Getting Warhammered [WH 40k Fanfic]
207 – Peering into the Abyss

If this was a trap made specifically to ruin my day, what would it be? How would I mess with me, if I was an eldritch asshole thriving on messing with people? I thought to myself, floating in the void of space with distant asteroids slowly floating by me. In the distance, well beyond what even my eyes could see by themselves, I could see the thermal signatures of the Fleet’s exhaust plumes as infinitesimal little pinpricks of light. What can even hurt me as I am?

Nulls were the obvious answers. A suitably powerful Pariah could sever my Avatar from my Soul, given enough time and then they might be able to destroy it. Doing so would make me lose control of everything, using the Avatar as the central node of the telepathic web which kept my little burgeoning empire going. It wouldn’t be the end, but people on my moon most certainly wouldn’t find it enjoyable, even less so when the defences that should have been keeping them safe went to shit and allowed the arriving Fleet to bombard them into oblivion.

Alternatively, any Greater Daemon that managed to crawl its way up into my Realm could make a mess of things. 

Then there were the obvious Macguffin bullshit artifacts someone just pulled out of their ass. Crazy overpowered artefacts that seem to pop up randomly in this galaxy just to mess up a ‘bad guy’s day and then disappear into obscurity. 

In the books, it was easy to explain. The authors wanted a cool, super-powerful antagonist for their heroes to fight. Problem was, the heroes were weak and had no hope of winning, so they stumbled upon or found out about some bullshit artifact that was just perfect for countering their current foe.

Shitty writers. They made my life much harder. That shitstain Custodian already had that soul-rending spear thingy that nearly sundered my soul. And if they had a spear that spat little pokey beams, they had grenades, they had bombs and they might even have the equivalent of a spiritual nuke they could dump in my Realm.

I’d be utterly fucked. 

Did it exist? Probably no- I really hoped it didn’t, but it just might. And if it didn’t, Tzeentch might just make it exist. Fucking Tzeentch.

Val was right. One mistake was all it took for me to die at the hands of some random group of nobodies with Fate cradling their balls. 

I still don’t have anything conclusive about the existence of real ‘plot armour’ though. It might just be worrying about nothing. Then again, there is no such thing as unhealthy paranoia in this world, when all that bullshit is really possible. Every type of paranoia helps me stay alive.

So, I decided to be super extra careful and super-duper sneaky. Before that though, I made sure I felt no shitty daemons lurking nearby in the Warp, waiting to pounce when some nutjob gave them the slightest gap to slip through. Made sure I felt no lingering echo of Chaos on the Fleet. 

I found nothing, beyond the regular group of Khornite busibodies who just didn’t know when to sod off. They had been beating on each other for all of last week, having grown bored of waiting for me to poke my toes into the Warp again. 

Nothing too dangerous, no Greater Daemons in sight. Just Lesser ones and a few Heralds. 

The Khornite daemons at least banded together to beat up any other types that wandered in. It kinda felt like keeping around a bunch of nasty spiders in the forgotten corner of my room because they caught the annoying flies in my room.

With my preliminary inspections done, I wreath myself in just about every cloaking technique I have at my disposal. Camouflaged carapace, Psychic Illusion based invisibility, my body being forced to absolute zero temp, light bending around me, along with all other electromagnetic waves.

Gravity, I was reasonably sure, wouldn’t be a problem. Not even the biggest Narwhals could sense the gravitational signature of a single person floating in the void of space; then again, even a speck of dust seemed noticeable on a blank white sheet of paper. I had nothing to blend in with out here.

I wasn’t confident in replicating Val’s space-bending trick yet, though, not without just making a bigger mess and making myself be more noticeable than I’d otherwise be. He could kind of twist space around himself, making a little fold which he could hop into and hide away in. The problem was, making sure the spot where space is … ‘pinched’ to form the fold needs to be absolutely seamless or the spot will look like some tumour growing on the back of realspace itself to anyone with the sense to feel such a thing. 

