- Location
- Alaska, USA
These were painful to read due to the poor gammer. They desperately need an editor to go through them.
The Galaxy is Flood, Not Food
- Thread starter Jackson Fox
- Start date
- Crossover Sci-Fi Horror
TheAkashicRecord
The Library Of All Knowledge
- Location
- Somewhere~
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Hey, I didn't Change anything, these are all as is copy and pasted from Space battles, and I'm not planning to unless they are changes over their
You should add number or something else for the title of those omake, since it a bit hard to know which one is which here
I didn't really mind the grammar I found them entertaining
Chapter 53 - The Emperor's Knives
Day 36, Continued
The Eversor tore forwards like a lightning strike, weaving itself through the hail of autogun rounds that filled the air around it as the PDF opened fired. It took only a moment before it reached the first of its newest victims.
It ripped into them like a feral beast, a whirlwind of claws that crackled with energy as it performed its bloody work. The puppets leapt at it with combat knives and bayonets, moving far faster than a human body was capable of. It didn't make an iota of difference. They may as well have been throwing themselves into a meat grinder.
The Eversor roared and laughed madly as it butchered ceaselessly. Eight seconds passed and nearly twenty puppets were strewn across the corridor, their innards painting the walls red. More PDF rushed forwards, but every new wave fell in rapid succession as the Eversor worked its way through an endless horde.
There were flashes of light behind it and more victims emerged into the corridor. These were larger, stronger, and utterly inhuman. They were hulking brutes with long claws extending from a palm that glowed blue with internal plasma weaponry. White-hot flame filled the corridor, but the Eversor had already leapt out of the way, beheading another three puppets in the same motion. The plasma bursts collided with puppets, incinerating another rank of bioforms that was just as quickly replaced.
The brutes roared and rushed forwards, ceramite-tearing claws gleaming in the light of their plasma weapons. The Eversor matched their roar with a cry of glee as it rushed forward, its own claws igniting with lightning.
The Vindicare was secure in his belief that the machine spirits of his suit would not fail, that his magnetically sealed boots and glove would remain unfaltering in their duty of keeping him connected to the hull of the Valkyrie. The same could not be said for his faith in the lander's own capabilities, which were already being pushed to their limitations by the dogfight the pair of Lightnings were putting it through.
The fighter craft were like annoying gnats, if heavily armed ones. No matter how the Valkyrie maneuvered through the sky, ducking, diving, ascending, flipping, even cutting its engines temporarily in an attempt to get behind its pursuers, the fighters matched it in maneuvering and exceeded it. The pilots of the fighters did not seem as skilled as the pilot of Valkyrie, of course, but they didn't need to be. The lander was slower and bulkier, not suited for this kind of fast paced combat. Already, he could hear the whine of the craft's engines, the protest of the metal hull. They hadn't been hit yet, a testament to the skill of their pilot, but even a single shot could end them, as the Vindicare knew well.
This couldn't go on, yet the Vindicare was powerless to change anything. That is what a lesser mind would have assumed and they would have been wrong.
"Flip onto the side," The Vindicare voxed the pilot, as the pair of Lightnings pulled in behind them once more after another brilliant turn that took full advantage of the lander's hovering abilities.
The pilot needed no further information, no explanation of the plan, they simply did it. There was a lurching as the Valkyrie wrenched itself about so one of its wings was pointed towards the ground, the other towards the sky. In the same motion, the pilot put them on a near ninety degree turn that would have scrambled the brains of anyone without the augments of an assassin.
In that moment, the Vindicare seemed as though they were simply crouched on the ground. With every ounce of swiftness that one of the most efficient killers in the galaxy could muster, his hand demagnetized from the hull and went up to steady his rifle. He had his shot in an instant and did not hesitate. He saw the slight change in direction as the enemy realized his intents and began to react, but it was already too late.
His round flew true, slicing through the cockpit's glass, splashing it with blood as its occupant exploded. The penetrator round continued on through the craft, slicing through armor, engine, and more. The fighter exploded and the shot continued on, only a slight loss in its speed, fleeing into the distance.
The remaining Lightning twisted in the air and he wasn't in a position to shoot it down. That would only last for a moment, however.
As the Valkyrie's engines began to protest the strange position of the craft, the pilot allowed the craft to level out once more. However, he did not stop the motion there and the Valkyrie turned once more, this time on its other side.
