41 – Aftershock

41 – AftershockMy vision wasn't swimming by the time I saw the first Shadows walking through the dark tunnels with headlights and putting a few rounds of lasfire into every little horror that thought they could hide by pretending to be dead. I was still weak in my knees and breathing came hard but somehow I managed to walk in a confident stride with all the grace of an Eldar. I waved off a Shadow with some stripes on his shoulder pad signifying that he was either an officer or a squad leader before he could come up to me and ask something annoying as my makeshift armor melted off me and crawled back under my skin as it dissolved into hair-thin tendrils. To my satisfaction they managed to hold the line and all the Horrors were dead as far as my senses could reach, I followed my mental link to the tiny tendril I left on Selene with a tunnel-like focus, I didn't see all the other people and the Shadows staring at me with much more awe and fear than before, a part of my mind registered it but it didn't quite reach my conscious thoughts. I stumbled into the hall holding the ruins and saw Orion point towards me, I also saw Selene's face torn towards me with a frown, like she was about to berate me for being late but it was wiped off of her face as I stumbled on a brick poking out of the floor and face-planted into the hard ground. Hello, ground, nice to meet you. I closed my eyes as I sighed, unwilling to bother getting up at the moment, my whole body felt weak and frail. I felt like a single flick on my forehead would make my form shatter into thousands of shards like a plane of glass. I'm so fucking dumb, you don't fight crazy eldritch Psykers that crawled out of the Warp with Psyker powers, the only consistent was in WH lore to beat an overpowered Psyker is to go full ret- berserker on them with pure physical strength. I should have tried the Lictor form and ambushed him...why didn't I?....It was safer from range.... A thought struck me and I couldn't help but frown, was I scared of it? "Holy shit," I heard Selene say only a step away from me before I heard her kneel down next to me and then I felt myself get flipped over, "are you alright?" "No," I said with a strained smile, "but I'll be good in a few minutes." "What got you into this state?" her eyes were filled with worry and an undercurrent of righteous fury. "A bird," I coughed, no blood came out as I didn't actually have any physical injuries, "it spoke in riddles, it gave me a headache." "Oh come on," she almost hit the side of my head but held herself back, "be serious for a moment, you look like you are dying." "But I'm not," I said, my right hand reaching up and touching her cheek as I stared into her beautiful steel-coloured eyes, "and I'm already feeling better." She grabbed my hand and held it in her own, though the bulky gauntlet on her hands made it far less romantic than I'd have liked. "Should we bring something? A sleeping bag?" I heard the aged voice of Orion from somewhere close, "Don't bother, I have all I need." "It's alright," Selene waved the old man off, "I got this, you handle the aftermath." Once he left she sneaked her bulky arms under my back and legs and raised me up in what a 21st century nerd would refer to as a 'princess carry'. "How gallant," I murmured as I leant my head on her annoyingly armoured shoulder, it wasn't quite a real 'princess carry' if I couldn't feel the heat of her body and the softness of her body. In the meantime my metaphysical body was healing quickly, I was coursing soul-energy filled with the intent to heal and restore through every pore of my body and it was doing wonders to my psychic channels. My mindscape was also a bit fucked from all the energy rolling through it without much control on my part, I had to get the floating pyramid back into the center and clean up all the aimlessly floating chaotic soul energy. Soul energy wasn't as annoying to clean up as warp energy but once I gave it some sort of intent it was like a hyperactive kitten on LSD and I had to tell it that it could calm down. She took me over to a larger tent set up at the edge of the ruins and pushed the flap open with her shoulder and consequently with my head. "Ow," I moaned as it slapped me in the face even if I barely felt it. "Oh, sorry," said Selene sheepishly as she placed me down on a bed, "you can rest here as long as you want." "Stay," I said as she turned to leave, "I can't heal without you holding my hand." She looked at me in a way that told me she knew I was spewing bullshit but with a sigh, she sat down next to the bed and clicked her gauntlet off before pulling my hand into it, then she started caressing the back of my hand with her thumb. "Aren't you like 700?" she wondered out loud. "Mhmm, and?" "Then why are you like this?" "The only way worth living is to enjoy life," I nodded sagely as I smiled at how her soft fingers carefully held my hand like it was some delicate art piece. "So what was this bird that beat you up like?" she changed the topic after a moment of silence. "Annoying," I huffed but my shoulders slumped a moment later, "it's been a while since something didn't die from a single bolt of Eldritch Blast." "So it gave you an actual fight?" "Yeaaaaah, you could say that," I stared at the ceiling, "it could have given me much more of a beating if it wanted to, I think." I watched her from the corner of my eye, her lips parted as if she was going to speak up but she reluctantly closed them before any sound could escape them. I was far too tired at the moment to urge her to talk, the silence was comfortable and with my arm encased in her gentle grasp, I let myself relax. Silence followed with none of us speaking up