58 Primal Fear (II)

Cato Sicarius fell to his knees, a sharp pain shooting through his chest.

He could barely breathe; his mouth and nose were completely covered in blood, but that wasn't the most pressing issue. He began to move, crawling.

At the same time, he heard the sound of ravenous eating behind him. The sound belonged to a wild beast that was starving; it would eat and bite almost anything, and once it had a bite, it would never let go.

Sicarius forced himself to ignore the sound, dragged his body across the floor, and then grabbed a sword.

"Fire!" someone shouted.

The sound of the exploding bomb shattered the silence, turning the sounds of a beast feeding into a series of incoherent whimpers and howls. The firelight pierced the darkness at just the right moment, Sicarius turned his head to see Roboute Guilliman's face contorted in the flames.

His cheeks were bulging, filled with flesh, and a few pale fingers slid out from his trying-to-close lips.

Sicarius should have been lying on the ground, but he couldn't bear it any longer. A voice far beyond reason was screaming and urging him to stand up and kill it.

Sicarius strained to turn his eyes downwards and barely managed to see a pair of bloodstained hands stitching up his wounds. The gentle touch of the needle and thread contrasted sharply with the impatient tone.

Sicarius stared at him, waiting for what would happen next amidst the dragging sensation in his chest and abdomen and the slight pain of needles piercing his flesh.

He sighed, and then sighed again, blood gushing from his mouth.

Some people were yelling at him angrily, while others were patting his cheeks to keep him awake, but Sicarius was almost oblivious to everything.

"Wake up.!"

He was staring intently at the Apothecary's white-painted Power Armour, which, apart from Aquila's, had no other markings on Power Armour.

The Apothecary's voice suddenly became very low.

He couldn't help but take deep breaths. Although most of his wounds had been stitched up and the bleeding stopped, he could still feel the bone fragments stuck in his flesh. They were so real, and the pain they caused far outweighed everything else.

The pain almost brought tears to Sicarius.

"You're with the Fourth Company now; they've recaptured all the decks between thirty-two and twenty-seven. Company Idaeus and his men wiped out all the monsters, kid. You're lucky, you know?"

"In conclusion, based on the available intelligence, the power of those things stems from people's faith in me."

His actions caused the Apothecary to subtly increase the pressure of the sutures, almost making Sicarius cry out in pain. He endured the pain without making a sound.

Sicarius blinked, blood blurring his vision, and then he remembered the Aquila Suit he was supposed to receive today.

"In short, you're dying. The medication I've given you will ensure you're not much different from a normal person for the next fifteen minutes. I'll do everything I can to try and save you during those fifteen minutes, but I can't guarantee you'll actually survive."

The Apothecary, as if knowing his thoughts, actually began to introduce himself. "Yes, just as you thought, I'm not one of you. I'm from the Jairzinho Guzman Medical Research Institute, and I've come here specifically to exchange and learn from your Chapter. My name is Sarral, and what's yours, kid?"

"Don't move," he said coldly, releasing his grip and letting Sicarius's head slam against the cold steel.

The colors before his eyes were fading, and everything real was dissipating like ashes—the faces of the two men, the Aquila on their chests, and even the fallen monster not far away.

Sicarius glanced at it, watching it scream and writhe in a pool of blood, spitting out flesh and blood, before its skull was shattered by a bomb. Roboute Guilliman's face was torn to pieces, flying everywhere.

Today's events have completely disrupted his simple understanding of the world. Even if someone tells him that he only has ten minutes or so to live, Sicarius no longer feels any sense of reality.

It screamed, then threw a punch purely in self-defense.

He observed the world before him with a bewildered yet detached perspective, and the full picture of the two people finally came into view at that moment.

The things before his eyes spun and turned into blinding light, and everything gradually disappeared in this vortex of light. In the end, only a face remained, the face of Roboute Guilliman.

"I was granted permission to dissect them all. The strength of their bones is essentially no different from that of ordinary humans. What truly drives their movement and gives them their great power is not within their bodies, but elsewhere."

"Essentially, they are nothing more than slaves to these so-called rules. What you are facing is different; it cannot be predicted."

"Isn't it just for eating?" Sicarius asked, suppressing his nausea.

"They appear chaotic and frantic, but their inner nature is quite different. Every action and every word they utter is guided by a certain principle, and they can only act according to this principle."

Sicarius looked at his Primarch, blood suddenly began to gush from his mouth, nose, eyes, and ears, and he began to cough.

Cato Sicarius saw a familiar blue.

Roboute Guilliman stared at him, silent, his white hair fluttering in the wind.

However, the wreckage he had just witnessed suddenly burst into his view at this moment, bringing a surge of deep anger that forced him to speak in a hoarse voice.

"How bad is the situation?" Sicarius asked calmly, and at the same moment he asked the question, he was surprised to find that he really felt no fear at all.

"Yes."

Not for the scalpel's cutting, but for my own foolishness.

The Power Sword hummed and trembled in his hand, bullets whizzing past like lightning pierced his body without harming him in the slightest. Only the gunfire and the blue light of the Power Sword remained in the corridor, Sicarius's blood-soaked face writhed and trembled in the shadows of these two lights.

A hand patted his cheek.

Sicarius silent. He wanted to say something, but he really didn't know what to say.

Sicarius shut his mouth and began to take deep breaths. Amid the pain, he whispered a question.

He sat up, and two people helped him up.

His hands didn't shake.

