Sorcerer Swapping

The Invasion of Lenza III

East 109th floor, Garthur Hab-Tower. Hive Prime. Hive-World Lenza III.

Planet's status: Invaded by elements of the Black Legion Traitor Space Marines, supplemented by Cult activity.

Special note; Ordo Hereticus Inquisitor and five-man team dispatched to neutralize Cult activity.

Special attache appointed to her team: Ezra Coran, Adeptus Astra Telepathica Primaris Psyker. AAT Assignment score: Alpha (sanctioned)

The stench of old blood and rotting flesh assailed my nostrils. That didn't worry me. This level was cleared of both enemies and civilians long ago. Though the said enemies neglected to clean up the bodies of the civilians they killed on their way out. It was disgusting, it was horrific, it was brutality on a level no sane human being is capable of doing without a weight on their conscience

It was nothing new.

What did worry me was that I didn't care how many people, loyal Imperial citizens all, were slaughtered by the damned traitors. I didn't care what pain and horror those poor people had suffered. I didn't even bat an eye at any of the headless corpses, the torsos ripped opened, the guts putrefying on the floor of the hallway.

And that scared me.

Have I really become so jaded that I stopped fighting for the people of the Imperium and was now just fought and killed to defeat their enemies?, I asked myself. Was I any better than the monsters I fought now if that was the case?

My handler, the irritating woman that was the Inquisitor I had the misfortune to be assigned to serve, snapped me out of my self-condemning reverie.

"Ezra!", she called, "Focus. I know you Brains are absolutely eaten up with the desire to space out and leave reality behind, but right now we have a war to win."

"Always ready with an inspiring and emphatic phrase to bolster your allies, aren't you my lady?", I quipped back, irritated at the derogatory use of the word 'Brain', "I am just sensing the area for hidden threats, as you instructed me to do."

The Inquisitor frowned. "When in the Emperor's name did I give you that order?", she asked.

"When we entered the tower. Your exact words were, 'Keep your inner eye open, Freak.", I answered, adding, "To answer your next question, no, there are none but us on this floor or either of the floors above or below us."

"I wasn't going to ask you that, Brain.", she growled.

I smiled thinly. "I know. But you should have."

After a brief moment where she postured to make me think she was moments away from using that Inferno Pistol on me in irritation, which didn't fool me in the slightest, she huffed. "Let's just get our mission over with. Find the cult leader and purge him and his lieutenants before this invasion gets any worse."

Just my luck, I grumbled internally. I get saddled with the most Psyker-intolerant Inquisitor in the galaxy for a commander in this damned campaign. As if I don't feel disconnected enough from humanity, I have to have some Purist bitch calling me every slur that can be dredged up from here to Holy Terra itself. Brain, Freak, Mindjob, Weirdeye... and those were the tame ones.

I stepped over a decapitated corpse, an old man by the looks of it. Neck cauterized closed as if by fire, but no burns or scorched flesh.

Bloodletter work. Their Hellblades burn with the fires of the heretical Blood God's Daemonforges.

"Confirmed, my lady. This was the work of Daemons. The presence of the Warp here is getting thicker.", I reported.

"Any estimation as to when it will be strong enough to bring a full-blown daemonic incursion here?", she asked.

"Maybe later today, maybe in two days. The Immaterium is a fickle thing. And with the Imperial Guard tying up the Cultists in street-to-street underhive fighting, they aren't sparing as many as they could to perform their profane rituals." , I replied.

She scowled, "Remind me to include in my report that you know a little too much about summoning daemons to be considered safe."

"Remind me to include in my report that you know too little about summoning daemons to be a member of the Ordo Hereticus!", I snapped back, nearing the absolute end of my patience with the woman.

She rounded on me, fury starting to smolder in her eyes. "I swear upon the Saints, Coran. You bark at me one more time, and-"

I cut her off. "You'll do what? Call me something even more intolerant? You get what you deal, my lady.", I seethed, my voice dripping venom, "Perhaps I should match you tit-for-tat? Every time you call me a Brain, I'll call you a bitch. For every mention of the word Freak, I'll snipe a quick 'moron' at you. Would that be fair?"

For a moment, while the Inquisitor rocked backwards on her heels, I considered what could possibly be motivating my sudden anger. I searched my thoughts for any trace of outside, insidious influence...

