I could feel the soul of the man that I had killed dissipate into the warp, his final thoughts being prayers that he would see his family again in another life. For half a second the horror and guilt that I had been in the process of slowly bringing back under control came back with the strength of a thousand sons and I broke down again with Dyrrath, the loyal tortured creature that he was trying his best to calm me down.

Honestly I don't know how I got to that point, never before in my life had I ever so lost control of myself except for the night that my father died. The fact was that the horrors of everyday life in the Imperium, and then the mind numbing cruelty as a Guardsmen had pretty much completely desensitized me to near everything that would have sent a normal person into a spiral of ptsd and trauma.

The fact that I was so affected by my first transformation should have been my first clue that my emotions were off balance, so off balance that I had abandoned my squad to their fates and run off to cry and whine in some apartment that I had just assumed was empty because no one was in it in the moment. My second clue should have been the way I couldn't help but flip flop between fear, happiness, amusement, rage, and horror like a goddamn asylum patient.

But I had also never been on death's doorstep twice in a day, had my memories of my first death shoved into my head, memories which I could just barely hold onto, which I assumed came from the upgrade my fey form had gained. And hadn't that been just the shock to top it all? The fact that I was apparently the contracted entertainment to dark and malevolent gods that got the most amusement not from me doing well and triumphing over my own failings, but instead laughed as I died and rewarded me from ever more brutal deathly encounters.

So yeah you can forgive me for breaking down in the face of multiple life changing and shattering events in the span of a day, especially after my very consciousness and body was overridden by the dread mantle of a Fey Lord that was more interested in torturing human souls than being a good person.

And wasn't that just a whole other can of beans for me to deal with? I was now apparently the host and mortal form of a fey mantle that I can only access when I am nearing death. Or well actually that's how it was supposed to be originally. Because after I felt the soul of Rienhardt dissipate into the warp and had my last little meltdown I slowly came back to myself, it took my new hound, who I had named Anluan by the way due to her size, cuddling with me and Dyrrath singing to me but eventually I was able to fully take stock of myself and everything that had happened.

Which is how I ended up here self reflecting, not only on myself but also everything that I had learned. The contract had granted me knowledge, knowledge that I was either too busy, too out of it, or too consumed by the mantle of the fey to truly appreciate or access. Now after steadying myself once more I began to really dig deep into what I now knew of both myself and my power, and while the memories of my original death and what came after were still allusive and fragmented, the knowledge of my power and new form was beyond easy to access.

It was sort of like diving into an ocean if you get my meaning, I simply closed my eyes, felt the cool touch of knowledge that was not my own, and I jumped. Metaphorically at least.

And not even a moment later the knowledge slowly began to stream into me, telling me just what I had done, what I was, and how I was different from those who lived in this universe. There was a lot to say the least, with one of the biggest differences between me and those who were native to 40k was our souls. While fundamentally the soul was the soul and nothing would change that, the sapient beings of this universe were also fundamentally tied to the Empyrean, the sea of souls, the Immaterial universe, the warp, the personal playpen of the four chaos gods, whatever the fuck you wanted to call it but every single sapient in this universe was connected to it on a fundamental level.

Their emotions came from it and shaped it, their every thought, dream, and want both originated from the warp and changed it. The warp was what gave them true free will, the ability to choose and change in a way that wasn't affected by the material world's influences or probabilities. Of course, it was also a source of power that those with stronger and more powerful souls could tap into and shape to their basest wants and desires, which is of course a major reason for why its so fucked in the present, even if in the beginning it was far more calm and tranquil.

My soul on the other hand from what my new knowledge told me wasn't connected to that great ocean, due to its extra-universal origins my soul had zero presence in the warp. Not to be confused with the nullification or active suppression of a null or pariah, my soul simply had no connection to the warp, making it invisible to its predators, gods, and users, while also making me completely unable to use the warp as a psyker. Which as far as I was concerned was completely fucking fine and dandy.

