Strange Blooms (Warhammer 40k Tyranid Quest)

So, I'm a bit late, but the voting moratorium has ended. Vote, my pretties, vote!

Well, the voting on what amounts to the final part of character creation is complete! The nice doc it is.

"You are awake." The voice was flat, factual and familiar. Cyrus turned his head, feeling as though his neck was set on millstones rather than vertebrae, only to meet the glassy gaze of a skull with flesh and skin withered against the bone. A nest of short, snakelike mechadendrites rose from its crown, surmounted by a half-dozen tipped with blinking augur-lenses.

He opened his mouth, finding it both parched and filled with a rancid taste. "Master Rho-Eta." His voice was scratchy and hoarse.

"Your eyes are not in urgent need of replacement, then," the Metasurgeon replied. ++How about your voxcaster?++

++Fine,++ Cyrus replied then, finding it easier to use the machine to talk than to force his heavy tongue to obey him, continued ++What happened?++

++It is, as yet, not entirely clear,++ said Rho-Eta, turning to administer to one of the many machines connected to venous ports in the apprentice's arms and torso. Two of the augur-serpents remained fixed on Cyrus where he lay. ++You and Skitarii Tlamac CV/11 were the only survivors of your expeditionary force. They carried your unconscious body some significant distance from the site of your battle, after near-catastrophically overloading their systems to send a distress call of sufficient strength to summon aid.++ The speech was clinical as only Lingua-Technis could be, but Cyrus could detect a note of respect in the Metasurgeon's binaric voice.

++You said that they survived?++

++Affirmative. They are in the Skitarii Medicaerium,++ Rho-Eta replied. Then, switching to vocal communication, for greater nuance, "And you will not be able to meet them until you can prove to me you are fit to leave your bed."

++And if I do prove that?++ Cyrus asked

++Then you may go.++

It was an old issue; Cyrus did not think the Metasurgeon had ever forgiven him for testing out his new limbs too early, resulting in a broken bone and over a dozen torn muscles and ligaments. That the augmentation scheme for his body had been of Rho-Eta's own devising only made it worse - a patient injuring themselves under his watch was bad enough. Damaging one of the tech-priest's pet projects? Sacrilege. And sacrilege earned low-grade anaesthetics for reconstructive operations, as well as bed rest enforced via paralysed limbs.

++So,++ the apprentice asked. ++How long will it be?++

The Metasurgeon let out a mechanical hum, the sound of a well-kept cooling fan. ++You are far more lucid than I had expected you to be upon waking, which is good. Your bodily injuries were limited, and the remains of the xenos bio-projectile could be removed with relatively minimal work. The lack of other damage or signs of cerebral trauma suggests that your comatose state was the result of some form of mental attack, of which this xenos species is well capable, according to the archives. Can you confirm?++


Cyrus paused for a long moment, trying to sift through his memories of the dark, confused moments of the battle in the jungle. ++Yes,++ he finally transmitted. ++We were attacked by the xenos; a large number of lesser creatures, Gaunti gladius and Gaunti virago, commanded by one of their leader-beasts; Tyranicus praefactor. It used some form of… psychic intrusion, upon the minds of myself and the Skitarii, to delay our reactions.++

++And this resulted in your unconsciousness?++ One of Rho-Eta's cerebral mechadendrites lowered down, shining a light into the apprentice' eyes - checking for pupillary dilation.

++Its second such attack, yes.++ Cyrus was grateful for the rigid format of Lingua-Technis, forestalling any hesitation on his part.

"I would ask if you had any clue why the creature did not devour you," the Metasurgeon said. "But somehow I doubt you know. Nevertheless, I can see no immediate signs of injury which would preclude your getting up. Raise your hand and move it."

Cyrus did so, and continued through a series of further small exercises meant to test his motor responses. His arm still hurt where the beetle had bored into it, but it was on its way to healing. The monotony allowed his mind to drift, though, to the other body he could feel, as keenly as his own. The conversation with Rho-Eta had taken up his full attention, but now he found the image of the jungle's greens intruding on his vision, and the phantom sensation of strange limbs. It was… disquieting, and he had no idea what to do with this inexplicable connection. Who should he tell? Should he tell anyone? How? What did it even mean?

