Towards the Golden Throne (Warhammer 40k Xianxia)

[Fayhem]

Spoiler: Glossary of terms and idioms

Vlka Fenryka = Wolves of Fenris. Canonically, the Space Wolves' preferred name for themselves.
Icelicker = Somebody so stupid they try to just lick the ice when they're thirsty instead of melting it first.
Galdr/Galdrar = Spell/spells in Norse magic. I'm using the terms as an analogue for Art/Arts.
seidr = Norse word for magic. I'm using it as an analogue for qi, or akasha in Miraxa's terminology.
Like a monoknife through blubber = Like a hot knife through butter. This one was probably pretty self-explanatory.
Off the ice = Out of the woods.

Collaborative Purging Exercise

Ashild Brandottir cleaved the last sporespawn in half with her crackling runeaxe, and cursed as its wet guts splashed on her artifact armor. The wretched things looked like some Allfather-forsaken melding of mold, decayed flesh, and an absolutely gratuitous number of teeth and claws, and they smelled like nothing she'd wish on her worst enemy. A Blood Claw wasn't afraid of getting messy in battle - couldn't be, in fact - but these filthy dirty-green and shit-brown creatures made it a much less appealing prospect than usual.

"By the Allfather! These things die easily enough, but they stink like the privy the morning after a great feast. One where the fish turned out to have gone bad," Runa commented, scrunching her nose in distaste. Her best friend and packmate had a delicate sensibility, by the admittedly low standards of the Vlka Fenryka at least. The tragic result of leading a soft life as a chief's daughter before joining the Sect, no doubt.

Ashild grinned at her, ignoring how she'd been cursing for a similar reason a mere moment ago herself in favor of the far more important priority of teasing her friend. "Oh? Would the princess like a scented handkerchief to mask the odor, then?"

Runa scoffed at her. "Of course, an icelicking savage like you would try to offer courting gifts in the middle of an unholy cesspit."

"Wh- that's not what I - shut up! I wasn't!" Ashild spluttered. She had gotten busted checking Runa out one time when they were both aspirants, and she'd still not gotten to live it down.

Runa smirked back, smug at having won the exchange this time, before replying, "Enough. We need to focus."

Reluctantly, Ashild had to admit she was right. The situation remained dire. Oh, the sporespawn fell before them readily enough, considered as individuals. Most were barely more than mortal, and even the strongest they'd fought so far had only been in the First Realm that elevated an adept above mortality. Certainly no match for Second Realms like the two of them, even without accounting for them being adepts of the most matchless sect of the matchless Astartes.

The problem was that the enemy seemed numberless. It was supposed to have been a simple assignment, just a joint purging expedition with the Forge of the Omnissiah Igvita against a minor disease cult festering in the depths of an unexceptional hive city. A good place to send newly-ascended Blood Claws from the Stormwolves Great Company to cut their fangs on real foes and practice coordinating with allies of another tradition. The lessons and seedling Galdrar embedded in the geneseed gifted to them from the Senior Disciples were powerful spurs to growth, but it took some settling in for the recently graduated scouts to get used to their new strength and enhanced instincts, much less to develop their new Galdrar. Combat was, as ever, the best teacher.

It went well enough at first as they fought towards the supposed "headquarters of the disease cult" as both the Stormwolves and the Sunforged were well-equipped for burning their way through the occasional clot of disease-sodden cultists that tried to bar their way. The problem was that once they got there, the "headquarters" was revealed to be nothing but the bait in a trap. And the disease cult?

Well, it turned out it more properly should be called a fungal infestation - likely not actually a cult at all, but rather some strange sort of Xenos Horribilis. The local population - thousands-strong just in their immediate vicinity - had turned inside out, and sporespawn had stepped out of the wet ruin of their insides where they'd been growing all along. Then more of the sporelings had poured out of the residents' homes and businesses as hidden fungal farms had disgorged their reeking, sharp-toothed progeny en masse.

Their rear guard had been buried in a tidal wave of enemies in a matter of moments, though Ashild would bet that at least some of them still lived. Astartes adepts in their artifact armor didn't die easily even when literally submerged in foes, though she couldn't speak for the coggies.

Still, the fact remained that even the pack instincts of the Vlka Fenryka and the vaunted coordination and precision of the Mechanicus had proven no match for the chaos, and the remainders of the purgation force had been largely split up. Ashild herself had been driven from the side of her packmates - Runa excepted - by the tide of foes, leaving her to hunt these dark, dank tunnels for signs of her comrades while she cut down enemies as she found them.

Speaking of. Ashild narrowed her eyes and bared her fangs as another cluster of enemies revealed themselves to her enhanced senses. They were about twenty strong of the near-mortal variants - mere ten-to-one odds, nothing to concern even Second Realm adepts of a lesser tradition, much less two Astartes. The enemies didn't appear to have noticed them yet.

She prepared to charge, only to pause when Runa put one hand on her pauldron and subvocalized, "Hold. These ones are doing something different. We should observe before exterminating them." The faint sound was easily perceptible to Ashild's enhanced senses.

Reluctantly, Ashild had to admit there was some good tactical sense there. Getting taken by surprise by the enemies' capabilities had already cost the purgation force severely. So be it; wolves could be patient hunters, too. She and Runa settled down on their haunches to wait to see where this went.

