P3t1 NOTE: Tbh I don't know how I feel about this chapter, a lot of it feels like it lacks substance or meaning but since I already wrote it I might as well post it and see how y'all like it. Came out to be 3200 words so a rather long one, hope you'll enjoy it. Also, felt like this would be the perfect theme for this chapter: Dawn of War 3 - Ork Waaagh Banner Music Extended - WAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!
I sat still as a statue in the middle of this seemingly endless hallway; I knew by now that it was only an illusion and with every kilometer came an intersection where we could choose from three directions to continue on. Sometimes the hallways were pristine and discarded tools that were used to carve the intricate markings left behind on the walls were still visible. Other times, — like this, for example, — the hallways were like the first one we entered. Derelict and overgrown nature reclaimed these buildings. Only lush bushes and crawling vines remained after splitting and crumbling stones and carvings. I glanced around me. Selene slept with her back facing the wall, and I noticed her eyes trembling, threatening to snap open whenever Val shifted in his uncaring slumber. Speaking of our resident Eldar, he slept like a log and shifted around in his sleep quite a lot; I was weirded out by the dichotomy of the current snoring Eldar and the dignified Psyker I saw hours ago. Zedev was weird, as always. I could only tell from the calmness of his aura whether he was actually sleeping with his red eye still flickering ominously and his mechadendrites moving from time to time. Still, he was resting by the looks of it. A surge of bio-energy quickly banished any fatigue that might have seeped into me. I didn't miss sleeping; I had so much to think about, to work out and consider. It felt like sleeping would be a waste of precious time even if I let the rest of my mind cores continue working as the main one slipped into a dreamless sleep. Yes, dreamless, as even if I fell asleep I never dreamed anymore. Inhaling deeply, I let the dusty air enter my lungs. I didn't exhale but let out tiny tendrils of my eldritch flesh inside of my lung and pulled in the air into them. I couldn't gain any bio-energy out of inorganic matter like air, but even still I could absorb it and store it inside my body with that weird phasing thingy, and like with organic matter, I could instinctively analyze it. Not that I need that part of my power kit to know that fucking Orks are creeping around us. Bio-energy seeped into me from the absorbed air as the fungal spores of the orkoid plague got broken down and transmuted into energy. I strained my ears and let a few locks of my hair shift into eldritch flesh. I felt the vibrations going through the air through the white skin. Listening intently, I 'heard' them then. "Oi, can't we just go an beat em up?" "You stupid git, boss'll beat youz stupid skull to mush if you go grumpin before he gives the signal." "Grrrrrrr," *screeech* "Oi, I need thoze gretchin to gives me refillz," "what you gona do bout it?" "Smash yourz skull in, thatz what." What followed was a few distant gunshots and flesh meeting something hard. The illusions between hallways might prevent me from seeing, but hearing was another thing and these dumb mushrooms didn't make hearing them too hard. I sighed as I stood up. I first carefully walked over to Selene and reached to shake her shoulders. Her eyes flew open and her hand snapped to her hip when my hand was ten centimeters from her body. "Good morning," I whispered, "we have company." "R-right," she said as her eyes held mine, slowly comprehension dawned on her drowsy mind and she silently climbed to her feet, "can you change this back please?" "Sure," I smiled and with a telepathic command, her armor turned back from looking like an oversized onesie to actual armor. She nodded at me as she went over her fancy piston and the one remaining plasma rifle we had. Hell-pistol, I think that's what she called it. I think I remember that from lore, but I'm not sure what it did. "Zedev?" I whispered, not bothering to wake him as delicately as I did with Selene, the tin can already had half of his mind awake by now from the feel of his aura but with my whisper, the rest also slowly booted up. "I am awake. I detect Greenskin presence in our vicinity. Numbers could range from a dozen to a hundred. Not including lesser Greenskins." "Yep," I nodded as I walked over to Valenith, "wake up already. How did you survive like this?" I mused in a silent whisper as I kicked his leg. He just turned over