Getting Warhammered - [ 272 ] (Patreon)

AN: This chapter was pretty fun to write, hope you guys will like it.

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I stood amidst the two hundred slumbering Storm Wardens, taking my time to pick and choose the most interesting pieces of equipment they had on them. The Lock-Warden had a hexagrammatically warded body-suit under his Artificer Power Armour. I also found an Iron Halo on the Captain of the 7th Company and added a handful of those Storm Amulets to my collected pile of loot, too, for later study. Well, I was hoping I’d learn something by studying all of them. The hexagrammatic wards were nice, a curious subject to study, but so was the refraction field generated by the Iron Halo. I was sure I could optimise and improve upon my own methods of converting incoming kinetic impacts into energy by fiddling with that thing.

“Ah, finally!” I smirked, turning around to see a big Astartes stride into the room, wearing gleaming grey Power Armour. It practically glowed to my senses with the amount of wards and psychic defences interwoven into the intricate ceramite plates. “It’s rude to keep a lady waiting, don’t you know?”

He didn’t respond, not with words as most humans would understand them, anyway. He began to sing, and I felt each note echo not through the audible frequencies of the Materium, but beneath it. Soon, he was joined by his Battle-Brothers, making up a choir that bolstered the strength of their Aegis with each new singer. 

I felt it pressing in on me from all around, like the Materium finally noticed my innately Immaterial existence and wished to see me banished from its realm. The other Grey Knights stepped through the walls, shimmering into existence like phantoms, and their voices grew all the stronger for it. 

I could have rushed ahead and slaughtered them all faster than they could react, but that wouldn’t have been very sporting, now would it? They have brought me such great gifts. So many fancy toys and new things to learn.

I didn’t resist the Aegis all that much, letting myself feel its oppressive weight press in on me. It was like sitting at the bottom of an ocean, experiencing the water pressure seeking to crush you at those depths and consigning you into the abyss. I started humming under my breath, teasing out each note, infusing them with the specific emotions and meanings I sensed in the Grey Knights’ choir.

Before I could tune it well enough to press my way into their Aegis, the leading Justicar barked out a word infused with psychic power and opened fire. 

The strange weapon in his hand spat out a beam of condensed psychic energy matching the Grey Knight’s own specific ‘taste’. It was like my own Eldritch Blasts, but more focused. Somehow, the word he had spoken resonated with and latched onto the beam of energy, riding along like a hitchhiker and no doubt seeking to give me a black eye.

Both lanced towards a dome barrier I’d conjured up around myself, the specific variant I had just learned from the Storm Warden Librarian. 

The other five Grey Knights also opened fire, though they only had boring old Bolters. Well, Storm Bolters to be specific, but they paled in comparison to the beautiful weapon wielded by the Justicar. That was a Psilencer, was it not? I want it. 

The bolts and the condensed psychic beam impacted my small barrier in quick succession, crashing against it with the power of a landslide. The beam, I felt like a gut punch even through the barrier, but the word that rode along with it? Now that was a nasty thing. It bypassed the barrier, latching onto the energy powering it, my energy.

The Aegis, trying to banish me from this side of reality, thrummed, sounding like the war-horn of a Titan for a brief moment that made my breath hitch … and then I loosened the valve on my soul energy, letting it pour into me and thicken the thread connecting me to my soul until it became a pillar of solid energy.

The Aegis remained, but it was halted just beyond my skin and was not allowed a single atom closer. I breathed, feeling that constricting force fading into a faint echo of a sensation; it no longer had the strength to so much as make me uncomfortable. 

That would have likely been the end of it, but the Justicar had something even more curious strapped onto his belt, a cube made of a silvery metal, interlaced with lines shining with an eerie green light. I recognised it, of course I did. Fool me once, shame on you, try it again, and I’m going to fuck you up.

That was a Tesseract Labyrinth, the same thing that kleptomaniac Trazyn trapped my first Avatar with. 

He also had a very nice Force Glaive … oh! That was a Nemesis Force Glaive! Those things were attuned to the psyker wielding them, becoming an extension of themselves, and growing in power alongside the psyker. The best-made ones supposedly had no upper limit, allowing the Grandmasters of the Grey Knights to cleave Daemon Princes in twain with the ease of cutting wheat. 

