Guilliman's adoptive mother had vanished.
Why, of all tis, would she disappear now?
"Kasha, calm down first. Have you searched everywhere for her?" Axis asked, "When did she go missing? Is it possible she just went off to sightsee sowhere?"
Guilliman's mother enjoyed a high degree of freedom on the planet Nuceria. She could travel nearly anywhere on the entire world.
Aside from a few key military installations, her movents were exceptionally unrestricted. Axis wondered if the woman had perhaps gone to watch a gladiatorial match. He had not abolished Nuceria's gladiator culture, though it was far less bloody than before.
It was a necessary practice to maintain the Legion's combat prowess and to select suitable candidates for recruitnt. Gladiators were an invaluable source of soldiers.
"Axis, she disappeared last night after you finished strengthening her with your Ki," Kasha said. "She went back to her room and hasn't been seen since. Her handmaidens didn't see her this morning when they went to attend to her."
"Did the people we stationed to moniter her sense nothing?"
"They were just as clueless!"
If it had not been ti for her scheduled Ki reinforcent, Kasha might never have even realized she was gone. Guilliman's adoptive mother was essentially a free citizen on Nuceria, with no duties to attend to.
Her days were peaceful and leisurely. Kasha typically only escorted her to a specific room to wait for Axis during her Ki treatnts, and would lead her away once they were finished.
"Dispatch more people. Search again, everywhere. Check every arena and all the major cities," Axis instructed.
"I sent people to search an hour ago," Kasha said with a helpless sigh, "But they found nothing."
"...." Axis closed his eyes, letting mind and body relax.
The Ki energy throughout his body began to stir, spreading outwards to encompass the entirety of Nuceria.
Axis's Ki was imnse. On his very first mission, he had been able to cover half a planet with his senses. Now, he could blanket the entire world, locking onto virtually every living being. In his perception, every life form on Nuceria was located and marked, from Space Marines to nobles, from commoners to gladiators.
After a thorough and careful scan, Axis frowned. He found no trace of Lady Euten. It was as if she had vanished from the planet into thin air.
The situation was dire. If it were anyone else, Axis would not be so worried.
But this was Guilliman's adoptive mother, a person of profound importance to the Primarch, perhaps even more so than the Emperor himself.
Currently, the logistics and civil administration of all the worlds under his command were managed by specialists from Ultramar. While Axis had spent the last few years training his own administrative personnel, talent could not be cultivated overnight.
It would take at least two or three generations, decades at minimum, before he could hope to establish his own independent and systematic corps of administrators.
"Kasha, suppress this information for now. Do not let anyone know that Lady Euten is missing," Axis said as he stood up.
The only course of action was to control the news and continue the search discreetly.
If word of this got out, it would be extrely disadvantageous for him. His relationship with Guilliman was excellent, but if the Primarch's adoptive mother disappeared, her fate unknown, while on his turf, the consequences wouldn't be sothing he'd like to deal with.
"Axis, perhaps I can try sothing with my foresight?" Kasha offered.
"Isn't that a passive psychic ability?" Axis asked.
"It used to be," Kasha explained, "but things changed after Magnus acquired tos from the Black Library. The ancient Eldar invented a perfected form of divination sorcery. While it cannot predict all future events, it should be relatively simple to use it to find a person."
Over the past few years, she had been in psychic communion with Magnus, who had taught her many new and wondrous forms of sorcery.
"What are you waiting for, use it then. We need to find her as quickly as possible," Axis said with a nod.
He had been considering calling on a Harlequin Troupe for help, but it seed Kasha and Magnus had their own thods for locating people.
"I will need one of Lady Euten's personal items, and a quiet room."
Axis nodded and accompanied Kasha to Lady Euten's chambers.
The décor was sowhat unusual, incredibly luxurious and gaudy, with a heavy purple the. Axis even noticed a few pieces of extrely provocative lingerie. There were also several intimate toys that he felt were rather out of place in a lady's room.