The Vindicare hung upside down, nothing but his boots keeping him attached to the hull. Internal augmetics forced the blood from rushing to his head, but even they were being overwhelmed. He was blinded as his eyes went dark from the strain of the gravities, but he did not need his eyes. Linked to the auguries of his mask and rifle, he found his target and took the shot in the same moment.
As his augmetics fought back the darkness from taking him, the Vindicare's sight was restored just as the Valkyrie began to level out once more, performing a barrel roll that let the Vindicare crouch and reseal his hand to the hull. He watched as the wrecks of both Lightnings screamed towards the ground, little more than fireballs.
"Sky's clear," He heard the pilot say.
For now, the Vindicare left unsaid. They needed to extract as quickly as possible.
The Callidus sprinted forward, her blade humming with strange frequencies. The power armored foe raised its blade as if in preparation to block. It would not work, the quality of her blade meant that it could cut through virtually anything, even the plasma containment field of a Sollex-Aegis blade.
She leaps, blade prepared to carve it in twain, and her foe responds and only when it is moving to guard itself does she realize the mistake she's made. The movement is fluid, far too fluid for a suit of armor. The being before her is entirely flesh, despite the strange appearance.
She is already in the air, her momentum is set. Her blade passed through the energy field of the Sollex-Aegis with contemptuous ease, slicing through the entirely organic mass of the wielder's neck just as easily. However, her eyes are not on the slain flesh-puppet, but the small barrel of the plasma pistol that was hidden behind the leg of the creature, like the sprout of some weed and gripped in a crimson red gauntlet emerging from the bottom of the pod.
She saw the trigger finger start to squeeze. With grace beyond that of the greatest of acrobats, the Callidus twisted herself in mid-air, reaching out with her hand to grip the shoulder of the freshly decapitated flesh-puppet. With equally inhuman strength, the Callidus wrenches herself bodily, halting her momentum.
It is just barely enough. She feels the singing of the white-hot flame rake across her as the plasma blast strikes ineffectively into the ceiling. That does not distract her, however. With another graceful twist, her blade strikes once more, this time piercing downwards into the fleshy flooring of the pod. It is not a fully blind strike, assuming the hand itself was an indicator of the true foe's location. However, in that moment, she makes another mistake in ignoring the decapitated flesh-puppet.
With speed and strength pushed beyond what a human was capable of, the headless body, apparently controlled by a brain or some analogue not housed within the helmet-shaped skull, dropped its sword and reached out towards the Callidus. She tried to push off it with her hand to gain distance, but it purposefully fell backwards as she pushed, killing any momentum she might have gained. She felt its hands wrap around her arm with a grip of ceramite and began to squeeze even tighter. At the same time, she saw the barrel of the plasma pistol turning towards her once more.
Her blade flashed up, slicing through the wrists of the flesh-puppet… and her own. Suddenly freed, she shoved off the flesh-puppet just fast enough to dodge the next blast of plasma, which cooked her would-be captor in an instant, turning it to ash. In the same instant, a second red gauntlet burst out of the floor, catching the Sollex-Aegis blade midfall.
The Callidus fell to the hangar floor, rolling with her momentum, bringing herself up in a crouch in a moment. In the time it took her to recover herself, the true power-armored creature rose. This one was painted a familiar crimson and clearly metallic with a silver visor and had a small gap over where its heart would have been were it human, the precise spot where her blade had struck. She noted with slightly narrowed eyes the symbols of the Mechanicus embedded on its shoulders. It wielded the Sollex-Aegis and plasma pistol, holding both at the ready.
She darted to the side, just as the trigger finger of the armored foe tightened and a bolt of white-flame flashed, cooking the air where she'd been a moment earlier. She lanced forwards, throwing herself to the side as a second shot was aimed and fired at her, rolling once before coming up still sprinting.
Dozens of spikes of bone ripped out of the floor of the pod, shooting upwards and out, many directed towards her. She slid, coming to a stop at the base of the pod just as the spikes embedded themselves into the rockrete ceiling above her, and her sword struck upwards like a rising serpent. The power armor did nothing to protect its occupant, who had raised its own blade to strike at her.
