"I asked if you have a way to help me absorb the energy of a star, and yet you evade my question." Axis's palm flared once more with a golden-green energy, his threat unmistakable.
He wanted to know if the creature could help him absorb stellar energy, not waste time on pointless chatter.
"Wait! Young one of my kind," the Flayer said hastily, "If you can help me become whole, gathering all of my shards, I will regain my complete memories. Then, I can tell you the method for devouring stars."
Axis sneered. So, it was all about getting him to resurrect it. The Flayer's machinations were all too clear.
"I do not appreciate deception, and it seems you intend to deceive me. I understand your kind, the C'tan, quite well. While the powers we wield are similar, we are fundamentally different in nature." Axis's voice was cold.
"If you are only trying to tempt me into resurrecting you, then you are gravely mistaken." A potent, destructive force emanated from his palm, making it clear he would annihilate the C'tan shard at a moment's notice.
For Axis, the only thing of use from a C'tan was its ability to consume stars.
"Shards of the C'tan cannot be destroyed. Even with the great power you possess, we are incarnations of the universe's fundamental laws," the Flayer transmitted a message of furious indignation.
"I have my pride. If you insist on acting, then I have nothing more to say, you who are a being from another world."
"Heh! I thought you would continue the charade, trying to convince me I was one of your kin. So you've dropped the pretense now," Axis said with a small smile.
While the C'tan were not on the level of the four Chaos Gods, they were no weaker than other warp deities. If the Goddess of Life and the Laughing God could discern his origins, there was no reason a C'tan could not. This wretched thing had simply been trying to save itself with a clumsy lie.
"I did not deceive you. I saw your true nature from the start," the C'tan retorted. "Even though you come from another universe, your power is far more akin to ours than to those monsters from the Immaterium. We have common interests, so why not try to cooperate? I speak to you as an equal. The other mortals before me are like ants."
Initially, it had indeed planned to deceive the outsider, even spinning small lies to foster a sense of kinship, suggesting Axis might be the reincarnation of a C'tan or a new Star God born of the material universe to combat the Warp.
"From your words, you seem to know I have made deals with gods of the Warp?" Axis asked.
How could it know of his dealings with the Goddess of Life, the Aeldari's Laughing God, or even Khorne?
"Is that so strange? The beings fighting my brethren over there, are they not gods of the Warp?" the Flayer replied with a hint of confusion, gesturing toward the distant battlefield.
There, Sanguinius, Leman Russ, and Magnus had each engaged their opponents, and the duels were raging fiercely.
The C'tan recognized the powers they wielded all too well. While the one called Sanguinius seemed to draw his strength from the material universe, the other two were saturated with the energies of the Empyrean.
Their nature required no guessing. What did puzzle the Flayer, however, was the immense physical power of their vessels. In the materium, it should have been impossible for any beings other than the C'tan to possess such terrifying strength, rivaling that of the Star God shards themselves.
Axis was left speechless.
It seemed they were on completely different wavelengths. He had thought the creature was referring to his actual pacts with gods of the Warp, but the Flayer was talking about the three Primarchs before them.
The distant battle was indeed ferocious.
Unlike Axis's one-sided confrontation, the three Primarchs were not completely overwhelming their C'tan, but they clearly held the upper hand.
Sanguinius faced a C'tan weapon of grotesque form, a bizarre fusion of a colossal eyeball and countless writhing tentacles.
It was clad in pale, osseous armor that constantly sloughed off and regenerated. The tips of its tentacles crackled with a baleful green energy of decay, and each lash tore through space itself, leaving behind festering wounds upon reality. The creature had no fixed core, its attacks a tempestuous storm of cosmic force intended to erode and dismantle the Primarch's sacred light.
"Abomination! You shall be reduced to nothing in the face of the Holy Light!" Sanguinius's voice boomed like a great bell as his golden wings fully unfurled, bathing him in a radiance so bright he appeared as a god forged of pure gold.
Each swing of his greatsword of light cleanly severed a tentacle wreathed in decaying energy.
No foul ichor sprayed from the wounds, only the hiss of sanctified flames and a rising mist of golden vapor as the appendage was purified.
Judgment!
A pillar of divine light descended from the heavens, a strike of absolute divine wrath.
The colossal eye-like creature let out a voiceless, piercing shriek in the pure radiance. Its massive body erupted in golden flames from within, and in the sacred purification, it dissolved completely into motes of light.
