MEPHISTON
The Chief Librarian froze mid-walk, gathering some curious glances from the other occupants of the street but he went back to his previous stride without as much as a change in his severe expression.
For a single moment there, he felt his senses expand into something new, something entirely foreign to him but it closed not a moment later. All he got was a single lick of the sensation that this new section of what he assumed was the Warp, felt like.
He’d felt both corruption and purity before, both chaos and order. He was well versed in the intricacies of the Warp and many of its deepest secrets were known to him, still, no one could truly know everything.
Mephiston was young. He knew there were other Librarians who were his seniors, and he didn’t doubt that those who put themselves into the service of the God of Magic knew any less than himself.
Even so. When something was right in front of him or so close to him as this phenomena felt, very few things ever managed to so effortlessly slip out of his grasp.
Curiously, this phenomenon had the same ‘taste’ to it as what he felt wafting off of that mysterious woman.
This must be her doing. He concluded with a thoughtful look.
What exactly was it that he felt though? What had she done? He felt her power more clearly for a moment there than he did when she stood right in front of him and it wasn’t just something as mundane as removing a cloaking technique from her soul.
What he felt was more than any single mortal Sorceress could ever be. It was just more.
He went back to going about his day as he would have been anyway, brooding over the strange phenomena and what it could mean in the back of his mind throughout his other duties.
For now, he was to stay back in the Fort while the Chapter Master continued to take sorties out and prepare for the possibility of another monster similar to that ‘Swarmlord’ showing up.
Mephiston was rather confident in his capability of taking down the monster but he acquiesced to the Chapter Masters idea of preparing a ritual for such an eventuality. He understood that putting either himself or the Commander in as a precarious situation as facing down that monster again could mean the end of their resistance here.
Mephiston couldn’t let that happen. He knew how Tyranids operated, Kill, Eat, Evolve. He also knew that under his feet was a chapel more sacred than any to the bloodline of the Great Angel as it was the final resting place of the Primarch.
He faced the possibility of the Primarch’s remains falling into the maws of the Xeno menace numerous times during his meditations and he didn’t like any of the possible futures that laid out before humanity.
There were already bio-forms who could go toe-to-toe with the likes of Commander Dante who he counted amongst the finest warriors of humanity. If those beasts got their claws on the genetic material of a Primarch and used that to better themselves could any warrior stand in their way and expect anything other than a gruesome death? No. He didn’t think so.
The primary Ritual he prepared was for when he fell in battle. That ritual would cause the utter annihilation of the entire fortress along with the sacred chapel below.
It was a disastrously un-filial ritual and the thought of defiling his gene-father’s remains so saddened him but it was the obviously superior alternative to letting it strengthen the enemies of humanity. He could only wish for forgiveness after his death, if he was allowed even that, being the Avatar of the Dark Angel.
Not an hour after the first phenomena Mephiston felt that same tingle run down his spine, and he immediately made for his personal chamber, pushing both Brothers and regular humans out of his way as he rushed through the Fortress.
Back in his chambers, he sat down and let his mind slip away from his mortal shell. By the next time he opened up his eyes, he was in an ethereal replica of his own body floating along the currents of the Warp.
He made for the source of the phenomenon; he felt it more clearly now. The connection or whatever this was, felt more stable.
When he first laid his eyes upon the source of the phenomenon, he couldn’t quite tell what he was looking at. He stopped a good while away from where he could clearly observe monstrous beings of varying sizes rushing at the source but not a single one of them made it all the way to it.
Arching whips of pure energy which snapped out, obliterating either parts of the monsters or unmaking them entirely whenever it touched them. None of them seemed to care, these were mostly mindless Warp beings and some demons from the lowest echelons of their orders.
He glanced around and he could feel concealed auras all around himself, though none were as adept at hiding their presence as he was so he reasoned they should be unaware of his presence. Hopefully, the woman who made this phenomenon was also the same.
One approaching aura stood out from the rest and Mephiston watched it as it moved closer to the source much like the monsters. Few of them paid the bright soul much attention, transfixed as they were with the phenomena but the few that did were dealt with in short order by the soul itself.