Her blade takes it in the stomach, slicing through where the lower spine would be. She slashes outwards, cutting through half of its stomach and through internal cords of the armor. However, the blade of her foe continues downward, uncaring of the damage, and she is forced to push off the pod with all her might, sending her sliding out of the way. With a mental command, her blade deactivates and her one arm reaches up. With the momentum of her slide, her hand catches the floor and she flips back and up into a graceful crouch.
The creature treads after her, but its clear from the sluggishness of its legs that the lower half of the armor is no longer powered. Nonetheless, it moves swiftly and with strength. The plasma pistol comes up again and fires, but she is too close. She ducks down and bolts forward. The sword slashes down and she changes direction just enough, avoiding the blade and the armored warrior, slamming one foot down in front of her and bending her knee to absorb the momentum of her sudden halt. Then, just as the blade is slashing around towards her, one of her legs comes up and intercepts the forearm of the creature with a kick.
The ceramite plating of the power armor cracked under the force of the blow, while her leg remained intact. The creature stumbled forwards, unable to regain its balance after the unexpected strike. She took full advantage. With a single, diagonal slash of her blade, the power armored creature collapsed, its torso slashed into two pieces. It crashed to the ground and remained still there, but she made sure to sever its head from its body, as well as its arms and legs.
The Callidus surveyed her kills carefully. Her eyes did not leave them even as she backed away towards the pair of blanks. The entire fight had taken around thirty seconds, far longer than it should have.
"W-what are you?" She heard the target ask. The Callidus was silent, focused as her ears picked out the sound of an approaching Valkyrie's engines coming from outside the hangar.
"Get ready to leave," The Callidus commanded. "There will be more coming."
The aircraft's roar quieted as it slowed to a hover in the hangar. As it turned about and landed, Cass' eyes widened at the sight of a man, clad in a black bodysuit similar to Sulla's own albeit with a white mask and holding a dangerous looking rifle, detach himself from the side, where it looked as though he'd been hanging off it with one hand. The boarding ramp lowered, but the engines never cut.
"Move!" Sulla ordered and Cass did so as fast as she could, though Brunt's steps were slow. She saw the man and Sulla look at each other, as though speaking a nonverbal or unheard conversation, before Sulla moved over to Brunt's other side and surprised Cass by picking him up, like he weighed nothing more than a corpse-starch bar. She carried Brunt into the landing craft, while the man stood watch. Sulla followed and the man was last inside. His feet had barely touched the ramp before it began to close and the aircraft began to rise.
Sulla set Brunt down in one of the seats, strapping him in. Cass took the seat next to him, watching Sulla carefully. When the black-clad woman turned to her and began the motions to strap her in as well, she did not interfere.
Cass got the feeling that, if she hadn't walked into the landing craft willingly, they wouldn't have taken Brunt with them or been willing to help him. She had no guarantee they still would, but she could guess these people wanted something from her.
The lander's engines roared and shook the craft as it departed from the hive spires and suddenly Cass had a whole new thing to worry about. She had never been on an aircraft before and it was not a gentle ride.
The Culexus assassin piloted the Valkyrie, rushing to try and reach the cloud layer and its auspex-blocking confines. Before whoever had been chasing them sought to use that teleportation trick again.
However, the moment they left the hangar, the Culexus noticed the flash of light coming from above him. His head jerked upwards, just in time to see something falling down towards them. His hands jerked the controls to the side. The Valkyrie swerved and he heard someone in the hold fall over, as well as someone swearing loudly in low gothic, who he assumed was the target.
The thing continued to fall, past where the craft had been moments before, but he thought he could see tendrils reaching out towards the lander from it. There was another flash of light, this one even larger and brighter and the Culexus pushed the craft to its limits, the engines roaring loudly as they surged forwards. It was barely enough and he felt the back of the lander jerk hard as something massive clipped it. It took a moment to regain control, but there was already another flash, the brightest yet, and no chance he could evade this one.
What he could only describe as a writhing mass of tendrils crashed onto the Valkyrie, wrapping its form around the wings and clinging on with a death grip. The Culexus pushed even more power into the Valkyrie's engines, nearing the limits of the safeties to keep it from colliding into the ground, but he could hear metal wrenching as something was torn away by titanic strength. He considered firing the weapons, but if they had been damaged, that could endanger the target.
