On the lower deck of the Shadow's Sovereignty, Battlefield Four, designated Section XXXVI.
Stevens, from Catachan, had requested the aid of the "Druid" Aevos Jovan to shape fifty deck sections into a world of deadly flora, reminiscent of his homeworld.
Stevens lay prone in the undergrowth, appraising his target.
As a full-fledged "Hunter" from Catachan, he understood the importance of careful observation.
To execute his hunting plan, he had traversed six deck sections, adapting the intelligence from his father and his encounter with a host on Indra-Sul to this far more powerful Progenitor within the source domain.
The "Druid" Aevos concealed himself within the spiritually reshaped Catachan soil.
The soil across the fifty deck sections had been personally transported by Aevos from Catachan itself.
Though plant growth had been hindered in ways he couldn't explain, it still grew faster than on Imperial agri-worlds like Rynn.
The "Druid" Aevos moved through the soil, his spiritual vision fixed on the Khrave Progenitor a hundred meters ahead.
The colorful radiance around the Progenitor suddenly dimmed and contracted; his spiritual aura grew patchy.
Bang, bang, bang...
In the thickets, trumpet-shaped flowers burst upward.
Countless barbed tendrils shot towards the withered form.
Catachan Ticklegrass.
One of the most common and deadliest subspecies of the Catachan barbed poison-vine, and the most adaptable.
Not reliant on Catachan's strange terrain, it thrives on worlds across the galaxy, constantly hunting prey.
Slap, slap, slap...
The highly corrosive chemical sap splashed against the Progenitor's psychic shield.
The colorful light rippled. The Khrave Progenitor scoffed.
"Shadows of Order, your foolish father has sent you to your death." The Progenitor's voice was like rustling papyrus, dry and papery.
"He made you face me because he fears us."
"You are the insect he discarded!"
"Heretic!" Stevens's obsidian eyes blazed with fury, but his Third Level Thelema mindstate kept his anger in check.
He retreated. He knew his position was compromised.
As he fell back, a telekinetic shockwave tore through the barbed tendrils, leaving them floating in the air.
White sap splattered, exploding into chemical smoke that mingled with the colorful psychic mist, thickening the fog across the deck.
Grey, fibrous particles drifted on the air.
A wisp settled on a Progenitor's tendril, unnoticed. The Progenitor's right arm swept, materializing a two-meter aetheric blade.
The "Conspirer," Stevens, raised both arms, his right hand conjuring two serpents of flame that twisted into a wall of fire.
Since witnessing Sanchez's mastery of flame on Indra-Sul, Stevens had honed his own skills, making significant progress.
The Warp Distortion tore through the air, striking the wall of fire.
Bang!
Sparks flew. The wall of fire twisted, flickering, but held.
The "Conspirer," Stevens, snapped his left middle finger. A rocket-flame shot at where the Progenitor's clawed foot would land.
Before entering the source domain, he had pre-planted temperature-sensitive traps.
Boom!
A pillar of searing flame erupted, coiling around the Progenitor's entire withered right leg.
A series of sharp cracks. The colorful light of his psychic shield dimmed from auroral brilliance to a faded rainbow.
"You think this trick will hold him until he comes to save you?"
The Progenitor's mockery rippled. He raised his left arm.
A bolt of psychic lightning tore through the mist.
Seeing the lightning flicker in mid-air, the Progenitor's tendrils twitched in disgust, sending out a psychic pulse.
"Nareth's tricks have had a strange effect on me."
"Kill him!"
The psychic pulse spread.
There was no response.
The Progenitor was stunned. He tried to sense the Khrave's mental network.
He could vaguely sense his own Splinter-Web, constantly battered by the deaths of his Khrave, but he could not sense any other mental networks.
Suddenly, Nareth's words echoed: "Section XXXVI is Battlefield Four."
'Battlefield Four?'
'Had I been isolated?'
'This battlefield was not so simple.'
The Progenitor focused his consciousness, scanning himself psychically. He found his aetheric power diminished, his mental perception impaired, even his body weakened.
He raised his left claw, grasping five of his tendrils, and wrenched.
Rip!
The severed tendrils' fluids fell upon his left claw, burning like fire.
He clenched, and aetheric light flared.
With a crack, flakes of withered flesh fell from his claw.
If he could kill the Shadows of Order in this battlefield, perhaps he could break whatever held him.
The Progenitor's clawed feet pounded the ground. He swung his arm, and a stream of aetheric flame shot forth.
The "Conspirer," Stevens, raised his hands, seven hundred and eighty streams of flame erupting.
His spirituality guided them, weaving and striking the psychic flame from multiple angles.
A series of sharp detonations; each explosion sent Stevens staggering back.
Bang, bang, bang...
Stevens's back hit the wall.
"Your end is here." The Progenitor took a step, his Warp Distortion descending.
"Soon, it will be your gene-father's turn."
The aetheric blade struck the wall, shattering it.
The shockwave hurled Stevens back.
The Progenitor raised his hand, a telekinetic hand slamming into the wall.
Boom!
The wall collapsed like an avalanche.
The Progenitor, without pausing, stepped through the flying debris, his psychic shield raised, entering the adjacent deck.