There were already about five charred bodies of the sporelings on the ground here, and Ashild was heartened to see the evidence that they weren't the only ones still fighting. Not that she'd doubted, of course. A matching number of the living sporelings draped themselves over the corpses and their bodies shuddered as their teeth went to work on their fallen fellows. In a matter of moments they'd swallowed the entirety of the corpseflesh and absorbed it into their own mass. "Reclaiming resources…?" Ashild subvocalized.

This thesis was swiftly challenged however, as the sporelings that had just fed rose and each cut down another of their fellows. Oddly, the victims didn't resist at all, nor did the others react to this. "Allfather!" Ashild and Runa both subvocalized simultaneously, then exchanged a glance of mutual incomprehension. This scene repeated itself several times, the Blood Claws allowing it to happen without interference to try to divine the purpose underlying these peculiar actions.

That purpose revealed itself before much longer, after each of the five feeders had claimed a total of three victims apiece, leaving them the only survivors. Ashild's eyes widened as they arose from their last meal as First Realms, near-mortals no longer. As always with a Realm ascension, the difference in the threat level was near-exponential. They were a negligible threat no more, though at least they were still only outnumbered two and a half to one. The implications, though… "Well, shit fuck."

"Yes. 'Fuck shit' would also have been acceptable," Runa subvocalized back. She continued, "It makes a kind of sense, though. Fungus feeds on decay. Whatever intelligence controls this infestation must have a curiously poor understanding of the Imperium, though - if they had this capability for rapid advancement via cannibalism, they should have used it before springing their ambush instead of relying so much on numbers. They must have somehow thought a purgation force would consist much more of mortals."

Ashild rolled her eyes - it was a valid insight, but she couldn't just go and admit it. "Yes, yes, thank you for the wonderful theoretical analysis, princess. But I think the upshot is that it's time to get our axes dirty again, before they pull off anything worse." She grinned. "Try to keep up, yeah?"

And with that she charged, leaving Runa to scramble to follow her. Their enemies finally noticed the hunters as their pounding steps brought them ever-closer, and as the sporespawn spread out in some strange version of a combat formation, Ashild breathed deep and unleashed the Howl of the Bloodmoon Galdr, one of the signature techniques of the Vlka Fenryka, joined a heartbeat later by Runa in eerie chorus.

The deafening sound smashed into their enemies with an almost physical force, making them stagger and fall out of their nascent formation - the infusion of seidr in their howl made it as much an assault on the spirit as on whatever their enemies had instead of ears. The sound might attract more enemies, but it could serve as a rallying cry for allies just as well, and it wasn't as though the Vlka feared battle.

Just before impacting the first enemy, Ashild instead stutter stepped and spun to the side of the sporespawn while feinting at one of its limbs. Runa seamlessly swept in in her wake, their movements synchronized with eerie precision by their Red-Fanged Pack Instinct Galdr, and cleaved the wretched thing cleanly in half, each severed segment igniting in the crackling lightning carried on the blade of her runeaxe.

Ashild grinned wide with the joy of combat, her fangs gleaming in the low light. When outsiders and foes looked at the Vlka Fenryka, they saw uncouth savages in bulky artifact armor, and imagined that they must fight like some kind of mindless berserkers just bulling their way through every obstacle. Somehow, despite their very name, it never occurred to them that the Vlka might dance around and through their enemies like a pack of wolves instead. If one of the Vlka berserked, it was for a damn good reason and usually as a last resort.

Despite the strange collective consciousness the fungoids appeared to possess, they were no match for the coordination of the two adepts - if they'd ever had a chance of that, it was shattered by the Howl. Even with only two members currently in their pack, they went through the foes like a monoknife through blubber. Sure, the sporespawn could have been a real threat after their Realm ascension, if they had been able to outmaneuver the pack-sisters and effectively use their superior numbers to pin them down and overwhelm them.

If.

Ashild finished off the last enemy soon enough, a privilege Runa did not contest by unspoken custom since Ashild had set her up to take the first kill. "Well, that was bracing," Ashild said with a grin. Rather than responding as Ashild expected, Runa's eyes instead widened and she exclaimed, "Behind you!"



Ashild spun around just in time to parry a blow she barely saw, only managing through raw instinct honed by countless hours of practice. She barely caught a glimpse of the creature before it bounded back into the shadows, but the eidetic memory of an Astartes meant a glimpse was all she needed to analyze the details of the new horror. This one was more humanoid in its bodyform than any of the others they'd encountered, though the pincers, spines, and four-foot prehensile tongue covered in teeth meant that was still a very relative assessment. It was actually the latter that she'd parried as it had speared at her.

Worst of all, though, was that it was well into the Second Realm - significantly further than either herself or Runa, by her guesstimate. "Damn! Don't you think they should at least buy a girl a drink before trying to slip her some tongue?" Ashild quipped. Runa's answering chuckle was weak, though, and Ashild understood her unease.

The enemy's approach had gone unremarked for far too long - if not for Runa's warning, Ashild might well not have noticed the ambush until it was too late. Worse, even after they were wise to it, it had been able to slip back into the shadows far too easily - the keen senses of the Vlka Fenryka were not supposed to be so easily defeated. The enemy must have some Galdr of its own to obscure its presence, to complement its apparent role as an assassin.

Without needing to speak, Ashild and Runa shifted to stand back to back. They knew better than to think they would be shut of this enemy so easily. They began to chant a Saga infused with seidr together, the skaldic technique sharpening their focus and bolstering their reflexes and endurance. They wouldn't be able to keep it up forever, but it might be enough to make the difference.

