The bsted prey kept zipping about, and it was driving Reginald all sorts of mad. He was seething, apoplectic in his rage as the Star he had to kill kept slipping through his fingers.

  He saw red as he felt his prey once again zip away. His rage burned in his chest, seeping through his flesh and dripping down his arms in the form of liquid fire. He shook, trembling in anger, and roared, unable to keep it contained, causing the twisted Warp-fyre clinging to his frame to explode outwards.

  The Lesser Daemons that had joined his host ughed and cackled, but the flesh and blood humans screamed, trying to run. The more … enthusiastic ones, the kind that would welcome the touch of the fmes, were long lost to those very fmes. Reginald wasn’t one to usually entertain those sorts, burning them to ash outright, or having them thrown out of his war-host.

  Where the fyre touched the men and women, their bodies twisted and mutated. Some of them fell to the ground, dead in moments, as something went horribly wrong in their bodies. Others swelled in size, muscles bulging at the seams, or grew nky arms and far-too-wide grins, or started decaying in real time, screaming at first, then starting to ugh. Their ughter joined the chorus of demonic cackles.

  Reginald paid them no mind, charging after the Star with single-minded focus, his war-host unrecognisable, but still following in his wake.

  Somewhere along the way, another war host joined up with Reginald’s, melding with it almost seamlessly. That is to say, the mob of unorganised, uncoordinated raving lunatics swelled in number without too many of them killing each other in the process. Long gone was The Stigmartus’ famed and feared iron discipline, chaos having taken its pce.

  Reginald gnced to the side, his eyes alight like smouldering pieces of coal as he gred, lips peeled back in a toothy snarl. The other Psyker, who had been leading the other war-host, ignored him. The bald woman with the mark of Chaos tattooed onto her forehead bounded along with a deadly grace, her focus singurly forward.

  The Star changed trajectory again, and they followed suit, growling. Another Psyker joined up with them, then another and another, growing the horde at their back to more than five thousand strong, and leading the charge were six psykers, though Reginald knew he was the most powerful of them. Only the Sorcerers outstripped him in combat, and he was smart enough to fear them, but not this rabble.

  Still, he couldn’t win a one-on-five fight, which he would have had to do if he didn’t want them butting in to take his prize. No, he would have to let them tire themselves out fighting the Star.

  His thoughts were growing increasingly hazy and discordant, the whispers pushing in and mingling with his own thoughts. He could barely even tell them apart at some point, unable to tell where ‘Reginald’ ended, and The Voices began.

  His battle lust and instincts drove him onwards, taking the reins, so much so that he barely even reacted when the Star suddenly reversed course. Its presence was unmistakable, a bright light amidst an ocean of darkness, not even trying to hide. Reginald and his peers only let out a gleeful war-cry in response, their base thoughts only able to connect that ‘prey getting closer’ to ‘good’.

  They didn’t wonder why it was the case, what could have changed, or why the Star suddenly wanted to face them. Such nuances had been worn away by the screaming whispers dampening their minds.

  A silvery light curved across the sky, visible just barely through the canopy. The sound barrier broke, the shockwave of it reverberating through the forest. It was deafening, but nothing compared to what came next. The silvery Star fell, like a meteor from the heavens, like the hammer of God.

  The trees bsted away, the earth shook, the forest floor sent crashing away in waves as if it was liquid. Whatever sound it had made, none could hear it for every eardrum within hundreds of metres burst as one from the shockwave reverberating through the air.

  The daemons, mutants and cultists who’d been at ground zero of the impact were just gone. The ones just a bit further away were pulverised, reduced to chunks of flesh and bone. The ones further still received the shrapnel, boulders, the earth, trunks, branches and the remains of vehicles and weaponry that’d been sent flying.

  The Star rose, floating above the devastation it’d wrought like a goddess of destruction, a long bde of pure white held loosely in one hand.

  The war-host, unlike any sane group of people — if they could even still be called that — didn’t do the smart thing. They didn’t listen to their fight, or flight instinct. Or rather, they did, but someone was pushing down heavily on the side of ‘Fight’, and so they did.

  They surged forth with a war cry none of them heard, all having ruptured eardrums and all. Bloodletters, Blue Horrors, Daemonettes and Nurglings followed, along with grotesque mutants, some soldiers still sane enough to hold their weapons, and finally, the six Psykers.

  The first wave reached the strange creature the Gods wanted dead so much, cws and swords rearing forward to rip and tear. An inhuman, soul-rending screech rang out, screaming in a dozen voices. One didn’t need to have ears to hear it, for it was the daemons screaming in unearthly agony as they were obliterated from existence.

