Please favorite, follow, share, and/or review
The Hormagaunt did not stop racing throughout the jungle, even when its breathing became rugged and its movements got less precise. It was still a living organism and prone to getting tired and I had a feeling it would keep running until its body gave out unless I told it to stop and rest. I did so only when it brought me to a fruit-bearing tree in a relatively short bunch of trees. It immediately curled and began to catch its breath, it was easy to forget that this was real life now and even Tyranids needed a rest from time to time. Even if I knew it would run until its heart gave out.
The sun was already losing its shine and this whole area would be plunged into darkness soon enough, I held into the hope that the Hormagaunt would be able to see and get me to some shelter. Even with the sun setting the jungle was able to retain heat well, likely due to the warm climate of this planet. So freezing to death wouldn't be a serious issue for now. Which was great because my pajamas were ruined. The undershirt was nothing but a crop top, overcoat, and pants while dry still had the visible evidence of dry mud on the back. My clothes needed to be changed and I still didn't have any shoes. Foot coverings having long since been abandoned at the temple and my feet still had scabs on them from the glass I stepped on.
It was something to dwell on later as my stomach reminded me of the purposes of having the Hormagaunt take me here. I cranked my head up to see light free ovals hanging from the branches. I didn't know if that meant they were ripe or not but hoisted myself up to get them down. The tree was half the size of the one I first climbed and the bark more sturdy. Once I was at one of the lower branches I grabbed and shook hard, green leaves and fruit that I noted looked awfully like pears swayed. None fell off so I shoot harder than decided that because my hand was more than able to wrap around the branch and breaking it off was my best bet. I yanked and pulled but the base held firm for a while until giving away, not breaking off completely but snapping and bending down which would be easy enough to reach.
I landed on the still-wet dirt and tore one of the green fruit from the branch with far greater ease than breaking the branch off was. It was a hefty bounty of dozens of fruit, the trees probably need to make so many just to have a shot at surviving in this jungle. I hoped my luck would assist me here and make this thing was edible and had only one way to tell. Hesitantly I took a bite from the side and tore off a section, a sweet taste filled my mouth, I couldn't identify the taste due to it being a foreign fruit from another world. Yet it didn't feel off in my mouth and after munching it down I swallowed and took another bite.
There was a seed at the core of the fruit and it was large like the kind in an avocado but oval-shaped instead. I tossed it away and finished matching down my meal but as I reach for another one I couldn't help but eye my completion laying there. It had stopped breathing so heavily and kept still, it was relaxed, I could tell after a moment staring at it. Still, I couldn't help but pluck a second and third fruit into both hands for me and it.
"If my only mode of transportation and bodyguard here becomes too weak to function I'll be even more screwed than I already am." I thought as I rolled a few of the oval-shaped fruits in front of the Hormagaunts toothy maw and hoped these things were omnivores.
I mean it would make sense for them to be, Tyranids stripped a planet bare of biomass and they included fruits and vegetables. Their troops should be able to feed on plant life, it's not like meat could always be available, right?
The Hormagaunt took the fruit into its mouth and crushed it. Whether that was because it was able to get nutrients from it or because I wanted it to eat was yet to be seen though. Lacking molars like me it quickly became a messy meal as it used its tongue to push the green food to its front to keep biting down on it. The messy way it consumed its snack was a serious contrast to me who was able to carefully break the soft flesh down into manageable mush. I even had to tell it to just spit out the seed when it kept rolling the thing around its mouth to break it.
I was done and halfway through my third when it finally finished eating and I held its second one out. It carefully accepted the thing into its mouth and began messily eating again. This time I couldn't help but bring my hand over to pet its head, rubbing leathery skin fondly.
"You know it's kind of easy to forget you're basically just an organic machine when you act like this..." I didn't smile or felt amused by how it ate or acts protectively back at the town. I had to remember that this thing just saw me as a synapse creature and only reacted to my thoughts and desires as they happened. So my hand was drawn back and we are in mostly silence.
Eventually, my mind wandered back to the settlement and the Tyranids there. I know I didn't tell those Termagants to turn their guns over and fire on the bolt pistol. I had just panicked and my thoughts consisted of wanting that gun to be pointed anywhere else. Then the Tyranids around him just attacked that guy specifically, not stopping to even deal with the several other Space Marines around them. Even when they were assaulted by them.
"I did that but in a panic, no clue how..." My mind went back to the stinging pain I got from the Tyranid warrior. "That was a synapse creature leading a tiny brood, what was it trying to do to me? Finish what the hybrids were doing? Just trying to communicate?"
I didn't feel anything hostile from it. Not in the way I felt from that lieutenant or the Space Marine. I was good at sensing an intent to harm me ask of late. Then again that might be because those two were human and I could judge their intent better.
I was able to control or at the very least influence Tyranids or just the small cannon fodder variants to a degree. The Hormagaunt I was with knew what I wanted even if I was being vague. Perhaps, I thought, it isn't reading my surface thoughts but my subconscious mind. I never 'said' eat with fruit in my mind but just wanted it to do so and the creature did. I never told it to zig-zag when running away from the settlement yet it did that as well... The more I thought about it the more it began to clear up. To some degree, I cannot determine I am a synapse creature, when that Tyranid warrior died those Hormagaunts and Termagants lost their connection to the hivemind and began to run. Yet in my panic, I ended up sending out a message to assist me.
"Not intentionally of course, it was a subconscious thing the smaller warriors happened to pick up on... But how though? What made them 'hear' my mental plea and react and moreover what made this specific Hormagaunt come to view me as its owner while hundreds of others rushed pasted to kill Guardsmen..."
