Of course Soshyan asked Talos what that scream was.
To this day, he still remembers the prophet's smile and answer, and planted a seed of regret in his heart.
"By combining it with the pure art of torture, Dietrian created a scream song loud enough to be heard and felt by souls on several planets...but it was never enough. , the slaughter and sacrifice of mortals is not uncommon at all, how many legionnaires have done the same thing over thousands of years? I don't even need to guess, raiders have been using this trick to cover their tracks since long ago , so in that case... Is there a better way than churning the warp to thicken the silt to slow down the pursuers? Even if there is the risk of being infected by daemons, its effect is enough to make it worth the risk. This risk."
"So you killed all the slaves on your ship?"
"Mortal souls are meaningless. You won't understand. Power and pain are at our fingertips. It's not a weapon that can level a city, nor a warship that can break the blockade of an entire fleet. These things will last forever. There's no point in fighting.... We can leave scars on steel, but so can any old pirate ship with a big cannon, but we are the Eighth Legion, and we cut through flesh, steel and soul, We have traumatic memories, we tear our hearts apart, our actions must have meaning, otherwise we should be forgotten and rot in ancient myths.”
Talos took a breath and his voice suddenly softened again.
"So we sing, this piece of music is absolutely meaningful.... It is a more real weapon than a laser cannon or a bombardment cannon, but how can we best turn this song of silence into - the possibility A blade that will make the empire bleed?"
Soshyan didn't answer, but he had already guessed.
"Sing louder."
Talos' lips had the same sickly smile as before.
"It just needed to be chanted louder, so we turned the singers into a screaming choir, distilling the pain and fear from week to week into pure, absolute agony, and then adding torture upon torture, ever increasing their intensity. ....The massacre of thousands of people is nothing - a drop in the ocean, but not the Astropaths! They have no choice but to hear, see and feel what is happening.... ..When the psykers finally die, they are like husks swollen by the suffering caused by the massacre, blinded by the ghosts of the dead around them."
Soshyan was shocked by such atrocities.
"We leave them in pain and fear night after night, they scream that it's mental anguish, they scream at the moment of death and enter the psychic tunnel... world after world after that. Listen, astropaths on planets or ships will amplify it with their own sufferings, adding verses and choruses to their songs to share with others."
After hearing this, Soshyan kept telling himself that he must not use such depraved power until the last moment.
However, what he didn't expect was that such a moment would come so quickly——
"Sad."
One by one, Valer tortured them in various ways.
Each of them looked into his eyes, and though he didn't know what they saw, he knew what was going to happen.
The first man howled, grabbing at him with invisible hands and striking him in the face with his severed wrist.
Not all Astartes are psykers, but in essence, their structure and genes are tainted with some psychic power.
Under torture, their minds revealed fear beyond the warp, and their flesh and blood cracked and became beyond control.
Some people simply passed out, their spirits finally drifting away from the bodies that tortured them.
Others squirmed and struggled against their restraints, with a vitality they had never known before, struggling with painful organ failure.
Several bloomed before him, leaving the apothecary's white armor drenched with putrid entrails.
When the torture here was over, Valiel would watch as the servitors carried out the remaining bodies, down to the last one.
He was usually not very interested in Mechanicus things, but this time was an exception. He cleaned his body and then came to Dietrian's secret cabin.
In the minds of many Chaos Space Marines, man is only human in the most indulgent, physiological sense.
He doesn't know he's ever had a name, and he doesn't really have the sentience to express the same painful emotions over and over again.
His existence is divided into two levels of experience, his strangled mind interpreted as numbness and torture.
During the long hours between each disaster he lay in a state of torpor, doing nothing, seeing nothing, knowing nothing but a perpetual state of weightlessness and saltiness in his lungs and throat. Chemical material.
The only things that could be generously interpreted as thoughts were faint, distant echoes of anger.
What he felt was not the anger itself but the memory of it: the memory of an anger he had known without knowing why.
When the whip of torture is struck, it brings a storm of pain.
Anger rose again, sparking in the veins of his brain like a malfunctioning wire.
He would feel his jaw drop open, his tongueless mouth screaming silently into the cold void that surrounded him.
After a while, the pain fades and is replaced by false anger.
It's happening.
The captain of the red pirate team, once known as Tedley, breathed cold liquid in the gray.
Inhaling fluids and excreting filth, his battered body finally rested.
As Valere stood before the vat containing the tortured man, something called for closer investigation.
Then he tapped the glass with his hand.
"Hey, hello, my good brother."
He whispered with a smile,
The corpse in the pod was dragged by mechanical claws, its legs severed below the knees, and its hands amputated at the wrists.
Valier looked at the figure tumbling in the liquid, and fell deeply into the pain of the intoxicated heart.
"Don't touch the glass, thank you."
Dietrian's calm voice still expressed his dissatisfaction,
Valere turned his head.
"I won't break anything."
"I didn't ask you to break anything, I told you not to touch the glass."
Valier groaned and looked back at the torture needle being pulled out of the prisoner's temple.
"Is this how you create screams?"
"Yes."
Dietrian's chrome face was hidden in his cloak as he struggled to shut down the pain engine that entered the suspension tank.
"This batch of prisoners is of good quality. Although they are not psykers, they have been in the subspace for too long and have strong psychic qualities. They are excellent mediums."
Valiel was no Techmarine, but he could guess the details easily.
In fact, the screams fascinated him.
He could not imagine that such a device could render the scanning and communication equipment of many enemy ships dull and useless, as well as the astropaths and navigators, thus drowning them in a torrent of cut-and-paste code. Long article...
Such technology is very rare, requires the right talent and the right materials, and only one of countless methods is likely to succeed, with countless failures in between.
Generating electronic interference from the pain of one's soul, filtering organic pain through the ship's systems, and using it to harm the enemy - it's a poetry that Valiel can truly appreciate.
Then he knocked on the glass again and let out a low growl, but it wasn't quite a laugh.
"Bishop, how much of your brain is still human?"
Dietrian paused, his gnarled fingers lingering over the console keys.
"I have no inclination or motivation to discuss this issue, why do you ask?"
Valere tilted his head toward the amniotic cistern.
"Because of this, this is not a cold, logical creation, this is a work of art that understands the pain and fear of the soul."
Dietrian hesitated again, wondering whether he should take the pharmacist's words as a compliment.
This guy can't always figure it out.
Suddenly, the door opened, and the hydraulic device made a harsh sound. Dietrian felt that there was no need to answer, because he saw several figures reflected in the red emergency lights in the distance.