No, no manipulation. My mental defenses were intact. Chaos may have tainted the air in it's wake, but I myself was protected by my powers and training.

I was just righteously pissed at that woman.

Before she could formulate a rebuttal, another member of our retinue, a hulking mercenary by the name of Jarn, interjected. "Err, pardon me for intruding on yer lover's quarrel, lad and lass, but dinnae we have a traitor teh pummel? Save yer anger for when we be back aboard our ship, that way I can sell tickets!"

Leave it to the ex-guardsman with an accent to diffuse the situation... by giving us both a common enemy.

"SHUT UP!", I and the Inquisitor yelled at him simultaneously. He took two steps back, not wanting to be either shot by her or turned into a gibbering lunatic by me.

After a second, I sighed in defeat. "Annoying or not, Jarn has a point, my lady. This bickering will kill us before it kills the cultists. We should head for the stairs. We don't want to use the elevators in a war zone. The Cult Leader is a couple dozen floors above us... I can sense his taint from here."

She nodded slowly, swallowing her pride. "Right... To the stairs, men.", she commanded

And so, in a welcome silence, we continued down the bloodstained halls, the after-echoes of pain, anger and death clawing at my mind...

The ghosts of the slain innocents crying out for justice.

Untapped Knowledge

Star Swirl the Bearded wing, Canterlot Royal Archives, Canterlot, Equestria.

"I cannot believe how excited I am!", squealed the newest Alicorn Princess, Twilight Sparkle, as she pranced around the aged bookshelves. Her eyes were wide as she darted from shelf to shelf, 'ooh'-ing and 'ahh'-ing at all the new, old books she now had access to.

Her assistant, a baby dragon named Spike, was racing to keep up with her, "Twilight, calm down! It's just another library! Yeesh..."

Twilight froze mid-prance and turned to face Spike, her face the picture of incredulity. She advanced on him, sending the little dragon backpedaling to avoid being knocked over by the incoming lavender Alicorn.

"Just another library!?!", she said, the disbelief evident in her voice. "This is the Star Swirl the Bearded wing! Only the rarest and most insightful books on magic and science are kept here!"

"We've been here before, Twi.", Spike sighed as he rolled his eyes, a wry smile starting to curl his lips, "Remember? When you thought the world was ending that Tuesday?"

Twilight blushed, "That was... that wasn't the same. I snuck in here to try and get a spell that would let me...", she shook her head, "But that's not important now! What's different from then and now is that I'm now here with permission!", she felt like squealing again, "And I can check out as many books as I want!"

Now she did squeal again.

Spike rolled his eyes again. "Twilight... You're here with your own permission. You're a princess now, and you can basically go where you want."

"I know!", she squealed for the third time. Then she stopped and put a hoof to her throat. All that squealing was starting to hurt.

Spike rolled his eyes again, and the cupped them and groaned as they protested the repetitive motion.

After a second, they looked at each other, realizing what each of them was doing, and then they laughed.

"Okay, okay.", said the purple unicorn, still giggling a little, "Spike, you don't have to be here. I can gush over some library books well enough on my own. You go ahead and head to the kitchens to get you something to eat. I hear A La Mode is making a gem pie, since he was warned of your arrival.", she said with a warm smile.

Spike licked his lips, "Mmm... A La Mode's gem pie... Alright, you talked me into it!" He headed for the door, waving back at her. "Later, Your Highness.

Twilight smiled and sighed. She may never get used to being called that, but at least it was funny when Spike said it.

She stared around, marveling at where she was. Nopony but Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, and the wisest and most talented scholars in Equestria (...and Pinkie Pie, Spike and a few Royal Guardponies, but that's beside the point) had ever set hoof in here. Books on every intellectual topic from the stars to the oceans to the deepest magic and even the secrets of the mind surrounded her... Untapped knowledge. Waiting for her to discover it.

She squealed again and practically danced on her hooves. Then she stopped, a pained expression on her face, and put a hoof on her throat.

Right, she thought, less squealing more reading.

She grabbed a book entitled, "The Cosmos and Beyond", by World Walker, sat down in a comfy chair by a window, and leaned back to begin her longest study session yet.

East 112th floor, Garthur Hab-Tower. Hive Prime. Hive-World Lenza III.

