"I'm going to chant, then you're going to slit your wrist and pour your blood into my open mouth. Afterwards you repeat my chant while continuing to pour blood in my mouth. When we're done we're both going to see jumbled visions of the past in the left eye, the present in the right eye and the future in our third eye. You got all of that?"
My sister is currently sitting on the navigators throne, surrounded by glyphs and runes written in blood red chalk. Both of us have our third eye uncovered. I nod. "Yeah, you can start."
Making a single mistake from now on would lead to the whole ritual failing. Thankfully misspelling a word probably won't lead to nurglings spawning, I think. Joline takes a deep breath and begins chanting.
"Sanguis mihi visum ultra tempus dat"
"Sinistra oculus mihi praeteritorum secreta ostendit"
The light in her left eye dims.
"Dexter oculus mihi praesentis secreta ostendit"
The light in her right eye dims.
"Tertius oculus mihi secreta futuri ostendit"
Her navigator eye widens, showing a clear picture of the sea of souls.
I slit my wrist, taking care for the resulting blood to pour only into her mouth. I begin chanting.
"Sanguis mihi visum ultra tempus dat"
The pouring blood slows down, as if gravity had lessened.
"Sinistra oculus mihi praeteritorum secreta ostendit"
My left eyes lose vision, becoming blind.
"Dexter oculus mihi praesentis secreta ostendit"
My right eyes lose vision, becoming blind.
"Tertius oculus mihi secreta futuri ostendit"
The man is recruited into the cult of blood. A man is starving, about to die. The planetary governor is killed by the general. He is offered a chance to prove his worth by a hooded figure. He slowly grows strong and mighty. The man becomes a pitfighter. The astropaths are missing. The planetary governor imposes a new tax. A man kills the general. The rebellion begins. The general is killed. Half of the population will be trained for the tithe. The blood cult rejoices. The commander general of the PDF is preparing the armed forces. The governor is killed. A man is recruited into the PDF.
The wife hides in the bunker. Plasma cutters shine against steel. There is plenty of food. The man promises to remove tax. The man is a leader. A plea is being screamed. The man is hailed as a hero. A plan for defense is discussed. Pdf is too scrambled for response. They will have their revenge. Everyone rejoices. They are in the bunker. A man takes power. Valuables are hidden. The vault doors open. The blood cult fades
The tithe will be taken. The blood god will rejoice afresh. Golden coins will gleam. Red blood will flow. The Aquila will be raised. Treasure chests will be opened.
I close my eyes and begin taking deep breaths, trying to calm myself down. Once my breathing is in order I open my eyes. My vision is blurry, the more I try to concentrate on seeing the more pain I feel in the back of my eyes. I close my eyes again.
I take a deep breath. "This isn't going to be permanent, right?"
"No, just give it an hour or two." Is my sister's ragged reply.
—
Putting on power armor is difficult to impossible on your own, thankfully we have servants to help us with that. I raise my arms, allowing the servants to slowly attach the chestpiece. "Any idea what we should do about the blood cult on the planet? Other than informing the lord commander about it."
My sister keeps her arms down, allowing the servants to attach the shoulder pieces. "Find the closest inquisitor and point them at the problem. That's probably what the lord commander is going to do anyway, I doubt he wants to go anywhere near them."
That's fair. I lower my arms, allowing the servants to begin work on the shoulder pieces. "That's probably the smart idea. We could also investigate for ourselves, the cult 'faded', so I doubt the inquisitor is going to find much of anything."
My sister lowers her arms, the servants having finished setting up most of her armor, all that's left is putting on the helmet. "That sounds pretty exciting! We're going to go on an adventure like on those holos. 'Die, filthy rebel! Pow pow'."
I lower my arms and take the helmet held by the maids, securing it on my belt for now. "Kinda but not really? We're probably going to just soul search anyone suspicious until we find a lead, if we find nothing there's not much we can do."
Joline holsters the offered archeotech las pistol and power rapier. "Party pooper. I call dibs on any psykers."
Our third eye allows us to easily detect psykers as their souls act like a gate to the warp, not unlike our third eye. I also holster my own las pistol and power rapier. "And how are you going to train them? Natural selection?"
Joline blows a raspberry at me in response. A maid brings a tall mirror, allowing the two of us to take a good look at ourselves.
Our power armor is colored a stark white with red accents. Despite looking more like a status symbol than a functional suit of armor it is still leagues above regular power armor, as befits of something made for a navigator. I move my hand to the nape of my neck and plug myself into the power armor, allowing it to boost my physical abilities. A quick flicker of the inbuilt refractor shield confirms that everything is working as intended.
—
"We've done a scrying ritual, there's a heretic cult on the planet."
