CHAPTER 1
Jinglypuff the fairy fluttered leisurely through the lush Greenwood forest, her dainty body carried gracefully by a pair of rainbow wings. She drew sparkling curves around trees and lazy animals. It was a sunny late spring day and the ompa-ompa mushrooms had just begun to bob and sing. What a silly bunch. Jinglypuff didn't know if they were plants, animals or something else. She didn't have much of an interest in mushrooms anyways. Today she was here to spy on the human princess taking the ceremonial bath in the enchanted spring, which had been one of Jinglypuff's own creations.
She liked the princess and often played mischief on her, causing sudden winds and stealing her underpants, tihi~! At one point she had turned into a human maid and- Jinglypuff blushed in embarrassment remembering the incident.
Compared to greater beast summoning, weather control and continental terraforming, turning into a visible human was surprisingly expensive magic for a fairy. How frustrating. In the middle of the act she had run out magic and disappeared in a poof. Perhaps in another thousand years she'd be powerful enough to keep the spell running for an hour. She was already the oldest and most powerful fairy. Even the eldritch entities in the Otherwhere had to be polite to her.
Jinglypuff arrived at the enchanted spring early and settled down on a big zooboing-leaf to await the princess and her escort of warrior priestesses. As she lay there contentedly, hands on cheeks and feet paddling air, lightning suddenly struck out of nowhere. Jinglypuff was immune to lightning, but nonetheless turned into a crisp.
–o–
"System is very sorry. System was playing around with a new type of lightning. System hit and killed spirit by mistake. System has been experiencing issues. System will make it up to spirit."
"Huuh?"
Jinglyfuff found herself in a strange white space hearing a disembodied metallic voice. She was aware that there were other realities – and that she lived in one of the upper-tier ones, but this place felt like it was outside of them all.
"Hey, you! Put me back! I'm going to miss it!"
"System is very sorry. System can not immediately return spirit. System first must thread spirit through lesser reality. System will give already powerful spirit even more power as an apology. System estimates that staying in lesser reality for a short decade will be sufficient to facilitate a smooth return. System ensures spirit that no time will have passed in home reality."
"A decade? Hmmpf... very well, as long as I don't miss the thing."
"System is pleased about the agreement. System has located a reality. System could find no fairies but has located a world with humans and will now attempt to put spirit into a temporary, mature human body. System advices some healing might be required after resurrection."
"Transfer attempt failed, target body fully expired."
"Transfer attempt failed, target body fully expired."
"Transfer attempt failed, target body fully expired."
"Transfer attempt failed, target body fully expired."
"Transfer attempt failed, target body fully expired..."
–o–
The victory had been hard earned. Urzal, not even a Space Marine Sergeant, now held the highest rank in the fleet, though he didn't have much left to command. The Angles of Absolution had deployed a force of three hundred Space Marines and two titans to face down the remainder of the Tyranid hive fleet Ravant. All forces had been lost. All except Urzal who now dominated the secondary bridge of the damaged frigate Malorant. Out of the Imperial Guard forces... well, all but one burned along with the world below. A lone guardswoman had escaped with Urzal, both having just managed to board the orbital transport in time. It was Urzal who had finally given the order to call down the Exterminatus. Cyclonic Torpedoes had been custom fitted to the inconspicuous 1.5km frigate more as a contingency measure but ultimately had to be deployed, cleansing the planet and finally stopping hive fleet Ravant in its tracks.
The sacrifice had been worth it. 90km ahead of the Malorant drifted the hive fleet's last synapse ship, and besides it another carcass – that of the 3.5km cruiser Yarrexon which had boldly rammed the xenos voidship and reportedly injected some sort of biocide agent originally intended for planetary deployment.
"Astrogator, set the Malorant on a boarding trajectory.", Urzal ordered.
A drive systems servitor whirred and clicked in response – is head twitching inside the mechanical head cradle that connected it to the Imperial voidship's machine spirit via a multitude of tubes and needles. Next to it another servitor hanged slack in its harness, sparks shooting from the mechanical sockets of its amputated arms.
The Malorant was a little slow to respond, half of its crew of 24000 being dead or severely injured. The engine tech priest was also dead, as were the entire bridge crew including the Master Helmsman and Inquisitor. Most of the frigate's laser batteries had already been stripped out to fit the Cyclonic Torpedoes – the remainder were out of order and repairs weren't coming. Regardless, Urzal had inherited Deathwing Mandate orders to investigate the bioship if possible and scout for any weak points.
