Aleya was making her way through the ship as fast as she could. But the walls had turned to liquid and were actively obstructing her, making it harder. Her heart was pumping quickly.
There were strange gurgling sounds and echoes from the bilges below her, distorted and shrieking.
For a moment, she thought that this must have been what the Warp sounded like, some terrible snapshot into an infinity of agonised and corrupted souls and energy.
The Cadamara bucked again and was thrown off its axis. Inner panels punched inwards, power lines exploded, armourglass suddenly frosted and morphed into abominations.
Fresh alarms were going off. The status panel above her flashed runes, indicating that they were about to tumble back into realspace, when the most powerful and destructive hit impacted with the Cadamara.
The alarms blared even louder now, and they were forcefully stopped from exiting the Warp by something powerful.
Aleya pushed herself further, rushing as fast as she could to reach the command deck and Gerhard or Erefan to tell them to get them out of there. This was the horror you didn't want to experience when inside the Warp. And here she was, experiencing it.
Seeing anything was hard, as the lights had gone out and only the sparse emergency red lights remained.
...
Suddenly, Aleya stopped.
Right in front of her stood a crew member. He was a male who had been impaled on the metamorphosed wall behind him. Blood ran down his body and onto the floor.
But that wasn't what made her stop.
It was that wide grin.
It was so wide, in fact, that it tore the edges of his mouth. Every flash of the lights and the subsequent drowning in the darkness only made that disturbing smile bigger and darker.
He reached up to his mouth and pushed a hand inside, grabbed his tongue and began to pull like a lunatic.
Aleya's hand clenched over the handle of her sword. Something long, black, and disgusting came out, continuing to spill onto the ground. Aleya grabbed her flamer and pulled the trigger.
"AAAAAHHHHHHHHH..."
The man screamed and writhed, shaking in tremendous pain as the flames burned away at his body. His clothes caught fire and burst into flames, turning his skin black in seconds.
And yet, he wasn't dying just as fast as he was supposed to. Something oily and black curled up in the flames, preparing for a strike.
"AAAHHHH" "AAAHHHH" "OOOAAAAA!!"
Dozens of screams and shouts could be heard from everywhere at once. And yet, they seemed not to be close.
Aleya threw her flamer away and swung the Executioner Greatsword with both hands. She lashed out, severing one of the tentacles, then spun around to plunge her blade into the polyp of flesh at its heart.
The creature shrieked and flailed its tentacles around, trying to hit her and damage her in some way. But Aleya was deep in the combat-trance, moving faster than any of the normal humans on the ship and swinging her blade through the air with more power than she should have been able to.
This was a shedim, as they called it, a Warp denizen of the Ruinous Powers. She thought it was supposed to be impossible to get in. How did it get in? The Geller field should have protected them.
She smelled rotting human flesh as she carved it open. The new weapon her sisters had gifted her proved incredibly effective.
~Anathema psykana...~
~All alone? Alone out here? I will relish turn--~
Aleya didn't care and plunged her blade into the creature's heart, affecting it with the special property of the Greatblade and destroying it fully.
~AaaaaaAAAAAaaaAAA~
With a final loud shriek, it finally ceased to exist.
...
Aleya heaved, her lungs burning from the toxic gas released by the shedim. She looked at the ground where the creature had been just a moment before. Then she turned around and pushed herself to reach the deck as fast as possible.
.
The Cadamara was no longer a machine of steel as it had been created. It had become a fever dream of the Architect of Fate. Corridors stretched into impossible lengths, the bulkheads weeping rainbowy colours that hissed a thousand lies.
Through this shifting madness, Lencillus moved like a golden flash.
The Allarus Pattern Terminator Armour provides its wearer with an exceptional range of movement and near-unencumbered speed, augmented strength and resilience, and the survivability to stride unharmed from the blast of a macro-cannon shell.
Needless to say, the Custodian was a blur of impossible speed. To a mortal, he would be invisible; to the Daemons, he was the apocalypse, their definite end.