I can't directly tell the man that there's a khorne cult on Kinja, but this is about as close as I can get to informing him without consigning him to the bullet. Navigator houses are among the select few aware of exactly what the 'archenemy' is, so I'm not putting either my sister or I in any danger by telling him this.
The lord commander immediately closes his mouth, processing what I've just told him. He gives a resigned sigh once he is done processing. "I will contact the inquisition, hopefully they're nearby. We will still be staging our attack as scheduled to secure a landing site, but we will have to hold off on doing a proper invasion until they arrive."
—
Joline and I are currently sitting in our twenty man drop pod, waiting to be dropped on the planet below. The remaining eighteen seats are filled with our household guard.
Clad in white power armor, albeit with much less bling than the ones my sister and I are using, and armed with human-sized bolters. These are the elites of our household guard. They serve both as our bodyguards and as a form of status symbol.
Four drop pods of elite guardsmen will drop along with us somewhere nearby. Those guys are using standard issue carapace armor and lasguns, so they're essentially one or two steps away from being red shirts.
The lord commander's voice is heard from the drop pods vox. "Men, you are the first line of defense of the imperium of man! Without you, no world would stay safe from heretics! You are the most vital part of the defense of this world! We will conquer this world for the Emperor!"
I hear Joline snort through our vox-channel. "That speech was kinda ass."
I nod my head. "Yeah."
It does not take long after the speech for the drop pod to be released, beginning our fall towards the planet's surface. Using the link between me and my armor I mentally uncover the port over my third eye and try to figure out our landing spot.
Joline snickers. "Make sure to cover your eye before impact, don't want to kill any of our allies we happen to come across."
I close the port and cover my third eye, having managed to figure out our exact landing spot. "We'll land right into a skyscraper, the drop pod is probably going to blast half-way through it."
Joline and I both pull out our archeotech las-pistols and power rapiers in preparation for our landing. The drop pod begins to violently shake as we go through the skyscraper. As soon as the shaking stops and we've stopped falling through rock-crete floors the drop pod doors open.
We step out of the drop pod and examine our landing site. We're in what looks to have been a dormitory. Blood and gore is strewn about, with heavily injured and frightened hive-worlders everywhere. Pointing my las-pistol at them makes them fuck off.
The architecture of most hive-worlds is almost always similar. Cheap rock-crete is used to raise buildings while sectors are closed off by heavily reinforced steel plating. Our goal is securing this sector, in order to do so we need to first secure its only entrance, afterwards we can either purge or secure it.
I give the few hive dwellers who have frozen in fear a glance. When I was first born in this galaxy I'd angsted a lot over my morals. After burning the souls of innocents and guilty alike just for training I can't bring myself to care anymore about anyone not close to me.
I turn to Joline. "Should we even bother trying to differentiate between locals and rebels? Most of them are probably masquerading as civilians anyway."
Joline shrugs. "Eh, it's probably better to just ignore any civvies. If they turn out to be rebels we can just interrogate them and get some info from em later."
I nod. "Al-" five men dressed in matching flak armor carrying autoguns come into view from a collapsed wall. Joline, the household guard and I all fire warning shots. The rebels turn towards us.
Joline laughs. "Speak of the daemon and he shall appear!"
Joline and I both turn on our refractor shield and uncover our third eye, each of us giving a different one of the rebels a deep look.
Was born to a factory worker, father unknown. Was forcefully taken and raised in local schola. Was trained from a young age in combat. Was trained to ALWAYS follow orders. Was recruited in the pdf immediately after graduation. Served the pdf for ten years. Was given orders by superior to capture a malcontent noble. Fought against pdf to capture noble. Pdf superior gave orders to fight against pdf. Fought against pdf for two days. Combat ended, realises he was a rebel. Goes home. Drop pod lands on building.
I blink. The rebellion used the planetary defense force against the planetary governor? Not much time has passed since the rebellion succeeded either apparently.
Revealing our eyes ended up killing all of the rebels, along with most of the surrounding population. Joline and I both cover our third eye. I turn towards my sister. "My guy was a pdf soldier to got used by his superiors for the rebellion, what did you find?"
Joline shrugs. "Same as yours, he got ordered to fight against planetary officials and didn't really question his orders that much until it was already too late."
I begin moving towards the visible set of stairs. Joline moves next to me and the household guard surrounds the two of us, moving to secure areas on entry and guarding against any potential ambush.
When we reach the stairs the guard goes first, scaring away the local population and clearing a path for Joline and I. I see a drop pod go through a nearby building as I am going down the stairs. It continues going through another and only stops at the third impacted building. We continue walking towards the next set of stairs.
Joline points at one of the locals while continuing walking. "DIBS!"
I turn my head towards who she called 'dibs' on. It's a haggard looking teenager with shoulder length black hair. He, or she, looks to be thirteen years old, although you can't tell for sure because of their apparent malnutrition. Their soul draws in the warp, but not to the extent of a true psyker. I shrug. "Sure, but you're the one making sure that they don-."
