A soul-tearing pain struck him.
It wasn't a neurological pain, but something deeper, more fundamental, as if the fibers of his soul were ripped apart and then crudely stitched back together.
It felt as if someone had yanked his soul from his body, thrown it into a Warp storm to be churned for hundreds of rotations, and then roughly shoved it back in, causing him extreme physical discomfort.
If he hadn't already converted his stomach into an energy reactor, he would probably be throwing up right now.
Osiris' consciousness struggled to surface from a chaotic void, each thought bringing fresh dizziness and nausea. He abruptly activated his optical sensors, and the blinding sunlight made him instinctively lower the sensitivity.
Before him lay an endless golden sea of sand.
"The Emperor above… where in the Warp is this place now?" he muttered under his breath, his voice, filtered through his faceplate, carrying a metallic rasp.
The after-effects of his transmigration made him somewhat irritable; this time, the feeling was even worse than when he had stumbled into the Warhammer Universe.
He tried to sit up, his servo arms and mechanical appendages extending from beneath his dark red robe, steadily supporting his body as grains of sand rustled and slid from the gaps in his joints.
"Priority: self-diagnosis," he habitually initiated the procedure, attempting to dispel the inner confusion with familiar tasks.
"Structural integrity: 93.7%. Power core output: reduced to 41%. Energy level: low. Warning: non-essential systems have automatically entered low-power mode."
The energy alert tightened his heart, this meant most of his combat capabilities were temporarily sealed.
His hand inadvertently touched a cold object at his waist, a dark golden dodecahedron ancient relic, its surface covered in utterly incomprehensible, dizzying, seemingly living, flowing patterns, emitting faint energy fluctuations.
"Was it your doing?" he murmured to himself, a mix of helplessness and amusement in his tone. It was this very thing that had suddenly activated a teleportation in some ruins, dumping him in this godsforsaken place.
He looked around, trying to find any landmarks. Dunes stretched endlessly, extending to the horizon.
He activated his multi-spectral scanner, and his vision was instantly overlaid with data streams.
"Environmental parameter scan: Gravity… approximately 0.998 standard G. Atmospheric composition: Nitrogen 78%, Oxygen 21%, Argon 1%…" He recited the data, but his voice suddenly cut off.
This composition… it was too familiar! So familiar it almost made his heart stop, if he still had his original heart.
Impossible! How could it be?!
He took a sharp, deep breath. Although the air was filtered, he could almost "smell" the scent from his memories, so similar to the blue planet he longed for! The gravity was almost identical too!
An absurd, crazy thought, one that made every part of his body tremble, sprang into his mind.
"Could it be… I've come back? Back to Earth?!" Excitement made his voice crackle with a hint of static.
Home! Cola! The Internet! No whispers of Chaos! No Ork Waaagh! No Adeptus Mechanicus brethren constantly trying to dismantle him for study, or declaring him a heretic for using an extra unit of power!
He almost wanted to dance and shout at the sky.
But years of ingrained caution and suspicion quickly suppressed his impulse.
"Calm down, Osiris, calm down! The data might just be a coincidence… more evidence is needed." He told himself, but his tone still held an irrepressible tremor.
His gaze fixed on several clumps of thorny, drought-resistant plants growing close to the sand.
The scan quickly commenced. "Plant sample analysis: Genetic sequence shows extensive unnatural splicing and mutations, carrying weak beta and gamma radiation… characteristics consistent with forced mutation caused by radioactive contamination. Ecological assessment: abnormal, confirmed as radioactive mutation product."
Radioactive mutation? His heart sank slightly.
Had his homeland's environment become like this? Or was it… not the time period he remembered?
"Attempt to connect to the local data network! Quickly!" He almost roared, impatient, excitement nearly overflowing.
He raised his hand, and from beneath his robe sleeve, a pale metallic construct the size of a human skull flew out, a servo-skull adorned with an Aquila and data ports, its jaw constantly opening and closing, humming and hovering beside him.
"Scan all available frequencies, retrieve data signals, attempt to access local network nodes, priority: identify network protocols and civilization status!" He issued a string of binary commands.
