Pheonix Fire
Fire was a very interesting medium to express psychic powers in. To many versed in the psychic arts, it was looked down on as a crude tool, lacking in versatility or finesse. One of those lacking in control, untrained, or too inept to master other disciplines. With cause, too—nearly any human psyker was capable of manifesting enough warpfire instinctively to serve as an attack, while the signature forms of attack for nearly every other discipline universally required some significant training to reach a level where they were of even marginal utility for any that did not have a specific affinity for the field.
Few bothered to question why this was the case, most either seeing it as unremarkable or assuming that warpfire was the natural expression of raw warpstuff channeled into the Materium. Xavier disagreed. Raw warpstuff created the effect found in Vortex weaponry, and was itself far less damaging than warpfire at the same power concentration, and while humans were far from the only psychically active race capable of using warpfire they were far more capable with it than most.
Humanity and fire were deeply linked in Xavier's eyes. Evolutionarily, historically, culturally, and even conceptually. It was a complex relationship too, with destruction, war, industry, creation, and hope all described as flames. They could bring pain or relief, could incite fear or invite comfort. Humans were rare among sapient, let alone sentient, beings in the galaxy that they even had favorable instinctive reactions to fire—for while almost all had made use of it, few viewed it as anything more favorable than a useful, if dangerous, tool.
Relationships like that matter in the Warp. The raw weight of emotion and belief found in the collective response to fire shapes some of the very laws of the Warp themselves, and humanity's greater tie to fire than most has led to them both influencing and being influenced by it.
So while the conceptual weight of fire and mankind's closer-than-usual tie to it certainly allowed fire to be used as a crude and brute-force tool, it was in no way limited to being such. Fire destroys, melts, purifies, ignites, consumes, heats up, spreads, and much, much more—simply tweaking the emphasis a bit on any of these factors can turn psychic flames into a precision tool, and Xavier had long since mastered such relatively simple tricks.
Many psykers, even among those who specialized in using warpfire, never moved beyond those tricks and their instinctive connection to fire. It was a mistake in Xavier's mind. Even the greatest instinctive connection to fire produced what was best described as a dirty flame. An incomplete combustion. At the lower levels this was actually a boon of sorts, the impurities acting like dirt in the wounds inflicted by the flames, but this tangential benefit were dwarfed by the potential gain in power offered by more complete combustion. Of course, unlike with mundane fuels, there was no such thing as even approaching 'perfect' combustion with the Warp, but he was proud to say he had walked far further down that path than most.
Right now Xavier was putting his hard-won expertise with fire to use leading (technically Conducting due in part to the influence of Tamia's Songweaving) a Pyromancy choir assigned to eliminate high-value targets, guided by Ridcully. Choirs were always an interesting experience in and of itself for Xavier. The connection was in some ways reminiscent of his bond with Mittens (currently off hunting for infiltrators while occasionally lending a mental hand with the targeted strikes), a fact that he believed helped him in using it, but was different in almost all of its peculiars. That said, both his personal experience with it and their current theoretical understanding of the phenomenon was that everyone experienced it differently.
Currently his was 'seeing' through Ridcully's Divination, looking for appropriate targets—the battle was too far away for mundane senses to be of particular use, and more technological ones lacked enough of a conceptual connection to target the powers through them. Except 'seeing' wasn't exactly the right word for the sense, and it wasn't exactly Ridcully's Vision that he was 'seeing', but more what Ridcully was divining interpreted through his own divinatory senses. Mostly. Psyker stuff was horribly complicated at the best of times, and normal language didn't even necessarily have the words or concepts to describe it.
Xavier himself couldn't really see 'through' all the wards, even connected to Ridcully's vision, or at least not easily. However, he in most cases he didn't need any more of Ridcully's help to target them appropriately—damn near anything that had significant enough warding against Pyromancy and/or Divination to register as difficult to see into to his vision was a high-value target. Not that said help wasn't useful anyway, with Ridcully also informing him in the not-words communication of the Choir-bond of the specifics of the target including relevant abilities, durability, and any weaknesses in the warding. Plus, the nature of Ridcully's vision made it far, far easier to effectively 'reach' over the distance to the target with his power, as Ridcully's power made the distant location far 'closer' in the Warp.
There was a bit of a lull of mentally 'marked' targets within effective range. Not because the enemy was wising up—the lack of fear and mindless obedience exemplified by the followers of the Abomination might aid them in maintaining coherence in the face of massive casualties, but its absence led to even greater issues with things like the sunk cost fallacy—but because they intentionally spaced them out temporally to ensure that a random swing in the air battle's favor at the wrong time wouldn't be able to eliminate a large portion of their most valuable assets. Rather than taking a breather, though, he quickly surveyed the grouping within his effective range, and spotted a large transit shuttle very heavily warded against Pyromancy.
Thinking that perhaps Ridcully had missed it (as he was the first to admit that merely being a Seer unparalleled by mortals in human history did NOT make him anything approaching infallible), he mentally nudged Ridcully with the transport in question and a questioning thought.
