291 – Pyromania
The Battle Barge burned around me; the parts of it that I’d traversed were left as little more than a burnt-out husk. Finally, I was about to meet the last of the Night Lords holed up in the ship. Just beyond the massive bulkhead barring the path to the top floor, I could feel them as they prepared their ambush. The command deck and the escape pods were just behind them.
A pulse of Technomancy swept over the bulkhead, frying the electronics and warping the metal along fault lines. I kicked it, using a bit of soul energy to expand the point of impact so the bulkhead flew off its rails into the room, rather than my leg getting stuck inside the thick slab of metal.
A bolter round was the first thing to greet me, exploding in my face and clouding my vision, even if my Barriers shrugged it off. Not that I was so limited as to be blinded by the momentary loss of my sight.
I held up a hand, aiming it at the Marine who’d been the first to shoot me, even as dozens of other bolter rounds exploded around me. I curled my fingers, and energy gathered into a sphere, growing and growing until it was vibrating in place.
I infused it with a few concepts, then ignited the sphere and let it rip, grinning as a beam of silvery fire, not unlike condensed solar plasma, shot off and lanced through the chest of the unfortunate Marine.
It wasn’t a particularly useful or powerful spell when taking into account the sort of beings that could force me to take a fight seriously, but who didn’t want to throw around beams of plasma? Lame people, that’s who.
They had two Chaos Sorcerers in the room, both of them Marines and old. One joined in on the assault with a plume of Warp fire, while the other wove together some nasty ritual in the back-line.
With barely a thought, I flicked an ember of silvery flames over their heads, making it arc nicely and strike the dome-like shield erected around the ritual.
Unfortunately, it was made of nasty Chaos stuff, so the little silver ember went through it like a hot knife through butter. It smacked right into the gathering cyclone of Chaos energy and devoured it as fuel, bursting into a silvery inferno that was rapidly expanding outwards.
Another pulse of Technomantic energy swept out from me, rolling over the entire room, and the relentless rain of bolter rounds died off in an instant as all their weapons jammed.
There was a moment of silence, permeated by the near-tangible confusion radiated by my foes, but they weren’t Astartes for nothing and got over it in a heartbeat. Not a second later, a trio of Power Blades were arcing towards me, aiming at vital spots like my neck, heart, and spine.
I swung my Witchblade almost lazily, but despite how it looked, the blade moved just fast enough for the cunt going for my neck to notice it. But too fast to do much else with the information before my sword bisected him from hip to shoulder.
His two halves, carried by the momentum of his lounge, flew by me, one smacking into the asshole targeting my back. While he was momentarily blinded by the corpse, I stepped forward, avoiding his blade while slipping into the guard of the last of my most immediate foes.
I saw his eyes widen — because apparently he was too cool for a helmet — as I moved faster than his body could react to in time, and punched him in his stupid face. I felt the satisfying crunch of his nose breaking under the blow, but I put a bit more oomph into it at the last moment, and my punch pulped his head, popping it like a watermelon.
I flicked an overcharged Blood Boil at the one behind me the moment he shoved the corpse off of him, curious how resistant an Astartes would be to the spell. The answer turned out to be ‘not very’. His twin hearts burst in an instant, blood vessels popping all over his body, his brain melted, his eyes popped, and his flesh started bubbling as he collapsed, first to his knees, then falling on his face. Outwardly, the only evidence of what just happened to him — aside from his face's impromptu meeting with the floor — was the trails of blood seeping through gaps in his armour and pooling underneath him into a puddle of simmering blood.
I looked around at the rest of them with a slowly growing grin. There were still somewhere around fifty Night Lords on the ship, though I could only see thirty spread out before me, with fifteen more lurking nearby and the remaining ones lingering further away. Namely, they lingered near the escape pods.
“ … and they shall know no fear,” I said in a mocking, sing-song tone. I swept my gaze across the room, making eye contact with all the helmet-less Marines. Hesitation, anger, hate, malice, confusion, fear. “But I suppose standards have dropped since that proclamation, haven’t they? Not that your specific Legion ever had such a thing as standards, even I heard the rumours that the Sons of the Night Haunter only fought foes they knew they could overcome, but still. You lot are quite pathetic, aren’t you? Masters of fear? Don’t make me laugh. You are all cowards, like all cruel men.”
Was I paraphrasing one of my favourite quotes from Warhammer 40k? Totally. Was it a bit hypocritical, considering my minor sadistic tendencies? Maybe. Did I care? Not one bit. They killed children, so all bets were off.
I don’t think they appreciated my critique, considering that about ten of them roared and pounced on me like a bunch of vicious animals. No grace, not much technique or skill, just speed and strength.
“Arrogant mortal.” The voice was a low growl, like nails on a chalkboard. “You think killing us will be the same as those worthless cretins you’ve slaughtered outside? I will enjoy breaking you.”
I didn’t grace him with an answer, meeting the ten near-rabid Night Lords charging me head-on. My Witchblade danced through the air, its edge flowing from one swing into the next, utterly unimpeded by whatever weapons and armour my foes brought to bear to block or parry it. It took a grand total of five seconds to cut the ten Astartes up into twice as many chunks.
“Empty words,” I hummed, though the amusement faded from my tone. This room was repulsive; all its walls were covered in still-living humans, nailed to them like decorations, in several stages of being flayed or otherwise carved up.