The other body was lying on its side, Cyrus could feel. With a feeling of trepidation, he tried an experiment - moving the other body. It obeyed as easily as if it were his own, and he found a wordless familiarity with its form that disturbed him. He climbed to his - no, he made it climb to its feet, and survey the small clearing it stood in, alone. The soil and foliage around had been torn and rent; the creature had clearly been thrashing around. Besides that, an ache spread from points on its chest and shoulder; duller than real pain. When he turned its head he could see the seared, shattered scars where the galvanic rounds had struck it.

++Perform the lesser rite of diagnosis on your cortical implants,++ Rho-Eta said, stirring Cyrus from his thoughts. He did so, reaching instinctively for the small jar of oil which sat beside the medical bed to anoint his temples. The rite progressed smoothly, though a number of strange errors made the apprentice frown as he routed the list through his voxcaster. The elder tech-priest soon distracted him, though, with a series of mental tests, first making him repeat the mnemonic mantras Hakor had taught him, then liturgical lists of mechanical components, then a succession of minor rites. Rho-Eta gazed fiercely at an array of readouts as he did so. Cyrus recognized the devices as cerebral monitors, using the data from his implants to show activity in his brain.

++Minimal damage or aftereffects,++ the Metasurgeon finally pronounced, the binaric language covering any grudging tone on his part. "You may attempt to stand."

The apprentice swung his limbs over the side of the bed, first pulling himself into a sitting position then, with one hand kept firmly on the rail, pushed himself to his bare feet. He swayed, then righted himself, and tried to take a step.

Instead, he found himself remaining still, but the other body kicking against the ground, powerful muscles and hard exoskeleton tearing through the turf with ease. Feeling Rho-Eta's gaze on him, Cyrus concentrated on command of his own body, and this time he succeeded. Soon, he was taking short steps, then walking more confidently. His body ached all over, but the ache was fading and it obeyed him well enough in the meantime. The Metasurgeon made him walk until he was sure he was steady, then pointed him to a box sitting beside the bed. Inside was a set of standard clothes for an apprentice of his rank - a robust undershirt and hard-wearing pants, boots and gloves, and then a grey tunic edged in red.

He pulled them on, caring little for Rho-Eta's presence - the elder tech-adept had pulled most of his torso apart at various points anyway - and felt a little more himself when he was done. Finally, the Metasurgeon led him out of the room, down a short corridor and through the basic airlock which kept the insides of the building free both of the jungles' cloying humidity, and of the drifting spores and seeds on the air, which would take root given half a chance.

The outpost was laid out in a rough diamond shape, a tower at each corner of the walls and a fifth in the center, from which a bristle of vox-antennae jutted like a sprout of unkempt hair. The walls were painted in shades of orange and black, eye-catching to humans but not to many of the creatures evolved to survive in the shadows of the understory, and sloped so that any seed or spore which attempted to take root in the tough plascrete - a real danger - would slide down into the electrified moat below. The air had a tang of ozone to it; another deterrent, as many of the jungle's predators used electrical discharge to hunt.

Skitarii were scattered amongst a garrison of less-augmented soldiers to man the walls, and barked binaric acknowledgements as Cyrus and Rho-Eta passed on their way from the southernmost tower to the easternmost, where the Skitarii's quarters and medicaerium were situated. After passing through another airlock and enduring a brief blast of air intended to suck any spores away to be disposed of, they entered.

Stark lights illuminated their way as the Metasurgeon led the way through to the rooms set aside for the care of injured Skitarii, somewhere between an ordinary medicae facility and an enginseer's workshop. There lay Tlamac CV/11, attached to an array of life-support devices. Even at a glance and after however-many days of healing and repair, Cyrus could easily see signs of damage - burnt and fused wiring around the head and shoulders, an augmetic arm removed and in the process of repair on a nearby fabrilathe. The faint smells of melted plastic and blood lingered in the air, even with the whirr of the omnipresent filter-fans.

"The damage is due to a combination of battle-trauma and, as you see here, damage from repeatedly overloading their vox-transmitters in an attempt to pierce the jungle's galvanic-wave interference," Rho-Eta explained, indicating various damaged components of the Skitarii. "It was our supposition that they either continued the battle after your unconsciousness, or were forced to fend off native flora or fauna."

