Favelith settled into the circle of ancient stones, the chamber's stale air thick with the scent of scorched resin. Around her, faint runes shimmered etched in the ether itself, a lattice of psychic sigils pulsing with low, blue light. These weren't mere decorations. They were wards, psychic glyphs forged in the ancient Craftworld tradition, designed to cage a force far beyond normal understanding.
She had begun drawing the ritual lattice a day ago. Not with chalk or paint, but with soul synth viscous fluid derived from degraded spirit stones and mixed with her own psychic essence. It glimmered faintly violet in the chamber's gloom, humming under her breath like a sleeping predator. The pattern ran out in radial symmetry from the center, a cage within a maze of psychic logic.
She worked with slow motion. Each line of the lattice had a purpose harmonics tuned to suppress warp turbulence, outer layers meant to fracture possession attempts, inner circles designed to dampen daemon memory resonance. The math wasn't guesswork. It was psycho reactive geometry, based on a thousand year old binding template used by Ulthwé's Seer Shrines. She had adapted it, modified it, weaponized it.
Next came the anchor cores six of them soul tethered foci wrapped in containment wards. They were built from cracked spirit stones recovered from the battlefield, saturated in death, softened for receptivity. She hadn't told anyone what else she had buried in the cores names. Real ones. Not just echoes of the dead, but pieces of their psychic identity. That was what a daemon respected: memory and sacrifice.
Then the transfer conduit. This part required a mix of Eldar and crude Martian tech Farron's doing. A psychic relay matrix soldered onto a containment manifold. The core was a pulse fusion tube surrounded by a dozen micro rune traps, each tuned to a different warp frequency. If the daemon tried to slip into the Webway or splinter across multiple hosts, the relay would splinter its consciousness into containment vectors. She didn't even pretend to fully understand the tech part. That was the Magos' arena.
She placed her hands above the lattice and exhaled sharply, fingers twitching as she anchored her presence into the structure. The air changed. Cold. Still. The chamber began humming in response.
She was sweating now. Not from exertion, but from what came next calibration.
Faevelith reached into her pouch and withdrew some blood. It was Eliethor's. A sample taken days ago. She placed it at the center of the lattice and immediately felt it bite back his psychic fingerprint was still infected, tainted by the thing inside. It twisted against her senses, oily and alien.
That was what she needed.
The structure needed to be tuned to that exact signature so the daemon would think it was returning home. The moment of transference would be delicate. One wrong pattern, one unaligned anchor, and it would rebound, split, or worse possess one of them.
So she calibrated. Slowly. Carefully. Bringing the blood of its original host into alignment with each anchor node. Psychic frequencies were adjusted manually, like tuning a living instrument. She monitored response patterns in real time fluctuations in warp pressure, signature deviations, latent resistance.
Hours passed.
By the time she finished, the chamber had gone silent.
Faevelith backed away from the center of the lattice, breathing heavy, hands slightly shaking. She hadn't even begun the real ritual. This was just the structure the pit, the chain, the cage.
But it was ready. The daemon would have no idea it was walking into its prison.
And when it did, it would be too late.
---
Cassian sat in the low hum of his workshop, light from scattered hololiths casting jagged shadows across his tools and gear. The silence was thick and loaded he wasn't just gearing up for a mission. This was crossing a line.
He stared down the table spread with his weapons, gadgets, and a small arsenal of technological wonders.
The Cloaking Shard. A joint venture between Magos Farron and himself, this tech was a fragile marriage of Eldar illusion fields and Imperium camo. Not perfect, but enough to bend light, sound, and heat signatures his invisibility cloak in a world of psychic sensors and hawk eyed sentries. This wasn't some factory trinket; it was painstakingly reverse engineered from Eldar stealth armor and reforged with servo hydraulic amplifiers from a Martian forge.
