"I spent... A solid year in the world of Terterium. Playing around using 'safe' powers. Upgrading my friends, relying on technology and supposedly safe wards to strike a blow at the evil of this galaxy." I spoke to the void of the Hall of Bones.
From the very start of my arrival in this universe... It had all been building up to it. I started off as a guardian/mini traveler with a soft Light to illuminate the darkness of this war-torn galaxy.
But a soft light wasn't enough. It was smothered until the God Emperor, the Dark King, breathed a furious burning hate into me when he revived me.
A mind-shattering, thrumming noise rang out as my form. The form that was Gravemind, Brethren Moon, and Traveler's celestial body tore through the Warp and re-entered Real Space.
My form that which I was now calling to myself at least. 'The Warmind' looked similar to the Traveler from Destiny itself. The outer shell of the planet-sized form was covered in Eldar Wraith Bone, which isolated foreign Warp Energy as well as allowed me to channel my own through it.
My closed eyes opened, and then another portal opened as I had come through the Warp and out of it in a specific place for a very good reason. I came out in a certain asteroid field that belonged to the planet that was once called Barbaros.
The home of the Traitor Primarch Mortarion.
"The Warp here... It's all but a direct path to Nurgle's Garden." I whispered as I could feel it.
It felt like the Scarlet Rot of Elden Ring seeping into my soul. A clinging and cloying decay, whispers of stagnation.
I hated it.
It reminded me all too much of the Nurgle cultists of Tertitium. The endless Pox walkers. Zombies of what were once people, but their minds shackled and their bodies piloted by the horrid plague that filled their forms.
The Warmind's silver form, made up of Elder wraith bone burned red with veins of heat and flesh expanding as I tore a new hole into the Warp.
The planet-sized hole in the void left a spatial storm in my haste to enter the warp as already Nurgle himself noticed my direct entry into his realm.
My vision, far escaping the Warmind, was met with vistas of rot, disease, and filth before a slow... Painfully slow chuckle hit my mind like a forest of rotted trees collapsing.
"You are the newborn. The son of the Anathema... Yet you burn not with his golden light, but pure hate and delusion." Nurgle spoke.
I looked upon Nurgle's form as his massive form, far greater in size than my own planetoid size from over the rim of his cosmic cauldron, filled with every disease and form of decay in the galaxy.
And despite the size difference. Despite his words that made me want to rage even further, I snorted as I built up my power.
As we stared off at one another. As his Greater Deamon's fled clearly at his own urging, as the Grandfather DID love his own deamons for sure at some level.
I found her.
I found the Aeldari goddess Isha bound to her rusted and spike-covered cage nestled between the toes of the massive form of Nurgle.
Isha was beautiful. For an eldar goddess. But our races were far too different, and it's not like I would have any mercy for a foreign 'goddess' when the glory of humanity needed to be saved from Chaos!
"What delusion do you speak of then? My hate for all you monsters? No... That is all to clear to me." I spoke as burning silver flames escaped my form and below the Warmind, the fetid swamps and rot crackled before bursting into flames.
Nurgle gave a hearty laugh. A tide of maggots was vomited from his rotten, teeth-filled gullet as he laughed with undulations of a pollution-filled ocean's waves.
"Nooo... Hahaha! No you stupid boy, you ignorant child!" He spat at the world child upon me before he continued.
"Your soul was mangled by your own hand. Then purposfully molded by that Anathema, and even tainted by the Eldar's own hands. Are you even yourself anymore Jake Bariss?"
He leaned in... And whispered. "You have... Such wonderful abilities, you can raise the dead, you can form a godly throne that makes you not our equals but someone who WE, have to pay attention to."
"Then... Why is it, that you never thought to directly save the souls lost to the Warp? Because the Anathema didn't just save your soul alone, you fool."
My form's burning fire sputtered as I felt an ice pick digging into my soul, and it wasn't just Nurgle's corrupting words... There was a horrid truth to his words, his... Decay of my mind that stuck because there was that kernel of truth I couldn't deny.
What did happen to Barghest's and the other guardsmen and Sisters of Battle? Even in that Spiritual blackhole. They couldn't be instantly destroyed due to my own blessings, the god emperor's blessing I pushed towards them.
To say nothing of themselves being above normal humans due to them all being superhumans due to the Super Soldier Serum and other things.
The Emperor had taken their souls as well...
It was all too clear to me now, and that soul-deep awareness of that. That was why I didn't resist the Emperor's machinations of my own soul and mind.
Because even with my hate and fury at this time. Would I have made this... Warmind went so far off the deep end when I left on my own ship with my people?
"Join me, Jake... I can save the souls of your friends and loved ones. I will welcome them to my garden, where they will feel no pain. Suffer no harm, and you will be my son, lord of all my forces upon the mortal worlds." Nurgle whispered like a wheezing cough into my soul.
Trying to tempt me even as his poxes and rotting vines tried to pull the Warmind to the surface of his realm.
Then all the while I had been building up my power. I exploded outwards in a corona of flames. Silver burning flames of fury raked over Nurgle and his garden, with the Chaos God grunting as his form was scalded with the flames that engulfed him.
"Fuck you. You, walking dirty used bag of vomit." I retorted, and as Nurgle's garden burned and he snarled with anger.
He never noticed something. I, who had been burning with hate and fury all to simply and blatantly had used the cold void of melancholy, an emotion that was already close to his own domains, that he didn't notice.
He never noticed as Isha's entire cage fell through a portal and her rusted cage was teleported directly into the Warmind, and from ther,e I just punched a hole out of the Warp.
Causing a massive Warp Storm in the process that could have been sensed by any pysker in the galaxy that was paying attention.
But in splashing the sea of souls so thoroughly, I shot out of the Warp violently like a basketball that was held under water, only to come out of the water and into real space.
This time, however... I had a new guest on my ship.