After collapsing, Andrallo had no idea how long he’d slept.
When he woke, every wound on his body had healed, and color was slowly returning to his pale flesh.
Standing in front of the mirror again, Andrallo took in the sight of his warped, monstrous body once more.
“Damn it, wasn’t I just playing Stellaris?
How did I turn into a monster?
Did I actually end up inside the Stellaris universe?”
Andrallo looked himself over, turning this way and that, flexing his body.
He could tell immediately that his flesh was nothing like it used to be.
The massive frame, the fluid speed, the raw power, the abnormally sharp senses, all of it told him plainly: this body was nothing an ordinary human could possess.
The moment it occurred to him he might genuinely be in the Stellaris universe, Andrallo’s mood shot up.
He remembered he’d used a mod to build one of his go-to species templates before this, one specialized around genetics and psionics.
“If that’s really the case…”
Andrallo shut his eyes and focused his mind.
Almost immediately, violet energy poured out of him, flooding the whole room.
Under his direction, the blasphemous specimens made from human bone and blood were destroyed by that psionic power, leaving nothing behind but ash scattered across the floor.
Sensing the psionic resonance still coming off the ash, Andrallo went wide-eyed.
“Wait, is this Zro?
Were all these poor people psykers?”
All the bone-ash from these psykers combined wouldn’t have filled more than a small vial, but the energy packed into it was staggering.
Andrallo carefully gathered up the precious substance with his power and left the room.
He’d sensed something off about his surroundings from the moment he’d woken.
The psionic disturbance here was far too intense, and it carried the same signature as the Daemonette from before, saturating the air around him.
When Andrallo stepped out and followed the corridor into a wide open space, what he found confirmed his suspicion.
Bloodshed, debauchery, and every nauseating vice imaginable filled the hall.
Humans, surgically altered wretches, monsters, and creatures that looked disturbingly like xenos were all crowded into it.
Countless humans were being toyed with as playthings, no one spared, men, women, the elderly, even infants.
Countless armored giants who looked like Andrallo grinned as they tortured their victims, flaying and dismembering living people at a speed he couldn’t even follow, turning the flesh and blood of their victims into art and into food.
The tormented never died, not even at the final moment.
Their screams never stopped, washing over Andrallo’s nerves in an endless wave.
A fire lit inside him.
Andrallo wanted desperately to wipe out every one of these blasphemous lunatics, but in the end he forced the rage back down.
He knew nothing about his surroundings.
He’d already blacked out just from fighting one daemon; charging in now would only get him killed for nothing.
As Andrallo was working out how to gather intelligence, a monster even larger than himself came walking over, dragging two humans along by the arm.
This one’s armor was similar to Andrallo’s own, but gaudier, and several tendrils extended from its mouth as it spoke in a sickly-sweet voice.
“Yo!
Andrallo, you’re finally up.
It’s been so long I figured you’d knocked yourself out on something.
Look, I brought you the paint you wanted!”
“Paint?
What paint?” Andrallo shot back, disgust creeping into his voice.
“Oh?
Ha ha ha!
Don’t tell me you actually fried your brain that badly.
Forgot your own art already?
The paint’s these two humans, obviously!”
Andrallo looked at the two young women.
Their faces were remarkably alike, one dark-haired, one pale-haired, both drained of color and stamped with fear.
The violet-armored warrior trailed a mutated finger gently across their cheeks, making both girls tremble uncontrollably.
“I just took these two off some Hive City nobles.
Excellent psychic potential, wasted on me since I can’t use it, so I figured I’d give them to you.
We’re even after this.”
Andrallo ignored the creature’s rambling and studied the two women in front of him.
Young, healthy, and full of vitality, clearly better fed and better cared for than the other human captives he’d seen.
People who’d lived comfortable lives, most likely, and probably good sources of information.
Andrallo took the chains without further comment, brushed the creature off with a few offhand words, and led the two of them back to his quarters.
The two girls sobbed quietly the whole way down the corridor.
Having seen what waited out there, they were certain the same fate was coming for them.
They’d already braced themselves to die in the Emperor’s name, but when Andrallo opened the door, the sight in front of them left them stunned.
A clean, orderly room.
No art made of blood, bone, or viscera, just a bed, a table, chairs, ordinary furniture, and the faint smell of ozone hanging in the air.
“Don’t just stand there in the doorway.
Get in.
I need to ask you two something.”
Once the two girls had sat down, still not quite believing any of it, Andrallo dropped onto the floor beside them, the clang of his armor against the deck making it clear this wasn’t some hallucination.
“Tell me your names.
Otherwise I’ve got no idea what to call you.”
The pale-haired girl: “Maen Westminster.
I’m the elder sister.
This is my twin.”
The dark-haired girl: “Charlotte Westminster.”
The two of them answered in near-whispers, terrified of provoking him.
Andrallo looked between them, hesitated for a moment, then asked a question neither expected:
“Who am I?”
After a long stretch of questions and explanations, Andrallo finally had some grasp of this world, or rather, of the state of this galaxy.
Humanity had once colonized across the galaxy, thriving beyond measure, until the Men of Iron uprising, also called the Cybernetic Revolt, gutted them.
Later, Warp storms cut off contact between worlds entirely, and civilization slid backward from there.
