My vision darkened, my knees buckled on their own, and you could talk about willpower as much as you wanted, but it would not go beyond physical capabilities. If your muscles tear, you will not be able to overcome and lift the power hammer. If the explosion tears off your legs, then in the counterattack, at best, you will have to crawl, and in the worst, more likely, you will lose consciousness from pain and die from blood loss.
And my body was falling apart right now. The powers Tzeentch had given me weren't even intoxicating, they were simply killing me. Quickly, painfully, and unstoppably. For such a sharp increase in psychic abilities, or rather magical ones, I paid with an equally sharp deterioration in my health, both mental and psychic. However, every second I felt my abilities growing and my psi-sensitivity increasing. Tzeentch needed his figure, that is, me, to have sufficient strength at the right moment. Of course, he didn't care that I would die a second after completing the task.
"Don't whine, you will be reborn and receive a reward as a loyal servant," Tzeentch's mood remained bad, he didn't like what was happening, perhaps he was talking about the events here, or perhaps something in the entire galaxy didn't go according to his plan.
Meanwhile, I vomited the contents of my stomach with blood impurities. I wanted to fall down and die, put a bullet in my temple, but someone else's will was pressing and ordering. Besides, I understood logically that it was to my advantage to follow Tzeentch's plan. He could repeat the fate of such a mercenary for me, throw me into the body of a baby thrown into a trash can, correct my memory, help me survive in order to prolong my suffering... he could do everything, because he is a god and it is better to receive gifts from him than punishments.
- You think correctly, mortal, and now... Get up!
And the voice raised the vortices of the warp, after which my body began to change. The changes became more and more obvious, soul and body began to be penetrated by the warp through and through. The pain went away and the voices in my mind sounded stronger. Daemons of Tzeentch, and perhaps of the entire immaterium, spoke to me, wanting to penetrate through the breach into this mortal body. Fortunately, Tzeentch did not allow them to do so.
Medallion, Primarch, past, present, future… questions were already floating in a single river, and the level of consciousness was falling to a critically low level. How I got to the mines was not clear to me. However, an incredibly brutal battle had already begun there, which had not yet become too large. Small tactical units were working here, while the main forces were preparing for the final blow.
- They don't know where exactly the artifact is hidden. The Garden of Nurgle is already losing ground, since it couldn't immediately figure out the plans of some Rogue Trader.
- So Detrius is already there?
- Detrius? This fool betrayed me, decided to take all the power for himself.
- And you didn't do anything?
- He is following my plan without knowing it. His fate will be extremely terrible. And yes, he is approaching this place now. He thinks he thought of it all himself.
— I don't understand anything…
- You don't need to, just do what you're told. The medallion needs to be delivered to the artifact. It's in the mines, at the very bottom, where the xenos dug up quite recently.
Meanwhile, the planet was burning with the fires of war. The followers of Nurgle continued to attack other cities, they created new diseases and collected a critical mass. Mologost could not stop them, as the followers of Tzeentch, or rather the traitor Detrius was too carried away by the struggle for power, and not the struggle for survival.
Taking advantage of the chaos, Detrius seized power in the capital, consolidated the people around himself, made the imperialists, aristocrats and Nurglites enemies of the people, and then captured other cities. How was he going to fight Nurgle? Apparently, he hoped for a miracle, because everything indicated that he would not be able to hold on to power.
In turn, Mologost also changed strategy, placing his full bet on the xenos. Whatever his original goals, he now decided that Draekernor was beyond saving. His ships bombed everything in sight, regardless of civilian casualties. The salvos destroyed as many enemies as possible, strategically important objects such as factories and plants, and sometimes deliberately burned civilians so that they would not become biomass for Nurgle.
In all this chaos there I was, moving through the intricate tunnels. Occasionally I encountered a fighting squad of Lir Family Guards, occasionally I saw Imperials, at least one Space Marine of Nurgle was clearly searching for something here, as I was.
Thus, making my way through the darkness, I managed to stumble upon a team of miners who had been massacred by someone. Their corpses were very fresh, no one had desecrated them. The holes in their heads indicated that they had been shot. Only the holes were too even. After a bullet hit the skull, it usually tore it apart as it exited. But here, the hole was perfectly even.
"This is not an imperial weapon, I have not seen anything like it among the planetary forces either," I said, trying not to even breathe, because my lungs were burning with fire and it seemed as if tentacles with feathers were starting to grow in them.
— Xenos.
