Seras little snippet thread

It was overwhelming.

Being out of the warp, being real.

As I pulled myself through the portal the foul taste of that Daemon still wrestling inside my stomach. It's natural ability fighting back, trying to kill me back.

But my mind was inundated with… Everything.

The feel of wind on my carapace. The faint rumble under my claws. The warmth of a sun on my crest.

I was alive.

I opened my maw, and roared to the heavens because this was too much!

Even my sense of the warp was shifting as souls flowed around.

I tasted… Bravery, loyalty and hatred. I shifted looking at the human corpse the soul had come from.

Kurtz.

A man of the Imperial Guard. His death had been so close, his soul had been taken without notice. It was… Warm.

Familiar. I felt melancholy. That was the emotion, named from that foolish Daemon I'd eaten in the warp before. An insidious emotion to humans, one easily turned to the Daemons benefit.

But I was feeling it. Human emotions, and thought. I was eating at the soul. Taking from it, to gain this perspective…

The hunger within me demanded I simply consume it all instantly, but I pulled that away. I'd already nibbled enough by accident.

I wasn't the Tyranid, not these rotting, filthy Daemons.

I'd learned from the Tyranids' stupidity. I knew when to let go of a bite. I released the soul, and instead focused on the others.

Crammer. A cultist. A nurgle worshipper. His soul hadn't escaped either, and he I felt less issue with consuming.

This soul was disgusting and foul, and I devoured it instantly. Gaining his perspective.

This planet was Kiritz IV At least according to the Imperial, it had a Tau name a well, as the two races fought over it.

That's where I was. A planet within the Damocles Gulf.

Finally my roar to the sky ended as I lowered my head.

I had no eyes, yet I could see. There was so much to see as well. Broken bodies, destroyed streets, brave men and women, and monsters in human flesh, and worse.

Monsters in monster flesh. Daemons.

All of which looked at me, none of them seemed to dare move. The Beasts of Nurgle had stopped their inexorable slaughter as I made manifest. I could feel it. The pressure they left in the warp, the connection letting them remain manifest.

I reached out and with barely a thought enforced my WILL onto this reality.

The disgusting creatures fled, and they'd do well to keep fleeing, because when I returned to the warp I would hunt them if they remained.

The Unclean One. Kurgle. Taught me more. How to manifest yourself when the warp disrupted reality. How to cause it, how to maintain it.

I understood now what It would take to remain manifest, and how despite everything… This reality wasn't my own. I wasn't meant to be here.

I looked down, as reality… cracked in my presence. Brittle. This place was brittle, made doubly so because of the Unclean ones ritual and my own manifestation. I'd forced open the portal. The portal that now remained open without a controller.

I couldn't stay here. Not long, not without damaging this world… The temptation was there. The Tyranid part of me, the hunger the beast. I could break this world. Use it as bait, lure in more of the Daemons, and others. The light I'd followed…

Genestealer Cult? Tyranid bioforms that corrupted humans and flared to let the Hive Fleets know where the food was.

I see.

Context. Context was delightful. I could feel it. The Tyranid soul that lured me here. Perhaps I would stay just long enough.

I reached out and forced my will. The portal closed. It was difficult a wound that now didn't want to close, but close it did. I would not use this world as bait. The idea was… Abhorrent. It would destroy this place, leaving it as nothing but a place stuck between materium, and immaterium.

Useless.

The portal closed and I focused on my prey.

It was… Far. Far enough. My back split and where before was smooth chitin. Wings grew in an instant, large enough to darken the ground beneath me.

The instincts were already there. I flapped once and leapt into the sky. My own power gave additional lift. Forcing me into the sky.

The city stretched out below me.

But I was unconcerned with the battle taking place.

I shifted and burst away. Tiny flares of light all over the city. The Genestealer cultists. They were made to lure in Tyranids, they couldn't hide. Couldn't turn it off.

And so I knew exactly where all of them were. I aimed for the strongest, but… A few stops along the way was fine.

The first was among a group of guardsmen. A regiment?

The numbers flowed in my mind but I ignored it. They noticed me of course, but I ignored the actions of the humans.

I crashed into the palisade that was being constructed. Guardsmen screaming in terror quickly grabbed their Lasguns and fired.

I ignored the pinpricks, and reached out.

A man screaming in terror as my claw grabbed him. He continued to scream as I brought him up and swallowed him whole.

