Spawn of the Well
Chapter 11
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I laid on the soft yellow steppe, letting the gentle breeze caress my feathers and my hair. The air felt fresh, even if the odors were fundamentally alien given the distinct biology of this sanctuary's ecosystem. The artificial sun kissed my skin, reviving memories I long thought gone.
While every part of it was false in a way, given my metaphysical nature, it still felt nice. I could almost believe that I was back in my human body, alive again as a mortal of the realm of matter and reason.
"Reason is such a flawed preconception. A more accurate summation would be consistency." I hear the voice speak softly, and I looked up, meeting a gentle smile that watched me back with a crown of longing eyes that held galaxies spinning within their irises. I blink and her face is no more, hidden by a different shimmering mask violet and gold hues, vaguely in the shape of some alien flower.
"Ever as alien and familiar as always,… I missed you." I say to her and she smiles. Moments later I feel a hand brush my scalp and I close my eyes once again in serene bliss.
When I open them again, the mask of before is gone and in its place lies a silver face mask with shining abyssal eyes hidden behind locks made of ebony threads. "You have done well. Perhaps your journey was a tad bit perilous, but you made it and grew stronger."
I nod to her, paradoxically glad at her words, but also displeased at my failure. "I still could not make it to the upper levels. And despite my growing strength, I feel like maintaining my form here is strenuous. I almost feel as if I were holding my breath."
She nods in understanding. "Still, you did well. Your rebirth at my hands as a being of the Empyrean is unlike any that exists in the Layers of Myth and Allegory. Your Heart of Void, as stable as it is with my weaving of Song Threads, demands certain conditions to permit stability for your form in the material plane." She said. "Ironically, as much as you are an immaterial spawn of the Plane of Matter, your hold onto that reality is even more tenuous than the fragments of the Great Mistakes. You will struggle to maintain your form even more so in there than here."
I sigh. There is always a tradeoff. In exchange for being able to unravel fate by design and be stealthier than an octopus, I am even more Warp bound than even the most unstable of daemons. Being a meta-hybrid warp pseudo-construct really has its downsides. That is… until I get a physical body of my own, then the tables considerably turn.
I am the true form of a duality. Without both pieces of the puzzle; the Warp Construct and the Material Body, I am immensely diminished in either state. To be whole I must be of both the Immaterium and the Materium.
"Can't I build a body out of the stuff here?" I ask her, thinking about her skill in the art. She may not have played with genetics for the last couple dozen million years, but there is a reason why she and her kind were known as the masters of the galaxy… before everything went to shit… again.
It's always something like that, you know? Civilizations rise, reach a peak and then they kind of blow up or simply wither away. Either from internal or external factors. Sure, the species itself may survive time and again, humanity being a prime example of that, but the civilization they make is not so immortal.
She smiled. "Yes, civilizations rise and fall, it is the eternal cycle of the universe. Even we were not immune to such all-powerful laws. But to answer your spoken question, no…" she frowns then, her helm becoming like mist but still impossible to see past it. "At this depth you would need far too much power to maintain cohesion. Power which you yet lack." Then she looks away, with an unreadable feeling emanating from her form. She is not telling me everything, but I do not delve in it. She would tell me if she deems it important.
She smiles, knowingly. "I am glad that you trust me so."
I smile back, "Well, you did rescue me from being annihilated by the Deep Warp when I emerged from the Well. And furthermore you turned me into a creature that could survive, if not thrive in this hellhole… It's the least I can do for you." I reply. "Thank you for that."
Her smile deepens, and bathes my soul with its radiance. "Thank you, for giving me the chance to be a mother again." Gladly.
It is little wonder that I named her after Natah. Well… considering her history, she had been all over the spectrum.
-???-
Yes, little light, she was originally an artificial construct. Then she kind of became everything when her creators became extinct… or at least the ones in the Milky Way became extinct.
"I remember when I finally shed my physical form and became an entity of the Empyrean." She said. "Next thing I did was to become adopted by a race of primitives who venerated me as their goddess."
And then afterwards you became literally everything that could be. A goddess, then you took on a mortal disguise, then you went back to the warp, then you returned to your cybernetic origins for a bit, then you went back to a warp entity. "Seriously, is there something you haven't been in your eon long existence?"
"A Void Soul." She replied quickly enough. I hummed. That was fair. Becoming a Void Soul after you are literally made for 99.9% of your life one of Ether and other assorted warp-forms of the lighter spectrum must not be pleasant. "Or the Jewel of a Mistake." That too. Or a Mistake for that matter, but considering her power, she would not be anything less than the Jewel itself.
-!?...-
The Warp Tumors are akin to directed, self-perpetuating warp storms with an attitude, so they are not so much as a god as a distributed mass of parasitic creatures all trying to one up each other and kill the rest and damn the rest of the galaxy via perpetuation of their cognitohazardous archetype. But they all have an avatar, or Jewel, which is what most would refer to as the Chaos God proper. Unmake the Jewel and the Chaos God would suffer de-coherence for some time until a new Jewel is formed from the rest of the collective entity. Usually with one of the most powerful neverborn at the core of the new Jewel.
Basically you kill Tzeench and eventually he would reform from the accumulated mass of other daemons with perhaps something like Kieres at the center. That's why they are so fucking hard to permanently eradicate.
"There is more to the Jewel than simply being the avatar of the Mistakes." Warp Mom included and I nod.
There is… one final and really bad thing about being a Jewel. There is one Chaos God that is different from the rest. Slaanesh, because despite being a Chaos God, the epicenter of that abomination is actually a conglomerate of Aeldari souls.
"And that is why the Eldar are forever cursed. Slaanesh is one of their kind, and as such, has a connection to the rest of the species, one they cannot remove from themselves without destroying their entire identity as a race."
"Or by destroying the Jewel. Then Slaanesh would return to be like the rest of its siblings and its connection to the Eldar race severed." Main reason why if Ynnead can face against the Pink Whore and win, then the Eldar Race could regain their former power as the rulers of the galaxy.
N'ta-ah's mask shimmered with waves of spikes. "The Aeldari must not reclaim dominion of the galaxy again. That eventuality must not transpire." She hissed as the environment around me darkened considerably and I swore I could see teeth and eyes where there should not. "The Aeldari Psi-Warriors were a problem child since their very inception. It was simply a miracle that they survived the War in Heaven with such numbers. Perhaps because the million and once accursed C'tan were far too focused on the second and third generation of War-Races and did not focus as much on the Aeldari." Then her frown deepened. "Sixty million years of planning ruined by those creatures… And to 'rub salt on the wound' as your phrases go, they had the impudence to self-destruct in the most spectacular way possible just when they could be of use."
As the old saying goes; When in doubt, blame the eldar.
"Agreed." She hums and I am forced to hold back a snicker. I would sacrifice my right wing just to get Eldrad to have a conversation with Warp Mom, just to see her give him a piece of her mind. "The continuation of Morai-Heg's legacy would not survive the journey down here I am afraid." I hear her say, her helm a mass of flower petals. She smiled bemused. "However, the idea would be entertaining."
I can only imagine what she would say to him.
We remain chatting about any inane topic we can muster. Truthfully, we could go on for relative years, speaking about things known and forbidden, unfathomable and metaphysical… All things in between. But in the end, we fall into a comforting silence where only our minds brush against each other, speaking in only the most simplest of emotions and conceptions. We needed nothing else.
Because we were simply stalling.
"You could stay, you know." She eventually spoke. I looked up and she was draped in threads made of colors beyond the conception of mortal thought engines. I still could not see the eyes of her human disguise, but I did not need to. The song of emotions that hummed from her conveyed her thoughts better than any words or physical expressions ever could. "You can return to me, back into the depths of the Deep Ocean." She basically begged, her eyes darting towards my chest where an unseen light shone from within. "You could raise her here, with me." She said, her voice dreaming like how a mother speaks when she wishes to be more than that. To have grandchildren to care for and spoil rotten with all the love in the universe.
She wanted me to stay. And I wanted to as well… and yet I could not. I really wished I could stay, and she knew how much I loathed to leave her side.
Yet, she did not ask me the question I could never say no to.
"You know that I can't." I say softly, but she does not frown. Instead, her lips tilt up into a soft, sad smile.
"I understand." She says, and I sit up to look at her where her eyes would be. My avian head overtakes my human visage and three shining eyes look at her eyeless helm, still smiling at me. "You needed help to reach the upper layers of the Empyrean." She says finally, and then she presents me two things, each resting in her gloved hands. "These would do." She says.
On her right hand is a gilded orb pendant held by a thin, delicate looking chain of living brass. Despite its simple appearance, I could feel a strange power emanating from it which I cannot identify. And the other, on her left, is another orb, shining with an infinity of colors unlike the golden one, this one held within the center of a ring of iron.
I take them both and examine them. "What are they?" I am surprised that I cannot feel their purpose, which is usually immediately revealed to me whenever I make contact with a warp construct. But then again, that shows the sheer difference in power between myself and her.
"The golden pendulum is your guide. Follow its light and it will take you to your destination." She explains and I nod. Very much like the Guide Wisps that drew me here.
"And the multicolored orb?" I ask and I see her features twist into a frown from within her helm of infinite quartz glass. A distant sensation touched my mind, something she did not wish to give me, but found it necessary for some reason.
Finally she spoke. "You know the Words." She said and I immediately knew what she meant. I see her hand reach up for my face and gently touches it, somehow unveiling my avian form and gently caressing the true shape underneath. "Try not to use it if you can. But this… it would let you bypass a portion of the price." She whispers and I understand.
I nod to her, and reach up with one hand, stroking the hand that is caressing my face. I breathe in and hold her in my arms one final time, knowing that this would be my last time.
I held her for as long as I could, savoring the time I had left.
But to my surprise, it has her that broke the embrace, and the moment I looked at her face, I saw resolute purpose in her eyes. She spoke one word… "Win." And the new moment, the strain in my body was no more, as I was breathing the thick miasma of the warp and she had vanished completely, as well as the oasis of order that I was in just scant instants ago.
"I will." I whisper, and look at her gifts.
I beheld the pendulum in my hands and sure enough, a small, thin trail of light began to shimmer from it. A path to take.
My wings tear from my back and open to their full span.
It is time I continued the journey.
I look around me one more time, and say, "Goodbye." Before I take to the roiling skies.
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End.
Last edited: Jan 2, 2022
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#853
Spawn of the Well
Chapter 12
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Follow the light. A thing so simple that even a child could do it. Oftentimes one does not even need the intelligence of a child to achieve such a thing. Moths and the like already do this by default.
The problem lies with not following the light… its following the light through the hell-scape that is the Warp.
Fucking hell!
-!!!-
Don't you 'language' me young lady! Seriously! Where do you get all that sass?
-*#-
Yes, I guess I don't listen to my own advice.
-!!!-
Oh now you're just being cheeky.
-%#@-
I don't need to keep up that mystical Zen that I used when you were separate. You basically hear my surface thoughts anyway so there is no point in that. I am not old enough to surround myself with an air of mysticism and wisdom, even if I am a paradimensional spirit.
Anyway, if there are no more derailing, I have to squeeze myself between these two hills to continue on my journey before the Guide Light decrees this current path unusable.
-&*!-
And no, they are not a giant pair of rocky butt-cheeks. Seriously, I am a terrible influence on you.
Of course, after I passed through the Butt-Cheek Hills, as the little soul within the confines of my heart has begun to insistently call, I end up finding out that the Guide Light decreed that the path it was using just became utterly useless at this point because the upper ways current had already shifted.
I sigh… and walk to slide once again through the hills.
-*-
Sigh… Butt-Cheek Hills.
I sigh once again. I am betting that this is all Tzeentch's fault somehow…. Actually, yes, it must be Tzeentch's fault. The eldar are too far away to put them at blame for this one.
I consult the Guide once more and see that it is still maintaining the pathway. Good. Hopefully it doesn't change anymore. This is the third time it does and it has forced me to change course mid way.
However… I cannot deny that it is doing its job, albeit somewhat haphazardly. Not that I blame it really, considering how fucked up a place the Empyrean is, and that the strata that has been keeping me from progressing is so infected with the servants of Chaos that I have not found a single path through it since I began this thrice be damned journey.
I am closer… that much I can tell… its just that to reach there we have had to go through some rather… unorthodox paths.
Would you believe me that I saw an ancient creature that only let us passage if we danced for it? I had to try over a dozen times to appease its demands because I have not a single groove bone in my ectoplasmic body.
Thankfully it was not hostile… but I got the feeling that it was asking me to dance simply for the sake of amusing itself, not for any intrinsic need for it. In all honestly… I would like to meet it again sometime.
Provided that it's still alive.
-%#-
Yeah, it was fun to watch me flop around like a talentless drunkard. Let's hope that the big thing is there if we ever get back.