Sure enough, it was no time at all until the next strike from the shadows. They quickly fell into a frustrating pattern - the enemy would lunge out of the shadows, trying to strike from out of the corners of their vision as its approach went undetected until the last moment, them barely parrying in time, and the enemy then melting back into the darkness again before they could effectively retaliate.

Ashild knew perfectly well that it was trying to bait them out of position so it could ambush one of them more effectively, but that didn't make it any less grating to be forced to just hold position and endure. Worse, the standoff wasn't going to be tenable in the long run - if more enemies appeared, or if they slipped up even once, they could pay a dire price for it. If the sporespawn didn't make a misstep soon, they'd be driven to take some more drastic action to try to resolve the situation, even if it cost them.

Just as she was gritting her teeth and resolving herself to deliberately take a hit to lock it down long enough for Runa to actually land a hit - she didn't love the idea of accepting a hit (especially one almost certainly laced with some nasty fungal toxin Galdr), but if she didn't do it then she knew Runa would, and she couldn't just let that happen when she could take the pain instead of her pack-sister - a brilliant flame lit the darkness.

She and Runa adjusted their stances to be prepared in case it was hostile while still keeping their backs to each other, but hope bloomed in her hearts - she hadn't seen any of the sporespawn using any flame Galdrar as it seemed to be quite inimical to them.

The flame raced towards them at a speed startling even for adepts, revealing itself to be a human woman propelling herself forward with a jet of incandescent plasma like an anthropomorphic boarding torpedo. She barreled past them without a word, jetting unwaveringly towards a particular point in the darkness that was soon revealed to be the current lurking spot of the assassin sporespawn. "How did she…?" Runa murmured.

They immediately engaged each other with a flurry of blows. The creature was lashing out with pincers and teeth and (ugh) tongue as it desperately tried to create enough space to disengage, and the woman in return was unerringly parrying or redirecting each blow with her fists or some metal tentacles seemingly growing out of her spine (Ashild thought the coggies liked to call them 'mechadendrites' or somesuch), or possibly just out of her own artifact armor.

Runa and Ashild moved to support her now that the enemy's position was revealed, but the fight proved frustratingly difficult for them to catch up to. The sporespawn was just as eager to avoid them as to escape the woman, and their own movement Galdr was not quite fast enough to actually gain ground on them.

In seeming desperation, the sporespawn unleashed a Galdr that released a cloud of roiling spores that obscured both it and the woman fighting it from view. The combatants had gotten dangerously far from them, but Ashild and Runa accelerated further, driving themselves harder to try to catch up. It was never a good idea to plunge facefirst into an unknown technique, of course, but to abandon an ally who may be in need would go against the very core of what the Vlka Fenryka were.

The spore cloud cleared to reveal the woman coughing and giving ground for the first time, as the creature instantly changed tacks to go on the offensive and try to take her down before her erstwhile allies could arrive. It didn't look good for the woman, as her movements faltered and the sporespawn's frenzy only intensified.

The woman gained a little distance from the creature with a frantic jet of plasma propelling her into a wall, only to double over coughing. Allfather damn it, we're still too far away!

Just as the creature closed in for the kill, the woman suddenly snapped back upright, coughing fit seemingly overcome in an instant. Ha! It was a feint!

Taking advantage of the sporespawn's overcommitment to an attack against an enemy it thought was all but helpless, the woman temporarily pinned its limbs and (ugh) tongue out of guard position with her mechadendrites and plunged a fist wreathed in burning plasma into the creature's core. She then raked her hand upwards, splitting the creature in half vertically from the waist up.

As the sporespawn's corpse slumped to the ground in front of her, she raked a hand through her hair to reorder it and turned to face Ashild and Runa as they finally caught up to the now stationary woman. Ashild noted that the woman's eyes - well, the visible one anyway, the other was behind some kind of techno-monocle - was still reddened by the exposure to the spore cloud. Shaking it off wasn't as effortless as she had made it look, then.



"Greetings, warriors, and my thanks for pinning that foe down long enough for me to catch up - I had been tracking its heat since it failed to ambush me twenty minutes ago. Know that you have the honor of having your lives saved by this Young Mistress of the Omnissiah Igvita Sect, Miraxa SH-43893," she intoned formally, chin lifted proudly.

Uh, saved our lives? Ashild felt Runa stiffen beside her, and was in full agreement. Timely intervention notwithstanding, they hadn't actually been out of options even for that sticky situation. Speaking to them as if they were hapless mortals was simply too much. Sexy metal tentacles or not, she couldn't just let this Miraxa woman get away with that.

That said, responding with open hostility would just make future cooperation strained at best, and they still weren't off the ice yet. Ashild grinned, instead. The reputation of the Vlka Fenryka could be a handy thing, sometimes.

"Ah, yes, a great honor for us indeed!" Ashild exclaimed, voice full of false enthusiasm. She elbowed her pack-sister as Runa turned to stare at her, silently willing her to play along. "In fact, I think your great deed is worthy of being honored with a deed name, which is a very great honor among our people!"

Runa grinned next to her, instantly onboard as Ashild had thought she'd be. "Oh yes, nothing less could possibly suffice for our most honorable savior," she practically cooed, voice sickly-sweet like syrup on the verge of going bad.