The servo-skull's eye sockets flickered with light, its jaw opening and closing faster, emitting a faint clicking sound in response.
It quickly ascended, beginning to spiral reconnaissance around Osiris.
Initially, there was only blank noise, which tightened his heart.
But soon, the Skull detected something. Not the vast, orderly digital ocean he hoped for, but a sharp, dissonant burst.
What was fed back to his nervous system was not the expected data packets. Instead, a cacophony of harsh, chaotic noise flooded his inputs. It was fragmented, aggressive, and utterly unclean. The servo-skull barely managed to forward some extremely weak, fragmented data packet remnants, but they were like debris after an explosion, lacking effective protocol headers and information payloads.
The servo-skull transmitted a calm analysis: "Warning: Traces of large-scale signal annihilation detected. No effective network beacons found. Data fragments cannot be reconstructed. Hypothesis: Global data network severely damaged or in an extremely disordered state. Access attempt failed."
Hope deflated rapidly. The immense disparity left him breathless. As intense as his earlier euphoria was, his current disappointment was just as profound.
"Recall. Maintain alert mode." He ordered somewhat dejectedly, his voice lowered. The servo-skull quietly flew back to his shoulder.
This was not the home he longed for.
Osiris chose a direction and began to walk. Precise mechanical feet left deep imprints in the sand, but they were quickly smoothed over by the ceaseless wind and sand.
After what his internal chronometer estimated as three standard hours, Osiris's multi-spectral lenses caught a faint, persistent glow on the horizon. Not the reflection of the sun, but something artificial, a shimmering, vertical pillar of light against the dust-choked sky.
"Analysis: Unidentified vertical structure. Significant thermal signature detected. Power output high." His voice was purely diagnostic.
As he drew closer, the structure resolved itself. It wasn't a temple or a fortress, but a megastructure of polished steel and shimmering glass that clawed its way into the clouds, a monument to arrogant, secular engineering. It was crowned with a massive, stylized logo he didn't recognize, but whose corporate scale was instantly familiar.
The structure was the gravitational center of a haphazard, sprawling encampment, a makeshift town of rusted shipping containers, dome tents, and jury-rigged power generators. Crude, graffiti-scrawled signs flapped from rusted poles.
The servo-skull buzzed nervously on his shoulder.
"Attention, Osiris. Multiple signals detected. Not Adeptus Mechanicus protocols. Heavy frequency congestion. Significant electromagnetic pollution. One data signal designated 'Priority Alpha.' Highly structured, encrypted, and corp-grade."
Corp-grade. A new designation for the Tech-Priest.
"Access the Alpha signal. Priority: language and local vernacular." Osiris commanded.
The servo-skull shivered, absorbing the data stream. After a moment, a metallic voice, not his, but a synthesized transcription, filtered into his auditory receptors:
**...repeat, all choombas listen up. The corpo dogs are running the usual patrol today. Don't be a gonk. Keep your heads down, keep your chrome on low-power, and definitely don't try to jack in to their damn terminal again. The raid last week was a total preem mess. We need eddies, not body bags. You got me, you nova pieces of work?**
Osiris froze. The words were a mangled, unrecognizable form of High Gothic, a patois filled with slang he'd never encountered.
Choomba? Corpo? Gonk? Chrome? Eddies? It was an entire lexicon of profanity and street language.
His core protocols spun, attempting to define the terms. Corpo was clearly a reference to a corporate entity, but used with visceral contempt. Chrome likely referred to augmentics. Eddies was a likely placeholder for currency.
"This place…" Osiris's voice was strained, the metallic rasp holding a hint of genuine disorientation. "This is not the blessed Golden Age. This is something… else."
He took a step towards the wasteland, his red robes flapping. This was not the Earth he remembered. The technology was advanced, yet the social structure was clearly a shattered, vulgar ruin.
"Buddy, maintain high-alert. Let's see what kind of tech-heresy these local 'choombas' are running."
___________
76 chapters to start us off is pretty simbolic
"Speak"
'Thinking'
**Radio, Message**