"I… find it improbable that they could have defeated the remainder of the xenos attackers alone," Cyrus opined. "May I make a request?" The Metasurgeon transmitted an affirmative.

"Metasurgeon, this Skitarii has saved my life. You have spoken well of my medical skills before; may I aid you in treating them?"

Rho-Eta's eye-lenses whirred. "You may," he said. "You were always one for repaying debts owed."


Over the following hours, Cyrus lost himself in the work of healing, his own knowledge and the Metasurgeon's expertise working in harmony upon the body of the stricken Skitarii. Seared wiring was replaced, implants repaired and flesh prepared for healing. Several forms of secondary damage which had been missed in the initial care were noted and addressed, preventing more work in future. By the time the work was complete, all but a handful of the support machines had been detached for lack of need.

Finally, Rho-Eta stood back, his cerebral mechadendrites retracting and cleaning themselves. ++We have done all we can,++ he broadcast. ++They will likely recover to the point of waking within the next day. You, however, have exerted yourself; I recommend you find rest, and prepare to give a thorough accounting of the expedition's events soon.++

He paused, then sent another signal, thin-band for privacy. ++Magos Hakor has heard of this incident, though he has been busy liaising with House Vanefa and conducting research on effective weapons and tactics against this xenos threat. He requested to be notified upon your waking, and to have a hololith conference with you as soon as possible.++

++I understand,++ Cyrus replied. The Metasurgeon left the medicaerium and, a moment later, so did he.

Night had fallen, as dark as any on Covyria, though the skies were lit by the outpost's floodlights, and by the gleaming points of the watchful Skitarii's eyes. The way to his quarters, a small room halfway up one of the outer towers, wasn't long, but the walk there had a strange, almost hallucinatory feel to it It was such a short time ago that he had *left it last, and yet now when he returned one of his teachers was dead, and he could not deny that he had been changed.

The singular focus of first the mental tests and then the medical work on the Skitarii had let him ignore it. But, in their absence he found the strange doubling of perspective unavoidable, as he saw through the other body's senses and felt through its limbs.

It did not feel as though he was controlling it so much as that he was it - a mind stretched across two bodies, as easily as he had ever existed in one. It was disturbing, not least because although he knew a little of the metrical alteration the Immaterium could produce - the powers of psykers like astropaths or navigators - this bore little resemblance to those. In fact, the only thing he could compare it to was the findings of certain ancient Magi into the Tyranids themselves, which had been unearthed from Covyria's datavaults and opened for the reading of all relevant personnel. A distributed consciousness directing many bodies...

Could he describe himself as anything but that? Not of the same scope, but there was a disturbing similarity.

Cyrus passed through another airlock, endured another air-shower, and picked his way through the corridors towards his quarters. His thoughts followed him as he entered the small room which was his own. A bed was pushed against one wall, and a small work-bench and various tools against the other. A few small projects, built with what scraps he could scavenge around the outpost, were kept neatly in small drawers, but he had no energy to pursue any of them now. His ruminations had followed him, bounding at his heels, and he felt like he could concentrate on nothing until he answered at least a few of his questions about his other body.

Mechanically, the apprentice prepared himself for rest, stripping off his garments and folding them neatly before lying down on the slab which answered for a mattress. Closing his eyes, he concentrated his attention on his presence in the form of the Tyranid creature. It was armored well, and he knew all too well its brutal strength, but he slowly came to realize that it was made for more, engineered...

[] [Purpose]
-[] ...as a machine of bloody destruction. It wielded two blades composed of a bonelike substance, each of which exuded a field of destructive energy Cyrus could only compare to that surrounding the power-axes sometimes wielded by senior tech-priests in battle. When he struck at a tree with them, the blades passed through with barely any resistance, leaving a withered and desiccated path in their wake.

Beyond these strange tools, the second pair of arms bore great five-fingered hands tipped with vicious claws, and as he explored the unfamiliar body he discovered a range of strange reflexes. The two most interesting of these were the firing of an array of barbed darts from the torso, linked harpoon-like to the creature by sinewy cords, and the activation of a series of what Cyrus had originally assumed to be some form of tumor or parasitic Covyrian growth, but which sent the body into a frenzied state. Its feverish agitation had echoed down the link, and it had been an effort to hold the body in place as it shivered with pent-up energy.

