Interlude of 194: Across Ten Thousand Years (Part Two)

Cassidorius awoke from his slumber with a splitting headache and a strange taste on his tongue.

He staggered to his feet, his vision blurring. This was obviously not normal, but he paid no attention to it and simply dragged his weary body to sit by the fire.

Van Cleef looked up from his reverie, glanced at him, and then said nothing more.

The First Company was always like this; he rarely spoke unless absolutely necessary. He seemed to believe in the golden rule of silence, or perhaps he simply thought that doing was more important than saying.

Cassidorius sighed and turned to retrieve his gun from the rock face. He was numb and dizzy, and even sitting by the fire did not alleviate his symptoms.

That's why he chose to pick up the gun.

He knew what this sign meant, or rather, he knew it was a harbinger of something about to happen.

A biting wind howled outside the cave, tearing at his hearing. Snowflakes occasionally drifted inside, but quickly melted. This place once belonged to a hibernating bear; now, it was merely a temporary resting place for two travelers.

After a while, Cassidorius stood up and walked to the front of the cave. Since there was no shelter, the ground was wet and cold, and the melting snowflakes soaked his steel boots.

He looked down at his boots and noticed that their surfaces had become quite worn. Their journey had been fraught with chaos, but chaos is still time, and it had left its mark on this masterpiece of Mechanicum.

Cassidorius didn't know how much longer it could last, but the priest named Cawl, who was working with him, said it could operate for 8,300 years without maintenance or major damage.

This statement is quite intriguing. Eight thousand three hundred years is neither a general number like ten thousand years nor several thousand years, but a specific number.

It's like that priest did an experiment.

An experiment that lasted for eight thousand years?

Cassidorius stretched his hands out of the cave and soon gathered a handful of snowflakes. He stuffed them haphazardly into his mouth and began to chew.

The temperature inside his mouth didn't melt the snowflakes quickly enough; in fact, quite the opposite, his mouth was the one that was quickly transformed.

The temperature dropped rapidly, and he became numb. He spat out the snow water and saw a little blood. There was probably a cut or frostbite somewhere in his mouth.

Cassidorius frowned.

The forest is not a habitable place in winter, and it's snowing heavily right now. Even predators that aren't prepared for hibernation won't be out in this weather, looking for prey that is impossible to find.

However, he heard a soft, delicate sound of footsteps on snow outside the cave. He looked into the darkness, trying to make out some shape within.

He is now a seasoned hunter, well-versed in the habits of various animals from Ancient Terra. Interestingly, this knowledge is often completely different from what he learned from books.

He stared into the darkness, speechless and silent.

What is stomping on the snow?

The cold wind howled, and snowflakes drifted, turning into sharp knives that could cut one's cheek in the wind. From the surrounding darkness, a continuous, faint sound could be heard.

Something is watching.

Are they ravenous predators? Or evil monsters from Terra's ancient legends?

None of those. It is something else entirely, something more evil than all of them combined.

Cassidorius slowly raised his gun.

Besides wild beasts, he had also killed many monsters: Wendigos, man-eating beasts under the moonlight, and other strange monsters that only existed underground. If he hadn't seen it with his own eyes, he really wouldn't have believed that so many monsters that shouldn't exist existed on Terra.

Cassidorius pointed his gun at the darkness, slowing his breathing, patiently and meticulously waiting, even beginning to clear his mind. He was experienced; he knew what to do now.

After a while, the sounds in the darkness finally ceased, and what followed was a pair of slender, thin hands covered in frostbite. They emerged from the darkness and tightly grasped the muzzle of Cassidorius's gun.

"Hello, hello, lost traveler," the thing began to speak in the snow, uttering wave after wave of wet, foul-smelling whispers. "Could I have some water?"

Cassidorius released his grip, letting the thing take the gun away. The sound of footsteps on the snow resumed, and a strange swallowing and weeping sound came from the darkness.

"How could you do this? I asked you for water, and you gave me a weapon of destruction."

"Know-it-all" pulled a short bone knife from his belt and slowly moved forward, gripping it.

The sky was dark and devoid of light, not a single star in sight. Snowflakes fell on his head, bringing a damp chill, and the cold wind continued to blow. Suddenly, the voice of that thing sounded from behind him, soft, thin, and fragile, each syllable sounding like glass being shattered underfoot.

"What year is it now? What year is it?" it began to chatter on. "What era is it now? What era is it? How much longer can you hold on, you lost soul?"

"How much longer can you continue your long journey? Look back, your boots are already stained with blood. Look back, traveler, you are in a labyrinth of mirrors, and what you will face, see, and kill are all your own reflections. You think you are doing something great? No, you are slowly killing yourself. When the journey ends, your life will also come to an end."

Cassidorius turned around and plunged the bone dagger into the chest of a body. The creature had a pale face; it wasn't exactly handsome, but rather resembled a human.

His eye sockets were deeply sunken, and his eyes were bloodshot and speckled with dark spots. Two streams of blood hung from his nose and flowed down his dark lips. His face was covered with swollen wounds, and his expression was one of extreme panic and unease.

Cassidorius recognized that face.

He pulled out the knife, and it screamed and fell to the ground; its eyes were two bright yellow Lantern.

Screams began to echo through the woods. Cassidorius closed his eyes, swayed, and collapsed onto the snow.

--

About seven hundred years later...

Perhaps seven hundred years, perhaps eight hundred years, time has lost its meaning. We walk repeatedly through the endless cycle of history, therefore everything is meaningless, everything is nothingness. We cannot communicate with people, we cannot exchange ideas, we cannot stop, only move forward—never-ending, never-ending.