in his sleep. My eyes twitched a bit as I stepped on his palm and started putting weight on his fingers. "WHAT?" he jumped up and I stepped off of his arm, "oh." "Well, now they know we are awake," I shrugged. A hundred orcs couldn't be too bad compared to a Lord of Change or a Hive Tyrant. It didn't bother me much. This would be an excellent test run for Selene in her new armor and to see how good Valenith actually is. It was undoubtedly filling me with a bit of excitement to see an actual Eldar in action; I had their instincts and a perfect replica of their bodies, but even both combined shouldn't be able to hold a candle to an Eldar that had these since birth and had centuries to obsessively hone his skills. "You stupid git, whoz gonna tell the boss we got noticed with us beat up as we iz?" I heard one orc say in the distance, it didn't get an answer from the presumably very dead other orc. "Alright," I rolled my shoulders, "is everyone ready to kill some orcs?" "Affirmative." I heard many somethings whirl up inside of Zedev's large body as he brandished his oversized War-Axe and the many mechadendrites ending in an array of dangerous-looking weaponry. I even caught one with an Auspecs which should be some sort of multi-purpose scanner they used for absolutely everything in the Imperium, must be from an STC then. "Yes," I caught a dangerous glint in Valenith's eye as he glanced both ways, his pointy ears probably catching some of the same things I was hearing. Eldar and the Greenskin have been murdering each other in sight for the last sixty million years. Crazy shit, where do they get all the energy from? I, of course, knew it wasn't a question of energy. Orcs had the equivalent of an orgasm every time they pulled the trigger, and the Eldar really didn't like the ugly fuckers infesting their maiden worlds. The Old One made both of their species to be weapons against the Necrons and out of either worry or simple fracturing of their faction, the two species inherently hated each other. There was no negotiating with the Orks. I snorted at that. Only the Tau were dumb enough to negotiate and be at peace with the Orks, Orks lived for war, they literally starved and devolved if they weren't in a 'good grumpin' now and then. I turned my head to the right and narrowed my eyes in the opposite direction of where I heard the two orcs. The ground trembled as large bipedal beings walked with unorganized footsteps. I listened, I breathed. Bio-energy trickled in quicker and quicker as the ever denser fungal spores got absorbed inside my lungs. I heard the disorganized shouts of a hundred orcs coming not from just one side but both. "Around fifty on either side." my voice was steady and I held myself up confidently as my narrowed eyes snapped from side to side, scanning for the first ugly fucker to step through the illusion, "Selene, do you want another weapon? I'm not sure your one can fire fast enough to be useful." "What do you have in mind?" she grimaced as she undoubtedly understood that whatever I gave her would be the same type as her armor: organic. "Well," I quickly scanned through my list of symbiotic Tyranid weaponry that I could fit onto Selene's armor, "I'd recommend either a Deathspitter, a Devourer, or some sort of Barbed Strangler." "I have no idea what those are," she pulled her eyebrows into a frown, "what'd you choose?" "The Devourer, even the Orkcs need their brains," I nodded, "Just don't look at what you are firing." "I've been in the Imperial Guard," she looked at me dubiously, "I think I can handle your bio-weapon." "Oooookay," I shrugged, "I'm covering your head too, by the way, looking pretty doesn't trump having your head protected." "Sure, Thanks." With a simple command, the armor expanded and flowed over her head, tucking the loose strands of her hair inside before hardening into an impregnable shell. I spared a brief glance at her fully covered form and had the urge to shake my head in disappointment; she looked almost like a female mannequin, with no painting or even the tiniest lick of artistic touch on the armor, only a belt at the waist to hold her weapons. It'd have to be fixed later as her current appearance is uncomfortable to be around. Look at the eldritch space horror talking about making people uncomfortable by looking weird. "They come," Valenith said, his staff held at the ready. Zedev's weapons flared up, ready to shoot at the moment as he went through a quick series of motions that I think were meant to check for the range of movement in his many limbs. Weird, but who isn't in this galaxy? With a thought, a