Then again, so could dying in a crash. The lascannons fired, burning two holes through the writhing mass and, for a moment, he could see out of the windshield again. The Valkyrie was spinning, fortunately away from the spires, but he needed to level it out.
There was the horrible sound of metal being torn away and the Culexus felt the Valkyrie begin to fall as its engines were ripped away. No chance of leveling out then. The tendrils recovered the gap and spread further around the Valkyrie. A suicide attack, was it?
The Culexus left the cockpit. The Callidus' blade could cut their way free. There was only a few seconds to-
There was a vibration, a hum across strange frequencies that made their bones shake and teeth rattle. Their hearts pounded in their chests and adrenaline coursed through their veins as something no amount of training or experience could have prepared them for.
The five of them felt as reality itself opened up and released them from its grasp. Out of time, out of space, they fell and fell.
They saw strange places and far realms beyond the worst imaginings of the Warp and grander than even the greatest designs of gods. They saw monsters who devoured gods and daemons. They saw heroes that never surrendered before evil and brought light wherever they ventured.
They saw everything and in every sense of that word. Worlds that burned with the screams of the damned, xenos so strange that simply witnessing them caused their brains to ache with the pains of forbidden knowledge, and universes filled with life of every kind imaginable and even more that was not.
They fell through the space between their universe and the infinity of others. They might have screamed. They might have cried. They might have gone mad. And, just as it was about to be too much for them, just as they might have broken beyond any hope for repair, reality reached out for them, like the hand of a merciful god, and pulled them back into its care.
Familiar laws reasserted themselves and their frail minds overflowed with the sights they had just borne witness to. The memories leaked out of them like the blood running down their noses and eyes and ears. They had all collapsed where they sat or stood, not unconscious, but twitching and shivering.
They didn't hear the Valkyrie's landing door be wrenched open, didn't see the place they had been transported to, far below the surface of a hive city filled only by the dead. They didn't even feel it as hulking monsters and tiny insects scrambled inside, weapons at the ready, taking careful aim at the barely breathing assassins and blanks.
They moved in swiftly, keeping their weapons trained on their targets the whole time as the insects rushed forwards and burrowed swiftly into their flesh. Only once the five of them were properly infected, with the man starting to be healed of his would-be mortal wounds, did the bioforms dare lower their weapons.
The Eversor tore forwards like a lightning strike, weaving itself through the hail of autogun rounds that filled the air around it as the PDF opened fired. It took only a moment before it reached the first of its newest victims.
It ripped into them like a feral beast, a whirlwind of claws that crackled with energy as it performed its bloody work. The puppets leapt at it with combat knives and bayonets, moving far faster than a human body was capable of. It didn't make an iota of difference. They may as well have been throwing themselves into a meat grinder.
The Eversor roared and laughed madly as it butchered ceaselessly. Eight seconds passed and nearly twenty puppets were strewn across the corridor, their innards painting the walls red. More PDF rushed forwards, but every new wave fell in rapid succession as the Eversor worked its way through an endless horde.
There were flashes of light behind it and more victims emerged into the corridor. These were larger, stronger, and utterly inhuman. They were hulking brutes with long claws extending from a palm that glowed blue with internal plasma weaponry. White-hot flame filled the corridor, but the Eversor had already leapt out of the way, beheading another three puppets in the same motion. The plasma bursts collided with puppets, incinerating another rank of bioforms that was just as quickly replaced.
The brutes roared and rushed forwards, ceramite-tearing claws gleaming in the light of their plasma weapons. The Eversor matched their roar with a cry of glee as it rushed forward, its own claws igniting with lightning.
The Vindicare was secure in his belief that the machine spirits of his suit would not fail, that his magnetically sealed boots and glove would remain unfaltering in their duty of keeping him connected to the hull of the Valkyrie. The same could not be said for his faith in the lander's own capabilities, which were already being pushed to their limitations by the dogfight the pair of Lightnings were putting it through.
The fighter craft were like annoying gnats, if heavily armed ones. No matter how the Valkyrie maneuvered through the sky, ducking, diving, ascending, flipping, even cutting its engines temporarily in an attempt to get behind its pursuers, the fighters matched it in maneuvering and exceeded it. The pilots of the fighters did not seem as skilled as the pilot of Valkyrie, of course, but they didn't need to be. The lander was slower and bulkier, not suited for this kind of fast paced combat. Already, he could hear the whine of the craft's engines, the protest of the metal hull. They hadn't been hit yet, a testament to the skill of their pilot, but even a single shot could end them, as the Vindicare knew well.
