【战锤40k同人作品翻译】Ennui 第三章：狰狞 Grim
本章概述：
伊莎莱（Isarae）决定放个假，可能一去不回的那种——事实上，她就是这么打算的。
In which Isarae decides she needs a vacation, one she may not come back from, in fact, she intends not to.
正文：
血液在我脚边积聚。
在被我选为离开科摩罗的出口的网道节点，驻守于此的百名卫兵几乎来不及互相示警便像树叶一样撒遍了码头。猩红色恰如缓慢扩张的红色调色板一样延展开来，以最缺乏想象力的方式映衬着黑暗的城市。
哪怕这些武士们不及我古老，任何人也都会认为他们本可以体贴到死得比这更漂亮些。
可悲。
超越控制这套系统没用多少时间，我作为魅魔的资格认证结合Shae’lith执政官的脸皮帮忙提供的一点生物质就是所需的全部东西。
我扫视着这个节点可能带我前往的几个世界。
在灵族之陨之前，科摩罗是灵族帝国最大的港口城市。它就像网道的肿大、长瘤的心脏，如城邦一般位于通商贸易的中心。多亏其独特的位置，如果我足够尽力的话就有可能到达银河的任何一部分，但我不需要费那些功夫。
再说了，我还挺挑剔的。
“不是这个，”我喃喃着翻过几个处女世界。尽管掠夺这些世界的确挺有趣的，可我已经做过太多次了。那里没有战争，屠杀无助的流亡者（Exodites）没什么挑战性，而且在烧杀掳掠一个原始世界成为一件苦差事前你也烧不了它多少次。
我是个艺术家，不是园艺师。
“不对，不对，不对，”我反复翻过几个散发着象征危险的病态黄色的Mon-Keigh世界。
尽管掀起一场单人（女）对Mon-Keigh的战争也很好玩，可这没什么意义，除此之外我在找一场进行中的战争，我可没有自己挑起一场的耐心。
“嗯…要不…” 我在停留于一个被标记为红色，目前正遭到一个效忠混沌的Mon-Keigh战士连队进攻的流亡者世界时若有所思地哼了一声。
“算了，”我下定决心，翻了过去。
他们人数太少，除非这些流亡者里恰好有一个顶尖的前道途武士，抑或是混沌的舰船恰好承载了黑暗诸神的冠军，否则我不大可能找到值得一杀的东西。
“不对，不对，不对，不…”我停了下来。
一个被标记成发炎伤痕的颜色的世界在我眼前闪烁着。它在燃烧，于片刻间我欣赏了它的残酷。一个巢都世界，就如Mon-Keigh称呼的那样，充斥几十亿只出没于将倾大厦间的昆虫，他们全都已死到临头。
“当然了，这本是显而易见的，”注意到控制台上的标签的同时，我感觉微笑的影子回荡在我的嘴唇上。
我渴望挑战，我渴望注定能指向我的惨死的东西，而且我已经找到了。
我毫不犹豫地敲入了坐标并启动了打开网道大门的工序。我找到了自己一直以来追寻的东西——一个浸没在战争的狂热和绝望中的世界。
更确切地说，在一场WAAAGH！中。
网道传送门运转和开启的声音再一次勾起了那丝期待感。这声音遥远而沉闷，但他确实响了起来，告诉我该出发了。
我回到了接近节点时使用的喷气摩托，登上去并在网道如活物般怒放之时如打开了节流阀，科摩罗在我冲过传送门，进入网道并驶向目标星球时模糊成了一块红黑相间的污渍。
过了一小会儿，倒在节点主控室里的尸体上的定时跳线手雷爆炸了，这随之关闭了我身后的传送门并确保其在很长一段时间内都会保持关闭。
这趟贯穿数千光年的旅程借助网道的复杂网络只花了不到一个小时的时间。我回想着自己曾多么频繁地和我的血腥新娘、我的巫灵教派一同游历这条线路，有多少世界因为巨额赏金被我们收割；多少我带来的奴隶为满足执政官无尽的阴谋诡计死在竞技场里，又有更多的多少最终成了我的血伶人的实验素材。