Devourer formed on Selene's right hand and connected to a newly created nerve ending in her armor. "Try it out," I pointed towards the faraway intersection, "aim it and 'will' it to shoot. Just imagine wanting to shoot and it will comply." I stepped to the side as she raised the nightmare-inducing weapon; I waited for a few seconds and just as I was doubting whether she could fire it, a swarm of flesh-eating worms flew by my face at supersonic speeds; they splattered against the ground a hundred meters away and I could hear the stone sizzling under the potent acid carried in the disgusting little things. "It's more of a shotgun than a precision rifle like your other ones, but I'm sure you'll manage," I threw her a thumbs up. "This thing is disturbing," her voice came out muffled and I once heard it because I put some hearing nerves inside of her helmet. "That is the purpose. Fear is a superb weapon," I shrugged, "though I don't think it will work on our current enemies." "Psychological warfare capable of affecting the Greenskins needs to be extreme. The only way is to make them dislike fighting you as an enemy." "I'm not sure we can manage that," I shrugged, "I think only the old Aeldari Empire, the Necrons and one of your Primarchs ever made an orc dislike fighting them." Both of my human companions were clearly interested in the last part, but I refused to elaborate. I'm so mysterious and cool. I saw the first Ork shimmer into existence a good two kilometers away from us, these hallways didn't curve like a planet and the air was clear, meaning I didn't have any trouble watching the bunch of them walk out of nothing like a disorganized mob as they jogged towards us in disheveled looking armor and far too large weapons that looked like a kid had thrown them together from a bunch of scraps with a stolen welder. "They are kinda far still," I frowned, "can any of you hit them from this far?" "I could but it wouldn't be efficient," said Val, his hawkish eyes focused solely on the Green tide approaching us from the left, "I'm more used to fighting with enemies less than five hundred meters away from me." "Alright," as I was turning, I noticed Selene raising her hellpistol, I watched curiously as she pulled the trigger. A beam of crimson light flashed between the barrel and the incoming Orcs and I saw three of them that stood in a line fall over. I couldn't see any wounds at this distance, so I let a bit of bio-energy trickle into my eyes and with that, I noticed a finger-sized hole drilled through the first corpse. The orcs looked between the three dead orcs and us collectively before they burst into cheers. Then they started rushing at us not with some idea of vengeance filling their limited minds, but like a pack of starving dogs that have just been thrown a bone. Orks. "Well, that worked," I mused, "at riling them up, that is." "I did kill three," I heard Selene say awkwardly as she put away her steaming pistol with one hand. I saw Val tense a bit at the resounding war cries now echoing through the decrepit hall. Zedev was still as the crumbling statues around us and I stood lazily in the middle of this group, keeping my eyes out for anything suspicious. Despite being disgustingly overpowered, nothing in this life was easy for me so far. The Lictor was close to digesting me instead of the other way around, and the annoying bird demon could have whooped my ass if it wasn't so absorbed in being weird. While I severely messed up the Tyranids, all of Selene's remaining Shadows and Zedev's goons were gone now. I don't believe fate is handing me a free meal, what it's gonna be? I've been feeling a touch … fidgety since the Orks came into view and wasn't the good sort you got from excitement, I felt like something was going to go wrong. My question was ignored as the Orcs finally got inside the range where I felt confident in hitting them without wasting too much energy. Still, I held back as I wanted to try something, just throwing Eldritch Blasts and Chaining Bio-Lightnings wouldn't help me grow as a Psyker. Telepathy was out as my enemies were Orks, I didn't want to get entangled in their weird hive-mind-like WAAAAAAGGGHH!!!! thing. That left Illusions, Telekinesis and what? Biomancy? There should be other biomancy 'spells' besides bio-lightning. Let's see what happens if I try this. I collected a small bit of soul energy and condensed it into an orb the size of my fingertips; I watched it float a few centimeters above my palm as I concentrated on filling it with intent and instructions. Intent was like fuel, the energy was more potent, the