Isha was running, fleeing through the warp; a disturbance had shaken the entire realm into an even more dischordent mess, shattering the domains of the twisted gods that now held dominion over the warp.
That same disturbance had broken her cage and distracted Nurgle long enough for her to flee his garden.
Isha knew she did not have long before Nurgle found her, she had escaped before and everytime no matter where she hid she would be found and dragged back to the cage, weaker with each attempt and with the concoctions the dark god fed her.
She just needed to find somewhere to hide, just long enough to recover her strength, but the warp was entirely corrupted and there was nowhere left to hide.
Isha could feel Nurgle daemons nearing her when she discovered the source of the disturbance that had broken her cage, it was an entire world, this was not uncommon though, worlds fell into the warp often enough, and it would not be enough to cause a disturbance with enough force to free her, no what caused it was that this world was untainted by the warp, not just free of corruption, but a true vacuum of any warp presence.
That was unprecedented, even worlds in real space had some reflection in the warp, some minor presence or even a nascent world spirit if the chaos gods did not destroy it before it could form. This planet had nothing.
Isha watched as the dark gods struggled to send their forces down to the planet and watched them rage as only the barest tendrils of their powers managed to reach down into the planet's atmosphere.
Well a planet that seemed to be actively fighting off the warp's corruption seemed like a fine place to hide, even if Nurgle found her he would have trouble mustering the force to pull her from the planet, at least while the planet stayed uncorrupted.
Hopefully that would give her a few hours to regather her strength, hiding her presence as best she could, Isha prepared to entire the planet, and as she breached the atmosphere she was surprised to feel the planet watching her, how could a world spirit form on a world completely devoid of any warp presence?
She felt the planet judge her, and suddenly regretted sending all of her essence into an unknown situation, but even this world spirit deciding to snuff out her weakened spark was preferable to the cage, so she waited as the planet judged her.
She felt the barrier around the planet give around her and slowly pushed her way through, finally feeling the life that was on this world, a fierce ecosystem that was even now destroying the tendrils of corruption that the dark gods snuck through the barrier.
It seemed she wasn't even fully safe here, if one of those tendrils found her, well she didn't actually know what would happen but she doubted it would be good. She needed to find somewhere to hide, preferable with something that could fight off the tendrils without corrupting itself.
The good thing was that seemed to be everything on this world, the bad thing is that there were apparently only 3 true environments on this world, the strongest dwelled in the ocean and greedily devoured all that came near, and the other 2 were roughly equal and competing for control of the planets land, one was of machine and clockwork and the other of flesh and chitin.
She would not be hiding with the ocean's creatures, they felt endless hunger and reminded her too much of the dark gods to truly feel safe near.
The insects were novel, an ever growing horde that fed on corruption and pollution and one that would adapt in time to any threat, as long as the adaptation would not cause corruption itself.
The machine life was the equally interesting though, an interconnected web of souls stretching across the world, similar to the bugs in that regard, but different in that it only had one true nexus, while the insects had one for every hive cluster, and the soul at the center of this cluster was a human one.
The humans soul showed signs of poor mass production, with a bland flavor showing its lack of parents to contribute to its soul, this was bad enough, with a soul like that the man would be lucky to make it to 20 before it broke, but it was worse than that, his soul was splintering, and slowly breaking from stress, Isha saw the man's life, all 2 years he was alive, and saw nothing but fear and danger from it, with only the distant hope of escape keeping the man sane.
The machines souls were merging into and filling the cracks in the man's soul, crudely repairing the damage, and the man might have even been fine, slowly becoming more machine yes but alive and with a soul, but corruption had come to this world and the damage to his soul would make him vulnerable, she could already see some of the machines souls bearing taint before getting subconsciously exorcized from the network of souls by the man, and each machine soul he lost ripped a piece of his own soul out with it.
That made Isha's choice simple then, the insects didn't need her help and the man did, it didn't matter that this world would fall to chaos in a few days, someone here needed help and she could provide it.
It didn't hurt that he had the only source of plant life left on the planet was in the factory.
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Isha found that this planet just kept surprising her, first of all it had lasted a week so far without falling to chaos, sure the dark gods could still send portions of their legions thorough, but not in numbers the ecosystem here couldn’t handle, and the barrier holding the bulk of the dark gods off was holding strong.
The work to fix the man's soul was simple, she just needed to smooth out the crude fixes the machines' souls had done and ensure that any bits of his soul lost with a machine would not harm him, and she was a goddess of life, she could manage something as simple as that.
Now each machine added to the network of souls would strengthen the man's soul, and that strength would be lost when the machine died, rather than the man losing an actual chunk of his soul. It was as if each machine was another layer of armor around his soul. Unless the largest and most developed machines' souls all fell to corruption the man's soul was safe, And with how the man's soul sought out and purged the corruption from his network it was extremely unlikely that would occur.
It seemed like this world and all the life on it was anathema to corruption of any sort, and thus it shouldn't have surprised her when one of the true anathema’s offspring ended up on this world.
Isha did not have any presence outside this world, she barely had any presence outside the man's main base, and so she did not know how or why a child of the anathema ended up on this world, which was still floating in the middle of the warp. But that didn't change the fact that there was in fact a child of the anathema in this world, one with enough of a presence to be considered a demigod.
That meant that either than anthema was dead and had scattered his children, or that chaos had taken the children, or some unseen scenario had played out without her knowledge, she just didn't know, what Isha did know was that if the anthema was alive he would come for his child, and he did not exactly have a high opinion of the eldar pantheon.
That was a problem for later Isha though, right now she was more concerned with gathering enough power to do more than make a few plants grow around her, she used to be able to make a dead world spring to life, now she could barely manage a hedge maze.