"Indeed, indeed," Ashild nodded solemnly. "From henceforth, let our fungus-vanquishing savior be known as… Shroomslayer!"

Miraxa's one visible eye widened noticeably. "Oh no. I mean… really, that's not necessary. Please, think nothing of it. Really. Please."

Runa laughed heartily, blithely ignoring Miraxa's almost pleading tone and clapping her on the shoulder. "Nonsense, we insist! You're too modest, Shroomslayer!"

Ashild nodded sagely. "That's right, too modest by far. If anything, I think you're worthy of being immortalized in verse! The Saga of Shroomslayer, what do you think?"

"No, no, please don't. I mean, you really don't have to," Miraxa said hastily.

Ashild grinned back, baring the full length of her fangs in a gesture only another one of the Vlka would recognize as smug. "Not to worry, it'll be our pleasure! Really, it's no trouble at all. Runa, why don't you get us started with the first verse?"

As Runa began composing aloud, "oblivious" to Miraxa's only partially successful efforts to hide her cringing, Ashild couldn't help but feel things were looking up. They'd finally managed to link back up with an ally, and a quite capable one at that. They'd cut a swathe through the sporespawn and defeated the best they'd shown. Best of all, they had a cute new coggie friend to tease! This purging exercise might not turn out to be a complete shitshow, after all.

Spoiler: A/N

It's always annoyed me that canonically girls can't be Space Marines because apparently geneseed is incompatible with cooties. This AU/crossover seemed like a fine chance to rectify that. Beyond that, I also had some thoughts about how to translate the concept of geneseed to this setting (which, of course, the QM may or may not choose to accept). What I came up with is that the "geneseed" is more than merely biological here - it also contains nascent versions of the signature Arts of the Sect, as harvested from more senior members (or the fallen, as the case may be).

This lets adepts very rapidly cultivate versions of those Arts that are powerful for their level, and also carries instincts/memories of how to use those Arts effectively - sort of like breaking down the Remnant you absorbed at Gold in the Cradle setting, for those familiar with that. Because of this, full member of an Astartes Sect have a notably higher "floor" of average power level than other traditions - but the process of preparing to receive and then mastering the geneseed is so demanding that they're also notably fewer in number.

And of course, I wanted to tie things back to Miraxa and the quest. Some squinting at galactic maps later, I saw that Ryza and Fenris were actually surprisingly close to each other. I've always liked the Space Wolves anyway, so my choice was made. Though I will note that while I like the Space Wolves in theory, I feel they're often written wrong - they're so much more interesting when their actual cultural uniqueness and motherfucking Space Viking factor gets highlighted, instead of them just being wolfy wolf wolfers who wolf wolfily. Hopefully I was able to bring that across in the writing.

Also, I do know that Miraxa hasn't been noted as having any mechadendrites in the text, unless I missed something. But they're so iconic that it just broke my heart to think of a tech-priest with no mechadendrites, so I figured maybe they were just some of the gear that got taken from her when she was captured.

~3900 words counting the notes, if it matters.

 

[BungieONI]

The Burning Path
​

Far overhead relative to her the bulk of Ryza Secundus soared. It glowed like a halo even in the daylight, an artificial moon so suffused with its own lumen-power that it managed to compete with the star burning so brightly overhead. The foundry flames and thundering plasma conduits which constantly boomed and zapped all around the collection of Adept students just added to the heat with their cacophony. Miraxa ignored the noise as her Apollyon enhanced eyes twitched and shifted, cataloging the flow of akasha in the great station's bulk, imagining the flow of vox and tight-band las carrying the energy of enlightenment between the station and the world she sat on. Soon she'd be able to see those too as her mastery of the Eyes matured.

The Adepts around her sat in contemplation, many whispering and buzzing or beeping quietly while they waited. Only her and a few others were taking the time to truly refine their tools of comprehension in the Runic Realm. Wasteful, she declared it all. It didn't matter that she'd been a little to eager to talk about her interests in plasma and neon artwork with her sisters and these plebeians when they were all gathered a few days ago. These Adepts were clearly all morons who could not see the Throne. Especially her gene-sisters.

Miraxa huffed, her akasha stuttering in distraction and displeasure. Looking down from the great orbital she scanned the training area they were all seated in, doing her best to ignore her lesser fellows and reign it back in. They were placed atop the high spine of one of the innumerable forge-works that spread around the City of Endeavour; she thought this one might handle the construction of capacitors for the Mk. II Ryza Pattern Plasma Pistol. They had been waiting for their instructor for the past thirty minutes, going by the chronometer set on a pillar off to one side.

Ahead of them spanned the gateway to the Sun-Temple Course, an archway of metal wrapped all around by neon lumen wires and studded with lux crystals. Past it was a path wide enough for all of them to run abreast, and a cascading tangle of tubing, cooling blocks, cherry red radiator fins and a dozen other devices. The air was thin and hot in her lungs, making it more difficult to grasp her akasha properly. What they had already been introduced to in the Sun-Tempered Temple body was immensely useful in this task and she couldn't help a little bit of giddy excitement for the next leg of the trials to test herself against.

She would prove she was better.

Miraxa sat and breathed and let the quiet murmurs and rustles of the other Adepts wash over her like water as she waited, and when she was almost but not quite settled, their seniors arrived. The snaps of cloth and the fwumpf of propulsion fires announced them, followed by the thumps as they landed on the metal plating of the rooftop. All of her fellows fell silent as the pressure of their senior's akasha pressed upon their minds, their robes red and white and marked with sigils of rank and office.

