/
Slaanesh was bored. Quite the feat for one renowned for His insatiable indulgences.
A bored Slaanesh was a dangerous Slaanesh.
She stared into the expanse of the Warp, searching for something to alleviate His hunger. Hovering a moment on a small moon colony.
He whispered, and a boy caved, eating that extra piece of candy he had been saving for tomorrow.
She caressed, and a loyal wife took the neighbor she had been crushing on to bed.
He laughed, and a young man suddenly got the confidence to finally stab his mother to death.
She squeezed, and-
Slaanesh recoiled at the burning sensation. Glaring balefully at the faint golden star in the distance. Stupid Anathema, always ruining Her fun. He couldn't help but pout as She once more roamed the Warp, once again bored.
A ripple in the Warp drew Her gaze. Oh! The humans were destroying a planet again! The Warp always felt so soothing in those areas. He quickly coalesced at the location, so much pain, so much suffering! It was always so glorious! The wall between the Warp and the Material realm was always so weak in those few seconds, making the sensations all the more intense.
She took a deep breath, savoring all the flavors. The hint of guilty pleasure she could detect really tied it all together. It seemed the inquisitor who ordered it wasn't quite as stalwart as he liked to think. Oh! He was certainly someone She would watch going forward. Those fanatic types were always so much fun to twist.
And as an added bonus, it always pissed off the Anathema, whenever one of his was turned.
Just as He was about to start following the Inquisitor's ships jump into the Warp. An overpoweringly oppressive stench caught Her nose. Following it lead her to a tiny tear in the Warp. It was so small that it would never have been noticed, should never have been noticed. And it wouldn't have, if the smell coming out of it hadn't been so offensive.
It was the smell of a soul, not just any soul either, a soul that had been denied happiness, a soul that had been denied indulgence. For a being like Slaanesh, a being born of a trillion orgasmic screams, such a soul was an affront, an insult, an impossibility, a mistake.
A mistake that needed to be corrected. Upon inspection, the tear seemed to lead to the material realm, that wasn't surprising, what was surprising however was that it wasn't the Material realm she was familiar with. A different universe entirely. Tentatively trying to push Her way into the tear yielded no results, an invisible wall seemed to stop His passage.
A harder push this time yielded results, as He could feel whatever barrier was stopping Her begin to stretch under the pressure. Just as She really started to make headway, Something on the other side pushed back hard. He was flung back, the barrier once more becoming an unyielding wall. In the moment She was repelled, they glimpsed the being that thwarted Him.
It had been smug, it had been condescending, it had been laughing.
She narrowed His eyes. This would not do. Not one bit. There was a soul who desperately needed His help. And this uppity little Thing, thought it could stop Her? It thought it could mock Him?
For the first time since His inception, Slaanesh gathered Herself, every scrap of Her psionic power from every corner of the Warp and the Material realm converged on one point. A blinding star of power, bright enough to briefly outshine even the Anathema.
Across the Material realm cultists suddenly found themselves empty, bereft of their goddesses' touch and blessings.
But Slaanesh gave no thought to any of that, He was focused solely on the tear. Bearing down on it with such force that the event could be seen even in the material realm.
Under such intense pressure, the Presence's reinforcements to the barrier didn't even slow Her down. Her torrent of power blasting through into a new realm, punting the condescending Presence across the cosmos. Slaanesh had to act quickly, He was not meant to be in this reality, every moment burning tremendous amounts of power. Within moments it had latched onto the poor unfortunate soul, tearing it from its mortal shell, plucking it from its reality, and dragging it back with it through the tear. On the way out however, She made sure to collapse a few stars, just as a parting gift for the shaken little Thing to remember Him by. Perhaps next time it would remember to respect its betters.
Her blistering radiance seared the tear shut the moment it cleared the hole, but He gave it no mind. Instead focusing all Her attention on the soul thrashing around in her palm. Its horrified screams as the unfiltered Warp melted its fragile mortal mind were truly beautiful. Screams which echoed even more powerfully as the threads of its very essence ignited and began to burn, the intensity of His undivided power proved to be too much for the mortal soul to bear. Unfortunately the delectable agony was ruined by the putrid stench still wafting off of it, reminding Him of why She had grabbed the soul in the first place.
Mortals are so fragile.
With a sigh, She formed a bubble of her power around the soul, cutting it off from the surrounding Warp and putting out the ethereal flames. Its screaming instantly cut itself off. Normally this would be the part where the screaming started even louder, but He wanted to help the poor soul, not break it…not yet at least.
Scattering Her power once more through the Warp, He studied Her prize. Picking apart the memories that churned within the tangled strands of consciousness.
"Sleep tight little Tanya…" She crooned down at the exhausted soul. "You are going to need the rest with all the fun I have planned." He couldn't help but laugh as He plotted for the future.
This poor soul would indulge itself, even if it was the last thing it did.
She would make sure of it.
/
The leaf floated above her palm, spinning once, twice, three times, before bursting into purple flames.
Tanya couldn't help but cringe at the backlash she felt from the loss of control. The sudden bout of nausea and pulsating headache were nowhere near as bad as they had been not even a year prior. Granted her current body was only four years old at the moment, but progress was progress.
Without her computation orb, the spell formulas she could actually manifest were frustratingly simple. After years of having one, it felt so limiting. Almost like she had lost an arm or a leg. At times she found herself wanting to try something, only to realize that she couldn't.
