19 – To et or not to etSo psychic powers ca more naturally than others, not because of my lacking potential but my inexperience. It was easy to turn my palm into a flathrower but making several objects float with telekinesis without crushing them into dust or accidentally smashing them into walls? Now that was a bit more challenging.
Telekinesis worked by coating an object in soul energy and controlling it through a tether connected to , it needed constant concentration to keep this up and even more if I wanted it to move as I wanted. It turned out that my new body's mind was just as adaptable as the rest of its eldritch parts and it didn't take long to have several smaller objects orbiting around like little planets around a star.
I added small fireballs into the mix, it worked mostly the sa just with the end of the tether constantly burning up. I wasn't sure how much of a vulnerability this tether connecting to them was in a fight, others might be able to just cut it with their own psychic attacks, making lose soul energy without it achieving anything useful.
From what I rembered the other types of powers psykers had were: Illusions, Invisibility, Precognition, and Biokinesis aside from the more complicated ones like mory Manipulation or Warp Travel. For obvious reasons, Biokinesis was the most interesting to , if I could use soul energy to create organic matter then my body's energy reserves could be easily replenished, giving a basically infinite lifespan as long as I could siphon energy from the Warp.
Not that I rembered anyone being capable of doing that, at most they healed wounds and cured diseases but Biokinesis in itself was an advanced power. On the other hand, shooting Eldritch Blasts, ca as naturally as it could, soul energy flashed out of my fingers in a beam of white light and smashed through a wall.
It was near instant and as basic and easy to control as any psychic power could be, it was, in essence shooting out soul energy from my fingers and making it obliterate whatever it touched first. Its ease didn't make it any less deadly though, quite the opposite, and it was much more cost-effective than doing the sa with my pyrokinesis or telekinesis.
I tested Biokinesis obviously, which resulted in having to stitch my body back together from more than a hundred separate parts. That will need much more control than I have right now.
In the next test, I wanted to strengthen my muscles purely with biokinesis, which resulted in only having my bones in said arm a mont later. My prior muscles now coating in a significant amount of gore. Ok, sure, let's leave that for later, I can practice control with the other abilities before this one.
Illusions and Invisibility ca almost as easily as the Eldritch Blast did, these relied not so much on control as on my imagination and visualization. Being an eldritch monstrosity with dozens of thought-streams going all over the place neither proved to be lacking.
For Invisibility, I coated myself in a film of energy and made light bend around through that, while Illusions required to give it substance in the form of soul energy while visualizing exactly what I wanted it to show.
As I wasn't in the mood to end up tossing myself into the warp by accident I decided to keep practicing these powers for now. I didn't know how to practice Precognition either so that was out too for now.
I was walking around while blasting walls, paintings, and sculptures into bits until I stumbled upon my original destination, the office of the dear governor of this dead planet. I walked in and took in the sight of the place, it was much more personal than the rest f the place, making assu he tended to spend most of his ti here when he wasn't politicking.
I plopped down into his extravagant leather chair, surely made of so near-extinct animal and treated by masters of their craft based on how comfortable it was. Wish I had dinsional storage just to keep this chair.
Next ca the exercise which would test my perseverance, I'd have to read through most of the stuff here. I decided to start with the sowhat well-hidden vault concealed behind a bookshelf of all things. Cliche as hell, but it was still cool.
I wasn't in the mood to search for secret switches or find the one book I'd need to move to make it open up so I opted for tearing the whole shelf out of its place which revealed the gleaming steel of the two-ter-tall vault behind it.
The Vault door left its place without needing to exercise myself too much, I used my physical strength instead of tearing it off with telekinesis to not waste too much of my energy. There was a near-infinite storage of Warp energy but replenishing my own soul energy was the most disturbing experience I have ever had the displeasure of experiencing and I say that having felt human corpses dissolve inside my body.
I spent the next couple of hours with my head buried in books and scrolls, trying to figure out whatever the fuck is going on around these parts. I surprisingly found what I wanted, the governor had a regional map with all of the 'major threats' around here.
