289 – Do Not Do That
I could see the Genestealer Patriarch’s stupid face snap towards me, its beady black eyes full of malice and hunger staring into my own as the portal hissed up.
It took a moment to process the sudden appearance of a portal right behind it, and the sight that greeted it on the other side. It was a moment too long as I exploded into action, not even calling on any of my weapons as I punched my fist right through its ugly mug.
The thing fell on the floor, crumpling into a meaty pile like a puppet with its strings cut. At the same moment, my two assassin drones pounced and drove blades infused with the life-eater virus through the bodies of the two Norn Queens on two separate Bioships.
I could feel the Shadow of the Hive Mind reel back in surprise, its stranglehold over the Tyranids’ collective psyche in the system shattering. On a much smaller scale, the local Genestealer Broodmind quaked under the collective death of the two distant queens and that of the Patriarch that had been the primary synaptic node in the region.
Damn, I loved the life-eater virus. It was such a great alternative to my own Eldritch Flesh, saving me the worry of allowing that material to land in the claws of the Tyranids. The slurry of bioactive material it left behind was in no way diminished in its bio-energy content. The virus had been designed to lyse the living cells of any species, essentially causing infected organisms to "melt" into a contaminated soup of organic matter. It could affect anything and everything organic. I was glad I managed to nab that torpedo from the Inquisitor’s ship so long ago.
The Sovereign began its assault, primarily under my mind-cores’ guidance. Its goal would be to cripple the enemy ships, keep them in the system until I was finished down on the surface. I’d head up and absorb all the biomass, then destroy the Chaos warband’s ships. Those latter ones were the only ones I was worried about; they could always shit their pants and just Warp Jump, ignoring the fact that the gravity well of the local star would mess up their jump.
I’d snuck some infiltrator drones onboard those ships too, but who knows? Hopefully, they’d be able to mess with the Warp Drives and nab me a few Navigators.
The Tyranids broke out into a cacophony of screeches, some of the nearest thrown to the ground as their bodies thrashed violently as if struck by a stroke. It was that scenery that greeted my minions as they stepped through the portal behind me.
“Looks like it worked,” I said. “Both Norn Queens are dead, the Shadow is reeling, and the Hive Mind has lost its grip on them. We have some time until it reasserts its control.”
“So it would seem,” Selene said with a light giggle. “What commands do you have for us, Your Majesty?”
I raised an eyebrow at her, a pleasant thrill running down my spine at the playful lilt of her voice. There was a suggestive quirk to her lips, one that promised a very enjoyable night after the battle was over.
“Hear me, my minions, and obey,” I said, playing along with a haughty huff as I raised my chin as regally as I could manage. “Rip and tear!”
I could tell that the peanut gallery couldn’t really understand what was happening, but I didn’t care. My Selene was happy, and flirting with her would always be more important than maintaining my dignity.
“With pleasure,” Selene practically purred, her psychic power exploding as she zipped across the battlefield faster than a bullet, leaving diced-up Tyranids in her wake.
“Follow these,” I said, twisting my soul energy into a minor illusion tied to a simple divination spell. It looked like a spherical compass with four arrows inside jutting out from the centre, pointing in different directions. Two of them latched onto Cain and Amberley, while a third latched onto Selene. “Those will point you at the Broodlords. If you’re in too much trouble, I’ll save your asses, but until then, good luck!”
With that, I Blinked away, having sensed a trio of curious presences nearby. The stench of Chaos was strong with them, so I had an idea of what I would find.
I popped back into being right behind a trio of skulking Night Lord Astartes as they peered down at a tablet-thing. I floated up, peeking over one’s shoulder to watch the visual feed show my awesome Selene delivering all due violence upon a Broodlord. They hadn’t noticed me yet, even if I only made a half-assed attempt at hiding my presence, but they were about to. I didn’t like the emotions I felt radiating off them as they watched my lover. Not one bit.
“That’s creepy stalker behaviour,” I said casually, causing the three Astartes to leap away like a bunch of startled cats. I just kept staring at them impassively. “I’d ask whether your mothers failed to teach you to respect women, but I’m unfortunately aware that the only parent you lot ever had was a colossal fuckup and he’s been dead for ten millennia and change besides.”
The nearest one lashed out at me, Power Claws crackling with power as he struck out while retreating a step. I blocked it with a hand coated in a thick layer of Barriers, but stopping the force of the blow still made my Storm Ward buzz against my chest, where it hung from a necklace.
“I don’t appreciate the way you look at my lover.“ I added. “So I think I will be teaching you three some long-overdue lessons on respect.”
The Night Lord nearest to me didn’t let up, setting his feet and leaning into the attack as if he could overpower me by the sheer power of his Power Armour-clad body. I didn’t budge; tendrils of soul energy protruding from my feet glued me to the floor so thoroughly that he would have had to tear up half the building to move me. And even if he could do that, I could just use telekinesis to counteract it, but I was trying to practice more tricks to make my psychic toolkit a bit more versatile.
“Witch,” he spat, making the word sound like a slur. “I’m going to enjoy making you scream.”
I raised an eyebrow, glancing down at the Power Claw that hadn’t moved forward an inch. He threw a haymaker at me with his other hand in the blink of an eye, servos whirring in his armour and sending the gauntlet-clad fist sailing into my stomach with enough force to shatter concrete.
There was a sound of metal striking something hard, and I continued smiling, entirely unmoved. Both metaphorically and literally.