这些都产出了什么？
不过是同一事物的更多变体。
几万亿种毒剂诱导的更丰富的疼痛类型，最终还是以同一结果收场。
我无法理解任何以赞许或认为他们取得了什么成功来看待这种停滞的想法。
我极力拓展自己的艺术的极限，却只让它成了取悦随便哪个能付的起奴隶和灵魂的钱的阴谋团日渐迟钝的感官的廉价消遣。当我前往饱受战争蹂躏的目的地时，我意识到这才是一切的终极真相——科摩罗有着癌般的荣耀，却产生不了真正的新生事物。
只不过是那让个让全体灵族都被饥渴女士诅咒的失败之变种罢了。
“看来Mon-Keigh在一些事上是对的，“我无精打采地轻笑起来，感到一股真切的乐趣击穿了我冷漠的不安，“看来我的整个种族可能的确该死。”
当传送门的虹膜（iris）出现在远处时，我口中冒出苦涩却又真实的笑声，随机我俯身，低头，睁开双眼为一场突然袭击做好准备。
节点的控制台尚未表明这个传送门有任何暴露的风险。但我要是没有保持应有的谨慎的话也不会活到今天。
在我突破传送门的那一刻，我卡住动力撑杆，停止了我和摩托的运动并让过载的动力流入电池，随即便转身下车，一只手抽出动力连枷，另一只手拔出“悔恨”（Rue）——我其中一支毒针手枪。
我被一座发霉、古老的地下墓穴所环绕，其中没有任何明显的死亡气息能泄露Mon-Keigh或者兽人的存在。相反，只有尘埃和死尸，我发现自己感到一丝失望，它多么的安静，不过我觉得我是来自己寻找乐子，而非是等它被拱手相让的。
几个动作下来，我关闭了喷气摩托和传送门。如果这里不适合作为我的埋骨之所那就得另寻出路，不过我再不会享受的节点的好处了。
闲逛可不是寻死的好法子，我想。
花了些比我想花费的更多的功夫，我设法把喷气摩托开出了地下墓穴，直至到达了一直以来被藏在寄生于这颗星球上的Mon-Keigh的视线之外，被灵能屏蔽的传送门。穿越灵能护盾和传送门外的洞穴系统花了我三个多小时，到那时我已经变得更相当焦躁。
兽人的进攻仅在一天前展开，而已经过去的每一个小时里我都没能杀掉什么东西。我已经把武器固定在腰间，开始期盼起某个有进取心的兽人能想到检查一下这个洞穴以便我杀死他们，抑或是一群逃窜的人类难民。
这不将是场令人满足的杀戮，但现在容不得我挑挑拣拣。
这样的运气没找上我。
一个小时后，我烦闷地离开了洞穴。洞口终止与一座半开凿的山的顶峰。空气寒冷，稀薄，能闻到下面的巢都的污浊臭气。
这座巢都像这颗行星的血肉上一处开放的疮口般蔓延扩展，在兽人放肆地降临其上时燃烧、起伏。老实说，我能真心喜欢兽人和人类的一点在于：他们繁衍地如此之快，以至于我永远不会缺乏可杀的东西。
我还要再花几个小时才能赶到这座城市，这令我很是恼火，不过我总会会到达那里并找到我的目标。我能感受到环绕着这座城市的突突的灵能尖啸——大量的骇人的惨死带来的可口的痛苦。
好吧，至少在那里我不会感到饥饿了。
我再度骑上喷气摩托并启动了引擎。目标的更新令我振奋，在附身启动推进器时我开始好奇自己在这里的死状。
死于一群兽人的冲击在某种意义上很有吸引力。这是种真正缺乏价值又极不光彩的死法，令我颇为向往。另一方面，在与领导这场WAAAGH的兽人战争老大鏖战后死去从个人角度看来更加令我满足。我是艺术家也是战士，我不确定自己能抵御最后一战的诱惑。
在持续几个月的无尽血战后暴死也是一个选项。
我的杯子真的要满溢出来了。
这个决定是对的，我如此确信。
原文：
Blood pooled around my feet.
