Getting Warhammered [WH 40k Fanfic]

“So?” I asked curiously while working my way through Selene’s tangled mess of hair, trying to work some soap into every lock of hair with my fingers. “What do you think?”

“You are adorably naive,” she said, eyes closed and voice a bit absent as we both sat in the scalding goodness of the thermal bath. “That won’t work. I know you’ve tried to make it better, but it still feels like those humans are to be your pets instead of subjects. Well-kept and cared-for pets, but pets nonetheless.”

“That’s what I was worried about,” I said with a sigh, continuing to wash her hair. I gently rinsed the soap out of it, guiding her head beneath the water until only her face was left above. “What do you think I could change to make it better?”

“Don’t give them everything on a silver platter,” she said, cracking open an eye to stare up into my eyes. Her gaze lingered on my face before sinking lower and giving my bare chest an appreciative look. “Humans don’t do well when they are given everything for free. You have to make them work for it, you can give them houses, food and water for free, but make all three the bare minimum so they can work for the upgrades and a better standard of living. Some might thrive in the society you’d build with your idea, but most would not, most would … likely devolve into hedonism. Like the Aeldari.”

“Fair point,” I said, lifting her head out of the water again as I got to drying her hair. Making my fingers excrete heated air with a bit of soul energy was simple enough that I needed no specialised tools. “But how would they ‘work for it’? I don’t need them for anything. I could maybe give them credits for fancy artwork and architecture that I like so that they could switch them in for benefits?”

“If they have the materials and the need for things, since you don’t give them away, the jobs would create themselves,” Selene said. “Give them the opportunity to mine the earth and to grow their own lumber and in no time you’ll have dozens of stonemasons, architects, laborers and carpenters. They’ll want fancy houses and nice furniture, especially if you give them matching houses at the start. As you’ve said, humans love their individualism, but what they love even more is having something others don’t and then bragging about it.”

“Letting them mine would create a weakness in the arcology’s defences,” I said, thinking aloud. “There are some nasty species of both flora and fauna on this little planetoid that could sneak in through an open tunnel. Some could do so even if I added layers of security and air-locked doors to the entrances.”

“It’s your choice,” Selene shrugged, groaning in a way that sent shivers down my spine as I started massaging her scalp. Not that what I was doing to her stopped her from continuing the conversation. “Could make some mining drones and trade minerals for services they do to you. It’d make for a fascinating economy if you exchanged mined minerals and stone for pieces of art.”

“True,” I hummed, enjoying every little gasp and groan my lover made. Even if they made it a bit challenging to continue thinking about nation building. “Art and creativity. Those are the two things they can give me.”

“Creativity is not reserved for art either,” Selene said. “You could be discussing these topics with a room full of highly educated people with varying viewpoints and psychologies. I think your idea from those mock High-Lords is nice, but you could expand upon it greatly. 

“Also, news. If you aren’t willing to let people out of the arcologies, you have to at least supply them with information about what’s going on out in the wider world, or galaxy even. I still think you should let them explore the planet, even if some of them would end up as chew-toys to one of the horrors you’ve made. You should at least make them think they are free to do as they wish.”

“I really should have chosen a safer planet to start on,” I said regretfully. “That’d have made this at least a bit easier.”

“You could probably get that Ethereal to give you Vallia in return for delivering a whole human-populated planet into their grasp,” Selene said. “No?”

“Maybe,” I said, frowning as I thought it through. “I’m pretty sure the one they sent to me last time wouldn’t be opposed to it, but I know they too have politics and he was not representative of the Tau’s overall stance on me. Could be they already think they’d given me too much.”

“They’ll give in,” Selene said, a smirk playing across her lips. “They always do. Don’t be afraid to push them, even if they are wise enough to fear your powers as a ‘mind scientist’ they’ll still keep violence as the absolute last resort. The Tau are synonymous with compromise.”