I didn’t think my collection would receive such a generous donation today, but I wouldn’t complain. Even I could get lucky sometimes. Hell, I deserved all the luck for the sheer misfortune of ending up reincarnated in War-fucking-hammer 40k.

Seeing that their ranged assault wasn’t bearing fruit, they rushed at me, each of them brandishing Nemesis Force weapons that thrummed with barely contained psychic might. The wards on their armours flared, shrouding them from my psychic perception until they were little more than disparate blobs. That was annoying, I couldn’t study all the fascinating wards woven into their Aegis pattern Power Armour that way. 

They continued singing, but not with their voices. It was a song of the soul, which left their mortal lips free to shout words of banishment. They struck me one after the other as they fired Storm Bolts from wrist-mounted bolters as they ran. Each slithered through the barrier, slamming into my psychic presence on this plane. They were potent weapons, trying to disrupt my manifestation in the Materium, weaken my link to my Avatar and thereby, weaken me. 

I withstood it, standing strong against the assault as my Avatar almost vibrated with my leashed storm of soul energy. I absorbed my substandard bonesword; it had been enough for the Ward-Master, but a Grey Knight Justicar aided by five of his battle-brothers was a different matter entirely. With a thought, Atiesh slammed into my palm, and my power surged into it. With a flick of my will, my psychic power manifested at the head of the staff, forming into an energy blade and turning my favourite staff into a glaive. 

As they closed in, I noticed that their vague psychic presences were melding at the edges, each note of their Aegis sung as a choir reverberating from one Grey Knight to the others. They were resonant, somehow empowering each other while locked in that choir, not entirely unlike how Orks grew more powerful the more of them were melded in their gestalt WAAAAGH! I could handle this single squad easily enough if I paid attention to that Tesseract Labyrinth, but I wasn’t sure I’d have enjoyed facing down the Supreme Grandmaster backed by the entire Brotherhood nearly as much. If their power grew exponentially instead of linearly, then meeting a thousand Grey Knights in open battle could be … troublesome. 

I could see how they had been enough to defend the Imperium from the Ruinous Powers for ten millennia. Ka’Bandha or any of the Daemon Primarchs would have had little fun fighting them, considering I wasn’t even their preferred enemy, and they most certainly were. I wasn’t Chaos or Warp tainted; I was merely an entity of the Immaterium, and as such, their specialised anti-Daemon armaments weren’t doing much against me.

I met the Justicar’s punishing lunge, slapping the body of my staff against his Glaive’s hilt. That still left his body coming charging at me with the power of a freight train, but I just shifted the barrier around me so it deflected his momentum just barely to the side.

Stepping past him with a grin, I pulled on the buried muscle memory I borrowed from Fulgrim and began to dance. My glaive spun around me, its energy blade flying through the air with grace as it deflected a Force Falchion, slapped away a Knight, then slipped through the guard of another and plunged into his neck. 

I danced away from their counterattack as the man collapsed to a knee, Atiesh never stopping as it spun and flew through the air, impossibly meeting every incoming strike at just the right time. A Nemesis Force Sword broke, my own trusty staff’s conjured blade tearing through it, the enemy Grey Knight’s psychic might have given form proving inferior to it. 

The Justicar pressed me the hardest, his Force Glaive weaving around in a relentless assault while he kept shouting those pesky words of banishment at me. He was the better fighter, the better glaive-master … but I was cheating without a single speck of shame.

Every moment, I was building upon the foundations Fulgrim’s instincts left me with as my mind-cores dissected my opponents' every move and turned it into another building block of my growing mastery of the glaive.

They noticed that their Aegis song and words wouldn’t be enough, and switched gears as one. They kept up their physical assault, even the man whose head I almost freed from his shoulders re-entering the fight after a minute of employing some impressive Biomancy. I could feel some spell being conjured by them jointly, each Grey Knight adding their strength to it through the choir.

I couldn’t help it and giggled, exhilarated after the many gains of the day. So many new toys, so many new things I have learned, and I even got to improve my fighting style, and now I saw a most fascinating spell being woven.

