- So where are we? And most importantly, where is this bastard? A pest, like the Poles' Sussin... - I cursed, trying to find Lazur.
I was right behind her, step by step, but somehow I blinked and that was it. Now I was standing in an open field, a storm of vortexes of magic above me, and spells from demons massacring each other exploded all around me. And each spell was many times more dangerous than any artillery shell, largely because of its extreme unpredictability. A vortex of magic could simply give you a third hand or turn you inside out, cause psychosis or ecstasy. Anything could happen, including nothing.
"It's a fiasco," added Birdie, sitting on my head and also not particularly orienting herself in the distorting space.
And so, on the one hand, I was a servant of Tzeentch, and it seemed like the higher demons didn't particularly want to touch me, so as not to incur the wrath of the Architect of Fates. But on the other hand, right now, in the chaos, thousands or even millions of small entities were being born and dying, who, due to their stupidity, didn't give a damn about Tzeentch, or whose servant I was, or about objective reality in general, or about any consequences. Sometimes, like lemmings, they even jumped into the epicenter of magical storms, where they were torn to pieces, and after which something new was born from their echoes.
"Well, here they come to me," I muttered, quickening my pace and believing that I could somehow escape from the little demons.
But somewhere there, every second step led me either to the left or right, or even turned me to face these creatures, nullifying my attempts to escape. At the same time, the demons themselves were not much better oriented than me, but due to their numbers, they would definitely get to me.
- Okay, freaks, if you want to die, die. I'm not proud, I'll cut everyone down.
Having abandoned my attempts to escape, I stopped and Birdie immediately helped to create a crystal sword. I immediately adopted the stance learned during numerous fencing lessons, the sword was put forward and its surface sparkled, in which the power of magic shone. Frozen, I carefully watched the approaching opponents, who seemed to be jumping in space when they went beyond the boundaries of my three-dimensional perception. At the same time, Birdie continued to cast spells on the crystal, because the physical in the Immaterium played the least role, although not zero, as well as vice versa.
However, in order to inflict a wound on a demon here, one had to have a suitable weapon or possess a gift for magic. Otherwise, even the most strong-willed space marine, transported here and having survived a mental shock, would not be able to do anything to even the lowest demon, which he would have torn apart with his bare hands in the physical world. Or no, to be honest, this was just my theory, the nuances of which will certainly emerge in the future.
One way or another, the first demon made another jump and flew out to my right. He himself did not expect this, because he was the third one running towards me. He also did not have time to get his bearings, unlike me. I froze and did not move at all, so as soon as the first enemy was within striking distance, my crystal blade pierced his muzzle through and through. The crystal easily cut through the shell and with its magic began to cause the demon to disintegrate, turning him into what he had recently been born from.
Then I kicked away its dissipating carcass and prepared to fight the next creatures. Alone, they did not pose a serious threat to me, because even my natural psychic abilities, which I had not even really begun to develop, were already better than the abilities of a recently born creature not of flesh. Besides, these were born creatures, not reborn. Most likely, some magical battle or echo of Tzeentch's paranoia was the cause of their appearance. His chaotic particles barely had time to gain a bit of self-awareness before they immediately became nothing again.
This was the norm in the warp, and only chance could allow the daemon to live long enough to gain experience.
"Hmm, it looks delicious," Birdie chirped, watching another demon become a swirl. "I'd eat it. Can I?"
"Go ahead," I waved it off, noticing some patterns in the demons' spatial jumps.
It was something like mole holes, at least I couldn't come up with another comparison. Having stood in one specific place, the enemy always appeared in the same place, as if passing through the fourth dimension. The creatures themselves did not have time to gain experience and see this pattern, because they were full of meat and if they did not die from my sword, they began to squabble among themselves over any little things. As a result, the battle with them turned into a slaughterhouse, where I was the butcher.
"It's not that difficult," chopping left and right, I was already striking ahead and even began to try to use these mole holes myself.
Moreover, the longer the battle went on, the more hidden threads I managed to see. My magical sense gave much more information than my eyes. This was probably the secret of orientation in the warp. True, so far I could barely predict my movement one step, maximum two, ahead. Of course, I was far from the navigators who pave the way between the stars, as well as from the higher demons, but everyone started somewhere.
- Ha-ha! This is much more fun than I thought! - I laughed and shook the warp with my laughter, causing even more creatures to rush towards the surge of emotions.