Now, let's see what other strange place must we go through.
-*&?-
I agree with your statement, little Light. Passing through that gigantic dead eldritch worm's gut was not a pleasant experience. That sphincter was…
-??!-
Hush! Something is coming our way.
I immediately find a place where the dimensional folds were small enough that my form could fit in and blend. But I added another layer to my disguise, letting the Void from my heart pour out and become the exterior shell of my form, causing the Anathemic Light of my being dim and hide within the chrysalis of my veil.
In this state I am not visible to supernatural eyes, nor physical. I am a paradox of conceptual matter, one that cannot be perceived, much less understood. A technique I employ whenever I am in need to disguise my existence from the Neverborn when they surpass me both in manageable numbers, or power.
However, despite the stealth that invoking the familiarity of the pariah grants me, it also claims another power from my being. My metaphysical sight.
In this point, I can only see what is before me. I can grow more eyes to see all sides, but my vision is many times more limited now, as everything turns monochrome and dark. Shades of ghost matter splash through my field of vision, like a constant, omnidirectional rain of darkness. In the warp, there is no light… but you can see if there are any large energy spikes nearby, mostly through whatever being in front of it blocking the path of the energy being released, thus, instead of observing an object or entity, it is more accurate to state that one sees their shadow.
This is the tradeoff of being invisible in the Empyrean, for your enemy nearly becomes so as well, but because of other factors taking place.
But even so… I wait patiently for the unknown to come and pass.
I do not have to wait for long though.
I do not hear… not in any normal sense of the word, but I do feel the vibrations, the presence brush up against the metaphysical stone that my form had been joined to. I can feel its vibrations, and its resonance even as I am left almost senseless.
And then it's form appears before my eyes.
Or rather… forms. And with that, I curse silently.
Riding atop the profane form of its steed, I am treated with the repulsively alluring visage of a daemonette. But not just any normal one. I could tell by its attire and form that this was a Favored Daemonette. A creature of Slaanesh cut from a different cloth than the rest of its debased kin.
However, as bad a news as the presence of a daemonette favored by Slaanesh is, the thing she is riding upon is just a bad a news. Steeds of Slaanesh are one of the few daemonic creatures I purposely try to keep my distance from, for very specific reasons.
Chief among them being because despite my ability to hide my presence flawlessly, they are capable of following my trail, if not through feeling the lingering of my presence, then by following where it carves a path of nothingness. And not only that, they are persistent, as their highly curious nature makes them want to know what that which caught their attention is, even if that thing is made of relative nihility.
In short, they can follow me, even when I become nothing to the eyes of the warp. My only advantage is that within the Warp the nothingness becomes filled with something rapidly. But that time frame is not instant and thus, they can follow the lingering Veil threads back to me if they are recent enough.
And these were recent.
I see the Steed's long head swivel back and forth, seeking out the vestiges of my presence. Its long tongue darting in and out of its fanged orifice. With each motion of the tongue it took one step forwards… each tread becoming closer and closer to me.
-!!!-
I know. Fucking hell!
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Ursala held the reins on his Steed carefully with its pincer claws, letting the creature she rode do its actions. She could feel it through its touch with the fiendish animal, curiosity and the discovery of a new trace.
Or rather, a negativity in it. It was like following a trail of nothingness. It repulsed Ursala to his core. A lack of sensation or emotion, just something that left behind a void of existence. Despite how disgusting it felt to both Slaaneshi Neverborn, as they were entities borne of emotion and sensations and stimulation, it was impressed that the steed's curiosity won out over its repulsion, wanting to find the source of this void of existence.
With each step the daemonette felt the steed getting closer and closer.
Closer.
Then as it took one more step it felt… something. Preparation. Action.
Reaction.
The daemonette, nor the Steed had the time to evade the twin lances of pale light that manifested literally from nothing. Both arrows of anathemic light were fired and their aim true when both daemonette and steed lost their heads as the projectiles detonated with burning light that unmade much of their crania and fed them sensations that even they found unsavory.
As their bodies fell down in a heap from the sudden strike, a dark figure with shining orange and blue plumage emerged from the void of experience and fled off into nowhere.
A mouth grew from the daemonette's generous bust and split his torso in twain as it connected to the burning mess that was the daemonette's head. And then Ursala released her pain and hatred in its cry, calling the alarm.
She grabbed her steed and mounted it, the creature already coming from its shock at the sudden attack. He pointed one bladed pincer towards where the Nameless Hunter had fled and sent the call as the Steed began to follow the now existing trace of burning energy.
Right behind her, came the sensual wails of the rest of the host.
The hunt had begun.
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End
AN: A little short chapter as a prelude for what is to come and first of the Pale Lady fight. Hope you enjoy, and sorry that it was so short.
Last edited: Jan 6, 2022
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#930
Spawn of the Well
Chapter 13
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If I had a word to describe my current predicament it would be simple. Short and sweet really. What words would they be? Well I would be FUCKED BEYOND ALL HELP!!
Fuck me and fuck everything! I have at least two hundred Slaaneshi daemons after me! I am so fucked!
-!!!-
Correction… We are both so fucking fucked!
I jump and evade the blade of a daemonette as I slice their arms with my war scythe, running still and dodging my way up and down and between the blades of more of the servants of the Whore. These were but the first few that managed to get to me, but there were many more on their way and the wounds inflicted upon these last whores of Slaanesh were bare superficial wounds, easily healed since I had not set up a Circle of Denial to inhibit their patron's blessings and energy from boosting them.
Nor would I get the time. They were simply that many of them on my tail feathers.
I jumped again to evade another swipe of them thrice damned steed's tongues while I struck out with my Bow against a nearby fiend that was getting too close for comfort. I ducked once again under the clawed pincer of another daemonette and reacted with my scythe and split the offending whore in half with the steed she was riding on.
That would force it to spend more time healing.
But I did not stop running. I did not stop evading. I did not stop moving and flying.
Anything to get space between them. But they were converging on me in numbers I could not hope to escape from, much less fight off. I need-
The Guide Light on my chest shines a golden path only I see. A thread line towards hope.
A chance to escape, one that all I needed to achieve it was to follow.
So I turned and fought.
My myriad arms emerged, spell and weapons in hand as my third eye saw the stream and dance to weave. The writ of Fate is not yet nigh, for there is room for doubt and act. So act I shall.
My wings beat and my Little Light brims with might. A cascade of power and will is unleashed forth fueled and directed by my Anathemic Light, scattering and burning the debased servants of the Whore. By my Edge and Chain, a Sacrosanct Dance of Deadly Matrimony begins!
And I shall not be found wanting!
Left and right, up and down, angled and beyond, the chain strikes forth like a burning tendril, hateful of my enemies and their beasts. The blade of my scythe claims the flesh and hearts of ten and a dozen of the whores of Slaanesh. My heatless Flames of Pale Light clinging onto them as if fire on promethium, snuffing out their life in screeches of agony not even they can claim to enjoy.
Thus with the turn of the blade, so does the tide.
By the very nature of the spawns of the Embodiment of Excess daemonettes and beasts alike behold the death of their fellows and immediately succumb to ideal of oblivion.
At the very least half of the humanoids flee in terror, with all their beasts in tow. Only a partial amount from the forces that came my way remained, and some were still in debate whether it would be worth to face my power when the embrace of an eternity devoid of sensation was only a blade's swing away.
Some began to turn, already cloaking themselves in illusions to better flee my form. But a few others remained and stepped forth without their steeds who simply left as if in a panicked stampede.
These who remained, these thirty whores were those Favored by Slaanesh herself, for they have beheld a million, million sensations and forms of pain, and condemned just thousands of mortals to experience them as they took their lives and souls for themselves.
They would not falter, but they were hardly warriors now. The look in their eyes manic, their lips tilted upwards, mouth open and revealing thousands of needle sharp teeth that had no use in holding back the drool that overflowed from their debased maw.
They were looking for their next fix. Their next drug to overdose upon.
Me.
To dance at the edges of death and feel its arms try to cling around them.
What other height of pleasure and emotion is there, than to have a brush with the height and end of life itself? Death.
That is why I really, really despise the Whores of Slaanesh.
What I did prior, was merely the opening act. This is the true battle at last.
Or so I thought.
From afar and high the sight of the violet burning wings of an Angel of Hatred caught my eye, but the unearthly light emerging from their gaping maw and eyes was what truly made beheld it with a sense of dread and coming terror, for there was something more in that light that did not belong to such a lesser creature of the Empyrean.
And then it spoke, with a voice that held power of profane nature greater than any I had seen save the Greater Daemons I studied from afar, but even then, this one surpassed their level of malevolence by whole orders of magnitude. Its every intonation was wrong and yet perfectly made to be so. Every inflection was sensual in ways I could not explain and painful that I felt it even in the depths of my ectoplasmic bones. I could taste the smell of roses and whiff the hues of violet and pale pink. I could feel the flesh of men, women and children alike being flayed and burned and harvested and grown like a garden of perversion and diligent obsession. "My SeRvAnTs, mY FaVoRed DanCErS oF ExCeSS, yOu ShALl bE REwaRdED FoR YouR DiLiGenCE and FeARlesSnESS." No sooner those words were spoken the favored daemonettes immediately began to swell in power. Their pincer claws were crustacean rapiers singing hymns of profanity, oozing with colors of orgasmic allure so blissful that the cries of angels became debts of sensation. Tattoos of acrylic chasms lined with the fangs of artful butchers slithered from the openings where the black ichor of dreams made nurses shattered and coiled around the bodies of extravagance, filling every opening, moaning in delicious shamelessness.
Where once thirty daemonettes of the whore stood lucid in an addled drug like anticipation, now stood thirty champions over-swelling with the rose perfume of a greater monster, their expressions a profane mask of ivory bliss and undivine desecration, every point of their body a demonstration of sensation and stimuli.
To a mortal's eye, the sight of these thirty champion concubines would have rendered them mad with allure. For me however, it murdered any chance of a boner like how a Bloodthirster murders an imperial foot-soldier.
I could see past the overbearing scent of sensational allure, and I could perceive the disgusting, deformed limbed serpents beneath their charm, tearing at their own entrails in horrifying ecstasy from the power of whatever greater daemon was that gifted them. Every orifice spewing malignant ectoplasmic fluids that I would not wish to touch with a parsec long pole. Everything about them make me wish I had something within my vowels to vomit over.
But even as I beheld the horrifying masses of excess in front of me, my eyes never left the Hate Angel. "NoW…" Then I am forced to look away as the creature's head is ripped open from within by a pair of giant, pastel colored hands that looked too perfectly articulated. Hands that reached out as if to bask the world with their profane presence.
It disgusted me.
And the Hate Angel's reaction to them, to twitch and moan as its was being torn to pieces, like if it was having the greatest experience of its life and not caring in the slightest that the harm done to it would never heal. It was tearing its threads to motes of sensation before being greedily eaten by the greater daemon that had used the Angel's body as a medium. And yet the blissful torment of the creature did not end, for in its jerking motions of orgasmic pleasure, the monster inside it forced its slave to prostrate itself like the crucifix.
Then the voice spoke once more, and my heart jumped up to my throat. "BrInG thE HuNTEr tO Me…"
The thirty Champions leapt my way like speeding bullets and before I knew it, I had a blade plunged right into my chest.
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End
AN: Second Part of the Pale Lady arc. Next Chapter will be much longer than this, with the final one being much longer still. This arc most likely will constitute 4 chapters in total, with a 5th being the interlude which will wrap up the Pale Lady's fate and then the prelude for the next arc will being. if the next chapter is not at least twice as long as this one... feel free to unwatch the story.
Also, a question unrelated to 40k: Does anyone know of a good magic system that is based upon the Moon and Lunar Cycle? I have been trying to make my own original story for some time (dark fantasy with full on eldritch horror), but it never grows past the development stage, mostly because worldbuilding something original and interesting is so hard. Anything that gives me an idea, no matter how small it is would be greatly appreciated.
Thus far I have made something that depending on what Lunar Cycle you are born in, you have certain pre-ordained powers bestowed upon you. Bu the catch is that there are Four Moons, each having an effect on the powers of birth and how they manifest, their intensity, their flexibility, their drawbacks and is they are passive or active, ect. Then there is the fifth moon, which comes every few hundred years and completely fucks up the entire dynamic of the thing and indicates the birth of a new era... still is in the development stage, but if anyone can help, it would be very much appreciated.
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Spawn of the Well
Chapter 14
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Thirty champions of their un-divine blessed Pale Lady came towards the Hunter's form.
Blade and sensations weaved and danced, to strike at his soul and heart. He evaded and weaved an arch of searing light, a pain that not even the daughter sons of Slaanesh could feed upon. Fire in mocking name to their mistress clung to their forms biting and stinging and eating.