Tzeentch was absolutely right, although you didn't have to be a god to guess that. And after making sure that there was no one around, I approached the bodies and tools. The drilling equipment was still working, burning fuel, but a little ahead, among the simple and uninteresting rock formations, a crack gaped. Looking into it, I saw a vein of... I don't even know what, some kind of metal, but extremely unusual. Not only did it distort the light, but the influence of the warp around it changed.
"Cleaning up the traces?" I wondered, not quite understanding why the xenos would kill the miners who were developing here on Mologost's orders.
However, if you think about it, Mologost might not have known anything about the medallion. Or rather, he clearly knew nothing about it. If this thing was of such value to both Nurgle and Tzeentch, then it would have been worth sending a much larger force here. At the very least, take the Astartes with them. Mologost didn't even give the order to seize that cauldron at the ritual, he simply planned to destroy the breeding ground of the infection.
And this meant that the xenos and Mologost were perhaps just beginning to suspect what they had gotten themselves into.
"Move on, this is pointless," Tzeentch ordered again, tearing me away from studying the vein of metal that could have formed inside the stone incomprehensibly, for it was metal that we were talking about, bright, pure, mysterious and incomprehensible, as if someone had smelted ore and then poured this vein here. "The fools have already doomed this world with their ignorance. It will die, and with it the entire star system will perish, including the xenos world.
Following Tzeentch's further instructions, I continued on my way and soon came across a flock of rainbow daemons. They were small and resembled silverfish, constantly changing their colors. However, these creatures of the warp were extremely dangerous, despite their small size. Their strength lay in their numbers and their ability to "whisper" that could drive a mere mortal mad. Of the unimaginable number of Tzeentch's daemons, they were the most numerous and inhabited almost all worlds, existing unnoticed by mortals and feeding on their feelings.
At first I followed six demons, then their flock increased in number to a dozen, then I had to fall to my knees and begin to crawl on my knees, following their glow. A few moments later, having dug myself into another tunnel, from the side of the rubble, I already saw a whole stream of these creatures. They dug, greedily and deeply, devouring each other and breaking their teeth on the hard rock. They were led by the command of Tzeentch and dying they made their way to the goal.
— Once there was a crystal altar here. With it, I will know the exact date, the exact place, the exact list of all the players and… only if no one interferes with me and does not change the flows of the warp… no… others would rather want to look into the flow too, to separate the past, present and future, to understand what they missed and where to look. They will not interfere, they will join in and try to outplay me, as always… if only he… he can ruin everything, he can do it. Or can he not? Has he outsmarted everyone? Even himself?
And suddenly time itself froze, and Tzeentch, without noticing it, began to tear apart my soul and mind. More and more of his knowledge penetrated me and I could not perceive it, contain it, and even more so understand it. Tzeentch continued to argue with himself, he sometimes caught the truth, sometimes ran away from it. So many plans, so many ideas, he confused them with each other and forgot what he had come up with, what others had come up with... no one could understand all the plans of the Great Manipulator and it seems that he himself sometimes became a victim of his own traps.
"Enough... enough, please..." I begged, although this would disappear from my memory forever in the future due to too much stress.
- Yes, no, perhaps the probabilities are higher, but if you look at the situation from a different angle... - Tzeentch got into a frenzy and, without noticing it, began to broadcast all of this into the physical world.
The silverfish strained to the limit, and began to bite into the ground even more furiously. A minute later, they all turned into a rainbow haze: their physical bodies literally burned in the rainbow flame. However, they had achieved their goal, and the crystal pedestal was sticking out at the bottom of the dug hole. I only needed to put the medallion there.
- Yes... yes... yes!!! - Tzeentch cried out and his scream almost killed me, but the next second he calmed himself and gave the order: - Put the medallion! Faster! Everything is calculated!
His will was still enormous, but now it was under his control. I had enough strength to reach the pedestal and place the medallion. And then I was immediately turned inside out again, this time worms crawled out of me. They fell right onto the foot of the crystal pedestal, which continued to change. Tzeentch was completing the missing parts and right now the warp on the planet was going crazy, giving birth to something that should not be born.
Meanwhile, the worms were dying and turning into rainbow butterflies, which quickly covered both the pedestal and my medallion. A demon was coming out of me into reality, helping to tune the artifact. My soul was being torn apart, and Tzeentch began to perform his ritual through me. I should have died from this, but either Tzeentch turned out to be an extremely skilled sorcerer, which is logical, or he simply chose a more suitable shell from the start, which is also logical. Probably, both options were correct at once.
