While my decoy was doing its damo distract the Custodian while also making him show off the limits of his zappy toy, the dragon sort of drew me into its fight with Ka’Bandha who seemed to have all but fotten about me.
The Greater Daemon was ughing and r in equal measure, its mouth filled with serrated teeth locked in a preternatural grin of savage joy.
The dragon wasn’t looking too good, and the eventual victor of their fight seemed to be already decided. Not that the rown fire breathiile was going to go down without a fight, not by a long shot.
It circled the daemon, one of its four horns broken off and fav its left limbs as it walked. The growl it made held wary hate, its eyes held the same measure of apprehension, that doubt about its ces at winniing together with its clear revulsion at the mere idea of not sughtering the Greater Daemon before it.
So how did it iently draw me into the fight? Well, let’s just say I got a bit distracted by manually trolling the copy decoy at the same time as Selene did something even more- ehm, distrag to my other avatar.
So I sort of didn’t notice it ambling towards my hiding pd it sort of stepped on me.
Which, as you might have guessed, I didn’t particurly appreciate so I sort of burrowed through its feet and ate its hind right leg.
I would have gone further, ate the whole damned beast in one go but it didn’t live to this age because it was easy to kill or dumb.
It didn’t eveate to tear into its own leg while I was busy digesting its unnaturally tough shinbone and before I k the leg with me in it was flying through the air and plopped right into the biggest magma ke in the cavern.
Unfortunately for the beast, that was one of the st things it did before Ka’Bandha’s axe crashed into its skull like a ndslide. I practically felt the shock of the ungodly on sundering the a beast’s skull in my bones even as I crawled out of the magma dip I’d iently taken.
The daemon roared again, announg its victory to the world as the dragon fell limp and colpsed into a heap. He reached to tear off the uni-like ruby horn and only then did I remember why I was there in the first pce.
I gowards Trazyn, saw him palming a set of Tesseracts with reluce oozing off of him. I suppressed a sigh, then dipped into my soul energy reserves a rip through my skeleton and flow into my staff.
The bio-bde grafted onto it fell off, fking away and turning into dust before it touched the ground and the white greatstaff practically shoh impossible colours.
Space tore before me, and a telekiic force surged through. In an instant, it ripped the ruby horn off, dragged it back through the spatial tear, spped Ka’Bandha over the chest with enough forake him stagger, then closed the tear.
I threw the whole thing over to the Ne and levelled an uain gaze at the rather miffed Greater Darmon.
“THIEF! Cowardly thief! e out, let me rip your spi and drink your blood!”
He followed the shout up with a flick of his wrist, sending his whip fshing out and only my supernatural instincts and premonition saved me from getting bisected by it.
I remembered him being more well spoken in the books. Did he get nerfed in the braiment or is he just not b to use his brain for my sake?
Sure enough, this robably the equivalent of a fun vacation for the greater daemon so he might not have felt the o put too much effort into thinking.
Anyway, with Trazyn instantly grabbing the horn out of the air and throwing up his cealment thingy, the daemon didn’t notice him. Instead, it charged right where it supposedly felt the spatial rip open, which was also where I was so I decided to skedaddle before he chopped me up.
I was ting today as another win at this point. I got all the dragons, got Trazyn his oy and didn’t get kidnapped. Now, all I had to do was escape together with the resident kleptomaniad perhaps punch a hole through that Custodian’s face to teach him some manners.
That st one tional, but a girl could dream. Though with a very angry and very loud Greater Daemon ing right at me with murder not only on its mind, but radiating off of its body I was thinking the surviving and esg bit might get … tricky.
So far, I’d mao keep well away from Ka’Bandha and food reason. If something could throw hands with Sanguinius and e out of it intaough to talk as much shit as this daemon had, I didn’t want it anywhere near me.
Not for another decade at least, not until I had an avatar twice as strong as this one and pools of energies hundreds of times deeper thainy puddles I had to mah currently.
The daemon clearly wasn’t satisfied with that oute though, and at my clear ck of willio ‘e out and fight honourably’ as he called bashing my head in with its oversized axe it bristled visibly. It’s form, already fraying at the edges and fluctuating, fading in and out of existence became increasingly severe.