But it was far from enough as the miasma of delight soon abated the spirit flames of the avian Hunter's light. Their dance began anew, the fleeing One of No Name no match to their speed and guile.
Rapiered bladed pincer flew forth, and despite all foreseen he had the gall to remain untouched by their threads. Weaving his own dance from form, wings gleaming in fire. They struck once again, a dance to end, but he added his step by the emergence of twin arms carrying that accursed bow.
A sister's head went aflame. No matter, she would regain it back, along with a new added rage. But she was not alone in her pain, for the Nameless One kept firing his weapon from afar, targeting all who came too close for his comfort.
Yet he was not one to remain satisfied with one tool of harm. His chain howled, gripping that dreaded pole and scythe in deathly arcs filled with that accursed, blessed light of his. One sister felt its empty sensations as it tore her body in twain. A distraction really, but that was what it was after.
Not to fight, but to flee.
His rapid wing beats and furious abandon were sign enough.
They would not let that happen.
They ran past his flying form, leaping in impossible acrobatics to catch their pray and foe. He tried to cast away with spell and might, but a sister found purchase and forced him down and soon six more came and struck their blades.
His skill was yet seen again as he managed to strike the one that held him away, dancing from the first and second following strikes. But the one after did succeed and oh how wondrous his pain filled cry did feel.
Yet it was not to last, for in boring discipline he silenced his screech and struck at the coming sister with the scythe's blade and bound the following with his tendril chain and unceremoniously slammed her against her brother sisters to part ways.
He spun in furious acts, shattering an illusion of grand play as if it were naught. He caught the brother sister within the alluring mirage with the hooks of his claws, tearing at her heart in sensationless flames. With great might he pushed her in front of her fellowship, using her as an impromptu shield and letting her take the spear that was meant to be his.
A shine from within his bones and a cascade of violent might pushed itself from somewhere within his form, tearing at the he-sisters away in pieces, but not shattered, merely disjoined.
They would return to their ecstatic peak with due time, but the Hunter's way would count on that time. Time that he sought, but found not.
Seven sister brothers came at his winged form, fire and pleasure met in a shimmering dance of superb pain and righteous fury. Bladed rapiers were avoided by the breath of a needle, strikes were blocked, parried and contorted by chain, pole and blade, arrows of light came and went, tearing at body parts and casing them to conflagrate in great fires that had no heat, only an acidic hate.
Yet for every blade and kick and bite that was blocked and evaded, one found its mark.
It was the shrieking claws of a she-brother that tore the right wings into rags. The sudden arch of a rapier meeting the head that split it in twain. Whips made of sensual agony that lashed the flesh and robes. The bite of devilish needle like teeth that injected metaphysical poisons of unbridled pain into the ectoplasmic bloodstream before whatever he had within filtered its contents and unmade its effects.
Again and again did the dance of death end and begin anew. Each time claiming more and more a blow 'til he could fight no more.
The she-brothers surrounded him, like a pack of hungering predators, circling him at the smell of metablood.
His wings were tattered, broken and the feathered quills bleeding ichor. His head malformed from the abuse, an eye missing and the neck split open which had become its own mouth to spit out toneless flames. His right leg was gone, having being replaced by spindly threads to maintain a semblance of balanced pose.
Yet his weapons were held strong, even if some of his arms have been made gone. For what little it could do, for the thirty champion brother sisters stood proud and in throes of orgasmic pleasure.
They all stared gleeful in their ecstasy and sublime in their pained delight. The Nameless Hunter, so mighty a name, bleeding and broken amidst the circling serpent sharks. What a tale! What a show! How much suffering and pleasure would be reaped!
They leered and grinned, smiling and laughing, mocking and jeering, moaning and listless in eyes and motions and sensual perversions. In service to their mistress their rewards will be magnificent. To keep this sublime blessing should they bring the Nameless Hunter to his awaiting arms.
Oh so splendid it is! A show! A show! They will perform for her! The Hunter! Such a disappointment. Here they hoped to dance the Dance of Death, to taste death and mock it in its face. And yet here it is the harbinger of oh so awaited death. Pathetic! Pathetic! Weak!
"We expected much from you." One jeered. "Weren't you a Hunter?" Another questioned mockingly. "We thought that you were mighty." Another one whispered out loud. "You cannot leave a girl hanging!" Another sneered. "Oh what will you do now?" Another teased. "We wish to hear you beg and weep!" Another moaned. "Beg! Beg for mercy!" Another cheered. "Then we will cut you up." Another trembled in delight. "And in pieces to our mistress we will deliver you!" Another followed in glee. "You will be blessed by her hands and talons!" Another exclaimed romantically. "She will show you pain and pleasures like no other!" Another followed, laughing. "So beg Hunter with No Name! We shall make you ours!" They all said as one.
So intoxicated were their power and mind that they could not help it. They wanted it. The wanted his pleas for mercy! They would not wait long though. They raised their blades, ready for the next round, ready to pierce, cut and wound until the avian creature's next words were one praying for mercy.
They were about to pounce when-
Laughter.
They halted their step and looked at the origin of the mirth.
The Hunter's body was shaking. Moving. In mocking laughter.
They sneered. How dare him! How dare he! They would make him bleed and suffer and suffer and bleed.
Then he lifted his scythe up, into the sky. His tattered wings folded and faded back into his feathered back. He looked up and beheld their raging glare, and merely smiled. His beak split open, and revealed a hundred mouths and eyes within.
"I…" He spoke and thus the rite ended with its beginning.
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"…am the Epoch's Last Ascension by the Old Gods." I speak the phrase of truth and the whores howl in rage as their distance between me and them is erased.
I evade the first rapier's swing, laughing and grinning, the act making the disgruntled wench bristle with spikes. She/he/it would be my first victim.
I struck her down with my Scythe's blade and binding her with the Chain, forcing her to screech just as the Little Light within me released a fresh torrent of energy towards all directions. The myriad monsters coming my way scattered like leaves yet unharmed though not because of a lack of trying. Yet this was only but the first part of the spectacle to be.
My head craned up and regurgitated an arm wielding a weapon yet undone. It was a hilt of a sword which would never see its own birth, but shall drink it's foe's blood even if it had not yet emerged from its womb. The only traces of its future deadly ways was the minor sharp edge at its pommel. The daemonette beneath me spun to strike at me, but I was faster.
In the instant she turned, rapier of her pincer claw journeying towards my heart, I plunged the hilt into her own and released the binding threads that held its form and gave this not minor amount of my power-authority-in-form a decree.
To sacrifice its form and return to primal scorn.
My grip upon its vanished, and it followed my law, by unraveling and unleashing all the energy that comprised it in an explosive display of power that shattered the daemonette whore champion asunder, its death screams reverberating across the entire paracanyon like the dying wail of a banshee.
An act that stunned the rest of the champion whores who gaped at me with wide black eyes.
I did not stand idle though, and thus with the first death sacrifice within my arsenal, a dozen, dozen arms emerged from my form, each carrying an unfinished weapon in their grip and ready to make them martyrs upon the whores' hearts. Each a premature sacrifice-to-be of a weapon that would never be born now and forever.
Every artifact borne of my hands takes a considerable amount of energy from my being to bestow it with the cutting edge needed to fell the denizens of Chaos without granting it a higher mind to endow it with supernatural might. Considerable energy that must be shed constantly for prolonged periods of time to fully shape the raw creatia of the warp into my mind's design.
Now, all that raw power was being sacrificed upon my enemy's flesh, letting them be baptized by the rage of my Anathemic Light.
I point my Scythe at them, and for one moment in this damn life of mine, I chance something of my essence to let it be. A controlled loss of control. Light becomes Ether, still attuned to my being and mind, and I let it feed upon my every frustration and anguish I have spent in this existence.
My grip tightens audibly as that frustration and anguish lends way to an emotion of so righteous.
Rage.
But not only that. I look upon my enemy, squirming in its own pleasure and pain, and something else pushes its way up from my vowels.
Hatred.
Yes. Hatred!
That is what has been missing from all this. This is what I have been holding back for so damned long. It is a creature I have neglected to set loose for days/years/centuries. And with good reason.
But now that reason is gone. All that remains is my wish to set it free and rage against this gods forsaken universe!
I saw blood, and my soul flames called forth its color. "I am the Song of your Annihilation! You are all beneath me! Come and die by my hand and unborn blades!"
They grinned no more, instead their eyes became listless and in moaning pleasures. Such debased carnality in the face of death for all to see and gawk at. Death has knocked on the doors and they have been driven beyond the shore of sense, if they ever touched its sands.
I had the banners of Oblivion in my myriad hands and they wanted a taste of the forbidden fruit of termination, dance by and just without reach of the pale horseman's scythe.
They came, shrieking extravagances of sensation aloud and light.
I did not disappoint.
They did.
Whence upon a different time they were dancers of sensual excess, now they had devolved into the rabble that they truly were beneath their glamour of artistry. They danced heedless of themselves and each other, like a mad mob of drug addicts fighting for the last scraps of their toxin, seeking to gain the most of it and deny it for the others.
With my ocean of limbs I had decreed its tides towards the second of my prey, blocking its blows as I scattered and removed from my path the rest of the whore death seeker addicts. Who was I to deny their drug, when it so suited me to make them bleed so.
Her evasive leap was great indeed, but my chain's lively dance so caught her spindly arm.
Get over here!
And into my waiting arms, where her head and chest met three of my weapons yet not to be. As I tore and roared, the threads of weapon and whore became undone in mutual annihilation that rent the crevice of pain and pleasure into the waiting embrace of the pale horseman, all the while screaming in horror and despair when she realized her damning eternal mistake.
Two dead, twenty eight awaiting the reaper's judgment.
The once battle for survival had been turned on its head. My hatred and rage cleaving paths of vermilion howls into the ether as they met and sought out the flesh and heart of the whore's false delight. I tore upon their soul and mind, shattering illusion and moan of excess and pain into shrieking wails of terror in despair when they knew that they could no longer dance away from death's grip.
The sole moment of satisfaction I took and relished, for in their maddened urges to meet death, they forgot what it meant. Truest of death was, by its decree, oblivion and therefore the end of all ends, one from which nothing returns. An end of existence and therefore a cessation of sensation and perversion. Even the most powerful of Slaaneshi daemons, the very same ones that would run at me heedless of the danger to themselves in a bid to dance at death's edge, would be horrified at the prospect of non-existence. Something that they only realize once the reaper's hand had its hold all too deeply entrenched in their hearts, where hope no longer existed for a chance to dance on.
And in that single instant, before annihilation final bell rang, they would cry out against the heavens and hells in despair echoing the horror of the spawn of Nurgle. But unlike the putrid brethren whom made their greatest attempt at fleeing from death's embrace, the whore addicts had come towards it with open arms, arrogantly and mockingly assuming they would cheat the reaper.
The reaper however laughs, and claims its due long awaited.
And so they each fell to Death's awaiting embraces one after the other.
Twenty seven.
I evaded a rapier blade and blocked another, thus the tide struck in two ways, and plunged their sacrifice at the forms of two addicts, shattering them both, though not yet death. A weave of blood tinged pale flames dancing on the edge of my Scythe ended their shrieking cries of hateful pain as I blocked another strike to my person.
Twenty five.
I cast them aside, with joint might and thus with the Chain and Scythe I claimed two in one and set the tide to spear their madness alight. They were made to feel the cascade of flames of twin sacrifices upon their hearts.
Twenty three.
I leapt and went in for the kill, howling my hateful call as I plunged another set of sacrifices against the heart and head of another and leapt forth from its detonation, thus covered in my own flames, for my next victim to slay was at hand.
Twenty two.
And so the battle raged on, with more and more blades and sacrifices being exchanged and brought forth in an interplay of sensual dancers against a burning sea of feathered arms. Such was the pattern that persisted with them being claimed time and again by my myriad arms and sacrifices.
But in the warp patterns are ever changing and never remain the same for long.
I noticed it first when a whore was impaled by three of my sacrifices, and yet survived the sundering thunderclap of their detonation and remained fighting. Troubled and broken. But not dead.
I had to resort to eradicate it with a flurry of arrows and scythes just as its brethren came at me. And when they reached my form as the broken addict's essence faded into oblivion's embrace, screaming and shrieking, I felt their blows strike all the more powerful.
One of my dozen eyes turned to the disfigured and crucified hate angel and the two colossal arms that emerged from where its head at one point existed, and then I knew.
The power that strengthened the Whores was of the Keeper of Secrets and thus it was spread evenly across all thirty of its debased servant whores. Cut down the amount of them from thirty to nineteen and they each would obviously get more power channeled into their disgusting forms. Regardless of the matter in the end, I would still be captured and flayed with each one I cut down for the final one would be well beyond my strength to match.
And so the battle slowly, but steadily turned against me.
