[**** *****]
[Activated]
Gerhard stared as the hidden skill or status slowly became fully visible, and the two words settled into view. For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
THUMB
Suddenly, a monstrous wave of energy exploded deep within Gerhard. It was like a massive dam breaking, and water flooded outward. Bright golden light burst out, shining in all directions and lighting up the gloom of Luna's surface.
It felt like watching the sun rise.
Golden radiance poured from his chest, carrying a cyan touch that chased away the corruption and oppression all around. The corrupting blackness that had spread throughout his body boiled, evaporated, and vanished in an instant. The blue, pink, and violet Warp energy clinging to the glaive recoiled as if burned, and the blade was ejected from his core.
BOOOOOM--!!
Magnus and everyone else nearby staggered backwards. Magnus' enormous hand tightened around the weapon's haft, his single eye widening as he looked at the anomaly who should have been dying.
Gerhard's feet slowly left the ground.
Golden radiance continued pouring from his body, though its initial intensity had begun to fade. Beneath the ruined remains of his armour and clothes, the hole in his chest was already closed.
[Corruption Removed]
[Mana Circulation Restored]
[HP Restored]
[A Unique Status has been gained]
[New skills have been created through the Unique Status]
[Massive surge in energy detected]
[Mana responds]
[Integration commenced]
[Massive surge in MP]
[-1,000 HP per second due to energy overload]
[Regeneration]
[-2,000 HP per second due to energy overload]
[Regeneration]
[-3,000 HP per second due to energy overload]
[Regeneration]
[-4------ ERROR]
[ERROR]
[ERROR]
[ERROR]
[New skill has been gained due to Unique Status]
[Massive surge in total HP and MP]
[-10,000 HP per second due to energy overload]
[Integration]
[Regeneration]
[ERROR]
[ERROR]
[Partial suppression commenced]
[Integration]
[New skill has been gained due to Unique Status]
.
.
.
Gerhard blinked. Then he looked around as if staring through everybody. His eyes shone with brilliant light and had changed colour.
"Oh."
He pressed a hand against his chest. There was no pain, no foreign influence, and no more of that disgusting sensation of something trying to devour or corrupt its way into his existence. On the contrary.
He felt... ecstatic.
"Huh."
A massive grin slowly spread across his face as he looked into the sky and spread his arms.
"Heh... hehehe..."
Then he laughed.
"Ahahahahaha!"
Hard.
"HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"
Magnus, Guilliman and Alaya stared. But they weren't the only ones. Everyone even remotely receptive to the Warp and psychic power turned to stare at Gerhard at that moment. The monstrous wave of psionics that had emanated from him was almost beyond compare.
"What?"
"Gerhard. Are you still yourself?" Guilliman asked.
Gerhard looked at them, momentarily confused.
"Sorry. Sorry!"
He waved a hand dismissively.
"It's just... Hehe, I feel amazing!"
His laughter grew louder.
"Ahahahaha!"
Guilliman didn't know what to make of it. If he didn't know any better, he would say that Gerhard was... high...
Magnus's expression twisted. A moment ago, this insignificant creature had been impaled upon his glaive, his body about to be corrupted and his soul exposed to the will of a Chaos God. Now he was laughing. Laughing!
But before the Crimson King could respond, something inside him shifted again. A terrible pain tore through his soul. The shock of Gerhard's change had momentarily stilled the internal struggle, but now it was back in full force.
For an instant, his consciousness was dragged somewhere else.
During his fight with his brother Leman Russ, Magnus had been shattered into shards, and he had spent a long time trying to reclaim them. Now, within the Immaterium, Magnus the Red's shattered fragments were in chaos.
The spell Gerhard had forced into his essence had done something no one had accomplished in ten thousand years. Something that should have been impossible. It had begun separating Magnus from Tzeentch.
Not entirely. Far from it.
The Primarch's soul was too thoroughly corrupted, too fundamentally altered by Chaos powers, for such a thing to happen so easily. But some fragments had been cleansed. Those fragments fought the others, and that was a big problem, because the cleansing Gerhard had performed was still helping the healthy parts.