And even those few spells that she could manage, tended to blow up in her face. It wasn't even her fault! The spell formulas were designed to operate under the assumption that the potential energy of the Mana was a fixed and known variable. But this world's Mana had a potential energy that was anything but fixed. It spiked and dipped at what seemed like random, never stabilizing for more than a few seconds before shifting again. She was slowly getting better at predicting and accounting for the shifts, but progress was slow and literally vomit-inducing in some cases.
Whatever fueled her magic now, certainly wasn't the waste energy of the planet's magnetosphere that she had been familiar with. No, she had done extensive research back in the Empire, the mana as it had nominally been called was benign, simple energy, granted it was energy that only a select few could access, but still just mundane energy nonetheless.
This new energy felt as equally more potent as it was polluted. Even on those rare occasions where she managed to keep control of the power, it always left her feeling dirty. As if she had just willingly bathed in sewage. The dirty, slimy, feeling clung to her for days, no amount of rubbing in the bathroom seemed to ever help in the slightest.
And to make matters worse, this universe's Mana seemed to be under a lot of pressure, so even opening herself a tiny amount led to it flooding in and triggering the magical equivalent of a gag reflex. Forceful expulsion of Mana had not been a pleasant experience back in the Empire, so it was doubly worse with the rather…unique…flavor and texture of the mana.
"Tanya? Sweetie, are you in there?" The Matron called through the locked door.
"Yes, Matron Sam." Tanya was quick to reply, even quicker to jump off the toilet seat and flush, if only to keep up the appearance of her actually using the bathroom.
"Okay, just checking, the food's ready so hurry up, yeah? And remember to wash your hands!" The Matron said before the clack of her cane wandered away from the door.
Tanya did just that, she stood on the stepstool, scrubbing her hands viciously under a storm of lather and near-boiling water. While hygiene was important to her, the stain of the magically infused ash was her true target. The grayish-purple stain seemed to want to linger on her palm, but finally, after a painful battle of attrition, it was defeated. Though her stinging red hand would have probably argued it had been a pyrrhic victory at best. Unfortunately for her hand, this was a dictatorship and not a democracy, and she had decided that it was indeed a victory.
If there was one thing in this new life she was thankful for, it was the improved living conditions. Sure, she was yet again a penniless orphan. But this time, the orphanage had the funding it needed to do its job, meaning decent care, education, and most importantly to her at least, food. Good, delicious, hearty meals. A whole three meals! Everyday!
Honestly, it was a little worrying that something as simple as a good meal was enough to almost make her break out in song. Unfortunately, as her perpetually stunted growth could have attested to, fighting on the front lines did not necessarily mean fighting with a full belly. More often than not the already meager food rations had to be rationed further whenever supply routes were cut off.
She had to remind herself to swallow as she stared at the spread on the table. The smell alone flooded her mouth in saliva. Nothing could bring her mood down now.
"Praise to the God-Emperor!" Matron Sam shouted from the side. "For it is with his benevolent light that we may enjoy this blessed food!"
Correction, almost nothing could bring her mood down.
"Praise to the God-Emperor!" All the children including her echoed back with bowed heads.
They had to pray before every meal. The Matron demanded it, 'lest we lose the protection of His divine light'. Or some such nonsense. Honestly, the fervor with which everyone believed in this "God-Emperor" was frightening. Tanya had of course seen individuals with such passionate faith in both her past lives, but to see it burning in the eyes of everyone she had met so far was more than a little worrying.
The "God-Emperor", honestly she still wasn't sure what to make of him. Assuming he was even real to begin with, she could certainly believe that ten thousand years ago an ambitious and charismatic general had conquered the galaxy. It was certainly something she had seen in both her previous lives, if only on a much smaller scale.
It wasn't even the part where she claimed the "God-Emperor" was able to smite enemies with a wave of his hand, and heal the meek with the same motion. No, this was certainly something that she could see being possible with liberal usage of magic, especially with how much more powerful this universe's mana seemed to be. Hell, she could even see a little bit of herself in the tale, with her own exploits during the war, it wouldn't have been too hard to paint herself as some sort of blessed figure. In fact, it would have been disgustingly easy to have the PR department twist "Devil of the Rhine" to something more positive like "Angel of the Rhine".
Even the part where he was still alive after ten thousand years was believable. As the Emperor of a million worlds, he would most assuredly have access to medical resources beyond imagining.
An immortal mage-emperor who used religious misconception to keep control was fine. In fact, it was quite logical, it was a plan of action she could respect. After all, she herself had used both patriotic and religious zeal to paint herself in a better light to her fellow soldiers both at the academy and on the battlefield.
The part that she took umbrage with was that these people genuinely believed in his divinity. As in, they truly believed that there was an Emperor who could both hear and respond to prayers millions of light-years away.
But her own opinions didn't matter, they couldn't matter. Not when any sign of heresy was met with a lasgun round to the head.
And to make things more difficult it appeared that sometime in the last ten thousand years, the Mage-Emperor declared magic to be heresy. How such a hypocritical decree could even exist, she wasn't sure.
"Praise to the God-Emperor, may he bless our food." Tanya intoned once more before taking the first bite.
Oh! This is good. Tanya couldn't help but hum appreciatively as she indulged in the amazing food.
/
In a different universe, a terrified and confused Being X searched for his lost lamb to no avail.