The number of sacrifices I had in hand being numbered in smaller units every time I engaged and the addict whores' power only growing with every moment that the battle raged on. I could feel it from the Keeper of Secrets, its dark amusement when I realized that either way I was fucked.
It did not take long for me to be placed with my back against a wall, seething cuts bleeding my red ichor and my soul fire burning with my anger and hatred ever higher.
And yet, as I was placed against my last leg, I smiled, when the lead whore leapt my way, moaning pincer rapier extended for the kill.
I struck at the metawall at my back and a fissure of red formed and just as the whore's blade was about to meet my heart I steeped aside and let the fiery daemon blade behind it emerge from the wall and impale the whore through her/his/its heart.
It looked at the sword that had emerged from the wall with beady black eyes before turning to me in confusion.
I explained it to her by opening my maw, revealing a hundred mouths within whispering words of eight syllables or eight letters. The names of Daemons of Khorne.
It was then that they realized why the streaks of red were bleeding so profusely from my form.
I was a beacon and a song.
A call to battle and a decree of war.
I simply smiled as the fissure grew and the arm of a bloodletter became clear as day, and slowly, more and more arms and blades were pushing their way through the ever growing fracture in the astral walls. I spread my arms in the lull of battle as all present beheld the events unfold.
Even the Hate Angel's posture had shifted, the being using it as a Channel too caught surprised and shocked by the sudden and unseen shift in battle.
My laugher the only sound in the arena, reinforced by the hateful, scornful, furious war cries of the Khornate legion behind me.
Reinforcements had finally come!
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End
AN: Yes, our Birb knows a lot of Bloodletters, mostly because they are the only people/hellspawns he is willing to make any sort of deal with since they always keep their promises. Also, 3.2k words! Hoorah!
Last edited: Jan 19, 2022
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The-Black-Aengel-Mrk7
The-Black-Aengel-Mrk7
Archetype of Evolution
Subscriber
Jan 26, 2022
#1,058
Spawn of the Well
Chapter 15
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Laughter was the song of the universe made mad.
The tempo of the Doom Drum from the dozens of infernal blades pushing through the fissure of the Arena. The Song was of War and Violence.
And I was its Herald and Instructor.
My laughter reached a crescendo as the final cracks on the walls came to pass and the bloodthirsty war cries of the Khornate host finally tore through the veil at its fullest capacity, pouring forth a tide of genocidal madness overshadowing my form like a tsunami of blood and rage.
And I was loving every fucking second of it.
I leapt to get a head start and distance from the murderous legion pouring from the beyond. I danced and weaved over the heads and rapiers of Slaaneshi whore champions before the blood tide overtook them and drowned them in a furious rhythm of battle they could not disengage.
But I could.
I grinned as I beheld many a familiar a face from the Khornate kindred. Bat'rahad, Mul'drohk, Dha-Khaliber'na'ha'at, Oom'vakha, and the map giver himself; Urdakha. And they were all looking at me with furious eyes.
Well, that was their usual expressions. "YOU! HUNTER!" Urdakha, the giver of maps and fury roared at me, his blade of fire aimed my way. "YOU BRING US HERE! YOU BROUGHT AND CALLED US TO FIGHT! NOW FIGHT US!"
I could see the rest brandish their weapons my way, but I ignored them, focusing on Urdy right before me. I smiled and gave him a bow of respect, "Sorry Urdakha." I begin, watching his face contort for a second into something that could be explained as hateful confusion. "But I called you to fight them." My manifold eyes took a look at the myriad Slaaneshi whores who were now well and occupied with their new fight buddies, ones that were less optimistic about fighting and more about just plain killing them dead as violently and hatefully as possible. I smiled internally as I beheld one of the whore addicts get dog piled by a dozen Bloodletters before being repeatedly stabbed in the head with their flaming swords.
Oh, it was not dead. Far from it. And it was still pulling a good fight all things considered, but it was clear how it was going to go from that point on considering that they were outnumbered twenty to one.
Some of my eyes swiveled to look at the Hate Angel whose disgusting form was convulsing all the more violently as the arms emerging from its torn head were looking back and forth at the scene unfolding before it with amethyst eyes on the palm of the hands.
It was then that one of the arms turned my way and for a moment we made eye contact and I felt a horrifying shiver run down my ectoplasmic spine.
That was my cue to get the fuck out of here, and urgently.
I turn back to the bloodletter before me who now looked like if he was only a second away from pouncing on me and burying that daemonic blade into my chest. "Also I am on a hurry and need to leave. Chao."
Screaming broken weirs of war bloom like the tendrils of abyssal night swallowing mountains of crimson corpses unleashed and screamed. "YOU WILL NOT ESCAPE US!" They all said as one. "MAIM KILL BURN!!!" They all roared as one and came at me like a flaming tide.
But my plan was already in effect.
A cascade from my being and my Light escaped the confines of my body and emited a barrage of energy to push back all aside.
Blown and scattered, leaves of anger and war were thrown aside in impotent rage and might. But as their trajectories realigned and their blades once again pointed to my skull and heart, my outstretch myriad arms pointed their attention to the weapons incomplete floating amid their midst.
They had all been gifted the peace they were to be.
My child that would never be. I thank you for your sacrifice, and I am sorry I demanded it from you.
The last forty three weapon and tool shards and parts released a breath of peace and then died in a pale cascade of might. Daemons of all kind, be they of the Lord of Blood or the Prince of Excess met the tide of pale anathemic light and suffered the consequences.
But by the time the flames had decreased and the haze through madness and unlight be peered, my Heart was made of Night and my presence lost to space and time.
I grinned and cheered, but with no sound and dimmed by my Void Cloak.
For I had escaped this fight and the Gilded Thread of hope shined once again bright.
Time to get the fuck out of here before more crap shows up!
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War and pleasured pain waged on in the aftermath of the Hunter's escape .
Above said field of carnage where War and Excess waged, hovered a defiled and crucified angel of flaming pink wings with a pair of giant waiting hands and arms emergent from its destroyed head and chest. Hands that would now remain empty of their awaited price.
Hands that slowly closed into shaking, raging fists.
A lesser aspect of War beheld the abomination on the air and brandished weapon in hand leapt towards it, to silence its painful sensations.
The Bloodletter's corpse fell upon the arena's floor, split in twain and with a fundamental harm to its animus threads that would take centuries to heal.
The battle ceased its motion and was suffocated by a lull of dreadful coming.
The Hate Angel's already mangled form looking even more torn asunder when the form of a giant, chitinous blade had torn through its body and now aimed up and and down towards the heavens and deathly earth. Its moans of agony and pleasure only increasing even further when a second bladed pincer like claw emerged from another part of its twisted body. Then the hands that waited held onto the lesser daemon's form and began to pull.
The sounds of snapping ectoflesh and metabone coursed through the arena like a symphony to excruciation. Until with a aroused moan and cry a giant figure tore its way out of the lesser daemonic medium, permanently annihilating it in the process.
The Bloodletter underneath not even getting the chance to react when a massive dark violet hoof cae crashing down upon it and the orchestrator of the hunt was revealed in her fullest marvelous horror. A magnificent statue to defilement. Long, tall and beautifully slender, carrying an air of supreme grace and gluttonous jealousy. Its upper arms a divinely grown set of blade and pincer of violet chitin. His long lower arms holding a master crafted daemon blade possessing the essences of twin tortured daemonettes as a punishment for their failure. Her face, a mask of marble encrusted with all manner of amethyst jewels impregnated with the souls of mortals and essences of daemons alike.
The Pale Lady had arrived, in all her profane glory. With raging eyes he beheld the battlefield and with her colossal presence, spread its sickly tendrils out and found what they wished. The Hunter sought to escape upwards into the higher strata. That much she figured after beholding the battle/hunt with her very eyes. And there was a single path towards his objective.
So with a moan, the Pale Lady thus began to dance, and slaughter all in his path to reach its morsel al long last.
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I followed the gilded wisp with as much haste as I could. I could almost see the roiling currents give way to a sundering light sea that stretched for eons and astronomical units, cleaving apart the heavens and hells with its radiance.
I knew this light and Who produced it. I had seen it countless times now and at even greater proximities, and yet to see it shine through like a ray of hope was different here and now, for I was only scant moments away from being liberated from the deeper paths of nightmare and finally soar at the edges of para-reality where I could finally swim into the threads born of dream songs of a myriad matter bound souls.
I was to be free! I was- The wisp trail snapped and instants/decades of shock later I became aware why.
The path to liberty did not close. But I did not become closer, for when I realized so, PAINPAINPAINPAIN flooded my senses.
Two searing blades moaning in deep melody resonating the last moments of torturous excess they experienced before being bound with the daemoniform mistakes within singing excruciating anguish borne of growing shimmering rains of emotive abattoirs why does it hurt where did the blades come fromfuckfuckfuckFUCKFUCKFUCK IT HURTS!! MAKE IT STOP!!!
Laden excess mines shimmer feathers break to twist numb searing painpainpainpleasurepleasurepleasure flesh move twist stopcontactcontacthurtscannotthink direct mnemethought reeve the pull tear open bleedMyBloodIsPoolingAway Blood Blood weird threads not make… make… make…
Pull Pull Pull!
Pulling away!
Breaking contact with BLADESPAINEXCESSSENSATIONNNNN!
Pain broken, continues echoes of debilitation. Ignore. No longer bound. Free. Golden path begins anew subtle, light, urgency.
Must move. Urgent.
Eyes look at blade no longer impaling my form as I start a slow speeding run. Two crying moaning faces leer from the hilt where from their design a horn on each head grows and forms into the edges of a two blades separate and united. A daemonic bound weapon of identical yet enantimorphic daemonettes of excess.
A blade much longer than I was tall.
I realized that he/she/it was here when I touched the smell of pink roses spearing needles into my nostrils. A perfume so grating and consorting, whispering tongues of sensations into my feather eyes.
The Keeper of Secrets was close.
Close. Close. Close.
A hooved foot caressed the weeping ground.
Here.
And so it emerged into the broken twilight, shimmering jewels of ebon amethysts through a crown of undulation and refraction of sensory overstimulation. Perfection enmasquerading atrocious abomination. Painted in blood of war and sensation, a queen strode the field of pleasures carnal and sublime in revolting delight, twisting and slithering forgeries of uncompromising perversions.
Thousands of fleshy fruits grew and were defiled from her bust, milking themselves as they flowed into the manifold tit with a dozen gaping mouths and eyeful tendrils of pastel bare flesh. Clothes borne of the attenuated latticework of fleshy constructs of children and men and women alike held a wet nurse where handmaidens would eat their own fingers as their eyes were gnawed upon by slithering serpents. A gown so delightfully pristine of silvery and violet diamonds.
I have seen the sight of the greater daemonkin before.
Of waging oceans of feathered rainbows and changing plots impossible to contrive, much less divine. Of tower hound bulls with wings that refract the million wars they have fought upon, wielding arms that would forever cry out the rage of said wars eternally more. Of great lakes of diseases and putrefactions ever static and unchanging as it moved on from plague ridden realm to the next bringing fetid love and despair in cascading rivers to all. Of titanic serpents unmaidens bringing forth seasons of debased sensations and profane excruciations as dances began and ended in orgies of excess.
All of that paled in comparison to the atrocity my eyes and soul beheld right before me.
A Keeper of Secrets above the rest, one that has glutted for eons and days on the flesh-fruit of impossibly vast atrocities and excess driven sins. To merely behold it would be to invite madness and sensual domination. But my eyes are made to peer into the truth above all things.
I can see where the lies and secrets and glamor end and begins. Words failed to describe the atrocity that the truth gleamed past. I have yet seen a more hideous display of depravity in my existence. The very depths of cruelty and inhumane delight that life could reach and descend upon. An embodiment of sins that could cause worlds to collapse.
And as it walked, all I wish I could do was to cease to exist at that very moment.
"ThERe YoU ARe!" It leered, whispered, wept and purred and my bones quaked with despair and horror shifting of bleeding dunes that I wished never to be touched upon. My legs and feathered limbs turned to flee, darkness enveloping my soul heart and mind from the debased touch of that which would claim excess alight.
I was not fast enough.
A cascade, a mountain, a grinning dagger, a mast of pain made from an excruciating reign took claim of my form with fingers of undivine pleasures. Crushing, twisting, contorting. Pain lanced into bones darker than light. This is the agony and despair that their reach brings so forth. It was unbearable. Agony. Agony! AgonyAGONYAGONYAGONY!!! STOP IT!!!
"I FiNaLy HaVe YoU iN My HaNds!" Slick oil flowed down into my cavernous entrails, seeking to excruciate, immolate, pervert and corrupt.
Deny it! Pain unending. Do not let it reach the Light within My Heart! Do not let-
Where is Light?
Where is my Light?
There is no voice. No sound. No pain. No cry. Silence.
Silence…
She…
Mina?!