This couldn't go on, yet the Vindicare was powerless to change anything. That is what a lesser mind would have assumed and they would have been wrong.
"Flip onto the side," The Vindicare voxed the pilot, as the pair of Lightnings pulled in behind them once more after another brilliant turn that took full advantage of the lander's hovering abilities.
The pilot needed no further information, no explanation of the plan, they simply did it. There was a lurching as the Valkyrie wrenched itself about so one of its wings was pointed towards the ground, the other towards the sky. In the same motion, the pilot put them on a near ninety degree turn that would have scrambled the brains of anyone without the augments of an assassin.
In that moment, the Vindicare seemed as though they were simply crouched on the ground. With every ounce of swiftness that one of the most efficient killers in the galaxy could muster, his hand demagnetized from the hull and went up to steady his rifle. He had his shot in an instant and did not hesitate. He saw the slight change in direction as the enemy realized his intents and began to react, but it was already too late.
His round flew true, slicing through the cockpit's glass, splashing it with blood as its occupant exploded. The penetrator round continued on through the craft, slicing through armor, engine, and more. The fighter exploded and the shot continued on, only a slight loss in its speed, fleeing into the distance.
The remaining Lightning twisted in the air and he wasn't in a position to shoot it down. That would only last for a moment, however.
As the Valkyrie's engines began to protest the strange position of the craft, the pilot allowed the craft to level out once more. However, he did not stop the motion there and the Valkyrie turned once more, this time on its other side.
The Vindicare hung upside down, nothing but his boots keeping him attached to the hull. Internal augmetics forced the blood from rushing to his head, but even they were being overwhelmed. He was blinded as his eyes went dark from the strain of the gravities, but he did not need his eyes. Linked to the auguries of his mask and rifle, he found his target and took the shot in the same moment.
As his augmetics fought back the darkness from taking him, the Vindicare's sight was restored just as the Valkyrie began to level out once more, performing a barrel roll that let the Vindicare crouch and reseal his hand to the hull. He watched as the wrecks of both Lightnings screamed towards the ground, little more than fireballs.
"Sky's clear," He heard the pilot say.
For now, the Vindicare left unsaid. They needed to extract as quickly as possible.
The Callidus sprinted forward, her blade humming with strange frequencies. The power armored foe raised its blade as if in preparation to block. It would not work, the quality of her blade meant that it could cut through virtually anything, even the plasma containment field of a Sollex-Aegis blade.
She leaps, blade prepared to carve it in twain, and her foe responds and only when it is moving to guard itself does she realize the mistake she's made. The movement is fluid, far too fluid for a suit of armor. The being before her is entirely flesh, despite the strange appearance.
She is already in the air, her momentum is set. Her blade passed through the energy field of the Sollex-Aegis with contemptuous ease, slicing through the entirely organic mass of the wielder's neck just as easily. However, her eyes are not on the slain flesh-puppet, but the small barrel of the plasma pistol that was hidden behind the leg of the creature, like the sprout of some weed and gripped in a crimson red gauntlet emerging from the bottom of the pod.
She saw the trigger finger start to squeeze. With grace beyond that of the greatest of acrobats, the Callidus twisted herself in mid-air, reaching out with her hand to grip the shoulder of the freshly decapitated flesh-puppet. With equally inhuman strength, the Callidus wrenches herself bodily, halting her momentum.
It is just barely enough. She feels the singing of the white-hot flame rake across her as the plasma blast strikes ineffectively into the ceiling. That does not distract her, however. With another graceful twist, her blade strikes once more, this time piercing downwards into the fleshy flooring of the pod. It is not a fully blind strike, assuming the hand itself was an indicator of the true foe's location. However, in that moment, she makes another mistake in ignoring the decapitated flesh-puppet.
With speed and strength pushed beyond what a human was capable of, the headless body, apparently controlled by a brain or some analogue not housed within the helmet-shaped skull, dropped its sword and reached out towards the Callidus. She tried to push off it with her hand to gain distance, but it purposefully fell backwards as she pushed, killing any momentum she might have gained. She felt its hands wrap around her arm with a grip of ceramite and began to squeeze even tighter. At the same time, she saw the barrel of the plasma pistol turning towards her once more.
