Sorry about taking so long, everyone! You may have realized this by now, but I write all of this on the fly. I don't think I've ever prewritten any of these stories. I also barely use Microsoft Word and instead use the edit feature here on the site for most of the writing. Usually only this preface and the disclaimer are on the word documents.
I guess you all have figured this out by now, but I don't update at regular intervals.
Disclaimer: Who owns Warhammer 40k? Seriously? I honestly don't know. I know Black Library has something to do with it...or maybe it was the Games Workshop...whatever. I own nothing here. Though I would like to know if you are going to use any of my OC's.
Alexis's head lolled to the side as he slid down the wall, his mental faculties dangerously unbound. The screams of the dead and dieing as they fought the daemon sounded as though they were underwater. Colors and lights swam across his eyes and he could feel blood leaking from where his right arm had snapped.
From somewhere, a torrent of blood splattered across him and up the wall. Slowly, the hot, red liquid wormed it's way into his thoughts and he seized it, using the sensation as a foothold to propell himself back towards consciousness. With a willpower only psykers and Space Marines possess, Alexis pried his eyes open.
The daemon had not gotten lazy after he had been knocked out.
At least three more of the Fire warriors were dead, their corpses adorning the walls with splatters of blood and gore. One of the Seer Council was speared into the ground by a stone javelin though the throat. The severed body parts of several Eldar were all that remained of the Dark Reapers that had accompanied them. The daemon itself hadn't moved from the previous spot and was still spouting off insane nonsense from both of its heads, each sentence disagreeing with the previous. In one of its hands it held the holy blade they had come for, its desecration likely what had powered the rift that had brought the daemon, and in the other hand it was holding onto a Howling Banshee, her struggles a source of amusement for the left head.
Slowly, the ringing in Alexis's ears came to an end and he was assaulted by screams and the cackling of the daemon. Using his left arm, Alexis Mons Forced himself to stand. After that trial, Alexis began to walk, shakily towards the Fateweaver as it crushed, cut, and killed his allies. Glancing to the his right, Alexis saw a token force of Dire Avengers fighting alongside Samantha. On his left, Felix and the surviving Fire Warrior took potshots whenever they were not being attacked. In front of him, Farseer Elain, Mylisa, and what remained of the Seer Council, Howling Banshee's, and Warp Spiders Ducked and rolled under the Daemon's swings, carving chunks out of the daemon's hide with sword and shot.
The daemon didn't even seem to register the miniature wounds that were spreading across its body. Suddenly, it ceased its movements and crushed the Howling Banshee in its hand. After throwing the body against a wall, it's left head shut up for a moment, glancing about the room. Then, with lightning-quick precision, it used the unholy blade to begin carving into the building's floor, not caring or even noticing the bodies that got in the way of the rapidly-moving blade.
The right head began to giggle and the left head shouted, "Out of the way, fools! Your blood it ruining it!" Then, in the usually switch, the left head began to sob and the right head yelled, "Perfect! Your blood with be a wonderful medium!"
Suddenly, the daemon was knocked back slightly. In front of him, having somehow gotten ahead of the daemon from across the room, Elain and her Seer Council had dropped a collection of pendants to the ground and were blasting the daemon with enough power to, quite possibly, level more than a few hab-blocks. Despite his hindered state, Alexis felt the struggle and lent his power to the attack, then was almost immediately swept up in the psychic torrent of force that was the two clashing sides.
One needs to understand why this would be so surprising for Alexis. He was, by no means, the most powerful psyker around. However, with a beta rating, he was about as good as you could get and still remain sane.
Alexis could feel the chaos of the mental battle ripping into his soul and screamed. Simultaneously though his physical eyes and the "sight" his psychic avatar had, Alexis watched the thunder of the mental war wash over Felix and the last standing Fire Warrior, ripping them apart in a shower of blood and screams. Alexis's psycic avatar barely managed to escape the maelstrom before being completely ripped apart and he watched as, one-by-one the seer council fell. There was no explosion of gore like when the bodies were caught in the invisible battle, they simply fell face-first to the floor, dead.
Before long, Alexis brought the avatar back to himself, afraid of getting caught in the crossfire. He looked around rapidly for his remaining companions, despairing when he found what was left of them. Samantha was adorning the walls with her blood and Mylisa's head was gone, she had likely got caught in the psychic storm.
Alexis heard a muffled grunt of pain and then the screeching of steel on stone. Not looking over, yet knowing that the daemon had gained victory, Alexis grabbed for the the signal box under his robes, and, panicking, he shoved down on the big red button. He then threw the device out a nearby window and turned back to the daemon.