I wasn't going to be fucking with the warp even if I was twice as powerful as the Emperor at his prime. You could miss me with that shit thank you very much. It also explained why I never felt the touch of the Emperor or his gaze upon me even when many of my brothers in arms claimed they had felt his touch or guidance while in prayer. That did dampen my spirits a bit, while I knew the Emperor wasn't a god, not truly, he did care about humanity and he was more than willing to suffer ten thousand years of undeath to see humanity continue in its existence. Even if it cost him everything.

So yes I knew that I had been brainwashed, I knew that my love for the Emperor and the wider Imperium was the effect of vast institutional brainwashing, and you know what? I don't care. I'm not some teenagers' gary stu self insert with the ability to overcome every obstacle through the power of cheats and plot. I'm also not the protagonist of some porn fic whose powers allow him to overcome every obstacle and gain ten thousand women in the process. I'm a person, a flawed, scared, and traumatized man with mountains of ptsd and no infinite willpower to fall back on like those I had read about in my position.

So yea I know that the Imperium's a sack of shit, and that the Emperor is an asshole who wanted elf pussy so badly he ditched the great crusade to get it. But I don't care, because I am a man, a Guardsman, and a coward. I'll defend this mockery of humanity with my dying breath, and even if it'll never accept me for what I am, and even if it would try to kill me the moment it found out I would still fight and die for the one place, the one group that would ever look at my frail human body and say "You're perfect just the way you are.". That is what I fight for, and that is what I will defend until my last dying breath.

So despite my hatred for it I dived deeper into the knowledge the contract provided me, both on my fey form, and what else my contract entailed. And by the God-Emperor it was dense.

First I began with my Fey form as both my only and most powerful ability at the moment, though I had a feeling that even if it wasn't my only boon it would still be the most powerful due to its various abilities and the frankly bullshit nature of Fey magic. Like holy shit as I looked at what I could do I found it harder and harder to contain my astonishment.

CONTRACTOR REQUESTS KNOWLEDGE

ACCESS GRANTED

[FEY FORM]

ASPECT: WILDE JAGD/THE GRAND HUNTER (PARTIAL MEMORIES GRANTED)
SUB-ASPECT: THE FEY LORD OF BETRAYAL (ONE MEMORY GRANTED)

1 BOON OF IMPROVEMENT GRANTED

FEY FORM GIVES THE FOLLOWING EFFECTS AND SKILLS:

BODY OF THE GRAND HUNTER
SKILL OF THE HUNTER
MAGIC OF THE HUNTER
AURA OF THE HUNTER
MIND OF THE HUNTER
MANTLE OF THE GRAND HUNTER
FEY MAGIC
FEY MIND AND MORALITY (WARNING THIS CAN AFFECT HOST PERSONALITY)

CONDITIONS TO USE FEY FORM: THE COLD TOUCH OF DEATH [ERROR BOON OVERRIDE]

CONDITIONS TO USE FEY FORM: MAY CALL UPON [FEY FORM] FOR A PERIOD OF TWENTY FOUR HOURS DEPENDING ON USE. THE MORE POWER USED THE SHORTER THE LENGTH OF TIME IT MAY BE USED.

All of that? Just the basics of the full explanation the contract had to give on my power and what it could do, I could go into depth about how the so called "Skill of the Hunter" encompassed much more than just weapons but also tactics, strategy, ballroom dancing, personal grooming, courtship rituals between fey, and holy shit wasn't that a doozy to learn, but also magic. Because guess what? Just because you can perform magic doesn't mean you're actually going to be any good at it without practice and knowledge.

If it wasn't for the innate skills granted to me in that form I likely wouldn't have been able to turn the family into the forms they now resided in, instead I would have likely just ended up completely destroying their souls in a horrific and near endlessly painful process that would have left their souls screaming husks for thousands of years. Instead I just made them into puppets of magic and fey flesh and material that would be forever loyal to me despite the still screaming, wailing souls that made up their base.

"My Lord, are you ok? You've been silent for quite a while." I broke out of my internal monologue at Dyrrath's words. And wasn't that just another problem of many? I didn't know what the fuck to do with him, he was perhaps one of the few allies I had now along with Anluan, but she was a dog and he looked like a strange Aeldari, not the best allies in a fucking hive city. "I'm fine now Dyrrath, you can let go of me." The man let me go, leaving another still clinging to me. "That means you as well, please get off me Anluan, you're heavy."

