Getting Warhammered [WH 40k Fanfic]

142 – Golden Nuisance

I moved, appearing up next to the Custodian faster than a heartbeat, faster than he could pull the trigger. Not faster than he could react, though. He pulled his spear back, or attempted to anyway as I grabbed its handle and yanked.

Surprisingly, the Custodian came along with the spear when I swung it around and sent it flying right into the closing maw of the dragon on the other side of my body. Jagged teeth as large as my forearms clamped down on the golden warriors' armour, and yet found no purchase.

This seemed to enrage the beast, which then swung his head about wildly like a cat would with a mouse to break its spine. The Custodian wasn’t one to fall easily, its auramite power armour not having even a scratch despite the abuse. He swung his spear and its humming blade tore through a dozen teeth trying to impale him.

Just as he was about to send himself barreling out of the beast’s jaws, I swung my staff at the two and a gigantic telekinetic push crashed into the custodian, sending it down the throat of the dragon. 

The beast froze, eyes widening in something between absolute horror and anger unlike any other, it let out a low rumbling growl and then liquid fury in the way of flames flowed out of its throat. It probably hoped that would barbeque the Custodian no doubt laying waste to its insides, I doubted it worked, but it was at least preoccupied for the moment.

It huffed, sending little puffs of flames out between gritted teeth, it slammed its body into a pillar, then its stomach down on the ground and then started rolling around, eventually rolling back into the lake of magma.

Well. That gave me some breathing room at least. I cracked my neck and tightened my grip on atiesh, my gaze washing over the cavern. Daemons, hordes of Bloodletters that seemed to have no end to them, Trazyn, the Salamanders, my drones … and the Silver Wyrm that was now getting the Loki treatment from Ka’Bandha.

I stared, my lips parting in astonishment at the sight. The Greater Daemon was screaming curses, its trunk-sized fingers wrapped around the tail of the Necron construct. Ka’Bandha heaved, swinging the Wyrm over his head and then smashed it down into the ground. 

He turned, swung it again, and the Wyrm came slamming into a magma river this time. He repeated the action, again, then again and again. I saw chunks of the silvery metal dent burn, melt and fall off like useless chunks of scrap metal. Guess we had a winner there. I just hoped it wouldn’t want to join the ‘let’s group up on Echidna’ club.

I glanced at the dragon, still thrashing around and now busy clawing at its own chest and tearing off the molten rocks coating its thick hide. I had a few moments still, until either the beast managed to somehow dislodge the Custodian or died from a sudden case of having all of its internal organs scrambled.

I moved again, pushing my superior avatar’s muscles to the limit with a grin and appeared behind the Salamanders. They had outlived their usefulness, and were annoying Trazyn, furthermore, they were making me waste soul energy by making me shield the kleptomaniac. They had to go.

“Our acquaintanceship had been short and I didn’t particularly enjoy it,” I said, spinning Atiesh around me and deflecting a round of bolter shells and melta fire as I did. “So this is goodbye. Have fun in hell.”

I swung Atiesh in a wide slash, sending an omnidirectional surge of telekinetic wave out around me. It crashed into them like a tsunami, sending them all rolling head over heels into the magma river running around this central island. My drones protected Trazyn from the effects, of course, but some quick-witted Salamanders hid behind the dome-like barrier and escaped their comrades’ fate of a magma bath.

Not wanting to have them lose out on the fun, I flickered around the island, grabbing them by the hand one after the other and swinging them into the river like they were unruly children weighing less than a piece of bread. I clapped my hands, looked around once more to make sure all of them were taken care of, then nodded in satisfaction.

“They could have been worth preserving in a tesseract,” Trazyn whined, speaking up after I’d sent them into a molten grave. 

“Want me to fish them out?” I asked, giving him a dry look. “Around twenty of them are still alive … nineteen … seventeen now.”

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“No,” he huffed. “You’ve damaged their armour too much, would have been a waste of a tesseract. Though … maybe that Custodian … or the Fire Drake.”

“The dragon’s mine,” I said, leaving no room for discussion. “You can have the golden boy though, I don’t care about him.”

“You mean the Fire Drake?” He asked, sounding confused.

“The dragon, yes.”

“Yes … the dragon,” he said slowly, shaking his head before glancing over at Ka’Bandha giving a victorious roar over the fallen form of the Wyrm. “It seems that you have a new opponent now. I will not be wasting further elements of my collection on this excursion if at all possible.”

“No worries,” I said cheerily. “I’ll get you the spear … staff, whatever, then you can phase out of here if you want. I want the dragon.”

“Losing you, or your avatar here, would be even more of a loss,” he said grumpily. “I will not be leaving without both the artefact and you safely secured inside a Tesseract.”

