48: Olympia's Turmoil (End)

Perturabo returned to his home alone.

This place was once merely the palace of the Damnekos, a collection of tedious details in the eyes of the Lord of Iron. Everything was so dull, with nothing noteworthy in its design or anything to boast about.

Things are different now.

Now, this is a jewel. In the past, the palace of Lokos was regarded as a kind of pilgrimage beacon by every Olympia, and tourists flocked from all the city-states just to witness the Radiance of this palace.

It was completely rebuilt by him decades ago, and everything left by the architects of Damnekos was torn down. Perturabo did everything he could, and the results were astonishing.

He was complacent about it for a while, but unfortunately, it seems that this place still doesn't satisfy him.

It was nighttime, and all was quiet, without a sound. The Iron Warriors did not speak while on missions, and the Midnight Blade was even less so. All the guards had been dispersed, and they were now under the watchful eyes of the Iron Warriors in the plaza of the side hall.

Some of them knew the truth and were trembling. Others were completely bewildered, seeing it as just another classic case of Perturabo's rage, which he then vented everywhere.

Yes, Perturabo knows how they see him, but he doesn't care.

He clenched his fists and pushed open the palace's main gate. Pale golden light spilled out, dispelling the darkness. The redesigned chandeliers emitted a gentle, rather than glaring, glow.

Sixteen marble columns inlaid with reliefs stood quietly in the hall, with a coffin placed between them. Perturabo did not look at it; his gaze was first fixed on the Throne of the Lord of Lokos, located at the far end of the hall.

Damnekos once sat here, and so did he. After he left, and after Damnekos died, the person who sat here became Calliphone.

During the years he was away from Olympia, his sister sat on this cold Throne, gazing at the empty hall.

Time had transformed her into a symbol of old age and frailty, a far cry from the intelligent and beautiful woman he remembered. Perturabo had thought he would despise her for this fragile imperfection, but he didn't.

A different emotion was surging within him.

Perturabo lowered his head and walked toward the coffin. The hard crystal that made up its body was still covered with soil. At Perturabo's command, the Iron Warriors dug up Damnekos's grave and brought Olympia's only governor here.

Perturabo stopped a few steps away from the coffin and did not approach it.

Standing here, he could clearly see what he wanted to see. Damnekos lay there, the old tyrant's face a ghastly ashen, a color only the dead possess. He was also very thin, and this wasn't the effect of death; he had been thin even when he was alive.

In the last decade or so of his life, the man from Lokos who raised him gradually transformed from a robust old man into this state. His glory was gone, leaving only a decaying, emaciated shell.

He was very stubborn, and even though Perturabo had tried to persuade him several times via remote communication to accept mechanical modifications or surgical organ implantation, Damnekos was unwilling to do so.

He died of old age, but even by Olympia lifespan standards, he lived a very long time.

One hundred and seventy-two years.

Perturabo thought of the number instantly—he knew it without even half a second of thought, as if it were second nature, beyond human comprehension. Far surpassing any mortal, his extraordinary nature was so obvious.

His father, who raised him, is dead, his sister is old, and everything from that era he knew has vanished, yet he remains unchanged.

He will always remain the same.

A sudden, complex fear rose within him. Perturabo was reluctant to acknowledge it, but he did anyway.

"Father," he spoke to the coffin, using a title Damnekos had never heard before while he was alive. "Olympia opposes me."

His voice was very soft.

"It's not that they're against me, it's that Olympia is against me," Perturabo repeated. "There's a difference, you understand? This planet doesn't welcome me; it doesn't like what I do to it."

"Luther, the Caliban who came here from a world you don't understand, can confirm what I'm saying. In fact, it was he who told me all this. He told me everything in detail from his hideout; the seeds of this civil war and those ideologies were sown many years ago."

He paused, then took out a rough metal cube from his waist; its unrefined appearance made it hard to believe that Perturabo was holding it.

Perturabo carefully pressed several hidden buttons, and it began to rotate, opening itself from a cube into a triangle.