Psyker. Feels like an Eldar. About upper Delta.
Not that the denomination meant much for an Eldar. Theirs was a miserable existence of having the power to bend reality and being unable to do so lest they pay for that power with their souls. Farseers tended to be Beta level Psykers, which were the strongest a regular human could theoretically reach.
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Very few Beta level human Psykers ever had a sound mind, the whispers of the Warp and the machinations of the demons breaking them before they could ever learn to control their powers.
He watched on curiously as the soul slowed; it seemed to deliberate just at the edge of where the arcs of energy first struck out. Monsters stepping past each lasted no longer than a blink, though larger ones advanced further in that time and yet they too ended up being sent back into the depths of the Warp.
None could fault him for the astonishment he felt when despite common sense the soul moved forward. He almost reflexively sent out a pulse of power to send it back but he held himself back. The soul wasn’t his to save. If it wanted to face oblivion instead of an eternity of torture at the hands of demons, he wasn’t one to fault it.
The soul moved and despite demons and monsters alike flaking away into nothingness all around it, not a single arc of energy as much as grazed it. He narrowed his eyes. A demon came close, somehow more intent on taking a bite out of the soul than rushing to its death like others of its kind but as it bounded forward as much as three arcs of energy smashed into it and obliterated it.
The soul moved on, unharmed and dare he say, protected by the phenomena.
He stared at the center of it all, at the source of this phenomenon and the center point of this orb of death. A rift was there, not unlike the ones made by Warp Drives to open a portal into the Warp.
It hurt his eyes to look at it. His senses were somehow proving uncomprehending of the true nature of what he was beholding, and a part of him knew that his mind was turning the incomprehensible into something his mortal mind could process. So a rift.
He couldn’t truly know what he saw as a rift could be underneath that veil his mind used to protect itself but he dared to guess. A gateway.
He could feel an impression from it, similar to how smaller realms inside the Warp felt, but this was like a bundle of realms smashed together in a larger one.
Despite his expertise and power, he held no hope for peering into the depths of this mysterious realm which felt entirely untainted by not only Chaos but the Warp itself.
He squinted as the soul touched the rift and disappeared into it with no sign of it ever having been there. Was this rift made just for that single soul to pass through?
He concluded that it had not when the rift remained even after what he felt were 20 Terran minutes, passed.
Then came another soul. This one had a faintly familiar aura to it which he matched with the Eldar Warlock he noticed going around the fortress under an illusionary guise.
Much like the previous soul, this one was also unharmed by the arcs and while it garnered more attention from the demons, it also exercised much more power and expertise in banishing each. It also disappeared into the rift.
He waited for the rift to close but it stayed open which had him cast his senses far and wide for any Psyker level soul also approaching the rift. He found a single one just out of naked sight, battling with a horde of demons on its own.
Like a wraith, he approached it. The horde was varied and included some regular Warp monsters but most of it comprised demons. He saw everything from nurglings, to bloodletters, to even a single Herald of Change all collapsing on the single human soul.
Human. He let his aura lick at the soul and he recognised the taste. Selene Voss, was it?
The woman was obviously a Psyker, though a new one. Her soul paled compared to the previous two and its powers left much to be desired but it held out with a vicious ferocity, banishing demons in pairs at a time but he could tell her limit was approaching.
He deliberated on helping the woman; she was obviously at least moderately important to that woman, so if he wanted to put her in his debt, this would be a perfect opportunity.
Would she take him being here at all, obscured and stalking, as offence? Would it be worth it to show himself? Would the loss of this Selene even affect the woman enough to prove detrimental for the war campaign?
His face hardened as he saw the force fields around the soul starting to flicker. The chances were set and he would rather have charges of stalking against himself than letting someone important to the woman die.
He got ready to shake off his cover and make quick work of this flimsy horde of demons but a tingling chill ran down his ethereal spine, making him stop for a moment.