"Slow. But that will improve." The result of failure did not need to be said. "This course is five kilometers long and ends at Pollux Manufactory Gate Five. Finish it in an hour," the one in the lead commanded, voice unidentifiable, a towering figure in a red and white robes whose face was obscured by a blue visor and grilled mask, Sigil of the Gear emblazoned across its forehead. They stepped to one side as the junior Adepts stood, and raised one arm from their sleeves to gesture at the gateway. "Begin!" The senior shouted, a bolt of fire leaping from their fingertip like a las-bolt over the gateway.

Pounding feet filled the course and she rapidly pulled ahead of the pack. She was not at the head however as her two gene-sisters surged ahead with her, jockeying for position at the lead. Lexi SH-44007 and Domina SH-44133 were dogging her heels as their shoulders bumped and slammed against each other.

"Hey! Watch it!" Lexi cried as one of Domina's elbows landed on her nose with a heavy smack. Miraxa growled as the slim form of Lexi crashed into her, her sister's blonde head nearly colliding with her teeth.

Domina was the tallest of the three gene-sisters, dark haired and also muscled, with a penchant interest for heavy artillery and a similar boisterous attitude.

Domina laughed. "Gotta get ahead of Miraxa, Lexi~! I ain't letting her past me again!" And that was the one aggravating good thing about Domina; she understood that Miraxa was better than her and Lexi.

Miraxa and Lexi's eyes met for an instant as they disentangled from each other and understanding bloomed like a vicious flower.

Domina did not understand that sometimes cooperation was better than violence. The next thing Domina knew two pairs of feet were slamming into her shoulders and forcing her to her knees so the two could leap a dozen meters ahead over a gap between the rooftops. She quickly righted herself, yelling in fury as she trailed behind, caught in the gap between the leading sisters and the leading edge of the rest of the students. Miraxa laughed as her and Lexi pulled ahead and put their sister out of their minds.

Instead the two sister's attentions were consumed as they ran on and the heat and complexity of the course radically increased.

The air was thin, little ozone to be had because of pollution and their height, and little relief to be had from the weak wind. The machines added their own heat to the burning fury of the star above and made the floors hot enough to fry an egg and boil the sweat that fell from their bodies. The walls and tubes and machinery blocks were no better, every moment of contact forced to be brief else they would burn. Miraxa was unharmed so far, but the effort required to not be hurt left her equal with Lexi and she could not escape the smug girl.

And damnably her gene-sister started to pull ahead when they reached a section of thumping pistons and hissing valves that filled the air with hot steam, obscuring Lexi's form as she darted ahead while Miraxa was forced to slow. Miraxa's grasp of the Unchecked Apollyon Eyes was a hairs breadth behind her sister. And wasn't that galling.

She would not have it.

Miraxa's akasha-heart roared as she pushed her muscles faster and faster, heating up her flesh and flushing her eyes with enlightenment. The steam parted before her, both literally as her burning hot body forced it away, and metaphorically as the Unchecked Apollyon Eyes sliced through the obscurement of the steam ahead. She spotted the flitting form of Lexi, who flicked a quick glance over her shoulder and then dove out of the way with a yelp as Miraxa sprinted past like a tank shell.

Miraxa was three steps ahead of her sister when Lexi gave a scream of gleeful rage and righted herself, catching up rapidly. "HAH! I knew this would be fun!" She sounded happy, and that just stoked Miraxa's fury higher. Why was Lexi like this? It made no sense. But there she was, a step behind, seemingly enjoying the challenge presented by her gene-sister and not even caring for how annoying she was.

Behind her, her gene-sister prattled on in excitement, keeping pace with Miraxa. She tried to pull further ahead but the speed she could squeeze out of her body was not enough, not with the increasing effort she had to put into the Sun-Tempered Temple Body in order to protect herself. She had more stamina than her gene-sister, but a gap of one step was not enough in the slightest. Not for wining this, not for the insult given to her artistic abilities, and not for her being so aggravating.

The two of them raced down kilometers of causeway and rooftop, up and over and around hundreds of dangers as Miraxa wracked her brain for a way to get Lexi to lose this race. And lose some dignity. Maybe that would stop Lexi from being so annoying about Miraxa's artwork again.

..."Gene-sister, how goes your latest project?" Her gene-sister exclaimed as she poked her blonde head into Miraxa's workspace. Miraxa jerked up, distracted from her frustrated focus on the toroidal capacitance halo she had created. Its craftswomanship was immaculate and far above the work the lesser Adepts could create. A decorative piece of fashion for the discerning Adept. And it currently wasn't working for reasons that completely vexed her.

Fiddling with it she pushed it to the side and leaned back. "Well enough, though there's something wrong with its coaxial control circuit," she answered.

Lexi shuffled in, looking curiously at the device. Then a wide smile split her face. "Ah! I know what to do!" The other girl said brightly and then reached over and prodded it in two places and adjusted a wire. The dead grey of its inner tubes went a bright, subtle silver-blue that highlighted Miraxa's hair as it reactivated. "There!" She said happily, oblivious to Miraxa's consternation. "I was just dropping by to let you know I've got access passes to the vaults you wanted. We can go any time today!"