“I don’t know,” I muttered, thinking back to how the Ethereal spoke of other Witches and their experiences with them. ‘They tend to violently explode after some time’, he had said. Would that be enough for them to be on the fence already and pull the trigger the moment I stepped just a bit out of line? “I might have to work on convincing them that I’m more stable than other rogue Psykers.”

As I said that, I let my memory of my conversation with the Ethereal flow through my Bond with Selene.

She blinked lazily, eyes glazing over and going distant as she reviewed the new memories I’d given her.

“You … might be right,” she admitted after a moment, shaking her head. “Never knew they were that knowledgeable of Psykers. Should have assumed though. They have billions of human subjects by now, there had to be some new Psykers born among them.”

“I’m sure there are some among them who would just love to finally understand how Psykers work,” I said with a growing grin. “It has to drive them up the wall that an Imperium they see as barbaric savages is so much more advanced than them that they can’t even fathom the basics of some of their sciences.”

“We are going around in circles now,” Selene said, and it took me a moment to recognise the playful pout on her lips for what it was. “I think a change of topic is in order.”

{♥️♥️♥️}

“Really?” I smiled as she took both of my wrists and backed up until her back was pressed up against me, then she guided my arms to embrace her under the water’s frothing surface. “What topic would you like to discuss my love?”

Taking the invitation for what it was, I trailed my fingers along her bare stomach. 

She squirmed a bit, settling in my lap and then turned around, her face so close to mine that I felt her breath on my skin. She looked up at me with those beautiful, intelligent eyes of liquid silver that spoke of a want I felt growing in myself. 

I wrapped my arms around her waist and pulled her closer. Selene needed no further incentive to arch her neck and lean in for a kiss, her arms wrapping around my neck.

Her slender body pressed into mine as our embrace tightened like we were trying to meld into one. Her tongue licked across my lips, and with a smile I let them in, deepening the kiss.

Selene was hungry, gone was the poised noblewoman and the dignified captain I’d met so long ago. Nowadays she was more willing to show her true self to others, but it only truly manifested at times like this.

Fighting, sparring and lovemaking. She was a woman who knew what she wanted and was not shy in taking it, or fighting for it. 

And now she wanted me.

A fact which she made sure I knew, her arms leaving my neck and starting to wander while her tongue wrestled with mine. It was like she didn’t know what to touch, what to grab and what to tease but wanted it all. It was an addicting feeling, being wanted so much.

Not being one to just be on the receiving end of things, I loosened my embrace and my fingers slipped from her waist, travelling lower and lower. 

Selene pulled away from the kiss with a gasp that turned into a humm of pleasure as my fingers slipped between her legs, which she eagerly parted for me. 

“Four days was too long without this,” she gasped, smiling dreamily as she sank lower in my lap until she had her head resting on my shoulder. “You have much to make up for.”

“You never came to me,” I complained, wrapping one arm around her waist so she wouldn’t slip further while the other drew teasing circles on her inner thighs. 

“You were busy,” she retorted, though I could see the smile on her lips. “Didn’t want to interrupt.”

“Well, I’d have loved to be interrupted.”

Her answer was cut off by a gasp as my fingers found their mark, drawing a moan out of Selene as she arched her back. 

Soon the small grove housing the spring was filled with moans of pleasure, gasps and groans, first Selene’s then mine as she worked to return what she’d been given twofold. We became a tangle of limbs and wet bodies, enjoying the moment and each other. 

Everything and everyone else be damned.

{♥️♥️♥️}

*****

Octavian Gaius, one of the God-Emperor’s Ten Thousand, wearing the finest golden power armor mankind could make, knelt with his head bowed. 

“I beg you, Captain-General,” Octavian said. “This is no longer a mere disagreement, not one where the honoured Shadowkeepers’ methods will earn us the results we need. It is my firm belief that it is in His Majesty’s best interest that you order them to give up on their quest.”

Octavian looked up, having already shown more respect to his superior by kneeling that any one Brother of the Adeptus Custodes should. He knew it was a must though, lest the Captain-General failed to understand how truly desperate he was to be heard and listened to.