A pack of Screamers, daemons, drifted through a bulkhead, their serrated fins vibrating to slice through space. Lencillus didn't break stride. He fired his Guardian Spear, the bolter shells detonating inside the spear's head, turning it into a cloud of blue sparks.
As the others dove, he spun, the legendary grade power blade of his spear carving a blue arc through the air, with surreal speed. The Screamers were erased, their ephemeral forms unable to withstand the perfected lethality of a Custodian Demon-Slayer.
Lencillus reached the primary junction leading to the lower decks. There, amidst a pile of dissolving Blue Horrors and shattered deck plating, he found Kaelen and Liora. The two Sisters of Silence were back-to-back, their Executioner Greatblades rising and falling in a rhythmic, silent dance of death, and the flamer burning those evil packs of energy to dust.
Their Blank-pockets created a small sanctuary of "void" space, a bubble where the air stopped screaming, and the floor stopped morphing into what it shouldn't.
'The generator,' Kaelen signed sharply as Lencillus skidded to a halt beside them, the magnetic clamps of his boots sparking against the deck.
'Hans is trapped. Hordes of shedim will confront the Tech Priest. If the Gellar field dies fully, we are lost.'
Lencillus inclined his plumed helm. His voice, amplified by the Allarus plate's vox-grille, still sounded calm and respectful. He had the situation under control.
"Save the generator. Save Hans. I shall go to the bridge. Gerhard is a beacon, one way or the other, and if he falls, we will all not get out of the Immaterium."
Liora and Kaelen nodded. Without a word, the two Sisters vanished into the darkness of the service shafts, their presence disappearing like a candle in the Warp. Their equipment and weaponry were what kept them effective and ridiculously lethal in this situation. If they hadn't been equipped with them, they would most likely already be dead and overwhelmed.
Lencillus knew that.
He turned toward the Command Deck, but the Cadamara revolted again. The corridor ahead morphed.
The floor buckled upward, turning into a vertical wall of teeth and pulsing blue veins. The ceiling fell away into a bottomless pit of swirling stars. Tzeentchian architecture was a puzzle designed to break the mind, but the Custodian's mind was a fortress. He knew that this wasn't real, so he ignored it.
"Trickery," Lencillus said.
He activated the Adrathic Destructor placed on his left arm. A special weapon created by Gerhard and upgraded to legendary grade.
Thump-thump-thump.
The disintegration-bursts shattered the illusion, as each denizen was killed right away. But as the smoke cleared, the way was still obstructed.
What stood before Lencillus was known as a Fluxmaster hovering on a Disc of Tzeentch.
~WhaT do We havE heRE?~
This was a Herald of the Changer of Ways, and he shrieked, its head babbling contradictory prophecies as it began to weave a web of blue fire across the only remaining walkway. The bridge was only a few hundred meters away, but in this distorted reality, it might as well have been on the other side of the galaxy.
"Gerhard," Lencillus whispered, his grip tightening on his spear. "Give me a moment. I have to deal with this pest vermin."
He charged straight through the heart of the magical inferno, his golden armour reflecting the Warp-fire thanks to Auramite properties and the insane stats of the Gamer system, as he prepared to tear the path open by force.
.
The Command Deck of the Cadevara had become a kaleidoscope of fractured unreality as the Warp showed part of its true colours. From the shadows of the Warp near the vaulted ceiling, a single eye watched. Outside, floating an incalculable distance away, it presented itself as gangly and feathered, perched atop a gargoyle like a vulture of the soul.
It tapped its staff against the energy below, and the very air shuddered.
"Go," it hissed, its voice like the rustling of parchment.
A dozen Pink Horrors materialised, not with a malicious roar, but with a chorus of ecstatic, high-pitched giggles. It was still malicious, of course...