The only mainstay was that all of them had their tongues cut out, and their lips stitched together with rough leather cords. Their groans and moans of pain filled the air, making even me rather uncomfortable. A wave of my hand crushed them into paste, killing them all in an instant, which was about as much of a mercy as I could grant them.
They were all severely Chaos-tainted, however unwillingly, so there was nothing I could do. There was a threshold of Chaos corruption beyond which purging the corruption killed the victim. It was like cancer, or a malicious parasite, more like. Beyond a certain point, it was the corruption keeping the victim alive, and removing it would be like tearing out the foundation of a building.
And burning the corruption out of their souls would have likely been a more agonising end than them being inevitably nommed on by Daemons. Mara had survived the process because she had an especially powerful soul as a Psyker, but these were just regular people.
“Kill her!” The same grating voice said, but I sensed a spike of panic as he watched me dismantle ten of his men.
I looked at the one speaking, a Night Lord standing a bit taller than the rest. One eye replaced with a biotic one, bald head criss-crossed by so many scars that it looked like a relief map, and a single bloodshot eye staring at me with naked hatred. That was the leader of this band of morons, the so-called ‘Soul Flayer’.
Funny. I was pretty sure there were half a dozen Chaos-worshipping warlords running around the place with that very same epithet.
To my unmitigated glee, the Night Lords standing arrayed against me hesitated to follow their lord’s order. It was probably the mocking smirk I sent his way as realisation dawned on him that pushed him over the edge.
The mighty Soul Flayer screeched like a banshee, face twitching into a rictus of apoplectic rage as he lashed out at the nearest Marine.
The unfortunate Marine failed to react in time; the Soul Flayer’s Power Sword cut him in half as he was jumping away.
“KILL HER!” he roared once more, and this time, some of them obeyed. Namely, the fifteen cunts hiding in the shadows of alcoves and high up in the railings of the spacious hall. Some of the ones standing near the Soul Flayer did the same, rushing towards me, even if I could tell they were doing it more to get out of their boss’s stabbing range and with the intent to slip away from the fight at the first opportunity.
About twenty more scattered, running towards escape pods and into dark tunnels, probably hoping to disappear into the bellows of the ship, or find another means of escaping it, and thus, me. Cute.
I let them run. There was no escape; I’d crippled all escape pods, shuttles and fighter voidcraft long ago. They would all die soon enough, namely, once I was done playing with this bunch of idiots and got around to igniting the Battle Barge’s fuel container. Or maybe I’d just throw it in the sun; that would also work.
I decided to handle the group charging at me with my new favourite spell, probably the most difficult Pyromancy spell I had, and it wasn’t by a small margin either. Fortunately, I was … cheating. In a lot of ways. So I managed to hammer out the kinks after a handful of attempts.
Soul energy poured into my body, filling every crevice, energising every last cell of my corporeal form. I didn’t ignite it, as I did with my other pyromancy spell. I didn’t want to light myself on fire, no, I wanted to become Fire. The nebulous concepts of Fire, Heat, Flame, and so on seared themselves into the soul energy suffusing my body, and I slammed my will down on it like a hammer, willing myself to change, to become Fire.
And then I did. My body, every last cell, turned into pure energy as I became a living avatar of fire and heat, only vaguely humanoid. With a flex of my will, that vague silhouette condensed into something firmer: pure plasma. I was wreathed in a cloak of silvery flames, and my new form radiated such an intense heat that the metal floor beneath my feet started melting, then bubbling like molten magma.
Reality absolutely loathed it. I wasn’t real in this form; I wasn’t supposed to be. It pressed in, demanding that I stop, that I relent, and that I once more submit to its Laws. I didn’t. Reality hated vacuums, and I was just that: a section of space where I temporarily denied its Laws. If my usual Avatar is comparable to a Daemonhost in how it functioned, then my current form — Molten Form, heh — was more like a Daemon manifesting in realspace. It felt like holding a mountain on my shoulders, but I could do it for a while.
I shot forward, arms splitting into a dozen questing tendrils of superheated plasma that lashed out like whips. They tore through the walls, the floor and even the ceramite armour protecting my fleshy foes, boiling them inside their shells just by mere proximity.
My physical form was always fluid with my Eldritch Flesh on hand, but I usually kept it constrained. This felt like when I turned my entire body into Eldritch Flesh, but even less limited. I wasn’t physical; I was a cloud of energy. I was heat, fire and flame.
My form dissipated, becoming a tide of roiling flames that washed over the Night Lords before they could so much as scream. I spread, my flames expanding like a roaring silvery inferno, flowing into every crevice, screaming down every corridor and burning everything and everyone they touched.
Not ten seconds later, they were all dead. Little more than charred husks and pieces of molten ceramite remain to show for them ever having lived at all. With a thought, my flames reversed, all of that energy that made up my current form rushing back into the centre as if sucked up by a vacuum. Once it was all gathered up, I flexed my will and released the spell, finally letting Reality reassert itself.
A few of the earliest runners managed to get far enough away that my questing flames failed to reach them. There were no more than five of them, having scattered and hidden as they scurried into the darker corners of the dying ship.
I didn’t feel like hunting them down. They might as well die with their ships. Let it all be consumed by the flames of a star. A fitting end to my first foray into Pyromancy, I think.