In his imagination, it shimmered, the golden Aquila on its chest like the sword held by the Emperor's statue in a cathedral. It could protect him, and help him survive the countless wars he would face in the future.

Then, the pain brought Sicarius back to reality, forcing him to accept something else.

The liquid was so violent that it made him scream within seconds. He suddenly felt pain all over his body; every part of him ached.

→

"I don't know," Sicarius replied.

The Apothecary let out a muffled laugh from beneath his somber bird-beak helmet.

Sicarius obeyed the voice's urging. He scrambled to his feet like a madman and charged through the rain of exploding bombs toward the monster with Roboute Guilliman's face.

"Hold on, you reckless idiot!"

"What exactly are we facing?" Sicarius asked earnestly. "What enemy are we fighting?"

He finally realized how naive and childish he had been.

"Very well, now you probably guess why I've been talking to you so much, right?"

Cato Sicarius's world was plunged into darkness.

--

Standing within the Star Language Array, Roboute Guilliman let out a somber sigh through clenched teeth.

"I don't know. Perhaps they see me as the thirteenth son of the God-Emperor. In religion, I'm probably just an incarnation of his, a tool that can act on his behalf in the human world."

"So, in other words, there is genuine faith in you within the Five Hundred Worlds?"

He finally couldn't help but force a bitter smile, his face covered in blood and mottled with marks.

He began to feel dizzy. The mysterious Apothecary named Sarral hadn't lied to him; the potion could only keep him alive temporarily. Its effects were starting to wear off, and the same sense of powerlessness that Sicarius had experienced returned.

He swung his sword, and it pierced the thing through its chest.

Sicarius closed his eyes, trembling, ready to face death. He was prepared until a cold liquid was pushed into his veins through his wrist.

"I understand. Does your ship have a church?"

"Kato Sicarius, from Talassar."

Where am I?

These sounds gradually blended with the scalpel cutting into his flesh and the sound of bone fragments being removed and thrown onto the metal tray.

His fear died, it died the moment he killed the first "Roboute Guilliman," and ever since, even as he walked alone across thirteen decks and waded through mountains of corpses and seas of blood, fear never again tormented him.

Even now, even as he is about to die, it remains the same.

He shook his head meaningfully at Sicarius, leaving the outcome to him to understand, Sicarius, and bear for himself. The young Astartes, of course, couldn't comprehend his words, but he could make some inferences based on what he knew.

"What beliefs do they have about you?" the person on the other side of the formation asked softly.

"Good question, Kato Sicarius from Talassar. It's a very good question. You're still young, yet you're already able to get straight to the point, just like your predecessors—except, not the enemy, you understand?"

Their arms were cold steel, but their breath was not; the scorching air hit Sicarius's skin, making him truly feel alive.

Was it without malice? Perhaps, but probably not much, otherwise Sicarius should have died on the spot. But the truth is he didn't die; he was simply thrown into a pile of corpses and became stuck in a heap of broken bones and flesh.

The Apothecary laughed—in fact, he almost burst out laughing.

In that instant, he suddenly realized that he felt no fear.

He can't get his hands on the Aquila, and he can't possibly survive every war—no one can. They are Astartes; sooner or later, they will all die.

You must be alright!

But it wasn't one of those young, flawless, blond monsters; it was a man with a full head of white hair. This man was staring at Sicarius, who was standing on a platform, wearing a blue and white Macragge robe, and speaking to the people below.

"Yes," Roboute Guilliman replied somberly. "I tried to stop it, but it only backfired. People need an image to guide them. And, obviously, they would prefer an avatar who could actually appear before them rather than the Emperor."

His lost colors returned amidst this extreme pain, and Sicarius clearly saw an Apothecary. The man was holding his face in his hands, and the circular saw extending from his right arm guard was covered in blood.

What truly astonished him was the Apothecary's patient explanation that followed.

"You're still alive, but if you keep moving around, I can't guarantee anything."

"I'm afraid not," Sarral said. "I'm telling you, young Sicarius, those Daemons from Chaos, their behavior patterns are predictable."

Some are fighting, some are dying; they wield weapons as they battle monsters bearing the faces of their Gene-Father atop the Macragge's Honour.

But he simply lay there, the honor he craved vanished without a trace, leaving only his most fundamental understanding of war—at this moment, Cato Sicarius let out a short cry of pain.

"Your heart has stopped beating, most of your organs are damaged, your spine is dislocated, you have multiple fractures, and you have extensive internal bleeding. In short, you're practically a dead man, but I won't stand by and watch you die. So you'd better keep talking to me, Cato Sicarius."

"Those things can't even be considered living beings, so they are by no means enemies. They are just a bunch of beasts with empty shells, their flesh and blood all coming from what they have devoured."

So he pressed on, asking, "Chaos?"

Sicarius was among them; he should have heard the Primarch's words clearly, but now he could only vaguely catch a few words.

Moreover, these were words that were swaying, and their existence sounded ridiculous, but only for less than a second before they quickly turned into a tsunami.

"It is not," Sarral said gravely. "It is far superior, Sicarius; it did not come for killing or destruction."

He fell silent, Sicarius also quietly shut his mouth. Time ticked by, and in the distance came the whistling of exploding bombs and angry shouts.

"You're in the world, aren't you, idiot?" the Apothecary retorted with a sneer, clearly quite impatient.

The whirlpool dissipated.

"You will survive, believe me," the Apothecary whispered. "In the name of Jairzinho Guzman, we will never abandon any wounded."

What church?

"My church," Karyl said softly. "Wait a moment, Roboute, we'll be there shortly."