stronger the Intent I gave it. It'd still fulfill my wishes as soon as I thought them up but there was a difference in weight, a whim might be fulfilled if nothing opposes it but with realspace and its annoying laws getting in the way, wishes were hardly weighty enough to cause much of an effect. The other important factor I found was Instructions. Even if I had all the willpower in the world and an abundance of energy, if my Instructions were lacking, my spells would be nothing more than blunt and imprecise. Instructions were like the code of a program, the solution to a problem beyond 'more power'. Well, that's a complicated ass description. The important thing is, for that Orks head to erupt I have to Want it to erupt and tell my little orb of energy how to accomplish that. Easy enough. 'Go' The orb shot off and smashed into the first Orc a moment later, the overgrown fungus staggered as the energy sapped his vitality and withered his cells. I watched intently as he fell to his knees a second later before his eyes and ears started bleeding. *pop* his skull fractured and exploded through his skull as the rapidly growing tumor my spell made with all the sapped vitality painted the other Orcs in blood and brain matter. It's slow, but it does its job, and it's efficient. I'm barely using my own energy for it, though firing that off a lot could get mentally exhausting. Biomancy tended to work that way, detailed instructions and little energy cost. "Interesting," Val murmured, "Was that a self-made spell?" "Yeah," I nodded, my pride getting the better of me as my spine straightened, "I just came up with it." "I assumed you focused on biomancy from your … other shows of powers." "It comes more easily. I suppose others would need extensive studying to achieve this?" "Indeed," he nodded, "to understand how to break something with the least resistance and energy wasted, one must know how to build it. A body is no different." "What do you specialize in?" "Precise mass murder," his lips quirked upwards, "observe." I felt repulsive energy flow into him and crawl up into his staff where it condensed into a flickering orb that resembled electricity, but I knew better, that was pure Warp energy. He gently tilted his staff forward and dozens of bolts of lightning arced out of it. They latched onto the first line of orcs, then the second, third, and fourth as they gawked at the shiny energy coiling around them. Some tried to smash them and I heard gunshots going off, but Valenith just sneered as I felt the orb pulse as the arcs transformed. Warp energy turned into bolts of paralyzing electricity in places while others seared the unfortunate orcs to ash. They didn't even have time to scream out in pain as their nervous systems got fried, either along with their bodies or not, depending on their luck. "Well, that was certainly impressive." The Eldar preened under my praise for some damned reason. Weren't they supposed to be, like, super arrogant and degrading to every other species? I started hearing the other two's weapons going off one after the other, Selene's was silent as the rotting flesh of the Devourer ejected out the worms with some disturbing inner muscles but Zedev made up for her silent weapon with his half-a-dozen different weapons going off in a rhythm. I saw Orcs shrug off lasbolts, hop forward after they got one of their legs melted off, or get outright vaporized when an arc of electricity leapt from Zedev to the Greenskins. The worst off were still those that got close enough for Selene to blast them with a full swarm of Devourers as they were called, the nice little worms dug their way through the Orc's skin and caught onto their nervous system, chomping down on the flesh in the way as they continued on until they reached the brain. Then it was an open buffet for them. Even an Orc couldn't live without a brain. I think?. I had a nagging feeling at the back of my head. Where is the thing that's going to fuck me in the ass? Val was having a blast handling one side of the hallway by himself as he shot off arcs of chaining lightning one after the other while Zedev and Selene were handling themselves quite well on the other side. Val put up some sort of a barrier around himself that didn't let a single bullet through, and my armor was more than enough to stop anything the Orcs could throw at Selene. Zedev had some nicks and leaks here and there, but he could fix those up quickly. I leaned on the wall and put a simple Illusion around myself as I watched the battlefield with narrowed eyes.P3t1