But I got carried away, these small victories intoxicated me and it seemed to me that not a single lower demon could defeat me. They were too stupid and now I myself began to approach the epicenter of the vortex, from where these entities were born, spewed out by chaos. When else would there be a chance to practice on fresh meat?
The bird also got carried away by devouring creatures and even grew a little in size. However, self-confidence has always been the main enemy for any inhabitant or guest of the warp. I was completely carried away by the process and did not notice how one of the lower demons had long since frozen and was watching me attentively. He was different from the others.
A small horror that looked like a vile, hunched man with extra arms growing out of his back. He was barely one and a half meters tall, but his sharp claws were extremely dangerous and could even tear souls. In addition, the demon's mouth was able to open one hundred eighty degrees and with each passing moment it stretched out, beginning to resemble the mouth of a crocodile. His skin absorbed the energy of the warp and he became a little stronger with each passing moment.
But then the demon merged with the crowd. One by one, he let other stupid demons pass ahead and waited for the moment, studying my attacks and movements. And as soon as I struck the demon to my left, he jerked into one of the holes and appeared to my right, immediately grabbing my hand, which held the sword. There was no other way this creature was born from the most cunning echo of magic.
In an instant, the demon tore my arm up to the elbow. At that moment, in horror, I recreated the crystal dagger in my left palm and plunged the dagger straight into his eye, twisted the blade, but held back and did not allow myself to jump back, remaining standing in place. From such a wound, the demon's essence quickly dissipated and although it was stronger than the others, but with a squeal, the Birdie already pounced on the remains and quickly finished him off, after which she began to chase the residual whirlwind in order to absorb even him.
I felt fear, but surprisingly the pain was... extremely weak. Moreover, my wound was rapidly healing and in a matter of moments my arm grew back. First the wind brought crystal sand, then it formed into a frame and the arm slowly crystallized. And after a few seconds it cracked and shattered into pieces. The shell disappeared, but underneath it a new arm had already appeared, the same as the one I had moments ago.
Well, that was to be expected. After all, the physical shell played an extremely secondary role in this world. It could be destroyed over and over again, but there would be no particular benefit. The determining role was played by what mortals call the soul. And only by wounding the soul could one cause sufficient harm to the enemy. This, of course, pleased me, as did my own strength, which exceeded that of newly born demons. Probably, even after the complete destruction of the shell here, it will not be difficult for me to reassemble myself. Of course, unless someone like Birdie devours the vortex that escaped, or I am exhausted, deprived of the strength for such a thing.
Having somehow calmed my fighting spirit, I began to carefully retreat from the whirlwind. Along the way, my gaze began to notice, in addition to the threads, my own shadow, in which I recognized my soul. It was slightly battered and one glance was enough to understand the extent of the damage. This understanding was always with me, I just had to consciously turn to it, which is also not as easy to do as it seems. In order to do something like this automatically, I will have to practice more.
"An invaluable experience," I whispered, already learning to hide from the gaze of the lower creatures.
How long had I been wandering? It was hard to say, for the concept of time in the warp varied greatly. But despite all the risks and dangers, and the lack of understanding of my own location… it was truly an invaluable experience, thanks to which I began to understand much more about what the Immaterium was. And then a monstrous surge of energy caught my attention.
Carefully moving along the thunderous echo of the magical battle, I tried to find a place from which I could see the battle better. And after one hundred and eleven steps I managed to do so. Once again the space around me changed and now to my left there was a deep crater, on the edge of which I suddenly found myself, it appeared just as unexpectedly and the reason for this was the same multidimensionality of space.
At the bottom of the crater, Azure was already fighting in full force, wielding two curved swords and pushing back some bird-like demon with a staff with a whirlwind of blows. Azure was quite strong, she moved much faster and her blows made the space tremble. At the moments of flashes from the swings of her blades, the veil of the warp thickened and for a moment the physical laws were strengthened. It was somewhat reminiscent of creating rifts in the physical world, only in reverse. The bird-like demon did not like this at all, as did the forced close combat.
He wanted to break the distance and turn the fight into a magical duel, but Azure simply did not allow it. She knew her weaknesses and the weaknesses of the local inhabitants very well. And although she could not compare with the demons of other gods in close combat, but among these frail and cowardly magicians, her furious pressure was revealed one hundred percent, combining with an accurate knowledge of the tactics and strategies that these same magicians loved to resort to.