"Ahem. She has been single for several hundred years. I think it is quite normal for her to have such things in her room," Kasha said, pursing her lips.
"Why the hell would I care? Just pick sothing," Axis said, stroking his chin.
Lady Euten, he thought, was quite a fiery woman.
High on a wall, Axis noticed a massive portrait. It depicted a beautiful blonde woman clad in exceedingly sensual nightwear, seemingly running with a joyful expression. The beauty was none other than Lady Euten, restored to her youth. Guilliman's mother, it seed, was also quite narcissistic to hang such a risqué portrait of herself in her room.
"Axis, the combination of your Ki reinforcent and the effects of the Tree of Might Fruit is gradually restoring her vitality to its feminine peak," Kasha coughed awkwardly, "It is only natural that she has certain… special needs. You understand. So, please, stop staring at that painting." She then picked out a nightgown that Lady Euten had clearly worn often.
"I just thought the painting felt a little off."
After taking the nightgown, the two departed from Lady Euten's room of sensual pleasures. Unseen by them, where the nightgown had lain, a symbol glowed for an instant.
Within the portrait, the joyful expression on Lady Euten's face twisted into one of terror. She began to pound against the canvas, and behind her, the silhouette of a sinister, androgynous being began to erge.
The woman in the painting wore an expression of utter horror.
When they arrived at Axis's private training chamber, Kasha took the nightgown and sat on the floor, beginning the psychic ritual to locate the missing woman. Using the nightgown as a dium, she unleashed a powerful wave of psychic energy.
Instantly, her face turned deathly pale. She began crying tears of blood, and her entire presence seed to wilt.
"Kasha!" The mont he sensed the abnormality, Axis had Kasha in his hands. He bathed her entire being in his Ki, cutting off her connection to the warp in its entirety and cleansing any malignant taint that had affected her.
"Axis! The portrait! Quickly!" Kasha managed to cry out before she collapsed with her eyes rolled back.
Things were happening a bit too quickly. Kasha didn't seem to be in any mortal danger, but her soul seed utterly unstable.
Axis used his Ki to stabilise her injuries before carrying her to the dicae bay. He administered a healing elixir made from the fruit of the Tree of Might. The special potion completely healed the physical trauma to her body, but the wounds to her soul remained.
She did not awaken.
Her soul, which Axis had been reinforcing with his Ki for decades, was remarkably resilient. To injure her, to cause a backlash of this magnitude, was a feat beyond the power of an ordinary Greater Daemon of Chaos.
This incident was very likely connected to a Chaos God.
Axis had heard Kasha's last words clearly.
The portrait. The one in Lady Euten's room.
He imdiately summoned the Rune Priest Mader to watch over Kasha while he sprinted back to Lady Euten's chambers. He kicked the door open and his eyes fell upon the huge painting.
The scene within it was now horrifically warped.
Lady Euten was no longer joyful or running. She was now clinging to the fra of the painting, desperately trying to get into the physical realm.
Her face was a mask of pure terror. Behind her, a disturbingly beautiful man was gripping her ankle, dragging her deeper into the scene. Lady Euten's usual dignified grace was gone, replaced by a raw, screaming panic, her mouth agape in a silent shriek.
Axis let out a sigh. The suspicions that had been brewing in his mind cleared at this mont. Indeed, it was a trap.
But he was a Saiyan.
He transford instantly, his hair shooting up into golden spikes as arcs of lightning coiled around his body. This ti, it was not rely Super Saiyan, but a direct transformation into Super Saiyan 2. He unleashed the full might of his psychic power, his pure soul flaring into existence, and threw a punch straight into the massive portrait.
The painting shattered like a sheet of glass. A grotesque and terrifying Warp energy flooded out, transforming the room. Axis reached through the breach and grabbed Lady Euten's arm, sending his Ki through her body, reinforcing it and pushing the tainted warp energy away from her body. He was trying to pull her from the world within.