The Direhound let out a whine at being called fat, didn't know how I knew that but I did, but eventually it relented under my gaze and hopped off me before curling up around my feet. Quite the distressing sight considering the fact I could hear the soul of the mother cursing me and crying for her children back. "My Lord now that you are back to a calm state can I ask you what our current plans are? While the current host of the hunt is small I'm sure we could grow its numbers easily enough with a hunt."

I shook my head vehemently at his suggestion. I wouldn't go on a killing spree just to gather souls to make my host of damned souls larger. "No, no the hunt can wait for the moment. For now we need to bury the family and give them proper respects, its the least we can do after I so permanently changed their lives just by entering it." He looked at me curiously, his fey mind obviously not understanding why I would give rights to human dead.

"Think of it as payment for their part in acting as the catalysts from which I could make you, Anluan, and my new equipment. They may not have done anything great in life, but in death they served the hunt well and for that they deserve a proper burial at the least." It hurt me to say what I did, but Dyrrath was young, a fey, and nearly completely divorced from human morality. He would need more than 'its the right thing to do' as an explanation.

After a moment pondering my words he seemed to accept them and bowed to my command, with a small tug he drug me to my feet and we got to work.

It was a slow process, one made all the slower by the fact that there were no graveyards in the hive, no places we could take the bodies to bury them with all the respect I could give their bodies even as their souls screamed into my ears. So I did the next best thing, I ripped up the floor of the apartment they had lived in, thankfully it was ground level, and with Dyrraths magic carved out six graves. One for each of the family members I had killed.

As their bodies were placed into their graves I dug deep into the scattered and fragmented memories I had from the Grand hunter, searching for those rites related to honoring the dead, as none were given for the dead of the Imperium as far as I was aware. It took time, both to find the memories and to set everything up but after three hours of work the bodies lay in their coffins of stone and metal in boxes of wood Dyrrath had fashioned at my command.

I spoke over them then, not in high gothic but in the fey tongue, a curious mixture of Celtic, German, and sounds that had no equivalent in any language I knew of. I spoke of the deeds I had gleaned from their souls, spinning a tale of a happy, loving, and great family that was destined for greatness and prosperity given time, only for disaster to strike when they met with the lord of the hunt.

I spoke of how they did not deserve their fate, and were it not for the petty contrivances of the universe they would still be alive having never gained the wrath of a great and mighty fey. But I also spoke of defiance against their fate, how even now after death their souls still raged against their tyrant bonds, and while they raged their spirit would live on forever and into the infinite. Finally I spoke of how I would never forget them, never let them leave my memory, always close and forever a reminder of my sins and shortcomings.

Silence was my answer, Dyrrath too loyal and young to fully grasp what I spoke about, Anluan not yet at the point where she could be considered truly sentient, even if that would come in time. It was the souls of the dead however that fascinated me the most, because for the first time since I had killed them, they did not scream or cry, they were silent.

I hated it. "Dyrrath, you know what to do."

"Yes my Lord." Green filled the apartment as fey magic moved through the air and the ground slowly filled in around the bodies of the dead, forever hiding them from sight. Not long after the souls which had been quiet until this point slowly began to make themselves known once more, though no longer did they cry and scream, they tried to speak to me. To ask me to let them go and end their torment.

I wish I could, I wish I had the ability to let the family's souls go into the Emperor's embrace, but I needed them. They were all I had now, and all I could offer them was the vague promise that I would end their suffering soon. I didn't tell them how that meant I would likely be sending them into an eternal sleep as soon as I was able to call upon the mantle once more.

Once the graves were sealed up, the floor made indistinguishable from what it had looked like before, and the pantry of the family raided for all that it was worth, stored by Dyrrath in a place I could only guess at I took one last look at the apartment. One last look at the place where a great and terrible sin had been committed, and I walked away.

I knew my place in the world, and my goal. If I couldn't defend humanity at the forefront and with lasgun in hand I could do so from the shadows at the very least. And where better to start than the depths of the hive where an entire Guard Regiment had been stationed? I knew something was up when we had been assigned here, and I would end the threat before it materialized itself, whatever it may be.