Ten thousand years ago, a figure known as the Emperor rose from Terra, which was Earth, and led humanity to unification, founding the Imperium of Man.
The Emperor then created the Primarchs and the Space Marines and launched the Great Crusade to reclaim lost worlds, only for the effort to collapse when the Primarch Horus turned traitor.
Ten thousand years passed after that, and the Imperium slid gradually into decline, until not long ago, traitors tore open the Eye of Terror and split it wide into the Great Rift, cleaving the entire galaxy in two.
“So we’re currently on the dark side of the galaxy, and your homeworld got hit by them not long ago, which is how you two ended up dragged onto this ship?”
Maen and Charlotte exchanged a glance, both silently thinking the same thing: aren’t you one of them too?
But neither of them dared say it aloud.
They just kept nodding.
“So what exactly am I, then?
I’m smaller than the things out there, sure, but I’m a lot bigger than either of you.
I’m guessing I’m not exactly a normal human.”
The two girls dropped their heads.
They didn’t dare answer.
They had no idea what game Andrallo was playing, and if they made him angry, they really would end up as “paint.”
“Quit hesitating.
If you two actually want off this godforsaken ship, answer my questions straight, or there’s no way I can get you out of here.” Andrallo said it with a note of impatience, seeing them stay silent.
Maen stared at him, stunned, like she’d just seen a ghost.
“You…
you actually mean that?”
Andrallo: “Why would I bother lying to you two?”
The sisters glanced at each other, exchanging a brief, silent conversation with their eyes.
Neither believed Andrallo was actually that kind-hearted.
Looking at him now, half man, half nightmare, it was obviously the result of long-term drug abuse.
But they didn’t dare refuse either.
They had no room to say no.
In the end, Maen, as the elder sister, steeled herself and stepped in front of Charlotte, shielding her.
“Then, Lord Andrallo, I’ll answer honestly.
But what I’m about to say, you might not be able to accept.”
Andrallo: “Doesn’t matter to me.
There’s nothing I can’t handle.”
Maen: “You’re a Space Marine of a Chaos warband.
A traitor to the Imperium.
A target the entire Imperium wants hunted down and exterminated.”
Andrallo: “…”
His head throbbed.
Andrallo had never felt a headache like this in his life.
He’d been dropped into this world as a monster, gotten the hell beaten out of him, and now, on top of it all, found out he was a wanted man.
So this is Warhammer, Andrallo thought.
Everyone online called it a shithole of a setting.
He was starting to understand why.
“Goddamn it!
I’ve been a law-abiding citizen my whole life, why do I have to go through this!”
The sisters had no idea what Andrallo was muttering to himself about.
All they could tell was that this Chaos Space Marine had lost his mind.
Charlotte reached out to Maen through her psychic power, careful to keep it quiet: “Sister, what is he even babbling about?
Has he lost his mind?”
Maen: “Some Chaos Space Marines inject themselves with unauthorized drugs.
He’s probably hallucinating from overdosing, and thinks he’s still some soldier loyal to the Imperium.
But that’s actually good news for us.
We can use him to survive!”
Compared to Charlotte’s confusion, Maen kept a cooler head.
Whether or not Andrallo had lost his mind didn’t matter, as long as it kept the two of them alive.
Nothing else mattered right now.
Andrallo pressed a hand to his forehead and thought it over for a long moment before finally letting it go.
Complaining wouldn’t get him anywhere now.
Better to focus on getting off this ship first.
Right then, both Maen’s and Charlotte’s stomachs growled.
Andrallo glanced at them and held out two ration bars.
“Well, we’re already here.
Eat first.
This is all I’ve got, no taste to speak of, but it’ll fill you up.”
The sisters hesitated for a moment, but hunger won out in the end, and they tore into the bars.
Andrallo handed them each a cup of water and asked, almost as an afterthought, “So what even is this stuff?
Doesn’t taste like anything at all.”
Maen: “This?
This is corpse starch.
Cheap Imperium rations.”
“Ptooey!
Corpse?!
This thing’s made out of corpses?” Andrallo spat the paste out of his mouth on the spot, clutching at his throat in horror.
“What do you mean, how could it not be?” Maen said.
“Corpses are a high-quality source of protein.
It’s normally handled by the Corpse Guild.
These ration bars are just a byproduct of the industrial process.”
Charlotte couldn’t help giggling at the sight of Andrallo’s mortified expression, but the second she caught his glare, she clamped her mouth shut in fear.
Andrallo paid no attention to Charlotte’s laughter.
He was still reeling from what Maen had just told him.
The Corpse Guild?
Corpses as a high-quality protein source?
Wasn’t the Imperium of Man supposed to be an interstellar civilization?
How the hell had it gotten to the point where corpses counted as a prime resource?
Andrallo couldn’t wrap his head around it no matter how he turned it over.
Maen and Charlotte walked Andrallo through a long stretch of history.
Once they’d finished their corpse starch, exhaustion caught up with them.
Andrallo told them to get some sleep in the bed, and sat down alone by the door.
Andrallo stayed awake.
This one day had hit him with more than the past few decades of his life combined, and he was starting to understand just how enormous a world he’d landed in.
But the galaxy still had far worse shocks in store for him.