After sending his father away, Magnus met with Nareth. His deep voice carried a tone of apology.
"Nareth, forgive me. As much as I wish to speak with you right now, my sons are trapped in despair. I must rescue them first."
Nareth glanced at Azhek Ahriman, who was stepping down from the landing craft, his body twisted by flesh-warping mutations, his mind dazed as if sleepwalking, and nodded slightly.
"Of course. I don't mind waiting."
"Thank you for understanding," Magnus said, moving toward his sons.
He spotted one warrior among them, clad in red armor, whose features were more perfect than the rest, his condition clearly better than the others'.
Magnus approached him and asked, "What is your name?"
"Father," the warrior smiled reverently at the crimson giant before him, "I am Hathor Maat."
As a "Spectator," Maat imitated the admiring expression of Apophis, the strongest of his brothers, who gazed upon Magnus with awe. From his perspective as a biomantic psyker, he evaluated silently:
'Outwardly, both my father and my master possess perfection beyond any Astartes.'
But my master has the miraculous power to free me entirely from the flesh-change.'
'So, how will my gene-father solve the mutation that plagues our Legion?'
"You're in good condition," Magnus said. "I'll need your assistance."
"Your command is my will."
Nareth withdrew his gaze, satisfied that Maat's performance showed no hint of deceit.
He soon led a handpicked honor guard aboard a Shadow-class Stormbird. Each chosen guard was a non-psyker, all were beyonders beings.
The Shadow-class Stormbird lifted off, flying west toward the dangerous wastelands. It glided silently over forests, rivers, and vast plains, descending outside the ruins of an ancient city.
Nareth stepped off the ramp and beheld a cluster of black, scorched ironstone towers, long abandoned and now thickly overgrown with greenery.
His eyes swept across the towers before striding toward one of them. He did not enter; instead, telekinetic force surged outward, gripping the rotted iron gate like a giant hand and tearing it down.
A wave of damp, decaying air poured out, accompanied by a deep, droning hum, countless wings vibrating in the dark, like a storm of birds taking flight.
"The Psychneuein are extremely sensitive to psychic energy. Even the small pulse I used just now has already caught their attention," Nareth explained. "The more psychic power you use, the more of them you attract."
He had achieved exactly what he intended: to lure them out.
From the black tower burst a vast, rolling swarm, winged monsters whose chitinous limbs clicked as they flew. Their glossy carapaces gleamed as they twisted through the air, six slender limbs oozing viscous fluid.
Each Psychneuein was nearly two and a half meters long. Their wings beat so rapidly that the human eye could barely track them, though the Shadows of Order could easily follow their movements.
Their swollen heads resembled human brains, exuding a rotting stench, and their multifaceted eyes fixed upon Nareth.
The Psychneuein devoured all things, but psykers were their favorite prey. Naturally, Nareth, as the only psyker present, became their prime target.
Dozens of male drones emitted a shrill psychic cry; invisible mental spikes shrieked through the air toward him.
Nareth's spine flared with light as he ascended instantly into the second layer of the Thelema mindstate.
The psychic spikes struck an unseen barrier, and ripples spread through the air, unable to pierce his psychic wall.
The wasps, linked in a collective mind, beat their wings in unison and dove downward.
Nareth stamped his foot against the iron gate, and shards of metal whirled into the air, twisting together into long metallic cords.
This was no telekinetic spell, but his beyonder ability, "Rope."
He sensed other hives nearby awakening; those closest to his psychic pulse were already flying toward him, while the distant ones remained still.
The "Barron of Corruption" judged the rate of psychic drain and the recovery from the blood-red necklace coiled around his finger. So far, it was manageable.
With a sharp grip, the metal cords constricted, bound Psychneuein fell helplessly to the ground one after another.
Thud. Thud.
Dozens crashed to the earth.
Then more came, hundreds more, their eyes flashing with strange light as they released intangible, spectral eggs aimed straight at Nareth.
He knew their pattern: male wasps attacked first, bombarding psykers with mental strikes to render them unconscious. Then the females began their insatiable reproductive act, planting ethereal eggs in the victim's mind.
The eggs would root within the victim's brain, microscopic at first, but by the next morning, they would hatch and feed on the host's mind.
Nareth ascended instantly into the third layer of Thelema. The spectral eggs struck the psychic wall and dispersed in ripples.
His restored spiritual energy erupted; green vines shot upward, wrapping around the wasps.