Cassidorius stared at the river in silence. A scream came from behind him as a Chainsword became lodged inside a body, relentlessly tearing apart flesh and blood.

The creature didn't resist, but kept calling out Cassidorius's name, as if they were old acquaintances. Friends, family, intimate lovers, like-minded partners.

Its screams never ceased, and so did the roar of the Chainsword's motor.

Until it stops screaming.

"You're still going crazy," Van Cleef asked slowly as he approached. "How long has it been going on?"

Cassidorius remained silent.

"How many times has it come?" Van Cleef pressed. "I haven't counted, Cassidorius, but you must have. You have an instinctive memory, even in your madness; you're a natural recorder. Perhaps you should have been born in the era of the Great Crusade; my legions would welcome someone like you."

He slowly sat down, scooped up a handful of water from the riverbank, and began to wash the bloodstains off his Power Armour. The bloodstains scattered into the river, attracting a school of greedy fish.

Van Cleef let the fish lick the blood without reacting; the thing was an illusion, and its blood was no different from the river water.

He began to wait, but unfortunately, after more than ten minutes, Cassidorius still did not choose to speak, so Van Cleef lowered his head and looked at the water curtain, slowly sinking into his memories.

"The Great Crusade was not a good era. I'm serious, you know-it-all, it wasn't a good era."

Cassidorius remained silent.

His lips trembled as he stared blankly at the flowing water. His face was the embodiment of dazedness and idiocy; he hadn't been lucid in a long time.

"All our achievements are actually built on piles of bones. We are all glorious executioners, butchers who receive glory and praise. It's so absurd that I only realized this many years later."

As Van Cleef spoke, he squinted, his face looking like a ceramic toy that had been shattered once, full of cracks from which fine ash peeked out.

We don't know where they're going.

"But both humanity and the Imperium need our evil deeds," he said slowly. "Yes, we are the necessary evil. Without us, humanity wouldn't have united so quickly—and of course, you know the final outcome."

Everything was reduced to ashes; all achievements, hopes, and expectations of cleansing their sins were reduced to ash in the destruction of Terra.

He shook his head, a rather sarcastic sneer suddenly appearing on his face.

"Imperial Truth," he suddenly mentioned the term. "You've probably heard of it, haven't you? I don't know if the Sigillites still preaches it; I suspect not."

Cassidorius suddenly closed his eyes.

"In short, Imperial Truth is a lie that teaches people how to view everything rationally and dialectically, but it's also a fragile shield. However, I don't think things like reason can protect you people ten thousand years from now. I also don't believe that light can overcome darkness; I'm pessimistic, I think."

He stood up, turned around, walked to a corpse, stared intently into its yellowish eyes, and uttered his last words.

In reality, in the end, it's just darkness devouring darkness.

Two dark red lights flashed in his eyes. He pulled the Chainsword from its shell and then slashed it to pieces. Flesh and blood twisted on the grass, covered by flames of fury, and slowly turned to ashes.

One interesting thing is that Van Cleef never remained silent when Cassidorius was not speaking.

--

"Faith came first; gods are merely a byproduct of faith, along with all that nonsense about Redemption, blessings, and eternal life after death," Cassidorius said, spreading his hands to the blind prophet. "I tell you, prophet, there is only one God in this world."

The blind prophet shook his head, not angered by his disrespect. "How do you know? Did a god descend from heaven to tell you this?"

"No, that god said there is no god in the world," Cassidorius said. "Moreover, He told me not to believe in Him."

"Which god?" the blind prophet asked in astonishment. "That's too..."

"Neither, old prophet." Cassidorius shook his head. "This god was once man, but He has now ascended eternally to the temple of the gods and is tormented forever. Are you breathing, old prophet?"

"Certainly."

"Then, let's calculate it by the time it takes you to take a breath. That's one second, understand?"

Cassidorius patted him on the shoulder, pulled the old prophet to sit down, and they talked on the ground. Van Cleef was behind them, brandishing his sword and fighting a monster.

"Put sixty seconds together, and that's a minute. Put sixty minutes together, and that's an hour. Twenty-four hours make a day, a complete day. And he's enduring eternal torment. Do you know what eternity is?"

"I don't know," the blind man answered honestly. "Who dares to presume to speak of eternity?"

"Stretch a second, stretch it to five hundred days, five hundred years, five million years, five million years plus another five hundred five million years. That is a moment of eternity. Extend this moment to an unimaginable extreme, and eternity will have passed a minute. He is in eternal torment, He could have been different, but He chose to endure this suffering for our sake."

"Us?" the prophet asked doubtfully.

"We," Cassidorius repeated. "human beings."

He changed his posture, kneeling before the old prophet. He took the withered hands in his own, feeling their roughness, then lowered his head and began to whisper in a voice as soft as a mosquito's buzz.

What should we do?

He cleared his mind, and in a brief moment, something slowly entered his thoughts. The power was restrained and cautious; it flashed through his mind and disappeared in an instant.

The old man suddenly gripped his hand tightly.

"What should we do, Prophet?" Cassidorius looked up into those golden eyes. "We can't find our way, we're lost, how much longer until we reach our destination?"

The old man slowly shook his head and reached out to pull up a gem hanging from his chest. It lay quietly in his hand, neither shining nor trembling. Cassidorius, however, stared intently at it, as if gazing into a mirror.

He saw another messenger in the mirror, who had also traveled a long way, was also covered in wounds, and was suffering greatly.

"As you said, there are no gods in this world, Cassidorius," the old man said. "Faith cannot help you, gods cannot help you, nothing can lend you a hand. There is only one power in this world that can allow you to traverse this dark sky."

He released his grip, letting the gem return to his chest.