Warhammer 40k: Ours Journey

Chapter 35: Emperor: Why Couldn't Magnus Have Had This Brain?

"How is that possible?" Romulus asked instinctively.

In the tight, dark confines of a starship, a single Drukhari warrior could easily inflict casualties on multiple Astartes. Let alone the few hundred Astartes in this crusade fleet, even the entire Carcharodons Chapter couldn't finish the job in five minutes. With the forces the Templars had, there was a very real chance they could be wiped out.

If the main body of the Black Templars were here, it would be a different story. With a force of at least five thousand "Black Beastmen," they could probably hammer Lelith Hesperax herself into submission and drag her to a pyre.

"Yes, how is it possible," the Chaplain agreed, equally baffled. Clearing out these rootless xenos wasn't actually difficult. They just needed to concentrate their superior forces and slowly chew through the areas they occupied. They could certainly take them down in a short amount of time. Even if the Drukhari blew up the forge-core of an Ark Mechanicus, the damage wouldn't be enough to cripple a vessel of that size.

But five minutes...

He suspected the Archmagos had either changed his mind at the last minute, intending to give them an impossible task to back out of the deal, or the ship was so important to him that he couldn't bear to risk any damage to it at all.

Ultimately, unable to resist Aglaia's insistence and the results of the Chaplain's own divination, the crusade fleet had sent two assault squads to launch a raid. They had taken heavy casualties just to capture three of the Drukhari leaders alive, hoping to extract intelligence. The highest-ranking one was now locked in the sealed container, and the other two had remained silent even after the Inquisitor's interrogation.

Now, the tensions within the group had reached a boiling point.

As the Chaplain finished his account, Romulus finally had a clear picture of the situation. Aglaia was clinging to her omen, demanding the Black Templars press on regardless of casualties. But her own questionable abilities had already made Marshal Orlando lose faith in her, and he was unwilling to sacrifice any more men for her absurd decision. The Chaplain, meanwhile, trusted the Emperor's Tarot and hoped to enlist the aid of the Deathwatch and the Carcharodons to try and meet the Archmagos's demand. And Cawl's own attitude was extremely ambiguous. Before the Drukhari attack, the payment he had offered was incredibly generous. But after the Drukhari boarded his ship, he had become exceptionally conservative, even abandoning his mission to a planet he had been willing to pay a great price to reach.

"What do you all think?" Romulus asked, seeking his companions' opinions.

"Don't look at me. Can't kill them all in five minutes," Arthur shrugged. He saw Romulus's hesitant expression. "Even with Karna and Tyberos, it's the same. If the others join our assault, the casualties will be too high."

"...Is that so." Romulus wanted to say that wasn't what he was asking, but the fact that Arthur thought he could take on all those Drukhari by himself was pretty impressive. Of course, Romulus himself had no desire to micromanage that kind of close-quarters battle against a horde of stealthy Drukhari. He wasn't a primarch; he couldn't guarantee that over a hundred men would all react in time. His training was focused on leading assaults with heavy armored support. A high-speed, blade-to-blade brawl with Drukhari was too much for his brain to handle.

"Karna—" he began, but then he saw the look on Karna's face, which clearly said, 'Out of everyone here, you're asking me?' and promptly shut his mouth.

"..." Romulus looked around and suddenly realized there weren't many functioning brains in this team.

"Hey, why don't you ask the almighty magic-wizard of the transmigrator squad?"

"You have a plan?" Romulus asked, ignoring Ramesses's self-deprecating tone.

"I have an idea, but I need to test it first," Ramesses said. "Also, you don't mind getting your hands dirty with the Warp, do you?"

"I don't mind." Romulus then added, "But Arthur can't."

"That's enough. You guys wait here, don't move. I'm going to pick something up." Ramesses turned and went straight back to the Thunderhawk that had brought them. A few seconds later, he dragged out a coffin wrapped in chains.

"See if you can link up with this." Ramesses knocked on the iron coffin.

Romulus glanced at the coffin's lid, which was covered in Purity Seals, and understood. He synchronized a portion of his consciousness with it.

His vision immediately changed.

The most obvious difference was that he could now see a creature's soul. The Chaplain and the Sisters beside him were shrouded in a faint golden mist, while Archmagos Cawl looked like a fragmented cloud. And when his gaze fell upon the sealed iron box, a soul, distinct enough to form a complete outline, was curled up inside, mirroring the movements of its physical body.

It felt like an extra layer had been added to his vision, complete with a bizarrely colored filter.

"This is?"

"A hand-made Slaaneshi daemonhost," Ramesses replied. "Looks like it's working well?"

"It's more than working well." Romulus's gaze swept towards the depths of the ship. Hundreds of soul-lights, like bright motes of dust, drifted within, revealing their every location. He looked back at his companions, and the filthy, pink-tinged filter finally vanished.

"Now I know why a single Daemonette in the novels can wipe out an entire slaving party." Facing an opponent who can see right through you, without an absolute physical advantage, any struggle is futile.

"Are you confident now?"

"I am. But we'll still need the Sharks' help," Romulus nodded, tacitly accepting Ramesses's appropriation of their shared resources. "The Drukhari react with exaggerated speed. We still need to encircle them. By the way, since you've already completed the daemon-possession project, why not just use it on an Astartes?"

A Slaaneshi Astartes would be even more effective against Eldar. The Dark Eldar's Webway hub, Commorragh, had been given a run for its money by the Slaaneshi champion, Lucius the Eternal.

"Dude, it's a daemon. Do you really expect that thing to listen to you?" Ramesses rolled his eyes. His experiments had shown that a daemonhost shares control of the body with the original consciousness. It was essentially installing a Warp-based operating system on top of the physical one; it would just turn into a fight over the controller.

"You do know that daemons aren't really afraid of death, right?"

"Of course," Romulus nodded. This was a common misconception among most Warhammer fans, who thought that daemons would be completely obedient when faced with forces that could permanently destroy them. But honestly, in the Great Game of Chaos, daemons died permanently by the mountain-load, even Greater Daemons, and you didn't see them cowering in fear. They understood self-preservation, sure, but you couldn't control them with the threat of death. If you put them in an empty Astartes shell and sent them into battle, they'd just end up causing a huge mess for the transmigrators.

The only thing in the material universe that could truly bind a daemon were daemonic pacts, which were tied to the powers of the Warp and could forcibly control a daemon's actions.

"And don't even mention daemonic pacts to me," Ramesses added. "With a brain that can get scammed out of half its savings by the Emperor on our first meeting, you don't want me messing with that stuff."

Sigh— Romulus thought. If a certain wise Thousand Sons Primarch had had your brain ten thousand years ago, the Emperor would probably have a Webway that reached Andromeda by now.

(End of Chapter)