7. Jumping into the Fray

The Khra'e, the dominant sapient inhabiting their planet Khra'ltva, was going to undergo a mass extinction event for they were at the wrong place and time.

K'ltutv a young adult male member of this species was crying bluish blood rich in copper, he was lucky that many more of his brethren had their eyes ruptured and veins in their brains explode at the sight of the source of this event.

Intelligible screams of terror and agony ensued but not him, he didn't act this way for fear was not what he felt at the forefront, this being, this thing was far above any of them, standing in his presence was an affront in itself.

Its shape was for them everchanging, impossible to describe in detail but its main attribute stood out, a horned head, six disembodied hands, a tail, and a vaguely male figure.

It was a monster, a demon, an angel, a god, a spirit, a nightmare, an abomination, or any other name for such creatures little for he was a being of unfathomable presence, reality broke and reformed in

Its presence and all that gazed upon him began losing their very self.

Insanity and madness befell on them for their mind couldn't comprehend such a paradoxical and unnatural being. It wasn't their fault, or due to weak minds, it was simply the order of things.

But… The rampant delirium had not had the time to show its deteriorating effect that this very being K'ltutv felt none of them were worthy of even existing in its mere presence spoke through their species' psychic link and shared consciousness, the Chamber of the Ancestor.

Its voice was soft, deep, and melodious superior to the most beautiful symphony their species had ever woven into reality but of nature and power eldritch in origin, alien and destructive, antithesis yet not to the world. A polyphonic voice that could bring both prosperity and annihilation and all that existed could be grasped and held for none could escape it.

-Be not afraid, I do not bear the intention to cause you harm. I have come to help.-

Yet again none could truly appreciate it nor the words and their meaning could be understood for they together with how the link had been shaped shattered this very same Chamber of the Ancestor.

This was their species' highest creation that connected them all, alive and dead as knowledge and experience from ancient and present times melded together in an ever-increasing progress in every domain. Their dream, hope, and future breaking apart in a puff of smoke.

It had instant and grievous consequences on the entirety of the species, close to ten billion died in an instant, infants, children, teenagers, adults, seniors, males, females, sick and healthy no matter their physical characteristics, like and dislike all mattered little against the obsidian black, violet and dark purple sun of impossible heat that extinguished their souls while their body collapsed, eyes ball busted, muzzle and ear pouring blood and other unrecognizable tissues.

It happened at unprecedented speed luckily far too quickly for any to have felt any kind of pain or if they did their melting nervous system couldn't comprehend it. One second they were alive the next their world disappeared as their souls and minds were engulfed and erased by a paradoxical force.

But not all of them had died… A fraction had survived hanging onto life with varying degrees of injuries, more dying by the second but this fraction of a fraction that survived had their souls, minds, and bodies tainted, scarred, and mutated with this psychic-anti-psychic burn scar forever more.

K'ltutv was one of them but surviving was not without pain, his body was spasming on the ground, agony mental and physical with a sense of euphoria and power mixed together as the bones in his body broke and regenerated, his skin morphed, all of his furs fell off revealing milky grey skin adorned with pulsating veins.

His ear, enlarged and became pointy, his upper shoulder blades broke followed by the upper arm with the fingers elongating into pseudo membranous wings, the lower arms grew in size and bulk, third scrawny deformed ones growing right in the middle, the tail became almost scorpion-like while the digigrated legs became had similar treatment then at last he fell unconscious, ferocious fangs jutting outward in a twisted snarl.

This phenomenon was not unique to K'ltutv, it was happening simultaneously to thousands of his kindred, the shambles that were their shared consciousness giving awareness of one another until they blacked out together.

The individual that had caused this planetary-wide tragedy on a blunter that he clumsily tried to fix with power he had no concrete understanding of or control of was staring with a conflicted mix of emotion at everything, his senses both through Realspace and the Sea of Souls giving noodles and understanding of all that happened in the greatest of detail.

'I… I didn't want to do this… What I have done… Billions gone, killed by me, and the survivor twisted into something else by my own doing.', Hoopa thought as he closed his left middle hand, the pinkish-purple psychic energy vanishing from his hasty act of fixing and stopping the consequences of his action.

'And it felt the same as stepping halfway on a snail… Slight guilt but not much else, I feel more shame about the fact I failed than what I did. What the fuck did she do to me.', was his horrifying realization, what he did was beyond monstrous that he initially wanted to do it or not mattered little in the end.