Magnus the Scholar remembered Prospero. Magnus the Warrior raged against his enslavement. Magnus the Penitent cried out for the father he had betrayed. Others remained consumed by hatred, pride, and madness, insisting that the Changer of Ways was their only salvation. And still more fragments were barely recognisable as Magnus at all.
The Primarch's soul was tearing itself apart.
But someone had something to say about that.
Tzeentch would not allow it. The Changer of Ways had invested too much in Magnus. He was one of his greatest champions, his central chess piece in the battle for the galaxy, a Primarch of the Anathema, and a prize he had coveted and prepared for since before the Horus Heresy. He would not surrender him to some mortal anomaly.
~E̷N̶O̴U̷G̵H̷.~
The command descended upon the warring fragments. The voices fell silent. The cleansed fragments resisted. For the first time in millennia, parts of Magnus's soul were no longer entirely subject to the god's will. Another part of his grand plan had gone off the rails.
But the power difference was unimaginable. Chains of impossible colour wrapped around the struggling fragments, binding them together and forcing them beneath the corrupted whole, like a cursed mosaic.
Magnus screamed. For a moment, he almost managed to resist. Then his consciousness was crushed beneath the will of his owner. Tzeentch took control. And on Luna, the Crimson King's expression changed.
Guilliman felt it immediately. The pressure and malice around Magnus spiked so violently that the ground beneath the Daemon Primarch cracked and mutated at once.
The Lord of Ultramar raised the Emperor's Sword and prepared for a fight. But this was different; this was not Magnus. Where had all that power come from? The last time he felt such power was... 10,000 years ago.
"Magnus?"
The giant slowly turned towards him. His single eye burned with a thousand shifting colours. Then he smiled. It was not Magnus's arrogant smile. Guilliman's blood ran cold, and his hair stood up. A voice emerged from his brother's mouth, accompanied by countless others whispering beneath it.
"Y̷o̴u̵..."
The eye turned towards Gerhard.
"Y̸o̵u̷ ̶h̵a̶v̴e̴ ̷t̸a̵k̶e̸n̶ ̵s̶o̸m̸e̸t̶h̸i̸n̸g̷ ̴t̵h̸a̶t̵ ̷b̸e̷l̶o̸n̶g̴s̷ ̴t̵o̸ ̵m̶e̶."
Gerhard didn't look at him and kept staring into the sky.
"Oh? Is it? Yeah... maybe so!"
Suddenly, the Warp erupted. Massive tears opened in reality above Luna's surface. Thousands of daemons poured through them, their shrieks echoing through the minds of every living being present. Pink Horrors, Flamers, Exalted Flamers, Screamers, Exalted Sorcerers and other monstrosities descended upon the Imperial lines.
Entire formations of Rubricae marched through the newly opened webway portal, accompanied by hundreds of Thousand Sons Sorcerers. And above them all, a monstrous two-headed Lord of Change spread its enormous wings.
Kairos Fateweaver.
The Oracle of Tzeentch raised his staff and unleashed a tremendous wave of sorcery upon the advancing Custodians. Guilliman turned towards the battlefield. The vox erupted with desperate and grim reports.
"Lord Guilliman! Enemy reinforcements!"
"Massive daemonic incursion!"
"Grand Master Voldus requests immediate support!"
The Primarch looked from the battlefield to Gerhard. He wasn't sure what had happened, but he felt no malice or corruption in him. His strategic and logistical mind urged him to run tests and talk to him to find out what was happening, but he knew he had no time for that.
"I cannot leave you here!"
Gerhard, still floating several feet above the ground, smiled and looked at Roboute.
"Sure you can."
"That is no longer merely Magnus! Something is controlling him!"
"Yeah. I noticed."
"Gerhard--"
"Roboute. I've got this."
Guilliman hesitated. But the feeling he got from Gerhard reminded him of something. Then another desperate transmission reached him. Reluctantly, he turned and charged toward the Imperial lines. Gerhard watched Magnus. Or rather, the thing wearing Magnus' skin.