When he turned, the daemon's left head turned to regard him while the right continued to guide the unholy blade in its task. Looking closer, Alexis saw Elain's destroyed body adorning the center of the vast symbol the daemon had drawn.
It was then that Alexis began to laugh at the insanity that had brought him here. Even the most novice Malleus inquisitor knew that, when facing a major daemon, you call in the Grey Knights. He had been more proud and overbearing than the Eldar in believing that his small retinue could face this foe! Even with the aid of the Farseer, who evidently was not the smartest of her kind, he should have seeked more allies or at least informed those higher powers. Soon, the lance strike he had called in from the cruiser above would destroy the nameless city he was in and him with it. His insane chuckles ceased and he looked around the building, only now seeing his folly for what it was. The xenos that had placed their unknowable faith in him lay dead or, in the case of two, unconscious. His companions for the past decade lay among the bodies of the daemons that had killed them or next to xenos they had sworn to fight. To think that, during the fight against the daemon, he was the only one who had succumbed to cowardice, that most heinous of sins, and did nothing. He had retreated his mind from the daemon's might, for he had feared going to the Emperor's side. He had not tried to save those he cared for when the daemon cut them down, no move on his part to rescue those that had saved him innumerable times. By the Warp, he hadn't even fired his plasma pistol once!
Enraged by his own stupidity and ineptitude, Alexis stumbled forward another step and promptly was picked up and slammed next to the Farseer's body by the daemon's hand. Dazed, he barely registered two more slams next to him and the daemon's words, now issuing from both mouths at the same time.
Slowly, the words came over him, the two voices giving an odd dissonance as they said the same thing for the first time, "When you all reach your destination, good Inquisitor, do try to keep all life from being purged. That would be against both of our master's plans." Then, in a flash of light that could only be the lance strike hitting nearby, Alexis felt his body, his mind, his very soul being ripped away to parts unknown.
Daemons swam around three figures, trying to pierce through the bluish cloud which shielded them. With almost contemptuous ease, the cloud flickered out a tendril and swatted aside the whole of the denizens of the Warp. Then it sped along, reach the unseeable and impossible edge of the Immaterium and, straining itself, beyond that edge. Soon, it slammed into another edge on the same Immaterium and, like before, passed through with some difficulty.
The Chaos god Tzeentch, the Grand Schemer was stretched to his...its limits. The embodiment of hope and ambition cursed the void the so-called Reapers had caused to the slowly-developing land of organic emotions that was the Warp of this universe. Their cycle of purges kept it from expanding in and corrupting and consuming the souls of these defenseless beings. Not to mention that, truth be told (a rare thing indeed for the Changer of Ways), the stalemate in the Emperor's realm bored him. It was stagnate, unchanging, decaying, and he hated it. His rival Nurgle had too much of a hand in the fate of that galaxy. But here, this land of shifting mass, things were in a cycle, something much more easy and fun to interrupt than the other land.
As Tzeentch pondered these and trillions of other thoughts, schemes, and ideas each as insane and unknowable as the last, he neared a grand mass of souls in the middle of a nebulae. The beacon it provided drew his waning strength in and, with a snap, Tzeentch released his cargo from the Warp in the middle of the soul pool before shooting back, slamming through the barriers between universes and slamming into Slaanesh's circles before getting back to his own maze. Tzeentch sighed at the lost universe and turned back to watching the so-called reborn Saint Sabbat leading her ghosts. Oh well, at least he could watch another of Khorne's wars fail for the next couple of years. He could hardly wait.
Shepard's chest swelled with pride...also because she had breasts, but it was mostly pride. She had just become humanity's first Spectre and had been chosen to hunt down Saren. With a grin she nodded a final thanks to the three leading figures of the galaxy and turned, meeting the eyes of Udina, who was for the first time since she had met him happy, and gave him a nod before completing the 180 and marching back towards Captain Anderson, Tali'Zorah Nar Rayya (who was there in case the Council remembered synthesized voices...which they didn't...yay!), and Staff Lieutenant Kaiden Alenko (who was there because he was the only biotic she had that she trusted to take in the tower, no way was she bringing Wrex). She was about to reach them when she felt something above her that was just...wrong.
She looked up and caught a glimpse of some sort of hole in the air. It was half-filled with swirling colors and impossible faces before three shapes shot out of it and into the fountain down the stairs and it closed with a cackling laughter. Swiftly, Shepard, her squad, and several groups of C-sec rushed down towards the water feature. From within it, an off-white shape rose up, a black shape and a blue shape thrown over each shoulder. From a head-like sprouting on the top of the humanoid shape, a red light came on and centered on Shepard before turning and regarding, for half a second, each being in the circle around it. It then turned back to Shepard and a stream of static issued from it. Shepard, having lowered her Kessler mark two, quickly reraised the gun, her mind flashing back to the chittering of the Geth. The oddly armored creature reached up a four-fingered hand and quickly gave the side of the head-shape a slap before another sigh of static burst from it. It reached up its other hand careful to keep what Shepard could now see were bodies on its shoulders and gripped both sides of the head and pulling up. The ensuing hiss of air shocked Shepard. Its organic! Thank God/ the Goddess/ the primordial ooze from which all life has sprung!