Captain-General Trajann Valoris stood before him, his cold and horribly scarred face giving away nothing of his thoughts. He was the 17th Captain-General of the Adeptus Custodes, the Emperor’s representative among the High Lords, the leader of the Ten Thousand and the single greatest warrior of the Imperium besides the Primarchs. 

When he finally spoke, his voice was measured, and each word came with a weight that forced one to listen with rapt attention. “Am I right to assume you speak of their quest to retrieve Subject G-1, Brother Octavian?”

“Yes, Captain-General,” Octavian said. 

“Your disagreement with the Shadowkeepers is known to me,” Valoris said. “I’ve turned a blind eye to your … competition. I was made to believe either side succeeding in their quest would have served our Lord’s interests. Was I wrong, Brother Octavian?”

“No,” Octavian said, only his superhuman constitution and biological inability for fear or doubt keeping his voice even and confident. “You merely lacked the information I’ve only come across in my latest encounter with the being now inhabiting Subject G-1.”

“That creature has met and fought with a member of the Adeptus Custodes three times,” Valoris said. “One of our Brothers fell at its hand, and you failed to capture it not once, but twice. What knowledge have you gleaned from your final encounter?”

“I saw the creature battle with a Greater Daemon I’ve identified as the Bloodthirster Ka’Bandha,” Octavian said, answering the question instead of addressing the statements. “The moment before its banishment, the Daemon addressed the being possessing Subject G-1 as ‘Anathema’.”

A pregnant pause hung thickly in the air, as if the world itself was taking in a sharp breath. Octavian stiffened, feeling a familiar, yet impossibly heavy weight settle on his shoulder and he inadvertently glanced to the side.

There, one an ancient artifact from the darkest times of ancient humanity fashioned into the form of a Golden Throne sat the Emperor of Mankind. To the naked eye he was, but a withered husk, dead beyond doubt, but he was neither. 

He was something greater than anything else, than everything else in this paltry existence. He lived, not through his mortal coil but through his unfathomable psychic might.

His attention, even just an infinitesimal fragment of it that Octavian was now blessed with, was heavy. 

“Are you certain?” Valoris asked, voice maybe just the slightest bit tighter than before.

Of course Octavian was certain, he wouldn’t have spoken otherwise. Custodes didn’t lie, not to Brothers, and absolutely not about something of this magnitude. 

Tha Captain-General should have known that, and Octavian was certain that he did. The fact he still asked must have meant the news shook the ancient warrior just as much as it shook Octavian. 

“Yes,” he spoke the word despite knowing it was redundant. He knew the answer the moment his attention landed on Octavian, for his thoughts and memories were an open book to the Master of Mankind.

Octavian waited with bated breaths, hoping, wishing that the Lord spoke to them. To him. Valoris must have had a similar hope, for they wouldn’t be having this discussion in the Throne Room otherwise. 

The Emperor spoke to his son after all, maybe … just maybe … 

Alas, minutes went by, an eternity for Custodes, and the only sounds filling the Throne Room was the beating of hearts and the working of arcane machinery. 

“Brother Octavian,” Valoris finally spoke. “I want an extensive report on everything you’ve learned of this being. Leave nothing out. Personality, capabilities, tendencies, everything. This situation is … unique. We’ll have to proceed with care, consider your earlier request granted.”

“Unique?” Octavian inquired.

“This would not be the first time we’ve received a report of a Demon cursing out a mysterious being using the word ‘Anathema’,” Valoris said, turning his head to glance at the still form of the Emperor. “But almost all of them had been proven to be shards of the Emperor’s soul acting autonomously. He could appear as a child, an old man, a woman, a ghost, a spectre or anything else.

“So.” Valoris turned the full weight of his attention back on Octavian. “Speak. I have yet to decide whether to consider this being a possible material manifestation of one of his soul-shards or if somehow a yet-unknown being has somehow earned from the Great Enemy the very same title our Lord has.”

“Understood,” Octavian said, then he began to speak. He spoke for hours, days perhaps as he started from the very first dream he received and left no detail out, not even his failings and the defeats.