It was something equal and comparable to what was done to him even if it was by accident, and even if their fate without his intervention was sealed to begin with. It didn't change what he did, he didn't simply kill them, he erased their souls. There was no going back for them, they couldn't be more dead.

And he didn't dwell on it, not by choice, he couldn't do so for the battle had truly begun at this very moment. A moment marked by the Aeldari God of War, Violence, and Murder's flaming blade colliding with the green rusting one of the Necron God of Death, Darkness, and Destruction.

The shockwave of the impact permeated through the time and space of Realspace, the tumultuous waves of the Sea of Soul, and the convoluted barriers of the Labyrinth Dimension.

It propagated far and wide from the epicenter in every direction reaching light year away and its collateral damages were vast, from material to the hundred thousand that died at this instant Aeldari, K'nib, Rashan, Krork, and more but it was mainly the weaker of each race that succumbed, even Necron had their living metal body ripped apart.

The planet Hoopa was on was not spared, but for him, it was the exact opposite, it was the equivalent of a strong breeze blowing slightly his fur, beard, and hair messing them a little which was immediately fixed. But that was for him... On the soon-to-be-dead planet, it was far different, disasters happened everywhere all at once and on scales far beyond natural as the heart of the planet had been shattered.

The crust fissured at every point causing earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, ravin and untold more to happen, the atmosphere was not spared either like a dust cloud in a storm it was pushed away, and the water, air, and all that stood following the same as they became space dust killing all life on the planet.

But Hoopa had anticipated this and shields of potent psychic energy had been preemptively formed around all that he had twisted into what could but be called abominations protecting them all from death both physical and metaphysical.

'I don't have time to brood. I need to warp them far away now in a safe place… It's what I wanted to do, to begin with. Why did I have to try and interact with them?', Hoopa thought, and this led to another horrifying realization that he wouldn't have had to filter out a great majority of the population choosing from who to who was more worthy of life.

Passing from a few million to realistically transport to less than a thousand eased the process greatly, to say the least, not that he could have saved them all, to begin with. It also meant he wouldn't have had to choose who died on this broken planet.

All these deep and conflicting thoughts were born out of self-reflection on his lack of humanity and his actions happened simultaneously with a multitude of others he was having. And so at the same time, he conjured portals with three of his rings.

He didn't even dare hold them directly for he feared he would crush them or his psychic essence would kill them if he had a lapse in concentration, which was a high possibility. Around the planet, thousands of stones, from the size of a room to islands encapsulated in psychic bubbles began to float and moved at speeds far beyond that of sound through his rings' portal.

Once all were gone the rings flew back to his arms and he closed his eyes for a short second mumbling a sorry, they had been warped to a planet with a similar atmosphere and condition to this one a hundred thousand light years away.

At least it should be if his sense and intuition were correct, and they were as he checked just to make sure by creating another portal. He didn't need to have made another mistake right now, at least toward them for he knew they would have consequences, maybe none that would affect him but there would be that is certain.

'They should be able to survive and repopulate here.', he hoped, on that point if he messed up their species or not the result would have been out of his control. It was up to them to survive and thrive, a logical part of him told him that his initial blunter and the action to fix it might even be beneficial toward that goal.

"The fight now…", he mumbled entering a ring that just popped from his left upper hand as another shockwave, weaker this time similarly shook the planet and the world around and it was one of many that came in the following seconds.

Reappearing in the middle of the Necron fleet he blocked all projection shots at him, from arcs of green lighting, higher dimensional bullets, beams of antimatter, and more that played with all laws of physics like a fiddle.

But all the products of those weapons at the epitome of science dissipated against the psychic shield that he kept on improving with each hit it received. Faults and defaults in its design changed and improved each second.

One arm shot out to the closest Light Cruiser that was two kilometers and a half in width and one in length, his fist pulsating with dark electricity impacted its head. Then the Necron spaceship exploded in green plasma, forming a cone shape from the point of impact, the psychic energy-enhanced punch ravaging all.

"Egyptian space robots, how quaint. You are one of the mindless ones so it's moot to try to converse. That would have been interesting.", he let out with fascination taking a good look at his unliving foe he managed to grasp with his attack, it was the pilot, decorated with strange symbols and of grey metallic body that would likely rip apart humans but for him it was no more than a toy he could hold between two fingers.

He crushed it like the bug that it was and it turned into glitching toxic green motes of light, his curiosity temporarily satiated then he truly began the offensive. His six wrist rings popped off and the death ray from the Nightbringer shot outward in thinner beams from the constellation-like aesthetic of the portal.