His screams cut out the moment my maw closed on him.

Then once more I flapped my wings and flew off into the sky.

My next prey was close. A bunker, guardsmen and tanks surrounding it, but that was secondary. I fluttered, dimmed myself as I approached, and I watched as the men already preparing for my appearance looked around in horror as they couldn't see me.

I landed with a scraping noise of carapace claws on ferrocrete atop the bunker, and it was only the noise that earned me the screams and shots that flared against my chitin and slowly repealed me once more as the lasguns disrupted my camouflage

Difficult. Many little lights inside the bunker. Men and women. I felt them.

I had no interest in taking their souls today, but I would have my goal.

My claw slammed down slicing through the ferrocrete like butter…

Butter?

I wanted to blink at the random word that flowed into my mind. Yes butter, I knew what butter was. I shook off the thought as I grabbed my target. Ignoring the feeling of attacks scraping across my chitin…

Was some brave human attacking my fingers with a chainsword?

I pulled out my hand and inside was my goal. A woman. She was dressed in a military uniform, but that hardly mattered.

She was a Tyranid, I devoured her then and there, her screams cutting out before I jumped back into the sky, ignoring the many many men trying to shoot me.

I was close enough now.

The main source. The biggest lure.

I dropped down and this time didn't stop. The street exploded as I hit the ground. I ignored the screams from around me. Civilians, and guards as I tore into the ground and then went deeper. Digging downwards.

I came out almost tumbled, but using my extra limbs to grab on as the floor below me gave way to a massive cave.

There I hung looking down as the dust cleared and revealed a sewer plant. Water flowing through in every direction, and a tent city. All of them were my prey.

There he was. From a tent my prey rose up. A Genestealer, the strongest thing here. It shrieked at me, an angry challenge, and already the prey began trying to move.

So I opened myself up. Stopping dimming my presence, and roared.

More than a few of the prey died, their souls instantly going down my throat as the reveal of my power simply broke them. For a moment the leader, the… Patriarch. That's what these prey thought of him as hesitated then I felt it.

Fear.

He turned to flee, and I moved diving faster than this prey could hope to stop and slammed into his back. He broke like an insect under my claws, and tore into him. His soul was powerful, glutted as he was on all the power flowing through this cult.

Yet it was nothing, a drop of water in a desert to what the Hive Fleet had been.

Yet I devoured him still, and turned on the others. My tail lashed out. Pinning the next strongest to the ground as I lashed out and clawed and ripped my way through my meal.

Body and soul they were devoured. The feeling of real going into my stomach was an experience I was quickly learning to enjoy and it even gave me more than just the soul alone.

But the soul was the main course, and I devoured the souls of these pathetic Tyranids.

Until only a few humans remained.

These were not my prey. Chained, or bound in some way, most of them were screaming in terror. Yet I ignored them, they were simply humans that had been captured to be enslaved.

To be another set of broodmare for the cult my knowledge now told.

They weren't my prey.

My tail lifted up and dropped the last of the Cult into my maw. There were others around the planet. But I hesitated as I went to leap out of the hole.

The planet was getting more brittle by the moment. I stopped and instead looked through, and when I shifted I moved not left or right, but through.

Back into the warp.

—---

"General!"

"Report!" He demanded without preamble. This was not a day for wasting time!

"We followed the… Creature into the hole and discovered what was down there… The Genestealer Cultists Sir. That was their headquarters."

"Damn." He whispered. A black Tyranid had found the cultists. Was it going to be a continued knife in his side? Already they were fighting a two front battle with both damned cultists appearing among his forces to cause trouble.

"Sir, the cult was destroyed." He looked up because that made no sense.

"Explain."

"The creature killed the entire cult, including the Genestealer in charge. It was a massacre. We recovered a few women that are not infested as well, but the entire place is a charnel house. Some of the men watching form the hole it dug into the ground report that it was a fight."

"A fight." That made no sense, something that made no sense wasn't welcome on his battlefield.

"I want a full exploration of those tunnels then! Send a few squads down there and check every crevice."

"Sir!"
A strange creature after reports of a full daemonic invasion. Xeno cultists, and damned cultists at the same time, and no answer as to what was going on!

His own command bunker had been attacked and only one person harmed?

He glanced at the hole, where the Aide had been standing as she'd been ripped out of the building.