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P3t1 NOTE: Tbh I don't know how I feel about this chapter, a lot of it feels like it lacks substance or meaning but since I already wrote it I might as well post it and see how y'all like it. Came out to be 3200 words so a rather long one, hope you'll enjoy it. Also, felt like this would be the perfect theme for this chapter: Dawn of War 3 - Ork Waaagh Banner Music Extended - WAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!
I sat still as a statue in the middle of this seemingly endless hallway; I knew by now that it was only an illusion and with every kilometer came an intersection where we could choose from three directions to continue on. Sometimes the hallways were pristine and discarded tools that were used to carve the intricate markings left behind on the walls were still visible. Other times, — like this, for example, — the hallways were like the first one we entered. Derelict and overgrown nature reclaimed these buildings. Only lush bushes and crawling vines remained after splitting and crumbling stones and carvings. I glanced around me. Selene slept with her back facing the wall, and I noticed her eyes trembling, threatening to snap open whenever Val shifted in his uncaring slumber. Speaking of our resident Eldar, he slept like a log and shifted around in his sleep quite a lot; I was weirded out by the dichotomy of the current snoring Eldar and the dignified Psyker I saw hours ago. Zedev was weird, as always. I could only tell from the calmness of his aura whether he was actually sleeping with his red eye still flickering ominously and his mechadendrites moving from time to time. Still, he was resting by the looks of it. A surge of bio-energy quickly banished any fatigue that might have seeped into me. I didn't miss sleeping; I had so much to think about, to work out and consider. It felt like sleeping would be a waste of precious time even if I let the rest of my mind cores continue working as the main one slipped into a dreamless sleep. Yes, dreamless, as even if I fell asleep I never dreamed anymore. Inhaling deeply, I let the dusty air enter my lungs. I didn't exhale but let out tiny tendrils of my eldritch flesh inside of my lung and pulled in the air into them. I couldn't gain any bio-energy out of inorganic matter like air, but even still I could absorb it and store it inside my body with that weird phasing thingy, and like with organic matter, I could instinctively analyze it. Not that I need that part of my power kit to know that fucking Orks are creeping around us. Bio-energy seeped into me from the absorbed air as the fungal spores of the orkoid plague got broken down and transmuted into energy. I strained my ears and let a few locks of my hair shift into eldritch flesh. I felt the vibrations going through the air through the white skin. Listening intently, I 'heard' them then. "Oi, can't we just go an beat em up?" "You stupid git, boss'll beat youz stupid skull to mush if you go grumpin before he gives the signal." "Grrrrrrr," *screeech* "Oi, I need thoze gretchin to gives me refillz," "what you gona do bout it?" "Smash yourz skull in, thatz what." What followed was a few distant gunshots and flesh meeting something hard. The illusions between hallways might prevent me from seeing, but hearing was another thing and these dumb mushrooms didn't make hearing them too hard. I sighed as I stood up. I first carefully walked over to Selene and reached to shake her shoulders. Her eyes flew open and her hand snapped to her hip when my hand was ten centimeters from her body. "Good morning," I whispered, "we have company." "R-right," she said as her eyes held mine, slowly comprehension dawned on her drowsy mind and she silently climbed to her feet, "can you change this back please?" "Sure," I smiled and with a telepathic command, her armor turned back from looking like an oversized onesie to actual armor. She nodded at me as she went over her fancy piston and the one remaining plasma rifle we had. Hell-pistol, I think that's what she called it. I think I remember that from lore, but I'm not sure what it did. "Zedev?" I whispered, not bothering to wake him as delicately as I did with Selene, the tin can already had half of his mind awake by now from the feel of his aura but with my whisper, the rest also slowly booted up. "I am awake. I detect Greenskin presence in our vicinity. Numbers could range from a dozen to a hundred. Not including lesser Greenskins." "Yep," I nodded as I walked over to Valenith, "wake up already. How did you survive like this?" I mused in a silent whisper as I kicked his leg. He just turned over