The hundred guards of the Webway junction I’d chosen as my point of egress from Commorragh had barely had time to warn one another before they were scattered like leaves across the embarkation platform. Bright crimson spread in a slowly expanding palette of reds, contrasting the dark shades of the city, though only in the most trite and unimaginative manner.
Even if these warriors were not as ancient as I, one would think they could have been thoughtful enough to die more beautifully than this.
Pathetic.
It was the work of a few moments to override the system, a combination of my credentials as Succubus along with some biological matter helpfully provided from Archon Shae’lith’s flayed face was all it took.
I scanned over the possible worlds this junction could connect me to.
Before the Fall, Commorragh was the greatest port city of the Aeldarii Empire. It sat like a bloated, tumorous heart in the Webway, resting at the center of trade and commerce like a city-state. Thanks to its unique position, I could potentially reach any part of the galaxy if I tried hard enough, but there was no need for such efforts.
And anyway, I was feeling picky.
“No,” I muttered, flicking past several maiden worlds. As amusing as they would be to despoil, I’d done so far too many times. There was no war to be had there, no challenge in slaying helpless Exodite peasants, and one could only scorch a pristine world so many times before the notion became more of a chore than anything.
I was an artist, not a landscaper.
“No, no, no,” I repeated flicking past several Mon-Keigh worlds that glowed a sickly yellow for danger.
As amusing as it would be to wage a one-woman war against the Mon-Keigh, it would serve little purpose, and besides that I was looking for a war in progress, I didn’t have the patience to start one myself.
“Hm… perhaps,” I hummed thoughtfully as I paused on a red-tagged Exodite world currently being raided by what appeared to be a Chaos-sworn company of Mon-Keigh warriors.
“No,” I decided, flipping past it.
Their numbers were few, and unless one of those Exodites happened to a superlative ex-Path warrior, or the Chaos vessel chanced to be carrying some champion of the Dark Gods, I was unlikely to find anything worth killing.
“No, no, no, n-” I paused.
A world tagged with the shade of an angry bruise blinked before me. It was burning, and I took a brief moment to admire the sheer brutality of it. A Hive World, as the Mon-Keigh call it, teeming with billions like insects infesting a decaying edifice, and they were all dying.
“Of course, it should have been obvious,” I felt the shadow of smile echo across my lips as I noted the tags on the console.
I wanted a challenge, I wanted something that was sure to result in my ignominious demise, and I had found it.
Without hesitation, I punched in the coordinates and began the cycle for opening the Webway portal. I found what I’d been looking for, a world soaked in the furor and abandon of war.
Or rather, in WAAAGH.
The sound of the Webway portal cycling up and opening drew out that thready sense of anticipation again. It was distant and dull, but it was there, and it was telling me to move.
I retreated back to the jetbike I’d used to reach the junction, mounted it, and opened the throttle just as the Webway exploded into fulminating life, and the Commorragh became nothing more than a black-and-red blur as I tore through the portal and into the Webway towards my target planet.
A few moments later, the haywire grenades I’d left on a timer behind me attached to the various corpses I’d littered the junction control chamber with went off, shutting the portal behind me and ensuring it would stay closed for a very long time.
The journey, a span of thousands of light years, took less than an hour to complete via the complex networks of the Webway. I reflected on how often I had traveled these lanes with my brides, my cult, and how many worlds we had reaped of their mortal bounty. How many slaves had I taken to die in my pits to feed into the endless machinations of the Archons, and how many more had ended up as experimental fodder for my haemonculus.