I did not resist, and silently prayed for it to end as quickly as possible. Past events that I tried to turn away from appeared before me. The Primarch, the Space Wolves, xenocide, war, corpses, tragedy, incredible pain, error, defeat, victory… everything merged together and sometimes contradicted itself. Tzeentch looked into the past and tried to understand whether he had missed something or done everything correctly. He himself no longer understood anything, while simultaneously attracting the attention of the entire immaterium with his actions.
Nurgle was the first to notice him and immediately rushed into battle. Nurgle was not so much interested in the ongoing intrigue, as he simply wanted to interfere with his sworn enemy. He had noticed the unrest in the warp even earlier. A colossal explosion shook the stone vaults. The Chaos Space Marines captured the mining equipment and fought their way straight into this excavated cave.
"PROTECT ME AT ANY COST, I AM NOT DONE YET!!!" Tzeentch screamed, and the cry illuminated the entire planet, transforming living beings into daemons that attacked everyone in sight.
After this, She Who Thirsts immediately became interested in what was happening, because Nurgle, without a twinge of conscience, did everything so that each of the Four learned about some new machination of Tzeentch. She did not act rudely, but simply watched Tzeentch with interest, not understanding why this past suddenly became so interesting to the Great Manipulator. Was there really a mistake in the game played?
And where three of the Four had already gathered, the bloodthirsty god was not long in coming. After all, violence followed in the footsteps of any of the Chaos gods. Something was coming, perhaps the greatest battle in all of history, but even if not, what champion of Khorne would not want to tear off the rainbow wings, rip out the skull of a plaguebearer, and hack apart every vile tentacle of the spawn of Slaanesh with chainaxes?
Mortals, as usual, found themselves between a rock and a hard place, already sensing their imminent death. My end was approaching, too, because in the vortex of the warp my power had increased sharply, causing irreversible damage to my nervous system. Hellish pain pierced my mind, causing me to go mad. A cry of incredible pain escaped my mouth, and when the drilling machine broke through the rock, the rainbow flame gushed in an unstoppable stream onto the plague marines.
Bolters roared, plasma exploded, but the creatures of Tzeentch poured forward from the rift, and I walked among them, now a shell of a daemon that had taken full control. Groaning in hellish torment, I could only glimpse what was happening as the sorcery and daemons of Tzeentch destroyed an entire squad of Space Marines, after which the unstoppable tide rushed out in order to throw everyone as far away from Tzeentch as possible, who was not so terribly carried away.
He looked at every detail, but even though he was a god, he was only a product of the emotions and feelings of all living beings. His power in the immaterium was colossal and was comparable only to other gods. However, he was not above the laws of the universe, he obeyed them and could only look for loopholes to break these rules. In addition, in addition to the laws of the universe, there were also mortals who were outside of his power.
Those whose will allowed them to rise to the level of superman or even step further. They were as far from man as man was from a monkey. They completely subjugated their feelings, learned to subjugate their instincts and did not even feed the Chaos gods with their emotions. Among them was the Emperor, many immortals, like the primarchs, had the ability to disrupt the plans of the Chaos gods. Of course, there were also less significant figures who, although they did not decide the fate of galaxies, still stood much higher than such trifles.
There were problems, confusions, and complications with them, so it took Tzeentch much longer to separate what was possible from what had happened, and to make sure that no one was deliberately distorting the picture, including himself.
- I see! I SEE!!! - the cry rang out again under the roar of thousands of guns.
In fear and horror, seeing what was happening on the planet, Mologost gave the order to fire from everything they had at this place. And after him, the followers of Nurglit switched to bombing, stopping the battle in space. Tzeentch himself turned his attention to this place and whatever he was up to, he had to be stopped at any cost.
At that moment, all the xenos warships headed for Dreikernor, breaking the long-standing prohibition against trespassing on their overlord's borders. Mologost himself stood on the bridge and watched as the last of the forces finished landing, preparing to destroy everything. Mologost knew that none of them would return. Chaos had already completely consumed this planet. Everything had to be sacrificed and as much damage as possible had to be done to the enemy before all the ships disappeared into the vortex of the warp.
My body was limping forward somewhere, when suddenly fear flashed among the pain and hope of victory. All the demons suddenly stopped, the entire stream stood rooted to the spot. And then there was a rumble of a metal boot and the demons took a step back. Suddenly even the will of the demons weakened, allowing me to see more, although I still could not control my body.
In front of the demons stood that same unknown ally, clutching a sword in one hand and a bolt pistol in the other. His robe was all torn, under it was visible armor, not like that of the space marines, much simpler, suitable for a man. Behind him, a chilling sob was heard. After a short pause and confusion of the demons, he himself said:
— I only do what I have to do.
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