"Execute her. May her soul return to the Throne."
Leonardo said this while drawing an artificer bolter from his waist, aiming it directly at the Inquisitor's skull.
"No, let me try. I might be able to save her."
Beside him, a calm voice spoke out.
The instant the words fell, Leonardo immediately sensed something was wrong.
The machine spirit of the artificer bolter... seemed to be resisting his control?
The machine spirit was displeased?
At a time like this?
He turned his head and saw Rowan's perfectly calm face.
"The threat is far from resolved. We have merely dealt with the boarding Chaos heretics; the strike cruiser of that Chaos warband is still glaring at us like a starving beast."
Rowan continued, "We need manpower. Right now, any situation that results in a loss of personnel is absolutely unacceptable."
"What can you possibly do?"
Leonardo looked at him, his previous demeanor gone, and asked cautiously, "This psyker has already fallen into a severe psychic backlash. If a decision is not made immediately, she will soon detonate a breach in the Veil large enough to allow a daemonic incursion into realspace."
"It is better to grant her a peaceful, dignified death right now, allowing her to return to the side of our Master."
Having witnessed with his own eyes Rowan's ability to manipulate a machine spirit so effortlessly, Leonardo's attitude had shifted instantly.
With the vast knowledge of a Custodian, he was acutely aware that this was definitively not something a psyker dabbling in witchcraft could easily accomplish.
Otherwise, why would the followers of the Omnissiah upon Mars, the Tech-Priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus, be the faction with the absolute lowest proportion of psykers in the entire Imperium?
"I have a way."
Rowan did not elaborate further, as fully explaining the mechanics would consume far too much time.
He gave a slight nod toward Lucia, and the Canoness immediately and obediently stepped aside to clear his path.
"Get back here..."
Leonardo attempted to reach out and block him.
He had still not entirely let go of his vigilance. In this grim dark universe, one could truly only trust oneself. Who knew if this man was a latent heretic using this opportunity to corrupt a senior Inquisitor?
Right at that moment, an arm clad in bright yellow gauntlets reached out, halting his movement. Leonardo looked up, locking eyes with Lucia.
No, that was not the gaze of the current Canoness.
The exceptionally experienced, battle-hardened Custodian froze in place instantly, completely dumbstruck.
An infinitely vast, boundless will was currently using the Living Saint as a vessel, casting a fleeting glance into the material realm, and perfectly locking eyes with Leonardo.
"..."
At this exact moment, under absolutely no circumstances could Leonardo, as a Custodian of the Emperor, ever interfere with any of Rowan's actions again.
Rowan, meanwhile, used this opportunity to quickly step toward cybia, who was slumped upon the deck.
Having lost the pacifying aura of the Living Saint, the psychic energies within her continued to boil and surge. Frenzied arcs of psychic lightning danced like silver serpents, erecting a lethal perimeter around her that no ordinary mortal could ever hope to cross.
Naturally, this was completely useless against Rowan.
It had been less than an hour since he was abducted into this universe by the Golden One. Having experienced disrupting a warp jump, detonating a Chaos Sorcerer, and assisting Lucia in her divine ascension, Rowan had recognized a fundamental truth.
That truth was that, in terms of affecting the immaterium, his nature as an architect of reality actually granted him a massive advantage.
As was universally understood among his kind, what reality architects altered was the very objective existence of reality itself—the ontological density.
And for certain dimensional spaces, the more ordered, comprehensible, objective, and stable they were... the higher their ontological density. Conversely, the more chaotic they were, the weaker the density.
And as the Sea of Souls, the boundless ocean of all emotion and spirit, the twisted reflection of the material realm... the overall ontological density of the warp was fundamentally lower than that of realspace.
Significantly, significantly lower.
"Aaaaarghhhhh!"
As if sensing someone approaching, Cybia shrieked in agony. The already frenzied arcs of psychic lightning became even more violent, actively lashing out toward Rowan's approaching form.
However, every single bolt of psychic lightning, which could have easily slaughtered an Astartes, simply dissolved into absolute nothingness the moment it entered Rowan's proximity.
Stepping directly in front of Cybia, Rowan reached out and engaged his authority over the materium.
Following the exact same procedure as before, he flawlessly extracted a portion of his own ontological field—which he had slightly bolstered by slaughtering the Chaos warband—and grafted it directly onto Cybia.
Then, with a casual flex of his will, he interfered with her consciousness, forcing her chaotic thoughts into total clarity, allowing her to securely channel and control the wildly unstable, raging psychic storm.
Ten minutes later.
"I am... still alive?"
A deathly pale Cybia barely managed to pull her mind back to reality.
An incredibly long time had passed since she had last utilized her full psychic might in combat, causing her to catastrophically miscalculate her own threshold.
The moment she sensed the psychic backlash taking hold, Cybia had already formulated her dying words. Yet, completely against her expectations, her soul had not returned to the Throne?
She tentatively engaged a fraction of her psychic power.
It was terrifyingly stable. Even the phantom whispers of the immaterium that constantly haunted her ears had vanished completely.
If her previous control over the warp had been akin to a child swinging a massive warhammer—destined to cripple herself at the slightest misstep—then now...
Cybia felt that even without channeling refined sorcery, her raw psychic output was enough to tear apart a heavy tank, and there was absolutely zero risk of backlash!
"How do you feel?"
Rowan asked.
Hearing this, Cybia looked up at the three figures standing before her.
Looking like a scene ripped directly from a religious fresco, the Living Saint hovered in mid-air with her pure white wings fully spread. Her face was a portrait of divine mercy and absolute purity, saturating the immediate vicinity with an aura of overwhelming sanctity.
Meanwhile, the stern-faced black-robed Custodian stood tall like an unbreakable monolith. His gaze was burning, his right hand resting upon the hilt of his sword, exuding an indescribable, martial majesty.
Yet these two figures, who seemed to have walked straight out of an epic mythos, were standing together right behind that mysteriously manifested youth, silently acting as his retainers.
As an Inquisitor sworn to suspect everything, Cybia should have immediately questioned the current situation. After all, the Imperium currently possessed no leader of high enough status to warrant these two holy figures acting as mere bodyguards.
Even a High Lord of Terra did not possess nearly enough authority to command the direct fealty of both a Living Saint and a Custodian.
However, such a thought never even crossed Cybia's mind.
She straightened her posture, faced Rowan, and delivered a textbook sign of the Aquila.
"Inquisitor Cybia Barrios of the Ordo Malleus, ready to serve the hope of the Imperium and all mankind. Should it be your will, my intellect and my power shall become but a paving stone upon your radiant path."