Even though I resumably alone on this p for several days by now I still found it unnerving. It wasn't totally silent as one would imagine a ghost city, the wild blowiween the buildings iraight, kilometres-long alleys made a ghostly, shrieking sound that I couldn't quite get used to. The smell of mould, stale air and dried blood bined with the occasional gory remains of what was once a person don't make it aer. Gng at once of the tter I 't help but grimad turn my head away as tendrils extend from my fio make use of whatever was still salvageable of it. I've seen a bunch of these by now, I think whoever killed these people didn't quite care too much about preserving the corpses for the ritual and just went about sughtering them however they wished. Afterwards, it proved to be too much of a pain to collect these parts too so they were left ying around here. Lucky me? Not that it was too nutritious or numerous enough for me to give a siderable amount of energy but beggars 't be choosers. I was now o floor I resolved myself to explore before tinuing my travel for the tral spire. It was tedious getting here after the initial excitement of finding human remains and possible clues about my situation. Along the way, I found several other stuff that only reinforced the validity of this being the Warhammer universe or I was in aremely well-made Warhammer museum or something. Now that I was looking for it I noticed the skulls, the Aquis and other iography I knew of before. I didn't find another library or anything like that but I doubted I'd until I reached one of the important gover buildings. There should be an Administratum building here, along with an Arbites and an Echlisiarchical at the very least, any one of those should have useful stuff but the Governor's pace should still be the best for me. However I tried to still doubt the reality of my situation my mind defaulted bato my Warhammer knowledge to make assumptions, I guess my subscious desperately wao g to this illusion of knowledge and more importantly trol. If I khe past, along with fotten and well-kept secrets of the main powers of the gaxy, bined with my short-term knowledge of the near future I could gain a form of trol over my future. I sighed heavily and kicked in a surprisingly intact door. It didn't fly off its hinges like the rest did when I did the same but it did smash against the wall o me as I ehe room. The resulting loud thud got lost in the sound of howling wind and I narrowed my eyes at the rge se of missing wall on the right side of the room. It was a siderably rge one, maybe a hundred meters ih and fifty in width. The rge hole wasn't blown but broken through, with little to no rubble o it. From the ihen. I frowned as I strode into the room but kept my distance from the rge hole lest the wind caught onto me and dragged me through. The rest of the room proved no less iing even if it wasn't the first room covered in gore like this. What was different was that a bunch of corpses were still here, uncollected. I barely smelled the stench of death thanks to the brutalized wall but I still grimaced at the state of the corpses. They were ripped apart, some had their eorsos torn into ks and spread across the room while others had more normal wounds looking like the results of small explosions. They all wore some sort of shitty military uniforms if I had to guess about the few mostly intaes. I think that was the insignia of the Arbites, an anization mostly like the police of Earth dealing with most civil problems that don't need fuck loads of Imperial Guards to solve. Those guys weren't too good at solving problems that went beyond shooting said problem. As I k o one of the corpses with a mostly whole upper body I noticed its head was messed up. It had a few smaller and two wrist-width holes in it. I don't know what got into me but I ghrough one of the holes and barely caught myself before I gasped. It was empty, the brain was mostly gone. I only found a bit of it smashed into a mushy goop that dripped out of the hole on the side of the head fag the floor. I decided to check out the rest of the corpses as these wounds tickled at my mind in arm, but only two of the others had simir wounds. With that done I got to quickly abs them while I thought about where I heard about wounds like this. By now the practice made the process somewhat instinctive. To spare myself the nausea I didn't transform my whole body just extended my hands and morphed the end of those into tens of tendrils that branched out into many more like some sort of horrid tree. The small tendrils went about pierg through the skin and expanding ihe body of the corpses. I could use the energy I had to expand the tendrils wherever I wanted, I didn't o make more mass inside my body and make it travel through the rger tendrils to the tip of the small ohe energy raced through the whole work in a blink and got to transf into biomass at the end, just where I wa to. This was what gave me some iing possibilities, like when I was back jumping rooftops I could unch a siendril over the gapih between the buildings and reabsorb my mass on one side whily left the small tendril that I unched before. Afterwards, I could quickly remake my body oher side. I was thinking about other simir tricks to add to my repertoire when a gss-shattering screech blew into me, clearly audible evehe howling wind. I nearly stumbled from the sheer pressure of the scream but I steadied myself a momehe biomass already absorbed and the small tendrils along with them. I cautiously swept my gaze around the room, searg for the source of the sound, my nerves early calm in the process. My mind already making multiple predis. Following my first idea, most of my head transformed into a white dome, getting rid of my blind spot at the bay head and also making sure that nothi onto me from above without my knowledge. It was also much better at deteg sounds and smells than my human ans. I kept steady and lowered myself into a more mobile position, ready to leap out of the way should I sense anything. As, only the annoyingly loud wind and the now clear smell of blood aore were noticeable. For a moment I thought it was a bust, maybe somethiallic got torn apart by the shitty building colpsing from the turies of abuse and . I could have maybe mistaken that for a screebsp;Such a thought instantly got wiped from my mind as a sound like nails on a chalkboard but thousands of times louder reached me. My head instinctively snapped in the dire even if I didn't o do so to see it. Oallicrete wall that I swore was mostly untouched before was a rge tear. Uneven and savage, it made an unwele addition to the 'ferrocrete' wall in all of its three-meter-long glory. The name of the stupid material the Imperium used in nearly all of its buildings just now popped into my mind. Another shriek resounded in the room, sending a shiver through my body and making me feel a bit weird. I felt like I'm losing one of my senses but I couldn't tell which just that I suddenly felt blinded even though my sight has never been clearer. My mind spun furiously and my eyes would have widened if I had one as I realized whiy senses got blinded. My soul sehe great dark see below my soul was darker than ever, it was murky and still like no natural water could be. This should be the , the ever-present stars and monsters swimming through it were o be seen, I could barely make out what was immediately under me. As my mind tried to make sense of all of this my whole body suddenly stiffened as I suddenly saw something. It faded ience like some sort of siing ghost but now it was far too real to be that. It stood hunched and still reached four meters high as it towered above me, Its sickly white carapace shone in the weak light and I noticed it stood still in front of me like a statue. Its lower pair of two arms held at the read near my throat to rip it apart with its ten cwed fingers while its two upper appendages which sported serrated chitinous scythes as long as I was tall were held back, ready to strike at me faster than I could reabsp;The worst was by far its head and 'face'. Two beady bck eyes stared at me full of malice, hunger and maybe a bit of i but I've had to imagihat. At where its nose should be its face turned into a mass of writhiacles c its jaws like a beard. All in all, it had a head that would make Cthulhu blush. In that moment I finally realized what those wounds reminded me of and this monster just proved that I was right with its ugly fabsp;A Lictor. P3t1

  I rehensive about this chapter and had to rewrite it a few times to make me feel better about it.Not sure if I mao put a bit of tension into it but I hope so.bat and tensiohings I'm not too practised in writing. Lictor: Warhammer Fandom Page