His clawed right foot touched the ground. He saw a flash of flame, which struck the deck between the Shadows of Order.
He glanced at the ground. It was vastly different from the plant-covered soil he had seen before.
Petrified organic matter formed jagged, saw-toothed structures, as if countless plants had died and hardened over millennia.
The flame fell upon the petrified ground. A fountain of crystal blades erupted, raining down.
Bang, bang, bang...
The crystal storm hammered against his psychic shield with a shriek.
The shield shattered. The shockwave scattered crystal shards.
The Progenitor's tendrils twitched. A shimmering glass grenade landed before him.
A piercing shriek. A rice-grain-sized, crystalline insect shot towards his tendrils.
The Progenitor focused his psychic power, clashing with the terrible Warp-brain worm.
Boom!
The supernatural collision erupted in the mental realm. In the blinding light, the Progenitor lost all awareness.
A syringe shot through the air, striking the stunned Progenitor.
His withered form collapsed, crashing into the rubble.
Stevens strode forward, addressing the Progenitor.
"You, who thought yourself so great, who devoured countless worlds, have fallen completely to my scheme."
Following his gene-father's command, he began to recount his plan to the captured Progenitor.
"The plan had two parts. The first was devised by Hasik Noyan-khan, Thibault, Porti, and myself."
"Father used himself as bait, luring you Progenitors to the lower deck..."
"The second part was our individual plans: to capture our assigned Khrave Progenitors alive, each in our own battlefield."
"Bold... I am... the hunter..." The Progenitor's voice was a crushed, papery rasp.
"Oh?" Stevens challenged. "But I captured you."
He nodded to Aevos Jovan, who had arrived at his side.
"Each of us prepared our battlefield in advance, shaping the environment to our plan."
"I modeled mine on Catachan... The several sections you passed through weren't just delay tactics. More importantly, they were slowly poisoning you."
"The plants you destroyed were hybrids of multiple species, not native Catachan flora."
"Once you were weakened enough to feel your body failing, you became impatient."
Stevens picked up a crystal shard. "This section of the battlefield is the only part I completed alone."
"You know, the splinter weed has another name."
"We Catachans prefer Devil's Fang. Only the strongest, or the most reckless, dare fight near them."
"Their wounds can easily tear through Terminator armor."
Stevens flicked his wrist, the shard falling. He drew a blood-red potion.
"Devil's Fang shattered your psychic shield. Then I used a forbidden 'Dark Age of Technology' weapon, a glass grenade."
"The Warp-brain worm paralyzed you, allowing me to fire the Chief Apothecary's anesthetic syringe..."
Stevens tilted his head back and drank the potion.
The world dissolved.
Grey Terminator armor encased him. A black axe blade gleamed with cold light.
"Listen, boy. My name is Amlodhi Skarssen Skarssensson, Wolf Lord of the 5th Great Company of the Space Wolves." Skarssen 's voice was cold as a killer's blade.
"Amlodhi Skarssen Skarssensson." Stevens's eyes turned iron-black, the words a low repetition.
The Catachan Fang materialized, its venomous blade spinning.
Bang!
A head fell.
"I am no longer the weakling you could so easily kill!"
Moments later, having defeated one enemy after another in the illusions, Stevens, now a "Reaper," spoke to Aevos.
"I have completed my Lord's task. It is time to grant you death."
His eyes iron-black, he focused on the Progenitor's tendrils, a flame coalescing on his fingertip.
Bang, bang, bang!
Three flame-bullets struck the Progenitor's tendrils.
The Progenitor, utterly defenseless, died under the "Reaper's" strikes.
At the center of the lower deck, Nareth had kept a portion of his consciousness focused on the void, directing the "linked" Jokaeros to maintain the Shadow's Sovereignty's Jokaeron Force Field.
He sensed the sections under fire falling into a prolonged silence.
Around him, the Khrave he had not slain collapsed.
His consciousness spread. The Khrave web-ships, once blazing with light, dimmed like extinguished neon.
The death of each Progenitor, like burning promethium, triggered the deaths of their Khrave.
The same occurred in the material world.
The Khrave's Warp Distortions shattered and vanished. Their flickering micro-teleports ceased. They collapsed.
The twenty-kilometer-long needle-ships fell silent, like the spider-tombs of the void.
Death-screams echoed through the six systems of the Ghoul Stars and the source domain.
'Thirty-eight have advanced to "Reaper." Nine more remain...' As Nareth pondered, his gaze sharpened.
He noticed that in Battlefield Forty-One, a "Conspirer's" plan had failed. The Progenitor had broken through the intelligent machines' cordon and was charging the Shadows of Order.
"Nareth, your sons have killed my kin." The Khrave Progenitor's tendrils twitched in disbelief.
"How... is it possible?" The Progenitor who had once fought Angron looked around, seeing Khrave dying in droves, screaming.
In the strange silence, Nareth had remained hovering, not slaying the four Progenitors. He had kept them as reserves, to ensure the "Conspirer" Captains would not fail.
Now, he had to end this quickly, to save his son.
The "Mentor of Disorder," Nareth, looked at the four approaching Progenitors.
'The Lion couldn't handle three Progenitors. I can kill four in just...'
....
If you enjoy the story, my p@treon is 30 chapters ahead.
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