{A/N: yeah, I'm typing this, whatcha' gonna do about it?}
Mont'yr looked at the being around him with his own eyes, his helmet's audio system compromised for the time being. He took another look at the female human in front of him, his black eyes rolling across her form. Satisfied he turns and looks at each of the other species surrounding him. Sadly, he only recognized the humans. He hoped that these humans were a slight amount less xenophobic and backward than the Imperium, and considering their surroundings, plants and other aesthetically pleasing items, they most definitely were not in one of the independent trade ports scattered throughout the galaxy...so where had he arrived? Not Imperium of Man territory, not in independent space, not Tau space, not Orc space, and not the Chaos lands. He turned back to the female in front of him, lowered the two humanoids from his shoulders, propping them against his legs after locking his armor and said, in Low Gothic, "Where in the galaxy are we?"
Shepard winced at the amalgamation of human tongues that issued from the aliens mouth. She caught hints of English, French, Russian, Spanish, Italian, Swahili, and a few other languages she hadn't gotten programmed into the universal translator all races gave to babies after their first year. If she had analyzed the language more, she would have caught a vast undertone of Latin, Arabic, and even Sanskrit.
Figuring she might as well go out on a limb, Shepard went for the so-called "language of commerce" back on Earth and said, in English, "I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're saying."
The Fire Warrior sighed, not understanding the human's words, but knowing their intent. He felt the distinct wish for one of the Water Caste with their universal translators. The one grafted into his own cranium was much more rudimentary and would require at least a 10 second sample of speech to get the basics of a language down. Deciding that he had little to lose, the Fire Warrior switched to High Gothic, glad that the Inquisitor was not awake to hear the blasphemy and said, "I apologize, native of Terra, but could you speak more, my translator requires a larger base to build from."
Shepard and the others had lowered their weapons by now, not putting them away, but not actively pointing them either. The creature looked slightly irritated, if Shepard could read its expression correctly. It was thusly that the powers that be decided to smack any of the more religious humans in the area in the face when it straight up spoke Latin. In fact, while every alien in the room, including the councilors who had now entered the scene, looked utterly lost at the language, almost every human heard the words and felt as if they could and should know what they meant. However, when expansion into the galaxy and meeting new species took place, universal translators took all the enjoyment out of learning new languages, and thus did nearly every old language die. The only reason it didn't was that the Vatican still had Latin mass and the Asari and Turians loved to learn about the Roman empire, while humans loved to see the look on their face when someone read the Rosetta stone to them.
Shepard's brow furrowed before she launched into an inane and possibly insane tirade that lasted a good minute and a half about how hamsters were just the best pets ever. The councilors were about to reprimand their newest recruit for looking crazy out of the shadows when the blue-skinned being bowed slightly and said, in perfect English, "Thank you for the words. I am glad to see another case of the Greater Good at work. I would like to request a meeting so at to better facilitate the transfer of knowledge between our peoples and aid the Greater Good in its never-ending task."
While a good deal of the aliens were now thoroughly confused, Shepard smiled lightly and opened her mouth to talk when the other two beings awoke.
Well, as I am bound to hear: ... or something close too it, I apologize. Real life and parasites under my skin slowed down updates. I would love some reviews however, telling me if I portrayed Tzeentch correctly. I would also like to know if, as this story continues, if I should make him a more prominent character or if I should have the intervention of the Emperor somewhere along the line. I get the feeling that the Fire Warrior will love the original idea of the council, but will swiftly become disillusioned by it. As far as romance goes...if I could someone else to write the scenes, then sure! I'm not good with the lovy-dovy stuff, being a poor, lonely lad that hasn't had a girlfriend...ever. Yuck it up you bastards. Now that I've scared away all but the most kind or stupid of people(oh, there go a few more, bye!) I am really sorry about the past few weeks. I'm trying to juggle a few things right now, besides my two ongoing stories, one upcoming story, and several hundred favorite stories. Also, most chapters will be this length. Any competent advice as to how some things should play out will be welcomed with open arms. Flaming will be met with a hot-shot to the face from Hlaine "Mad" Larkin of the Tanith First and Only...love yah Mr. Abnett, keep up the good work!