but she continued to caress my hand and that much was enough to make me happy, how long has it been since I held the hand of another person? Far too long, many things left me but it seems I still starve for physical contact. I closed my eyes as it seemed Selene sank deeply into her thoughts, I focused on guiding the energy circulating in my body and gave my whole attention to healing myself. "This is more complicated than I thought," I wondered aloud as Zedev's judging crimson gaze bore into the side of my face, I was sure if he had laser sight my skull would already be penetrated by it. It's been around half a day since I came stumbling back into the camp and around two hours since I released Selene from her hand-holding duty, I've finished healing my metaphysical body hours before but nobody could fault me for a few hours of relaxing after such a strenuous fight. Do they even know what a Greater Demon is, would they lose their minds if they knew one of those was less than a kilometer away from this place? He didn't even say anything as I ran my fingertips over the etched symbols and geometric shapes on the Gate. To be honest I sort of expected it to just need some insertion of soul/warp energy and it'd get that portal up and running in no time but as it turned out the space elves put a fuck ton of safety features into their Webway Gates. Trying to circulate my energy through the circular Gate was my current goal which was obstructed by having to lockpick a psychic lock every damned millimeter of the way. The locks seemed entirely random and each took a considerable amount of both time and effort on my part. After ten or so minutes the first one in my way which was already half--open when I bumped into it snapped open which caused the servoskulls to fly around erratically as Zedev focused on me with such intensity that I thought he'd pick me up and start swinging me back and forth by my shoulders until I explained what I'd just done. One of his mechanical arms started reaching for me before he caught himself, his hunched spine straightened a little as the Magos considered me again. "Query: What did you do?" "I lockpicked one of the psychic locks on it." Was a staring contest between a being like me and a cyborg like the Magos fated to continue until eternity? No, one of us would run out of fuel first and I sure as hell wasn't going to be that one. The Magos seemed to have realized the futility of his actions and while his gaze didn't leave me it lost most of the heat behind it. "Request: Elaborate." "Sure," I said with a smirk as I turned to run my palm over the alien contraption, "I tried to circulate warp energy through this gate at first but I bumped into a half-opened lock around...here," my finger stopped right above the place, "I spent the last ten or so minutes trying to tease it open and I finally managed it just now." "Fascinating." "How far can our sensors reach?" I asked, changing the subject. "Uncertain: Depends on how accurate it has to be...with the loss of the Wanderer most of our long-range sensors are gone as well." "I want to know how long we have until bugs start falling from the sky." "The gravitational shockwave of them disengaging their FTL systems at the edge of the star system should be the first thing we could sense with what we have." "From there it should take anything from a week to a month," I thought aloud. "Affirmative: that matches recorded data of the Tyranids." "I guess I'm not sleeping for a few weeks then," I shrugged with fake dread on my face. "Suggestion: If you lose functionality midway through your efforts would be wasted, I recommend taking time to ... rest." "Nice of you to worry," I said lightly, knowing he only said it because the tin can loathed the idea of dying, "but I can go for a few months without sleep, I can handle a few weeks without a problem." "Acknowledged: I will keep monitoring your functionality." "Much appreciated," I rolled my eyes, "SELENE!" "WHAT?" the woman shouted back from the other end of the ruins. I jogged up to her, carefully stepping around any part of the ruin that might be important. I spent some time after recovering just observing the engravings and faded pictographs on the walls, I didn't know the Eldar language and neither did I understand the weird hieroglyphs on the walls but there were some paintings too which did manage to jog my memory. The few intact paintings flashed in my mind, I knew one of the depicted figures in the middle of slaughtering another enormous being to be Khaine the Eldar god of Murder and every shit thing associated with it like cruelty, bloodshed, war and other cute stuff like that. This made me assume the rest of the forms were the other Eldar gods but I couldn't be sure, I didn't remember how they were supposed to look. "How far can those Thunderhawks get from the planet?" I asked as I slid up next to her. "Orion?" the woman glanced at her new second in command. "The fuel might be the biggest problem as of now but it should take the ships third-way out of the system but it'd take at least two weeks." I let the silence stretch a bit as I thought through my options, there was a chance that I could crack that Webway Gate before the bugs arrived but taking the effort to hold up the fleet for a bit or distract them would calm my nerves a bit. I was strong sure but as I was right now I didn't think I could protect even myself from a full-blown Tyranid incursion. The bugs weren't dumb animals, once they understood that only acid and corrosive stuff worked on me they were going to send an ocean's worth of it on me combined with whatever bioweapon they managed to cook up. I could eat bacteria and stuff but there were viruses and some