74 – Discussions

74 – DiscussionsLuis Dante

His feet touched down with a loud thud as his jump pack's ignition cut off. He bounded through the gate with the men he took out for this sortie following behind him.

The portcullis fell down right as the last Marine stepped through while the constant firing of auto cannons atop the battlements held back the Swarm.

"My Lord," Mephiston greeted him, the Chief Librarian having been awaiting his return.

"Speak," Dante spoke as he waved him to follow.

"Private," Mephiston said in his dark, whisper-like voice. He always had that certain weakness to his tone when the sun was up in the sky. "About what you asked."

"I see." the two of them walked in silence. The fortress was the most sacred of locations to their chapter and they knew it like the back of their hands. Dante navigated the hallways filled with rushing people, finding a room set aside for privacy.

The two stepped inside and even if it was redundant, with Mephiston being right next to him, Dante engaged all the regular protections against eavesdroppers and psychic intrusion.

"The ward is set," the chief librarian spoke in a whispered sigh.

"What have you learned?" Dante cut right into it and Mephiston caught his meaning. The two of them had agreed on specific turns of phrases and signals to communicate in during the negotiation.

Right as they left, the Librarian excused himself to meditate and dwell on the happenings and grasp the meanings hidden behind the deceitful veil of words.

Why didn't you kill 'her' or 'incapacitate' her? Was his real question the Chapter Master asked.

"I failed to sense her presence."

"She lacks a psychic presence?" Dante frowned behind his mask.

"No," Mephiston answered, the shake of his head only conveyed in his tone. "It was there, but out of my grasp, ethereal and beyond my senses."

"So she is not a blank."

"That is certain."

"What manner of being is she, then?"Gét latest novel chapters on nov(e)lbj/n(.)c/om

"I do not know," said Mephiston in the same, dispassionate voice. "Her power eludes me, yet I know it is there. She is something I haven’t encountered before."

"Were you able to gleam anything else?" Dante was calm. Calmness came easily when he faced the horrors besieging humanity for centuries with naught but his axe and jump pack.

"The Black Rage fears her," Mephiston said with a dark glee. "The black angel hates her."

"I suspect," Dante reconsidered his next words, but no matter how much he went through them, they still rang true. "So does the Sanguinor."

That wiped the glee off of the pale librarian.

"Beings of the Warp, both."

"Indeed."

"It would be ... curious to see how demons react to her."

"Enough of that," said Dante, cutting off the Librarian's musings. "If you had to guess based on what you know, how strong would you say she is?"

"There are layers to that question," hummed Mephiston with grim amusement. "What is certain is that the defences of her mind made me doubt the success of a telepathic attack."

"A strong mind is the sign of a powerful Psyker."

"Indeed."

"I suppose we will see the extent of her power today," Dante mused. "If she plans on actually aiding us."

"Her choice of compensation was ... concerning."

"Worse people than her have our genetic material," Dante would have shrugged if he could have.

When heretical lunatics like Fabius Bile were in possession of pure Blood Angel geneseed, he couldn't be bothered to worry about a few locks of hair to someone who was already a menace even without whatever power she could extract from it.

Dante’s priority was holding the Fortress for as long as possble, he would have allied with Drukhari if he had to if it meant holding the Swarm for a week longer. Plus, the troublesome woman was likely to end up dead by the week’s end, along with what remained of the Angelic Host.

The ‘Swarmlord’ was dead and gone, but the swarm of ravenous aliens was relentless.

Mephiston hummed an acknowledgement.

"Let us see how much she is willing to show us," Mephiston murmured, and Dante agreed with him. He'd been out on sorties to take down large bio-forms ever since he left that negotiation. For some damned reason, there was even a giant earthworm popping up from time to time around the battlefield that no one could take down so far.

Let's see whether I can make her kill that thing.

"It was a very important question," I huffed. "And I thought I could cast Blink perfectly already." I scratched my cheek.

"Well," she sighed, shaking her head with a slight smile. "You definitely can't."

"Your organs remained in the right place." I defended myself.

"It felt like my brain was rolling around in my skull."