–o–
Guardswoman Yava Jen didn't know why a lowly soldier was allowed on the bridge deck, but now she stood there looking at the remains of the world below with glassy eyes. Nearly a decade ago she had seem a similar sight. That time it had been her own home world burning. It hadn't been the Imperium who destroyed it though, but the machinations of the Chaos Dwarfs.
Her home world of Dezhenari had been a relatively peaceful arid farming world able to sustain a population of two billion after Imperial tithes. She was 16 when it happened, when the skeletal Androids constructed by the Chaos Dwarfs appeared and swiftly cut the population by half. She learned later that prohibiting women from serving was an exception rather than the norm out in the greater Imperium. After nearly all of the men had been drafted and eliminated things changed on Dezhenari of course. Reinforcements from the neighbouring system arrived to find an army consisting of mostly guardswomen, children and elderly – all desperately holding off the remaining Chaos Androids.
By this time Dezhenari was almost uninhabitable, though apparently not enough so for the Chaos Squat engineers who deployed their Furnace Bombs just as evacuations began, some twisted experiment of theirs apparently being over.
Dezhenari had never been beautiful, not like Holy Terra which was rumoured to be a lush paradise, but Yava had never felt such loss. Now it echoed in her mind upon seeing another world burn.
Her brooding was interrupted by the Emperor's angel who suddenly spoke directly to her with a powerful and commanding voice.
"Ready yourself, guardswoman, and follow me to the boarding torpedo."
"Wha- we're going over to the xenos ship?", was all she could say, but the enormous armoured figure ignored her, exuding purpose as it strode off with heavy thumping footsteps.
Momentarily she snapped out of it and followed, hurriedly performing The Rites of Maintenance on her dinged up lasrifle as she tried to catch up.
–o–
Jinglypuff woke up feeling dazed with her body sprawled under decayed bits of bone and torn organic tissue. What is this place? Something feels off. Didn't the system thing say I'd get a human body? This doesn't appear to be a human body at all. Oh- right, some great calamity struck the world and... there was a transfer redirection error? What's this body then?
"Full Heal!", she commanded, immediately surprised by her distorted alien voice.
The powerful spell brought the body back to normal in an instant. She rose out of the organic debris and observed herself. It was indeed a very strange body, made out of bone or some kind of chitin in tones of black, blues, purples and whites. It didn't seem very powerful though, not compared to Iron Spiders and Ant Dragons of similar form.
Hmmm. Something was poking at her mind, some sort of far off commanding entity. Very annoying. She shut it out. Apparently this body was originally part of some sort of hive mind collective, or hierarchy. If Jinglypuff had underlings she could probably command them, but she seemed to be the only one of her kind in the immediate area. The whole place looked deteriorated. Thinking about it, given the organic nature of the surrounding environment, perhaps a quick Area Heal spell could tidy things up a bit?
As soon as the spell took effect she received a connection request of sorts from a big dumb organism called "the ship". She was inside it. It's a travel organism? Peculiar, but not unheard of. Perhaps it was like the airwhales used by the merfolk?
Upon tapping into its sensory system the whole situation became a bit clearer. The ship was actually up in space and in orbit around a world which did not look healthy. Everyone must have died down there. Restoring the world would probably take some effort. The more pressing matter was a different adjacent ship. It had discharged a ragged group of humans into the ship via a smaller boarding capsule a while ago. Most of the humans – nearly a hundred – had quickly died near their point of entry due to the presence of a toxic mist, which had also severely wounded the ship. The surviving last three appeared to be wearing more sturdy helmets or masks.
No, wait, one actually had the head of a goat. A goatman! Those were pretty rare weren't they? It wore but a chainmail loincloth and belt. Short light brown fur stretched over its toned muscles. The goatman barbarian clutched a jagged buzzing stick and seemed ready to go berserk.
Then there was a large knight clad in a rather inelegant and dirty white armour, sporting a strange black metal rucksack. The knight carefully swept the area with a big clunky blunderbuss – likely of gnomish origin. On its spaulder flew a winged heraldic mark belonging to some noble house or kingdom.
Lastly, there was a peasant soldier woman a green and brown outfit. She was armed with a smaller blunderbuss but stood bent over as she had either lost her composure or was feeling sick.