My other stealth project was emitting a ‘notice-me-not’ aura, which should make anyone who does notice me dismiss my presence as inconsequential. Just a bug, or an artefact, sensor malfunction. Results varied so far, but it showed promise, and couldn’t hurt and so I used it. 

I could walk through a crowded street in any Arcology with this aura on, but would it really work on sensors manned by officers lightyears away from me? Distance shouldn’t matter when it came to Psychic bullshit, but who really knew how it really worked? I most certainly didn’t, so I just decided to hope for the best. 

Making some drones was the next obvious step, and I made sure to have the latest iteration of my Conduit Orbs — which is what I named the nifty little toys I’d made by mixing Khrave and Hrud genes, making a powerful, if temporary psychic conduit — and then covered them in the same stealth tricks I had on myself. 

It was overkill, probably, but I wasn’t going to half-ass it. Gork and Mork might have thought it funny to hide some nasty shit on one of the ships just to give a good ‘krumpin’ to me too. Maybe a C’Tan, or some other similarly powerful nastiness. I wouldn’t have put it past them, by what taste I got of their essence when they came to so kindly introduce themselves.

I Blinked them over to the ships, and being extra careful, decided to only send a dozen of them in the first wave. Imperial ships were damned huge, so some murder or a couple of random people out of the thousands running it going missing wouldn’t be out of place. Same with some sensors or cameras detecting some strange stuff. With how ancient the ships were and how little the Mechanicus actually understood some of their inner systems at times, they would easily handwave away by a couple of dozen weird creatures tucked away in the belly of the ship. 

A bunch of horrible, mutated abhumans and other monsters were practically a given around the Warp Drives. Still, when suddenly the number of weird shit spiked, doubling or tripling, that would have set off alarms. So I just sent a dozen. For now. 

While a thousand more waited at my sides. With them all being at least as powerful as a Lictor, I could probably wipe out the majority of the baseline human forces onboard just with them. 

Not that I would do so. The Orks needed to get their murder-boner worked off. 

Using the Conduit Orbs, I reached out over the vast distance and my powers that should have weakened considerably maintained a larger fraction of their strength than otherwise. It was imperfect, too weak, too quick to deteriorate, but it would do what it was made to do for now. 

Void-Shields parted easily, tiny human-sized gaps twitching open for just a second on a dozen ships as my infiltrator drones dashed in. I honestly wasn’t sure why other Psykers didn’t do the same. Void Shields were not that difficult to pierce. 

… Most of them probably didn’t fancy the thought of flying up to a colossal voidship, alone, poke a hole into its shield and then heading inside, alone. Did they? 

Or maybe they just didn’t have the power needed to peel away the layer of pure Warp-stuff that made up the Void-Shields. 

Whatever. 

Now, let’s see what we’re working with. I hummed to myself, letting my mind expand and split as I took command of all twelve drones simultaneously and sent them forth. Whoever it is, for whatever reason, they are going to have a really bad day. Getting yanked over here by a pair of overgrown divine fungi was just the start of your misery. 

*****

Solomon Tetrarchus leaned back in his command chair, visage grim as he let the reports of more and more of the corrupted psykers fly by him. 

Each one felt like yet another punch in the gut. Psykers were twisted creatures, tainted by the powers humanity was fighting, but they had been forged into tools nonetheless by the Emperor’s grace.

Turning the power of the Great Enemy against itself. The thought always left him conflicted. On one side, it was tainted power; on the other, it spat into the faces of their foes. That, he could wholeheartedly get behind. 

They were important tools, few in number, hard to replace and held great power. He could have used that power against his newest enemy. 

Alas, he had to watch them die, one after the other, as their minds descended into madness. There was no other choice. A tool was only useful when it could be trusted not to cut the hand wielding it. 

It was such a waste. 