"Mhmmm," I nodded, leaning in to look at her head. A trickle of psychic energy flooding my ocular system — my eyes and their central control system — allowed my sight to pierce through her soft skin and cranium to have a look at that brain inside.

Oooops. I gave her a concussion.

"Yep." I turned off my x-ray vision and suddenly found my face only inches away from Selene's, so I took the opportunity to give her a quick peck on her cheek before leaning back. "I gave you a concussion by accident, somehow you brain gained some extra velocity during the Blink."

She nodded at me, while giving me a look.

"I'll have to figure out why that is." I tapped my chin.

"How is it that only I got a concussion?"

"My brain is much less important for thinking and controlling my body than it is for you, plus I made some precautions." I shrugged. "For one, I fixated it in place by tendons connecting it to my cranium, and the fluid it floats in has some non-Newtonian properties, which helps a lot."

"I see," she nodded. "What's non-Newtonian?"

"This," I shrugged and made a bit of it in my palm. It was the same as those high school chemistry projects where you made these from flour and whatever. That is if you ignore where these come from.

I toyed with it, making it flow like a liquid before squeezing it tightly, causing it to escape my grip and show properties like a glob of wet sand.

"And that is inside your skull?" she asked with an obvious show of morbid curiosity on her face.

"Yep," I shrugged, reabsorbing the stuff.

"I see." she looked thoughtful, but shook her head a moment later. "So, what am I to do while you go worm hunting?"

"Well, if you are willing, of course, I might have a ... mission for you," I said with what I hoped was a mysterious smirk.

"What is it?" she asked with a glimmer of glee in her eyes. This girl loved the power I gave her, maybe even a bit too much, but oh well, so did I.

"I want you to procure some of those previously discussed test subjects."

She looked left and right doubtfully, then gave me a look. The white wasteland went on and on until it dipped below the horizon a few kilometers away. There was nothing here but boring sand.

Or so it would seem.

I could see all the living souls on Baal and a bit beyond quite easily, so I saw the few dozen human souls right below our feet huddling together like ants in a nest. It might feel like I am bullying these obviously Warp-tainted assholes, but they'd be excellent targets for Selene.

My one worry was whether they could somehow use her Psyker nature against her. I knew some Psykers went mad and fell just from looking at heretical runes and scriptures.

That could be a problem.

Would chaos cultists even work as test subjects? I'd need to see later, buuuuut they also had some untainted people down there. Initiates or prisoners maybe? Slaves or sacrifices?

Bad Echidna. If they are innocent, you shouldn't be ripping innocents’ souls from their body just to test your ideas ...

That would be the optimal course of action though, and I couldn't say I wouldn't be willing to test my idea on some sorry sods that turned into unwilling sacrifices if it meant I could keep Selene away from the demonic quartet's grasp.

Selene was just about to say something, but she stopped midway, her mouth hanging open as three tendrils of thick soul energy pierced into the ground below me.

I hummed as they burst into the underground rooms and caverns, questing for any denser concentration of chaos taint I could feel down there and washing them away with pure overwhelming power combined with a touch of Smite weaved into the tendrils.

I cared not as the cultists wailed, their single Psyker bursting into bloody ash under my power along with books, ink, scrolls and such joining him in his new ashen existence.

It only took five seconds before I stopped, scanning the whole thing another two times before I gave myself a satisfied nod.

Telekinesis flowed along the tendrils as I tore them out of the ground and with them came tonnes of sandstone and the rockrete wall of the underground hall closest to the surface.

"Chaos Cultists," I provided helpfully as Selene stared at the newly made gaping hole in the ground, probably also starting to hear the panicked shouts echoing out of it.

"I see," she gulped. "Okay."

"You can do this," I gave her a sideway hug. "I took care of anything that would have Inquisitors on your ass just for looking at them along with their lone Psyker. The rest should be run-of-the-mill cultists with lasguns and such."

She gave a more resolute nod to that. Good.

"Good hunting." I said with a smile.

"Yeah," the edge of her mouth quirked upwards. "Good hunting to you too."