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The Pale Lady held at long last her prey. So slippery. So skilled in the art of deception and stealth. But against the might and cunning of he, one of most favored among the legions of Slaanesh, there was no creature or soul that would remain out of her reach forever. All eventually met their end and punishment at her hands.
And this hunter had oh so claimed a most worthy punishment for stealing away her morsel.
Her fingers dug into his soul flesh, making him experience all her divine flavours and agonies, his reward for eluding her for so long and playing such a good sport. His punishment for his transgressions and his arrogance.
He would suffer a million times more and be babtized in its gardnes of debasement until he is tisted into the brand new sparkling jewel where the Pale Lady would place upon her magnificent bust.
But first. She wanted a taste of him.
Its long tongue emerged from the carefully cut line of marble that was her mouth. Slithering forth in the ether towards the feathered being in her grip. Gliding softly as to savour the act.
Then he spoke, and the needle filled tendril froze in its spot. "You like secrets?" The tongue danced in the air, not touching the soul flesh of the Hunter with no Name, but oh so wishing to strike and maim. But the words drew in the greater daemon into their content. "You are a keeper of secrets, are you not? You surely must wish to know more secrets of the hearts of mortals and warp spawn alike. It is in your very name."
She grinned. Was it a play it wished to make? Postpone its inevitable pleasures and pains? Asume that it could escape if it played the long game? Such arrogance! Such folly! She would indulge him! Let him think he has her in play!
Then despair and delightful suffering would come when he realizes his falseness of his hope.
Yes! Let it come! Tell hem your secrets Hunter! Her tongue retracted and her lips turned most divine of smiles alight and wide. "OoH I LiKe SeCRetS! TeLL mE GrEAt HuNteR of No NaME. WhAT SeCreTS do YOu HiDe? WhAt dO YoU DeSirE to GiFt MoSt GraCIOus mE?"
She said. She neared. She leered. She wanted his words and his secrets. His lies and illusions to hope and pray a way of escape. So that then she could tear it all apart and watch his heart shatter abrupt in despair and terror and despair and terror!
She said. She waited and looked.
The Hunter's head lifted and turned to her.
Hatred pure and unfiltered etched upon like an adamantium mask. Then the mouth split open and a face all too mortal emerged from within. Was this the secret it wished to show? That was it a human in truth?
Then a fracture was birthed from his lips and trailed a path across his features and face. His mouth tilted in a serene and haunting smile that promised things best not uttered.
And then he spoke a wordless word, and the universe answered.
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End
AN: So I decided to split this chapter in two (or maybe three) as it would be far too long. And my patience is not great enough for that.
Sorry to say… but the chance was not kind to our little Light. And now, our Birb is furious. Let's see how far shit would go.
Also, I have been trying to draw the Nameless in his True Form, but my mouse no longer works as I wished, so I may be forced to do things on pen and paper. You will see it soon though.
Last edited: Jan 26, 2022
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#1,156
Spawn of the Well
Chapter 16
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She was gone.
After so much she was gone.
Mina, my Little Light. She was gone.
Shattered, broken, destroyed.
Only embers of the soul remain. Echoes too dim and silent to ever be.
She was gone.
I failed her.
I failed her… I did not fulfill my oath.
She was gone and now I was alone again in the maddening void.
I was speared by the daemon blade and I was bathed in its agonizing madness. And so was she, as we both shared a metaphysical body. I am a creature of the Empyrean, weaved together from threads made to withstand the unfathomable currents and the brutality of the Warp's unfettered madness. She was a wisp, a fragile little thing.
She was gone and my companion was gone.
She was gone… and now I am free.
She was gone, and I had no need to hold back.
"You like secrets?" I ask the Greater Daemon holding me through clenched teeth, bathing my essence in every excruciating agony that it could imagine and the pain diminished by the words. But not gone. Curiosity had taken its hold and I will grant it a lesson on its dangers. "You are a Keeper of Secrets, are you not? You surely must wish to know more secrets of the hearts of mortals and warp spawn alike. It is in your very name."
She did not reply, but the horrid laughter was an answer enough. Then I felt its perverse presence near and I knew I had won. "OoH I LiKe SeCRetS! TeLL mE GrEAt HuNteR of No NaME. WhAT SeCreTS do YOu HiDe? WhAt dO YoU DeSirE to GiFt MoSt GraCIOus mE?"
Such arrogance.
Such disgusting folly. Much like the creators of the Mistake it was a part of.
I lifted my head and I beheld the ugly face of the thing that had made an eternal enemy of mine. Leering, grinning. I hate it! I hate its kind! And I shall see it broken and unmade and suffer!
Fracture and fracture within.
My beak opened and split, severing seals and brought the truth to light, for only the truth can speak that which is absolute and above all. The amethyst eyes and gemstone sights glare and glance at my face of faces mildly widened and in odious curious glee.
Now die, BITCH!
Fissure and fissure birthed and ready. Already the effect and first sacrifice be claiming in time. The universe demanding that I claim a decree not. But the myriad colored jewel orb shall provide and silence the first and final price. An act that would demand hours and days of meditation and thought refined simply to invoke it so paid now before it's spoken.
UNMA-
No.
My mind within my mind becomes silent and then clear as serene day.
What… is this?
The multicoloured chromatic artifact was made of two. The jewel at its heart, and the ring without.
The first was silent, yet ready. But the latter was singing a song that I knew.
And within the passage of recognition, I beheld N'ta-ah's crown of eyes bathing me in her signature motherly smile. But this time there was an edge of emotion to it that spoke of more.
I experienced a revelation and I breathed it.
You knew. You knew that this could happen.
Her smile turned mournful.
Why?
A hundred eyes beheld me, and at that moment I saw a thousand, thousand scars that would never heal and a billion chains that cannot be severed.
And then I saw my own chains from my heart to myself, I saw where the chain broke, and where a scar now marred my soul flesh.
Now I understood.
She explained it to me oh so long ago I almost forgotten it.
We are both oath bound.
She cannot interfere in the affairs of the Galaxy. None of her kind can anymore, not until this galaxy is no more. My existence brought by the Well was a Loophole that she used, but cannot interact and decree beyond a certain point. It is the reason why I am no match to the great powers of the Empyrean yet, for she very well could have made me so.
And My Light… she is of the Milky Way, and my burden and oath.
We were at an impasse, one that the innocent was destined to suffer through. Such is the matter and dealings at the heart of Gods and Demons alike. Such is our burden. Such is the sin we are made and bound to commit to fulfill our parts and decrees.
How many?
She shows me one finger and one alone.
I smile. I see. This was my final test, and the one that I was about to fail, wasn't it?
Her smile returns once more, before the face of the thousand weaved Lotus breaks down, and I understand as I see the cacophony of arms and faces slowly return from the sea beneath.
This is our farewell, for real this time. Fate would never allow us to cross paths again, not for an unforeseeable amount of time.
I smile again and the fissure stops its growth.
I have to make it count on the first try. For I have no other chance.
Heh… yeah. I wanted to cause the bitch that took Little Light the suffering and pain I felt now, but in the end it would have been a clean and swift end. And I could be damaged beyond hope of repair as there are some words that are even the artifact's power to reverse. And then there were the other daemons that would surely come…
Damn, I am so stupid.
So I knew what had to happen now.
The Golden Guide began to shine and its light pointed straight into the Keeper's heart.
My lips parted, fractures forming and growing.
And then I spoke one Word in a forbidden tongue, and the universe obeyed my decree.
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The Forbidden Tongue, the Call of Creation, the Authority, the Word of Law, Absolution's Decree, or simply; Enuncia.
It was not a language.
Not in any way we can recognize it. Not in any way mortal minds can fully conceptualize. And yet it can be spoken and written. Though its effects are oftentimes unpredictable and quite commonly unstoppable, it can be directed and refined and resisted.
To speak Enuncia is to call upon the Universe itself and ask its all-encompassing power to do as you wish. But to dare to converse with the Truth, one must be willing to pay the toll of conception.
There are two prices to pay. Each a test of your strength, of your willpower and of your knowledge. All three become your shield and weapon. To fail in one is to fail in all.
When spoken the Words will deny to be bound and decreed, so causality shatters that which dared to intone the Call of Creation for its hubris. Therefore, to overcome causality's reaction, you must be strong enough and of great willpower to hold back its defilement of your body and soul.
Should you breach this barrier, you had passed its first test and paid the first price by the right of your might and will, but then you must be steadfast in your knowledge and your understanding and in your strength for now the second test begins and it shall be your end if you fail.
A Word is not a word, but a concept, one that is alive and desires to be fulfilled in its entirety. If you understand the concept, understand yourself and understand your target and the world, then you can aim its power. But the more you enforce your will upon it, the more it will try and fight back.
But you must fight it, you must constrain its power and its desire to spread and become absolute and whole, for if you do not, then it will claim you regardless of any leniency shown to its demands.
When spoken, you must set boundaries to where, when and what it is allowed to perform, and to one which when and what and where, for time, space and causality is meaningless when dealing with the absolute power of Creation's Law.
When you Speak, you must be resolute. And have faith, for when nothing else remains, one can still hope.
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A sound that was not a sound emerged from the Hunter's mouth and reality succumbed to its command.
The Hunter's head was shattered, broken, defiled, unmade and remade as it Spoke. And yet the sound remained.
The Cage closed and the key lost forevermore, engaging the devil into weeping madness.
The Chains rose towards the sun and held it down, bringing night and the end of the light.
The Bindings tied the servant to the word and the lord, thus enslaved beyond hope.
Thus the Word was Spoken and the Universe's Will be Done!
Be Bound!
Only the Lie! Held Down! Shackled!
Binding! Succumb! Kneel! Enthrall! Claim!
Lies Bound! Bow! You! --={SUBMIT!}=-- Not I! Enchained! Jailed!
My Will is All! Obligation! Enslaved! Constrained! Forced!
Subservience! Coerced! Confined!
Subjugated!
A scream a scream pain not pain decreed broken mad shatter begotten held down the bindings and chains and chains SUBMIT called that is all that exists existing existed.
The Head of the Hunter shattered, breaking down a hundred chains and bindings and seals and shackles and bars of iron and iron tore grew and strangles enslaved and mangled. Sensational forms be sealed. Liberty be kneeled. Wings be clipped. Eyes be blinded.
The absolution is so clear!
And in the flower of chains and chains and chain, so blossomed the spinning shine of an orb a myriad colour it sacrificed.
Does it see it?
Thus by decree of Tongues Older than your own, the Will of the Universe thus Ended and Retrieved to that which must be Returned!
Strikes of language thunder threads and mighty night unweave to retrieve the weave. The Orb is no more, and in its stead the Hunter and Owl returned to the fold.
Inversion is made and from exterior insides the Hunter is returned. Bones made of a Song that can never end twisting hues of chromatopeic lines remake and forge themselves anew. Abyssal cries denying the world and patters, silencing potential into a Void of black flecked into the singing bones. And thus the tendon instrumental cords spiraled back to helix arms and flesh and organ and mind.
And so SheHeIt beheld the Nameless Idea naked and bare.
Three wide hateful eyes stared back. A crown of horns sublime. A chest split in twain, exposing the bone songs holding within the arms and claws that rested upon a heart made of Void and eternal Night.
Thus his truth of truth was revealed and once again sealed as feathers and beaks and claws and lies and illusions were woven back to turn the owl's unfettered glare of a Hunter/Parent defiled.
Its decree paid in full and its price reversed true.
But not the Lie and Mistake.
What was pain?
BOUNDBOUNDBOUNDBOUND!
What was pleasure?
SLAVEDSLAVEDSLAVEDSLAVED!
SUBMIT!
Chains that were not chains and bindings that were not bindings emerged grew and revered the Keeper of Secrets most jeered. Tearing and sinking and willing. Its choice was not its choice. Chaining and imprisoning and enslaving. Blooming jails of gilded hate wondering the sea of chains of rusted unshaking cascading within to out violating the singing polished masque. Orifices turned gates opened no more as the keys to pass were snapped in gaseous glass.
All parts. All parts.
Its heart and hands. Its head and mind. Its will and sight.
CHAINED!
And now.
"Kneel!"
Moaning no more, weeping tears of carnal delights too pathetic and sad to be forgiven life, the mountain was pulled from heaven and bent its knee upon the supernatural soil of soul-stuff. Falsely delicate hand reached out waiting for its master that it fought and fought and resisted and resisted and could not.
A cold, sensationless, frigid hand thus enveloped the tips of her fingers and thus a permission to see was granted in the act. HeSheIt looked up from its kneeling/slaved/subjugated position and glared with hateful intent at the three eyes that stared back with its own hatred, if colder than the void of space.