"Is that you, Lord Axis? Help ! Please, save ! That demon… that demon is trying to take ! Ahh!" Lady Euten scread in terror.
"Shut up, Lady! I'm here aren't I? Just hold on!" Axis yelled, pulling with all his might to drag her back into the materium. However he was t with untold resistance from within.
"Axis, we et again," the eerie man behind Lady Euten said with a smile.
"Shut your mouth, you depraved hermaphrodite!"
Axis raised a hand, aid at the androgynous man, and fired a ki blast.
The blast detonated within the mirror-like space in a blinding flash of light. The man let out a shrill laugh as his form dissolved like smoke, only to coalesce once more.
Half of Lady Euten's body was now out of the fra, but her dress was ensnared by countless purple tendrils, while the sinister man kept a death grip on her ankle. Axis' Ki and the tainted wrap energy clashed fiercely.
"Don't be in such a hurry to leave. It's been so long. Shouldn't we have a nice long chat?"
"Fuck you!!" Axis's biceps bulged with power, "I have nothing to talk about with you. We have entirely different hobbies and interests." The golden aura of his transformation illuminated the entire room.
Suddenly, a viscous purple liquid began to ooze from the floorboards, and dozens of pale arms shot out from the cracks in the broken portrait, clawing and tearing at his combat suit.
The androgynous man's voice echoed from all directions. "How touching. A rescue! But you see, this lovely lady has already signed a contract with ."
Suddenly, an image of a signed parchnt floated among the shards of the painting. Lady Euten's signature was there, and at the bottom, with Slaanesh's mark, a great na scrawled above it.
"And why the fuck would I care?!!" A vein throbbed on Axis's forehead as he unleashed the full power of his Super Saiyan 2 form, continuously launching ki blasts into the portal. "I'm warning you, let her go now. Don't force to co in there and beat you senseless!"
By now, he had pulled more than half of Lady Euten's body into the real world.
Yet no matter how hard he pulled, the man inside held fast to her ankle, refusing to let her go.
"Hehe! Let's make a deal, then, Axis," the Chaos God sneered, "If you agree, I'll release the lady."
"I don't make deals with perverted deviants."
"Then we'll just stay like this. I can play this ga with you until the end of ti."
"Why does that line sound so unfamiliar? Why not just say you could do this all day?" Axis raised a hand, forming his golden Ki into a longsword, and thrust it directly at the Chaos God. The Ki blade lunged toward the androgynous avatar of Slaanesh, but a barrier of pink and purple energy stopped it just before it made contact.
The Chaos God let out a gleeful laugh, clearly savoring the struggle, his face a mask of mockery.
"So crude, Axis, my little darling," Slaanesh's voice was nauseatingly sweet, "I just want to play with this lady a little longer. Why are you in such a rush? Or perhaps you'd like to co in and join us? We could play together, the three of us. You just said you wanted to beat , didn't you? You should know that pain is just another form of pleasure."
"Play with my ass, you sick freak! Damn it, even your voice is disgusting," Axis roared. The golden aura of his Super Saiyan 2 form flared even brighter.
The walls of the room began to crack as the boundary between reality and the Warp was torn apart by the two opposing forces.
Lady Euten scread in agony, her body stretched between the two powers. Strange purple markings, the signs of Chaotic corruption, appeared and disappeared on her skin, simultaneously being cleansed by Axis' Ki.
"Lord Axis! Please save !" her voice was faint and broken, her eyes flickering with an unnatural purple light.
Axis knew he couldn't delay any longer. With a mighty roar, his entire body began to expand dramatically, and a green-gold aura exploded from his form. He had unleashed his Legendary Super Saiyan mode, and his power instantly multiplied.
"Hahaha, yes! Yes! This is it! This is the form! I can feel the exquisite sensation! This is your true self, Axis," Slaanesh shrieked, overco with excitent.
"Get the hell," Axis bellowed, "back to your Warp!"
...
...
it's 200 ps per bonus chapter!
Reviews
All reviews (0)