Twin Boneswords, Twin Rending Talons, Flesh Hooks, Adrenal Glands

-[] ...as what he could only describe as a biological capture apparatus. Its armament consisted of a prehensile tail tipped with a vicious pincer, a pair of lashing, prehensile symbiote-creatures bonded to its upper limbs, and a single large, biological cannon of some kind fused to the lower. When he fired it, he found that it could launch either a seedpod which exploded - germinated? - on impact into a mass of barbed vines, or simply spew those vines from the weapon itself in a great gout.

With some more experimentation, he found that the mass of symbiotes which formed the strange weapon could be manipulated to alter the properties of the vines produced - removing the thorns, causing them to cluster more densely over a smaller area or more spread out over a larger one. He could even manipulate the directions in which the vines erupted, though he had no real understanding of how.

Twin Lash Whips, Enhanced Senses (Chemical Analysis), Bindthorn Cannon, Prehensile Pincer Tail

-[] ...as some form of advanced scout, judging by the batlike wings on its back which could bear it aloft, though with some difficulty in the close confines of the Covyrian jungle. Even at the distance of his connection to the alien body Cyrus couldn't help but feel a sense of exhilaration as he looked down on the treetops from above, an ocean of leafy darkness rolling away below. A darkness he could appreciate all the more, as the creature's eyes and senses surveyed the jungle in colours he could only guess to be infra-red and ultraviolet, and picked up the subtle sounds of creatures moving below the canopy.

Beyond the wings, the bio-form sported a pair of great scythe-like claws, and a matching pair of conical weapon-symbiotes. When he fired them - an odd reflex which felt something like tensing a muscle - a shower of wormlike creatures were shot outwards. When he fired them against the bole of a tree they merely splattered, though their remains hissed in a manner suggesting acid, but when they struck one of the eight-limbed, reptilian thamurs they bit into it with fervour, leaving its half-devoured carcass hanging in the tree.

Wings, Enhanced Senses (Infra-red, Ultraviolet, Enhanced Hearing), Twin Devourers, Twin Scything Talons

-[] ...as a weapon to destroy tanks and crack hardpoints. Although its upper limbs bore great hands tipped with claws sharp enough to easily rend the iron-hard bark and trunk of the nearby trees, undoubtedly its primary armament was a great biological cannon fused to the lower limbs. Its payload, when fired, appeared to be some kind of crystalline substance, but it struck his target - the same tree he had marked with the claws earlier - with such force that there was almost nothing to examine afterwards, and the tree was in real danger of toppling over. This was not helped by the fact that whatever the crystals were, they apparently had some kind of toxic or acidic quality to them.

He had no idea how the cannon produced the projectile's momentum. The force with which it had been hurled was far beyond what any kind of muscular action could reasonably produce, and he could see no signs of pressurized air or similar. Still, that was a mystery for another time. More comprehensible, at least, was the fact that the creature's carapace seemed to have some ability to change its colour - not fast enough to achieve true optical camouflage, but enough to blend into a background - while its vision had a remarkable acuity both in low light and at long distance.

Twin Rending Talons, Enhanced Senses (Long-Distance Sight, Low-Light Vision), Heavy Venom Cannon, Camouflage Carapace

After over an hour of exploration, the apprentice finally turned over and attempted to sleep. He did so, after a long while, but found that rather than losing consciousness entirely, his mind was simply left in the great, chitinous body of the Tyranid. After a moment of panic which jolted his own body awake again, he allayed the fear that he would lose himself entirely, but it was a disquieted Cyrus which looked out over the forest's night-rains and contemplated what he would do in the morning, before his appointed meeting with his master.

[] [Course of Action]
-[] He would seek out what knowledge he could find on the xenos invaders.
--[] Write In: Methods or focuses of this research.
-[] He would labour to help around the outpost; performing the mechanical work often done by apprentices of his stature, nearing the end of their apprenticeship.
--[] Write In: Areas Cyrus particularly seeks to help with; e.g. vehicle maintenance, or other goals.
-[] He would put his skills to work in the medicaerium, doing his best to heal the injured.
--[] Write In: Types of patients Cyrus focuses on, or other goals.
-[] He would concentrate on directing the Hive Tyrant under his control.
--[] Write In: For what purpose? For example, to find other Tyranids, to fight other Tyranids, to test it against the beasts of the jungle, to prepare ground for presentation to others.

