Day 13, Continued
Vra'kzil was a daemon of change. While not as powerful as a Lord of Change or another of the Architect of Fate's mightiest servants, it was still a creature of fluidity, of transformation. Being locked in a single form was anathema to it.
This was far worse. It was not even in a form, but stripped of its illusions to its barest parts, like a dissected animal or a disassembled boltgun. Yet, all the same, it was still aware and unable to do anything.
Every instinct within the daemon struggled, trying to escape that which should not have been possible: A creature of infinite shapes being trapped in one. Yet, it could not. Its spells could not be spoken, for it had no tongue. It could weave no signs of power, for it had no claws.
It had been aware of what the entity that held it, Tide it had named itself, had done with the servant of the Anathema. It recognized the manipulation for what it was, masterfully done, but it could not appreciate the craft of one that had it trapped so.
It was suspended in an ocean of darkness, trapped under crushing pressure, and there was something in the water with it and all around it. How did one fight an ocean? Vra'kzil knew of many ways, many spells that could accomplish such a thing, but none could fight this… thing.
For that was what it was. A thing, a thing that Vra'kzil had no understanding of.
It had mocked its 'master' Ahsael for being interested in something so seemingly minor. It was foolish, Vra'kzil had thought, for nothing had been shown in the Architect's Weave. Nothing of importance was in Malum, regardless of whatever the vanguard of the Devourer believed, otherwise it would have been shown.
Vra'kzil had found the thread and its first thought was that the Architect of Fate had betrayed its servant. Unsurprising, for the Changer of Ways was as fickle as it was powerful and rare were those servants that had not yet been betrayed or sacrificed as pieces in the Lord of Sorcery's Great Game.
It had followed the thread, curious, and found the Chasm. It had recognized the dark place for what it was in the same way it had recognized the manipulation of the entity that dwelled within it. It was instinctual to see a wound and know it was wrong.
The Empyrean, the Realm of Chaos, could not be wounded. That could not be possible. Yet, here was an invisible, unnoticeable gash, a tear ripped open by something not of this or any other universe connected to the Great Ocean. An impossible thing, the same as the entity that dwelled within.
Vra'kzil knew much. It had knowledge that could make the mightiest sorcerers go mad, secrets that would alight the minds of any mortal that learned them. Yet it did not know what this thing was, what this monster was. It did not even know if the Great Architect knew of this… entity, for surely even Tzeentch would recognize the dire threat it posed to all reality.
And that thought that there existed something outside the knowledge and plan of the Weaver of Destinies, was more terrifying than even being locked in a single form.
"Are you finished?"
The entity 'spoke' and its words appeared in the daemon's very mind, though this was no form of telepathy that it understood. It was not based in the Warp and Vra'kzil trembled at the idea that it might have other powers that it could have no hopes of understanding. At the same time, its curiosity grew, for the entity had not spoken since the mortal's departure. Strangely, it also no longer spoke in that strange, poetic form as it had before.
"I spoke to her in the way I did to inspire awe. I speak to you now like this for there is nothing I desire from you."
No! It could offer knowledge! Secrets! Power! Psychic might unparalleled in all the galaxy!
It was the first time Vra'kzil had offered a deal with no thought spared to even conceive of a way it might twist the terms to its advantage. It was the first offer it had ever made that had no strings attached, whatsoever and it knew the entity knew this. Survival, in exchange for whatever was desired.
"Your annihilation is all I require from you."
Vra'kzil felt a shift in the pressure. Then it felt nothing ever again.
The daemon's essence was like putty, Tide decided.
It had been surprisingly easy to kill Vra'kzil. He'd essentially pulled its very being apart, strand by strand. It wasn't something he could do in the material realm, at least he didn't think he could. Regardless, after tearing apart the daemon, annihilating any trace of the creature known as Vra'kzil, all that was left was raw… stuff. Almost like he'd reduced it to atoms or, as he'd noted, putty.
And, like putty, he could shape it. He played with it for a while, making various 'shapes', tearing those apart, and then doing it all again. None of his shapes were alive, at least as far as a daemon was alive, nor were they capable of thought. They also did not have any of the knowledge of Vra'kzil, but that was expected.
