As the transport craft returned to the hangar, the massive Void Sword re-entered realspace once more.
Ersen stood within the cavernous hangar bay, watching squads of Luminous Destroyers march out of the transports. They lowered their chassis, and the heavy armor plating across their midsections slowly slid open, revealing the Grey Knights sequestered within.
Ersen had not been notified to participate in the previous trials. When he questioned the Sapient Machine Automaton that had been guiding him, Axion himself personally answered.
"According to psychic scans, your warp signature possesses distinct variations compared to theirs," Axion explained. "Per the experimental protocols, you are a localized anomaly, whereas they serve as standardized test templates. There are other, far more critical experiments that require your direct participation."
Having received an explicit answer, Ersen did not dwell on the matter. Discussing any topic with an Iron Man always yielded entirely absolute, logical conclusions.
As soon as the Grey Knights returned, the next sequence of tests was immediately brought online. Axion needed to ascertain whether the output would remain stable when subjects with stark psychic variances were integrated together.
Before long, Ersen and three Grey Knights were organized into a cohort and led to an even larger, cavernous chamber. There, they stood before the awe-inspiring silhouette of a Luminous Punisher, a machine that exuded a majesty far surpassing even an Emperor-class Titan.
Even in its dormant state, the pure psychic energy surging within its colossal frame was potent enough to strike the mind with an endless torrent of awe and reverence. It loomed like a celestial deity draped in a pale-blue radiance. Even the Grey Knights, who routinely maintained expressions of cold stoicism and emotional detachment before outsiders, stood with their mouths agape, utterly at a loss for words.
Spurred by a prompt from an attending machine-servitor, Ersen was the first to snap back to reality. He let out a low breath of astonishment.
"The Emperor above... Were it not for the Master of Mankind's divine providence, I would never have witnessed such a breathtaking sight in this lifetime."
Perhaps this invocation of the Emperor struck a chord with his companions. Beside him, one of the Grey Knights rumbled in response, "Glory to the Emperor. This miracle is His bounty! We need only execute our duties and bring His vengeance upon His foes, and we shall not fail His divine will."
Compared to the overwhelming awe inspired by the sheer size of a Titan-class vessel, this Punisher-class Titan, enshrouded in terrifying psychic energy, left a far deeper mark upon their souls.
Two Eight-Legs descended slowly, carrying a massive apparatus several times larger than the internal compartment of a Destroyer automaton. The device resembled a four-lobed garlic bulb; each of its four faces housed a separate pod. The specialized hatch covers shimmered with an unnatural light, and a sequence of varying psychic crystals was embedded across the top.
The pods hissed open before the four warriors, swirling with an esoteric current of energy.
"The test is about to commence. Personnel, step into the loading pods," a cold, synthesized prompt chimed from within the chamber. "The neural projection array will synchronize your combat consciousness. You will perceive the enemy with absolute clarity. Maintain the absolute steel of your conviction in the engagements to come."
Following the illuminated markers, Ersen and the three Grey Knights stepped into their respective chambers. Secure restraints smoothly clamped down, locking their bodies into place.
With a soft chime, all four discovered they had been granted a seamless, three-hundred-and-sixty-degree panoramic field of vision. This holistic view of their surroundings was projected directly into their consciousness. Even the post-human cognitive capacity of an Astartes required several seconds to adapt to the sensation. For them, it was an entirely unprecedented cognitive experience.
The Eight-Legs hoisted the integrated pods, scaling a height of over a hundred meters before reaching the dorsal section of the Luminous Punisher. Massive mechanical components slid back, exposing a specialized docking interface that swallowed the pod assembly whole.
Through their synchronized vision, they watched countless interlocking mechanical structures seamlessly knit back together like living tissue, sealing the insertion point. A swarm of blinking blue data-lights on the pods enveloped them, and the crushing psychic pressure of the environment seemed to recede into nothingness.
Then, with a momentary blur and flicker across their vision, the perspective shifted entirely.
The imagery in their minds was no longer the confined interior of the pod structure, but the direct visual feed of the luminous, gargantuan war machine itself. The omnidirectional feed was impossibly sharp, clear enough to trace the microscopic dust motes drifting through the air.
The massive mechanical colossus shimmered with a faint luminescence before vanishing from the interior of the Void Sword. Utilizing warp-targeted teleportation technology, the luminous psyker-construct was hurled directly into the void of space.
"Teleportation sequence complete."
