General Severian Holt felt himself … snap free, for lack of a better word, from his mortal coil. The world dimmed, along with his thoughts, though his emotions intensified.

He felt a pull on himself, on his soul, and he happily allowed it to drag him towards what must have been the Golden Throne.

It was not. Primal dread filled his entire being as a creature more terrible than human minds could comprehend opened its gaping maw wide. The depths of its abyssal maw were the source of the gravitational pull.

With that realisation came panic, then defiance. He fought tooth and nail to persist, to ward off the pull, but it didn’t matter. Mere willpower wasn’t enough against that creature, not now that the veil that separated the Materium from the Immaterium no longer worked in his favour.

He didn’t know where the Emperor was or what was keeping him. Holt had been faithful his whole life. He had served the Emperor with every breath he took, with every swing of his sword, with every drop of blood and tears he had shed. He deserved salvation. He should have been kneeling before the Golden Throne, presenting himself to the Master of Mankind for judgment.

Not … this. This wasn’t supposed to be. It couldn’t be.  Newest update provided by noⅴelfire.net

The teeth of the creature nicked him, tasting whatever it was that made up his soul. It didn’t bite down on him, though it could have, and Holt had the feeling it was delighted to have its food struggle.

Then there was another tug, sharper, more insistent but this time in the opposite direction. Holt was sent flying out the beast’s maw, and that was when he heard it, an inhuman scream echoed by a thousand throats as silver light brightened the darkness. Where the light shone, the beasts in the dark scurried and screamed, and Holt relaxed, feeling himself soaring towards the silver sun up high that was the source of this phenomenon.

Finally, it was here. Salvation. His due reward for a life of service, duty and faith. He would not begrudge the Emperor for being … late, who knew how many souls he needed to rescue from those monsters every second? Holt had stared death in the eye enough times that one more didn’t make a difference, even if it felt different.

The surroundings changed. Gone was the seeping darkness and its endless horde of horrors, and in its place Holt saw an expanse of white silver, bare of any life. Except for the woman before him.

Holt staggered, shock and confusion warring within him. This was not the Golden Throne, and the woman was most certainly not the God-Emperor of Mankind.

And yet, the power rolling off of her in waves, radiating outwards, was so thick he could barely comprehend it. The human mind was adept at locking away insights that would bring only madness, and thus it was that Holt could only feel her overwhelming power, and not see what lay beneath.

She was a god. He knew that down in his bones, no matter how blasphemous it felt. As she stood before him, cloaked in a silver radiance that burned away the horrors, he couldn’t deny it. It was impossible to deny it when one was drowning in her awesome power.

But she wasn’t his god.

“Well, your God doesn’t give a rat’s arse about you so you’ll have to make do with me,” the woman said, her voice a mixture of regal grace, casual nonchalance and seductive allure. It threw Holt for a loop. Whatever he’d been expecting, whatever preconceptions he’d had about Gods, none of them lined up with the reality before him. “You have a choice to make, little human. I could use a military advisor as experienced with the Imperium’s way of war as you, that’s one choice. The other is that I throw you back into the Warp and let that beastie have you for a snack.”

“The Emperor will save me,” he said, though he didn’t know how he spoke without a mouth. He just did. “Release me.”

“You’d rather have your soul devoured by daemons than serve a God that’s not your own?” The Goddess asked, more curious than offended. It threw him for yet another loop. This was not at all how he imagined a god acting.

“The Emperor will save me,” he repeated, his voice holding more conviction than his heart felt. How could he be utterly convinced when he still felt how those teeth felt tearing chunks out of his soul, after all?

“Will he now?” The Goddess mused in apparent amusement. “He truly is the greatest scam artist with how convinced you are. But alas, as much as I’d enjoy to break down your faith and show you the truth … you are not interesting enough to bother. I guess it was worth a shot, oh well, off you go.”

Holt barely managed to even see the hand coming as it backhanded him out of the silvery heaven. Once more the roiling darkness surrounded him, the silver star above disappearing behind a veil of darkness, and he felt as much as he saw the furious monsters charge forth.

He had just been one meal out of thousands before, a bit more feisty than the rest, but nothing special. But now? Oh, he’d escaped them once, and they did not like that. Not at all.

He didn’t even have the time to scream or regret his choice before he was torn apart. The pain only registered for the briefest of instants before his mind and soul were snuffed out of existence.

*****

Everything went about as well as it could have. The two ships I’d left untouched escaped as planned, taking with them a handful of frigates — the maximum number their smaller Gellar Fields could give shelter to against the horrors of the Warp — and the ones left behind were now infested with a bunch of rather pleased Orks who’d once again gotten the opportunity to stretch their legs and bloody their axes. The naughty Admiral tried to do a runner, but of course, I couldn’t allow that, so I gave him an express-delivery primed missile. Only those I allowed to run could escape, it was imperative that even the numbskulls that probably commanded the Imperial forces on this front got that message. Maybe then they’d take me seriously enough to gather the majority of their forces to beat me back, thus sparing me the bother of having to run around like a headless chicken, playing an interstellar whack-a-mole with their numerous smaller fleets.

The only thing that didn’t quite work out was grabbing that General, but it was mostly just a whim. I might have tried harder, but I didn’t like zealots, something that I kinda forgot about up until he started spewing some bullshit about the Emperor, all self-assured, like he hadn’t just gotten nibbled on by a daemon. Well, he found out how much his precious faith was worth to his God.

But all that was future stuff and just me whining, let’s get back to the important stuff.