in his sleep. My eyes twitched a bit as I stepped on his palm and started putting weight on his fingers. "WHAT?" he jumped up and I stepped off of his arm, "oh." "Well, now they know we are awake," I shrugged. A hundred orcs couldn't be too bad compared to a Lord of Change or a Hive Tyrant. It didn't bother me much. This would be an excellent test run for Selene in her new armor and to see how good Valenith actually is. It was undoubtedly filling me with a bit of excitement to see an actual Eldar in action; I had their instincts and a perfect replica of their bodies, but even both combined shouldn't be able to hold a candle to an Eldar that had these since birth and had centuries to obsessively hone his skills. "You stupid git, whoz gonna tell the boss we got noticed with us beat up as we iz?" I heard one orc say in the distance, it didn't get an answer from the presumably very dead other orc. "Alright," I rolled my shoulders, "is everyone ready to kill some orcs?" "Affirmative." I heard many somethings whirl up inside of Zedev's large body as he brandished his oversized War-Axe and the many mechadendrites ending in an array of dangerous-looking weaponry. I even caught one with an Auspecs which should be some sort of multi-purpose scanner they used for absolutely everything in the Imperium, must be from an STC then. "Yes," I caught a dangerous glint in Valenith's eye as he glanced both ways, his pointy ears probably catching some of the same things I was hearing. Eldar and the Greenskin have been murdering each other in sight for the last sixty million years. Crazy shit, where do they get all the energy from? I, of course, knew it wasn't a question of energy. Orcs had the equivalent of an orgasm every time they pulled the trigger, and the Eldar really didn't like the ugly fuckers infesting their maiden worlds. The Old One made both of their species to be weapons against the Necrons and out of either worry or simple fracturing of their faction, the two species inherently hated each other. There was no negotiating with the Orks. I snorted at that. Only the Tau were dumb enough to negotiate and be at peace with the Orks, Orks lived for war, they literally starved and devolved if they weren't in a 'good grumpin' now and then. I turned my head to the right and narrowed my eyes in the opposite direction of where I heard the two orcs. The ground trembled as large bipedal beings walked with unorganized footsteps. I listened, I breathed. Bio-energy trickled in quicker and quicker as the ever denser fungal spores got absorbed inside my lungs. I heard the disorganized shouts of a hundred orcs coming not from just one side but both. "Around fifty on either side." my voice was steady and I held myself up confidently as my narrowed eyes snapped from side to side, scanning for the first ugly fucker to step through the illusion, "Selene, do you want another weapon? I'm not sure your one can fire fast enough to be useful." "What do you have in mind?" she grimaced as she undoubtedly understood that whatever I gave her would be the same type as her armor: organic. "Well," I quickly scanned through my list of symbiotic Tyranid weaponry that I could fit onto Selene's armor, "I'd recommend either a Deathspitter, a Devourer, or some sort of Barbed Strangler." "I have no idea what those are," she pulled her eyebrows into a frown, "what'd you choose?" "The Devourer, even the Orkcs need their brains," I nodded, "Just don't look at what you are firing." "I've been in the Imperial Guard," she looked at me dubiously, "I think I can handle your bio-weapon." "Oooookay," I shrugged, "I'm covering your head too, by the way, looking pretty doesn't trump having your head protected." "Sure, Thanks." With a simple command, the armor expanded and flowed over her head, tucking the loose strands of her hair inside before hardening into an impregnable shell. I spared a brief glance at her fully covered form and had the urge to shake my head in disappointment; she looked almost like a female mannequin, with no painting or even the tiniest lick of artistic touch on the armor, only a belt at the waist to hold her weapons. It'd have to be fixed later as her current appearance is uncomfortable to be around. Look at the eldritch space horror talking about making people uncomfortable by looking weird. "They come," Valenith said, his staff held at the ready. Zedev's weapons flared up, ready to shoot at the moment as he went through a quick series of motions that I think were meant to check for the range of movement in his many limbs. Weird, but who isn't in this galaxy? With a thought, a