I stood amidst the two hundred slumbering Storm Wardens, taking my ti to pick and choose the most interesting pieces of equipnt they had on them. The Lock-Warden had a hexagrammatically warded body-suit under his Artificer Power Armour. I also found an Iron Halo on the Captain of the 7th Company and added a handful of those Storm Amulets to my collected pile of loot, too, for later study. Well, I was hoping I’d learn sothing by studying all of them. The hexagrammatic wards were nice, a curious subject to study, but so was the refraction field generated by the Iron Halo. I was sure I could optimise and improve upon my own thods of converting incoming kinetic impacts into energy by fiddling with that thing.
“Ah, finally!” I smirked, turning around to see a big Astartes stride into the room, wearing gleaming grey Power Armour. It practically glowed to my senses with the amount of wards and psychic defences interwoven into the intricate ceramite plates. “It’s rude to keep a lady waiting, don’t you know?”
He didn’t respond, not with words as most humans would understand them, anyway. He began to sing, and I felt each note echo not through the audible frequencies of the Materium, but beneath it. Soon, he was joined by his Battle-Brothers, making up a choir that bolstered the strength of their Aegis with each new singer.
I felt it pressing in on from all around, like the Materium finally noticed my innately Immaterial existence and wished to see banished from its realm. The other Grey Knights stepped through the walls, shimring into existence like phantoms, and their voices grew all the stronger for it.
I could have rushed ahead and slaughtered them all faster than they could react, but that wouldn’t have been very sporting, now would it? They have brought such great gifts. So many fancy toys and new things to learn.
I didn’t resist the Aegis all that much, letting myself feel its oppressive weight press in on . It was like sitting at the bottom of an ocean, experiencing the water pressure seeking to crush you at those depths and consigning you into the abyss. I started humming under my breath, teasing out each note, infusing them with the specific emotions and anings I sensed in the Grey Knights’ choir.
Before I could tune it well enough to press my way into their Aegis, the leading Justicar barked out a word infused with psychic power and opened fire.
The strange weapon in his hand spat out a beam of condensed psychic energy matching the Grey Knight’s own specific ‘taste’. It was like my own Eldritch Blasts, but more focused. Sohow, the word he had spoken resonated with and latched onto the beam of energy, riding along like a hitchhiker and no doubt seeking to give a black eye.
Both lanced towards a do barrier I’d conjured up around myself, the specific variant I had just learned from the Storm Warden Librarian.
The other five Grey Knights also opened fire, though they only had boring old Bolters. Well, Storm Bolters to be specific, but they paled in comparison to the beautiful weapon wielded by the Justicar. That was a Psilencer, was it not? I want it.
The bolts and the condensed psychic beam impacted my small barrier in quick succession, crashing against it with the power of a landslide. The beam, I felt like a gut punch even through the barrier, but the word that rode along with it? Now that was a nasty thing. It bypassed the barrier, latching onto the energy powering it, my energy.
The Aegis, trying to banish from this side of reality, thrumd, sounding like the war-horn of a Titan for a brief mont that made my breath hitch … and then I loosened the valve on my soul energy, letting it pour into and thicken the thread connecting to my soul until it beca a pillar of solid energy.
The Aegis remained, but it was halted just beyond my skin and was not allowed a single atom closer. I breathed, feeling that constricting force fading into a faint echo of a sensation; it no longer had the strength to so much as make uncomfortable.
That would have likely been the end of it, but the Justicar had sothing even more curious strapped onto his belt, a cube made of a silvery tal, interlaced with lines shining with an eerie green light. I recognised it, of course I did. Fool once, sha on you, try it again, and I’m going to fuck you up.
That was a Tesseract Labyrinth, the sa thing that kleptomaniac Trazyn trapped my first Avatar with.
He also had a very nice Force Glaive … oh! That was a Nesis Force Glaive! Those things were attuned to the psyker wielding them, becoming an extension of themselves, and growing in power alongside the psyker. The best-made ones supposedly had no upper limit, allowing the Grandmasters of the Grey Knights to cleave Daemon Princes in twain with the ease of cutting wheat.
