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24.08.904.M38
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In the span of a second I appeared in front of one of the cultists who was wielding a weapon. I stepped out of the void and sliced him into sheets before he could even react. The moment I reestablished my position, a massive psionic storm formed over the core of the ritual. It discharged with brutal force, disintegrating nearly twenty cultists in an instant and leaving nothing but ash where, seconds earlier, there had been a swarm of Tzeentch's followers.
The crack of C-10 rifle fire began to echo through the cavern. My Ghosts advanced, covering the High Templars as they focused their power to unleash storm after storm. The cultists fell quickly as they tried to find cover among the rocks, screaming useless prayers.
The templar leader moved with monstrous speed. He cleaved everything within reach—arms, torsos, heads falling with every precise motion. From time to time he blinked in a flash, reappearing elsewhere to slaughter dozens before the rest even understood what had happened.
I searched for the cult leader.
His eyes… were not just two. There were many, opening slowly across his mutated body, all fixed on me. He continued channeling the ritual, even as the massacre unfolded around him.
Without hesitation, I focused all my power and hurled a barrage of psionic lightning straight at him. Everything caught in its path was reduced to ash instantly.
The cult leader answered by conjuring his own bolts from a deformed, tentacled arm. Both forces collided in midair, and for a brief moment we measured power against power. It quickly became clear who dominated the exchange when my lightning began to be forced back violently.
I felt the pressure spike and slipped into the void, reappearing to the side to sever the legs of another cultist who was trying to flee.
"Do not waste your time engaging him head-on," the templar leader transmitted as he continued his dance of death. "The human is clearly superior as long as his dark master continues to feed him. It is not a fight you can match." Cultist projectiles slammed into his plasma shields without effect. "Finish his lackeys. Then we will focus on him."
"Then do something," I replied coldly, maintaining the fight. "He's opening a portal. If we don't stop him now, we'll have daemons pouring through the entire cavern."
The templar leader didn't hesitate. He appeared directly at the center of a group of cultists hiding among the tall stone pillars my Ghosts were sweeping with fire. He raised his hand to the air, concentrating a massive amount of psionic energy into a single point until it formed a blazing sphere, which he hurled into the ground.
The shockwave detonated violently, hurling hundreds of cultists against the cavern walls, tearing them apart or leaving them inert. All were thrown clear—except the ritual core, where a compact group of followers of the God of Change remained standing, surrounded by a distorted barrier.
Suddenly, the nine figures positioned along the circle's perimeter began to move. They howled in pain as they rotated around the cult leader, twisting in unnatural ways.
"They're about to finish the ritual—shoot them!" I shouted to my men.
My Ghosts opened fire immediately, but the projectiles froze in midair the instant they touched the barrier, suspended as if time itself had ceased to exist.
"They are manipulating the laws of space-time," one of the High Templars transmitted as he focused his power against the barrier. "Within that field, time does not flow."
From inside the ritual field, the cultists began attacking to buy time. Warp fire, compressed explosions, and discharges tore through space, striking several of my Ghosts. Some fell before they could react; others managed to evade thanks to their superhuman reflexes.
Inside the barrier, chains of lightning, fire, and explosions intertwined as the nine sacrifices spun faster and faster within the ritual circle.
I lunged toward the ritual zone, but the barrier suddenly expanded and trapped me.
A brutal pressure crushed my skull. Time continued to move, but my body did not respond. I couldn't move a single muscle.
I focused my powers and forced reality around my body, tearing apart the spell that halted the temporal flow. The pressure slowly eased until I could move again and take in the battlefield.
Several of my Ghosts had also managed to break the spell. Others were not so fortunate. Above them, a growing group of daemons was already burrowing into their minds, exploiting their inability to resist.
The templar leader was fighting a group of massive daemons, his psionic energy crashing again and again against claws and jaws.
"Too late… too late…" the cult leader laughed with all his mouths at once. "Unexpected, but the ritual is complete. The Lord of Change claims this planet as his own…"
I felt his power surge abruptly as immense currents of warp energy gathered within his mutated body.
Without losing a second, I hurled myself at the pink and blue daemons attacking my immobilized men, splitting them in half with my psionic blades.
A devastating beam cut across the cavern from behind. I saw two High Templars engaging the cult leader directly, trading blasts, distortions, and psionic strikes, each unleashing their full arsenal to counter the other.
I focused on freeing my men from the temporal prison, one by one, throwing them back into the fight.
Every second mattered.
More and more Ghosts broke the spell, activated their blades, and charged the lesser daemons, dodging spells and talons before carving them to pieces.
The daemons began to fall… but from the open portal a new horde emerged. A wave of gigantic monsters, covered in tumors, tentacles, and multiple mouths, limped toward us, toppling pillars as they advanced.
"Aim for the legs," I ordered coldly. "If they're already limping, without them they won't reach us."
My men obeyed instantly, firing as they fought those abominations. Psionic detonations grew in intensity. Lightning and storms collided throughout the cavern while the High Templars battled the cult leader and lesser sorcerers struggled to halt our advance.
Fire, explosions, and distortions battered us without pause. Even the horrors we faced began to mutate in the middle of the fight—sprouting more arms, more mouths, more flesh—growing out of control into monstrous masses that became increasingly difficult to stop.
