War Hammer: The reality Bender Chapter 23 23: The Stalemate and the Shadow

When Miriael recovered from her montary loss of balance and looked up, this was the sight that t her gaze.

Behind Living Saint Lucia unfurled a pair of pristine white wings that instantly evoked images of holy angels, yet her face was contorted into a mask of terrifying fury. Her entire form was wreathed in a divine fire that, to a creature of the warp, inflicted spiritual burns rely by looking upon it.

And flanking Lucia, lagging behind only by the absolute thinnest margin, was another warrior entirely encased in majestic, auric Terminator plate. The heavy armor was inscribed with a myriad of complex honor markings, and the montum of his charge carried an impossibly sharp, lethal aura.

"Excellent... Excellent..."

Miriael murmured, seemingly entranced by the sight.

To cross blades with powerhouses of such extre rarity... such an experience, such "ecstasy"... it truly drove her into a state of rapturous joy!

The kinetic shockwave generated by their charge violently displaced the air, whipping up a howling gale within the confines of the bridge.

In the ensuing microsecond, Lucia arrived at the striking distance first. Her armored sabatons slamd violently against the ceramite deck, emitting an ear-piercing shriek of grinding tal. She hoisted her relic storm shield high, bringing it down with the catastrophic montum of a thunderclap.

The sheer velocity of the strike was so imnse that a baseline Space Marine would have been entirely incapable of tracking it. But against a Daemon Prince of Chaos—and specifically Miriael, a Chaos Champion who had once laid the severed head of a Bloodthirster at the feet of the Prince of Pleasure—it was still far from sufficient.

BOOM!

A colossal sonic boom erupted, the sheer concussive force enough to effortlessly shatter a mortal's eardrums. The relic storm shield was violently halted dead in its tracks by Miriael's Blade of Agony, entirely incapable of advancing a single inch further.

Without a sliver of hesitation, Lucia engaged every fiber of her transhuman might. The motive-servos of her power armor roared a heavy, agonizing protest as she threw her entire body weight into a devastating forward slam!

The sheer kinetic force of this slam was potent enough to effortlessly repel, or even violently launch, a fully armored Leman Russ battle tank!

Wait!

Experiencing absolutely no tactile feedback of resistance, Lucia's balance abruptly failed her.

She had dodged!

Miriael's form seemingly vanished from her position. Her footwork impossibly light, she broke into a graceful, nimble dance step, effortlessly weaving around the lethal arc of the shield bash.

A glint of sheer exhilaration flashed within her eyes as she brought the Blade of Agony down heavily toward Lucia's flawlessly pure cheek.

In that microscopic window between life and death, Lucia reacted. She contorted her form at a physically impossible angle while simultaneously violently snapping her wings, utilizing the centrifugal force to swing her storm shield back around and flawlessly parry the lethal strike.

Miriael's expression shifted into one of thoughtful contemplation, seemingly having deduced a vital piece of tactical data. But before she could fully process the thought, the Custodian wielding the Guardian Spear had already arrived.

The heavy disruption blade, crackling with a lethal azure energy field, was thrust forward without a hint of hesitation, aiming with microscopic precision for the articulation joint of her arm.

Simultaneously, the howling roar of the chainsword rapidly closed in from her opposite flank. The synchronized assault forced Miriael into a highly precarious position.

Across the entirety of the galaxy, the number of individuals capable of surviving a synchronized assault mounted by a Living Saint and a Custodian Blade Champion could be counted on one hand.

Regrettably, Miriael was precisely one of them.

The Slaaneshi Daemon Prince continued her graceful dance. Moving with a terrifying velocity that defied all mortal comprehension, she seamlessly weaved through the lethal storm woven by the chainsword and the Guardian Spear, periodically launching devastating counter-strikes while simultaneously weaving an impenetrable web of defensive parries.

The three figures instantly blurred into a chaotic lee. The staccato impacts of footwork, the deafening clashes of blades, the sonic booms of displaced air, and the roar of detonating mass-reactive bolts intertwined into an endless, deafening symphony of violence.

Ultimately, after an engagent duration that appeared impossibly brief to a mortal observer, but felt agonizingly protracted to the combatants, the three figures instantaneously broke apart, taking up positions on opposite sides of the chamber.

Miriael maintained her perfectly elegant posture. Aside from the horrific burns inflicted earlier by the plasma barrage, her Armor of Ecstasy bore absolutely no new scars.