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This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Isha had a reckless idea, she needed more power to do anything, and the only way she had to get it was to spread her plants, only she couldn't do that with the bulk of her spirit hiding, so she was going to send small chunks of her own soul into the mans, anywhere there was a sufficient amount of his soul would start showing signs of plant growth, further giving her power, it would only be in the parts of his soul near her, she didn't have enough power to spread everywhere his soul touched, but it would still hasten her recovery.
It was risky in that if she did it poorly she could damage the man's soul, but she was a goddess of life and was intimately familiar with the soul that constantly surrounded hers, there was also the fact that if his soul did fall to the corruption a large portion of hers would too, still as long as she removed her power before he fell she would be fine.
And the planet seemed to be holding on well enough anyway, it probably wouldn't fall the moment she risked herself.
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The plan did not backfire, and Isha now had enough presence to manifest small creatures in addition to her plants, which would only help to further grow her power.
The man's soul did not purge her energy like it did with the warps taint, instead it seemed to control the flow of her energy before sending the fragments of her power out around the borders of his outposts, it seems his soul thinks her power is just part of the factory now, and has incorporated it and any power she puts into his soul network is routed out much like the factory pumps out it pollution. Which was not exactly what she had expected to happen, having the man's soul treat her power like pollution from the hydroponics bay was an odd feeling, but it did serve her purposes.
The anthema’s spawn has begun spending more time in the hydroponics bay the bulk of her power resides in, seemingly working with one of the larger souls to redesign the bay, which is nice, the sterile and ordered nature of the garden was beginning to annoy her and Isha was uncertain that she could modify it without being noticed.
And if she was modifying the plants and animals to grow better in their new environments, well there was no one here to judge.
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She may have underestimated the child's sensitivity, as it seems both the child and the man are aware that she is in the hydroponics bay now, and even suspect her of causing the plant growth, though neither seem overly concerned, the man's soul has known of her power for quite awhile now, and he would have been hostile long before he actually discovered her if he was going to attack her at all, his soul would have made him angry or fearful with the plants she grew, and as it didn't he wouldn't be overtly hostile, suspicious yes but not hostile.
No the boy was more of a surprise, Isha had assumed the Anthema would write his hatred of the warp into the boy's genetic code, she couldn't see all of it, some of it was warded even from her weakened sight, but instead the child just seemed curious.
So when the boy brought in a handcrafted wooden hive, she could do little else but fill it with insects for him.
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Isha may or may not have insured the boys augmentations smoothly integrated with his biology, and no one was around to tell her it was a waste of her power, she even had enough power to see the entirety of the boys genetic code, it was …… passable, she could have done better and Isha did fine tune his genetics, along with weeding out any little errors that had shown up. Still for a deity that didn’t specialize in life the work was outstanding, and the boy's soul was an even better work.
She even ensured the boy's mind wasn't damaged by being directly exposed to the factories network, at least before it had adapted to him, superhuman or no, getting hit with that much information at once would give anyone a headache, and probably kill a mortal human.
Isha had even done more work on the man's biology, cleaning up the damage he had accumulated and further integrating his augmetics, plus a little work on his soul's subspace pocket, it was the least she could do for the shelter he had provided.
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The next few years were calm, with only slowly growing her power to cover the planet and developing an ever more complex ecosystem to take her time, and being an ancient creature of the warp it can be forgiven that she lost track of what the man and boy were up to, she only noticed that the planet was exiting the warp when the barrier around the planet, the one that had held for years, began to fray at the world spirit stopped maintaining it.
She barely managed to hide the bulk of her power by the time the dark gods had broken through the fading wall, and hid as the warp drives that would take the planet out of the warp spun up.
Isha knew that she couldn't get off the planet before it de warped, and with how Slanseshs and Nurgles presences were looking at her, she wasn't sure she wanted to.
Quickly using the plants in the hydroponics bay she began to grow a suitable vessel for her spirit to inhabit, she didn't really have time to make anything fancy, but the body she used to use to walk among the eldar was familiar enough that Isha could make it quickly.
It was only once the de warp had finished that she realized she had forgotten to grow clothes for it, still it was only a few minutes of work to grow a suitable outfit.
While Isha was working on her new clothing she felt the engineers attention fall on her, and could feel as his body got closer to the hydroponics bay, she spent the time till he arrived getting used to having a physical body again, it had been ages since she had incarnated and having limbs was disorienting.
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It was disconcerting to be sitting at a table with the engineer, she hadn't ever actually imagined needing to talk to him, not that he was even capable of speech, his makers not having seen the need to give a cloned slave a voice box, and subsequently removing the speech center of his brain to make room for more information not even letting him notice his own lack of a voice either, crude and barbaric work that. But Isha figured the first thing she needed to do was to give him the ability of speech.
Isha reached over the table to touch his neck and was vaguely surprised when the engineer batted her hand away, before remembering that the engineer was someone who had never met her before, and humans were particular about personal space, not that the eldar weren't, but when she met with eldar they tended to know who she was and let her do largely as she pleased.
Figuring that she wouldn't be allowed to touch him without a fight, Isha instead reached out to his soul, to communicate more directly.
The man had plenty of questions and she spent quite a while answering them, eventually leaving her seat and wandering the garden, snacking on a few of the fresh fruits, and after a few hours of conversation the man seemed to run out of steam, leaving with a quick thanks, presumably to continue working on the repairs, the daemons had destroyed quite a bit outside, she was still regrowing her forest herself.
Now Isha just had to figure out what she was going to do now, she could head to the eldar, but chaos would surely be hunting her and she wasn't nearly strong enough to fend them off, a planets worth of plant life was significantly better than her previous state, but nothing compared to before the birth of she who thirsts, so the warp was right out, staying here was an option but the anathema would be coming for his son at some point, if he was alive and considering she could feel his presence blaring across the warp from terra, that was very likely.