It looked to be moments away from blinking out of reality entirely, but iurn fing its expiration date hours closer its ruinous power soared.
“Shit,” I said, feeling its thid heavy aura tasting of blood and malice wash over me. The reition in it was clear, it fouhout doubt.
My instincts tingled, and I Blinked away without hesitation. Still, I was left with both of my legs scorched down a size and now ending in a smouldering stump at the knees.
A thunderous crack reverberated through the cavern, the daemon having sshed a new ravio the ground where I stood a moment before.
It flickered dangerously, its snarling face rounding on me even before its axe crashed down. Its aura was filling the cavern, seeping into every little crevid leaving me no room to hide in.
I felt that energy push into me, trying to corrupt my flesh and hijack its e to my soul to twist that too and drag it down to the ing waters of the below.
“Trazyn, are you ready to leave?” I asked, having little doubt that the Ne Overlord had good enough auditory sensors to hear me wherever he might be.
I Blinked agaiing an instant quicker than before and esg the fming whip’s wrathful swipe.
Ka’Bandha roared, the flickers of Khorne’s corrosive energy in my still smouldering stumps I’d almost finished purging, gaining a sed wind in response. Even the air felt thick with the stuff, and I felt it strig around me, making every movement feel like I ushing through mosses.
“I am at the exit,” Trazyn’s voice whispered into my ear, and I noticed one of those little meical scarabs he had perched on my shoulder as I asked for the source. “Staying is being increasingly perilous. I will await you for another mihen I’ll depart for my ship. If you wish to apany me, be there and preferably without that apparition following behind you.”
“Roger, roger,” I said, having to lean on Atiesh’s amplifying power to speed up my Blinks enough to escape the increasingly fretempts of the Greater Daemon. “I’ll be there.”
That was about when my decoy finally expired, having puffed into smoke as its bio-energy reserves ran out. I didn’t see the Custodian’s expression, but I imagined his victorious grin at having my decoy’s neck clutched in his hand morphing into a stupefied look as the elted into dust.
Not that I had overly long to be amused at him, as the momentary distra e a good forth of my torso along with my right arm. Along with the arm went Atiesh, which slowed my Blink enough to get a close up look of Ka’Bandha’s closed fist.
Why didn’t I just Blink out of the cavern, you might ask? Well, the damned daemon was making that impossible.
The was unstable, a miniature Storm having desded around the cavery was faltering, the veil fraying and wobbling like a toddler taking its first steps.
It was only through my own psychic strength, colossal mental power and — pared to human psykers — titanic reserves of energy that I could still work my Teleportation magic with some measure of reliability.
If I forced it through the Storm though, I couldn’t be sure my body wasn’t going to end up scattered across the Sector, or worse, end up getting dragged into the .
Atiesh, ever the loyal semi-se staff, came s bato my st intact limb. Now, how does one escape from a berserking Bloodthirster out to get their skull at all cost?
I’ve got to exhaust him somehow. It isn’t long for the world, soon enough he’ll get ejected bato the with the way things are going. I could just keep running for a while and hope he expired before I did … but then Trazyn will leave me here.
Furthermore, I could see the Custodian skulking about, waiting for a ce to poune.
I checked my soul energy stores, and calcuted that I could at most spend awo thirds of what remained if I wao keep my slowly blooming Realm from an early introdu to oblivion.
With Selene’s soul being stored in the core of that Realm, I wasn’t particurly keen on the idea.
If I run to Trazyn, I won’t be able to outrun this lunatic. It is both physically faster and strohan my avatar.
That was the problem, and the solution was quite simple. I had to use some of my sacrificable soul energy to either banish or just disable the daemon for long enough for me to escape.
I still had 46 seds until Trazyn’s deadline.
A possible solution drifted into my mind, a way to enhance my power enough to possibly wound the daemon as much as needed. It would be dangerous, but …
Fuck it. Let’s do it. Everyone already knows of me it seems so might as well.
*****
Octavian
Over the st couple of minutes, Octavian realised how nebulous his ces of actually aplishing his goals had been in the first pce.
