Getting Warhammered - [ 157 ]

It had been a week since I’d let loose Bob and Fae on the land surrounding the fortress with a whole load of orders and while they were progressing nicely; I had been aching to personally check out the death world so near me. Selene happily joined me, which is the story of how we ended up with her play-fighting against some of the fauna here, before she asked me to make some nastier foes for her to beat up, namely, Tyranids.

I might be going crazy. I mused, my eyes and senses tracking Selene as she flowed through the densely forested terrain like a graceful gale of precise destruction. Her sword was gone, only forming in her palm the moment before she snapped it forward and sent it right through the torso of a Tyranid Warrior organism I’d made for her to train against.

Psychic power pulsed through her and the impaled beast exploded into bloody chunks as the telekinetic shockwave tore it apart from the inside out.

It was … beautiful. 

The way her pure white armour ate in the splatters of blood, the elegant flick of her wrist that sent the gore flying from her sword before she jumped back, flying twenty metres as telekinesis aided her like a pair of invisible wings. 

Was it normal to find the way my lover so elegantly slaughtered her foe hot? Probably not, but oh well, who cares about that? 

“Can you make me something stronger?” Selene asked, her helmet not even melting away as she tilted her head, meaning she was clearly still in the battle mindset.

“I can give you a knock-off Swarmlord,” I said musingly. “It wouldn’t have the experience and mind of the real one, but its strength should be the same. Do you want to try it?”

“Yes,” Selene said all too quickly. “Give it to me.”

“Your wish is my command,” I said with an exaggerated bow, controlling the tiny bead of eldritch flesh still inside the gory remains of her last foe to pull itself back together and build up the Swarmlord’s body. “You are going to be a menace on the battlefield if you continue on like this. I think you could slaughter anyone but the strongest Chapter Masters already.”

“Well, the goals is to be able to slaughter anyone I come across,” Selene said with a shrug as she turned to gaze at the still forming body of the Swarmlord. I was taking my sweet time building it, wanting some time to just chat with Selene. 

“Mhmmm,” I nodded. “What do you think of this place by the way? I think its quite fun.”

“Fun for us,” Selene said, looking around at the dense foliage that covered this part of Vallia. “I never thought I’d ever consider hiking through the forests of a Deathworld to be a fun little adventure. I feel like I’m losing all sense of what’s normal … “

“Well, I never thought I’d find My Love slaughtering a Tyranid particularly hot either,” I said, running my fingers over the shoulder blades of her armour that I knew she felt through it. We had made sure the carapace transmitted tactile sensations to her skin. “We might be going a bit crazy, but I don’t particularly mind if I’m not alone in being a bit crazy.”

“Down girl,” Selene said with a smile in her voice, playfully swatting at my shoulder. “Let a girl work up a sweat before you drag her off to your bedroom, will you?”

“Aye, Captain,” I said with a smirk, my hand trailing down her back before I pulled her in by the waist for a quick hug. Let my fingers trail down towards her hips before I placed a kiss on her armoured cheek that I knew she felt. “Doesn’t mean I can’t work on building up some tension in the meantime. It’ll only make it more fun later on.”

“I can’t believe you,” Selene lamented with mock affront, her head falling on my shoulder. “Why did I have to fall for the naughtiest alien in the galaxy?”

“I think there are some Dark Eldar I’d have to contend with to win that title,” I mused. 

“Naughty does not equal deranged,” Selene admonished me. “Naughty is fun, what they are is not.”

“I’ll take your expert opinion on the matter,” I said, giving her rear a little swat as I danced away from her retaliatory attack at my own backside. “Your foe has rise, oh mighty hero! Will you be able to defeat this dreadful beast and save your helpless lover from its clutches?”

As I continued my little monologue, I danced behind the now complete Swarmlord and made my clothes change into skimpy rags of some noble dress. I fell bonelessly behind it, dropping myself against a nearby tree as I fluttered my eyelashes at Selene who I could just tell was rolling her eyes with a grin on her pouty lips. 

The moment Selene took a step, I let the autonomous combat ‘algorithms’ ingrained into the Swarmlord drone’s brain take control of it. The only modification I made to it was to command it to disregard my existence and ignore my general standing orders for all of my drones to protect Selene, changing the latter to trying to kill her.

My Selene was a tough cookie, she could handle it. Even if she died a little, she could crawl her way back to the world of the living with her growing control of internal biomancy and over the bio-energy every cell of her armour was brimming with.

She surged forth, sword in her hand lengthening into a spear that ended in a wickedly sharp point. A faint to the centre of mass had the Swarmlord stepping forward, a scythe already aimed to parry, but Selene reoriented her attack and sent a slash at its knee.

The blade’s edge was not made of Norn Emissary materials, but it was made of the exact same bio-material the Swarmlord’s scythes were so while it didn’t quite cut through the knee like a hot knife through butter, it did leave behind a gash dripping green ichor.

The Tyranid’s counterattack caught Selene in the flank just as she twisted her body to dodge, tearing into her armour and sending blood flying through the air as she spun. I felt her energy pulse, biomancy she was learning from both me and Val coming in handy as it guided and sped up the passive healing her armour granted her. 

She landed with feline grace, taking a few dancing steps back as her spear head lengthened into a glaive as she slashed out, keeping her foe from following up on its attack. 