I predicted most of these but I wasn't certain until now, the Tau empire is close but if I'm right it should be on the other side of the great rift, unlike Mandragora which was the Crown Worlds of the Sautekh Dynasty, and the Strom Lord Imotekh. Joy.
What I didn't know but sohow feared was also made evident, the splinter-fleets of Hivefleet Kraken were wandering all around these parts and eating planets wherever they went.
With that as the base the governor's peculiar actions as described in several docunts made much more sense. He supported a group of rebels that preached about freedom and safety under the protection of the 'star children'.
"Mhm," I nodded to myself, "not suspicious at all."
Well, whoever scoured the world for whatever reason probably wiped out these weirdoes too along with the rest of the population. Though I would have liked getting my hands on a genestealer.
"Fuck..." Doesn't that an that a splinter-fleet is closing in on the planet?
I was yanked out of my musings, I saw light in the dark sea I knew to be the Warp. I felt nearly blind to it compared to when I connected to it but it was better than nothing, I could sense beings getting close to even like this.
Normally it looked like the starry sky, with far-off souls shining like little stars of their own without being able to tell how far or exactly where they are. Now it was different, an entire constellation was shining brighter and brighter in the murky water as it closed in on my location at breakneck speed.
The souls seed brighter for so reason, I focused on them and noticed that they were entirely inside the Warp.
"What?" my eyes widened in shock until I noticed a film of energy coating each soul when they got even closer, "A Geller Field, maybe?"
So that was a ship currently traveling through the warp and straight towards , they probably noticed when I connected to the Warp. Was I a Warp Beacon just by existing or what?
I lashed out with my pyrokinesis and burned everything in the vault to ash, the old paper easily burned to ash and I was left wondering what to do. These were probably Imperials, I didn't sense too much chaos taint on them, and neither did they have a certain bdsm loving chaos god's tentacles wrapped around their balls.
Tau didn't have souls this strong and they couldn't even travel through warp while Necrons didn't even have souls. I wasn't sure how Orks would feel but I was certain I could tell the difference between sentient mushrooms and humans.
"What to do, what to do," I kept the constellation of souls in my sight, from far away I only noticed a few of them but now I could tell there were hundreds of them, most of them being only small flickers in the darkness with a single one being a brightly shining star. The Navigator.
My three options were Hiding, Fighting, or Acting. Fighting was a no-go, I couldn't pilot a damned spaceship so I'd still be stuck on this rock, just with a bit more energy in my reserves. Hiding was similarly dumb but I could probably sneak onto the ship and wait for them to leave.
"That'd be super boring though," I didn't get all this power to hide away on a ship like a rat, depending on others to maybe carry into safety. I was a shapeshifting eldritch monster so I should act like it.
"Acting it is," I smiled and ran my sense over my body, I made sure it looked just like a normal human should and had my powers ready in case I'd have to turn it entirely into a human.
I walked back into the office and sat down in the comfy chair, waiting for my soon-to-be visitors.
"What should my story be though?" I played with a lock of my hair in thought, "I guess I'll have to improvise based on who they are."
I grinned in anticipation as I sat in the half-ruined office like it was my own.
I hope they have sensors, it'd be awkward if they didn't find and leave.
Selene Voss
The ship churned and the Geller Field flickered. Whatever that damned shockwave traveling through the whole damned Warp was it sure did a number on it, it should have kept going for years, and yet here they were, a few days into their journey, and already it was near-failing.
She made eye contact with, Morrin, one of her personal guards, and he nodded in return.
She knew having the Navigator on the deck went against any protocols but the communication systems were beyond fucked and while the tech-priests were all working tirelessly on it they'd be dead by the ti it got fixed.
It was a miracle the ship even functioned, her Wanderer was a good ship but it wasn't made to withstand whatever the fuck this was.
Morrin had his las-rifle pointed at the back of the Navigator's head, she didn't need a demon crawling out of his body right now with all the other bullshit on her plate already. It'd be a great loss but she'd rather exit the Warp blind than get ripped apart by a demon.
"...he- here..." the psyker wheezed and collapsed. She glanced at him, unconscious.
"Disengage Warp-Drive," she ordered as calmly as she could manage, "ready the sensors, I want to know where the fuck we ended up!"
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