In that single moment, enormous tendrils of pure white energy flooded out of the phenomena just out of sight and tore through the Warp. They each came from different directions, tearing through monsters, demons and other unexpecting observers alike.
Building-sized tendrils split into thousands of tiny ones, each forming into spears that glowed with energy. Wherever they pierced demons, their incorporeal bodies vanished and their pained screeches reverberated through the Warp.
He watched on as the tendrils wrapped around the tiny human soul protectively. They pulled the soul back towards the rift as the other tendrils continued lashing out with vindictive malice.
His eyes were fixated on something else though, not the human soul, not the whimpering Farseer that got caught up in the tendril’s rampage and certainly not the obliterated demons.
Mephiston watched Warp energy flowing into those White tendrils and some faint red veins appeared on them for but a moment. The tendrils sucked up energy from the Warp in larger quantities than he used in an entire decade.
Then they retreated, pulling back into the rift and disappearing into it much like the souls. Then the rift hissed and dimmed. It’s white light phasing out of existence and leaving nothing but ruins and death in its wake.
Mephiston in that moment only had a single thought.
Not making an enemy of her was a good idea.
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Worry marred my face, a deep frown pulling my expression taut as I watched Selene’s meditating body slump forward.
I was there to catch her of course as she shook in my arms, letting out a long trembling breath.
I would have never gone through with putting Selene through this if the other two weren’t fine afterwards. Well, fine was a relative term in their case but there seemed to be no problem I could see.
Fae dropped to her hands and knees and smashed her head into the floor right after she woke up and thanked me with tears streaming down her face. Right now, she was a bit more collected but I could practically feel her veneration stream into me.
Val was different. He woke up sure, he instantly checked whether he could pull on his powers and ever since then he was staring into nothingness with an idiotic grin on his face, sometimes letting out a cackle as he activated a spell using Soul Energy.
Of course there were problems at first, the lingering Warp taint in his body and the Soul energy got into a fight as soon as they met and his body suffered the consequences. Not that such a thing as much as dampened his mood, he bore through it without flinching and by now he was as pure as he could be.
Now onto Selene, she was obviously exhausted from her previous fight which I was almost a moment to late to. My reluctance to show what I was capable of to all the naughty onlookers could have cost me much but thankfully she came out alright. Right?
“Selene?” I nudged her, and she looked up at me, eyes wide in something between horror and astonishment. She wasn’t looking at me — my body that is — but at me.
“Is this really you?” She gulped, hand tracing up at the side of my face as her eyes finally focused on my own. “Is this what you had always been?”
“Complicated questions right off the bat.” I giggled at her and pulled her into a quick hug. I wanted to reinforce that I was still the same. “Now you can see me in my entirety, that is my answer to your first question but the second one is a touch more complicated to answer.”
“How so?” She asked, blinking at me and shaking her head in an attempt to keep her focus on me. Should I put a barrier around this little forest realm that intercepts psychic senses? Let’s do that. “Eh?”
“Noooooo.” Fae lamented in the background, though I ignored her. Val only gave me a single glance before nodding in understanding before he went back to what I could only call ‘playing with magic’.
“This should help you stay in the present.” I said. “I don’t intend to hide my nature from you, but it overwhelming you isn’t something I want either, you don’t need to bother with it.”
“Okay, yeah, alright.” she gave off a sigh and cracked her neck as she stepped back from me. “I will need to get used to it. No more voices. No more worry.”
“You might not need to fear possession anymore but without that to put a limit on you, you can reach a point where your body gives out under the power flowing through it. You should keep that in mind, and you two too.” I gave a glance at the Eldar.
“Yes.” Fae nodded, slumping down to meditate while Val gave me a nod that told me he already knew that.
“Alright,” I turned my undivided attention to Selene. “I will help you get used to using this new source of power and your abilities and then we should get back into the fray. I promised a day of slaughter to Dante after all.”
“Okay.” A grin was slowly spreading on Selene’s face, missing the usual dark undertone of it and instead giving off a regular cheerful feeling. “Let’s get to it then.”