I didn’t think my collection would receive such a generous donation today, but I wouldn’t complain. Even I could get lucky sotis. Hell, I deserved all the luck for the sheer misfortune of ending up reincarnated in War-fucking-hamr 40k.
Seeing that their ranged assault wasn’t bearing fruit, they rushed at , each of them brandishing Nesis Force weapons that thrumd with barely contained psychic might. The wards on their armours flared, shrouding them from my psychic perception until they were little more than disparate blobs. That was annoying, I couldn’t study all the fascinating wards woven into their Aegis pattern Power Armour that way.
They continued singing, but not with their voices. It was a song of the soul, which left their mortal lips free to shout words of banishnt. They struck one after the other as they fired Storm Bolts from wrist-mounted bolters as they ran. Each slithered through the barrier, slamming into my psychic presence on this plane. They were potent weapons, trying to disrupt my manifestation in the Materium, weaken my link to my Avatar and thereby, weaken .
I withstood it, standing strong against the assault as my Avatar almost vibrated with my leashed storm of soul energy. I absorbed my substandard bonesword; it had been enough for the Ward-Master, but a Grey Knight Justicar aided by five of his battle-brothers was a different matter entirely. With a thought, Atiesh slamd into my palm, and my power surged into it. With a flick of my will, my psychic power manifested at the head of the staff, forming into an energy blade and turning my favourite staff into a glaive.
As they closed in, I noticed that their vague psychic presences were lding at the edges, each note of their Aegis sung as a choir reverberating from one Grey Knight to the others. They were resonant, sohow empowering each other while locked in that choir, not entirely unlike how Orks grew more powerful the more of them were lded in their gestalt WAAAAGH! I could handle this single squad easily enough if I paid attention to that Tesseract Labyrinth, but I wasn’t sure I’d have enjoyed facing down the Supre Grandmaster backed by the entire Brotherhood nearly as much. If their power grew exponentially instead of linearly, then eting a thousand Grey Knights in open battle could be … troubleso.
I could see how they had been enough to defend the Imperium from the Ruinous Powers for ten millennia. Ka’Bandha or any of the Daemon Primarchs would have had little fun fighting them, considering I wasn’t even their preferred enemy, and they most certainly were. I wasn’t Chaos or Warp tainted; I was rely an entity of the Immaterium, and as such, their specialised anti-Daemon armants weren’t doing much against .
I t the Justicar’s punishing lunge, slapping the body of my staff against his Glaive’s hilt. That still left his body coming charging at with the power of a freight train, but I just shifted the barrier around so it deflected his montum just barely to the side.
Stepping past him with a grin, I pulled on the buried muscle mory I borrowed from Fulgrim and began to dance. My glaive spun around , its energy blade flying through the air with grace as it deflected a Force Falchion, slapped away a Knight, then slipped through the guard of another and plunged into his neck.
I danced away from their counterattack as the man collapsed to a knee, Atiesh never stopping as it spun and flew through the air, impossibly eting every incoming strike at just the right ti. A Nesis Force Sword broke, my own trusty staff’s conjured blade tearing through it, the enemy Grey Knight’s psychic might have given form proving inferior to it.
The Justicar pressed the hardest, his Force Glaive weaving around in a relentless assault while he kept shouting those pesky words of banishnt at . He was the better fighter, the better glaive-master … but I was cheating without a single speck of sha.
Every mont, I was building upon the foundations Fulgrim’s instincts left with as my mind-cores dissected my opponents' every move and turned it into another building block of my growing mastery of the glaive.
They noticed that their Aegis song and words wouldn’t be enough, and switched gears as one. They kept up their physical assault, even the man whose head I almost freed from his shoulders re-entering the fight after a minute of employing so impressive Biomancy. I could feel so spell being conjured by them jointly, each Grey Knight adding their strength to it through the choir.
I couldn’t help it and giggled, exhilarated after the many gains of the day. So many new toys, so many new things I have learned, and I even got to improve my fighting style, and now I saw a most fascinating spell being woven.