To produce what?
More variations on the same thing.
More varieties of pain induced by a trillion different toxins, all resulting in the exact same outcome.
How anyone could view that kind of stagnation with approval or with the notion that they had succeeded at something was beyond me.
I had pushed the furthest boundaries of my art only for it to become a cheap diversion enacted to please the jaded senses of whatever Kabal could afford our fee in slaves and souls. That, I realised as I was in transit to my war-torn destination, was the ultimate truth of it all… that Commorragh, for all of its cancerous glory, could produce nothing truly new.
Just variations of the same failure that had damned each and every Aeldarii to the gullet of She Who Thirsts.
“It seems the Mon-Keigh were right about something,” I chuckled wanly, feeling a surge of real, genuine amusement crack through my malaise of dispassion. “It seems my entire race does likely deserve to die.”
Laughter bubbled out of me, bitter but real, as the iris of the far portal appeared in the distance, and I leaned in, keeping my head low and my eyes open as I braced myself for an immediate attack.
The junction console hadn’t suggested the portal was in any danger of being revealed, but I hadn’t lived as long as I had without taking due care.
The moment I breached the portal, I jammed the kinetic brace, stopping our motion dead and bleeding the kinetic overflow into the batteries, and spun off of the jetbike, drawing my razorflail in one hand and Rue, one of my splinter pistols, in the other.
Catacombs surrounded me, musty and ancient, and there was no telltale stink of death that might have announced the presence of either Mon-Keigh nor the slavering Ork. Instead, it was just dust and the dead, and I found myself feeling a touch disappointed and how quiet it was, but I suppose I was here to find my own amusement, not have it handed to me.
With a few motions, I shut off the jetbike and closed the portal. If this place was not suitable for my death then I would need it to find another, although I wouldn’t have the benefit of a junction.
Wandering wasn’t such a poor way of finding death, though, I supposed.
With more effort than I would have wanted to expend, I managed to maneuver the jetbike through the catacombs, until I eventually reached the psyshielded portal that had kept it hidden from the Mon-Keigh infesting this planet for all these years. It took better than three hours to traverse the cave system that existed beyond the shield and the Portal, and by that point I was growing exceedingly restless.
The Ork assault had begun only days ago, and every hour that passed was an hour I had not been permitted to kill something. I had already secured my weapons back to my waist, and found myself hoping some enterprising Ork had thought to examine these caves just so I could kill them, or perhaps a gaggle of fleeing human refugees.
It wouldn’t be a satisfying kill, but I wasn’t going to be choosy for now.
No such fortune found me.
I emerged from the cave another hour later, irritated and pent up. The cavern mouth terminated at the summit of a half-carved mountain. The air was cold, thin, and tasted of the pollutant stink of the Hive below it.
The Hive sprawled like an open sore in the planet’s flesh, burning and heaving as Orks fell upon it with abandon. The one thing I could say in all honesty that I truly loved about Orks and Humans was this… they repopulated so quickly that I would never run out of things to kill.
It would take me a few more hours to reach the city, and it galled me, but I would get there and I would find my purpose. I could feel the thrumming psychic shriek that surrounded the city, the delicious ache of so many horrific deaths.
Well, at least I wouldn’t go hungry while I was here.
I mounted the jetbike again and engaged the engine. This renewal of purpose was invigorating, and as I leaned in to engage the thrusters I wondered what my death here would be like.
Dying to a massive crush of Orks was appealing in a certain sense of things. It was a truly unworthy and hideously inglorious way to die, and that did tickle my fancy. On the other hand, dying after a prolonged fight with whatever Warboss led this particular WAAAGH would be far more personally satisfying; I was an artist and warrior and the appeal of a final fight was a temptation I wasn’t sure I wanted to resist.
Dropping dead of exhaustion after months of endless, grueling bloodshed was another option.
My cup truly overfloweth.
This was the right decision, I was certain of it.