The stairs were deserted. Only a few dead bodies were there to greet us as we ascended toward the 144th floor, where I sensed a gathering of malign energies taking place... the heretics were performing yet another of their profane rituals.

The sensation of utter wrongness scratched at my mind, a telltale sign of the touch of Chaos .

"Inquisitor.", I called up to the woman, "The heretics are practicing their foul rituals again! I feel the Warp convulsing above us."

"Wonderful.", she hissed, then barked orders at her retinue, "Move faster! Eyes peeled for enemies. Ready weapons."

Lasrifles were slapped with fresh charge packs, and I mentally gathered my wits and began quietly intoning a prayer to the Emperor. The prayer was specifically writ to shield his mind from the taint of Chaos, and bolster my will as I prepared to go into battle, a mental exercise he'd recited day in and day out for over a century.

As an additional precaution, I pulled my plasma pistol, a gift from a Tech-Magos I once saved, out of it's holster under my robes. It was a masterwork of Adeptus Mechanicus craftsmanship, the ceremite grey of it's frame decorated with fine gold carvings of the Double-Headed Aquila of the Imperium, the Cog-and-Skull symbol Mechanicus, and even the All-Seeing Eye of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica. Micro-engraved into these symbols and the frame were an infinitely-repeated pair of prayers. The first was a Mechanicus mantra dedicated to keeping the Machine-Spirit of the weapon appeased, in an attempt to prevent threatening overheats and spectacularly deadly overloads. The second was an Imperial prayer to the Emperor and the Machine-God, asking them to bless every shot that left the chamber of the weapon to be true and deadly to the enemies of Man.

The Tech-Magos had had it crafted for me after I saved his life from Tyranids, in the hope that one day the gun would return the favor for me.

I had never used it outside of a firing range. The need never arose. My powers had always been enough to crush any threat I came across before it could get close enough to warrant the gun's use.

Still, I had cared for it, maintained it, polished it, and it was always charged and ready when I went into hostile territory.

It never hurts to have a contingency plan.

As all weapons were checked and readied for the bloody battle to come, each team member nodded at the Inquisitor. I was the last to do so, prolonging my checks of my powers and weapon as long as I could.

Just as the Inquisitor was about to snipe at me, I gripped my staff tightly, my will flowing into it like water into a bottle, and nodded.

And so our climb continued.

Star Swirl the Bearded wing, Canterlot Royal Archives, Canterlot, Equestria.

Twilight sipped at her tea cup distractedly, the cup floating in her magical grip up to her lips and back down to her plate mechanically. World Walker's book seemed to be about the theory that many universes beyond her own might exist. She was so deeply invested in reading that she didn't even realize she had drained her tea dry until her lips met air when she went to take a sip. She frowned, but continued reading

...and so, with all of this in mind, I have come to the conclusion that there might in fact be an *infinite** number of worlds beyond our own. These worlds may be similar but for one little difference in history or a single different way a physical law acts, while other worlds may be so utterly different from our own in every aspect from the inhabitants to the very laws of reality that we take for granted. In some of these worlds, two plus two could equal three or five, rather than four. For that world's people, it would make perfect sense. For us, it would be incomprehensible, as our minds operate on the assumption that it two plus two is four. We would not, could not, understand a being from a universe where such cosmic differences exist between our world and its.*

"Hey, Twilight?", said Spike, snapping Twilight out of her focus.

"Huh?", she said, looking at the baby dragon. He had this worried look on his face that brought a bit of worry to her own mind. "Spike, is something wrong?"

He rubbed his head next to his spines a little before answering. "No... It just feels odd, being in here.", he said, "Different. Kinda... kinda cold. I feel like we're being watched or something."

Twilight giggled. "Come on, Spike.", she began, "It's cold in here because it's the tail-end of November. As for being watched; Who'd want to watch me read while you nap? They'd be bored out of their skull."

Spike nervously chuckled. "Heh... Yeah, I guess... Nevermind, Twi.", he said.

Twilight smiled at her assistant, the closest thing she had to a baby brother, and turned back to her book.

Yet... unbeknownst to them, in accordance with Spikes earlier sense of dread...

Something was watching them...

Hateful crimson eyes boring into the baby dragon's skull.