I didn’t recognise the spell itself, but it was familiar; it spoke to on so fundantal level. It was Purity; I knew it with the surety I knew that the sky was blue and the grass was green. The spell would try to erase Chaos taint from my very soul. Chaos taint. From my soul. It was hilarious. I let it hit .
The mont of pause, that brief instance of incomprehension when their spell struck and did absolutely nothing, made laugh even harder. I couldn’t see their faces, or taste their emotions veiled beneath all those wards, but I could still tell they were deeply baffled. To stun a mind as advanced and disciplined as a Grey Knights for even a mont … yep, I just wished I could see their faces.
They didn’t let it stop them for long, and they tried sothing else next. A brilliant white fla that tried to burn to ash, first, but when my barrier held it off with ease, they tried sothing much simpler: an all-around physical enhancent applied to all of them.
I recognised the abilities after a quick perusal of my mories, all of them belonging to the Sanctic Discipline of Psyker Powers: Purge Soul, Cleansing Flas, and the last one, Hamrhand.
Hamrhand was an apt na, considering they suddenly started hitting with enough power to turn a regular man into a bloody mist. The Justicar received the most substantial enhancent, and I wouldn’t have put it past him to rip apart an Astartes Terminator with sheer strength and nothing else.
I started taking it a bit more seriously at that, adjusting my graceful dance so that I no longer ignored opportunities to counterattack. I started scoring blows, a hand here, a bloody gash on a leg there, an eye there. They kept pressing , but they just kept losing bits and pieces of themselves without ever scoring a single blow against .
I was fast enough to go toe-to-toe with the Swarmord, with a fucking Primarch. They just weren’t fast enough to overco my reflexes, even with the gap in combat skill between us, which I was steadily reducing with each passing mont. It was the only reason I still kept the fight sowhat sporting.
One of them lost a leg, and then I pounced on their montary loss of cohesion. My energy blade flashed out with ruthless efficiency and deadly grace, eting layered wards and ancient Power Armour. It didn’t even slow, and certainly not when it t flesh and bone. A head still wearing its helt flew through the air as the now decapitated body crashed to the ground.
The legless one died next, getting a dose of the nastiest toxin I could make through his exposed flesh. He held it off for half a minute with an impressive use of Biomancy.
Then I corrected my earlier mistake and sent my glaive through the chest of the Grey Knight whose neck still sported a mark of my blade’s kiss.
That left the Justicar and two more, circling warily. Their choir was diminished, the Justicar’s voice now sounding loud and overbearing beside the other two. With that, the spell enhancing their strength was also just as diminished, as was the Aegis pressing in on .
The Justicar moved, his Psilencer rearing up and spitting out a beam of energy just as the man holding it spat out a word. But this one was different. I’d learned the feel of the ones he’d been using before, differentiating four of them by tone, and this one was none of them. It sounded harsher, more demanding, and it had the Justicar’s presence quivering once the word left his lips.
I would have stumbled without Atiesh to steady , as it was my breath rely hitched, and I was, unfortunately — for the Grey Knights — perfectly ready to react when the spell the other two Grey Knights readied went off right as the Justicar’s word struck .
Reality bled as a wound upon its skin was torn open. Beyond it was a tunnel leading straight through the Warp to so other place, likely their hideout or the sneaky voidship they had hiding on the planet’s smallest moon. The two grabbed the Justicar under the armpits as his knees gave out, his presence collapsing into a weak little thing, and they pulled him through what I recognised as another Psyker Power of the Sanctic Discipline: Gate of Infinity.
“Nuh uh,” I humd. “I don’t think I said you could leave, especially not with my Psilencer.”
But they were already sprinting through the tunnel, and the Gate on this side was starting to close. Not that I would let it stop . A tendril of soul energy reached down from my Realm, plunging into the Warp and finding the tunnel the three Grey Knights were fleeing through with ease. Then it slapped them back through the Warp Gate just before it could close, though one of the Grey Knights left everything below his knees on the other side.
“They don’t teach you manners on Titan, do they?” I grinned at them. The Justicar was unconscious; the word he had used must have been beyond what he could bear. One of them was without feet, and the last one was the guy whose arm I’d cut off at the shoulder. “I think it's ti for you three to take a nice long nap.”
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