He had thought his trump card of sorts would do the job, the thing had been stored together with the body the creature called ‘Ea’ now inhabited and was made for it by the Emperor himself.
The device was supposed to ‘reset’ any haywire piece of the bio-shaper artefact back to its base properties but without harming its stored data in the process, unlike how starvation would have done.
It didn't work.
Well, it did, but not to the extent he had hoped for. Even just her lesser flesh-crafted horrors had somehow resisted the ‘reset’ artefabsp;
Then there was the problem of actually hitting the main body — if it even was the main body — which Octavian was at the moment one of the most powerful Greater Daemons known to mankind fail at repeatedly.
Sihe first two lucky shots it had gotten in, it only ever missed and the woman was slowly but surely rec her strength.
“Fuck this.”
Octavian stilled as he heard the woman’s curse, not for any prudish shock at the crass words, but because of the inteingle in his palms.
He retreated, taking cover behind a pilr. Trusting his Emperiven instincts above all else.
The Greater Daemon roared once mleeful that its target stopped running and looking to be enjoying the staredown that followed immensely.
The creature was freakishly powerful, Octavian knew and wouldn’t have wao try his luck fighting it. He’d read the archives, studied history. That daemon had bested Sanguinius, the greatest of the Emperor’s sons time and again.
pared to the great angel, Octavian was nothing. He khat to be true. As clearly as he khat Ea was only marginally more powerful than himself.
He’d watched her fight, watched her wield her sorcery and he’d felt her imme limited power.
His instincts told him she was lesser than a Primarch, lesser than many things in many aspects. Her knowledge, skill and physical form were all some amateurishly stitched-together abomination that paled in parison to the real thing.
That was what he thought, ahere had always been a smidge of doubt. A barely perceptible veil of uainty c that clusion that his instinever had with anyone else before.
He had dismissed it, that smidge of doubt. Why wouldn’t he? His instincts had never been wrong before, not with any Astartes, Tyranids, Nes or even a Primarch. Why would they be so with a strange alien who mae with an a artefact?
For the first time in his life, his instincts faltered. The vague feeling of uainty greidly as the alien woman floated before the Greater Daemon.
Her flesh fked away, torn apart by the immeorrentuous power forced into her body. Octavian’s eyes widehe small flicker of silvery light he’d seen her as blossomed into a t pilr.
For a moment, a brief, treasonous moment, he pared it to the godlike presence of the Emperor. The colossal golden pilr his own presence showed itself as.
pared to that, the silvery soul of Ea was a mere stick. Still, when everyone else had always been just flickers of dust in parison …
But she was different, strange and alien even in the qualities of the soul. Where the Emperor was a firm pilr, a steady foundation holding the whole of Mankind on his shoulders like a titanic Ark, Ea was … slippery. He failed to put a hand on her soul, always trying to and managing to slip out of his grasp.
Where the Emperor boldly procimed his own power, challenging anything and everything to say otherwise, this woman hid. Not only that, she didn’t challenge anything, her soul feeling like a peaceful breeze pared to the tumultuous wrathful presence of even the Emperor.
She promised … peace. Safety. Tranquillity. Banbsp;
Octavian blinked, his visiourning to him as he felt like he only now desded back down to the earth from a trip through a cloudy orbit.
His head swam like never before and if possible, he’d have gasped in shock at the sight that greeted him.
The Greater Damon kneeled, a knee broken, an arm hanging limp and with a gleeful grin on its fabsp;
“Victory for our first bout goes to you, white child of stars unseen.” The Daemon procimed, its form fragmenting as reality pushed him back to where he belonged. “And thus another anathema joins the Great Game. The future holds great promise, I might not die of boredom yet.”
Then it was gone, reality rebounding and expelling every leftover Lesser Damon along with him.
Octavian stood there, the closest equivalent of utter astonishment a Custodian could feel rolling through him.
“Ana-thema?” He asked, his voice holding a measure of wonder uing of a Custodian.
He stared at the spot of air the white woman once hovered in, his gaze turning distant and thoughtful. She was gone of course, without a trace too, but his memory erfect, he could easily repy every nanosed of the e again and again as many times as he wanted.
As many times as it took for him to e to terms with what he learned here today.
P3t1
