"Just what in the warp is this abomination?"
The thought surfaced within the mind of the Chaos Sorcerer.
As a Chaos Sorcerer who had steeped himself in the pathways of the immaterium for over a century, he had always believed he possessed superior insight, absolutely unlike those ignorant lapdogs of the Corpse-Emperor who at the slightest provocation attributed ordinary phenona to the miraculous power of a god.
But now, he was sowhat uncertain.
He had just stared until his eyes nearly bled, yet he still could not comprehend how this thing before him, which possessed the appearance of a re mortal, was managing to interfere with a rift in the immaterium.
Furthermore, he had not sensed a single ripple of the Empyrean throughout the entire engagent; whether the opponent was a psyker, no, whether they were even human was difficult to say!
"McKnight! Cease your gawking and find a solution!"
Through the vox-caster installed within his helm, the roar of his warband brother reached the Chaos Sorcerer's ears, shattering his train of thought.
Boom!
The detonation of a lta bomb thundered, followed by a blinding flash of incandescent white.
Bolstered by Rowan's unnatural manipulation of the materium, the lta bomb, already potent enough to obliterate heavy armor, saw its destructive yield magnified exponentially, rivaling a miniature sun igniting within the confines of the chamber, instantaneously vaporizing two Chaos Space Marines alongside their barricades into nothingness.
The very concept of their cover was rendered utterly laughable.
Perhaps unable to accept such a suffocatingly futile demise, the Chaos Space Marines behind the next barricade broke cover before Rowan could even lock his gaze upon them, attempting to unleash a barrage of retaliatory fire.
Their fate was naturally no better, instantly reduced to free-floating atoms in the air by a storm of plasma spheres and lta beams.
The Chaos Sorcerer took a deep breath.
This simply could not continue.
Certain that his psychic reserves were insufficient to ward off a fusillade of this magnitude, the Chaos Sorcerer was forced into an action he fundantally despised, one he would never have considered under normal circumstances.
He rested his hand upon the dicae-dispenser at his waist, forcefully injecting a combat stimulant birthed from Slaaneshi rituals deep into his physiology.
"Rraaaagghhhhhh!"
A myriad of overwhelming sensory spikes violently pierced the Chaos Sorcerer's brain, causing his transhuman fra to violently convulse as his previously asured psychic energies boiled over into an uncontrollable tempest!
Praise the Prince of Pleasure! Praise the Empyrean! Praise this euphoric rapture!
In an ecstasy of activation, he conjured his sorcery, erecting a hardened kine-shield across his entire form; the explosive psychic bleed-off shattered his own cover completely, but he no longer cared in the slightest.
Bathing in the torrent of bolter fire, the Chaos Sorcerer locked onto his target and unleashed his frenzied psychic malice, manifesting a squall of luminescent pink witch-fire that instantly and utterly shredded Rowan, who seemingly had no ti to react...
...Was he truly shredded?
The Chaos Sorcerer widened his eyes, watching as Rowan's torn form slowly dissolved into the atmosphere.
A holo-projection?
Since when?
At this very mont, his brain, reduced to a slurry by the overwhelming sensory spikes, finally realized that the tactical vox-net had, at so unknown point, descended into utter, dead silence.
Guided by an instinctual dread, the Chaos Sorcerer slowly turned his head, finding the enemy standing re paces behind him, offering a casual wave of his hand.
In that fraction of a second, his frenzied psychic energies slipped his control like an unbroken beast, and a dazzling inferno of pink warp-fire erupted upward, incinerating him entirely into ash.
"It is over."
Rowan retracted his hand, idly stroking his chin.
Weapons whose machine spirits were in a state of absolute exaltation required no manual manipulation to automatically unleash their furies, thus providing Rowan the opportunity to stealthily outflank and ticulously execute the enemies cowering behind their barricades.
As for why he went to such laborious lengths... a secondary-grade manipulator of the materium possessed limits, both in area of effect and sheer output; Rowan's current grasp upon the existential fabric of reality simply could not support reckless expenditure.
Within the clinical classifications of his forr clandestine masters, a secondary-grade manipulator was rely evaluated as possessing an overwhelming advantage when combating baseline humans, utterly incapable of manifesting physics-breaking phenona like microscopic singularities native to tertiary-grades, nor possessing the quaternary-grade authority to trample the laws of reality, whimsically weaving life, souls, and paradoxical relics across a massive scale.
Had it been possible, Rowan naturally would have preferred to forego such convoluted tactics, instead reducing every hostile to non-existence with a single sweep of his hand.
Unfortunately, such annihilation was beyond him.
"I hope that once my command over reality deepens, I can finally escape these pathetic limitations."
Though, upon reflection, it should not be long now; surviving this engagent and slaughtering over twenty Chaos Space Marines had already filled the greater portion of his soul-harvesting threshold.
He imagined it would take little ti to breach a threshold of power he had never before touched.
This was infinitely more satisfying than the world of his clandestine past; it appeared this grim darkness of the far future was not entirely as miserable as he had imagined, possessing quite a few redeeming qualities.
While silently indulging these musings, Rowan walked toward the Canoness who lay collapsed upon the deck, her na still unknown to him.
He slowly extended his hand, engaging his power.
As effortlessly as molding wet clay, the missing limbs of the Canoness regrew, her ruptured internal organs were restored, vitality surged back into her flesh, and shattered bones were perfectly reforged...
Swiftly, a few minutes passed; Lucia, who had fallen into the abyss of unconsciousness, regained her senses, opened her eyes, rose from the bloodstained deck, and surveyed her surroundings.
The forrly arrogant and indomitable Chaos Space Marines had now been reduced to a scatter of corpses upon the floor.
She conducted a rudintary diagnostic of her body, finding it completely restored to its original state, as though she had never suffered a single wound.
Lucia sharpened her focus, looking toward the youth standing before her.
To Rowan's imnse surprise, Lucia, bearing the rank of Canoness, straightened her posture and proactively delivered a textbook sign of the Aquila to him, a figure of entirely unknown origins.
"I am Canoness Lucia Petrovich of the Order of Our Martyred Lady; I thank you for extending your hand in aid, helping the Order wash away its sha, and annihilating these blasphemous heretics."
Such an accommodating attitude?
Rowan paused, clearly a little taken aback.
By all logic, the attitude of the Ministorum's various Sisters of Battle toward any unsanctioned psyker dabbling in witchcraft could not exactly be described as amicable, but rather one of fanatical execution.
After all, the concept of a manipulator of the materium simply did not exist within this universe; even if Lucia had missed the battle due to her unconsciousness, simply observing the bizarrely executed corpses of the Chaos Space Marines he had dismantled, combined with his highly suspicious sudden appearance, should have naturally engendered hostile misunderstanding.
Naturally, as a Sister of Battle, Lucia operated upon her own distinct logic.
The blinding golden radiance exuding from the youth in her final monts of consciousness, her perfectly unblemished flesh upon awakening, her power armor restored to pristine condition, and the relic rosarius resting upon her breast, which was radiating a warmth that seed to saturate the very depths of her soul...
There could be no other explanation; this was definitively the miraculous might of the God-Emperor!
In truth, the fact that she had not imdiately dropped to her knees in rapturous prayer was solely the result of her ironclad sense of duty and sheer, agonizing self-restraint.
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