"Remain humble at all times. Never allow power and knowledge to cloud your judgment."
Just as Qin Mo turned his attention back to his research, Vanessa's voice cut through the mechanical hum of the chamber.
The words sliced through Qin Mo's concentration like a monomolecular blade through plasteel. His fingers, poised over the cogitator's interface, curled into a fist as he turned slowly to face her.
Her gaze was unnervingly composed, icy yet electric, the glint of a knowing mind lurking behind those unnatural blue eyes that shimmered faintly with psychic luminescence, casting eerie reflections on the cold metal walls.
"What did you just say?"
"Remain humble at all times. Never allow power and knowledge to cloud your judgment," she repeated, her voice devoid of mockery, its calmness more unnerving than ridicule.
Had anyone else spoken those words, Grey, perhaps, one of Qin Mo's trusted aides, he would have accepted them without hesitation. The advice itself was reasonable, even prudent, the kind of maxim a commander carved into the foundations of an empire.
But hearing it from a psyker?
That was something Qin Mo found very difficult to accept.
....
"Do you think I'm in a good mood right now?" Qin Mo tapped his temple with two sharp, deliberate knocks, his voice cutting through the chamber like a blade. "My mind is drowned in hatred and revulsion. The very stench of the Warp clings to this place. I cannot, will not tolerate the presence of a psyker."
The words carried more than anger; they carried a resonance, an alien vibration from the C'tan spark within him. To Vanessa it was almost painful, a vibration of cold emptiness that pushed against her mind like a glacier grinding across stone.
He knew well that his revulsion toward psykers and the Warp was more than mere personal bias; it was a side effect of the C'tan influence coursing through him.
Not all C'tan harbored an obsessive hatred for the Immaterium, but their nature was fundamentally antithetical to it.
The differences between individual C'tan entities were greater than those between gods and mortals.
Some C'tan viewed the Immaterium as a mere anomaly, a flaw in reality's design, while others despised it with an intensity that could scar suns and bend galaxies, hatred not of passion but of principle.
Qin Mo's new instincts were drawn from these echoes. He had not chosen this disgust, any more than he had chosen to be torn from his home reality and remade into something that was neither man nor god. But as with all curses, Qin Mo had learned to turn it into a tool. He would never embrace the Warp. But perhaps he could master the ways to silence it.
Vanessa tilted her head, watching him as a scholar might study a dangerous specimen preserved in glass. Her porcelain composure was absolute, yet a flicker of curiosity betrayed itself in her eyes, as if she had found a puzzle worth solving.
"You hate the Warp and psykers?" she mused softly, her tone balanced between intrigue and mockery. "Then isn't that the best reason to study it? Hatred alone is blind. If you want to defeat something, you must understand it. And if you understand it… you can build weapons to counter it?"
She gestured toward the various instruments and research stations scattered around the chamber. Flickering displays with half-written equations. Resonators thrummed with suppressed energy. Containment fields hummed faintly, enclosing coils of unstable matter harvested from fallen heretics. Servo-arms of polished chrome shifted and clicked, calibrating readings with mechanical precision. The entire chamber was less a laboratory than a war foundry of ideas, each device a tool in Qin Mo's attempt to impose order upon a universe that despised it.
"These devices," Vanessa continued, her lips curving into a knowing smile, "are incredible. The sciences of the material universe are your playground. You bend them as if they were clay. But the Warp?" Her voice lowered, silk sliding into steel. "You cannot even sense it. You are blind. And I…" she pressed a hand to her temple, eyes half-lidded, "…am not."
Qin Mo's eyes narrowed, but he didn't immediately dismiss her words.
Instead, he fell into deep thought. His mind warred with itself, his logical, pragmatic side urging him to listen, while his hatred screamed at him to silence her.
Finally, he forced himself to suppress his disgust. "Tell me what you know."
Vanessa's smile sharpened as she began her lesson.
She painted the Warp not as mystics or Imperial priests described it, but as a scholar peeling back the skin of reality.
She began with the fundamental nature of the Warp. She spoke of it as an ocean, an ever-churning, storm-lashed sea of raw emotion, unbound by causality. In the material universe, gravity pulled, energy conserved, time flowed forward. In the Warp, thought was gravity, desire was energy, and time was a spiral devouring itself.
Where the material universe obeyed logic and order, the Warp was a maelstrom of pure emotion and chaos. It defied causality and existed outside linear time, shaped not by matter, but by thought, belief, and desire.
Then she explained that psykers were not masters of this sea but fragile boats upon it. Their minds acted as strained funnels, straining the infinite through their own fragile psyches. Their will became the key, their discipline the only dam holding back the flood. Without it, they would be swept away, drowned in madness, or worse, opened like a wound for predators that were older than stars. Every psychic power, every flame of foresight, every bolt of force, was nothing more than a trickle siphoned from the infinite tides of the Immaterium.
She treated Qin Mo as if he were a complete novice, breaking down even the most fundamental concepts. And she didn't shy away from forbidden knowledge.
She sketched the outlines of the entities lurking in that dimension, the Ruinous Powers, their domains, their influence. Carefully omitting their names, but not their essence, painting their hungers vividly enough that Qin Mo could almost feel their breath pressing against the walls of reality.