An aide that he had suspected to be a cultist. He'd been testing everyone in the command staff, for taint, but she'd apparently been able to avoid most of the checks thanks to Lt. Fishers.

Lt. Fisher who suddenly disappeared at the same time?

Damned Cultists all of them.

He still had a war to win. They'd find this black xeno, and deal with it then. The Guard would not fail.

—--

A few Daemons remained around the planet when I returned to the warp, and without concepts like distance mattering as much they were hunted and devoured. Weak Nurgle Daemons, that I realized after eating just one, weren't still here randomly.

They were scouts.

Watchers to see what I was.

I scoffed and ate the rest of them before leaving this little planet behind.

I had context now. I surged through the warp distance passing me by in a rush as I headed for my next meal.

A much brighter light, farther than before, but that hardly mattered now. I dimmed my light as I grew closer and noticed that this Hive was already attacking a world.

I could feel their hunger as they launched themselves towards a planet, fought the humans in the sky above it.

Death was everywhere, and when I slipped into the Hunger surrounding the Hive Fleet, I began devouring happily. The souls of the Tyranid flowed into me, and I remained hidden among them. A predator of sorts feasting without their notice.

Of course that left me time to examine what was happening in the materium.

Men died.

Thousand, hundreds of thousands. Ships died and the men on board died with them.

I reached out and plucked those within that swarm. The corrupted and the damned, didn't scatter into nothing, they went into my maw. Just as those loyal humans went to their afterlife streaking towards the brightest light in the sky.

But that wasn't all. This was all taking place above a planet, and there were more deaths there. I devoured Tyranid and corrupt man, and I consumed it all. When a Tyranid ship put itself in a bad position, I was there. Leaping upon the minds inside, disrupting its function until it was blown apart by the Imperial Navy.

When another Tyrand ship wrapped around an Imperial ship, I was there, attacking and savaging it, so it lost its grip, saving the vessel.

It wasn't entirely because I felt a connection to humans. Every human ship meant more Tyranid deaths flowing into me, with so little needing to be done.

My stomach, which had been upset since I devoured that damned Unclean one, settled as power flowed through me and simply flattened the last of that thing's resistance to my consumption.

Hmm… Biological weapons huh? I could do that, but the Tyranid would adapt… Unless it wasn't biological. I grinned as I swam through the warp, getting close enough to each Tyranid vessel and just poking them. Inserting a small bit of myself into the collective mind.

Slowly, and then faster as it grew, it caused disruption. Orders were sent wrong. The gigantic biological ships attacked themselves, like a cancer growing within the fleet.

My fun was disrupted all at once along with the entire Fleet.

Two clashing noises the Hunger of the Tyranid was overlaid with the hunger of another!

Two fleets?!

I would be salivating if I could, but the more I looked into it…

No. It was some trick. I swiftly narrowed it down, and even as a majority of 'me' was left among the fleet to devour all that came, I split off something I did so instinctively I almost shocked myself when I realized what I had done.

The smaller form… Wasn't like the lesser Daemons I'd seen. I was too much like the Tyranids I realized and continued on without hesitation.

I hadn't made a lesser Daemon, I'd simply let a piece of me go do a task I needed done. I was a Hive Mind as well after all.

There was only one me, no matter how many pieces I became.

—---

"Excellent." Cain offered as he looked down at the now broken horde of Xenos that had been swarming up the shaft. "You can tell Clementine to stand down." He offered into his combead but a moment later he got a rather unfortunate response.

"Unfortunately, I can't." Sholer the Tech Priest responded. "As I anticipated, her last seizure proved fatal."

Unfortunate indeed Cain decided. The Astropath had actually used the bioship fragment, transmitting the hivemind of a different Tyranid fleet into the other, disrupting both.

It had saved all their lives, and potentially disrupted the entire fleet above.

"She did her duty to the Emperor. To the Omnissiah as well." He added into his combead for the priests benefit.

"Indeed." Cains duty to sound appropriately heroic done he turned and Jurgen was there his Melta practically hissing from overuse.

"Sir?"

"I b-" Whatever he was about to say was disrupted as a keening went out. The few Tyranid below that still lived screamed.

He'd heard Tyranid make plenty of noises before, but never like this.

Cain looked to Yail, the Terminator armored Reclaimer Space Marine was looking over the edge just as he was.

"Commissar, I believe we are not finished."