"Great...," Miraxa said distractedly, stewing lightly as Lexi waved and left, her message delivered...

Miraxa shook her head violently, casting away those thoughts and ignoring the joyful laughter of Lexi behind her. They were entering a tangled three-dimensional maze of pipes and coolant tanks and her mind coughed up a risky, stupid, idea to fulfill her need. Some of these pipes had valves she could smack off and a brief blast of coolant fluid could cause Lexi to slip at the right moment for Miraxa to take the lead permanently. The pipes would seal off automatically and the damage would be repaired long before it could become a problem.

Ahead of her she could see a steel crevasse, the path leading towards it before it abruptly turned towards a small bridge. The akasha in her heart and limbs rumbled. She had been practicing how to call up flame and fling it at her enemies, and she knew the basis behind self-propulsion. Learning one thing at a time was not enough for her. That's why she'd wanted access to those vaults anyway.

Akasha gathered in her hands, causing them to begin to glow with heat. She could not begin to reach for what her seniors could do, but all she needed was a crude boost across the gap and all of the students of the Omnissiah Igvita knew how to create fire in some form. She leapt forward, her hand smashing through one of the regulator valves sticking out from a pipe right next to the gap. She held back a shriek as the cool fluid spilled over her fingers and arm, but stubbornness and will kept her going as the slick blew out across the path behind her.

That was the thing Lexi did not have over her; she was not as stubborn and prideful as her sister. Miraxa reached the edge of the gap and leapt, flipping forward as she did, akasha gathered in her clenched hands. She looked backed and smiled as Lexi slipped on the oil slick she had made, her gene-sister's face twisting into dumb surprise as she tipped over the edge.

Their eyes met and Miraxa's smile twisted into a grin. Her sister would be fine, but this would smart her dignity for a while.

"Fuuuuuuuuck youuuuuuuuuu!" Lexi shouted as she fell, her yell slammed to a halt as she caught one of the pipes and stopped her descent.

Take that you bitch, Miraxa thought smugly as she shot through the air, propelled by her uncontrolled burst of fire. It consumed her vision and seared her hands with its heat but the kick from the explosion sent her over the gap on a trail of smoke.

Clang!

Miraxa yelped as the back of her head smacked into a pipe and she cartwheeled through the last dozen or so feet to land with a heavy thud on the far side. Groaning, she cursed the builders of this place and then righted herself. Desperately hoping Lexi hadn't seen that, head smarting and face burning from embarrassment, she dashed away with the lead firmly in hand.

---

@Maugan Ra omake for Miraxa learning more about the Sun-Tempered Temple Body (though mostly expressing her displeasure for her gene-sisters) and reaching for the principles of Incandescent Wings of the Phoenix. Any XP I'd like to go into the Incandescent Wings.

 

[Neshuakadal]

One Step Closer

***

Omnissiah Igvita appeared to many as a vast heart. Plasma instead of blood. Pipes instead of veins. Adepts instead of cells. Every piece has its place, every soul its purpose. For some souls had grand purposes, others however were handed simpler tasks.

One of the simplest tasks, yet perhaps the most important, was simply to learn. To absorb the information the Omnissiah Igvita deemed worthy of them. For as metal is tempered by flame, so is the soul tempered by knowledge.

This is something that Alexander 3-2-3 knows well enough, but in recent days has been a cold comfort.

"Dear Mother," the boy says in his small cubicle, "dear Father." The room he is in is small, just large enough for a bed and a washroom. Two black urns, small and unadorned, were the only decorations the room had. Everything else was a shade of white, not bright enough white to hurt the eyes when looked at, but white enough that any imperfection was easily seen. This was not the boy's room after all, it was Omnissiah Igvita's room, and any imperfection was a slight towards the sect.

The sect was zealous in answering slights, something that Alexander 3-2-3 had seen often enough.

"Today I'm going to try and solve Raban's riddle after lessons, again." Alexander said, continuing into the silence of the room. "My teachers have said I don't need too, but it itches at me. Solving it is how to prove myself to the sect, I just know it. I don't know how many more tries they will let me have, but I don't want to just be another menial in the sect. I don't want to be like…" He let the words hang in the air. Those thoughts were unfair, more than that they were untrue. For all that his parents weren't adepts they worked hard for him, struggled to provide for him, took increasingly dangerous positions to make sure he had the time he needed to study.

"I suppose that isn't the best way to think about it." He said. "You worked hard, harder than anyone should. In the end I guess I just want to make you proud." After he said those words he stood up from his bed, touched his head to each of the urns and then straightened up, or as much as he could. The ceiling was a little low for him. "Time to go." He said.

If he did burn away like his parents, Alexander thought as he left the small room, he would want to burn away caring about something as deeply as they did.

School in Omnissiah Igvita lasted for twelve hours. That was of course just the basic educational course. Students who pursued additional studies could expect to spend sixteen or even eighteen hours a day on their studies. Such studies didn't happen at the offical schools, but instead at one of the many study or lecture halls scattered throughout the outer reaches of the sect.

This particular study had been a favorite of Alexander's since his parents' accident. Several large pipes had been built just above the study hall and the hum they produced drowned out any of the accidental noise fellow students made, but wasn't too loud that Alexander was distracted from his studies. Large panes of glass covered one side of the study hall and allowed in the sun's natural light, which helped him keep track of the time. Alexander also didn't like the indoor lighting much of the sect used, they were bright, harsh things that brought painful memories.