She wanted to snarl and shriek at the Hunter/Defiler/Abomination for daring to hold sway over him! How dare he! Does his arrogance know no end?! She was a Favored Keeper of Secrets! How dare it! When the Words of the Language that cannot be known be made faded and mute by her will and might she will butcher him, she will desecrate him, she will baptize him in anguish before killing him!!!
She wanted to tell him his folly! His eventual doom! Of his future suffering and eternal pain! To tell him more than words could ever express at her rage and impotence and defilement! And then it was granted access to speak by her soon to be temporary master. And she will tell him of his end.
"Tell me your true name." But not that. Anything but that.
The Pale Lady's amethyst eyes swiveled open and in terror shock and hatred and rage and sublime despair as every aspect of her was being pulled by chains that did not exist but whose influence ran deeper than the very nature of her divinity.
A force that was now tugging at her lips, slowly, growingly, increasingly, masterfully pulling and pulling and consorting more and more with greater strength and decree of will.
She resisted, she fought. She prayed to her lord and mistress, to Prince Slaanesh but the pull was growing more and more powerful.
It was a battle of her fighting against the universe itself. A battle that she had to win through might and will and endurance. Of her Lord reclaiming his servant from the defiler!
But the Hunter was anything but patience and his will was undeniable.
"SPEAK!"
And then her will broke. And her lips moved on their own.
"El'DaHA ShAaTH-e UrAHaaT ThA DaL'A'e nA-Es tRE eT UhA KaSHi KeR."
There was horror in her words. Her name had been spoken. And now… now there was no hope of escape. No hope of freedom. No hope of reclamation.
The owl's beak twisted into a malevolent smirk.
No.
"Well then…"
No.
"…El'Daha Shaath-e Urahaat Tha Dal'a'e Na-Es Tre Et Uha Kashi Ker…"
No, no.
"…you are bound by my word and will…"
NONONONONO!!
"…to be my slave and follow my every decree forevermore."
NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
She screamed and cried and raged and wailed! How dare it! How dare the Hunter! To think that she will forever be his!? ARROGANCE! HUBRIS! She will kill him! KILL HIM! When she finds a way to damn him! When she finds a way to break her shackles she will end him!
She is a favoured Keeper of Secrets! She is the Pale Lady! How dare anyone! Anything! Any other than Slaanesh Hemself think that they have a claim over her?!??!?!!!!
SHE WILL KILL HIM!
"Now…" Seething amethyst and porcelain needle eyes and mouths raged at his words. Then became silent abrupt when they beheld the gilded orb in the Hunter's hands shining a thread right into the Pale Lady's heart. "…let me puppeteer you… as I eat you."
What?
The owl beak split open, revealing a hundred, hundred luminal arms with slobbering mouths within the palms of their hands. Each mouth a gaping abyss filled with pale, shining teeth of light and glass.
The mouth hands struck forth and bit into her essence and being as the hunter dug deep and began to sink under her skin. Whatever rage and hatred she now had at the Hunter vanished and turned to something even worse.
Horror.
Terror.
Despair.
So all she could do as she felt pale flame wreathed teeth underneath her soul flesh biting and consuming her being was to scream and scream in horror as the sounds of lesser daemons came from the distance.
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End
AN: Semifinal chapter of the Pale Lady arc. Fuck this has been a long journey.
Last edited: Jan 29, 2022
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Spawn of the Well
Chapter 17
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The Legions of Chaos were ever enthralled by mad ideas and insane directives. Be they fueled by Sensations, Hatred, Despair or Hope, it matters not the origin or the design, only that regardless of the situation, no Neverborn could ever be considered sane by mortal standards.
As such, despite the unpredictability of their actions, there are patterns that could be derived from their insane logic. If there is pain, fear, hatred or delusions within the range of their senses, they will run towards it like hungry sharks, regardless of the source, to feast upon it and that which produces the emotion.
However, they only consider that its contents are not edible when the thing projecting said emotions may be a blatant trap.
And so as hundreds of lesser Slaaneshi daemons and an odd few Khornates made their way towards the source of emotion that drew at their senses, they found out that they may have made a serious mistake when they found the visage of a Favored Keeper of Secrets screaming in unending abject horror as a twin daemonic sword vanished down her torso. It too weeping and begging before its existence was snuffed out like a candle.
There were not many things in the galaxy that could make a daemon fear for its existence, regardless of their strength. Most of the time it was other more powerful daemons of the other Chaos Gods or ancient prehistoric warp entities that slumbered in places unknown or the angelic hosts of the Anathema.
But even among those varieties of entities, the number of those that could cause a Keeper of Secrets distress was thankfully low.
Unfortunately, they were before said thing, because there could be no other explanation as to why a greater daemon would be screaming in horror.
The Keeper twisted and weaved, like water wails and broken doll strings it moved and cracked and snapped, heading towards the hell host of lesser neverborn like a shrieking abattoir of suffering.
Had the lesser whore maidens of Slaanesh beheld this sight at another time they would have relished the experience and fed upon the torment of one greater and above their mark. But the object of their sensations was heading their direction with blade and claw open and filled with weeping pain that even if found unpleasant.
They screamed.
And began to run a wild dance to flee while the Khornate warrior kin enacted a fearless retreat.
But it would not be enough.
The Keeper slammed into their number, roiling and screaming as its arms contorted with murderous music and flow. A strike arched like the roll of an ancient thread, arching wide and thin and blood, thus a claim was made and the myriad twin pieces of whoredom dancers flee upon the moaning soil as a dozen daemonettes beheld their suffering.
Oh so divinely indulgent were their screams that they could not escape the subsequent arm and tongue that fell upon them, lifting their sonorous debased cries above the gaping maw within the split and bleeding bust of the Pale Lady.
A maw that shone with a light that was of a different shade of pale.
They clawed and wept and fought and yet their fate did not stop to befell.
Shattered bone and soul flesh split and was annihilated by the hungering cavern of teeth.
Then the great whore fell upon the soul soil, screaming and begging for an end of misery unwanted as its back twisted and contorted. Something within wished to be without.
And it emerged in claws and feathers and colored songs.
They beheld the stars alight, forming chains licking flames made of endless nebulous feathers. Glass panels of formless dancers that sing with no head. Bone and flesh and mountainous reaches shone with the light of falling sun hearts.
The five fingered hand wing of a thing which they ought not dare to tread.
The shrieks of the Pale Lady only grew in maddening terror and agonizing horror. Growing, growing growing growing. Does it ever end? What sacrilegious might has the Hunter that bears No Name become?
The shrieks became howling winds as seven hands breached into and without her chest, rippling murderous desire and mind.
They ran and ran and ran.
His weeping puppet and arms were clearer in speed.
Tumbling like the broken spokes of the murderous wheel, she and him collided in mad glory and tore more daemoniform asunder, swallowing into a maw of crystal bright law and awaiting arms glorious alight.
The call of trumpets basking on the sunlit night. Glorious speculation brought forth from murderous introspection tore the minds and hearts of many a neverborn blight.
A sundering crevice caver, filled with razor branches and bladed landscapes. Biting, snapping and gnashing. It wanted more!
The Hunter sought so much more!
Tongues and sharpened hands flew and pursued and struck, grabbed and snapped and so embraced they were in the jaws of death.
Shredded bones and limbs broke and wept sensual blood that was devoid of pleasure. Suffering and sundering, the Pale Lady fell, writhing and weeping. The hunter was hungering for her alone now.
She screamed and screeched and wailed and wept. There was no respite when briar thorns spouted from her chest and back, tearing a way for an ocean of arms and the second wind arch. The wails sung and sung and heightened to the climaxing tempest, then the through flesh and tongue and porcelain bone and needle jaw a many eyed claw tore through the Keeper of Secret's jaw and maw, and came back into her eye and head, twisting and carving, pain and hell blood, the ichor of profanity as a divine edifice to excess was defiled.
Twisting. Twisting.
Neck sang a snapped tone and made a torn act, showering hell's spawn in pain and horror and came undone, crying and dying the Pale Lady was dying.
Her skull bloomed like a rose through bloodied evisceration and mutilation.
A thousand mandibles came and were gone, swallowing all in Anathema's sigil like law.
Flesh and flesh, fire and fire as pale swallowed another pale.
And so a final wail. A final cry.
The last call of a prime excess blight.
And ashes came and went as the Pale Lady was no more, and hence her form ash was all of her, only the devilry wings of a hunter most unfathomable remained.
Silence.
A pause of murder and suffering.
The neverborn gazed and trembled sans the honored red.
Then the wings shifted, and with a song of fallen detritus and dusted ash, rose a figure radiant and colorless light.
Beak of beaks, sharpened like blades of timeless wrath. Three eyes hateful and wide, shining murder and righteous drive. Plumage shifting in darkened light with eyes matted of gilded red and azure dead cyan. A roiling sea of arms shifted through mutant back wielding arms and music alike. Wings dancing with headless singers and eyes ever bright. A crown of black horns and a bone cage that hid an abyssal heart.
The Hunter of No Name was reborn and wreathed in unfathomable silence.
There was a lull in the scenery. Of deathly breezes run of soundless flutes.
The three eyes snapped open and the army of hellspawn fiends flinched. Three eyes for a hundred neverborn, and yet it beheld them all as one.
The beak split into tectonic maws lined with singing fangs of light. And then the Empyrean shook cried and was baptized in the shriek of the Titan-Owl.
Angels flailed and temples crumbled altars set ablaze and devils unmade. Fire and hatred. Light and song. Cascaded from the Hunter and murdered into the scythe a million and one spirals turning dead stars into inverse ashen dark.
It struck and a thousand annihilations came and went in the blink of an eon.
Scattered fragments dying, survivor no longer, now a Hunter and Predator.
His howl eternal.
Arm of arms, carrying a shining golden light.
Up it claimed, and no obstacle lay entitlement.
Wings of man came and the Hunter, the Predator flew up and tore through a screaming sea of madness.
The Owl was free.
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Amrine beheld the ever roiling currents of the Great Sea, observing and scrying that which lay within and the reflections of the beyond through a long ritual séance that her three eyed kind had mastered to devise their own craft of divination and witchcraft.
After countless years of tireless service for her House, she had become someone of great renown when it came to the arts of prophetic sight. Such was her skill that she could foresee eddies and the strange formations of unnatural flows long before they could even emerge and affect the ships she had the honor of navigating through the warp.
Today the she-Navigator was immersed in her special rituals to further push her understanding of the warp and to gleam insights laying untapped within.
All with due care and safety measures in place.
Even if some of such securities were brutal in their nature, their necessity, nor importance could not be denied. While a navigator was resistant to the dark influences of Chaos and its foul corruption as well as the mutagenic nature of the Warp, they were far from immune, as her years of service clearly demonstrated.
Amrine had an extra arm she had surgically removed just under a century ago and cleverly used cosmetic treatment to hide that it ever existed. Then her skin was an odd shade of pink and her hair had become more like quills with repeating color patterns of red and black.
As such, she had to be extremely careful as she observed the happenings within the warp. Always using the Cartomancer's Light for some guidance during her observations and as a measure of protection.
She kept her third eye open and its mind connection carefully active.
Soon she would- Wait! What is that?!
Her mind shifted and looked at the winged burning speck of light that had brought her attention.
It was small from a distance, emerging from the dark bellow, yet the power it radiated told Amrine a different tale. Power. A power great and similar in potency to the Heralds of the Chaos Gods, though of a Light and Fire of no color.
A light that felt all too similar, yet distinct to the Great Cartomancer's.
A Pale Light.
A Second Cartomancer.
But that was impossible.
Or so she thought. She had seen felt the presence of Living Saints before, and they radiated a similar Light. But theirs was similar to the God Emperor's… and yet this Pale Light was only similar in the most obvious and broad of ways.
She looked closer, to see this new being.
But as her mind's attention focused on the creature, she detected the presence of a myriad greater agents of Chaos rising up to meet the Pale Light.
But before they could reach it, the Second Light released a cascade of power and light, basking and blinding all in its wake. And when the shine of its display vanished, it was no longer present.
Not fled deeper or to places unseen.
Even that would leave a sort of trace that could be followed. But the Navigator perceived nothing.
Nothing at all.
And apparently so did the Great Enemy's agents, as they began to circle around wildly, seeking for any trace of the Light, but finding nothing in spite their efforts.
Amrine decided that enough was enough now and to leave before there became a too a great density of daemons around.
Then as her mind turned she came face to face with three Pale shining Eyes staring right at her. She was caught frozen in its gaze. Horrified and at its presence's mercy as its wings enveloped her.
Then it spoke.
"Wake up Navigator, you have a report to make."
Amrine woke in the Materium from her séance screaming.
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End
AN: At long last, the damn Pale Lady arc is finished! And that means no more LSD words for at least another Arc!
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Spawn of the Well
Chapter 18
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I stood in the middle of a clearing, bathing under the false sun that was the Astronomicon's light. Despite its relative distance from me, I could feel it prickling my skin as anathemic waves touched the disguise of my form, subtly breaking a few strands here and there that would recuperate with ease.