Devourer formed on Selene's right hand and connected to a newly created nerve ending in her armor. "Try it out," I pointed towards the faraway intersection, "aim it and 'will' it to shoot. Just imagine wanting to shoot and it will comply." I stepped to the side as she raised the nightmare-inducing weapon; I waited for a few seconds and just as I was doubting whether she could fire it, a swarm of flesh-eating worms flew by my face at supersonic speeds; they splattered against the ground a hundred meters away and I could hear the stone sizzling under the potent acid carried in the disgusting little things. "It's more of a shotgun than a precision rifle like your other ones, but I'm sure you'll manage," I threw her a thumbs up. "This thing is disturbing," her voice came out muffled and I once heard it because I put some hearing nerves inside of her helmet. "That is the purpose. Fear is a superb weapon," I shrugged, "though I don't think it will work on our current enemies." "Psychological warfare capable of affecting the Greenskins needs to be extreme. The only way is to make them dislike fighting you as an enemy." "I'm not sure we can manage that," I shrugged, "I think only the old Aeldari Empire, the Necrons and one of your Primarchs ever made an orc dislike fighting them." Both of my human companions were clearly interested in the last part, but I refused to elaborate. I'm so mysterious and cool. I saw the first Ork shimmer into existence a good two kilometers away from us, these hallways didn't curve like a planet and the air was clear, meaning I didn't have any trouble watching the bunch of them walk out of nothing like a disorganized mob as they jogged towards us in disheveled looking armor and far too large weapons that looked like a kid had thrown them together from a bunch of scraps with a stolen welder. "They are kinda far still," I frowned, "can any of you hit them from this far?" "I could but it wouldn't be efficient," said Val, his hawkish eyes focused solely on the Green tide approaching us from the left, "I'm more used to fighting with enemies less than five hundred meters away from me." "Alright," as I was turning, I noticed Selene raising her hellpistol, I watched curiously as she pulled the trigger. A beam of crimson light flashed between the barrel and the incoming Orcs and I saw three of them that stood in a line fall over. I couldn't see any wounds at this distance, so I let a bit of bio-energy trickle into my eyes and with that, I noticed a finger-sized hole drilled through the first corpse. The orcs looked between the three dead orcs and us collectively before they burst into cheers. Then they started rushing at us not with some idea of vengeance filling their limited minds, but like a pack of starving dogs that have just been thrown a bone. Orks. "Well, that worked," I mused, "at riling them up, that is." "I did kill three," I heard Selene say awkwardly as she put away her steaming pistol with one hand. I saw Val tense a bit at the resounding war cries now echoing through the decrepit hall. Zedev was still as the crumbling statues around us and I stood lazily in the middle of this group, keeping my eyes out for anything suspicious. Despite being disgustingly overpowered, nothing in this life was easy for me so far. The Lictor was close to digesting me instead of the other way around, and the annoying bird demon could have whooped my ass if it wasn't so absorbed in being weird. While I severely messed up the Tyranids, all of Selene's remaining Shadows and Zedev's goons were gone now. I don't believe fate is handing me a free meal, what it's gonna be? I've been feeling a touch … fidgety since the Orks came into view and wasn't the good sort you got from excitement, I felt like something was going to go wrong. My question was ignored as the Orcs finally got inside the range where I felt confident in hitting them without wasting too much energy. Still, I held back as I wanted to try something, just throwing Eldritch Blasts and Chaining Bio-Lightnings wouldn't help me grow as a Psyker. Telepathy was out as my enemies were Orks, I didn't want to get entangled in their weird hive-mind-like WAAAAAAGGGHH!!!! thing. That left Illusions, Telekinesis and what? Biomancy? There should be other biomancy 'spells' besides bio-lightning. Let's see what happens if I try this. I collected a small bit of soul energy and condensed it into an orb the size of my fingertips; I watched it float a few centimeters above my palm as I concentrated on filling it with intent and instructions. Intent was like fuel, the energy was more potent, the