The members of the diminutive boarding party must have been spooked when the environment around them suddenly regained its vitality, if not also from their comrades dying. Hadn't they ever heard about healing magic? Jinglypuff didn't know what kind of visitors they were, but knew that knights would sometimes get violent. So, Jinglypuff located a nearby sphincter and dragged them into holding cells using a handy tentacle feature of the ship, also quickly stripping them of their ineffectual weapons. The goatman had briefly attacked a wall with its buzzing stick. What was it planning to do? The ship was several kilometers long and could obviously be quickly healed.
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After casting an Area Cleanse spell to remove the remaining toxic mist she then proceeded to reconfigure the atmospheric glands of the ship. Jinglypuff didn't want more of the guests dying – not until she had questioned them. The zombies produced by her Resurrection spell really weren't all that talkative.
First it was time for some introspection though. She took a moment to examine her new body more closely and gained at least some appreciation for it. It was highly configurable, albeit with much room for improvement. Upon deciding that she was safe for now she entered a sort of cocoon mode and begun to alter the body, soon expediting the process using growth magic.
She shifted the extra arms to the back and activated the dormant growth code related to wings. Truth to be told, she didn't really need wings to fly – they just lessened the cost of the Fly spell. And, well, a fairy has got to have wings, right?
The rather crude spitting and shard shooting weapons had to go; she'd use her more diverse magic for defence and offence if needed. She kept the some of the sharp fingernails though, just in case, and popped one of the bone swords into her inventory space.
The posture had to be more erect and feminine. The muscular system was not as advanced as in one of her flesh golems so she made some improvements, doubling the movement speed and strength. Ah- there's a hidden camouflage system! She was used to being invisible as a fairy, so it would be nice to have. Phasing through walls was sadly a no-go though – she'd have to use a spell for that. Similarly she'd have to rely on a passive auto-cast shield spell since this body was a bit on the fragile side, being just regular matter.
Jinglypuff spent another ten minutes doing minor tweaks. Glancing at the sensors she noticed that the human ship had begun limping away for some reason. It was no matter – she could easily catch up if she wanted to.
Finally finished she emerged from the cocoon, standing nearly three meters tall with the wings neatly tucked into the back-carapace. She felt majestic and complete. The whole process reminded her about that time she had designed the flesh golem dungeon boss for the elves, minus all the nagging about aesthetics by the elven council. It took them two centuries to clear it.
Remembering that dungeon... didn't she need some underlings and minions now? Minion control was one of her new neat features after all so she should probably make use of it. The intruding humans unfortunately all looked too weak and clumsy to be useful and she didn't yet know if they could be trusted with anything. Oh, right, the ship can make minions, can't it? It just needs some biomatter for the, uh... brood chambers. Just as Jinglypuff was about to scavenge parts of the ship, she remembered something. Weren't there a lot of corpses near the boarding point?
–o–
Yava sat hugging her legs in the cell. She couldn't make any sense of the situation. The gas masks hadn't worked very well. So many had died. Her mask was better than that of the crews' but she had nearly succumbed as well. The beastman didn't seem too bothered for some reason... and the Space Marine... well, the children of the Emperor were all beyond that stuff, she guessed.
When she suddenly felt fine and the old infected gash on her hand healed, she first thought it was the Emperor's blessing, but then she noticed that the xenos voidship recovered as well. Why would the Emperor do such a thing? She reached for the Aquila pendant around her neck and asked for clarity, but received no answer...
–o–
Targ paced back and forth in his cell. He had been proud to walk with Space Marine. He had been proud to survive. His kind – the abhumans – were often looked down upon, and now now would learn of his achievement. He and the others were food for the alien ship.
–o–
Urzal stood calmly contemplating the situation and his error. He had been prepared to scout the xenos ship alone but hadn't expected so many of the crew dying from the biocide. It had been a gamble. If the biocide had somehow not been present due to a failed injection by the Yarrexon, then he would have likely been attacked by Tyranid survivors and could have used the distraction of 90 lasrifles. If the Tyranids were dead, chances were that much of the biocide had already been absorbed by the tissues, filters and organs of the ship. Apparently, not enough of it had been, or perhaps the crew gas masks were just subpar. Regular humans are so fragile and he didn't exactly have a Magos Biologis on hand to consult on the matter. He spoke a prayer for all the recently departed. Infortuni ad mortem. May their souls find the Emperor's Light.
As for the miraculous recovery of the Tyranid bioship... it was a phenomenon beyond the realms of reason. Surely it had not played dead just to capture just a few people? Was it perhaps a strange temporal effect – the twisted workings of demonic entities? Fifty years ago Urzal had entered the warp on an old and damaged strike cruiser with an irregular Gellar Field. The ship gradually improved in condition during the course of the journey... that is, until it exited the warp and reverted back.