poisons that did more damage to my reserves than eating them refilled. Some nerve agents could still work on me too, it'd only take a second for an entire splinter fleet to rip me apart. Orbital bombardment was something I wanted to avoid and based on my simulations I had the greatest chance at success if I went out and ambushed the fleet before they reached the planet. If I killed the Norn Queen at the center of the fleet all of them would descend into a frenzy before a new one was rapidly grown. The Psychic shockwave of the monster's death would be a Gamma class event too, by the Imperial classification system. I wasn't exactly sure what that entailed but it didn't sound good, it should be somewhat similar to what happened when those morons opened the Warp Portal in orbit just at a much larger scale. "What are you planning?" asked Selene with her narrowed eyes staring at my thoughtful visage, undoubtedly appreciating my finely crafted beauty. "I'd like to say that I'm confident in kicking that Gate over there into working order," I pointed over my shoulder with a thumb as my other hand came to rest on my hip, "but I think we should take the effort to slow them down." Her eyes widened as she thought she understood what I meant, "What do you think?" Selene glanced at Orion. "I don't know how large that fleet is," the old man ran his fingers through his short beard, "but I don't think two Thunderhawks are going to distract them for long." "Oh," I acted like he'd just said something surprisingly moronic, "but you see...I'm going to be the distraction." I couldn't help but grin at their dumbfounded looks, they were surely thinking 'What the hell is she talking about?'. If I didn't stay here who'd lockpick the gate? I flashed a psychic light, blinding everyone around me for a brief second, and by the time they regained their eyesight, there were three of me. The two newcomers standing behind me like bodyguards, covered from the neck down in chitinous armour as I was unwilling to give the drones any of my clothes. "If you can get one of these on any of the ships that ship falls," I declared, making my drones grin smugly behind me through my newly established pseudo-broodmind. Not too surprisingly all of the people who had their faces uncovered had to pick their jaws up from the floor. They didn't know yet that this was a turning point, they knew of my ability now. It was either them becoming my allies before we reconnected with the imperium or them going missing in the Webway. That might sound cruel and now with all the efforts I've gone to I felt guilt threatening to make me doubt my decision but it cannot be helped, I found that I don't exactly like wearing a mask all the time and making myself appear infinitely less powerful than I actually was. Zedev's astonishment when I replicated his prized samples, Selene's awe and confusion at my last action were both like a drug to me. I realized I loved it, the attention, breaking their concepts of common sense. I especially looked forward to pulling the rug out from under them and seeing how beings of this galaxy reacted to hope, not the superficial and esoteric hope that faith gave but a realistic hope they could feel and experience. How would an Eldar react when I tore of The Prince of Pleasure's grabby claws from their souls I wonder? Craftworld Ulthwé The Farseer awoke from deep meditation with a start, his well-organized mind becoming tumultuous like an untamable sea from one moment to the next. Prophecies, predictions and plans he has cultivated for thousands of years and used to guide his craftworld and by extension, the remains of his race into an optimal future vanished and thousands, no millions of new options sprang into being. Nothing was the same and the man who's lived for more than ten thousand years, watched the Great Crusade of humanity play out and watched helplessly as Chaos sunk its claws into humanity despite his efforts to prevent it. Fate was once again intent on defying him. Despite his mounting headache, the Farseer let his consciousness take in all the new possible futures, he cataloged and organized. He wasn't interested at the moment in what the future held but in what was the thing that kicked fate and destiny off a cliff. In less than a minute the man found the epicenter, a section of space held nominally by the Imperium sandwiched between the Tau and the detestable Necrons. A Star illuminated the great darkness that has covered the immaterium for 60 million years for but a minute. A Star-like no like no other he'd ever seen, it was brilliant white, untainted by the corruption and malice of this galaxy. Then it was gone, he grimaced as the star blinked out, it didn't die, of that he was sure but it shimmered out of existence, hiding behind the veil of both reality and irreality in a place where neither Fate nor Destiny could get ahold of it. The millions of new prophecies vanished, he tried to hold onto them but it was meaningless, like trying to hold onto air. Nothing remained, not a single sign of what had transpired and for a moment the old Asuryani doubted his own memory. The elder stood up, throughout his visions he caught a few glimpses, among them he saw glimpses at a brighter future even while he was focused on searching for the epicenter of the phenomenon. The dire destiny of his race and the galaxy at large that he saw as inevitable before was cast into doubt, there may be a chance still to defy She Who Thirsts. "Maybe..." the elder murmured as he got ready to send delegations to investigate this occurrence, "This time I will step carefully." The last time he tried to play with fate in such a way he almost lost his life. This time, it would be different.