Could this be a temporary thing? That thought was quickly quelled when I recalled something being placed into my head. It had to be a part of a Tyranid likely a synapse creature due to my ability to control them. But its power, range, and limitations are far too unknown for me to want to try and use it.
"This is something I didn't ask for nor want but it's the cards I was dealt with and was going to have to learn to live with it..."
My mind soon shifted back to the here and now, with my stomach tied over I needed to think about a place to sleep.
My Tyranid companion easily uprooted the small plant and carried it over to me. The large leaves were taken by me then laid out among dozens more at the base of the fruit tree. I was hesitant to leave the only source of food I knew about and didn't want to risk leaving and not finding another like it. It certainly didn't seem like this fruit tree was common in the jungle.
We had been gathering leaves and other soft foliage to make something resembling a bed for my comfort. I wouldn't be sleeping on the ground if I could help it, the air was still considerably warm despite the sun being gone. The Hormagaunt mechanically went back and forth and likely sped of the process by a few minutes. Once I was satisfied with my bedding I laid my back down and could only be grateful it want dirt I was on top of. The Hormagaunt took up the stop next to me but kept its head up and scanned for threats like I wanted. Now that I was moderately comfortable and reasonably safe, or at the very least had a watchman. My mind was finally able to wander back to the settlement and the Blood Ravens I saw.
"This would have to be the planet Typhon, as that is the only jungle world in the Sub-sector Aurelia. Those Tyranids organisms in the soil weren't just growing but wilting because the hivefleet was poisoned some time ago." I said aloud, mulling over what options I had while adjusting myself on the impromptu bedding. This was still an active warzone and I needed to bail out of here before I got killed. So I decided to go with the same plan but with a bigger settlement.
Did Typhon have any cities? You never saw any in the campaign but this world seemed like it would at least have one. It felt wasteful to leave this much lumber unattended and the Imperium is certain gluttonous especially with a forge word like Meridian close by. There had to be a large place or places where lumber was being harvested on a mass scale for transport off-world. The Blood Ravens only fought on a section of the planet over and over again in the game though. So there may be a place we could go and I could slip into. Yeah, that was probably my best bet to avoid being shot or taken by Genestealers again.
I had no delusions that it would be easy sailings from there. Just because I would be out of a warzone didn't mean I would be safe, I needed to get a job then figure out housing not to mention finding a way to get shelter. There was also local law enforcement and the religious expectations I needed to be wary of. One wrong move and I'd be in serious trouble or a dead man plain and simple. I decided to just rest, thinking about my next move and maybe getting my hands on some protein once I was there. I kind of wondered what grox would taste like. Meat of any kind sounded good right now...
I woke up to the thick smell of something dead and turned to track the strong sent a lizard-like creature the size of a large dog. It reminded me of a Komodo dragon but this one had tusks. The Hormagaunt was laying near it still scanning for threats for me.
"Why the heck is this here?!" The Hormagaunt had killed it and tore open its belly but seemed to leave the organs intact. It didn't eat any of its kill and had to have dragged it next to me. The why part I had to ascertain...
"Did I tell it to do this?" Tyranids didn't do anything that it wasn't told to or not a part of their pre-program instincts. I racked my mind to last night and tried to think of anything I said to make it do this...
"I thought about wanting meat and about grow... which are lizards that I wondered about tasting at some point..." I looked to my completion who turned to gaze back at me. Apparently, it could interpret my desires better than I thought before, which was something I needed to keep in mind of I met someone.
The last thing I need to think about hurting or killing somebody I meet only of it to take that literally...
I ignored the dead lizard in favor of the fruit, letting the Hormagaunt have at it. I had no way of making a fire and wasn't about to eat my raw, of course. The fruit was fine so I kept at it, eying the Tyranid tearing flesh off of the animal with far more ease than it did munching down the fruit.
"Makes sense this is what those teeth were designed to do." I thought running my hand over the back of the creature. This whole situation needed an explanation, I wanted one badly and knew it was likely going to be impossible to get it...
"When the hybrids had me hooked up one of them ask the God above to 'accept me as its vessel' it meant the hivemind right? Canonically at this point, the hivefeet was decimated and the Blood Ravens are mainly performing a cleanse. Aurelia and the Black legion is due to arrive like a year after the events of the vanilla game..." Another good reason to get out of this sector fast, it would be engulfed by ten years of warfare and Typhon would be hit by a nasty case of an exterminatus.
A problem to set aside for the moment.
Me getting grabbed by Genestealer Hybrids had to be related to the defeat of the Hivemind by the Blood Ravens. Were they trying to make something to connect Tyranids together? Weren't hybrids an independent force that functioned outside the hivemind? There were synapse creatures still on the planet working with hybrids to assault imperial settlements. I saw that yesterday but it was likely just a last push to try and break the imperial forces here. It wouldn't work Blood Raven reinforces arrived immediately after the central hiveship was destroyed and the Hive Tyrant was killed.
Nothing was making sense to me was what I was getting at and I hated that with a passion.
My mind couldn't help but wander back to the place where the Genestealers took me. Finding it would be hard but that was one place that might hold something... Maybe some pages with information on it? Like they researched this and wrote some things down. It was worth a shot at least as I did want answers to know if what was inside me was a ticking time bomb about to blow.
Going back to that place seemed stupid I wasn't dumb enough to think it wasn't. Yet I also wanted to go to just find anything that could explain this power I had. So against my instincts telling me no, my brain edged me into the idea and I thought of ways I could get more fruit down and carry them with me. This was likely going to be a long search for that place...