No, the natural sun was much better.

Without greeting the study hall overseer, that might have been considered a distraction, Alexander sat down at a desk close to the windows. For a moment he luxuriated in the warmth that the sun always brought with it, but only for a moment. Then he turned on the screen connected to the desk, entered his access information, and navigated to Raban's riddle.

For a brief second Alexander felt his heart in his throat as the machine hummed thoughtfully, had he already used up his chances? But then the machine blinked and the screen transitioned to the start of the problem.

The first thing that Alexander did was to start dividing the problem up, which parts would be simple to solve, which parts would require more work. Almost an hour passed like this with Alexander just dividing the riddle up into smaller more manageable parts. After that was done he went through it again, just to make sure he hadn't made any copying errors. Changing a minus to an additional sign would be extremely embarrassing.

Perhaps lethally embarrassing. Omnissiah Igvita didn't raise such careless fools after all.

With the assurance that all the minus and addition signs were correct Alexander began plugging away at Raban's riddle. Time moved sluggishly as Alexander worked, with seconds and minutes dripping away like tar. Something was niggling at the back of his mind, demanding attention. Half way through the riddle Alexander found what it was.

This section of the riddle could be solved with a simple methodology. Yet if he applied the appropriate method he would get an imaginary number. That worked for the immediate slice of the riddle the section was a part of, but this slice having an imaginary number would cause a cascade of errors throughout the rest of the problem. An imaginary number here just wouldn't work. Was he remembering the methodology wrong?

It was possible, he had learned it several years ago after all.

In his mind Alexander opened up his memories, swimming against the current of time to try and remember exactly what he had been taught all those years ago. Yet when he reached the memory he was looking for Alexander was left even more confused.

The general idea of the methodology had been remembered correctly, but when the exact details of the lesson had been reviewed greater problems had been revealed. If the methodology he was supposed to use was correct, that would make this topology equation, useful in later parts of Raban's riddle, impossible. But if this topology equation didn't work then this combinatorics hack was quite ridiculous.

One by one errors piled up. Was his entire education a lie, an effort by the sect to keep menials like himself where they belonged?

Alexander felt himself standing on a knife's edge. The confidence in knowledge that he had built up for so long was crumbling down. Everything was going dark. His heart beat violently inside of his chest, trying to escape the prison it found itself in. If he couldn't trust his teachers anymore, who could he trust?

Himself.

The answer came up deep within him and Alexander grasped onto it as a wolf grasped meat. Reason was the light of the soul. Reason would see him through this.

Creating a complete system of math that was completely separated from reality would be a feat that only the Omnissiah would likely be able to do. It stood to reason that no matter how much of what he knew was a lie there had to be some anchors of truth in what he had been taught.

Find those anchors and rebuild from there.

He would just have too…

Alexander gasped as felt something like cold water ripple its way through his spine, electric but organic at the same time. With a start he looked up, pulled away from his memories like a fish.

Sitting across from him was the study hall supervisor. He, or she, was bald, not a spot of hair left on their body. Instead dense vibrant blue lines covered their scalp and arms. Each one arranged so that they never overlapped.

"Apologies supervisor, I…" Alexander started to say before he paled. Outside the sun was just starting to rise. He had spent all night in the study hall. He was going to miss his mandatory lessons.

"Peace, Alexander 3-2-3." The hall supervisor said as he started to panic. "Peace. You've been exempted from your mandatory classes."

"Supervisor," Alexander said as he struggled to calm down, "forgive my disbelief, but I didn't know such a thing was possible."

The supervisor shrugged. "If certain conditions are met it is possible. Until further notice you have been assigned to an advanced class. Your screen will now show you the route."

At their words the screen on his desk changed, lighting up with a map to a scheduled study hall.

"I should not say much more," the supervisor continued, "but you made the right choice. Only you lack the information required to see your decision through."

"Supervisor," Alexander said. His head pounded. What was happening? "I don't understand."

The supervisor smiled. It was a somewhat sad smile. "Who does?" They said. With that the supervisor stood up and walked back towards their desk at the very back of the study hall.

Alexander shook his head and memorized the map his screen was providing him. Then he walked out of the study hall and into the light of the rising sun.

He didn't know what was going on or what the future now held for him, but he knew that if he just trusted himself he could reason his way through it.

***
Omake for @Maugan Ra

This idea came to me when I thought about what it might look like for a lexical realm menial on the verge of ascending. Thanks for writing such an interesting idea!

 

[ilbgar123]

Inquisitorial Report - Orkish Cultivation

It is a well-known fact that, save the Eldar, the Cultivation of xenos differs greatly from that of humanity. Their physiology is distinct even in cases of fellow bipedal mammalians. Their souls are fundamentally different, and not just because their cultures are different as a result of their physiologies. One of the most common points of study in this regard is the Ork. One of humanity's most common foes, one that has plagued it since before the Age of Strife if our records are correct, most probably since before Dark Age in all honesty. They're incredibly difficult to root out at the best of times, and the best of times have not been witnessed since the Horus Heresy.