Pink Horror – Lv.42
|HP: 6,500/6,500
|MP: 2,500
|Horrors are the writhing Lesser Daemons of Tzeentch, fashioned from raw warpstuff and used as slaves by the Lords of Change. Individually moderate, but extremely difficult to destroy due to its mutable form and splitting nature.
| They are cheerful, madly babbling with a madly happy demeanour… just overall mad.
STR: 50
VIT: 80
INT: 65
WIS: 85
---
They were disgusting heaps of shifting, rubbery muscle, their skins a vibrant, neon pink that released chaos energy into the air. They moved with a manic, jolly energy, hurrying across the ceiling, the floor and control consoles, leaving trails of thick pink smoke that smelled of hallucinogens and had the same effect.
Gerhard wasted no time creating the [Psionic Mana Shield] around himself and Captain Erefan.
"Happy! Happy! Oh, the change is coming!" a Pink Horror shrieked, its voice a creak, joyful whistle.
It clapped its many-jointed limbs, and from its palms burst a Bolt of Change. This wasn't your usual promethium fire of a flamer; this was a twisting, randomly changing spear of multicoloured energy. The large number of these Pink Horrors attacked all those present at random. One such bolt struck a nearby servitor. The machine underwent a horrific mutation. Its metallic chassis softened and bloomed into a cluster of weeping glass flowers that shrieked in an inhuman voice.
Gerhard's [Danger Sense] was going crazy and warning him of all the attacks, which seemed to arrive from all sides at once. It wasn't just the Horrors. The scheming Lord had brought some heavy hitters.
From the shadows behind the Horrors, three Flamers of Tzeentch and even an Exalted Flamer pulled themselves into the vessel.
Exalted Flamer of Tzeentch – Lv.62
|HP: 14,000/14,000
|MP: 6,500
|A powerful Lesser daemon of living warp-fire, capable of unleashing devastating magical infernos that ignore conventional defences and warp reality itself.
STR: 85
VIT: 100
DEX: 75
INT: 95
WIS: 120
---
They were tubular nightmares of melting flesh and gaping maws, their many arms spewing Warp Flames. This sorcerous fire dissolved the deck plating into nothingness, leaving yawning holes in the ship's secondary shafts, giving way for the next group.
And as if on cue, a pair of Screamers soared through the openings in the bulkheads, their razor-sharp fins glowing with blue power to slice through the very souls of their victims.
Screamer of Tzeentch – Lv.50
|HP: 8,000/8,000
|MP: 1,200
|A swift daemonic predator that slices through armour and reality alike. They are often referred to as Sky-sharks and are the Daemonic Beasts of Tzeentch. They soar through the Warp in groups in search of souls.
---
Herald of Tzeentch – Lv.58
|HP: 13,500/13,500
|MP: 6,000
|The most powerful and magically gifted Horrors. These beings are the most intelligent and independent of the Pink Horrors, capable of using their sorcery forcefully enough to blast an opponent into oblivion or weave cunning illusions.
STR: 75
VIT: 95
DEX: 80
INT: 140
WIS: 150
---
As the first pack of Horrors and Heralds lunged, Gerhard didn't hold back in the slightest. He activated the [Mana Reinforcement] and [Blessing of Gork and Mork] activated automatically, since he was in battle.
His stats shot through the roof, and he got to work.
Gerhard became a blur as he dodged the attacks, which managed to come dangerously close to him. The shield spell was still activated and levelled up massively, as it was under such duress. He blinked across the bridge.
With a flick of his wrist, he unleashed [Mana Bullet]. At his current INT level, these were concentrated lances of pure Mana that punched through the Warp-forms of the Horrors before they could even finish a giggle.
BBRROOOOOOOOMMMM---
[Pink Horrors defeated] x20
[+2,400,000 EXP]
The Exalted Flamer barely had time to gape and fire his Warp pyromaniac at the bullets before a hail of them shredded its twisted body into evaporating mist.
[Exalted Flamer defeated]
[+380,000 EXP]