  Reginald stumbled to a halt, blinking and growling as the wave of terror and seething hatred rolling off of the Daemons hit him. It only seemed to be climbing, mounting further as the creatures of the Warp all screamed bloody murder.

  It was eerie. Even Bloodletters, Lesser Daemons of the War God, Khorne, usually treated their excursions into the Materium as something of a … game. As fun.

  Why wouldn’t they, when killing their mortal vessels only banished their immortal essence back to the Immaterium?

  Not now. This wasn’t a game, and none of them were having fun. Reginald knew why, since he had felt oh-so-very clearly when the dozen daemons had been extinguished. Erased from existence.

  That silvery glow rose, and the white bde swept out once more, sending a crescent of sublime argent light shing out. Another scream rose, another twenty daemons perished, never to rise again.

  The horde went insane with rage, cwing and pouncing over each other to rush at the Star.

  Reginald understood now. He understood why the Star had to die. Why the Gods promised the world to the one who shackled its soul and brought it to them for a feast.

  This- … this abomination-, this heretic, this bsphemer- it needed to die. The only other being in existence to have ever managed to erase a daemon from existence had been the Corpse Emperor.

  He was not a daemon, the silver light might not hurt him, but even so, he would need something of a pn to get the drop on the Star, seeing as it was quite pow-

  KILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILL

  All that went right out the window as the divine fury of the Blood God himself flooded Reginald’s mind and consumed his soul. There was nothing but rage and hate left in him as he bsted forth, Warp-fyre trailing in his wake.

  Horrible, soul-rending agony wreaked havoc across his body, shattering what tiny ember of his mind remained forevermore and sending hairline fractures through his very soul. The human body was not made to handle the absolute deluge of power flowing through the husk that used to be Reginald, and so it started failing, decaying and disintegrating all at once.

  But it would hold for long enough. The gods willed it, and so it shall be.

  The husk screamed, its voice a mixture of pain, glee and rage as it swept its hands forth and Warp-fyre flooded out of it in torrential waves, consuming daemons, mutants and whoever else was foolish enough to stand before it as it raced for its target.

  The Star, perhaps foolishly, didn’t dodge. It stood its ground, merely surging its radiance in an effort to ward off the very fmes of the Immaterial infused with Change and Chaos.

  The fmes danced, their colours ever-shifting, every colour of the rainbow showing up here and there, along with some colours that no mortal words could describe. When one looked deeply, one could see faces, agonised, screaming visages, swimming in the fire.

  The husk that used to be Reginald fgged, its fingers fking away as they turned into dust, while all the organs in its chest ruptured and decayed, sending the body to the ground.

  Its eyes remained pried wide open, granting a window to peer through for those close within on the other side of the veil. They witnessed the fmes dying out, scattering and vanishing after a few seconds, with the source exhausted except where they caught onto a new source to feed upon and draw power from.

  The Star stood there, seemingly unbothered, aside from … the husk’s lips pulled into a wicked grin, seeing the pristine white armour bubble in pces with pus-filled sacs, wither to sand in others, and there were even spots where new eyelids opened, revealing frightened, panicked eyeballs darting around, or cry tears of blood.

  Then the grin fell away as a ripple passed over the armour, a silvery glow following in its wake, returning it to its original state. The cursed fmes that had been clinging to its form winked out of existence, and the silvery glow seemed to swell in radiance after it vanquished them.

  The Star stood tall, unbothered, unconquered.

  The st thing the husk’s burning gaze caught was the ivory bde in its arms coming around for a savage swing, and then it was gone. The vessel was pulverised by an overwhelming bst of telekinetic power, along with thousands of unlucky souls who were in its vague surroundings.

  *****

  I frowned inwardly while Selene shuddered in utter disgust. That had been a surprise and a half. Apparently, the stuff I make with my eldritch flesh is not nearly as resistant to Chaos-fvoured super-cancer as I had hoped. At least the mutations had only penetrated through the armour and were stopped dead in their tracks when they tried to warp Selene’s own flesh.

  I owed one to Big E for that one, ‘cause his Custodes tempte was downright immune to all attempts to corrupt it. I’d have to start weaving them into my elite draugr, or other types of combat units, even if the expense of doing so was rather exorbitant.

  My drones wouldn’t be worth shit if the enemy could just turn them against me by giving them a bath in those icky warp fmes.

  I considered altering my standard draugr tempte … but man, my theoretical army size would be reduced to a hundredth of its size by the increase of bio-energy cost per base combat unit.