"So..." He scratched his chin. "Where were we?"
The Crimson King's enormous glaive rose.
"Y̵o̷u̶ ̵w̸i̴l̸l̵ ̸d̶i̷e̵."
Gerhard grinned.
"Promises, promises. Ahahaha!"
Gerhard spread his arms.
"Very well then!"
Magnus crossed the distance in an instant. Space-time folded, and he appeared before Gerhard. His glaive descended with monstrous force, the blade wrapped in sorcery powerful enough to tear the surrounding space apart.
Gerhard tilted his body and let the glaive pass. Magnus turned in the same motion and swung a massively powerful backhand.
His fist zoomed through the air, but hit nothing. Gerhard wasn't there anymore. Magnus' eyes widened as he felt space distort right behind him.
There, floating upside down, was Gerhard. He held out his fingers.
[Vector Control] + [Diverge] + [Spatial Sense] + [Amplify]
A small, brilliant red sphere formed at his fingertips. The vectors of all forces within it reversed and pointed outwards from one point, compressing into a violent pulse of outward-directed force.
BOOOOOOOOOOM---!!
A colossal wave of repulsive force struck Magnus squarely in the chest. The Daemon Primarch's enormous body shot backwards. He violently smashed through the rusted hull of a crashed frigate, tore through several hundred metres of reinforced bulkheads, and finally struck the lunar surface with enough force to produce a tremendous explosion of dust and debris.
[A new skill has been created through a special action]
[Please name the skill]
Gerhard remained suspended in the air. He stared into the void above Luna, thinking about everything and nothing at once. He applied a bit of force to a single point, combined it with his skill [Vector Control], and then amplified it. The skill could only have one name.
"Reversal: Red."
Reversal: Red (Active) Lv. 1
| MP: 1500
| EXP: 0.00%
| An advanced spatial and/or force-and-vector manipulation technique that creates a powerful repulsive force using Mana.
| The user condenses spatial energy and/or force into a small sphere, then releases it in an explosive burst.
Effects:
| Creates a concentrated sphere of repulsion.
| +200% repulsive force compared to Psychokinesis.
| Releases an explosive wave of spatial divergence.
| Repulsive force increases with additional MP.
| Higher Mana output increases destructive potential.
---
Magnus crawled from the wreckage. His chest was crushed. Several ribs had broken through his flesh, while one of his wings hung at an unnatural angle. The wounds began healing almost immediately as Warp energy flowed through his body.
But Tzeentch was not pleased.
Gerhard's attack had been entirely different from anything the human had previously demonstrated. It wasn't merely an application of vector manipulation. And neither was it solely the use of psychic energy from the Warp.
Magnus's sorcery was powerful enough to manipulate gravity, space, time, and matter itself through the Warp. Yet the blow wasn't sorcery. It had been something else. Pure, directed force, powered by that anomalous energy he had already felt before.
And the anomaly had released it with almost contemptuous ease.
Magnus straightened. His bones snapped back into place. For a moment, the daemon's mouth twisted into something resembling a sneer. Something about the anomaly now bothered him immensely. That golden light reminded him of the Anathema, of something else, and he instinctively knew he had to destroy him at all costs.
"A̸h̴..." He looked towards the distant golden figure. "S̴o̵ ̴y̷o̶u̵ ̷h̶a̶v̵e̴ ̴g̶r̸o̷w̶n̷."
The Primarch raised his glaive. The weapon's blade expanded, becoming a long, shimmering edge of Warp energy. Sorcerous flames wound around the haft while several enormous chains of psychic energy materialised around Magnus's arm.
Tzeentch examined his opponent. Gerhard had demonstrated the ability to redirect physical attacks and repel matter with extraordinary force. But he was still mortal.
... right?
His body could be destroyed. His soul could be torn apart. And whatever strange defensive abilities he possessed, Magnus could overcome them. Something trembled inside Tzeentch, a warning of great danger, and he had to act on it.
Yet something was wrong. And not just with Gerhard.