A small, meticulously polished piece of broken metal was exposed; it was iron-gray and had a name engraved on it.

Eltelos.

"He was Olympia too," Perturabo said, glancing again at the coffin. His expression was so complex it was hard to believe it was him.

"I don't know if you can understand what I'm saying, Father, but I can confidently assume you are listening. Wasn't it the same many years ago? I would describe scientific theories or express my disdain for works of art; you wouldn't understand, but you would listen patiently."

"Eltelos was also an Olympia, one of my offspring. He went through rigorous selection to become part of my legion, and then I killed him through the hands of his brothers."

The Lord of Iron remained silent for a moment, then pressed the button, turning the triangle back into a square, and put it back. For a few seconds, his masseter muscles repeatedly tensed and contracted.

An uncontrollable rage was surging in the eyes of this man—if he could simply be called a human being—an rage that did not belong to ordinary people, nor even to those who should be.

It was too complex, too twisted and extreme; even the devils of hell wouldn't like it. Anger should be a person's most intense emotional outburst, but Perturabo's anger was different.

He suppressed it, distorted it, and robbed it of its angry essence, turning it into a whip held in his hand to lash himself.

"I don't even know who I should be angry at now."

He began to mutter to himself as he looked at the coffin.

"That's how it's always been. I always find someone to vent my anger on, and I always manage to find someone. But Olympia has come to this point, who am I to blame? Myself? I should do this, my reason tells me I should do this, but I can't."

Perturabo curled his increasingly numb fingers and slid them across the glass surface of the coffin.

Damnekos lay inside, eyes closed, unable to respond to any of his words. This ordinary man who had once tried so hard to be his father was now a corpse, a symbol for some to extol, or for others to try to resurrect.

But he will never be able to be his father again.

Forever.

Perturabo looked away, suddenly finding it amusing—what was he doing?

When Damnekos was alive, he never revealed a single word of his true feelings to him. Now, more than thirty years after his death, he longs to lie on the old tyrant's coffin and weep loudly.

How ironic.

Perturabo let out a cold laugh, then looked up at the ceiling of the hall.

He meticulously designed a glass dome there, and the approximate star map of the Milky Way was displayed through the refraction of light by the convex and concave parts of the glass. The night sky of Olympia was superimposed under their effect, making it look incredibly beautiful.

However, in the eyes of the Primarch, there are far more things in the night sky than those.

He stared at it, and it stared back at him coldly.

A colossal vortex, something standing amidst the stars. It scrutinized him, judged him, and countless times caused him anxiety, unease, and mania.

What exactly is it?

"What exactly are you?" Perturabo asked it, a genuine question forming on his face.

This question once belonged to many, including ancient scholars in robes who could only observe the stars through hand-polished glass lenses, and believers who preached to their followers while observing the stars under the night sky.

Now, this question belongs to one of the Emperor's sons, to one of the most outstanding people among humankind.

For the first time in his life, he looked directly at it with unwavering courage.

"Do you want to destroy me?" the Lord of Iron asked softly. "Or change me? Turn me into something I myself despise?"

The vortex among the stars did not answer; of course, it would not. It would only answer him under one circumstance, but that is not what is happening now.

"There was only one moment in my life when I was free from you, and that was when I stood with him. He was clad in armor, gleaming with light. He and I stood side by side atop a nine-thousand-meter-high mountain, looking down below, and that's when you disappeared. Why? Were you afraid of him?"

The Lord of Iron smiled coldly.

"Look," he said to it. "Whatever you want, look at it however you like, and comment on it however you want."

The vortex remained silent, with only Perturabo's voice echoing within the hall. The Primarch's voice was resolute, the connections between words as powerful and resonant as a hammer striking an anvil.

"I have accepted my flaws, and so have you. You are nothing but an illusion, a mirage. Some untraceable lesion within my nervous system. One day you may kill me, but for now, I am still Perturabo."

He stared at it, as if he had already won.

"And Olympia is my world," said the Lord of Iron. "The problems between it and me will be resolved by us together."

Also, the code.