These type of effects were often temporal. Perhaps he just needed to wait it out? But how long should he wait then? He still had his combat knife and a grenade and could perhaps carve a pocket for the grenade in the organic wall, creating an point of escape. With the Emperor's Wind at his back he could reach the boarding torpedo and hit the emergency ejection thrusters.
Suddenly the cell's door slit opened up, permitting exit – or extraction. Before he could make a choice the holding cell convulsed, forcefully ejecting him into a slippery tube. Moments later he was dispensed into a large, almost royal looking organic chamber. Its sides were flanked by thick pillars of bone and shimmering membranes stretching in elegant arcs. Some almost hung like banners. Something felt distinctly off about it.
Next to him the guardswoman and the abhuman rose to their feet, having landed less gracefully. Both seemed equally as perplexed.
At the opposite end of the chamber where one might almost expect a to see a grand church organ instead rose a large glistering throne festooned with spindles and tines. It was facing a closed archway in the far wall but soon swung around, revealing a large Tyranid creature – not quite a Hive Tyrant, but something else, more regal and imposing. It sat leisurely like a ruler would.
"Well well well, I have guests.", it spoke in fluent mid gothic, its coarse voice a loud rumbling wheeze matching the terrifying visage. Then it drew to its full height and strode into the centre of the chamber with a slight sway to its hips.
It was very clearly a large and deadly Tyranid, but also nearly human in build – oozing an unsettlingly abnormal normal aura. Coming to a halt it stood and grinned at them. For a moment it almost looked like a genuine smile.
Yava collapsed, clutching her Aquila and mumbling prayers. The abhuman seemed very confused and froze in place, its goat mouth agape. Urzal was preparing for combat, immediately running multiple attack scenarios in his mind, some ending with him plunging his combat knife into the base of the skull of the abomination.
"Ah, where are my manners? I'm Jinglypuff – Jinglypuff the fairy!", the Tyranid monster continued spreading its arms a bit in an uncanny human gesture.
"Emperors light, protect me!", Urzal declared before drawing his combat knife to rush the enemy.
It had left itself open and didn't appear to have any weapons. He crossed the distance in a moment, drawing a swift and deadly arc with the sword-like knife. However, the next moment a bone sword appeared out of thin air to block the knife.
"Hah, you want to fence?", the monster mused as it joined in a frenetic dance with him around the chamber.
Urzal had fought Tyranids in close combat before, and this was nothing like it. The abhuman seemed ready to jump in but became discouraged after seeing the exchange escalate.
"Isn't this the traditional greeting of the Death Elves? I'll have to say that you're not nearly as good – no offence.", the thing continued, looking a bit disappointed.
Filtering out the absurdity of the situation, Urzal blessed his luck for being given some momentary distance. He primed the grenade with a short fuse and threw it. The Tyranid simply waved it out of existence with a gesture, then put its hands on its hips.
"Throwing potions? Ok, that's enough of this. I'll take the blade too before you cause an injury, good sir knight."
The Tyranid made another gesture, and his combat knife appeared in its hand. Urzal finally froze too.
"Mid-tier work at best as far an un-enchanted blades go. Why don't you use blue mythril?", it asked, inspecting the chipped edge with what might have been a frown.
The Tyranid then paced back to its throne and sunk into it.
"Anyways, is this going to be a one-sided conversation? I've already introduced myself – I'm Jinglypuff the fairy. And you are...?", it lingered.
"I do not speak to demonic xenos filth.", Urzal retorted.
"Hah! But you just did.", the Tyranid chuckled leaning forward making some sort of finger gesture.
Then it suddenly grew contemplative, as if realizing something.
"Oh, hold up, I know why you're all so flummoxed. Uh, these things-", it pointed to itself, "...normally likes to attack and eat people, right? Right. I can sort of feel it in my bones, but don't worry, I'm not a bad monster...", it claimed, but then it added a slurping sound which seemed to negate its claim.
"You're- You're not a Tyranid?", the guardswoman asked after some pause.
Urzal thought about shutting her up but wanted to hear the answer as well.
"Tyranid? I've already told you, I'm a fairy. Was that not enough of a clue? Fairies can shapeshift, though I have not yet tried it using the spell with this body, and humans are difficult and exhausting to do. Anyways, this ship was dead and I merely seized it."