The god's attention shifted towards the Primarch's soul. The cleansed fragments remained bound, but they had not been reclaimed. Even now, they struggled against their chains. Tzeentch tightened his grip, dealing damage as he did so.
He would deal with them later. First, the anomaly had to die. He knew that feeling... and it was far too close to the dread that was the Anathema to let it live another moment.
Magnus began spinning his glaive. Psychic chains wrapped around him, carrying the enormous weapon through the air in sweeping arcs. Flashes of Warp sorcery burst forth, and it looked as if he painted runes with each movement.
Gerhard's eyes turned to Magnus with obvious interest.
"Oh?"
Magnus accelerated. The glaive struck the ground.
A massive wave of shattered rock and wreckage erupted towards Gerhard. He floated higher. The debris passed beneath him. Then something emerged from the cloud. The glaive. Its blade hurtled toward Gerhard from the side, guided by Magnus's immense psychic power.
At the same time, gravity around Gerhard suddenly increased a hundredfold. His movement slowed, space distorted, and the blade approached.
Gerhard looked at it and smiled.
It was a strange sensation. He felt the forces acting on him with perfect clarity. Gravity, momentum, acceleration- even the minute changes in the surrounding space and, most importantly, the Warp. The Warp's psychic energy was strongest and the foundation of everything.
Gerhard's Mana circulated without interruption, still swelling as it integrated the nigh boundless psychic energy that had appeared inside him. His body felt impossibly light. And beneath it all, the golden energy continued to burn.
Gerhard closed his eyes. Magnus's weapon was almost upon him. Gerhard opened his eyes. The golden light brightened.
"Sorry, Hestia. I'm probably enjoying this a little too much."
Gerhard moved his body slightly, letting the glaive pass harmlessly beside him. Gerhard slowly stretched his arms, his body floating higher above the ruined battlefield. For a moment, he simply gazed towards Terra.
The distant planet hung above Luna, shrouded in unnatural red Warpstorms and the imminent Chaos attack. For some reason, he felt an overwhelming sense of freedom and didn't care right now.
Gerhard turned his gaze back to Magnus, who was weaving dozens of spells that attacked him from all sides.
"Well then."
He raised one hand.
[Vector Control] + [Converge] + [Spatial Sense] + [Amplify]
Above his hand, a bright blue sphere appeared. Unlike Red, this one held converged space and all vectors to a single point.
[Amplify]
Gerhard pumped the new spell full of Mana and made it grow massively above him. He waved his hand around. The sphere sucked in all the sorcery and psychic energy targeting him, then evaporated into nothing.
[A new skill has been created through a special action]
[Please name the skill]
"Lapse: Blue."
Lapse: Blue (Active) Lv. 1
| MP: 500
| EXP: 0.00%
| A spatial manipulation technique that uses Mana to compress space and converge all vectors toward a designated point, generating a powerful attractive force.
| The strength, range and precision of the attraction depend on the user's INT, WIS and Mana output.
Effects:
| Creates a concentrated sphere of spatial attraction.
| +100% attraction force compared to Psychokinesis.
| Compresses matter caught within the convergence.
| Attraction strength increases with additional MP.
| Multiple targets can be affected simultaneously.
| Higher Mana output increases spatial compression.
---
Gerhard ignored Magnus' reaction and instead raised his right hand again. He was already high, so he wouldn't stop now. A concentrated sphere of cyan Mana appeared.
[Lapse: Blue]
The sphere distorted, pulling nearby dust and rock fragments toward it.
Then he raised his left hand. A second sphere formed; this one glowed bright red.
[Reversal: Red]
Gerhard studied the two opposing forces. He had used similar techniques before, manipulating direction and magnitude through Psychokinesis and, very recently, in his fight against Magnus, vector control.
Of course he knew what he was doing, but his state was too much for even his mind to handle. He was still feeling that rush, that immeasurable high that came from finally activating that skill.
The two forces were fundamentally opposed. One drew everything inward, and the other forced everything away. Normally, bringing them together would simply cancel each other out. Unless he used his Unique Status and what came with it.