Down below a noise erupted and Cain looked down. The remaining Tyranid were dead. Their heads had just exploded.

There was unusual, and then there was worrying.

His palms itched.

"Commissar!" The static on his combead went silent a moment later, and Cain knew something was wrong.

"Sholer?" No response. "To the Analyticum! Sholer's call was disrupted!" He roared and the Space Marines wasted no time, letting Cain follow after them at a sprint, but happily behind them, and their armor.

The moment the first marine made it around the corner Cain heard the bolters roar and that was never a good sign.

Cain didn't hesitate in checking the corner, the marines even Yail in his Terminator armor had rushed inside, they'd distract whatever-

There standing in front of the Bioship fragment, was… A Tyranid? But not of a strain Cain had ever seen. Pitch black and tall enough to be something only a Knight might comfortably face. Or as would be his preference an entire artillery battery from the Valhallan 597th.

It stood there, bone like, almost skeletal, a horror worse than even normal Tyranid in Cains eyes.

Sholer pinned under one of its clawed feet, and what scared Cain the most was despite all the bolter fire. It was unharmed. Looming taller than even the space marines making them all look like children beneath its flared wings.

All the rounds, bolter and even a missile from Yial's shoulder mounted launcher hung in the air. A wall separated one side of the room from the other.

"H-Hold your fire, you'll damage the Fragment!" Sholer called out, breathlessly as he still remained pinned below the xeno, but the Marines showed no signs of listening already reloading and preparing to fire again. Of course the Tech Priest would worry about the fragment over his own life.

But the Xeno simply turned away from them all and looked at the Bioship Fragment.

I piece of a Tyranid hive ship that predated the first recorded arrival of the Tyranids in imperial space.

The massive chunk of rotting flesh had shown that the Tyranid fleets were not allies. That they wished to kill each other.

But this form of the Tyranid was unknown, but undoubtedly powerful.

"Jurgen." Cain whispered, and already his aide was moving at his side. Melta gun ready.

Jurgen was a blank, and this thing was using Pskyer powers to protect itself from a team of angry Space Marines.

Ciain had seen worse odds.

But just as he was about to get close enough, something happened that Cain couldn't understand,

*Interesting.*

The word echoed around the room, and even Jurgen flinched.

The inhuman xeno… Spoke. Gothic. Impossible. Tyranid couldn't-

*To force division among the Hive Mind… Excellent.* It spoke, its voice bouncing in the massive room, a hissing sibilant noise that filled Cain with dread.

Intelligence was expected from the Hive Mind, but this was…

"What are you?" Yail spoke first, Storm Bolter still aimed at the xeno and to my surprise it responded.

*The Enemy of your enemy.* It uttered and the words made no sense. Surely not. Surely Tyranids weren't capable of this?

"What does that mean? What enemy?" Cain spoke his voice firmer than he expected, and Jurgen thankfully had still been following his orders, slowly sliding closer and closer. Perhaps if this thing turned hostile a Melta would be enough?

It turned to look at him, away from the Bioship Fragment and Cain felt fear.

It had no eyes. Just the massive maw of a Tyranid Tyrant, but more, the crest was larger and more terrible. Yet he knew without a doubt that even without eyes it was watching.

*I am… Hunger. I devour what you call Tyranid, I am the predator of their own making… The enemy, of your enemy.*

"You are simply another Xeno." Yial muttered angrily, which made Cain wince, because they had no idea how dangerous this thing was.

*Perhaps.* It seemed to almost mock, and then Jurgen was there. Stepping one more step forward, against the invisible wall still holding Bolter and missile in the air.

It popped like a soap bubble, the munitions fell, and the Marines didn't hesitate. It flinched as the attacks made it through, and Jurgen opened up. His Melta roaring out as it superheated the air, slamming into the xeno.

Then it continued on, the bioship fragment was now truly dead, bolter rounds and Melta tearing into it, but Cain had to blink in surprise even as he raised his las pistol and took his own shots. Because as Jurgen had drawn close enough, Cains shock rose, as the Xeno reacted shifting away and then seemingly vanishing into nothing in a familiar way.

Daemon. That xeno, hadn't been some Tyranid offshoot, it was a creature of the warp! Jurgens' aura having disrupted its form enough for it to retreat along with all the weapons…

Only… Why had it sounded like it had said… That as it fled?

*Ow.*