Daemon minds were difficult to comprehend. They were fragments, shards of an infinitely greater whole. Their surface thoughts were easy enough to sparse out, but the deeper one went the more fragmented the knowledge became. It was literal chaos.
It was rather disappointing, but maybe he could do something with the raw warp stuff at some later point? There were a lot of new opportunities open to him now, after all, and it would take time to explore them all.
The first and most pressing development was this… 'place'.
It was odd, being able to look inside one's own mind in a literal sense. Tide was both a swimmer in a vast ocean and the ocean itself. The benefits of being a transsentient being, he supposed. Was this what the Domain was? He wasn't certain, but he liked the name and it would be easier to call it that than just 'realm'.
His Domain was innately connected to Neural Physics. He'd recognized that almost immediately. However, he had only become aware of it when others had intruded upon it, the daemon and the psyker. It was like having a part of him touched that he'd never been aware of before and he had been… less than pleased.
He'd almost acted on instinct at the foreign feeling of having something touch his mind, especially given which universe he was present in, which would have been very bad for all parties involved. He'd have almost certainly annihilated not only the daemon, but the psyker Purilla as well. And, given what he'd learned from her, that would almost certainly have brought the wrath of the Inquisitor down upon his head.
Which brought him to one of the other developments. Purilla. Psyker, Inquisitorial acolyte, abused and broken. And now, the first person Tide had spoken to since arriving in this universe.
That is if you don't count that spider. Or the foreman from the factory. Or Lysilla and her group.
She was the first person he'd held a conversation with, short though it was. While he had slowed time to speak with Purilla for longer, the amount he had slowed it was not that great. That was another thing he could do here that he had no chance of doing in the material realm. The physics that governed this realm were far more malleable than those of the materium.
Which may explain how Purilla was able to 'talk' here. Her words had been choppy and short, but she had managed to push out some intent into this realm and have it respond to her. She was nowhere near the level of even a Proto-Gravemind and he doubted she would ever be able to utilize Neural Physics to the slightest degree outside of his Domain. Still, it was impressive that she'd managed even that slightest display. Was it because she was a Psyker and thus more used to adapting to use strange powers? He wasn't sure.
Purilla was… an experiment, he supposed. He thought he'd handled her intrusion rather well, all things considered. She had been unable to hide anything from him and she'd been fully on his side when she'd left. There was always the chance her allegiance would return to the Imperium, but he didn't have many other options besides trying to convince her. He couldn't kill her without drawing more attention to himself, after all.
So, he used what the Forerunners would have called the Logic Plague on her.
Honestly, it sounded worse than it actually was. At least, most of the time. It was a very broad term which encompassed any methods the Flood used to convince someone of something without actually physically infecting them. Basically, it was an infection of the mind, rather than the body, hence the name. It had been used to subvert mostly Forerunner artificial intelligneces, but it could be used on organic beings as well. There was no 'normal' way of infecting someone and, while there was no cure, there was also no guarantee that the affected person would remain affected. People, after all, grew and changed their mindsets, which could make certain arguments or persuasions less effective.
He'd initially been less interested in subverting Purilla and more in just figuring out who she was and what the hell she was doing in a part of his existence even he hadn't been aware of previously. It had been child's play for him to slip past her defenses and batter down those walls that weren't so easily gone around. That was how he had learned of the Inquisitor's plans and realized that simply killing Purilla was not really an option. He could have tried to wipe her memories of their encounter through brute force, but that method could result in permanent damage that would be… disadvantageous were the Inquisitor to notice.
No, subversion had been the only method. And it wasn't exactly a bad path to take, given the value of having an agent within the Inquisitor's retinue. Granted, it was an agent he couldn't communicate with, knew enough about his existence to draw the attention of a sector's worth of exterminatuses down on this planet, and possibly might be found out or turned against him, but he'd never said this path was perfect.
Hopefully, Purilla would be able to keep her newfound loyalties hidden for a while. After seeing the sorry series of events that was her life, he wasn't exactly interested in adding to those unfortunate circumstances. He'd spoken nothing but truth to her, likely a novelty for someone in the Imperium let alone an acolyte of an Inquisitor, so hopefully she would stay the course he had set her down. If she did as he asked and infected herself with Flood spores, he would be able to communicate with her more easily.