stronger the Intent I gave it. It'd still fulfill my wishes as soon as I thought them up but there was a difference in weight, a whim might be fulfilled if nothing opposes it but with realspace and its annoying laws getting in the way, wishes were hardly weighty enough to cause much of an effect. The other important factor I found was Instructions. Even if I had all the willpower in the world and an abundance of energy, if my Instructions were lacking, my spells would be nothing more than blunt and imprecise. Instructions were like the code of a program, the solution to a problem beyond 'more power'. Well, that's a complicated ass description. The important thing is, for that Orks head to erupt I have to Want it to erupt and tell my little orb of energy how to accomplish that. Easy enough. 'Go' The orb shot off and smashed into the first Orc a moment later, the overgrown fungus staggered as the energy sapped his vitality and withered his cells. I watched intently as he fell to his knees a second later before his eyes and ears started bleeding. *pop* his skull fractured and exploded through his skull as the rapidly growing tumor my spell made with all the sapped vitality painted the other Orcs in blood and brain matter. It's slow, but it does its job, and it's efficient. I'm barely using my own energy for it, though firing that off a lot could get mentally exhausting. Biomancy tended to work that way, detailed instructions and little energy cost. "Interesting," Val murmured, "Was that a self-made spell?" "Yeah," I nodded, my pride getting the better of me as my spine straightened, "I just came up with it." "I assumed you focused on biomancy from your … other shows of powers." "It comes more easily. I suppose others would need extensive studying to achieve this?" "Indeed," he nodded, "to understand how to break something with the least resistance and energy wasted, one must know how to build it. A body is no different." "What do you specialize in?" "Precise mass murder," his lips quirked upwards, "observe." I felt repulsive energy flow into him and crawl up into his staff where it condensed into a flickering orb that resembled electricity, but I knew better, that was pure Warp energy. He gently tilted his staff forward and dozens of bolts of lightning arced out of it. They latched onto the first line of orcs, then the second, third, and fourth as they gawked at the shiny energy coiling around them. Some tried to smash them and I heard gunshots going off, but Valenith just sneered as I felt the orb pulse as the arcs transformed. Warp energy turned into bolts of paralyzing electricity in places while others seared the unfortunate orcs to ash. They didn't even have time to scream out in pain as their nervous systems got fried, either along with their bodies or not, depending on their luck. "Well, that was certainly impressive." The Eldar preened under my praise for some damned reason. Weren't they supposed to be, like, super arrogant and degrading to every other species? I started hearing the other two's weapons going off one after the other, Selene's was silent as the rotting flesh of the Devourer ejected out the worms with some disturbing inner muscles but Zedev made up for her silent weapon with his half-a-dozen different weapons going off in a rhythm. I saw Orcs shrug off lasbolts, hop forward after they got one of their legs melted off, or get outright vaporized when an arc of electricity leapt from Zedev to the Greenskins. The worst off were still those that got close enough for Selene to blast them with a full swarm of Devourers as they were called, the nice little worms dug their way through the Orc's skin and caught onto their nervous system, chomping down on the flesh in the way as they continued on until they reached the brain. Then it was an open buffet for them. Even an Orc couldn't live without a brain. I think?. I had a nagging feeling at the back of my head. Where is the thing that's going to fuck me in the ass? Val was having a blast handling one side of the hallway by himself as he shot off arcs of chaining lightning one after the other while Zedev and Selene were handling themselves quite well on the other side. Val put up some sort of a barrier around himself that didn't let a single bullet through, and my armor was more than enough to stop anything the Orcs could throw at Selene. Zedev had some nicks and leaks here and there, but he could fix those up quickly. I leaned on the wall and put a simple Illusion around myself as I watched the battlefield with narrowed eyes.P3t1
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