When I freed the last of my men, I lunged at the sorcerers. They were the ones blinding my ranks with their spells. I appeared in the middle of their group and drove my blades straight into one's neck, severing his head before he could react.
Warp fire was hurled at me. I slipped into the void and reappeared behind another sorcerer, executing a clean right-handed motion that split him from neck to leg.
I used the same maneuver again to evade the next wave of spells. I appeared beside two more and plunged my blades into their spines, lifting my arms and separating their heads at the same time.
The sorcerers began to fall one after another. Without their support, the flesh horrors quickly collapsed beneath my men's blades.
When I eliminated the last sorcerer, I moved to finish off those still twitching. I smashed their skulls without hesitation. Some kept advancing even after being split in two, using warp energies to force mutations and regenerate at an alarming speed. Cutting them wasn't enough. The brain had to be destroyed.
The cult leader had stopped laughing. Even with the portal open, the daemons were being exterminated faster than they could emerge. He was now fully focused on his fight against the High Templars.
I watched the templar leader.
He was in danger.
Two massive daemons were fighting him at brutal speed. They traded blows that tore at his plasma shields and spells that detonated in violent explosions. Still, he held on. At the same time, a horde of lesser daemons advanced to surround him.
"Support the templar leader. If he goes down, we're fucked," I shouted.
But no sooner had I finished the sentence than I saw the templar leader fall to the ground. In an instant he was covered by the horde, while the greater daemons struck him mercilessly, trying to crush him under their mass.
For a second, I thought we had lost.
Then I felt the focus of an ancient, overwhelming psionic power.
The explosion came an instant later.
A devastating shockwave hurled the daemons in every direction. The templar leader emerged from the center of the blast, ripping mangled bodies off himself as the energy of the Ancestral winds flowed around him. His wounds closed before our eyes, the plasma shields recharged, and his presence reasserted itself over the battlefield.
Without wasting time, the templar leader lunged at one of the enormous daemons that had slammed into the cavern wall. I felt again the same concentration of energy that had charged the room before.
The daemon began to scream in pain as the templar's hand closed over its face. It writhed, trying to break free, striking him with claws and tentacles without managing to dislodge him. As I was about to move to face the second daemon, I watched it closely.
It was afraid.
Its expression was one of absolute disbelief at what was happening to its kin.
I didn't waste the moment. I appeared behind it and drove my blades into its neck, splitting it in two. The cut cauterized instantly, and the daemon fell divided, without even fully hitting the ground.
The lesser daemons who had been watching the screams of pain began to flee en masse, retreating back into the portal they had come from.
"No… no… what is happening?" the cult leader screamed, all his mouths open at once. "I fulfilled my part of the bargain! I obeyed every one of your designs… I followed the Great Plan! Why… why do your servants not obey me?"
He was still fighting the other two High Templars, but now he was alone. All his followers were dead, and the daemons were fleeing in terror from the screams of the one being destroyed under the templar leader's psionic power.
I began to walk toward him. He couldn't do anything to stop me; all his focus was on dodging the multiple psionic beams erupting from the Protoss minds.
"Is that what you were saying, son of a bitch?" I said calmly, revealing my warp blade as I advanced.
He redirected his magic at me, but I slipped into the void and reappeared to the side. As I emerged, I saw the sorcerer pierced by the High Templars' beams, which began to strike him one after another as he screamed in pain.
All his warp energy diverted to regenerating his body, trying to close the wounds. I gave him no time. I appeared in front of him, grabbed him by the throat, and slowly drove my warp blade into his skull. His many-pupiled eyes dilated abruptly.
"You promised me…" he managed to say before going still, the blade completely through his head.
In an instant, the ritual stopped. The portal closed and all warp sensation vanished. Only the agonized screams of the remaining daemon remained as its spirit was fragmented and dispersed.
The screams ceased.
The daemon turned to ash.
"These daemons are incredibly powerful," the templar leader transmitted as he observed the cultist's corpse. "The Terrans had few options to face them without catastrophic losses."
"I think we got lucky," I replied telepathically. "Something much worse could have appeared. You might not even have been a match for it."
"Perhaps," the templar conceded. "But united, the Protoss are stronger. We would have formed the Archon bond. Even these creatures would have feared facing the power of the firstborn of the Xel'Naga."
I looked at my men's bodies scattered across the cavern.
"Good," I finally said. "I need you to keep helping me. We have to find all collaborators. If we have to purge this entire planet, we will. I won't allow this to happen again."
I paused. "Get as many High Templars as you can. I'm going to order the mass construction of habitats. I need thousands of Ghosts per year for internal security. Today I lost dozens… maybe hundreds."
"In moments like this, faced with a greater evil, we must remain united," the High Templar transmitted. "As we were against Amon."
"Yeah...yeah...I wasn't there, but yes,," I replied as I began to leave the cavern. "And while we're at it… start teaching me those tricks of yours. Before you ask me for a planet for the Protoss again."
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If there are spelling mistakes, please let me know.
Leave a comment; support is always appreciated.
I remind you to leave your ideas or what you would like to see.
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