---

Welcome to the Build-A-Bug Warehouse! Sorry for the slightly slower update; this has been a very busy week.

Note that when describing rolls, a bolded result indicates a success, while a bolded and underlined result indicates 2.

This is a plan vote; pick one Purpose and one Course of Action (with whatever write-ins you want to add. Explaining why, and where you intend to go with this choice is probably a good idea.

Voting closes in 48 hours.

So, that's that vote tied up unanimously. All Your Bodies Are Belong To Us and medical aid!

Waking was a strange sensation in Cyrus' new state, less a swimming upwards towards consciousness and more a reconnection to his waking body. His other-self had grown hungry in the night, ravenously so, and he had made use of its biological armament to catch a number of the small thamurs which leaped and chittered through the trees. It had been grisly work to prepare them, as he could not bring himself to simply devour them, but the talons - or perhaps teeth - on the praefactor's whips sufficed well; they were prehensile, and able to do surprisingly delicate work.

The taste itself had been surprising. Though Cyrus had eaten thamur before, he hadn't really expected this other body to experience the taste in the same way. It was radically different to a human form, after all. And, true enough, the taste was utterly dissimilar. It had layers, as varied and subtly distinct as the colours of a grand painting, and like a painting they built up a greater image. By taste and the same nameless instinct which had shown him how to coordinate the creature's body, the apprentice realized he could identify elements which made up the thamur's flesh. He could taste the protein fibers of its muscles, the toxins its immune system used to fight off the endless infections of the jungle, and the lactic acid of its last panicked movements.

But, that was the night and this was the morning. As his praefactor body made its way to a place of relative shelter; a small cleft beneath the roots of one of the great trees, Cyrus pulled himself from bed and made himself ready for the day. He was only too aware of the strain the ongoing campaign against the xenos invaders, coupled with the ever-present difficulties of contending with Covyria itself, would be placing on the medical staff of the outpost. That being the case, he had resolved to do his best to alleviate their pressure.

He washed himself, said his morning prayers to the Omnissiah, the Machine God and the Motive Force, and left his accommodations to find nourishment. The outpost canteen, as ever, provided, and he ate his bland rations quickly, before making his way to the general medicaerium.

Ordinarily, the master of this domain would be Officer Medicus Rhoswyn Ymedall, a well-practiced woman in her fourth decade, but with only peripheral augmentations. With Rho-Eta 9 present, as one of the most respected Metasurgeons on the planet, her authority was rather reduced - not in theory, but in practice many of the staff tended to defer to Rho-Eta instead of her. She received Cyrus with slightly surly gratitude, understandable under the circumstances, and put him to work tending to the myriad of minor wounds, infections and parasitic infestations which plagued any activity so close to the jungle.


The work was long, tiring and often repetitive, and Cyrus found his attention wavering from his duty to more distant thoughts. His physician's discipline - aided by the mind-honing mantras he practiced daily - kept him focused, though, and it could not be said that he was not an asset to the medicaerium. He fought infections, proscribed a course of antifungal medication to head off a cordyceptoid infestation and sterilized and treated wounds. By the end of the work, though, Ymedall seemed to be warming up to him a little, even going so far as to wish him goodbye when the time came for him to leave.

From the medicaerium, Cyrus made his way up several floors to Rho-Eta's chambers, where he kept a personal hololith projector. The elder tech-priest was there, of course, occupied with a project of his own. He worked in a separate room, equipped with a dissection table and all the tools the metasurgeon didn't already possess in his array of mechadendrites. As Cyrus entered, he heard the drone of Rho-Eta's findings, dictated to a hovering servo-skull in techna-lingua as he cut into the corpse of a Gaunti gladius - a hormagaunt, in Low Gothic. An optical mechadendrite turned to acknowledge the interloper, and a short burst of greeting was transmitted from either side, before Cyrus settled in to wait for the elder's litany to come to a natural end.

A minute passed, then another, before Rho-Eta came to a stopping-place and dismissed the servo-skull to disgorge its contents into the central datavault of the outpost. Disinfectant hissed over his dissection tools as they folded away.