The Neural Disruptor. Small, easy to hide, but a device crafted from data stolen off the ship they escaped from previous daemon world repurposed to fry minor psychic signals. Perfect for short bursts against psychic wards. Favelith had helped tune its frequency. It was silent, but deadly if timed right.
The Synth Slicer. A micro-serrated blade with a monomolecular edge, forged by Farron himself for him. Perfect for quiet cuts and bypassing seals faster than any code or lockpick.
He ran a hand over the data slate with maps and patrol schedules, hacked together from intercepted Eldar signals and Farron's schematic analysis. The timing was tight: patrols shifted every eight minutes, with psychic sentries recalibrating every two. One mistake and the alarm would scream through the Craftworld.
Cassian's mind flickered through every scenario: guards rounding a corner too soon, psychic sensors flaring with suspicion. His heart drummed not from fear, but from the calculated risk he'd chosen.
"Prepared enough," he muttered, checking his chrono again. The clock was relentless.
Hours of meticulous work had boiled down to this: slip past psychic wards with Favelith's help, move forward with Farron's tech, and reach Elithor before the daemon inside tore the cell apart.
Cassian strapped on his gear, each piece clicking into place.
He took a final breath.
As he calmed himself.
---
Cassian pressed his back flat against the cold, ribbed wall of the corridor. His breath slowed, shallow and controlled. The cloaking tech from Magos Farron flickered faintly.
02:30 left.
Ahead, an automatic psychic sentry hovered silently, its lens glowing a dull, unnatural blue. It scanned in slow arcs, searching for any hint of movement or soul in the shadows. Cassian's heart hit a steady rhythm not fast, not slow. Perfect.
He dropped a tiny psi spike from his fingers. It dissolved into the air, invisible, insubstantial. The sentry twitched, jerked its head sharply away, and darted toward a phantom signal. Cassian slid forward, tight against the wall, the rough stone biting his palms.
His mind raced. No mistakes. No noise. At least for now.
The hallway twisted, ancient Eldar architecture folding space like a puzzle box. The walls shimmered with bioluminescent glyphs. Cassian passed through the flickering light and shadow, one silent step at a time.
02:00 left.
At the next checkpoint, a wraithbone lock sealed the passage. This wasn't just a door; it was a psychic puzzle, runes crawling with eldritch sigils and temperamental tech. Cassian produced the Synth slicer from his coat.
He whispered the activation phrase, fingers trembling as runes flared. The lock clicked, the barrier slipped open.
But then—
A soft shuffle behind him. The scrape of boots on stone.
Cassian froze. Cloak shimmering, heart nearly stopping.
Two Eldar sentries appeared, voices low but sharp.
"Patrol, sector twelve. Anything unusual?"
Cassian pressed his back into a recessed panel, breath shallow. His pulse thundered in his ears. Time slowed.
01:45 left.
The guards paused, exchanged a glance. Cassian held his breath.
Then they moved on.
Cassian exhaled, voice silent: "Too close."
He pushed on, faster now.
The path narrowed, twisting deeper into the Craftworld's bowels. Every surface seemed alive wraithbone walls pulsing faintly with psychic energy. Flickering psychic wards flashed ahead.
The containment chamber was near.
01:20 left.
Cassian reached the door thick, bone reinforced, etched with dangerous sigils.
The psychic wards hummed, alive and hostile.
He jammed the disruptor into the control panel.
Sparks flickered.
The door groaned, then slid open with a grinding sound that threatened to echo through the entire compound.
Inside was Elithor.
Suspended in psychic chains, comatose but burning with danger.
The daemon was restless, even here.
Cassian moved swiftly, getting rid of the restraints hands steady, grabbing Elithor's limp form.
00:55 left.
Suddenly, a sharp alarm shattered the silence.
Red glyphs flashed on the walls breach detected.
Cassian's heart slammed against his ribs.
"Favelith, now!" he hissed into the comm.
"Trying," came her calm reply.
He bolted toward the exit, dragging the burdened body.
The corridor erupted with deadly light psychic turrets activating, firing.