Hopefully, she would do nothing in the meantime that would rock the boat of the Inquisitor and her Genetor's currently held beliefs towards him. That they thought he was the Panacaea was more than a little surprising, but he could see the logic in their conclusions given the fragmented information they'd been working off. All he needed to do was keep feeding into that belief and keep attention on himself to a minimum.
Which brought him to the final and least pleasant development: The Chaos Cult.
The Thousand Sons were likely his favorite Chaos Space Marine faction in a prior life. Now that he was in 40k, he was less intrigued and more terrified of them. So, learning that there was a Cult of Tzeentch on the same planet as him, led by a Thousand Sons Sorcerer no less, was… well, frustrating.
He'd thought he had just started to get a handle on things, but then Genestealers, an Inquisitor, and now a chaos cult. All on the same planet. Yippee.
If he was being honest… He was less terrified of the sorcerer now than he would have been days before. After what he'd done to the sorcerer's 'pet', he felt more confident in his chances against Chaos. Not confident enough that he'd want stronger daemons or sorcerers to come to his Domain and match their wills against his own, but enough that he felt he could probably take them down.
And, hey, if he played his cards right with Purilla, he might not even need to act against them. She could have a 'vision' or something of the chaos cultists and have the Inquisitor send the Imperial Guard to crush them.
Well, maybe not. The Genestealers were apparently attacking another city, Enyo, in force. Eight of the twenty regiments had been deployed to assist the loyalists of that city and put down the rebellion. The bulk of the guardsmen regiments were being kept in reserve, for several reasons according to what Purilla knew. The first and most immediate was the danger of an Imperial Noble uprising. The nobility were apparently almost as displeased by the Inquisitor's presence on their planet as Tide was. It hadn't gotten to the point of open conflict, but the Inquisitor seemed almost certain it would only take a spark to be set off. A spark like an uprising that, seemingly, was made up of ordinary, if zealous, cultists.
Tide had been surprised to learn about how close the Inquisitor thought things were to popping off. The nobles of Malum were unhappy, but their minds were empty of thoughts of rebellion outside of stray, isolated individuals. It was possible those ideas would develop into something more, but the recent attack had resulted in them being more inclined towards supporting the Inquisitor.
The second danger was one Purilla knew significantly less about. The Inquisitor had come to Monstrum to raise twenty regiments of Guardsmen for a reason. Another planet, another hive world in fact, had entered into full-scale rebellion against the Imperium. This planet, called Evrak, had actually become rebellious around fifty years ago, but numerous circumstances Purilla was only tangentially aware of had led to it escaping a visit from the Imperial Guard. That was not what was strange, however. If that was all, twenty regiments of Guardsmen was not unreasonable. Nor was even the presence of a single Inquisitor.
What was unreasonable was the fact that these twenty regiments were only a part of the force being prepared to strike Evrak. A small part of a whole that included dozens of other guard regiments, a fleet of nearly twenty warships, and, most concerning to Tide, three companies from the Space Marine Chapter Death Spectres that Ellen had been in close communication with prior to the Warp Storm's arrival.
There was no way Evrak was just a rebellious hive world. These other forces were not at Monstrum but had been elsewhere to gather their strength before the Warp Storm. A small mercy for Tide, though it made him wonder just what foe they were truly gathering to fight against. Ellen had been even more tight-lipped than usual with Purilla.
For whatever reason, Catherine Ellen was playing it cautiously. She did not want to expend too many of her guardsmen before the crusade ahead, not to mention the possible rebellion that was slowly forming. A rebellion that the chaos cult of this 'Ahsael' almost certainly had a hand in.
The information he had gained from the daemon had revealed little regarding their plans beyond Ahsael's desire to learn more about whatever it was in Malum that the Genestealers were interested in. The disappearance of his pet daemon would almost certainly cause some kind of reaction, but Tide had not gained the same perspective of Ahsael from Vra'kzil as he had of Ellen from Purilla.
At the very least, Vra'kzil did not seem to think of Ahsael as very powerful. Or maybe it just thought of him as an easily manipulated tool.
