"Nia is a cursed monster."
That was how most people, other than her parents, had described her for as long as she could remember.
For some reason, her very existence made others feel disgust.
Even her gentlest words would provoke the fiercest irritation and loathing in whoever heard them.
Because of that, people kept their distance from Nia and called her a cursed freak.
And watching others suffer because of her, watching them hate her, she eventually began to hate her own voice as well.
She decided that she would never speak again, and would instead live out her cursed life in silence.
It was precisely that silent state of mind that let her remain soundless in the pitch-black cellar, trembling as blood dripped down from above and soaked her body while she listened in terror to her mother's screams.
In the freezing darkness of that cellar, she fell into confused thought.
Did her existence really have any meaning?
If everyone feared and rejected her, then after the death of the only parents who had ever loved her, was there any point in continuing to live?
Maybe she should just die there in the cellar. Maybe that was how her cursed life ought to end.
That was what she thought.
The thought of death wrapped around her like creeping vines, draining her strength while filling her with a suffocating dizziness.
Yet just as she had prepared herself to die alone in the corner, someone opened the sealed cellar door.
Warm sunlight drove away the cold and darkness of the cellar, and along with that sunlight, a strong hand and a pair of shining eyes entered her world.
That blazing light burned in the other's eyes. Vast as the stars and yet fierce as a spark of survival, it set fire to the death-laden vines around Nia.
And just as she instinctively reached toward that hand, she vaguely saw, upon the tall figure bathed in light, the lingering black mist that would not go away.
It was filled with intense ominousness, twisting and changing in inhuman shrieks, forming several revolting and grotesque shadows.
They seemed to laugh wildly, and also seemed to tear at and struggle against one another.
With each motion they made, that ill-omened black mist kept seeping into the body that should have been comforting, splashing strange dark green ripples across the surface, carrying a thick stench.
Yet what felt strange to her was that whenever she drew close to that person, those shadows would fade away under silent, furious screams.
She did not know what that meant.
But she knew one thing.
She had helped the person who had pulled her back out of the darkness.
Her existence had meaning.
...
Gaia looked with some helplessness at Nia, who always liked staying close to her.
For some reason, the child kept clinging to her.
She had even given up the chance to flee into the hive city and instead followed them onto the dangerous road to the front lines.
Although Nia's proximity caused Gaia pain, when she thought of the child's miserable childhood, so similar to her own, and of the cursed life she had endured as an Untouchable, Gaia simply could not bring herself to harden her heart enough to drive her away.
"Still... when we fight the greenskins later, maybe Nia's power can be used..."
She glanced at Nia, who was clutching the index finger of her left hand, and began recalling the War of the Beast, the great conflict that had nearly overturned the Imperium of Man.
After the Emperor's greatest and most unfilial son, Horus, led that grand betrayal, the Imperium of Man had spiraled into decline.
The age of the Primarchs came to an end, and the High Lords' Council of Twelve, drowning in their own games of power, took control of the Imperium's future.
And while the High Lords indulged themselves in childish struggles for power on Terra, six of the biggest, greenest, most Waaagh!-filled Ork bosses appeared. These mighty beings were known as Warbosses.
The six Warbosses launched the Ork version of a Great Crusade and fought their way all the way to Holy Terra.
At the very moment when the fate of the Imperium hung as uncertain as a leaf in the wind, humanity discovered that Untouchables could cause the Orks' Waaagh! network to short-circuit and explode.
After all, Waaagh! energy was essentially just psychic power exclusive to greenskins.
Through the Sisters of Silence, all of them Untouchables, the Imperium managed to decapitate the Warbosses and thus bring the War of the Beast to an end.
And Nia, as an Untouchable, though still unable to fully control her own power, was already capable of shorting out the greenskins' Waaagh! network.
But that course of action was far too dangerous.
Unless it became absolutely necessary, Gaia would never want Nia exposed to such risk.
"Once we've informed the Astra Militarum about the Cult of Gluttony, I'll have them arrange somewhere safe for Nia."
That was what she thought.
...
As shrill screams cut across the sky, terrifying blasts continued exploding over the wide plain.
Within those blazing flashes, suffocating smoke drifted upward, blotting out the heavens and spreading immense terror across every warrior still fighting.
Ever since they had answered the distress signal from this planet's governor and arrived here, how long had they been fighting?
Ten days? A month? Or even longer?
Under the deafening bombardment, the war cries of the Orks and the shouts of humanity mixed together, becoming the grand soundtrack of this vast stage play, a grinding funeral song for the lives constantly being snuffed out.
A veteran whose flak armor was stained with layer after layer of mottled blood watched in despair as the comrade beside him was blown into pieces by the thick bullets of an Ork.
He breathed in the hopeless gunpowder smoke mixed with the rot-stench of the battlefield's corpses and looked ahead with death already in his heart, toward the hideous alien charging through the haze.
"WAAAAAGH!"
As the creature raised its crude battle axe high, he skillfully lifted the muzzle of his lasgun and aimed straight at the open mouth of the hateful greenskin.
From experience, he knew that if he could fire through its mouth and destroy its central nervous system, it would drop instantly.
At that critical instant, driven by the muscle memory of countless battles, he pulled the trigger with force before the Ork's axe could fall.
Click. Click.
Yet all he got in return was the empty sound of a lasgun with no charge left.
In despair, he slowly closed his eyes.
Emperor... we fought to the death...
But why, even at the moment of death, have we still not seen reinforcements from this planet?
Bang!
A tremendous crash rang out.
Yet the death he expected never came.
He opened his eyes and saw that through the drifting smoke, a tall and powerfully shaped figure had stepped in front of him, blocking the Ork's axe with a warhammer in hand.
A gentle, androgynous voice came from that reassuring back.
"Go somewhere safe and rest up. Leave the hard targets to me."
Then, under the veteran's dazzled stare, that figure moved with unbelievable speed and a beautiful tension in every motion, smashing the huge greenskin, whose physical strength far surpassed that of a normal human, into another corpse beneath her hammer in the blink of an eye.
"Oh, right. Here, take this."
Gaia turned back and smiled lightly at the dutiful old veteran, taking a lasgun power pack from her belt and handing it to him.
"Occupational habit. Picked it up on the way."
(End of Chapter)
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