A man sized piece of rockcrete falls from the cracked ceiling, crushing the teenager into red paste. "-t die."
Joline sighs. "It's probably better to collect them after we finish fighting."
I snort. "Yeah."
We reach the stairs of this floor. The household guard go down first. Joline points her las pistol at the floor. "I've just thought of something, wouldn't it be faster to just blast through the floors and jump down each floor? We're all wearing power armor, so it's not like we'd be in any danger from debris."
I blink. That doesn't seem to be that bad of an idea. I give her a nod. "Yeah, let's go for it."
Joline points her las-pistol directly at the ground. "Not directly underneath us! Idiot."
She points the las pistol at the floor, this time at enough of an angle to leave us out of the blast radius. "My bad~"
She fires the pistol at half power, making a large hole through three floors and killing the unfortunate hive worlders underneath. The household guard jumps through the hole first, securing the immediate area for us before we jump in as well. Before Joline can blast through the floor again a group of sixteen rebels hurriedly comes through some nearby rubble. They raise their hands in surrender the instant they see the group of twenty imperials in power armor.
Joline points her las pistol at them and fires, turning them, two layers of walls and most of the locals in that area into gore. A flying finger hits my helmet. I set my las pistol at half power, aim at the ground and fire, allowing us to drop down two more floors.
We continue in this manner, blowing through the ground, securing the area and occasionally killing any rebels that we come across. It takes us about five minutes to finally reach the proper level we need to be on.
From here we just need to head on directly to the sector's entrance, which considering the maze-like nature of most hiveworlds is easier said than done. Joline turns towards me. "We can't just blast through walls until we get to our destination, our pistols are already on the verge of overheating. Any ideas?"
I take a swipe at a nearby rock crete wall with my power rapier, cutting through it like butter. That might work. "We can cut through the walls instead."
I hear Joline sigh through the vox channel. "Couldn't you have said that before? We could have cut through the floors instead of overheating our pistols."
I shrug. "It didn't come to mind at that time."
I make three more cuts into the wall and take a few steps back, allowing the household guard to kick the cut off section down, revealing a large room filled with rebels. The sound of the falling piece of rock crete makes the ones close to us turn around.
Joline and I immediately activate our refractor shields, allowing us to safely uncover our third eyes. Most of the rebels that turn around end up screaming in pain and dying immediately afterwards, their colleagues then turn around in response and then proceed to die in the same manner. The few remaining stragglers are swiftly shot and eliminated by the household guard. We cover our third eyes.
A drop pod lands in the middle of the now cleared room, opening up and revealing the first of our 'escort'. Joline snorts. "Really? I'd honestly thought you guys were already dead."
The captain of the group shakes her head. "Not yet ma'am. What are your orders?"
Joline points at our household guards captain. "Follow her lead, this gal is your new boss for now."
The captain gives Joline the sign of the aquila. "For the Emperor!"
Joline goes to a wall and cuts another entrance, allowing the household and imperial guard to go in and clear the area. The next wall she cuts reveals a long bridge in open space heading towards the building that our destination is located in.
The household and imperial guard go first. Halfway through las-fire begins to rain upon them from a nearby building. Thanks to their power armor, our household guard is able to reach the other end of the bridge unscathed. The imperial guard reaches the other end with minor to medium injuries, their carapace armor shielding them from the few lucky shots that landed. We wait patiently until the voice of the captain of our household guard is heard through our vox. "All clear"
Most young navigators only have access to one or two powers without counting the lidless stare, Joline and I are somewhat of an exception in that we have access to three. Immolate the soul, Tides of time and space and the course untravelled, the power that we trained in the month before leaving home.
The course untravelled is a navigator power that allows us to choose a potential future and occupy the location of our alternate self in that future. It's technically not teleportation, but practically it serves the same function. The limit is that the future self we choose must be theoretically possible.
Joline and I both use the course untravelled, choosing to inhabit the location of our alternate selves that have safely passed the bridge. Both of us immediately remove our helmets and proceed to vomit. The downside to the course untravelled is that it's extremely disorienting if you're not used to it.
I take the canteen offered by a nearby imperial guard and rinse my mouth, giving it back to him after putting my helmet back on. I turn to Joline, who has just finished securing her helmet. "Let's take a minute to recover, we should probably train that in the future."
She groans. "Yeah, that still doesn't mean that I have to like it."
—
Using only warhammer-lingo hurts my brain xd.
The reason Krauss was hesitant in the earlier chapters wasn't out of appreciation for human lives, that will come up somewhat later into the story.
I'm trying to get the feel of the fighting happening in an extremely crowded hiveworld, hopefully that came across well.
Ain't avoiding civilian casualties when they are packed everywhere like sardines.