He kept track of the attack he had sent away, getting it back and using it as its advantage was child play. Showing how strong he was on a base level and it was far from an unpleasant realization, just like how he crushed the robot. It was hard to describe but the feeling of utter power and control was one he found, right in a way that responded to him on an instinctual level.

And it showed him how strong the original ray was too, the three-meter thick beams of negative grey light divided from it moved at a speed his eyes could barely follow as they erased from reality for no better word could describe what was happening to everything they passed through.

The six beams cut everything apart before starting the necrosis of all that was close to the point of impact, it mattered little if it was matters that could do so to begin, it bent reality. An interesting thing since it didn't happen to the Blackstone Fortress, likely due to its nature beyond Realspace, Hoopa presumed.

Hundreds to ten thousand Cruisers were taken by those beams and he constantly changed directions by invoking new portals creating a virtually infinite weapon of mass destruction.

A rumbling monstrous laugh echoed from his chest and a fanged grin that put even more in evidence his large tusks. The rain of toxic green light never ceased once to rain on his shield doing little to sour his mood, it did the exact opposite.

The entire scene gave Hoopa a deep sense of satisfaction that was far too addictive, just like those videos on the internet from his past life but turned up to a hundred. He was enjoying this far too much, and he had passed over the death of billions by his hand far too easily, he was aware of it all but right now… He couldn't bring himself to care and it made him think of something else.

The sheer destruction was a spectacle beautiful beyond words to his inhuman brain, and he knew he would amplify it to an unprecedented level.

But it wasn't only him that was decimating them, the technologically superior Necrons' greatest weakness was his 'camp' greatest strength, magic, the battlefield being in a space amplifying it to high heaven worsening the automaton's case further.

The psychically gifted race under the careful machinations and commands of the Laughing God were massacring the undying metal warriors by the thousand, per second on mobile bridges of evershifting light all around, the notion of up and down, left, and right not applicable here leading to vast armies fighting everywhere all at once.

It was the same for the aerial battle, each Cruiser of equal size from one camp would take down dozens and dozens of the others by the use of a focused psychic matrix, expert maneuver, perfect coordination, and simple overall superiority.

The only true damage that was sustained was the result of Khaine and Aza'gorod's duel which Hoopa could see and feel, each of their blows, blade against blade damaged concepts and reality alike as they moved through everything, destroying ally and enemy alike in their wake without care.

'This is odd… Something is going on but what? This doesn't make sense otherwise for them to attack this way.', he thought with a bit of apprehension trying to find a reason as to why they were doing this from the knowledge given to him and he found none which was aggravating.

Whatever was being brewed wasn't going to be good and it was going to change the rhythm of the battle that Hoopa was certain of.

The beams of the Nightbringher suddenly fizzled out to Hoopa's disappointment but that was not a great loss. He was more surprised he was let off using it for so long.

What replaced them was born out of his power giving exponentially more control and versatility. Plunging his hands halfway into the rings he condensed his psychic then from portals appearing at calculated coordinates he shot at repetition but with surgical precision obsidian colored beams toward the surrounding battleships.

The destruction he was causing multiplied twelvefold and kept on growing, a part of his potent psychic nature imbued into the beams caused matter to disappear in an explosion of pure black and white.

That was only the first part, each time a psychic beam reached its target it exploded into dozens of thinner beams that shot outward from the point of impact like a magnificent firework.

But that wasn't all either, those smaller beams targeted nearby Cruisers like heat-seeking missiles, each of them sharing similar properties as the original, as such they exploded into smaller fireworks engendering even thinner beams that themselves possess the same characteristics thereby creating ever-growing tides of self-multiplying, and self-targeting purely destructive beams from a single shot.

It wasn't hard to do, neither on the technical aspect nor on how much energy was pushed behind. Like the two others in their duel, he was holding back greatly for he lacked control and the point was to murder each other, not destroy a quarter of the Milky Way beyond repair, if not far more. Even for the C'tan, he had his fleet and flagship right in the middle, losing them all would be an unpleasant outcome.

It still could come down to it but not right off the bat, it was still the warm-up stage of the battle so to say.

Speaking off… Hoopa's next target was this very flagship, one bigger than even some planet but its destruction was not to be for his time playing alone with the robots came to an end in the most violent of ways.

A sensation of dread and terror came over him, his eyes widened locking onto the edge of the rusted iron blade of a scythe that came out of nothing and was swiping downward to his nape to rip his life.