“That’s so sweet of you,” I said, laughing before I hopped back over to my dragon. 

It was standing still now, eyes burning with hate, but not trying to crush the Custodian inside it. I watched it breathe in a long, deep breath, its chest visible expanding as it did and then … it exhaled a tremendous gust of flame accompanied by an earth-shaking roar.

Surprisingly, in that gout of flame that had been aimed at where I stood a second ago I caught a glimpse of a golden form. I smirked, watching him go and slam into the distant wall of the cavern.

The flames let up, but not without effect. The ground was reduced to slag wherever it passed and the whole dragon was visibly radiating heat so intense that its entire body caught on fire and was glowing a whitish orange.

Then a bloodthirsty Greater Daemon smashed into it, lodging a great axe into its smouldering shoulder with a roar.

It seemed Ka’bandha thought the beast a worthier foe than I, which was a misconception I didn’t feel obliged to correct at the moment. While he battered the dragon, I had an angry golden warrior shooting back right towards me, practically gliding over the landscape even in that unwieldy armour of his.

A man that big and wearing that much stuff on him had no right to be that fast. Well, I also didn’t feel like playing with him at the moment, not when I had a dragon to nibble on right there. 

Staff swinging, I blasted him in the chest with a beam of uncontrolled soul energy. An Eldritch Blast, as I’d called it before and controlled it to wrap around him like a claw.

It didn’t harm him, not with the paltry amount of energy I was bothering to waste on him. But it was enough to swing him about at the end of the pole of energy and club Ka’Bandha over the head with him.

The daemon roared in response, letting go of the horn of the dragon it’d been trying to tear off to swat at the Custodian.

It didn’t go quite as the daemon expected though I presume, since the Custodian lunged at him and pierced him through the palm with his spear. That was when the daemon tore the axe out of the dragon with a furious roar and swung it at the golden warrior.

I watched in mild amusement as the custodian ripped the spear out and let himself fall off of the daemon, spinning around to kick off of the dragon’s flank to lunge at me again.

“You’re quite relentless, aren’t you?” I mused, while in the background the dragon whom now was freed from the daemon’s grapple retaliated and chomped down on its knee. “Didn’t anyone teach you to catch a damned clue? I’m not interested in whatever it is you are selling.”

“The Emperor’s will is absolute,” he said barely audibly. “And he wants you.”

“Then he should get in the damned line,” I chortled, throwing a glance at Ka’Bandha who has not long ago proclaimed the Blood God’s interest in adding my skull to his throne. “It seems I’m getting quite popular, alas, I have a girlfriend so please sod off.”

“You da-“ he started then his spear was upon me, slamming down from above with the weight of a mountain behind it. I slid to the side, carefully controlling my white lock to not be left behind and fall victim to the powerblade. 

Moving faster to dodge was much more energy efficient than parrying or blocking a strike of that calibre. 

I poked at him, sending a surge of bio-energy over Atiesh to form a blade at the tip. The Custodian swung around, a flurry of strikes coming at me in less than a heartbeat and I danced around them with a growing grin.

I poked under his armpits, at the elbows, at the crotch and just about anywhere I felt his armour might give way. It didn’t, and even the backdoor manoeuvre that one webnovel I’d read so long ago swore worked every time, failed.

Who knew, Custodian armour had double layered assplates.

Still, it annoyed me a bit. Just a bit. I’d gotten stronger since I’d fought that Shadowkeeper, a fair bit stronger, and this golden cunt was pushing me back while being weaker than that Shadowkeeper. Sure, I was being very careful with my energy expenditure, seeing as I had a dragon and a Greater Daemon to fight after being done with this guy.

Well, ‘be done’ was relative. Let’s just get him out of my hair for a bit.

With a flick of thought, the organic blade’s construction changed minutely. Only the edge, that wickedly sharp blade, changed as I disassembled and reassembled it in a nanosecond. I didn’t have anywhere near enough bio-energy to remake the entire blade out of the Norn Emissary’s sword, but a few molecules thick blade-edge? I could do that.

The Custodian felt something, I didn’t know what, how or why, but he did. Maybe it was a minute change in my stance or something innate like that. Alas, it wasn’t enough. My next strike came faster, stronger as I channelled a bit of bio-energy into my muscles to empower them.

The results were gratifying, my more powerful blade cutting through his powerarmour with a tortured shriek of metal. One of the most powerful armours the Imperium had couldn’t halt my blade, it made me smile.

Still, the result was a finger-thick gash running across the Custodian’s torso from shoulder to hip and not bisection like I’d half-way hoped. He pulled away, managed to lean back and twist his body just enough that I only left a flesh wound on him and didn’t rend half his organs.

