"This is some watered-down version of Space Marine 2. Whatever, let me see if I get any results out of this."
Zhou Ye muttered internally as he studied the Navigator standing before him — already possessed.
Hidden corruption was something even he couldn't always spot at a glance. But this possession was about as subtle as a drop pod landing in a library.
So his mischievous streak kicked in. Even in a world like this, seeking thrills was a fine way to get yourself killed — but Slaanesh couldn't lock onto him anyway. And even if she could, she'd never manage to corrupt him.
No need to hesitate with fallen Chaos servants. Just go straight for it.
So while the Inquisitor was still exchanging pleasantries with the Navigator, Zhou Ye reached into his bag and flung the contents directly at the Navigator's face.
A generous handful of gray dust hit the Navigator full on. This registered as zero threat in any conventional sense — no warp signature, no hostile energy — and the sorcerer within didn't even have time to react before he was wearing a faceful of the stuff.
"What are you doing?"
Being pelted with a fistful of grit was irritating enough to raise his temper considerably. He'd have loved to strike this cogboy down with a bolt of lightning right then and there — he'd been told this one was already corrupted, already a recipient of Tzeentch's gift.
So was this part of the plan?
The Thousand Sons sorcerer turned to study the Tech-Priest, waiting to see what explanation would follow.
"Do you see this?"
"...?"
"These are the remnants of Prospero."
"!!!"
In that single instant, the Thousand Sons sorcerer felt the blood rush straight to his head.
Nearby, Inquisitor Chris went rigid. At the sound of that ancient name, his expression shifted sharply.
It was a name of supreme desecration — a secret the Imperium had buried for ten thousand years. Even many Space Marines had never heard it. Chris himself had encountered it only once, written on an ancient scrap of parchment: the world consumed by fire at the command of the Wolf King Leman Russ.
The homeworld of the Thousand Sons Legion. The Imperium's eternal enemy.
But before Chris could react, or take any sort of follow-up action —
Zhou Ye threw another handful.
"Look. These are your brothers!!!"
The Thousand Sons sorcerer's blood pressure manifested as crackling lightning condensing around his temples. The air around him began to spark and spit.
"Should I mail the rest to Ahriman? Cash on delivery!!!"
BOOM!!!
In an instant, lightning and flame erupted from the sorcerer's form. A terrible radiance burst outward as the figure twisted and expanded with sickening speed — and where the Navigator had stood, there was now a monstrous shape stretching well past two meters tall.
BANG!!!
Almost purely on reflex, Zhou Ye drew his boltgun and fired. The Deathwatch Kill Team behind him opened fire simultaneously. Bolts converged from every direction.
The Thousand Sons sorcerer —
"I WILL KILL YOU. YOUR SOUL WILL SUFFER FOR ALL ETERNITY!!!"
Unfortunately, every single bolt was stopped cold by a wall of psychic force. The sorcerer's enraged roar reverberated through every corner of the Navigator's Court.
"Oh dear, oh dear. Getting worked up, are we? That all you've got? Really?"
Zhou Ye remarked in his most insufferable tone, then ducked smartly behind a stone pillar. Inquisitor Chris moved with him. Though his mind was still churning with shock and irritation, he now fully understood why this particular Tech-Priest had been expelled from his Forge World.
That mouth was a weapon of mass destruction.
Chaos's Thousand Sons sorcerers were renowned galaxy-wide for their cunning and cold calculation. But having your entire composure dismantled by three sentences of targeted trolling? He'd never heard of such a thing in all his years.
"Looks like the sorcerer's plan has already fallen apart. He didn't gather enough sacrifices to summon a Tzeentchian daemonic host."
Zhou Ye observed with genuine academic interest as the sorcerer engaged the White Scars Astartes in open combat. With the Great Rift still unopened in this era, manifesting daemons in realspace was no simple matter.
Still, he couldn't leave those Astartes to duel this thing alone — they simply wouldn't win. So Zhou Ye produced a device from his coat and tossed it to the side. An eerie green light flickered.
Necron-style dimensional transfer technology. An absolute abomination of a thing to have in one's possession. But Chris had long since passed the threshold of surprise — as long as whoever stepped out wasn't actually a Necron, he'd manage.
In truth, the device had nothing to do with the Necrons whatsoever. Zhou Ye had cobbled it together purely for appearances, as cover. Inside, it connected directly to his personal Thousand-Person Theater — and from within emerged three enormous, hulking silhouettes.
Kastelan Robots.
Besides his original unit, the other two had been assembled over the past couple of days using materials scavenged from the hive city and stripped from the ransacked Mechanicus Shrine — the leftover structural components of a Dreadnought chassis.
The sheer mountain of raw materials he'd worked through had only yielded these two.
To be fair, the material quality simply wasn't adequate for genuine Kastelan construction — every piece required conversion and refinement before it was usable. Dozens of tonnes of raw salvage barely yielded a single properly-graded metal plate.
If any other Tech-Priest had witnessed this process, they'd have erupted with such fervor they'd have sprayed sacred oil from the seams.
All three Kastelans opened fire simultaneously. The combined torrent of firepower crashed down in a withering wave — and even the Thousand Sons sorcerer's psychic barriers buckled under the sustained pressure, pinning him in place.
Then Zhou Ye drew his own weapon: the Star of Eden (Replica). A gravity wave descended from directly above.
Bang.
A thousandfold pressure slammed down onto the Thousand Sons sorcerer in an instant. He hit the floor like a fly swatted out of the air.
And in that same moment — a terrifying pulse of psychic energy detonated outward from the sorcerer's form. He broke free from the gravitational hold, spun on his heel, and was gone in the blink of an eye.
"Hm... fast."
Zhou Ye watched the fleeing sorcerer and muttered to himself.
This was his first real exposure to Warp sorcery at close range. He'd intended to study it carefully — building a reference for future encounters. He'd barely gotten a few seconds of observation in before the target bolted completely.
Observed absolutely nothing. A complete academic waste.
He moved immediately, running forward to recall his Kastelans. A few chips inserted, and the machines fell back into standby mode.
"Three Kastelans..."
Inquisitor Chris stared at the three machines standing in a row, something unreadable flickering behind his eyes. Three of these units were enough to form a specialized strike element on their own — and in a straight engagement, his Astartes wouldn't be able to match them.
But this was not the moment to dwell on that.
Chris moved to the center of the chamber, transmitted a vox-cast to those outside, then immediately overloaded and destroyed every psyker battery wired into the Navigator's Court.
Every last one of them had been tainted by Tzeentch.