"My, my, darling, you are positively brimming with tightly-coiled muscle!"
Despite encountering a completely unexpected situation, the Possessed Marine did not panic in the slightest; instead, he beca intensely aroused.
His earlier desire to flee was rooted in the belief that he could not possibly extract any euphoric stimulation from these lapdogs of the False Emperor.
But now, everything was different.
Through the esoteric sensory perceptions granted by the daemon inhabiting his flesh, even with the obstruction of the black robes, he could perceive the incredibly flawless, peak-transhuman physique hidden beneath.
A Custodian? Appearing entirely alone, and unarmored at that?
This was an unimaginably rare opportunity! As a fanatic devotee of Slaanesh, the Possessed Marine imdiately cast everything else to the wind, including the frantic, panicked babbling of the Neverborn echoing in his mind.
"If I can carve just a single scar into his flesh, if I can taste the agony he feels... then even if I die, the price of admission will have been well worth it!"
He fanatically raised his power sword, the blade beginning to hum with a purple, disruptive corona. The defiled power armor, covered head-to-toe in squirming, mutated runes, roared to life as fleshy tentacles sprouted from the armor joints and thrashed wildly about in a display of sheer blasphemy.
The black-robed Custodian stared coldly at the traitor before him, his eyes filled with absolute contempt.
The Possessed Marine stomped violently forward. The sheer transhuman force of his step caused the alloy deck plating to groan under the crushing weight, sending dozens of tallic shards exploding outward while providing a massive kinetic return.
He raised his blade with blinding speed, drawing it back to accumulate kinetic potential before snapping it forward into a lethal thrust—a fluid, flawless, and utterly linear strike that arrived instantly before the Custodian's eyes.
Their lines of sight crossed. Mirrored in the pupils of the Possessed Marine was the face of the black-robed Custodian: perfectly calm, like still water, entirely devoid of panic.
Facing this fully committed, lethal thrust, the Custodian shifted his footing. Moving as if entirely unburdened by montum or inertia, he took a step backward while simultaneously tilting his torso slightly to the side.
The sheer speed of his evasion and the microscopic precision of his timing vastly exceeded the Possessed Marine's expectations!
How is this possible... so fast?
He watched helplessly as his lethal strike hit empty air, rely piercing the billowing fabric of the Custodian's black robe and leaving a clean hole in its wake.
In the very next fraction of a second, an upward, sweeping slash arched out like a phantom beam of light, shearing cleanly through the Possessed Marine's armored forearms and severing them entirely.
Geysers of blood erupted from his truncated wrists as the power sword clattered heavily onto the deck.
Imdiately following this, without a microsecond of hesitation, the black-robed Custodian delivered a devastating front kick, launching the Possessed Marine hurtling backward.
BOOM!
The Possessed Marine's body slamd into a ceramite bulkhead like a fired artillery shell. His form slumped, and he vomited a massive mouthful of transhuman blood.
He looked up to see the black-robed Custodian, power sword in hand, advancing toward him step by asured step.
Yes! Yes! Exactly like this!
The warp daemon possessing the Chaos Space Marine felt that if it possessed human tear ducts, it would be weeping tears of sheer joy.
It finally managed to violently suppress the consciousness of its moronic, critically injured host, seizing total control of the physical vessel. Supporting itself against the bulkhead, the daemon desperately struggled to its feet, preparing to properly provoke the Custodian so it could finally be executed and banished back to the immaterium...
And then, a plasma sphere scread past the black-robed Custodian, obliterating the daemon's fantasies.
"NO!!!!"
A shriek filled with profound, agonizing terror and overwhelming reluctance served as the Neverborn's final testant in the material realm.
The black-robed Custodian slowly turned his head.
In his field of vision, the mysterious young man erged from the corner of a nearby corridor, the plasma weapon hovering beside him venting wisps of heat haze.
Having just blatantly stolen the other man's kill, Rowan felt slightly awkward and proactively offered a greeting:
"Greetings. My na is Rowan; how may I address you?"
The black-robed Custodian did not answer the question.
He swept a scrutinizing gaze up and down Rowan's form before asking:
"Who are you? From where do you hail? That power you just utilized... what kind of sorcery can trigger such anomalous phenona without generating a single ripple in the immaterium?"
Rowan let out a sigh.
It was true; the mont his command over the materium fell under the observation of a highly experienced Imperial veteran, the glaring anomalies were instantly perceived.
Furthermore, he never could have anticipated that a completely ordinary Lunar-class cruiser would be harboring such an absurd concentration of elite powerhouses!
The Inquisitor was one thing, but how in the warp was an Adeptus Custodes aboard this vessel?!
Old Man Emperor, was this part of your grand design as well?!
"Now is hardly the ti for interrogations."
The various firearms levitating around Rowan voluntarily lowered their muzzles, demonstrating an absence of hostile intent. "Could we hold this discussion until we have successfully regrouped?"
Weighing the tactical variables, the black-robed Custodian proactively sheathed his power sword.
"...You are correct. The threat of Chaos is far from concluded."
He paused for a mont before continuing: "My full designation is extensively long; you may simply refer to as Leonardo."
I completely understand; you are a Custodian, after all.
Rowan nodded in agreent.
Swiftly, the two n joined forces, moving down the corridor and retracing their steps.
Along the way, observing the grotesquely mangled corpses of various heretics littering the path, Leonardo's brow gradually knitted into a deep frown.
He naturally harbored zero sympathy for the deaths of these heretics. As a mber of the Emperor's elite bodyguard sworn to protect the Imperial Palace, the faster and more agonizingly these traitors died, the more pleased Leonardo was.
However, the primary issue was that, aside from a few who had been executed via plasma and lta fire, the rest had clearly died at the hands of a psyker; their forms were entirely covered in the distinct scarring of warp lightning and telekinetic torsion.
That Inquisitor had cast two warp teleportations in rapid succession, yet she was still utilizing her psychic abilities with such reckless abandon. Could she truly sustain this?
Carrying this faint trace of concern, the two n returned to their original position.
The sight before them caused both Rowan and Leonardo to pause in surprise.
Cybia was slumped upon her knees on the deck, her hands clamped violently over her ears. Her expression rapidly fluctuated between agonizing tornt and vacant delirium.
Standing before her, leaning heavily upon her chainsword, was Lucia.
Lucia's eyes blazed with golden light, the pure white wings upon her back fully unfurled. Her entire form radiated a faint, auric holy light that entirely enveloped Cybia beneath her, barely managing to suppress the volatile, fluctuating psychic halos that continuously rippled across the Inquisitor's body.
"What happened?"
"She is at her limit."
Lucia turned her head, looking at the two approaching n, and shook her head. "Reckless, unrestrained expenditure of psychic power in such a short window of ti has vastly exceeded her threshold; the tides of the immaterium have violently gripped her mind."
"She no longer possesses the capacity to rein in her boiling psychic energies; it is highly unlikely she can recover from this state."
Leonardo stepped forward, briefly analyzing the Inquisitor's condition.
"She will not recover. Unless she is imdiately placed within the null-chambers of a Black Ship to completely suffocate her psychic resonance, there is no chance of salvation. However, we currently possess neither the ans, the ti, nor the margin for error to accomplish this."
As a forr warden of the Black Ships, he regretfully delivered his verdict: "Execute her. May her soul return to the Throne."
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