I fucked up.
A scene similar to a certain classic dinosaur movie with the Tyrannosaurus Rex chasing a car was happening, with me swapping in as one of the hapless main characters and the T-Rex being swapped with a winged greater daemon carrying a colossal axe.
It seemed like a good idea at the time, exploiting the daemon’s glaring weakness of having no ranged attacks so we could do the classic tactic of “kiting” it to death.
What was not expected was how fast the damn thing could move and its seeming imperviousness to most ballistics weapons. It was terrifying to see how fast it responded to my flaming sword, it came straight at me like a giant moth to light.
In my active psychic state, I could perceive a part of its true nature. It was more than a huge winged humanoid with a colossal axe, its very existence had warped the nature of reality around it. This thing does not belong here.
Alicya was doing a great job of pushing the rhino to its limits in the rain and we went on a pre-planned route that would go around the battlefield in an endless loop while the army could freely shoot at the kited daemon.
‘The true enemy is here, show it no mercy!’ I sent my desperate order through all the general communication networks and the army responded.
The Imperials were soon unleashing a hailstorm of fire at the unholy thing, lighting it up in a glorious display of firepower with flashing tracers and lasbeams appearing all over the field, all drawing a line to the massive winged daemon.
But that seemed to only make it angrier as it roared in protest and persisted in chasing me down, determined to end me above all else.
‘Shoot that thing, don’t hit the rhino!’
‘Avoid hitting the leading rhino at all cost, I repeat…’
Connected to the communication network, I was informed of the commanders’ frantic orders in the air.
Blam! Blam!
Kira was discharging her galvanic rifle beside me and both her shots landed squarely in the daemon’s eye, a testament to her great marksmanship, but the impacts didn’t even make it flinch. I watched with great distress as the distance between me and the thing steadily got shorter and shorter.
The rain, the smoke and the horrendous sound of a huge amount of weapons being fired made for a hellish scene. In the chaos of it all, an unfortunate chimera armoured transport ventured too close to the daemon and it swatted the light tank off with a swing of its colossal axe, sending it flying and landed on its top in the distance, buying me a grand total of two more seconds of distance.
RIP unknown chimera driver and crew. We need better and more accurate firepower. Just as that thought entered my mind, I was suddenly aware of a familiar machine spirit entering my sphere of influence. Gunship Flameraven had arrived.
The massive inquisitorial gunship appeared on a low pass from nowhere, flying straight at us before unleashing all its payload at the massive daemon chasing right behind my ride. The thunderous discharging of its many heavy weapons made me wince.
Beams of concentrated lascannons, superheated multi-meltas and streams of bolt rounds laced with a tint of silverish blue light burst off from my flying saviour, accurately hitting the massive winged daemon. The sheer impact of it made the monstrous creature stumble.
Even in my awed state, I noticed the bolt rounds seemed to be laced with latent psychic energy. Are those... the psycannon bolts used by the secretive super-elite Grey Knight daemon hunters? So Thaberus had a stash of this precious ammunition in case of such emergency.
It howled, the otherworldly cries shaking the air. For the first time, I believed it finally grasped the concept of being hurt. In the blink of an eye, Flameraven flew past us, its huge backdraft messing up the rhythm of the rain falling over us as it passed. The gunship then went into a steep turn, its two twin heavy bolter sponsons never stopping to fire at the daemon locked in its crosshairs.
With my psychic senses, I could see the psycannon bolts were hurting it in this world and the next, doing the real work. Enraged, it finally took its attention off me to grab a massive rock from the ground and prepared to hurl it at Flameraven.
From my viewpoint, a transcendent level of calculations told me if the rock stayed on course it would hit the gunship’s cockpit. This was not some mindless brute throwing object as feeble protest, malevolent intelligence was guiding its every action.
Not about to let that happen, I activated thought acceleration and tapped into Flameraven’s flight control to dip its flightpath ever so slightly while dropping a warning in its internal speaker, ‘Careful, rock!’
The rock flew in slow motion, I watched with bated breath as it passed within centimetres of its intended target, missing the gunship by a hair’s breadth and landed with a massive splatter of dirt in the distance.
Flameraven continued flying unsteadily for a while before picking up speed and hurriedly making its escape, probably with Tashya screaming inside the cockpit.
The greater daemon seemed to know I had spoiled its plan and turned towards me again, eyes glowing with distilled hatred. Ignoring the endless hail of projectiles hitting it from all sides it grabbed another massive rock and this time hurled it straight at me. Luckily we had already put more distance between us and my ride was not a flying gunship with a restricted movement path.
‘Alicya, sharp turn left!’ The sister complied and mere seconds later the massive rock landed on our right, creating another massive shower of dirt that was too close for comfort.
Can nothing kill this thing? By this time the greater daemon had taken so many shooting attacks, this was beginning to look like a bad trope of a standard monster movie where the kaiju was being impervious to all but some secret weapons.
Talking about secret weapons, I was wondering what was holding up Kryptorer on my special weapon request. Tapping into the communication network, I sent a direct priority message to him.
I willed my authority to cut through all the technical clutter to get hold of the exact location of the special package and a highlighted ping appeared in my vision. It was coming fast, but five minutes might as well be an eternity when facing this monstrosity.