Her blade flashed up, slicing through the wrists of the flesh-puppet… and her own. Suddenly freed, she shoved off the flesh-puppet just fast enough to dodge the next blast of plasma, which cooked her would-be captor in an instant, turning it to ash. In the same instant, a second red gauntlet burst out of the floor, catching the Sollex-Aegis blade midfall.
The Callidus fell to the hangar floor, rolling with her momentum, bringing herself up in a crouch in a moment. In the time it took her to recover herself, the true power-armored creature rose. This one was painted a familiar crimson and clearly metallic with a silver visor and had a small gap over where its heart would have been were it human, the precise spot where her blade had struck. She noted with slightly narrowed eyes the symbols of the Mechanicus embedded on its shoulders. It wielded the Sollex-Aegis and plasma pistol, holding both at the ready.
She darted to the side, just as the trigger finger of the armored foe tightened and a bolt of white-flame flashed, cooking the air where she'd been a moment earlier. She lanced forwards, throwing herself to the side as a second shot was aimed and fired at her, rolling once before coming up still sprinting.
Dozens of spikes of bone ripped out of the floor of the pod, shooting upwards and out, many directed towards her. She slid, coming to a stop at the base of the pod just as the spikes embedded themselves into the rockrete ceiling above her, and her sword struck upwards like a rising serpent. The power armor did nothing to protect its occupant, who had raised its own blade to strike at her.
Her blade takes it in the stomach, slicing through where the lower spine would be. She slashes outwards, cutting through half of its stomach and through internal cords of the armor. However, the blade of her foe continues downward, uncaring of the damage, and she is forced to push off the pod with all her might, sending her sliding out of the way. With a mental command, her blade deactivates and her one arm reaches up. With the momentum of her slide, her hand catches the floor and she flips back and up into a graceful crouch.
The creature treads after her, but its clear from the sluggishness of its legs that the lower half of the armor is no longer powered. Nonetheless, it moves swiftly and with strength. The plasma pistol comes up again and fires, but she is too close. She ducks down and bolts forward. The sword slashes down and she changes direction just enough, avoiding the blade and the armored warrior, slamming one foot down in front of her and bending her knee to absorb the momentum of her sudden halt. Then, just as the blade is slashing around towards her, one of her legs comes up and intercepts the forearm of the creature with a kick.
The ceramite plating of the power armor cracked under the force of the blow, while her leg remained intact. The creature stumbled forwards, unable to regain its balance after the unexpected strike. She took full advantage. With a single, diagonal slash of her blade, the power armored creature collapsed, its torso slashed into two pieces. It crashed to the ground and remained still there, but she made sure to sever its head from its body, as well as its arms and legs.
The Callidus surveyed her kills carefully. Her eyes did not leave them even as she backed away towards the pair of blanks. The entire fight had taken around thirty seconds, far longer than it should have.
"W-what are you?" She heard the target ask. The Callidus was silent, focused as her ears picked out the sound of an approaching Valkyrie's engines coming from outside the hangar.
"Get ready to leave," The Callidus commanded. "There will be more coming."
The aircraft's roar quieted as it slowed to a hover in the hangar. As it turned about and landed, Cass' eyes widened at the sight of a man, clad in a black bodysuit similar to Sulla's own albeit with a white mask and holding a dangerous looking rifle, detach himself from the side, where it looked as though he'd been hanging off it with one hand. The boarding ramp lowered, but the engines never cut.
"Move!" Sulla ordered and Cass did so as fast as she could, though Brunt's steps were slow. She saw the man and Sulla look at each other, as though speaking a nonverbal or unheard conversation, before Sulla moved over to Brunt's other side and surprised Cass by picking him up, like he weighed nothing more than a corpse-starch bar. She carried Brunt into the landing craft, while the man stood watch. Sulla followed and the man was last inside. His feet had barely touched the ramp before it began to close and the aircraft began to rise.
Sulla set Brunt down in one of the seats, strapping him in. Cass took the seat next to him, watching Sulla carefully. When the black-clad woman turned to her and began the motions to strap her in as well, she did not interfere.
