hesitate to take steps to give chase, but were stopped.

"Stop!" Vladimir Arndt, his face ashen, raised his Boltgun and fired a shot at the rock wall.

Rocks and dust tumbled down, covering him in a cloud of dirt. He looked as if he were dead, or perhaps not— the Ultramarines watched him, and time ticked by. In the end, Vladimir Arndt's reason prevailed.

"The Primarch's memories are malfunctioning," the sergeant said, his voice filled with both rationality and despair.

"Just as he himself said, he is forgetting us, and the process is very rapid. He has even forgotten how we met. He now even thinks he's on Macragge."

"What he just said were his adoptive father, Lord Conno Roboute Guilliman's, exact words when he was assassinated. I heard the Primarch recount this story; he used it to warn us not to be blinded by anger like he was then. And we must learn from this lesson."

"What do we do, Sergeant?" the Apothecary asked, bewildered, his voice as faint as the chirping of insects.

"We... we fight," said Sergeant Vlady Arndt of the 3rd Chapter, Third Company Ultramarines. "We fight until we find him again, and then we'll find a way to heal him."

Update complete. I expect to reach 10,000 tomorrow as well.