Fucking daemons. Even when they died, they were frustrating.
On a somewhat less annoying note, he'd figured out where the mind leakage was coming from. Within his Domain was a rather large tear, through which was… Well, basically hell.
The Warp. Chaos. The Realm of Souls. Etc.
From his Domain, it looked like a storm made from a kaleidoscope of changing colors. In other words, what he imagined an acid trip looked like. Fortunately, it did not seem to be able to enter his Domain, though individuals or entities within the Warp could under certain circumstances. He might have been able to leave it, but to be honest… why would he?
It took him a little while to figure out just why there was a hole in what was supposed to be his mind that connected to the Empyrean. It was the souls of those he was connected to or rather, the connections themselves that had broken through the opening.
Purilla had viewed them as invisible spider strings connected to candles that represented the souls of others. He'd been relieved when he learned that she had initially been unable to view the rather large chasm in the Warp that had been made. Vra'kzil had equally been unaware of anything until touching the string. Hopefully, that meant larger and more powerful Warp entities, like certain would-be gods, were also unaware of him.
The reason his knowledge was being spread to his Altered was due to those strings that connected him to them. He had already learned to control the flow of that knowledge with minor effort, but it was still interesting to discover the reasons behind why it was happening. Still, that was an answer to just one question among hundreds more that were forming all the time.
It would take time to learn more about what utilities this place could have for him. If he could use it as something really like the actual Domain from Halo, connect the minds of his Altered to all his collected knowledge, albeit carefully curated by him… Well, there were definite ways such a thing could be useful to him. He'd need to experiment with it.
Ahsael paced back and forth across his chambers, the only sound within the expansive rooms the whisper of silk upon metal and the heavy clanking of his power armor's gait.
The space marine rounded upon the motionless body of the mortal. The runes in the head of the man had stopped glowing some time ago, demarking the end of the ritual, but Vra'kzil had yet to return. The daemon should have been back immediately, yet it had been nearly an hour now.
Had something happened to it? It was a ludicrous thought, one banished from Ahsael's mind almost as soon as it arose. Even the weakest of daemonic entities were impossible to truly destroy. Banish, perhaps, but the daemon's link to Ahsael's soul should have made returning to the Materium a small effort.
Raising a gauntleted hand, Ahsael gathered the power of the Great Ocean to him and a soft howl filled the chambers, a gust of wind that grew in strength as the air began to spark with lightning and blue flame. In a matter of moments, a small tear in the fabric of reality emerged. Monstrous shapes began to form, local daemons eager to feast upon flesh and soul manifesting bodies. However, the raven form of Vra'kzil, nor any trace of his familiar's essence was among them.
Ahsael lowered his hand and the rift snapped shut, the only sign of its presence the disappointed echoes of the daemons howling that quickly dissipated.
For whatever reason, Vra'kzil was either not willing or not able to return. Had Ahsael's insistence that the daemon enter this mortal's mind insulted it enough that it had left? Surely not, it had accepted four souls as payment for this single service. It would not have simply reneged on the agreement.
Probably. One could never be sure about anything with daemons of the Architect of Fate.
Had it something to do with whatever it was that was so important in Malum that it had made the Genestealers revolt so early? He'd hoped the PDF trooper's memories of that battle might provide some kind of answer, yet now he was left with more questions.
Stepping over to the still unconscious mortal, Ahsael raised his hand again and focused. He examined the mind and soul of the mortal from a distance. If there was some kind of defense in place that had forced Vra'kzil back into the domain of the Weaver of Fate, Ahsael's sharp senses could not see it. He shook his head as he stepped back from the mortal. Why would there be any kind of defense capable of banishing a daemon on some random PDF trooper? To even think that was inane of him and he was glad Vra'kzil was not around to see and mock him for it.
Whatever kind of mystery this was, Ahsael hated not knowing the truth behind it. Vra'kzil's method had clearly not worked out, so perhaps a more material approach would be more useful.
With a thought, he summoned one of the cultists he had promised to Vra'kzil. Since the daemon was not around, the man was still of some use.
"Send a message to Uirus in Janus and the agents in Eris and Ate. Tell them it is time the Imperium learned this world does not belong to their Corpse-Emperor."
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