Ridcully's reply in the not-speech thought of the bond was informative. "Promethium tanker. Moderate tactical/strategic asset at best, escorting forces too far out to get caught in the explosion. Not worth the drain of overcoming the wards."
Initially Xavier accepted Ridcully's determination, as a Promethium tanker was well below the tier of assets they were targeting, but an idle thought made him pause, then grin and send a thought-response back to Ridcully. "Promethium, eh? It's a pity we don't have anything that would be able to greatly increase the destructive power of a massive fiery explosion while guiding it to some deserving targets..."
A few seconds passed while Ridcully engaged his short-term precognition to answer the implicit question. Satisfied, with a mental nod, he sent an affirmation of the tacit idea along with a packet of information he'd gathered to aid in forming a more concrete tactical plan than "blow a bunch of people up with fire".
It took a few more seconds seconds to sketch out an appropriate plan of action, pass it along to High Command through some telepath intermediaries not actually part of the choir to give them some warning of the (minor) danger and (significant) opportunities it would generate in the short term, but hardly any time had passed before he had the green light for what would hopefully be a very significant strike, although just short of trivial for the scale of combat this campaign promised to bring. A quick message through his familiar bond also confirmed that Mittens would be free to lend a hand/paw with shaping the working (a deep familiar bond with a fully sapient, psychically active, and highly skilled individual like Mittens allowed a great deal of leeway in what should be possible in guiding a choir's power). Finally, though, it was time to act.
Setting the tanker on fire was relatively simple, but far from easy. True, it was really, really easy to set Promethium on fire, but on the flip side the tanker was designed with the intention of making that as hard to do as possible using both technological and ward-based means. Still, between the raw power of him and the choir behind him, his own skills, and Ridcully's skill and insight, it was the work of moments to work over, around, and through the countermeasures in place, both mundane and psychic.
The resulting explosion was spectacular in and of itself, but Xavier was far too busy to really appreciate it between the difficulty of establishing his influence over it as well as feeding it power. Simultaneously channeling their combined power through the recently-gained Siren Rune of Fire and, with Mitten's help, the Banishment runes (as the most valuable targets frequently resided in daemon-engines) the form morphed from a mundane and undirected explosion of fire into a carefully-directed extension of his will, taking the shape of the legendary Phoenix.
This choice of form was far from arbitrary. The Warp worked on legends, symbols, and emotions, after all, and the legend of the Phoenix itself had spread, died out, and reappeared again throughout human history much like the bird in question itself. The weight of the symbol itself added no small amount of potency to the working, as did the concepts it carried—hope and rebirth for the Trust, purity to combat the corruption of the Abomination, and fire for, well, all the fire involved (there was a LOT of fire). The fact that it was a form that was at home in the air merely added to the synergy there, and it was nothing but a total coincidence that it was a form that the Abomination followers would find sacrilegious.
Xavier was beginning to sweat from exertion as he guided the Phoenix of raw flame up, feeding power into it and compacting it as it flew. Faster and faster it sped in its assent, dwarfing the speed of the fighters as it closed in on its target, the next wave of the invasion force. Formation after formation disappeared, obliterated by the searing heat, but they were not its true target. Practically solid by the time that it did and shrunk down in size until it was hardly larger than one of the bombers themselves, all without losing one iota of its power, it barreled towards the two heavily-warded daemon-engine assault shuttles that were its goal.
The shuttles were designed to be tough enough to shrug off the withering fire specifically directed towards targets of its importance while delivering its payload, and that was before its durability was further advanced through the binding of a daemon to it and its extensive sorcery-based warding scheme. The contents of it were similarly tough, traitor Astares whose physical toughness was then enhanced through Chaos-based mutation and clad in wargear made more durable through foul ritual. To the fires of the Phoenix, though, it offered no more resistance than if it had been made of balsa wood. Utterly gutted, the two shuttles fell lifelessly, even their foul animating spirits banished without a trace.
The Phoenix was not done with this, though. Curving around it continued to shrink down without dropping in power, growing ever-brighter as it carved its way through the reeling Abomination forces. Finally, out of nearby foes, it played its final trick, shrinking down and seeming to vanish before its bindings were undone. Through the explosion occurred far faster than the human eye could see, many swore they saw the Pheonix itself in a triumphant pose as the flames dispersed leaving nothing behind but a lingering feeling of hope and purity, as well as a wave of Banishment-attuned psychic energy that temporarily disrupted every daemon-engine it washed over.
Xavier was quite happy to take a bit of a break after that little display. There was very little left in the coming wave that warranted his choir's attention, and that last display was exhausting. Still, though it was certainly a trick worth remembering, even if he wouldn't be able to use it often. Frankly, even if he could, it felt a bit wrong to use it trivially, and as a psyker you learned to listen to those feelings. Well, at least unless it was the daemon-y kind.
(just messing around now I get it)