“Nice punch,” I said with mock sincerity. “I almost felt it. Good job. Here, have an apple as a reward.”
The red fruit harmlessly bounced off the befuddled Marine’s helmet, and I stared into his crimson visor as it hit the ground and rolled away.
“What?” he asked dumbly.
“It’s not nice to refuse a gift.” I frowned. “So rude.”
A telekinetic blast struck him in the chest, cracking ceramite as he was sent zipping through the air. He struck the rockrete wall of the room, crashed through it and then found himself embedded in a metallic surface further beyond it.
I looked at the other two who stayed back, looking like a pair of wary predators trying to decide whether a prey was worth the trouble.
“What about you two, are you going to run?” I asked, giving them a smile that didn’t reach my eyes. “Do it. I do enjoy a good chase, and it would be a novel experience for you two to be the prey for once.”
They moved as one, their irritation and naked malice bubbling to the surface of their presences. One dove left and the other to the right, and they pounced like a pair of trained bloodhounds, lashing out at me with a Lightning Claw and a Power Sword.
“Cute.” I grabbed the Lightning Claw with my hand, a thin but powerful Barrier covering my skin, making sure it couldn’t even singe my skin. I slapped the Power Sword away, parrying the blow with the back of my hand. “Blood Boil.”
I didn’t need to say the words to actualise the Biomantic spell, but it kinda sorta helped, and I took some sick amusement from letting them know exactly what was going to happen.
A faint crimson haze wrapped around the two Astartes, but I hadn’t used enough soul energy to boil their blood into vapour in an instant. Oh no, I was letting it take its time. I’d felt bad about using it on a Sororitas Sister, but these two twats still stunk of the blood of innocents. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d literally bathed in the stuff, from what I knew of the Night Lords. Even the best of them were colossal assholes.
They both retreated a step, or at least tried to in the case of the Lightning Claw guy, who I yanked right back in, only for his helmet to connect with my fist. I held back a lot, but his helmet shattered, my fist crashed into his face, and he was sent flying faster than a bullet. I glanced down at the Lightning Claw I still held in my grasp, and the torn-off arm connected to it.
The other Night Lord tried to flee, but Blood Boil was ramping up, his blood literally boiling in his veins as he tried to run. He stumbled, his limbs twitching outside his control, and he fell to the ground with a roar of agony. It was quickly mirrored by the other one struck by my spell, though getting his arm torn off and his face caved in probably didn’t help much with the pain.
Now, if anyone wanted to complain that I was bullying them, let me state that each of them was wearing capes made of human skin. Some of which my aura helpfully identified as belonging to children. They were going to die screaming, and there was nothing anyone short of a Chaos God descending into the Materium could do about it.
A Blink took me away, dropping me back into realspace right in front of the Astartes I’d first blasted through a wall.
“Going somewhere?” I mused, and he rudely answered only by throwing a Melta grenade in my face.
I slapped it aside, a small Barrier encasing the explosion that followed inside its embrace, letting none of it escape. The Astartes leapt away from me, and I opened a portal behind him without him noticing.
He fell through, landing between his two writhing comrades, screaming as their flesh started melting off their bones, and their blood reached its boiling point. I stepped through the portal, letting space snap back together behind me.
He stiffened, whirling around to take in his changed surroundings the moment he landed, and I could see his gaze linger on his two comrades. The armless one fell silent first, twitching one final time, and the other one followed a few seconds later, the Blood Boil having burnt both his heart and brain well beyond repair.
“The Soul Flayer will ruin you for this,” he hissed, taking on a very stance while radiating a delightful mix of anger, hate, dread and desperation. He was not unlike a cornered beast.
“He will try,” I snorted, slamming him into the ground with a gesture. He tried to get up, but I pressed down on him with a continuous torrent of kinetic force. Ceramite cracked as he was pressed into the rockrete, then I upped the intensity and his armour shattered under the force. “And that’s that.”
I turned away from the pasted Space Marine, tugging on my mind-cores to feed me information on what my minions had been up to while I was occupied, and my eyebrow shot up to my hairline.
I Blinked over to Amberley and Cain, a wide grin stretching on my face as I looked down at the goddamn Carnifex and the retired Commissar standing above its corpse.
“That still counts as one,” I noted with some amusement, making him jolt as if slapped. “How the hell did you stumble upon a Carnifex anyway? I didn’t feel any nearby.”
One of the Broodlords lay nearby, half its torso burnt away into nothingness, and what remained had been torn apart by what I assumed was a Chain Sword.
Amberley was enjoying herself quite a bit, tearing through the Genestealer swarm and the lesser Tyranids pouring out of a nearby tunnel, though she made an attempt to hide it.
“Beats me,” Cain finally answered, then gestured at the tunnel. “This worm-thing just burst out of the floor, and this thing followed behind it, leading the rest.”
Did one of those burrower things go bonkers and target the nearest non-Tyranid, while the rest of the frenzied Tyranids just followed in its wake? They certainly didn’t seem to be doing much in the way of strategy; hell, I saw them hitting each other with projectiles and blades as they tried to get at Amberley.
Oh well, they seemed to be handling themselves alright, so I wouldn’t interfere in their battle. Selene had already taken care of two more Broodlords and was making a beeline towards the last one in the nest.
I suppose that means I have the time to visit this supposed Soul Flayer and show him the error of his ways.