Qin Mo did not interrupt. He simply listened, filtering out what he already knew and memorizing what he did not.
The lesson spanned a full Terran day, though his mind absorbed it all without pause. For another man, it would have been a descent into madness; for him, it was merely a system to be understood.
....
"A psyker's power does not come from within," Vanessa finally concluded, voice heavy with fatigue but eyes still sharp. "It is always stolen, siphoned from the Warp. If you had to distill the process into a single word, it would be 'extraction.'"
Leaning forward, her eyes gleamed with a predator's amusement. "So? Any insights?"
Qin Mo closed his eyes in deep concentration. Images of pipelines, circuits, and networks flooded his thoughts. The Warp was not mysticism, it was infrastructure. If there was a conduit, there could be a valve. And if there was a valve, it could be shut.
"Psykers exist in the material universe," he murmured. "If I can sever or disrupt their connection to the Warp before they draw upon its power… I can render them utterly helpless."
His thoughts ignited with inspiration. Without another word, he turned and began sketching schematics across glowing holo-slates. Devices that resonated with silence instead of sound. Fields that would choke psychic whispers before they could reach the Immaterium. He was not building wards or charms, he was drafting signal jammers for the mind.
Vanessa's lips quirked in genuine amusement.
"By the way," she said lightly, almost as if in passing, "does this mean you're trapped in the Talon Sector forever?"
Qin Mo paused, his gaze momentarily flickering with curiosity. "What do you mean?"
With a smirk, she pressed on. "Imperial warships use Warp drives. To cross the stars, they plunge into the Immaterium itself. If you so much as set foot into that storm, won't you go mad with hatred?"
"Who says I need Warp drives?" Qin Mo replied flatly.
"Oh?" Her smirk deepened, like a predator sensing a vulnerability. "Perhaps you'll stroll through the labyrinthine passages of the Webway, like the Eldar? Or resurrect some Inertialess Drive from the ashes of ancient heresies? Even if you built one, could you endure its use? You are not a machine, Qin Mo. You are still flesh, after all."
Qin Mo's face remained impassive as she spoke of technologies and secrets unknown even to the High Lords of Terra as if they were common knowledge. Yet Qin Mo felt no intimidation. If the Warp was a prison, then he would simply carve another path between stars. Such was the logic of his nature.
"I have a better idea. I just need time to research and develop it. I will find a faster and more direct method for interstellar travel."
Vanessa's curiosity was piqued. "Oh? Can you give me a hint? Considering I just taught you about the Warp and the Neverborn?"
"No."
"Ha!" Her laugh was sharp, mocking. "You haven't figured it out yet. You're stalling, pretending. In the end, you'll still need the Warp."
Qin Mo didn't even look up from his notes.
"Yes," he said flatly. "You're absolutely right."
"…"
"…Tch." Vanessa sighed, giving up on the topic.
Instead, her tone shifted, colder. "You were fortunate. The heretics' last stand conveniently helped you filter out the right candidates for your personal guard. Nearly all of them are suitable. Nearly. Except one."
Qin Mo stopped writing and turned to her. "Who?"
"Grot."
Qin Mo's eyes narrowed. "Reason?"
Vanessa's expression darkened, her porcelain mask cracking into genuine warning. "He revels in battle too much. He is a flame that burns for slaughter, not discipline. You can dismiss my words as an attempt to sow discord if you wish, but it will cost you later. I am speaking the truth."
Qin Mo was silent for a long moment. Then he nodded once. Slow. Certain. "You are correct."
....
He turned his attention back to his research, but his thoughts wandered to Grot.
He had noticed it before. Compared to high-powered cannons or heavy scatter-lasers, Grot preferred using his graviton hammer, a weapon meant for last-resort self-defense.
But Grot didn't use it as a last resort. He enjoyed crushing enemies with it.
He rejoiced in pulverizing heretics into pulp, rather than simply eradicating them outright.
He killed with joy.
And joy in slaughter was a scent that the Ruinous Powers could smell across the stars.
If left unchecked…
It was only a matter of time before Khorne, the Blood God, took notice of him.
Qin Mo's jaw tightened.
"Guards! Summon Grot."
"..."
Silence. No one responded.
Qin Mo's expression darkened. A strange unease crept up his spine.
He strode to the door and stepped into the corridor.
There, sprawled across the floor, lay his guards.
Unconscious. Snoring loudly.
Qin Mo's eyes widened. Without hesitation, he rushed to Vanessa's holding cell.
Inside, someone was still imprisoned. But it wasn't Vanessa. It was the heretic Magus who had fled from the battlefield days ago.
Her body was bloated and swollen, yet her vital signs remained stable.
Her eyes twitched, tracking Qin Mo as he approached. In those dazed, unfocused pupils, he saw confusion.
The Magus had no idea how she got here.
Qin Mo's fists clenched.
"Vanessa… She did this."
In less than ten minutes, she had escaped the underground research chamber, knocked out every single guard, abducted the heretic Magus, and swapped places with her in the cell.
Her psionic power was immense. At the very least, she was an Alpha-level psyker.
But… Qin Mo wasn't worried.
Because despite everything, she had not fled.
At least… Not yet.