140 – Warming Up

140 – Warming Up

“Push through, we must secure the Artefact!” the Salamander captain roared as he himself followed his own command and crashed through the crowd of Bloodletters like a human-shaped wrecking ball.

His men followed him with roars of their own and burning phosphorus and plasma fire soon burned a scorching path ahead of the Salamanders. They took a large detour, keeping their distance from the Greater Daemon and the group fighting them and headed towards the centre of the colossal cavernous hall.

I followed the direction they headed in with my eyes, then sent out a camouflaged swarm of drones to scout and found an altar at the middle island. It was made of a single titanic slab of obsidian and had hundreds of little runes carved into its side.

“It seems they are abandoning their kin,” Trazyn noted evenly. “Disappointing. The Daemons already have the upper hand. I might really have to part with another one of my tesseracts.”

Ka’Bandha was a monster, easily keeping up with the Custodian even as the Grey Knights did their anti-daemon magic on him. His form was visibly quivering at the edges, as if reality itself was trying to push him back down into the Warp, but was failing.

Is he ... not fully manifested? I rubbed my chin thoughtfully, trying to get a feel for the daemon and noticed that he didn’t have a damned anchor.

This crazy fuck was staying in realspace on nothing more than pure will and hatred, he just pushed through the veil because he just felt like it. Which was why the Grey Knights and the Custodian were still in the fight, most of his focus and power must be going towards maintaining his manifestation.

Interesting. If he could do it, so could I. Meaning, technically, the loss of both of my avatars might not actually consign me to an eternity of floating above the Warp like an angry white cloud. I could actually re-enter realspace.

Good to know.

[You already could, with the Crotalid hymn.]

Oh.

Anyway! It seemed as though the Salamanders would be the ones in need of our help after all, the whole lot of them were cutting down hundreds of daemons every moment, but they were getting pushed away from the centre.

“I’m assuming you’d need them to actually activate that altar thingy?” I asked.

“I do indeed,” Trazyn said, his green glowing gaze narrowing.

“Want me to help them out a bit? Get them over to the finish line?”

“That would be appreciated,” he said. “But do make sure you don’t attract the Custodian onto yourself. If he leaves the fight with the Greater Daemon the rest of them will fall apart quickly.”

“Sure, I’ll be stealthy!”

Under the cover of camouflage, I shot off towards the horde of daemons. Bloodletters, the most common Lesser Daemons of Khorne, were the most numerous here too, but I could see Bloodcrushers, the mounted cavalry of the God of Blood riding on Flesh Hounds.

Those were prime targets for the Salamander’s melta fire, though, so the few of them that came were already reduced to burning carcasses. I was silent, invisible, and quicker than anything else in here aside from the Custodes and the gigantic Greater Daemon.

Heads went flying, legs detached at the knees, arms wielding whips flew through the air and the daemonic horde slowed. I circled around the Salamanders, disrupting the daemon’s charge and dodged around plumes of burning phosphorus easily.

I was reduced back to using a Hive Tyrant grade set of claws on my hand to rip my enemies apart, and my speed was much diminished compared to my other avatar, but the Lesser Daemons were still just fodder.

Slowly, the Salamanders started gaining ground once more and with an enthusiastic ‘CHAAAARGEEE!’ from the captain, they were once again on the move. I kept up with them easily, slipping around and in between the daemons to thin them out and disrupt them as much as possible before the marines reached them.

They reached the first magma river soon enough and jumped over its five metre width like it was nothing. I’d been wondering how they’d get over it, so that was anticlimactic. With a sigh, I jumped after them and slipped back into the fray. Daemons were already waiting for them on the other bank of the river, so I had my work cut out for me.

The Salamanders whose life I’d saved countless times didn’t care, and soon I had to put up a damned psychic barrier to divert their assault. Flames coated it from the outside, bathing it all in burning phosphorus. It was annoying. They were making me waste soul energy.

“Stop that or we’ll have the Wyrm attack the lot of you!” I shouted at the assholes, empowering my voice with a hint of soul energy, and the assault on us quickly dried up. “That’s what I fucking thought. Numbskulls.”

“I believe they suspect we are intending to take their artefact,” Trazyn said evenly, turning towards the altar. He watched on in fascination as the Captain pushed in little finger-sized buttons on the obsidian construct. “What a curious construct.”

Everything seemed to be going well, which is of course a big no-no in this galaxy. The moment I found myself thinking that we might actually manage to do this little quest of Trazyn’s was the moment I felt a deep reverberation go through the ground beneath my feet.

“It is done,” the Captain said, his voice weary as he turned around to stare at the two of us. I practically felt his gaze narrow and sharpen as it took us in. There was hate in there, and a fair bit of defiance. “A Necron and ... a human? Wait! I know you, you metallic bastard! KILL HIM! HE WANTS THE ARTEFACT!”

That was all the Salamanders needed to open fire on us again, and I once again threw up a barrier that held their flames and bolter shells at bay. I didn’t care about them, not now, not with what I could feel.

I fell on my knees, my bare palms landing on the granite floor as I upgraded my tactile sense to the limit and overcharged them with bio-energy. Then shifted them once more, as my mind-cores found a handy little template from some animal sample we got that had pretty advanced seismic senses.

“Something is coming,” Trazyn said, likewise ignoring the Salamanders as he knocked his staff on the ground.

“There are twelve of them,” I said, my hands now looking like oversized frog-feet, but it was worth it. The seismic sense told me everything I needed to know. “They are ... burrowing through the granite? No, there are probably magma tunnels, they are swimming up in those. Whatever these things are, they are huge and will be here in half a minute.”

“Can you handle those things?” he asked, his gaze turning to stare in an apparently random direction.

“Perhaps,” I said. “If they are organic and non-psychic, I can probably kill them with little trouble. Though with how many of them there are ... it might take a while.”

“Your ‘stalker’ is back,” Trazyn said, swinging his staff onto the ground and sending out a crackling pulse of energy that flowed over the ground. It was just at the perfect moment too, as it sent the Custodian landing there barreling back into a river of magma before he could do anything. “Persistent.”

“He’s pretty annoying, isn’t he?” I asked with a smirk, thinking of a way to get through this debacle without wasting more of my soul energy or sacrificing the emergency bio-energy stores in my Realm.

[Potential Solution (If the incoming foes are organic): Consume them for bio-energy -> Recreate an adequate bio-form for combating the Custodian -> kill the Custodian -> Profit?]

“Can you hold the golden boy off while I take care of the incoming things from below?” I asked.

“Not if these Astartes keep hounding me from behind and you remove your barrier.”

Oh well. I should have enough bio-energy for that. I thought, then shrugged and sent two dozen globules of eldritch flesh that rapidly morphed into different Tyranid-esque forms.

Half of them were of the psychic variant, and would protect Trazyn from attacks while the other half were Lictors-like drones. You know the drill. Protect Trazyn. You don’t have to kill the enemies, but keep them from bothering the Necron.

[Acknowledged.]

I stood up, rolled my shoulders and cracked my neck as I counted down in my head.

... 5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... 0 ... Hello? Where are yo-

Three giants burst out of the magma tunnels with a bellowing roar.

I grinned. It was show time.