“All systems within acceptable parameters,” a tech-priest warbled in his mechanical tone. “The ship is ready for maximum velocity. May we engage the thrusters?”

“Do it,” Tetrarchus said. “No problems with the rest of the fleet?”

“Nothing outside the ordinary,” the comm-technician said, more machine than man himself with a dozen cables sticking out of the back of his skull and the top half of his face replaced by a metallic mask fused to his bones. “Some officers on other ships fell victim to maddened mutant beasts, but all such incursions are reported to have been crushed in short order by the Astartes squads attached to them.”

“Good,” Tetrarchus said, putting it out of his mind. Of course, whatever messed with his Psykers’ minds would send the tainted monsters into a frenzy. He should have ordered a purge of the lower decks before setting out in retrospect, but he wanted to strike swiftly at his foe. No use thinking about it, can’t change the past. We have a foe to slay, all else is inconsequential. “Engage the Void-Shields on full power as we approach the System. Our foe is said to be capable of teleporting through them from thousands of miles away. I also want every sensor cranked up to the limit. If we detect any spatial anomalies, I want to know.”

‘I think it’s a bit late for that.’ A feminine voice purred into his ears, thick with amusement. 

Solomon’s eyes widened, his instincts screaming in alarm as his hands tightened into fists on his armrest. His mouth opened, an order to do something ready on his tongue. 

The Psyker was in his head. Fuck. He needed to get one of those disgusting Blanks here now. His mouth failed him, lips remaining sealed shut, but he wasn’t to be deterred. He had to get a Blank, or a Telepath to shield him, or someone to shoot him in the head if all else failed. If he were compromised, the whole fleet may be devastated. He couldn’t allow that. Never. His mission was paramount, it had to succeed. His mind was linked up to the ship’s Machine Spirit-

The machine spirit wailed into his ears as he thought to reach out to it, then fell deathly silent, its presence fading from his awareness like it was never even there. 

‘Pesky little insect.’ The voice said disdainfully, its amusement still present but tinged with a bit of malicious satisfaction. ‘So quick to jump to extremes. I just wanted to have a little chat, oh great Lord Militant. Come, this is so … impersonal.’

Tetrarchus only had a moment to feel confused, and more than a bit terrified, at the Psyker’s words before he was yanked away. He felt something snap, stretch and stretch as he was sent soaring through nothing less, and then he was there.

More importantly, he could move again. 

Not even taking a moment to take in his surroundings, his fingers clasped around his plasma-pistol, and he drew it in a swift, fluid motion. Faster than some troopers even, he aimed it at the unmistakable presence he could feel bearing down on him. 

“Rude,” the same voice said mildly, and Tetrarchus caught his first glimpse of the psyker. “But I suppose it doesn’t matter when you came all this way to kill me. What use is courtesy between mortal foes, hmmm?”

The psyker was a woman, maybe early twenties if he had to guess, with flowing white hair and a pair of intense emerald green eyes that held power in them. She was beautiful, unnaturally so, reminding him just the slightest bit of some of the vainest Noble ladies who had extensive cosmetic remodelling done on their bodies. Very high quality one too, as the cheaper ones tended to look like a patchwork mix of body parts, like someone took the legs off one person, the breasts off another and the torso off a third and mashed it all together. The psyker didn't have that eerie, fake look to her, she looked more like a doll, or a statue carved to perfection by a master artisan. 

What threw him off a bit was all the rest. Those nobles always wore the fanciest clothes, wore jewels worth more money than some voidships and had extensive makeup to accentuate their unnatural beauty.

The psyker had neither, opting for a simply silky set of pants and robe that hugged her slender form. 

Tetrarchus could appreciate the feminine form; he was very much a man after all, even though he knew the psyker was probably the greatest enemy he’d ever faced. 

It didn’t make him hesitate in trying to put a bolt of plasma through her sickeningly beautiful face, though. ‘Try’ being the operative word there.