My ride took a steep turn to the left just as another huge object landed where we were moments ago, this time it was the turret of a Leman Russ battle tank. Luckily Kira was giving evasive instructions to Alicya while I was busy communicating with the dominus.
It was then the Stratoraptors strike wing Kryptorer mentioned arrived in tight formation and performed a classic low passing strafing run on the daemon, peppering it with an impressive amount of accurate firepower.
The monstrous thing roared in protest, threw another piece of wreckage at the three aircraft formation, then it spread its wings and took off after them at an impressive speed.
Too far to exert my influence on the strike wing, I watched in horror as the wreckage hit one aircraft, followed by the daemon head-butting into another, obliterating two out of three Stratoraptors outright. Not done with the carnage, it then flew after the final aircraft, finishing the job with its axe.
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Why does this thing seem to be getting stronger? Digging through my memory, I recalled some lore that mentioned certain types of daemon or daemon engines that enjoyed an increase in prowess as their connection with the physical world got weakened. So this thing gained strength both by its act of killing and getting wounded? What kind of imbalance is this?!
The daemon then turned in midair, making a beeline towards me. The sheer pressure it emitted made me shiver. It was done with the playing and wanted to end this fast.
Just then, Kryptorer’s urgent new warning reached me.
I gasped. When it rained, it poured. My calling out to all imperials to shoot the daemon had led to an expected opening. Staying on my ride would render me a sitting duck to the gunship, on the other hand getting off would mean getting into hand to hand combat with a towering greater daemon which I was sure I would not last more than three seconds against.
Another ping appeared in my vision, highlighting the position of the rapidly approaching super-heavy space marine gunship with a big red dot, it's turbolaser’s effective range indicator closing in like a death spectre while the greater daemon closed in from the other side.
I fucked up, talk about being between a rock and a hard place.
Am I at the end of the road?
From the front, an approaching Thunderhawk gunship armed with a turbolaser, on our back an enraged greater daemon flying over. Caught between life and death, time slowed as my thought acceleration activated again without prompt.
In my heightened state of awareness, I checked all the data readouts and saw something peculiar. Doubting myself, I double-checked again to confirm the readings.
Could this be true? I was trembling with fear inside and forced my logical side to do the cold calculation. If my hunch was proven false we would be dead anyway, there was no way a space marine gunner would miss its target in the open field with a primary weapon of that calibre.
‘Alicya, do a big one-eighty turn to the right.’ I ordered.
‘Lady Syrine?!’ Kira asked out loud as that would turn us towards the daemon, but Alicya had full faith in my order and was already doing the big turning. ‘Stay in the rhino! Krypto, with me.’ I ordered before climbing the side of the hatch and jumped off the rhino while it was mid turning.
Somehow instinctively I knew surviving this jump was a walk in the park so I took the leap.
While mid-air, rapid thoughts went through my mind. What the fuck am I doing? Looking at the rhino speeding away from me, an inner understanding surfaced.
I have made my choice. If a fatal miscalculation was made here, I just… wished no harm would come to my companions. After so many years of living on earth and even after becoming a jaded dude, deep inside I was still but a naive person wanting a happy ending for all.
Note to self, you are still such a damned noob.
I landed forward, sword in hand, did a small summersault roll and just ended up continuing walking as if it was the most natural thing to do after jumping off from a speeding vehicle, but I got mud and water all over my clothes and hair now.
The rain seemed to get heavier, I raised my halo and pointed the nameless sword at the approaching daemon and waited. Come at me. The sword seemed to agree and its plume of blue flame got brighter in response. It was then Kryptorer’s skull probe joined me in the rain.
Seeing me on the ground, the daemon in the air let out what sounded like a joyous roar. It then held its axe high with both hands and started dropping straight at me. Even with thought acceleration, it was becoming hard to track its motion as it dove at me with what would be an unstoppable attack.
I winced and started really praying to the Emperor for the first time. Please, Big E, I am begging you, let my hunch be correct. Then to my surprise, the Nameless Sword suddenly glowed brighter than ever before and I felt immense powers surging through my body.
This is do or die.
Every fiber of my being told me I was in mortal danger and something was charging up in me. This felt familiar. I had experienced this before when Fulton was about to smite me, but this time it was I who was gathering all my powers.
Time slowed. My thought acceleration seemed to benefit from my charged up state, but all I could see was the massive warp spawn with its reality distortion field bearing down on me in the rain with absolute detail.
My body became hot, then cold as all the energy gathered on my left hand. Time slowed further as instinct compelled me to raise my left palm towards the approaching daemon.
Be gone!
A blinding golden lighting burst off my palm, the intensity of unleashing the power numbing my entire arm. I watched dumb founded as the lighting struck the daemon squarely on its chest, and a satisfying psychic feedback told me something cracked.
This is working!? My joy lasted for a split second, the massive warp spawn continued unimpeded. I watched in despair as the daemon became a blur of motion, bringing its axe down. At the same time, a mental warning notified the Thunderhawk’s turbolaser range had reached me. I let out a soundless scream and closed my eyes.
My world became silent and pure white.