The alien force continued to press and at some point I not only lost consciousness, I woke up in a crystal labyrinth, surrounded by the distortion of alien souls.
- WHAT THE FUCK? - Tzeentch immediately roared, distracted from reading a book bound in human skin. - COME BACK TO ALBA!!!
- NO NEED, UNCLE!!!
But it was too late and under the monstrous power of the dark god my soul returned to the mortal world again. I did not even want to know what kind of enemy came to interfere with my duel with the Daemon Prince. After all, the creature that was capable of not only suppressing someone else's will, but also destroying the spell of Tzeentch, throwing my soul where it belongs. However, immediately after this, the pressure began to recede and I was forcibly returned by Tzeentch back to the battlefield.
I didn't die, my body remained the same as it had been after falling from the Daemon Prince's blow. It was the soul, the reflection in the warp that every creature possessed, that took all the consequences. However, if ordinary mortals simply lost consciousness and felt extremely bad, then psykers and especially demons... for them the consequences were simply catastrophic. And the stronger the demon, the higher its connection with the warp, the more suffering the alien will brought.
"Hey, are you alive there?" I asked the bird, but it showed almost no signs of life.
Mordred's soul slowly came to its senses, the Machine's will began to grow, because a significant part of the patterns had been destroyed. Slowly I began to take the exhausted warp flows under my control, creating a crystal right under the Knight's back. Like ice, it grew and grew, thereby tearing the war machine from the ground, returning it to a vertical position. However, standing up to my full height, I suddenly realized that another crystal began to crumble. Gaps in my armor gaped again and sparks began to form in the depths of the hull.
"Victory at any cost," the Machine hummed, and then steam began to rise from the hull.
The plasma core overheated and began to destroy the hull, and due to the lack of a thick layer of crystal, the damage could become critical at any moment. However, this price was fine with the "Curse of Morgana". Death in battle with the demon prince, could one ask the Machine Spirit for a more worthy reward?
The demon prince began to have a panic attack. He furiously looked in all directions, including the sky, trying to find a threat of a godly or at least semi-godly level. He couldn't believe that there was anyone in the galaxy who could compete with him, except for the other demon princes.
— YET YOU ARE NOT SDOKH?! the demon hissed, clutching at the bleeding wound in his stomach that had stopped regenerating, still looking around in a daze.
"Until the last bullet, even if my armor melts and the chain of my chainsword breaks, I will go into battle as long as my core hums," the Machine answered, but no one but me heard these words.
My bolter cannons on my head shook, suppressing the Daemon Prince. He still felt a huge threat and really didn't want to be distracted by me, but the laser cannon had already started to heat up, preparing to fire another shot. And throwing aside all doubts, the Daemon Prince rushed straight at me, intending to quickly deal with the annoying obstacle. This was his first mistake, because you can never ignore your own instincts.
As he broke into a charge, bolter fire rained down from both flanks. The finest weapons forged in the forges of Mars thundered, and plasma blasts beat out the rhythm of war like drums, heralding the end of any threat, daemon or xenos. And those shots were familiar to me, just as I had seen those who were unrecognizable through the Machine's sensors.
The Astartes came to the battlefield and I'll be damned if they didn't do something to distract the entire battlefield from their landing from orbit. And while the fleet that had arrived was fighting the xenos in space, the First Company, led by the Primarch himself, rushed straight into the thick of it.
I immediately thought of Leman Russ, the one I had seen in the past on Draekernor. It wasn't him, but like a demigod, this Primarch towered over even his sons. Armed with an incredibly heavy bolter machine gun that could easily be mounted on a heavy vehicle, he brought a whirlwind of fire and steel. The daemon prince's majesty melted under the barrage of the First Company, and he still continued to rush towards me, intending to use me as a living shield.
- FIRST YOU, THEN THE SOUL OF A DEMIGOD!!! - roared the demon prince, trying to dodge a shot almost at point-blank range.
The laser beam passed tangentially across his face, melting half of it, before delivering a single precise blow, plunging the sword straight into the Knight's eyes and pointing the blade towards the Throne Mechanicum. However, suddenly, in the grimace of complete malice, there was incomprehension. The cursed sword had not tasted another's soul.
"Change in your face, you fucking freak," I said, standing on the Knight's head, next to the open hatch.
At the last moment, the Knight finally let me go, deciding in gratitude not to drag me to the bottom. Although, due to leaving the Throne of the Mechanicum so quickly, I began to have phantom pains, and my neck and back were also torn apart by the too-quick release of needles and cables.
Anyway, without thinking twice, I jumped straight from the Knight down. The plan was simple - I would either fly or break all my bones. The miracle did not happen and the crystal bones scattered. In addition to broken legs, I also seem to have cracked my vertebrae, fortunately, immediately after the fall, I rolled into a ravine, which saved me from certain death.
Meanwhile, the Daemon Prince roared in rage, realizing that he had been tricked like his Dark Prince. There was a monstrous explosion of force and the Knight's overloaded plasma core detonated, scorching the Daemonic flesh. Immediately after, the Primarch himself rushed into the fray, handing over his machine gun to the captain of the first company and drawing his gigantic two-handed power sword, he was already closing the distance with the wounded Daemon Prince.
With the first blow of his blade, the primarch brought the daemon prince to his knees, whose limbs were torn off by precise shots from plasma cannons. And then the blade was thrust into the stomach and with a wild cry, the demigod threw the creature onto its back and with one movement ripped open its entire chest, tearing apart the daemon's heart. The body burned in pink fire, trying to poison the soul of the primarch with a final scream, but he only grinned and led the soul of the daemon prince to a far from final journey.
For a while he stood on the fallen enemy and looked at the damned sword, which was much bigger than him. I did not know what the primarch was thinking, but I looked at him from the ravine with curiosity. A real giant, this was not just a new stage of human evolution, it was something that was as far from a man as a man is from an ape. However, this strength also hid an incredible weakness.
Ash slowly fell onto the black and white armour, while blood slowly trickled from the pauldron with the Roman numeral XI. Meanwhile, the First Company had already spread out across the battlefield, marching on the side of the defenders of Camelot. The rifts were closing, the storm in the warp was dying down and the pain that had torn my mind was retreating back, because the first of the enemy was destroyed.
And then the Primarch suddenly turned sharply and looked straight at me, still covered in crystal, albeit extremely fragile.
"Good fight," he said, starting to move straight towards me, throwing his giant sword over his shoulder. "I never thought to see a sorcerer pilot in a knight world! The galaxy is truly full of surprises."
He stopped right next to the crater and it seemed to me that he was going to simply crush me, but instead laughter came from the helmet speaker.
- Get up, the fight is not over yet! Or will broken bones stop you?
And the Primarch turned, heading into the thick of the battle, following his First Company, which had already grabbed hold of the heart of the headquarters, surrounded by the forces of Camelot, led by Lancelot and Percival, as well as five more knights.
More chapters on my P@treon: https://patreon.com/OOOTEN