In the fading column of light, the form of Sanguinius was silhouetted, his four wings spread wide, a true Archangel of Judgment descended upon the battlefield.
The C'tan weapon that had battled Sanguinius was defeated, revealing the C'tan shard within as its material shell was utterly destroyed.
Magnus's opponent was a complex construct, a fusion of a great mechanical spider and a crystalline mountain. It was unnervingly swift, its eight metallic legs, sheathed in energy fields, skittering across the void at impossible speeds.
From its back rose several enormous crystalline spires that constantly fired beams of psychic energy designed to unravel matter and warp-field traps that twisted space. It was less a being and more a sophisticated war machine, relying on ranged bombardment and spatial manipulation to suppress its target with an unending barrage of cosmic rays.
Arcane Sorcery: Phase Shift!
As the dense volley of rays shot toward him, Magnus lightly tapped his staff. His body became momentarily incorporeal, and the beams passed harmlessly through him as if he were a phantom.
Arcane Sorcery: Energy Backlash!
He pointed his staff at one of the crystal spires as it was charging, and a precise bolt of arcane light struck it.
The C'tan spider shrieked in a furious hum.
Its remaining spires flared brightly, and several thick fields of spatial distortion coiled like invisible pythons, striking at Magnus from multiple angles in an attempt to pin and tear him apart.
"Hmph," Magnus scoffed, his own arcane eye glowing with unprecedented intensity.
Spatial Anchor!
Spatial Fold!
A rapid succession of spells dealt heavy damage to the spider-like C'tan.
Singularity Burst!
Pressing his advantage, Magnus created a pinpoint singularity with his own arcane power, and it began to pull the creature into its vortex. The massive spider-construct whined in terror, its remaining limbs clawing at the void as it tried to resist the horrifying suction with its psionic power.
But it was all in vain. Its metallic shell was torn and stripped away by an invisible force, its intricate internal structures twisted and crushed. The armor and crystals protecting its core were shredded like paper. The throbbing vessel containing the C'tan shard, along with the fabric of space around it, was ripped violently from the spider's body and dragged irresistibly toward the ever-expanding black singularity. This spell was, in theory, the creation of an Empyrean black hole, but even this immense power only sufficed to destroy the weapon's outer shell. The C'tan shard within remained intact.
Thus, the third C'tan was defeated by Magnus.
The Wolf King engaged in the most primal and savage of the three duels. His adversary was a fusion of a giant metallic ape and a behemoth of rock.
It possessed immeasurable strength, its fists encased in heavy energy fields that could seemingly shatter planets with a single blow.
Its body was covered in thick stone armor, making its defense astounding, and it could spew a powerful energy breath from its maw.
In response, Russ had transformed into a twenty-meter-tall silver wolf, wreathed in a tangible storm of psychic energy and biting frost. His silver fur was like the hardest alloy, and his bulging muscles were filled with explosive power.
His claws and fangs shone with the light of ice and psychic energy, and his cold breath condensed into a chilling fog in the vacuum of space. There were no elaborate techniques here, only the most primal of struggles. The great wolf Russ threw himself at the stone behemoth like a bolt of silver lightning.
The behemoth roared and swung a fist wreathed in destructive energy. The two clashed in a contest of pure strength. Ultimately, Russ gained the upper hand. With a final, earth-shattering blow, he brought a massive wolf-paw, glowing with annihilating power, down upon his foe.
The vast C'tan construct shattered into countless fragments, like a child's toy smashed to pieces. Leman Russ reverted to his human form and, standing amidst the floating shards of ice, let out a victorious roar that shook the battleships.
Beside him floated another C'tan shard.
The defeat of the C'tan constructs decisively tipped the scales of the battle. The Rangda began to break and flee.
"Axis, are you finished on your end? I have eliminated my opponent but have left the C'tan shard. My power cannot destroy it," Sanguinius was the first to contact Axis.
"The same for me," Magnus reported, "My arcane energies are also incapable of destroying this shard."
"Same here," Russ added.
"Do not rush. First, secure our captives. The C'tan shards are valuable prizes," Axis replied to through the power of his mind.
He then turned his attention back to his captive.
"I believe," Axis said, his voice calm, "your three brethren will give me a different answer. Wouldn't you agree, Lord Flayer?"
...
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ps?