  It wasn’t like I’d only ever fight Chaos, and there would be no need to be so careful against Tyranids or other threats.

  “You alright?” I asked Selene gently once she finished obliterating the war host with extreme prejudice and all due violence.

  Of the five remaining Psykers, nothing remained. Like the fire-guy, they were slow as snails compared to Selene, so they could never hit her if she didn’t let them.

  “Ewwww,” Selene said aloud, a revolted frown still worn on her face. “That was the most disgusting thing ever. Guess that’s just my reward for being a moron and standing there, letting them hit me. You’ve been a horrible influence on me. Why did I even do that?”

  Her words dissolved into pitiful whining, causing me to form fingers inside her helmet to rub her scalp consolingly.

  “Styling on stupid enemies should only be done when they aren’t a threat … and arguably, these ones weren’t,” I hummed. “To your health at least, not so for your good mood. If it helps, you looked extremely awesome while doing it.”

  Selene just groaned at my honest praise — rude — and shook her head.

  “I’m just gd I managed not to throw up inside my helmet,” Selene said wryly, huffing adorably in that way she always did when trying to psych herself up. “Alright, back to business. We still have a ritual to stop and some more Wytches and sorcerers to kill. I should get back to it.”

  I gave her a mental hug, enveloping her in a sense of comfort and affection through our Bond, and felt her rex slightly. Which had me patting myself on the back for a job well done- … which was of course when my sense of something fucky going on bred an arm in my ears.

  I found the source in less time than it took to blink, my focus nding on the suddenly complete ritual. The ‘how’ was obvious, as I looked down at the scene and saw the Chaos Lord and his inner circle id out in a twisted reverse pentagram, all sporting gaping holes in their chests. At the five points of the pentagram were wicked spikes, impaling five still-beating hearts, and at the centre was a sixth, radiating malice and Warp taint. That one had to belong to the Chaos Lord himself.

  Instead of waiting for the ritual to reach completion naturally, by gathering the energy from all the deaths across the pnet, they decided to rush it by sacrificing themselves. Though I wasn’t sure whether they had much of an actual choice in that ‘decision’, not that it matters. They were dead, their souls consumed, which was a worse fate than any I could have given them even in my cruellest moments.

  I felt the veil grow dim, and something slipped through. It didn’t materialise, remaining a vague cloud of crackling energy that radiated a twisted glee.

  I reformed myself in front of Selene, remaking my Avatar faster than I’d ever done before, power surging into my vessel in a torrential wave as I deployed enough barriers around us to keep us safe from a sun going supernova.

  It all proved meaningless in the end, as the Daemon, because that’s what the Warp creature had to be, didn’t come towards us. Oh no, it flew straight up like a missile, bsting into the sky at a respectable fraction of the speed of light. It had no weight, no physical substance, just a twisted spirit and energy.

  My eyes widened as I calcuted where its current trajectory would lead it.

  “You motherfucker,” I cursed in frustrated disbelief. It was heading for the Sovereign. It suddenly made sense why it didn’t make a body for itself yet. The bastard wanted to possess my ship; they had just learned that the stuff I make could be twisted to serve their purposes by a suitably powerful Warp-user.

  Then my frustration and annoyance — sure, losing the ship would suck, but it wasn’t the end of the world — turned to icy dread when I finally recalled one teeny-tiny detail: Cathrine, my adorable little daughter who liked cospying as a catgirl, was onboard that ship.

  Along with two Tau, but I couldn’t give less of a shit about them at that moment.

  Liquid fury roiled in my veins, sending quakes through my Realm as I gritted my teeth. I was fortunately in a well-enough state of mind still to grab Selene as I Blinked to interpose myself in the Daemon’s path. I took a fraction of a nanosecond to pnt an info-packet in Selene’s mind about what was going on before I yeeted her back onto the Sovereign with a teleport and commanded my ship to deploy all its defences at once.

  Worst case, I would warp the Sovereign so it created an incorruptible shell around Selene and Cat, while the rest of it I would all change into Tyranids so a Shadow would mire the way of any naughty Daemon trying to get at them. In fact, I decided to go ahead with the first step, transforming a hundred metre radius sphere around Selene and Cat into alternating yers of Custodes flesh and my best starship grade carapace.

  Then I stared down at the incoming Daemon. It wasn’t slowing, though it started to take on a vaguely humanoid form with a pair of wings at its back, though only the silhouette was visible in its current state.

  No matter, the fucker was about to die screaming anyway for trying to get at my daughter. Though I’d be lying if I said the fact that it didn’t look even slightly wary in its approach didn’t make me at least a bit uneasy.

  P3t1