Their razor-sharp mandibles, which could shear steel, could not so much as cut the fragile stems, for Rope allowed him to reshape matter's physical structure by will.
A deafening buzz filled the air as thousands of Psychneuein surged from every direction.
"Attack!" Nareth ordered.
This mission wasn't just to capture samples for study; it was to let his chosen hunting elites face the Psychneuein directly, to gain firsthand experience.
Even with all his briefings, no amount of data could compare to combat itself.
The selected Hunters from his honor guard immediately followed his instructions.
Four "Provokers" strode forward, drawing the swarm's attention as the wasps dived upon them as if upon psykers.
The Provokers raised heavy flamers and unleashed torrents of burning promethium, sweeping side to side. Molten fire consumed the oncoming swarm, turning them to ash.
Amid the drifting sparks, two "Apothecary" drew their archaeotech pistols and opened fire.
Each bullet was coated with alchemical fluids crafted from Catachan flora and fauna using the ability Material Adaptation.
They did not know which poison would work best, so they tested all fifty-two kinds.
As they fired, they noted the effects:
Venom extracted from the Catachan Black Viper proved the most lethal. A shot to the compound eye shattered it like glass, dropping the wasps instantly.
The Barbed Neurovine toxin had the strongest paralysis effect, a hit to the swollen head caused the wasp to flap twice before crashing to the ground.
The "Apothecaries" meticulously recorded each toxin's result.
Suddenly, a Psychneuein dived from the right, ambushing a Provoker.
Its bloated body dripped slime; a long, barbed stinger extended from its abdomen.
A Warrior stepped forward, storm shield raised, and the stinger struck the shield's crackling energy field with a thunderous snap.
Electric arcs flashed; the wasp spasmed.
An Arbiter charged from the flank, his power fist blazed blue as it smashed into the creature's carapace.
A violent explosion followed, tearing the insect apart.
But even more wasps swarmed from the ruins like a black tide.
Nareth transformed his vines into iron "Ropes," dragging over twenty wasps to the ground, then suddenly froze, sensing something.
From the darkness emerged a gigantic, grotesquely bloated Psychneuein, far larger than any before. Its tail and stinger were as long as the others combined, and it bore two pairs of wings instead of one.
The moment Nareth saw it, he knew: the Queen Wasp.
The Queen was not a separate species but a rare evolution among the three kinds of Psychneuein, Mara, Luctos, and Prospero.
Any could produce a queen, but the conditions were extraordinary, one in ten thousand.
Nareth remembered that in the far future, the Deathwatch's Magos Biologis would study them and conclude that such queens required near-unreplicable conditions to arise.
The Queen Wasp was a lethal adversary, capable of killing an entire Deathwatch Kill-Team alone.
Only the strongest wills could withstand her psychic onslaught, and only the mightiest warriors could hope to slay her.
Her movement was so fast that even the Provokers couldn't react; her tail-stinger pierced through power armor as if through paper.
But just before it struck a Shadow of Order, the stinger suddenly slipped sideways, grazing past him.
Nareth had bent its trajectory with his ability, Force.
He rushed forward, and the Queen shrieked with a piercing psychic scream that slammed into Nareth's mind like a tidal wave.
He immediately sensed the gulf between her and the others; if a drone's mental attack was a steel needle, hers was a power sword.
The psychic wall of the Primarch's mind trembled, but only for a moment.
He did not stop. In an instant, he appeared before her.
The Barron of Corruption clenched his right fist, muscles swelling, spine twisting as he hurled a punch like a cannon blast into her bloated abdomen.
Brilliant light flared, and the Queen's psychic shield shimmered around her.
BOOM!
A deafening explosion shook the ruined city. Her shield shattered, and the shockwave hurled dozens of wasps aside.
Nareth raised his left arm, channeling every remaining drop of psychic energy, and pushed forward with, "Imprisonment".
A viscous, transparent substance enveloped the Queen.
She fell to the ground, frozen in place like a specimen in amber.
The hunt raged for five hours before no more Psychneuein appeared.
Nareth ordered his guard to search the area and drag the corpses back to the Kingdom of Disorder.
In his first hunt, he captured a total of 316 Psychneuein, and the most precious of all was, of course, the Queen, it was to become the main ingredient for the Mentor of Disorder potion.
The Shadow-class Stormbird lifted off for the return journey, carrying three captured specimens in its underbelly, one male, two females, destined for the Apothecaries' experiments.
.....
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