I could feel Selene’s thrill through our Bond easily enough, she wasn’t bothering to hide anything from me at the moment and just the sheer feeling of joy surging through her at being able to go toe-to-toe with something that left some of the greaters heroes of Mankind dead or nearly so was making her ecstatic. 

I smiled adoringly her way, leaning back against the thick bark and just taking in the battle, enjoying her happiness like it was my own. Clawed arms snapped out, parried by long glaives, sometimes morphing into maces that had force behind them enough to send even the gigantic Swarmlord staggering.

Scythe met sword, spear met carapace and scythe pierced armour. Still, they fought and while Selene healed from everything in seconds, the Swarmlord couldn’t keep up with that.

Injured legs didn’t bleed the acidic ichor of their kind anymore, but it was slower and didn’t fully support the beast’s weight. A minute later a scythe-arm hung limp, nearly detached at the elbow, for that Selene ate a knee to the gut and was set crashing through three trees like a wrecking ball before her momentum slowed.

She came flying back like a loosened arrow, telekinesis giving her momentum beyond what her legs could have achieved on the slick wet dirt. The beast she fought was no slouch though, even with its tactical mind honed over eons now replaced by my shoddy programming. It evaded her attack, a nasty backhand smashing Selene aside as she came at it and she was sent rolling through the dirt again, though she stopped mere metres away and bounced right back like a coiled spring let loose. 

The way she was incorporating telekinesis into her fighting style was joy to watch and I wasn’t too prideful to admit that a dozen of my mind-cores were busy taking notes to steal her many tricks. This was the problem with having too much variety, too many kinds of powers right at my fingertips, I never took the time to really master any one of them.

Selene in contrast, was limited to her healing, and telekinesis in a fight and it showed. Months of tireless training was showing its worth.

Five minutes later, after Selene had disabled both arms of the Tyranid on one side she managed to pierce her spear just a few inches into its side. I could feel her vicious glee as she detonated the compressed psychic power at the tip of her spear, tearing out a sizable chunk of the Swarmlord’s side.

The beast screeched, its acidic ichor hissing as it splattered across the undergrowth and started dissolving it. Still it fought with the feral wrath of a cornered beast that knew it would not come out of this fight whole or even alive.

Selene faltered under the onslaught, losing her left arm to the one remaining scythe the beast had. I grimaced, feeling her pain and shock, but I didn’t step in. Stepping in now would have me banished to the couch for the next week. 

She took a grazing blow to her side, barely twisting out of the way as she closed her armour over her lost arm before her mind rebounded from shock straight back into combat mode. Her ferociousness doubled, and she turned into a storm of blades, snapping at the weakened Swarmlord from all sides even with one less arm.

The Tyranid fought on admirably, but Selene was now in the flow and it was a stomp from then on. She took out arms one after the other, cut off its injured leg at the knee and widened the hollow wound in its torso a few more times with well-aimed pierces.

Her spear went through its neck, her telekinetic shockwave tearing it right off its shoulders a moment later before another psychic blast sent the body crashing back. It landed with a thunderous thud, shaking the ground beneath me and kicking up a cloud of dust as birds and beasts that had the gall to stay throughout the fight fled.

Selene stumbled over to me, exhaustion clear in every motion of her battered body and I beamed up at her, clapping cheerfully. Her armour dissolved around her, revealing her clothes cut and torn in so many places they could barely even be called rages, but still a satisfied grin was spread wide on her lips. 

“How was it?” She asked, stumbling over and collapsing next to me, her head falling on my shoulder as she snuggled in. “Damn … I didn’t know losing an arm could hurt so much.”

“You did magnificently,” I cooed, a hand coming up to caress her hair and hug her close. “It was an amazing fight, you’ve come far.”

“Mhmmm,” Selene murmured, nodding a little. “Can you give the arm back? I don’t want to mess up by doing it myself. Also, leave the clothes and the other wounds … “

“Of course,” I said, continuing to work my fingers through her tangled hair. Meanwhile, I dragged the detached arm back over with a thought, quickly reattaching it to Selene. I could have remade it from scratch, but I was trying to be efficient with my bio-energy, even if I had an abundance of it now. “Feels right? It should be good.”

“It’s perfect,” she said, using her newly reattached arm to drag herself up and place a lingering kiss on my lips. “I saved the helpless heroine from the big bad monster, didn’t I? I deserve a reward, wouldn’t you say?”

“That you do,” I purred, leaning in for another kiss. “I’m at your service, oh mighty hero. You have won my heart and love … as well as my body for the night.”

“Make a tower,” Selene said breathlessly, her nose nuzzling against my neck as she placed kisses along it. I shuddered, feeling a familiar thrill run down my spine and gather in my core. “With a nice bedroom fit for a noble girl of your stature. We’ll continue there.”

The building she asked for was done in a moment, springing up behind us just a heartbeat after the illusion of the unchanged forest I made snapped into existence. It wouldn’t do for the Tau peepers in orbit to see a new building on Vallia’s surface growing in mere moments and connect the dots that we had absolutely ignored their refusal of allowing us entry.

A bit of bio-energy pulsed through Selene’s body and a moment later I felt her arms slipping under my knees and back as she lifted me up. In response, I wrapped my arms around her neck and giggled, swinging my legs back and forth as she set off towards the large gates of the tower.