“I’d killed a Shadowkeeper, golden boy,” I said teasingly. “You’ll have to try harder than that.”

“I think not,” he said with a calm ferocity, a hand reaching over to his waist in a way that set off alarm bells in my head. He was entirely ignoring the wound I had inflicted, and for good reason, as his superhuman healing was rapidly working to stifle the bleeding. For a moment I saw the Shadowkeeper’s form overlaid over him, and that damned blackened skull of his.

I was on the other side of the cavern in a blink, having pulled on my soul energy to teleport away with all due haste. I peeked out from behind a towering pillar, looking at his distant form.

There was something in his hand, something I couldn’t decipher the use of. It vaguely resembled one of those self defence tasers.

Alright dipshit, that scared me. I glowered, the feeling of having my mind torn apart and my soul mutilated by that adriatic spear the Shadowkeeper used echoing through my nerves. This went from fun and games to serious in an instant. “Maximum effort it is!”

I created a score of drones, all taking on the shape of my combat form and had them rush the guy. I had to know what the hell that thing in his hand was before I stepped within a kilometre of him with my avatar.

He quickly caught on, his gaze locking onto the vague direction I was in. Not that it was hard to, with twenty angry drones rushing at him from there.

Still, I wasn’t going to half ass it. I activated all stealth biotech I had and threw an Illusory cloak of invisibility atop it, but before I slipped away to hide under some rock I made an autonomous copy of me and left it behind.

It had a telepathic link to me and would take orders, but it’d copy my mannerisms and such to distract the golden boy for a bit if he rushed there.

I circled around the cavern under the cover of invisibility and blessedly the Custodian failed to track me with his gaze as I did so.

After a moment of hesitation that didn’t even last an entire tenth of a second, he lunged at one drone. In a blink, he was upon it and I watched through the drone’s many eyes as he sent his spear right through its neck, but not before the drone’s clawed arm pierced five nail sized holes into his armour.

He tore the spear out, swinging it to the side and leaving the neck of the drone hanging on to dear life by a thin strip of flesh. Then he jammed the ‘taser’ into the open wound.

I felt an invasive energy rush out from it, flowing into the drone and trying to push me out. That was new. Dangerous too, since while I could fight it off for a bit, it rapidly drained my stores of bio-energy to do so. The thing he was filling the drone up with felt like some kind of anti-bio-energy.

Well. Fuck you. I blew the drone up in his face, sending him sliding back as his heavy boots drew a pair of grooves into the rocky ground. What did he think that thing would do? Forcefully drain me of energy and put me into a coma? Purge ‘me’ from this body? 

Depending on the answer, I could very well imagine myself airing his brain a bit before I leave here. Dragon, Trazyn, and the Greater Daemon were secondary, this golden fuck made things personal. 

You didn’t just go up to a girl and try to kidnap her with a fucking taser without getting kicked in the balls hard enough to have your life flashing before your eyes.

In the next ten or so seconds, the Custodian swiftly and elegantly dismantled my remaining 19 drones like they were a bunch of children trying to wrestle an adult and not bioweapons capable of slaughtering thousands of regular guardsmen.

I blew them all up in his face though, and he was left there scorched all over and with a dozen new holes across his body in varying sizes. None of them lethal, sadly, only two even managing to make him bleed for more than a second before his supernatural blood scabbed over the wound.

He seemed to take a breather, then shot off towards where I left my decoy. I thought about what his goal was, what he was trying to achieve here.

If I wasn’t wrong, he was one of the Custodians who’d been shadowing me back on Baal. He’d been annoying, but not murderous. Even now, he probably wasn’t trying to kill me, but he’d seen me regenerate from a pile of bones so going easy on me in fear of killing me would have been foolish.

That taser though, what was its purpose. What would happen to me if I got hit by it in my avatar? Would it sever my link to it?

Doubtful. Trazyn’s Tesseracts failed to do so, so I doubt this would, but it could make the avatar powerless.

If I ran out of energy, the avatar would either turn to dust if it still had enough power to fulfil my pre-programmed orders. Alternatively, if that taser worked like I thought it did, my avatar could go back into its hibernation state where the tiny glob of eldritch flesh inside would gobble up the avatar and then harden into a fist sized orb.

He could store me in a biomass depraved storage, then carry around the powerless me like a pokemon. He’d just have to pour some blood on the orb to wake me back up.

If I didn’t forcefully sever my link to the avatar, which I would if it ever came to that. The only thing he’d be waking up, would be a rampaging avatar on the loose with murder on its mind that even I had no control over.