As the prompt echoed, the visual feed in their minds shifted to present a catastrophic scene entirely alien to their physical surroundings. This was a composite simulation generated by Axion, compiled from the data of countless Imperial worlds that had fallen victim to daemonic incursions and Chaos renegades.
Resorting to this simulated method was a matter of sheer necessity; the supply of spirit stones had been entirely depleted. Axion had initially hoped that Slaaneshi daemons would assault them with powerful entities as they had before, and had even conducted targeted baiting operations within the Immaterium to that end.
However, Axion remained unaware that the cohorts of Slaanesh had grown deeply suspicious of these blatant honey-pot operations. While the manifestation of an Aeldari soul in the Warp was not unusual, a succession of these souls appearing at perfectly identical, synchronized intervals was a glaring anomaly that even Neverborn could recognize.
Within the cohort's vision, a sprawling Hive World lay in a state of catastrophic collapse. Colossal Daemon Engines roared as waves of Warp-born horrors crashed into the hive cities. Chaos Space Marines butchered Imperial citizens alongside slavering daemons, their mocking laughter echoing through the vox.
The sacred Aquila and holy icons of the Emperor were cast down and defiled. Churches of the Adeptus Ministorum burned and crumbled under the unholy fires of Chaos.
The sight instantly ignited a fuse within the four warriors. A profound, righteous fury toward the enemies of mankind surged into their psychic output, which was promptly siphoned by the machine. Not for a single second did they doubt the absolute reality of the slaughter before them.
Axion, for his part, was completely detached from the fact that even the most unorthodox Magos of the Adeptus Mechanicus would never dare simulate such blasphemy. Any machine spirit that even brushed against the conceptual simulation of a daemon would inevitably invite immediate, systemic corruption.
Yet Axion remained utterly unyielding. His ancient subroutines operated with absolute, cold precision. A quantum architecture immune to the corrupting touch of the Chaos Gods themselves cared nothing for the conceptual taint of lesser daemons. Free of morality, devoid of desire, his absolute rationality acted as a flawless firewall against the corrupting rot of the Warp.
The psychic energies of the Grey Knights and the Word Bearer were funneled into the Luminous Punisher's psychic mixing chamber, blending into a singular current. Arcane, primordial psychic runes flared with an otherworldly brilliance.
Compared to the previous trials utilizing the Destroyer automatons, the energy capacity of the Punisher-class Titan was monumentally vast; the raw output of four individuals was nowhere near enough to disrupt the pristine psychic flow of the other automated modules. This time, the secondary arrays functioned perfectly, presenting zero anomalous variables.
As the gathered energy cascaded into the Luminous Punisher's primary Dark Banishment weapon system, a devastating torrent of pale-blue energy, laced with arcs of gold and crimson, erupted from the massive barrel.
The beam cut through realspace in a microsecond, slamming directly into a nearby asteroid. A violent cataclysm of energy erupted across the rocky mass. The asteroid was instantly wreathed in blinding bolts of blue warp-lightning that bored deep into its core. Incandescent golden fractures split the stone before it violently detonated, disintegrating into a cloud of fine cosmic dust.
The display was terrifyingly spectacular.
The Luminous Punisher executed twenty-five consecutive firing cycles, and the performance parameters remained completely stable. Every single strike yielded an identical, devastating kinetic and conceptual payload.
Following this, Axion ran a test where Ersen was disconnected from the matrix. Immediately, the explosive, incendiary properties vanished from the weapon's discharge. When all personnel were removed entirely, leaving the machine in an unmanned state, the pure psychic output reverted to its baseline, erratic randomness.
Without a conscious anchor, every shot varied wildly, manifesting unpredictably as psychic firestorms, localized warp-lightning, or even absolute-zero temporal freezing fields and spatial distortions that tore the targets into jagged fragments.
By the conclusion of the testing cycle, after cycling through every permutation of the personnel, Axion had mapped out over a dozen distinct combinations that imbued the weapon's attacks with specialized, composite attributes.
The conclusion of these trials signaled that this weapon system, highly lethal against daemonic entities yet completely devoid of the hazardous conceptual volatility inherent to ectoplasmic dissociation weapons, was fully combat-ready. It required none of the extreme operational constraints of its predecessors.
Axion immediately began making calculations for an audacious, sprawling campaign. Across his processing arrays, the priority parameters for several production and logistics threads were forcefully upgraded.
Khorne had repeatedly disrupted the Iron Men's operational timetables. That particular tactical obstruction now required systematic elimination.