Let us begin with a brief overview of their bodies. One might believe that the common greenskin is what an Ork is. They are, after all, commonly referred to as Orks, the large, simpleminded(not stupid, merely very focused on combat three-quarters of the time) brutes with red eyes and green skin, as opposed to the fleshy balls of teeth in the Squigs or the willowy but cruelly intelligent Gretchin. This is not wrong, strictly speaking, but rather than viewing them as disparate organisms, it would be more accurate to view them akin to the microbiomes within the intestinal tract of mortals. They do not exist within a vacuum. Instead, they are a slew of related organisms that influence their environment to be more accommodating. It should be noted that the physical and spiritual development of Orkoids are closely linked well beyond any other known species. One certainly influences the other in humans, but with Orks they are synonymous for all intents and purposes.

First of the Orkoids to emerge are the lichen and mushrooms, the food for the early Orkoids and the 'flowers' of their embryos. They often resemble common fungi at a glance, making them difficult for mortals to detect, though the aggressive nature of all Orkoids can be of use here, and they cannot hide from Akashic Arts, nor do they usually bother. The first Orkoids to emerge are always the Gretchin in their juvenile Snotling form, their equivalent to the Yoof stage of the Ork. They will begin caretaking the funguses and the emerging Squigs until the familiar Orks begin emerging. From here, internecine conflict will begin as Orks begin seeking to establish dominance. While for the longest time it was believed that this was considered a mark of idiocy as they killed each other more often than the Imperium did, there does seem to be a logic to it. That is, survival of the fittest. It is well-known that the biggest, toughest, strongest Ork will take on leadership sooner or later. They begin jockeying for the position the moment there are two Orks in the same area, though they are largely content to serve under a Boss, as they tend to call any Ork higher-ranked than them, who regularly wins and provides them with fights. Should they lose in a manner they survive even two or three times in a row, they can expect challenges from their underlings, sometimes before the battle they're losing is even over.

The Orks are, based on Mechanicus analysis, designed from the ground up to be tremendously difficult to kill. Human scar tissue is hyperactive, but it allows us to recover at least in part from anything that doesn't kill us outright, allowing particularly strong-willed individuals to perform surgery on themselves. Orks can, with some outside aid, attach their heads to the bodies of completely different Orks, and due to the nature of their Cultivation, this body will swiftly match their old one. Replacing limbs is even easier. In essence, nothing short of massive damage to their center of mass can be considered a lethal blow, which is not a guarantee they will not kill you before they figure out they're dead like a human on a massive adrenaline spike, and instantly fatal attacks can only be found in total destruction of the head, unless the combatant is using some sort of Art that bypasses their durability, as some Assassinorum Sects are capable of.

Now that I've laid out the basics, let us discuss their spiritual side. Orks develop from conflict, particularly from winning. There is an old Terran joke about achieving unlimited power by plugging a power strip into itself. For Orks, this can actually work. Not as efficiently as fighting other entities, but the waging of war and battle refines Akasha into Orkish Waagh! energies, and Orks can trivially absorb the energies of their fellows compared to that of non-Orks, effectively eating their souls to empower themselves, so a conflict below a truly ruinous tempo will leave the survivors stronger than the sum total of the original pool of Orks. This is why Orks must be purged with extreme prejudice and extreme thoroughness, as once an infestation has taken root, it can be more difficult than a Daemonic Sect to remove.

Their bodies release spores in life and en masse upon death, and their souls reflect this. The Waagh! Field connects every Ork under the Ork of the highest Realm in the area in a singular network, growing as the number and power of the individual Orks does. Thus, the number of followers a Warboss has is just as important as the number of battles they've won. A Warboss that absorbs a smaller Ork Empire by defeating the Warboss of that Empire will effectively merge their networks, exponentially increasing it's own power as the feedback loop expands. Even a 10% increase in their domain can vastly worsen their threat.

One of the better examples is the Ullanor Crusade, where the leaders of the Orkish Empire were so large and powerful that lesser Ork Empires were declaring their fealty and rushing to follow their new masters into battle without ever having met them, which had a self-reinforcing effect, hence the Legions of Astartes uniting to face them at the eponymous Ullanor before they could threaten the Imperium in it's entirety.

The Waagh! Field is their greatest strength, but also their weakness. While most of the energy of the fallen is redistributed through the network when an Ork is felled regardless of their position within the network, there are limits to that. If the leadership is wiped out, the network begins to fray, not unlike human civilization. This leaves them open to being defeated piecemeal, and even cannibalizing each other's souls will only sustain them for so long if their numbers drop enough. Exterminating even a third of the Orks in the area will have deleterious effects on the remainder. Hit the halfway mark, and you may see their more energy-intensive Arts and violations of physics suffer noticeable drops in power and effectiveness. It is believed that the network relies heavily on each node to absorb more energy in totality, as each individual node can only handle so much at once, which is part of why their numbers tend to explode in the aftermath of any major fighting that doesn't enormously cull them. However, you must cull the entire Orkoid ecosystem. Each Squig and Gretchin is just as much a node as the Orks are. Even their mosses and lichen must be put to the flame. Something even the mortals can do to expunge the threat.

In conclusion, I believe the Orks are the most dire threat to the Imperium. Their numbers and ability to escalate if they are ever united is terrifying, and the nature of their Cultivation means that uniting is as simple as a duel between their Warbosses, if that much. Should another Beast emerge while we are distracted by the Despoiler, mismanagement from a rogue High Lord, or, Emperor preserve us, both at once or more, I shudder to imagine the damage they could do.

AN: How's this @Maugan Ra ? 1300 words if it matters. Incandescent Wings if this is worth any xp.