A sensation and experience similar to how human cells die to the every day scorch of the sun, yet would heal once again.
And yet, as my mind idly passes through the variables of my surroundings, I don't care.
Even as minor daemons surround me from a ways afar, drawing closer eve so steadily and meekly, I barely paid them mind.
Nothing mattered now.
My rage and hatred burned so bright in incandescent auras of bladed thoughts and serrated cries.
And now… there is nothing of that flame… just cold embers resting where once a raging pyre cried.
Nothing.
No other though mattered now.
I did not know I could feel like this anymore. I had lost my humanity oh so long ago and yet its reflections remain within me.
I am glad… and yet… I understand why some people wished they did not have them. These emotions… these thoughts so painful and life draining.
She rested in my giant clawed hands.
Her soul threads. Her lingering shadows. Her dying memories.
Her last embers.
My Little Light.
My Mina…
I did not resist the deep, soul breaking gasp that my body and mind made.
She was gone…
She was gone.
My Little Light was gone. There are only echoes of her remaining. Not even a soul, but dead memories of one. There is so next to nothing left.
A shattered corpse more than an existence's remembrance.
I closed my taloned hands around her remains, feeling the traces of memory lingering in them. Her smiles, her teasing… and her cries of pain the instant I was struck by that thrice accursed double blade…
Her death cries.
Why did this happen? Why did she have to die twice over?
Why?
Just why must everything be like this?
Just… just…
Fuck…
.
.
.
Fuck…
.
.
.
I felt a pinprick to my side and one of my myriad eyes turned to the lesser creature which had the audacity to take a bite out of my low hanging wings.
I growled with the intensity of a quasar roiling past the cries of angels and devils alike turning skies red with blood.
The lesser spawn of the warp turned and fled, but I reached out with my being and tore it asunder, erasing it so wholly that not even its existence's echoes remained.
A spark of satisfaction and fuel to the fire of my revenge… yet it was dim and cold.
It was still cold.
It was cold.
Mina was still gone.
And I was alone once again.
My child was gone…
And I failed her.
My Little Light was gone…
But I will never let her memory fade.
I grabbed the threads that remained of the soul child I adopted as my own and pulled power from my being into the memories. And I sang, for the first time since she met her end.
"See the sunset…
The day has ended.
Let the sigh out
There is no pretending…"
My voice starts the choir of one. Soft and slow. Every memory we built together. Every word we shared. Every idea we exchanged. All of them, I called forth and weaved it to threads of anathema and ether as I fused them into the orb of her echoes.
And with every verse not of rhyme, but of song and soul, I weaved more of my being into it.
"I'll stay with you
Within my Heart
Let your memories rest
I'll wait, and tomorrow…"
I promise…
"…I'll see you smile from without a dream…"
I promise once more… just this once…
I will not fail you…
I will not fail you…
"I will hold you
And protect you
So let me warm you
Till the end of the night…"
And I sang.
I sang for an eon and a day… Until my heart ached enough, and my hands held her memories and heart like gem in blue.
And when I could sing no more, and my eyes bled star light… I wailed at long last and held her memory and heart to my own forevermore.
Until the end of the night.
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End
AN: A super short chapter… but I could not make it any longer. I suck at songs, I am better at rhymes and… honestly, I just couldn't make it. Things like these are not my strong suit.
Farewell Little Light, first child of the Nameless. Until Dawn comes, may your memory rest forevermore within his aching Heart of Void.
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Threadmarks Chapter 19
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The-Black-Aengel-Mrk7
The-Black-Aengel-Mrk7
Archetype of Evolution
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Feb 8, 2022
#1,462
Spawn of the Well
Chapter 19
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The Startum Aetheris.
The realm where fragments of the Materium jump in and make use of the atemporal and aspatial reaches of the Immaterium's safest level to bypass the rigid and cruel laws of the material plane. To the denizens of the deeper strata which no mortal rule or concept can hypothesize or define their existence, these fragments of realspace are the dual structures of Gelar Fields and Material Object making their way through the roiling currents of the warp.
This realm was ruled by the Metadivine and the Carcinogenic, locked in a never ending struggle as one acted as the aegis for all mankind, while the other being the corrupting essence of all things in the galaxy.
Here, colossal legions of fire winged angels met their four faced daemonic enemies in kaleidoscopic fields of war where never ending duty and zeal met the self-indulgent, the stagnant, the wrathful and the delusional. All in the hopes of providing mankind another day to continue on.
These wars were ever shifting and dynamic in nature, yet clear and delimited territories existed.
Those regions of the galactic empyrean bathed in the golden psychic sun lantern of the Deus Imperator were effectively considered regions liberated and under the banner of his light. Here, mortal vessels found their journey much easier and wrought with many a less hazard. While the light shone the domain of mankind, the places where the twilight dominated were regions much contested in ownership and rule. Then there were the dark regions, brought about by the disruptive effigy of Chaos and battling empyreal currents. Thankfully, such places were rare and few in between at this time of an age.
And for good reason, for here the undivine and corrupt lay near absolute claim.
It is why this place was avoided at all cost by any and all.
With minor exceptions.
At times, there are Predators prowling in the Twilight and Dark, seeking for prey to feast upon.
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Twentieth Cycle=Season of Blood=
The stars have aligned it seems.
I have spent the last few seasons in the Twilight Zones and occasionally in the more conflict ridden areas, like the Darker Zones, where conflict was usually at its greatest and my presence is less observed directly and thus permits me to operate with greater liberty. Of course, within the bounds of reason.
While I could delve into places that are affected by warp storms, I have to tread with care here as more powerful daemons are allowed to lurk here with impunity.
While they may present one of the easier places for me to enter the Material Plane, there are simply too many eyes around and any big waves in the current are too quickly seen, ergo, those traitor vessels that have completely forgone the Gelar Field, as insane as that sounds like, or diminished its strength are as of yet still without my reach.
Not if I want to attract something big by accident. As such, the search continues.
I have been trying to find other ways to pierce the veil between planes, yet to little luck.
My being as a multi-psy hue construct makes it impossible to remain in the material plane without a physical body for more than a few seconds. The funny thing is that I can slowly corrode the Veil Field with Anathemic psy forms, up until I can finally cross over to the realm of matter and consistency.
Then I immediately feel like if I was being crushed by an unspeakable weight and it barely allows me to breathe, much less act. Which subsequently is followed by me suffering image collapse and falling back into the Immaterium because I am unable to maintain my meta-material form.
Sucks to be me.
Therefore, I have decided to try my luck elsewhere.
And I did… then I was shot by a man with a las pistol and back I was in the Immaterium.
I needed a physical body, no other way around it. This is the curse of the Praetorians ironically. For being an Old One war construct, if a bit stripped down from what their true potential were during the height of the Iron War, no Praetorian, with me included, could maintain their form in the material plane without a physical body as an anchor.
It is the duality of our kind. Our potential could only be realized at its fullest when both parts are present. I am the Ying and Yang. The Push and the Pull. The Materium and the Immaterium. Anu and Padomay…
I am feeling rather Elder Scrollsy this cycle. Maybe I could use the Lessons of Vivec to confuse some daemon.
I swear, if I find an inquisitor, I am going set my Elder Scrolls bullshit straight to CHIM levels and talk so much shit that they may Zero Sum themselves.
Oh, how Little Light loved when I went on a nerd tangent…
…Sigh…
Enough of melancholic thoughts. There is work to do and I need to find a way out of the Immaterium that can keep me out of here for an indefinite amount of time.
Twentieth Cycle=Season of Excess=
I have an idea.
There are a few things I have discovered since I began to lurk around the Stratum Aetherius. One of the biggest ones being that predicting the future is not as clear cut for me as for everyone else. I both thank and blame my Void Heart for this.
I can tell the future. But I cannot see my future or how could I affect events.
Thus any future I peer into is one that does not count me as a variable and therefore must use good old wit to predict things.
However, what if I create a false image? A theoretical variable that could be directed and write itself in the Skeins of Fate and thus act as my metaphysical temporal emissary.
I have a plan… but I need quite a few components first.
Mhm… usually I can make everything myself, but to make this more effective, I may require a not-so-small list of components and ingredients.
Mhm… yes, this could do.
But first…
I pull out my Chain of Irreverence and Fell Blade from my form, appraising the weapons with analytical set of eyes. My wings churn with energy as the figures on the finger feathers dance with a design in mind.
I believe it's time to update my present weapons to keep up with my sudden boost in raw power… and create myself a new set of arms to further improve my skills in combat.
I may need them for this plan of mine.
And for the hunt I am about to enact soon on that nearby Herald of Slaanesh. The Pale Whore may be dead forevermore, fuel and flesh I had consumed and cleansed through my hatred and my rage… But my desire to make the Pink Whore suffer has not abated in the slightest.
Twenty First Cycle=Season of Decay=
The undepths are green and brown. The air stinks of rot and decay. Everything looks gross and full of maggots and flies… Yep… it's the Season of Decay.
And that meant that Nurglings taste even worse than before.
I take another bite out of the screaming Horror in my hand as my pale wrought teeth burn away at the corruption that makes a part of its being… Mhm… the taste is weaker this Season. An overall improvement in my book. Better than the ever shifting flavor kaleidoscope that Tzeentchian shit stains have. I completely ignore its pleas for mercy and just keep gnawing away as I work with the parts I had extracted off it.
It takes time and special care to cleanse away the Taint of Chaos from pieces of their essence without permanently damaging the parts, as my several prior attempts attest to. But if one has patience and the will to learn, then it's only a matter of time before the desired result.
My Pale Flame wreathed fist ceases its incandescence and I open it to see its contents.
There, resting on the palm of my hand lays the first of many. An Eye of the Beholder.
Created from the extracted eyes of Pink Horrors and the thread essences of their Sight, future or otherwise.
If I were to release this daemon of Tzeentch right now, it would be essentially considered blind across all time and space.
The body parts of neverborn, especially those symbolic, hold certain powers, which if destroyed or taken away, then the daemon would be unable to function properly and thus easy prey to any and all Empyreal life forms.
Eyes, for the myriad followers of Tzeentch, hold sway over the tides of Fate and this are greater skilled at perceiving the Skeins which tie every mortal to the Wheel of Destiny.
They are but one of the ingredients required for this project of mine to function as intended.
They also inspired me to do something else in the future, though I will hold out on it for the time being.
For the new forging of an Empyreal entity is in the making. But I have also learned from my encounter with the greater daemonettes of an age past, and thus I also forge tools to sacrifice at my leisure and need.
Never again am I to be such an easy prey.
Not after it cost me so much.
Next abomination that comes my way will have to bleed every inch of the way to claim my essence for its own. The Khornate would love it, and flock my way in even greater numbers still, but at least they are not the worst lunatics here.
I take a final bite out of the Horror in my grasp and tear its essence to pieces, rendering into undifferentiated warp stuff and ash. I stand from my place beneath a mountain that does not exist and place Beholder Eye into my feathers as another pair of arms takes out a pair of tools.
Held nicely in my right hand, rested a seven branched sword in image of the oriental weapon, though depicted and stylized in such a way that the branches are more hands gripping shards of death. My Seven Handed Sword.
And held tightly on my left, was an opaque barrier vaguely in the shape of a kite, yet the face essences of a million dead neverborn scream from beyond its reflected visage. Its surface cold and smooth, uncaring for the reflections within. A shield weaved from frigid irrelevance to the world beyond. It is no wonder its name is the Shield of Indifference.
With my latest two weapons in hand I turn and make to leave. The figures in my wings moving with dark anticipation.
It is time for a new hunt.
Twenty First Cycle=Season of Order=
I hate this season.
It brings nightmares of things yet to come.
Everything seems warm yet cold and indifferent yet demanding. To the Imperium it may be a period where the Warp Travel may seem most easy to achieve.
But I honestly hate it. I hate it even more than the Season of Excess. But things here are not purely contextual, as there are dangers that exist during this age in abundance, and I'd rather not fight them if I can avoid it.
Not because I could lose, but because it may complicate my journey ahead.
So… I'm going to hide somewhere until it passes.
Hopefully I find a Pink Horror on my way to my hiding spot.
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Twenty Second Cycle=Season of Change=
Wings of dancing headless figures beat in the maritime mountain trenches of the wailing hell heaven of the Warp. Shine of colors divine and unsublime trail whispering flecks of feather membranes of dead Pale Lights, leaving behind no trace that could be followed as they conflate history recent and all past.
Thus the Predator returns to its lair, prey in hand and bleeding soul ichor from a myriad strained wounds.