His fingers moved, he pulled the trigger, heard the hiss of his pistol as it made the bolt, then watched it blast forth, leaving a scent of ozone in its wake. 

Then he watched it bounce off her face, leaving it entirely unharmed. All it did was make the smug smirk on her lips stretch as he felt his dread returning with a vengeance. 

“Nice toy,” she offered, uncaring of the next four shots bouncing off her body harmlessly. “Did you take a look at where we are, though, Lord Militant? Isn’t taking stock of the situation the first thing any trooper should do when finding themselves in an unfamiliar environment? Perhaps years as the biggest man in charge made you rusty.”

Solomon glowered at her, but while he detested agreeing, he couldn’t not take stock of his situation. His pistol wasn’t working. There had to be another way, he had to figure out what the hell was going on. 

He froze as he finally took a glance at his surroundings. An expanse of pure alabaster whiteness as far as the eye could see, an endless field of marble under his feet, white sky up above and a white light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. 

The only two outliers in this vast emptiness were him and the psyker, standing a mere twenty metres apart. 

“Where have you taken me?” He asked, his mind running through his options. He kept her in his sight, but sent a considering glance down at his pistol. If all else failed … death was preferable to being made a puppet by a Telepath. 

“An interesting question, with an even more interesting answer,” she said, an aggravating smirk still on her lips as she tapped her chin, putting on a show of thinking deeply. “Your body is sitting calmly in your command chair, staring blankly at the vastness of space and the bustling command deck before it. But your mind? That I took the liberty of inviting you into this little world of mine. It’s a bit sparse, but I only spent a nanosecond constructing this mindscape. Not my finest work.”

Mindscape? He was in his mind? No, in a … fake world she’d imprisoned his mind in. He was locked in a battle of minds with what was likely the strongest mortal telepath in the galaxy. 

Without hesitation, he raised his pistol to his temple and pulled the trigger. His mind was here, she wanted the information hidden in it, so the only option was destroying it. It wasn’t merely spite that drove his decision, but the knowledge that if he died, his men would at least know something was really fucking wrong. 

But it was mostly still spite, to wipe that smug smirk off her face. How dare some rogue witch whore who spat upon the Emperor’s grace, who forsook His helping hand when had given her a chance to serve mankind despite her tainted nature smirk at him?

He sneered at her as he squeezed the trigger, heard the familiar click and prepared himself to meet the Emperor. 

His sneer fell away as the click of the trigger failed to be followed by the hiss of plasma searing through his flesh and skull. He was still alive. He was not dead. 

“Wha-“ he started, pulling the trigger again with rising dread and increasing desperation. “Worthless piece of junk!”

“It’s just a mental construct,” the psyker offered helpfully, her tone far too casual for the situation. “A figment of your imagination. Too bad you lack the will and imagination to make it do anything in a mindscape of my making. I made this world, in here, I am a GOD.”

Solomon barely had a moment to feel his terror spike to unseen heights as the dreadful world resounded in his mind, echoing in his very soul. He shivered, his entire being shivering, thoughts fraying, spirit quivering, and soul trembling.

The world fell away around him, and the facade went with it, the mask of a beautiful human woman peeled away, shattering like a plane of glass as the thing underneath stared down at him. 

He saw floating pyramids, thousands circling, revolving around a central monument. Tendrils, small and large, all alabaster white, curling around the dark constructs. Power followed in the cracks, so much power it hurt to look at, hurt to even think about. All a representation of the unfathomable being before him, his weak human mind trying to make sense of something he couldn’t possibly understand. 

A million eyes peered down at him, judging, measuring. A presence settled around him, making him feel like he had a mountain sitting on his shoulders. The eyes squinted. They found him wanting. He screamed. His mind broke. Alien tendrils pilfered its fragments, looking through the shards carelessly, throwing away what they didn’t need like the broken things they were. 

Then there was nothing. Oblivion.