I didn’t recognise the spell itself, but it was familiar; it spoke to me on some fundamental level. It was Purity; I knew it with the surety I knew that the sky was blue and the grass was green. The spell would try to erase Chaos taint from my very soul. Chaos taint. From my soul. It was hilarious. I let it hit me. 

The moment of pause, that brief instance of incomprehension when their spell struck me and did absolutely nothing, made me laugh even harder. I couldn’t see their faces, or taste their emotions veiled beneath all those wards, but I could still tell they were deeply baffled. To stun a mind as advanced and disciplined as a Grey Knights for even a moment … yep, I just wished I could see their faces.

They didn’t let it stop them for long, and they tried something else next. A brilliant white flame that tried to burn me to ash, first, but when my barrier held it off with ease, they tried something much simpler: an all-around physical enhancement applied to all of them.

I recognised the abilities after a quick perusal of my memories, all of them belonging to the Sanctic Discipline of Psyker Powers: Purge Soul, Cleansing Flames, and the last one, Hammerhand.

Hammerhand was an apt name, considering they suddenly started hitting with enough power to turn a regular man into a bloody mist. The Justicar received the most substantial enhancement, and I wouldn’t have put it past him to rip apart an Astartes Terminator with sheer strength and nothing else.

I started taking it a bit more seriously at that, adjusting my graceful dance so that I no longer ignored opportunities to counterattack. I started scoring blows, a hand here, a bloody gash on a leg there, an eye there. They kept pressing me, but they just kept losing bits and pieces of themselves without ever scoring a single blow against me.

I was fast enough to go toe-to-toe with the Swarmord, with a fucking Primarch. They just weren’t fast enough to overcome my reflexes, even with the gap in combat skill between us, which I was steadily reducing with each passing moment. It was the only reason I still kept the fight somewhat sporting. 

One of them lost a leg, and then I pounced on their momentary loss of cohesion. My energy blade flashed out with ruthless efficiency and deadly grace, meeting layered wards and ancient Power Armour. It didn’t even slow, and certainly not when it met flesh and bone. A head still wearing its helmet flew through the air as the now decapitated body crashed to the ground. 

The legless one died next, getting a dose of the nastiest toxin I could make through his exposed flesh. He held it off for half a minute with an impressive use of Biomancy. 

Then I corrected my earlier mistake and sent my glaive through the chest of the Grey Knight whose neck still sported a mark of my blade’s kiss.

That left the Justicar and two more, circling me warily. Their choir was diminished, the Justicar’s voice now sounding loud and overbearing beside the other two. With that, the spell enhancing their strength was also just as diminished, as was the Aegis pressing in on me.

The Justicar moved, his Psilencer rearing up and spitting out a beam of energy just as the man holding it spat out a word. But this one was different. I’d learned the feel of the ones he’d been using before, differentiating four of them by tone, and this one was none of them. It sounded harsher, more demanding, and it had the Justicar’s presence quivering once the word left his lips. 

I would have stumbled without Atiesh to steady me, as it was my breath merely hitched, and I was, unfortunately — for the Grey Knights — perfectly ready to react when the spell the other two Grey Knights readied went off right as the Justicar’s word struck me. 

Reality bled as a wound upon its skin was torn open. Beyond it was a tunnel leading straight through the Warp to some other place, likely their hideout or the sneaky voidship they had hiding on the planet’s smallest moon. The two grabbed the Justicar under the armpits as his knees gave out, his presence collapsing into a weak little thing, and they pulled him through what I recognised as another Psyker Power of the Sanctic Discipline: Gate of Infinity.

“Nuh uh,” I hummed. “I don’t think I said you could leave, especially not with my Psilencer.”

But they were already sprinting through the tunnel, and the Gate on this side was starting to close. Not that I would let it stop me. A tendril of soul energy reached down from my Realm, plunging into the Warp and finding the tunnel the three Grey Knights were fleeing through with ease. Then it slapped them back through the Warp Gate just before it could close, though one of the Grey Knights left everything below his knees on the other side.

“They don’t teach you manners on Titan, do they?” I grinned at them. The Justicar was unconscious; the word he had used must have been beyond what he could bear. One of them was without feet, and the last one was the guy whose arm I’d cut off at the shoulder. “I think it's time for you three to take a nice long nap.”