Conversely, despite holding the nurical advantage, Lucia and Leonardo were covered in fresh wounds. They were breathing heavily, their tactical status decidedly grim.

A shallow, bleeding gash had been carved across Lucia's cheek. Her relic storm shield was crisscrossed with a dense network of deep gouges, and the hand gripping it was trembling faintly.

Leonardo, positioned across from her, appeared even more battered. His Allarus Terminator plate was littered with varying degrees of lacerations and craters. Shockingly, his massive left pauldron even bore a terrifyingly deep fissure, teetering on the absolute brink of shattering completely.

"Hah, well, that was hardly as tedious as I anticipated."

Miriael giggled, her voice practically overflowing with irrepressible joy.

She first turned to Lucia, speaking languidly: "As for you, my 'forr sister,' it appears you were only very recently elevated to the status of a Living Saint by the False Emperor. While the Anathema clearly favors you, your martial repertoire is entirely unsynchronized with your new transhuman physiology. You are still relying heavily upon your mortal combat instincts, rendering your technique absolutely riddled with fatal openings."

"And as for you, Custodian... your martial prowess is mildly amusing, but your physical vessel is simply too slow. You failed to match the tempo of my dance on several occasions, surviving purely on anticipatory parries and sheer luck."

"Overcoming opponents burdened by such glaring, fatal flaws is an entirely effortless endeavor."

Miriael flourished the Blade of Agony, her tone saturated with amusent. "To execute a Living Saint and slaughter a Custodian... it appears I shall thoroughly entertain the Prince of Pleasure today."

As her words fell, Miriael closed her eyes in a look of absolute rapture. Engaging the empathic abilities inherent to all Slaaneshi daemons, she began to ticulously savor the emotional turmoil radiating from her prey.

"Hate . Fear . Rage against ..."

To a Slaaneshi daemon, these extre emotional spikes were the ultimate sustenance and the most exquisite delicacy, the very source of their boundless euphoria.

"Oh? How is this possible?"

Miriael suddenly sensed a glaring anomaly.

Why were the minds of the two enemies standing before her still so profoundly, unnervingly calm?

"Hah. How intensely irritating."

She muttered, a distinct edge of annoyance bleeding into her tone.

Simultaneously, within the telepathic network connecting the kill-team.

Leonardo: Lord Rowan, status?

Rowan: It appears the initial tactical objective has failed. However, it is of no consequence; this contingency was also accounted for within the paraters of the plan. Continue to stall her.

At this mont, Rowan remained stationed outside the blast doors, deliberately abstaining from joining Lucia and Leonardo in the lee.

Rowan possessed an acute awareness of his own limitations. As an architect of reality whose physical vessel was functionally indistinguishable from a baseline mortal—and who inherently despised close-quarters engagents—recklessly throwing himself into a high-speed lee of this caliber would rely render him a catastrophic liability to his retainers.

Thus, while Miriael had been occupied by the vanguard, he had remained at a safe distance, continuously channeling his ontological dominion in an attempt to violently unmake the Slaaneshi Daemon Prince's physical vessel.

He had attempted to dictate that her flesh simply fracture, or to spontaneously manifest high-yield explosives directly within her internal organs.

Even if the outco was sub-optimal, he had hoped to force the Fallen Sister to expose a fatal opening during the engagent.

The results, however, were entirely unsatisfactory.

The Daemon Prince radiated a colossal volu of Akiva radiation. If forced into the clinical classifications of the Foundation, she would unequivocally fall under the "Black Type" designation.

The Black Type designation pertained exclusively to entities intrinsically tied to Apex Pluripotent Entities (Foundation terminology: effectively gods).

As the beloved darling of Slaanesh, an entity who simultaneously harvested the terror of sentient beings across the galaxy and the fanatical worship of countless Slaaneshi cults, Miriael possessed an existential density that was fundantally unassailable by Rowan in his current state.

Whether it was the direct chaotic gifts she possessed, or the overlapping, impenetrable layers of belief-anchored reality reinforcing her form, Rowan—currently possessing rely a secondary-grade dominion over the materium—was utterly incapable of breaching her defenses.

"Fortunately, I anticipated this variable."

Rowan turned his head, casting a glance to his side.

Inquisitor Cybia, who had been standing right beside him just monts ago, had vanished entirely without a trace.