Cass got the feeling that, if she hadn't walked into the landing craft willingly, they wouldn't have taken Brunt with them or been willing to help him. She had no guarantee they still would, but she could guess these people wanted something from her.
The lander's engines roared and shook the craft as it departed from the hive spires and suddenly Cass had a whole new thing to worry about. She had never been on an aircraft before and it was not a gentle ride.
The Culexus assassin piloted the Valkyrie, rushing to try and reach the cloud layer and its auspex-blocking confines. Before whoever had been chasing them sought to use that teleportation trick again.
However, the moment they left the hangar, the Culexus noticed the flash of light coming from above him. His head jerked upwards, just in time to see something falling down towards them. His hands jerked the controls to the side. The Valkyrie swerved and he heard someone in the hold fall over, as well as someone swearing loudly in low gothic, who he assumed was the target.
The thing continued to fall, past where the craft had been moments before, but he thought he could see tendrils reaching out towards the lander from it. There was another flash of light, this one even larger and brighter and the Culexus pushed the craft to its limits, the engines roaring loudly as they surged forwards. It was barely enough and he felt the back of the lander jerk hard as something massive clipped it. It took a moment to regain control, but there was already another flash, the brightest yet, and no chance he could evade this one.
What he could only describe as a writhing mass of tendrils crashed onto the Valkyrie, wrapping its form around the wings and clinging on with a death grip. The Culexus pushed even more power into the Valkyrie's engines, nearing the limits of the safeties to keep it from colliding into the ground, but he could hear metal wrenching as something was torn away by titanic strength. He considered firing the weapons, but if they had been damaged, that could endanger the target.
Then again, so could dying in a crash. The lascannons fired, burning two holes through the writhing mass and, for a moment, he could see out of the windshield again. The Valkyrie was spinning, fortunately away from the spires, but he needed to level it out.
There was the horrible sound of metal being torn away and the Culexus felt the Valkyrie begin to fall as its engines were ripped away. No chance of leveling out then. The tendrils recovered the gap and spread further around the Valkyrie. A suicide attack, was it?
The Culexus left the cockpit. The Callidus' blade could cut their way free. There was only a few seconds to-
There was a vibration, a hum across strange frequencies that made their bones shake and teeth rattle. Their hearts pounded in their chests and adrenaline coursed through their veins as something no amount of training or experience could have prepared them for.
The five of them felt as reality itself opened up and released them from its grasp. Out of time, out of space, they fell and fell.
They saw strange places and far realms beyond the worst imaginings of the Warp and grander than even the greatest designs of gods. They saw monsters who devoured gods and daemons. They saw heroes that never surrendered before evil and brought light wherever they ventured.
They saw everything and in every sense of that word. Worlds that burned with the screams of the damned, xenos so strange that simply witnessing them caused their brains to ache with the pains of forbidden knowledge, and universes filled with life of every kind imaginable and even more that was not.
They fell through the space between their universe and the infinity of others. They might have screamed. They might have cried. They might have gone mad. And, just as it was about to be too much for them, just as they might have broken beyond any hope for repair, reality reached out for them, like the hand of a merciful god, and pulled them back into its care.
Familiar laws reasserted themselves and their frail minds overflowed with the sights they had just borne witness to. The memories leaked out of them like the blood running down their noses and eyes and ears. They had all collapsed where they sat or stood, not unconscious, but twitching and shivering.
They didn't hear the Valkyrie's landing door be wrenched open, didn't see the place they had been transported to, far below the surface of a hive city filled only by the dead. They didn't even feel it as hulking monsters and tiny insects scrambled inside, weapons at the ready, taking careful aim at the barely breathing assassins and blanks.
They moved in swiftly, keeping their weapons trained on their targets the whole time as the insects rushed forwards and burrowed swiftly into their flesh. Only once the five of them were properly infected, with the man starting to be healed of his would-be mortal wounds, did the bioforms dare lower their weapons.
Had a ton of fun writing this one. I know this one is kind of short, but I hope the fight scenes were good enough to distract from that. Next chapter is looking to be a longer one.
Teleport Haxx OP. Never nerf.
An excellent chapter. The flood is patient but inevitable. This section captured that perfectly.
- Location
- Someplace Somewhere
So three of the assassins have been infected and the eversor is still rampaging.
