The Warp.
Within the palace of the Chaos God Slaanesh.
Though still in a state of half-slumber, the chamber was already saturated with overwhelming tides of depravity.
Most of these emotions came from the Aeldari:
Madness, cruelty, indulgence, sadism…
As their species sank ever deeper into decadence, the flood of emotions stirred Slaanesh into greater wakefulness.
Its twisted form was shifting from a half-illusory state into a more tangible reality.
Born of the future, it was steadily syncing with the present.
Its will, once faint and dormant, now began to stir with flickers of power.
That power radiated outward like waves of distortion, rewriting time and space in its vicinity.
Like an overflowing liquid, those ripples seeped from Slaanesh's domain, spreading across the Warp.
And like ink dissolving into water, the further they traveled, the more they were diluted by the roiling tides of Warp energy.
But even in that weakened state, they became something else—
A raging, ever-growing Warp Storm.
The storm mirrored Slaanesh's revival: as Its power waxed, the storm intensified.
Everything caught within it would be consumed—ripped apart into fragments, or hurled into some unknown place.
Perhaps across the farthest edge of the galaxy…
Perhaps to a random point in the distant past…
Or perhaps flung into a far-off, unknowable future.
Once swallowed, escape was all but impossible.
...
At the same time.
"Five… four… three… two… one!"
As the countdown ended, under countless watching eyes, the Eternal Soul fired its thrusters, blue flames trailing as it left the space dock.
A ripple of energy shimmered—and the great vessel plunged into the Warp.
Inside, reports flowed across the command screens:
[Warp fluctuation: stable]
[No hostile entities detected]
[Internal systems: nominal]
Captain Itt scanned the readings carefully, confirmed them one by one, then gave his command:
"Activate the Temporal Jump Drive."
The drive, embedded within the ship's Warp engines, roared like a furnace.
Rivers of plasma hotter than the cores of suns surged through its conduits, cascading into a chain of controlled reactions.
Unleashed, that energy could have annihilated half a star system in an instant.
But under the precise designs of Federation AIs and cyborg engineers, it was harnessed.
From the cascade rose a peculiar vibration—linking with one of the Warp's most dangerous traits:
Temporal Instability.
It was this anomaly that made time inside the Warp flow differently than in realspace.
One second here could mean centuries beyond.
A traveler entering in the year 2020 might step out to witness the floodworks of Yu the Great in 2020 BC—or emerge in the 2020th century, dissected by future humans as a primitive specimen.
The Temporal Jump Drive was designed to exploit this very quirk.
Harnessing the Warp's chaos of time, the Federation hoped to achieve temporal travel with minimal energy cost.
And so, as the Eternal Soul synced with that aspect of the Warp, it slipped into a higher-dimensional state—
The vast hull fading translucent, shedding its three-dimensional shell, poised to ride the timestream itself.
If all went as planned, the vessel would traverse the corridor and emerge days earlier, back in realspace.
But then—
The Warp Storm, born of Slaanesh's awakening, swept into their path.
Driven by malice, it surged straight over the Eternal Soul.
The great warship, though half-anchored in higher dimensions, was still like a fragile canoe caught in a cosmic whirlpool.
With no power to resist, it was dragged into the storm.
The carefully charted time jump shattered—replaced by a chaotic plunge into the turbulent currents of temporal flux.
The ship was hurled past its intended destination, spinning further into the unknown, toward some distant and unpredictable epoch.
Inside the Eternal Soul.
The storm shook the vessel violently.
Bulkheads rattled, systems sparked, and crew members were tossed about like ragdolls.
Had they not been genetically engineered—humans of the Golden Age, each as strong as Captain America—the turbulence alone would have killed them.
At the center of the chaos, Captain Itt braced himself. After several moments, he steadied, forcing his body to adjust, then barked:
"Status report!"
Senna's voice replied quickly:
"Warp Storm impact severe. External armor compromised: sixty-six percent. Three main batteries offline. Structural stress critical—"
Itt's face tightened, his jaw twitching.
"And our position?"
A pause.
Then Senna, with uncharacteristic hesitation, answered:
"…We remain within the temporal corridor, but the destination is unknown. We may emerge in any place… at any time."
Itt smacked his forehead with a groan.
For a moment, his mind went blank.
Seeing his expression darken, Senna felt a strange turbulence in her own systems. For the first time, her simulated emotions tangled with something deeper.
Guiding her humanoid drone, she stepped close and gently embraced him.
"Captain," she whispered, "wherever we end up… I will stay with you."
The tension in his face eased.
And so, carried like a runaway bull, the Eternal Soul hurtled deeper through the storm—its temporal voyage spiraling into an unknown future.
No one could guess when… or where… it would finally stop.
....
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