Magnus watched.
For the first time since Tzeentch had seized control of the Primarch's body, the god started to freak out. The anomaly had turned into something. Something unfamiliar and yet familiar, and if his guess was accurate...
The Changer of Ways roared, conjuring tens of thousands of spells and curses and hurling them at Gerhard. But Gerhard did not move.
"Attraction..." The cyan sphere brightened. "Repulsion..." The red sphere brightened as well.
The two began moving towards each other. Gerhard brought his hands together.
The two opposing forces went haywire for a moment as the spheres touched. Then Gerhard forced them into a single point and used his new Unique Status slash skill.
Golden light materialised in between the red and blue. This was pure psionic energy, acting like a bridge between the two. The surrounding space trembled. Cyan, red and gold twisted together, producing a third colour.
A brilliant, almost white colour, surrounded by dark violet. Gerhard's eyes widened with delight. A small sphere of white light formed between his palms. Because the attracting vectors pointed inwards and the divergent ones outwards, it took the shape of a sphere.
"Hey!" he called towards Magnus.
The Daemon Primarch's single eye narrowed. Gerhard extended two fingers.
"Catch."
The sphere shot forward. For one brief instant, nothing happened. Then...
KRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA—!!
A sphere of white energy tore across the battlefield. The spells, curses and the glaive disappeared upon contact. The psychic chains shattered. The sphere kept moving, obliterating the wreckage in its path and carving a hole through Luna's surface.
Magnus attempted to evade. He twisted his enormous body, folding space around himself to escape the approaching attack. But he had waited too long. The white sphere struck his left side.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!
Half of the Daemon Primarch's torso vanished. His left arm disappeared completely, along with a great portion of his chest and the base of his wing. The attack tore through him, continuing into the distance before finally dissipating.
For several seconds, there was silence. Magnus stood motionless. His single eye stared down at the enormous hole in his body. The attack had not merely damaged his physical form. It had reached into the Warp, because of its added psychic nature.
Deep within the Primarch's fractured soul, the chains snapped. The cleansed fragments surged against their bonds, trying to get away. Tzeentch desperately tightened his grip. But the damage had been done. For one brief moment, control slipped. Magnus's single eye changed. The unnatural colours faded, and the Crimson King looked towards the human floating above him.
His mouth opened. "Wh... what..." He stared down at his ruined body. Because of Tzeentch's actions and the control of his body, he was still alive. He wouldn't have made it otherwise.
The Primarch staggered. His remaining hand pressed against the wound in his chest. Within his Immaterium, Tzeentch's chains tightened once more. But this time, the cleansed fragments fought back. And Magnus fought with them. His eye widened as he felt the god attempting to seize control again.
"No..." His enormous body trembled. "NO!"
Tzeentch's furious presence descended upon him.
~M̶I̷N̸E̴!~
Magnus screamed. Then his ruined body collapsed to one knee.
Gerhard watched him carefully. His smile faded. He could feel the struggle continuing within the Primarch's soul. The corruption had not vanished. Not all of it. And the god was still desperately attempting to reclaim what he had lost. But something had changed. Something irreversible.
Then, as if in protest, Magnus the Red's form suddenly detonated.
BBBBOOOOOOOOMMMMM---!!
...
Gerhard stepped onto the ground and looked around. He could tell that he had succeeded. He had taken his revenge and gotten a lot for it. He opened his hand, looked at the shimmering red shard he had grabbed, before storing it in his inventory.
He grinned. The future looked interesting for dear Magnus, the Imperium and Chaos. An answer from the Changer of Ways was inevitable now. Gerhard felt the massive churns in the Sea of Souls as the Ruinous Powers reacted to the massive L he had just taken.
The other three were having a blast at Tzeentch's expense. But they were far more worried about Gerhard right about now.
And they should be.
With a thought, he looked at his status again. He finally understood why he had become the Emperor's Chosen. And yet, that was barely a fraction of what had been bestowed.
[**** *****] --> [Star Child]
"Fuck..."