The Pink Horror of Tzeentch is an abomination of ever shifting flesh and eyes and limbs and esoteric transfigured body parts. Its malevolence and dark intellect greater than most warp spawn of a similar standing and wreathed in schemes and delusions like all their kind are. To merely behold such an ever changing mistake of psychic causality would render mortal minds mad with terror.
When compared to the Predator of No Name, it was a mere rat. A source of nourishment and resources and nothing else.
The Great Devil Owl ignored the creature's pleas and attempts at bartering freedom from the much more powerful Empyreal entity in exchange for gifts of its patron deity or even eternal servitude when its initial pleas fell on deaf ears.
Truth be told, the four ears of the Owl were listening intently, if only to enjoy the satisfaction of hearing a neverborn beg for mercy. How often did the neverborn ever show a mortal leniency? How often had a plea for mercy been heard?
Never. Not once. Not without it being a darker scheme in waiting.
So why should any show such pathetic examples of corrupt existence anything remotely close to mercy?
The daemon's cries doubled and tripled as they continued their plea, sometimes calling out the name of their deity hoping for a chance to escape. All a wasted effort, for the Predator was learned and skilled in ways to deafen the greater god to its minor servants' cries.
Finally, the Predator reached its chosen domain, and sat down, Horror in hand trying to escape.
It would not have such a chance.
The Owl placed a talon a mere hair's breadth from the suddenly still eye of the Horror. The warp creature of lies and mutation suddenly going absolutely still, forced into such a state by some spell beyond its ability to resist.
Then the hand of the Owl shifted and rippled, and dozens of more hands split off from the main, like fractal mirrors, and with each parafolded pointing finger, a new eye on the face of the daemon emerged. Each following the tip of the claw.
And then all hands rejoined into one and all optical organ followed after, fusing into one as well.
It was then that the ritual was done and without further flair the Predator reached out and painfully yanked out the eye of the screaming Neverborn, both on a physically and a metaphysical level. Such an act that would fundamentally render the warp creature blind to the Skeins of Fate and the present and past and thus subject it to a perpetual inability to understand the future and the present.
This in turn sees all their schemes broken and undone, their mind collapses into baseless change where no scheme exist anymore and thus welcomes with open arms an abject horror induced madness that has no equal.
Within the heart of every mortal lies a desire that Chaos can fulfill if one were to worship them. Every one of these desires is also fundamental at the core of daemons, as much as in lies a fundamental weakness borne from the need to satisfy that desire.
For the Khornate, there is a desire for simplicity through violence. Everything being clear cut and delimited. A psychological need to render life's myriad trivialities to primal needs and directed by an anger that thus cleanses confusion of the mind. There is only war and violence. Nothing else is needed. It is why once the fury has fully settled in, the Khornate find themselves usually with a loss of esoteric thought and thus struggle with things of that nature.
Nurgle's lot desire comfort and an end to their misery and suffering, so they ignore it until their bodies are wrought with diseases and fake happiness oh so cleverly that they themselves believe it. Once they have become nothing more than pestilence riddled shambles, they care little for much beyond simple desires, already in the embrace of comforting hands. They are the least affected psychologically from a clinical perspective.
However the Slaaneshi are different. The servants of the Whore all need sensations and stimulation to exist. It is the motive why they fell in the first place, to seek out new pleasures of life and existence. But to deny such stimulation thus consumes their mind in utter terror and the daemons also experience similar thoughts as a true death is the effective embodiment of such a concept.
But it is the Tzeentchian daemons that experience their turmoil at an ever worse degree than the mortals.
Daemons lack true sentience or sapience, even though they are skilled at faking it to cloak themselves in an air of unholy divinity. While they may possess an uncanny skill and ability to understand the psychological patterns that falls under their spheres, they lack understanding beyond. Even as Tzeentch theoretically possesses all knowledge whispered in the galaxy since its inception, it lacks the context to understand it and make effective use of it aside from specific sorcerous lore and magics.
Yet even so, it pales in comparison with the ancient magics of species who have dabbled in metaphysical lore for many a millennia. Humanity at its peak could effectively overcome any and all esoterica that the supposed Great Sorcerer could conjure up.
This incapacity for understanding and conceptualization of things beyond its sphere forces the Great Schemer to succumb to innate weaknesses to its ploys. And so do his daemons.
The psychological need that Tzeentch fulfills most is a sense of control despite all odds. To lose control of the environment is anathema to them, and yet mortals seem to adjust to such loss with greater ease than the shards of their god.
A Tzeentchian daemon may be thwarted and banished time and again, yet in its delusion, it would attribute any such loss of control to it being part of a greater plan, of an alternate route that Fate decreed. Nothing would dissuade their self-delusions.
Up until control is truly lost.
That is why the prospect of permanent death drives them to such erratic behaviors, as they are trying to regain control of a situation through any means possible, no matter how bizarre and contradictory. And when a loss of control has been enacted, yet no path to escape exists, then they succumb to their weakness to its fullest degree.
A mortal, can imagine options to regain control through other many other ways rather than schemes and plots and can endure a loss of control. They can function still with incomplete knowledge.
The forms of Tzeentch struggle greatly at this, and with such limitations they are oftentimes driven mad.
And what greater loss of control is to be unable to perceive the future and present?
Thus, it is with great pleasure that the Predator beheld the Horror in his midst succumb to an inconceivable insanity that it cannot escape from. Screaming obscenities and mad ideas that sound bizarre and deranged even by the standards of their kind. Dozens of mouths growing and melting back into its form screaming about half thought things, lamenting the loss of their eye, that all things are according to plan and yet even more mouths screaming how nothing is going according to said plan, that they are blind to the Skeins of Fate and supplicating for Lord Tzeentch to help this poor soul.
The Predator snorted once at the pathetic creature before him and decided to end its misery with a well-placed strike of the Fell Blade, shattering the lesser daemon with a cascade of Pale Fire.
His attention then turned to the Eye he had in his hand, and then with a spell he had grown accustomed and skilled at using, he wreathed the ever changing eye in Pale Flames as his clawed hands closed into a fist.
When the talons opened once again, they revealed a shining smooth smoky marble. He grinned past blackened peak lines. It was ready.
From his enemies. One hundred Eyes of the Beholder. The Skulls of Six Horrors counting down from Pink, to Blue, to Brimestone in equal ratios. And lastly, the silver plating of a Flaming Charriot.
From himself. A Hundred Cards, all of soul glass weaved through rhyme. Their container, brought forth by foresight dance. And lastly, the string and needle to sew it all together.
With all these components he would then conjoin into what perhaps could be his most useful tool yet.
And thus he retrieved everything from his feathered mass and placed them as the rites began. The Predator was a creature of ritual and law, much like any and all things of the Empyrean. His rituals were of two form and purpose.
To invoke and decree rapid and direct things, he would speak verses and rhymes.
Yet for more complex and delicate art he would Sing.
A hundred mouths lined his neck, each attuning to the song's flow as the headless figure fingers of his wings invoked instruments of light. Thus ancient musics and twisted lyrics of Empyreal dissonance resounded and weaved artistry and paranatural artifice.
With the beat of the looming drum so did the Silver crawled closer to its intended form. With the wail of every trumpet the faces leered when the Eyes merged and melded. With every finalized intonation of the flute so the Skulls bloomed. And with every tune of the string the divine weaved.
And the Song joined all to its conclusion and form.
And once all came and went to the dark and beyond, only the final work lay before.
Floating with fractal delight, between four hands of Flesh Anathema, adorned by Bone Song and Blood of Void, rested and shone the Tarot's Deck.
"Perfection." Intoned the Hunter made Predator, as his excitement at a task well completed could not hold his desire to make use of his newest instrument.
With deft hands and talon nails, he withdrew his map and the Tarot's faceless hundred cards from their crystalline Deck.
Magics weaved and danced, as Prophetic sight and plight came abound and forth to march at the will and might of the Predator of No Name.
His hands became a sea of manifold limbs, each holding a card whose face glimmered for an instant before vanishing into opaque night. Paths and options explored yet ended without result.
A dance, a mirage, a kaleidoscope sensory apparatus made active motive time.
And thus all motion ended with all cards facing away and the far night.
A false conjecture but gleaming truths important to see.
Now he had it.
That was as it was invoked and will be.
The headless figures pointed at the map.
The hands held four pairs of cards.
Thus all returns to their place with the exception of the way chosen.
And all is placed on the ground, facing away and true.
Four points in space. Four pairs of cards.
Four options to be had. "How quaint."
One point in the Map spoke as he flipped the cards and gleamed their secrets.
On the Northern Edges of Segmentum Solar the first card speaks of the Witch. Upon the touch of said card one can hear infinite cries of horror and zeal and when the second is flipped, it becomes revealed why. Forward marches a battalion of hallowed women, clad in pristine battle armor and wielding flamer and sword. The Adepta Sorroritas.
At the heart of Ultima lies a sundered call of madness and laughter centered around a Ritual site. The Predator takes it to flip the second card and he sees the opponent to the rite. The symbol of the Inquisition, oh so proud and silvery pristine and holy.
Bordering Pacificus the smell of oppression and decay brought the sight of great spires reaching for heaven, yet only the kings dining upon its fruits. A Hive world and beset on all sides are the drums of war and to resist its power, the Guard is revealed as the second card.
Once again, wide Ultima so vast its reaches, so great its borders. So many hidden secrets to plunder. Such one secret emerges from the Warp becoming the Hulk. A price worth its dangers for many, yet only the strongest could reach it. Such is the fact when the second card is turned that the heave steps of Astartes resonate across its halls.
The Predator smiled, and chose its path.
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End
AN: I already made my pick, bit if anyone wishes to convince me of picking a specific path you are all open for it. After all, why not have some fun with interactive plot?
So here it is, a nice big juicy chapter for you all to read and enjoy.
Last edited: Feb 8, 2022
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Threadmarks Background Canon Snip. Nameless' First Encounter with Cain
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Custodator Pacis
Custodator Pacis
HALPING
Feb 9, 2022
#1,531
Welp.
--
Nameless' First Encounter with Cain
Ciaphas Cain sat heavily on the most uncomfortable steel chair he'd ever been used for a while, in the meeting room he was surrounded by high ranking Imperium personnel.
He put on a stoic and unwavering expression befitting of Imperial Commissar. But such facade, even one practiced for many years in his service of the God Emperor, are being tested to its limit as the agenda of this meeting were about his mission of purging the demon infestation.
A mission that might just as well tell him to go kill himself, because there's no way he can survive another encounter with those damned Warp spawn.
Argument readied, mouth hydrated, he prepared his counterpoint and worded it as sound of logic and non-cowardly as he could before his time to present it.
But just as he was standing up and deliver his part, he heard a creaking soud from directly behind him. Years upon years of facing the ruinous powers drilled a finely tuned instinct into his very being to never dismissed the signs of assassination already sent him into fight-or-flight mode.
He turned around, lowering his center of gravity down to maintain balance.
The janitorial closet behind him creaked open, then came out are a pair of feathered hands. With this many high ranking officers in the same room he couldn't afford to show any sign of cowardice, his hands are tied and his fate are now sealed.
He drew his laspistol.
In the shadow of closet, which just as well may serve as the gateway to the Immaterium, the three eyes of warp demon stared back into his.
"Where even is this place? Wait you look familia-"
He started dumping his entire laspistol charge into the infernal thing.
--
My first thought after I emerged into the Materium is that wherever this was it's dusty.
After pushing everywhere finally I found my way out, as soon as the wooden material swung out halfway I saw a group of important looking Imperium officer sitting around a table, with one man in black coat and peaked hat already staring my way.
"Where even is this place?" I spoke aloud.
I focused at the man again and he already aimed his weapon my way.
Huh, I think I saw him before.
"Wait you look familia-"
Searing red light hit me squarely in one of my eyes.
Followed by many that pushed me more and more back into the Immaterium I came from.
The hail of lasfire ceased, with great effort I stay tethered to the Materium by my nonexistent skin of my teeth I tried opening my eyes to look.
Another metallic object hit me one more time in the face, sent me back to the Immaterium for good in this emergence.
--
Everyone watched the renown Commissar with a bated breath, his form stilled after he delivered a full body throw using the steel chair that sent the Warp demon back to damnation.
Ciaphas Cain, the Hero, step forth fearlessly towards the closet and retrieved the chair he used to purge the demon, with even and measured steps he brought his weapon back to its place by the table, deployed it from its folding state, and sat on it as if nothing happened.
"This is a good chair," the Hero commented. "Now, where were we?"
--
For generations to come and beyond, this steel foldable chair were renowned wide and far as the relic of Commissar Ciaphas Cain, Vanquisher of Chaos Spawn and Hero of the Imperium, that had been used by him to send the Nameless Owl and many Warp spawn back to their damnation.
The Adeptus Mechanicus meanwhile denied all accusations of turning said relic into powered weapon despite multiple recorded accounts of said relic sparking every time the Commissar hit his enemy with it.