Ravacene was mine. The very world that supposedly gave the whole front — The Greyhell Front — its name, with its hellish green jungles and grey ash clouds blotting out the sun. And it was mine.

Not even the grumpiest of Tau commanders present could deny that I’d done all the work conquering it, and the less grumpy ones were quite happy about it too. Ravacene was an inhospitable planet for them, with not enough resources to make it worth the bother of taming. They were only all too happy to go along with the agreement, even if they’d never believed I could earn myself a System before witnessing my power. They were quite happy too, mentioning how the original timeline had dedicated an entire three months to scouring the Imperium’s forces from the system.

I did all the work, and did it in less than 12 hours, sparing them from wasting the lives of their soldiers and their time. It was a massive win for all of them who were more concerned with the war than with how much power an autonomous ‘vassal’ like myself would be gaining in the process. Tau were the least xenophobic of the species inhabiting the galaxy that I knew of, but that didn’t mean that they were not racist to some level. Speciest. Whatever.

Humans weren’t meant to lead, they were unenlightened savages meant to be guided by the wiser Tau who understood the philosophy of the Greater Good. Only Tau could truly grasp the full meaning of the philosophy, and as such, only they could lead. Or so their thoughts went. As such, granting autonomy, or worse, treating a human as an equal, offended them on a base level.

Not that I cared, Aun’saal was result-focused, as were the other military commanders of the ‘crusade’ — they didn’t call it a crusade, that was a human thing, which was icky, even if it was totally a crusade as far as I was concerned — the majority of them at least. The rest didn’t matter, they couldn’t really do anything besides whining and throwing nasty glances and snide comments my way during meetings. Results spoke for themselves, after all, and I had single-handedly conquered a System they’d been struggling to claim for centuries. In a day. Even the grumpy ones knew to keep their mouths shut for now.

They were waiting, I could tell, to find some leverage or for me to fail. Likely, even the ethereal were waiting for such a thing, probably thinking my current status as an ally would be a temporary thing that’d end the moment I failed, or they figured out my ‘weakness’. Though maybe that was just paranoia on my part, I’d seen no sign of it, but I doubted the high-ranked Ethereals weren’t at least entertaining the idea of ‘putting me back in my place’ if they could get away with it without much fuss. It was what any autocratic governing body would wish to do to an independent actor they could only nominally control.

I was amusing myself by listening in on the Tau infantry reporting to their high command, and then all of them having a collective meltdown that they were desperately trying to hide. Why? Well, I didn’t blow all the Imperial bases to kingdom come, just a handful I wanted to test my orbit-to-ground ordnance on. The others, I used a single combat-drone to help destroy. One combat-drone per base.

The Tau who’d seen them fight and internalised mini panic attacks, which they were now transmitting them to their higher-ups.

Should I find them a better name? Something more thematic? ‘Combat-drone’ is a fine enough official name, but it’s kinda boring. Hmmm, maybe Talos? Ew, nah, as thematic as it would be to name them after a mythical automaton, it sounds clumsy. … Spartoi would fit too, but just thinking about it makes my tongue sore. Draugr? … better.

I wasn’t happy with it, draugr were undead warriors risen from the grave to defend their resting places in myth. It didn’t really fit, mythologically, but I liked the name. Eh, it wasn’t like anyone would know what the hell ‘draugr’ even means.

“You have a visitor,” Selene said, snapping me out of my thoughts.

“He can come back later,” I said, unwilling to move or release my lover. We were doing some much-needed recreational cuddling to relax after a super-strenuous battle we’d just fought. It was important to take the time to relax after such a stressful endeavour! “And you really don’t need to act like my secretary.”

Selene just shrugged, a soft smile on her lips as she made no move to squirm out of my hold either. For whatever unfathomable reason, she enjoyed it, acting like my secretary, bodyguard, second-in-command and whatever other role had her shadowing me and assisting me.

I was still a bit uncomfortable with the obvious boss-employee dynamic this was establishing. Lovers should be equal partners. But she never even argued back properly, just saying ‘I enjoy it though’ or something along those lines, to which I had no counter-arguments.

“He feels anxious,” Selene mused aloud.

“Of course he is,” I huffed. “Some strange alien just came over, whooped the asses of the enemy his people had been at war with for centuries, and then laid claim to the world those very same people had been calling their home for all this time. I already know what the conversation is going to be about, and this is one of those ‘this totally could have been an e-mail’ meetings. Why did the Tau even let him bother me after what I’d just shown them?”

“You know why,” Selene said, giving me an indulgent smile and a raised eyebrow, making me huff.

“Can’t a girl just complain about something without you trying to drag logic and reason into the conversation?” I gave her an exaggerated pout. “Yes, politics, the bane of my existence. They probably think I’d appreciate being given the opportunity to network with the leader of the Kroot auxiliaries on my planet-to-be, who probably has a favour or two to ask me. Doesn’t make it any less of a chore.”

Kroot were just worse Tyranids, and Tyranids were just worse me-s. I guess this was how the Necrons felt when some Tau tried to make nice with them. There is nothing interesting in someone who is a worse version of yourself.

“Can’t become the Empress of everything there is without some politics,” Selene said. I knew that, she also knew that I knew. Stupid logical arguments, I wholeheartedly agree with. “Correction: Lots of politics.”

I slumped, giving a tortured sigh.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll go talk to the local lead-cannibal and make nice.”

Maybe I’ll get them to stay and see what happens if I feed them funny genetic materials. They got ‘infected’ by the Catachan bandana-thing too, so their ‘I am what I eat’ shtick had to be a bit more thorough than just some minor mutations.

Maybe I could get some laughs out of it.