Thus, Azure became a very formidable demon hunter from her own tribe. Of course, it was not by chance that she did so, because she wanted to take revenge on Tzeentch and was looking for an opportunity to take revenge for a very long time, while fighting mainly with her own tribe.
And so her last chain of blows ended with one blade piercing the demon's thigh, and the second one plunging into his chest. The higher demon did not dissolve, like the lower demons I killed, he continued to maintain integrity and even raised whirlwinds with his will, which tore not very large pieces from Lazuri's soul. However, the blades were already destroying him from the inside, and Lazuri herself removed the illusions and the human face turned into the muzzle of a terrible monster, whose mouth had already opened and immediately closed on the head of the prey.
Tearing apart the soul of the enemy, Azure scattered it point by point and one by one, parts of the demon's body turned into rainbow vortices that were sucked in by Azure herself with each of her breaths. The demoness's strength began to grow right before our eyes, but no matter how many enemies she defeated, she still could not catch up with those who were above her. After all, while you took one step towards power and knowledge, the same Tzeentch took hundreds of thousands of steps, increasing the already huge gap. His closest servants, with whom Tzeentch shared his abilities, did the same.
Those who fell out of favor with the god could only watch meekly as they were left on the sidelines of history. Some hid, some continued to fight, but the end result would be absorption by a more powerful demon. It could not be otherwise, and Azure tried in vain to become an exception.
"Ah, there you are," said Lazur, without turning to face me, and her voice sounded as if she was pointing it at me. "The scribes are over there."
And her will pointed the direction, following the thread of which I saw what was initially hidden from my sight. Two blue horrors, they resembled those demons that I killed, but they lived in this world for an incredibly long time. They watched the battle of the demons of Tzeentch and the demons of Slaanesh on the border of the domains and actively recorded the spell they saw, which was born not by someone's will, but by chance at the moment of the fight of two higher demons. The Scribes were not interested in the fight itself, as they were not going to help their own.
Although these demons were not strong. Yes, in their lifetime they wrote down more spells than most demons knew, probably even more than anyone knew, with the exception of Tzeentch himself. However, Tzeentch already understood that they could become too strong and solved this problem in advance. It was logical to create some kind of dirty trick, especially for such a suspicious and paranoid god as Tzeentch.
As a result, by the will of his creator, P'Tarix could transfer the sorcerous symbols of any spell onto parchment, but he could not read. Skirat'p was able to read his brother's writings, but he could not understand them or connect them into something coherent, but he could correct mistakes. As a result, they wrote down and accumulated knowledge that they could not use either alone or together.
Though sometimes, the Architect of Fate used the Blue Scribes as a weapon, allowing fate to lead the two servants into the thick of the most brutal battle, where the outcome needed to be changed. Surrounded and almost cornered, the brothers could do nothing and their only chance was to rely on chance. And Skirat'p began to trace his finger over his brother's notes, pronouncing words he did not understand and trying to reproduce what he did not understand.
Then things happened that could not be predicted. Everything was left to chance, but often fate favored the two brothers. It was as if Tzeentch himself guided Skirat'pa's hand, and then, to his own surprise, he would recreate the most appropriate spell. Or the most inappropriate. Everything depended again on chance or... on the will of Tzeentch, whom many considered above such definitions.
So millennia or tens of thousands of years passed, an instant or an eternity, but the Blue Scribes wandered tirelessly, striving to learn all the spells that with the increase in power and number of mortals began to appear much more often and even without the knowledge of Tzeentch himself. Those fragments that once gave rise to magic could already be learned three times, but every moment even more spells were created and it was simply impossible to learn them all.
So the Blue Scribes were doomed to do their work forever, or until such time as Tzeentch chose to consume them and their knowledge. And if that day ever came, it would be terrifying to even imagine what would happen to the warp and the physical world. For Tzeentch's power would be greatly increased, and this could entail consequences even more dangerous than the appearance of the Eye of Terror.
And the more time passed, the more power the Blue Scribes gathered, making the future merger with Tzeentch even more dangerous for the world. Just as Tzeentch himself never forgot who cast him from the top of the Endless Mountains.
More chapters on my P@treon: https://patreon.com/OOOTEN