"Your timing is well; the Magos Hakor has signalled his availability for communication early," the metasurgeon said. "I believe he is eager to assure himself of your wellbeing."

Cyrus felt a slight smile tug at his mouth. "May we activate the link?" he asked.

Rho-Eta transmitted an affirmative as the last of his tools folded away, and a grey-skinned servitor lowered a preservative seal over the dissection table. The elder tech-priest's robes glided over the floor as he left the laboratory and moved through to the communicator annex. A plinth rose to the level of Cyrus' waist, a little under a meter in circular diameter. Rho-Eta depressed the power rune, hummed a brief canticle of authorization, and the hololith table burst into life, green light flickering across the air before their eyes until it resolved into a constellation of data.

The arrangement would have been incomprehensible to a layperson, but to an initiate of the Adeptus Mechanicus it was merely complex. Rho-Eta navigated it expertly, isolating the waiting signal, sending an acknowledgement, and then an invitation. Moments later the constellation died, replaced by the blooming of wireframe light into the form of Magos Genetor Hakor Tranth.

Cyrus was not entirely sure how old the Magos was. Certainly more than two centuries, but he was not a Covyrian native, and finding information on the wider Imperium was difficult. Whatever his age, little remained of him that had seen all of it. Like an ancient warship, each part of the genetor had been replaced and replaced again, whether with the metasurgeon's scalpel or the finer work of retrovirus, drugs and gene-splicing. He was human, as human as any elder member of the Mechanicus, and was known best by the Balorian-class exoskeleton he often piloted in public; of a size with any Dreadnought of the Adeptus Astartes. Its single array of optical sensors was iconic of the elder genetor, as was its vast array of tools and implements, enough that it represented a walking laboratory of its own.

Hakor did not wear it now, preferring to present his own lean form, and simple robes meant to be easy to clean of the stains of blood and oil. His face was a mask of optics, augur arrays and MIU uplinks, but Cyrus could make out the subtle movements of lenses and plates which signified happiness.

"I am glad to see you again, my apprentice," the hololith spoke. "I heard of the disappearance of your expedition, and feared the worst. Covyria is not kind at the best of times. But I thank the Omnissiah for your safety."

Cyrus felt a smile tugging at his own mouth. "It's good to see you as well, Magos Hakor," he replied. "I am sorry I could not complete Magos Karayev's mission."

"We are among friends," said the genetor. "There is no need to be so formal, Cyrus. And as to the cogitators from the excavation site, their loss is a price I am willing to pay for your safety." It was no small declaration - those cogitators had been repositories of ancient knowledge, sacred in their own right. Though a second expedition had been dispatched to retrieve them, now that Cyrus had been able to give approximate coordinates, it was far from a certain thing.

"You are healing well?"

"I am," the apprentice replied. "Rho-Eta 9 has seen to that."

The green hololith turned. "I would expect nothing less," he said to the metasurgeon, "But nevertheless I must thank you once again. Not least for the data you provided on my son's cerebral anomalies."

"Anomalies?" Cyrus asked. This was the first he had heard of them.

"Indeed," Rho-Eta said. "I needed to consult with your father on the matter of your cerebral implants and their interactions with secondary factors before I could fully interpret the results."

"But first," Hakor broke in in a voice of gentle but clinical command, "I would wish to hear the happenings of the last days from your perspective. Leave nothing out. I have time in abundance."

Cyrus steeled himself. He was prepared to tell his surrogate father…

-[] All. He would reveal everything that had happened to him, and his new state of existence.
--[] Write in: How do you want to put this, in broad terms?
-[] Some. He would keep some things to himself, until he could find a better way to describe them, and he knew more himself.
--[] Write in: What do you want to tell, and how do you want to tell it?

---

Firstly, I'm sorry for how long the chapter has taken, but I've had a rather confusing few weeks. I hope you'll forgive me.

As you may be able to guess, how much you opt to tell Hakor will have some influence on where the story goes from here. Therefore, I am putting a 24 hour moratorium on voting for discussion, and voting will end in 48 hours.

Good to be back! And, as always, thanks go to @BungieONI and @GardenerBriareus for help behind the scenes.