Cassian dove behind a pillar just as bolts scorched where his head had been seconds before.
He rolled, drew his synth slicer.
A drone rounded the corner, lights flaring.
Cassian used technopathy and fried it's circuit. Warp coming easier to him.
00:30 left.
The path was a gauntlet.
Sentries converged.
He ducked into a narrow side corridor, lungs burning.
Ahead, a final door stood between him and escape.
A psychic shockwave pulsed from the sealed exit. It threatened to unravel his cloak.
Cassian gritted his teeth, forced himself forward.
The door panel blinked red.
He smashed the disruptor into place.
The barrier hissed and dissolved.
00:15 left.
He burst through into the hangar.
Elithor twitched.
The daemon stirred.
Cassian dropped him to the ground, breath ragged.
Behind him, alarms blared, reinforcements closing in.
No time left.
He glanced back once.
Then started running.
---
Cassian didn't look back. The hangar's shadows swallowed him as he melted into the twisting corridors of Kaleor's underbelly.
The stolen wraithbone slab Elithor hung heavy on his arms, a dead weight that suddenly wasn't so dead anymore.
A flicker in the prisoner's eyes.
A spasming twitch.
Cassian froze.
Elithor's body convulsed violently, muscles jerking like they were being crushed from the inside. A low, guttural growl erupted from his throat a sound alien and bone chilling. The daemon inside the body was taking control.
His grip tightened. No, no, no. Not now.
"Hold together," Cassian whispered, voice rough, but the spasms only grew worse.
Dark corruption seeped from Elithor's skin, like ink bleeding beneath fragile glass. The air around them thickened, charged with raw, unholy energy. Cassian's cloaking shimmer flickered, struggling against the growing psychic disturbance.
00:12 left.
The corridors seemed to pulse, responding to the daemon's stirring presence. Alarms howled louder now, Eldar sentries closing in faster than anticipated. The plan precise, surgical was unraveling like thread on a blade's edge.
Cassian adjusted his grip, weaving through flickering light and shadow. The parasite's power surged, spasms rattling Elithor's frame so violently it nearly slipped from Cassian's hold.
A sharp, discordant pulse knocked Cassian off balance. His vision blurred. The daemon was pushing back struggling to stay locked inside the comatose shell.
It's a war inside him.
His mind raced: the transfer ritual won't hold if Elithor wakes fully here.
Cassian's breath hitched. Every second stretched, a countdown to disaster.
00:08 left.
A sudden shudder convulsed Elithor's body so hard Cassian nearly dropped him. Dark veins blossomed like cracked glass over pale skin. The corruption threatened to spill out poison the entire craftworld.
Cassian bit down on his fear.
No time for hesitation.
He adjusted the strap on his pack, fingers trembling as he pulled the ritual conduit Favelith had crafted fragile psychic chains designed to cage the daemon temporarily.
"Hold still, damn you," he hissed, his voice low but fierce.
The daemon roared inside Elithor's mind, a furious, endless abyss clawing to be free.
00:05 left.
A psychic shockwave rolled down the corridor, knocking Cassian forward. He stumbled, caught himself, dragged Elithor behind a pillar.
Sweat slicked his brow.
The cloak flickered dangerously.
He pressed the conduit against Elithor's sternum. The faint glow pulsed, psychic chains sparking alive.
Elithor spasmed once more, fists clenched tight, mouth a silent scream.
Cassian's grip was iron now, steady and cold.
"Not here. Not yet."
The daemon's rage sent tendrils of corruption crackling through the air, warping the stone walls, threatening to reveal his position.
Cassian glanced at his watch.
00:02 left.
Elithor's convulsions slowed then his eyes snapped open.
A grin curled across his pale lips. His hollow eyes locking with Cassian's
Like the daemon inside was stirring, waking and maybe, just maybe, enjoying the chaos.
Cassian's breath hitched.
Things have gotten more complicated.
---
Word Count: 2008
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