Vaguely tempted for Tide to just somehow not be able to deal with the Eversor and so go with trying to contain him within Whiro while also ignoring his existence, so the Eversor just turns into this sort of feral raccoon Tide has living under his floorboards that occasionally emerges and kills all his factory workers or some shit.
- Location
- Someplace Somewhere
Well it would be quite funny and honestly of all the beings that tide can encounter an eversor is so combat oriented that he really doesn't expect to drown it in a tide of flesh.
Wow Tide now knows how to do OP warriors now and assasins
Arjac
Retreating Backwards
TBH this felt less like patience and more like desperation, just throwing everything on hand and seeing what stuck. Still, inevitable is definitely accurate
The real question is what did it cost Tide to do that teleportation tomfoolery? Because if he could do that at the start Tide would have, which implies there is a damn good reason they didn't. I suspect it took tremendous amounts of concentration, concentration that they had to pull from elsewhere.
- Location
- ?????????
It probably takes a fair bit of biomass. He only pulled it out when all of his targets were in one place after all. So he couldn't just spam each one into an open room...so to speak. But yeah three assassins and intel for why the fuck an entire team is here. This is good for Tide. Eversor is...well still fighting I imagine
Why do they need Cass what is so special
Arcane Howitzer
Serial Arcanist
- Location
- United States
I feel like the Callidus might be a newer recruit. She seemed to underestimate her opponents more than the others (assuming what the Eversor does qualifies as "estimating"), was caught off-guard multiple times by the enemy's ability to keep fighting regardless of damage, and is the only one to be actually wounded in her fight.
Well at least someone is having fun in this whole debacle.
Well at least someone is having fun in this whole debacle.
Blanks counter psykers simply by existing, and she's carrying a baby born of two of them.
yacov
Lurking and sometimes blurting
- Location
- Clogging a drain
With how super elite and high quality everyone involved in this operation is, Tide had to go for the weak link: the escape vehicle. Once all the (lucid) actors got into the Valkyrie, their fate was sealed. Especially since Tide's influence probably extends to the suborbital by now.
No matter how amazing the pilot is, the best Valkyrie money can't buy is still just a Valkyrie. It can only be pushed so far before it reaches its physical limits. Unfortunately none of these Assassins were psykers to push the Valkyrie further, so it could only fly so fast until Tide caught up with them.
Blanks are notoriously hard to make more of. If the Sisters of Silence have a homeworld, it is one the most closely guarded secrets in all the Imperium due to how valuable it is.
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You guys remember that part in that one 30K book where a Greater Daemon of Khorne causally took two Ultramarines on a train ride through the Warp, exposing them to it somewhat, plopped them down into Pert's domain, and just sent them on a fetch quest?
Same vibes I got from that this chapter, but no fetch quests, just a Soulsborn TPK sequence.
Whatever Tide had to spend to get those five was utterly worth it, some blanks and Imperium assassins will no doubt vastly improve the crap he can do with his puppets.
Same vibes I got from that this chapter, but no fetch quests, just a Soulsborn TPK sequence.
Whatever Tide had to spend to get those five was utterly worth it, some blanks and Imperium assassins will no doubt vastly improve the crap he can do with his puppets.
JmonsterNEO
Spouter of nonsense
- Location
- The quest forums
The only thing that would be a problem is the second reason Eversors are kept on ice between missions, their augments and stimulantstream will cause them to just drop dead eventually.
I mean, they'll last for a good while, but the Eversor Temple's whole thing is just massively over clocking the human body far past its normal limits.
Can't wait to see what Tide can do with Blank powers.
Considering that he now has his hands on the Blank Gene and the fact he is absolutely terrified of Chaos, I would say he would probably insert that gene in nearly everything he has made and ever will make to keep Chaos from getting their hands on and being able to do anything with it.
Strunkriidiisk
THE LEGEND
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
TBH the combat capability he gets from the three Assassins is probably equally valuable, since he can spread that experience across all of his bodies without needing to modify them at all, and he's basically ensured he can't lose this specific type of fight ever again.
- Location
- A never ending hell of Myoukous
To be honest it would be kinda fitting. The Eversor might not even really be a person anymore, so much as it is just a biological computer programmed to kill. The other assassin's might still have some semblance of a person underneath, but I don't really think the same can be said of the class whose entire extraction plan tends to be "explode for maximum damage".