"So, you don't eat people?", the guardswoman prodded, showing signs of relief.
"Oh no. Wait- I think I did technically just eat some people.", it said, rubbing its temples looking vexed, "But they were already dead and I didn't kill them, so does it count? It doesn't count, right? Can we focus instead on who killed those people? Because that wasn't me – I just got here!"
Just as Urzal was about to speak up, the monster suddenly clapped its hands together with a thump.
"Goodness – I think my babies just hatched!"
–o–
Jinglypuff used the ship's sensors to inspect the twelve creatures hatching in the magically accelerated brood chambers. Her first minions were ready. What did the knight call this race? Tyranids? Doesn't that make her creations... Fairids?
The twelve Fairids didn't have any of her powers of course, but they were still an improved version of the Tyranids. Jinglypuff had made sure to isolate their minds from the greater hive. They're operating on their own secure channel, as the Gnomes would boast when prattling on about their mechanical golems.
The three guests were speculating in hushed voices, with the goatman insisting that the monster had been stalling for time so it could hatch more monsters. It didn't seem too bright. The large knight was sure a fairy must be kind of daemonic entity from "the warp", whatever that was. He gave the impression of someone deeply entrenched in a rigid belief system. Played it dirty with that potion too. He might be a leader but seems more like a bad influence. The peasant soldier woman clearly didn't dare to have an opinion in face of the knight.
She had done the whole chair spin reveal instead of using the camouflage system to just appear. Wasn't it more dramatic? The chair and decoration was a bit of a rush job, and her spiel had quickly been derailed by the dullards.
Perhaps there wasn't any way to convince these numpties that she wasn't dangerous. She wanted to pump them on information about this reality, preferably without using the Mind Read or Compulsion spell as that was considered very rude and could also have side effects if brains here were somehow weird.
Finally she did the less rude thing and put them back in their separate holding cells using a transport sphincter. They'd have to sit and mull things over. Perhaps they'll come around eventually?
More pressingly, she had used up nearly 5% of her mana and it was hardly regenerating much at all. That could be a problem. This reality was truly low-tier. Perhaps there was a greater concentration of mana somewhere?
She got to work improving the ship's sensors so that they became an extension of her own, but couldn't sense much mana this way either. The propulsion system of this ship didn't seem capable of teleportation of any kind. Perhaps a different type of ship acted as a tug?
After half an hour of tinkering around she made a discovery. Similarly to how her own body worked, the ship had some latent abilities buried in its growth code. She could find two features related to space traversal, none of them currently pronounced in the current ship configuration.
The first method was similar to spacial compression. Jinglypuff remembered a young wizard who had experimented with the method once. His spell fizzled and literally compressed the matter between the source and target destination, which was bad. Jinglypuff had to clean up the mess and terraform an area the size of a small country to make it habitable again.
The second method was buried pretty deep in the growth code. Apparently there is a separate dimensional plane of some sort which can be used to shorten travel distances. Not as good as teleportation, but still practical and cheap... so why weren't the Tyranids using it?
Jinglypuff decided to reclaim the weapons of the ship and use the biomatter to grow the extraplanar drive. She spent another few percent of her mana to carefully accelerate the process, but it still took a full hour as it was unfamiliar territory for her and sensitive work.
–o–
On the Deamon World of Kathalon, the Bloodthirster of Khorne and Tzeentchian Lord of Change halted in their slaughter and looked up at the sky. Something was pinching the warp, siphoning it. Almost simultaneously they both saw the opportunity and seized it, taking off rapidly towards the opening.
–o–
Wow, this works really well, Jinglypuff thought to herself. There's a lot more mana over there. After activating the drive without moving she had used the sensors to probe the extraplanar region. It was kind of like a big mana battery. She didn't need to actually use the drive, instead she could just tap into the mana battery to fuel her teleportation spell when she needed to move the ship.
Didn't something just get caught in the filter she installed though? She had heard two slushy sounds, one after another. Using a mana filter is just common sense in case there are impurities. Looking at the filter sensor, yeah, there's definitely a bunch of goo in there – gross. She used a Cleanse spell on it.
Anyways, her mana pool was topped back up. Nice, now she could play around with the planet. If she cleaned up the mess there maybe the locals would come around and see how great she is?
Unfortunately the atmosphere was completely toast. Who would go and cause such a mess? It'd take a full week to fix just the basics for sure. She had better get to work.