Editing Toyhammer (section)

=Chapter 7=

Thought for the Day; "Frak this, for my faith is a shield proof against your blandishments"" -Alem Mahat, The Book of Cain, Chapter IV, Verse XXI

Inside the white void that was my newly-discovered, un-landscaped dreamworld, I sighed.

My heart was almost audible as it thumped away in my chest. I gulped down my nervousness, and looked at the Eldar before me. Standing tall with her blue eyes shining, Zara was as haughty as ever, and even Yoza was giving me a smile that showed that he was really enjoying my confusion. I let out my breath through clenched teeth.

"What's the lesson?" I repeated, looking up at the tall, lithe figures.

Their grave voices were all I needed to reassure me that they were now being serious.

"Do not worry, mon-keigh. We know we must take this seriously."

"Many lessons, you have yet to learn. A simple one, we start with. Explore this place, you must."

The black-robed Eldar positively grinned at me as his partner smile haughtily. He then gave a small bow, and stepped back into the white mist to disappear from my mind's eyes. Zara did the same, but with more flourish as her featherlight garments wrapped close around her shapely body, and then unraveled to show thin air.

Now I was alone, in my own soul... this was certainly going to be interesting. I stepped forward, and tried to feel my way around the obscenely bright space around me.

"You have got to be kidding me..." I sighed as I ran a hand over the ground. It had little in the way of texture, and was hard to describe. It was almost like a carpet of some kind. A piece of my mind told me that to fight effectively, you needed to know where you were, so this kind of made sense to me... but how the hell were you supposed to 'explore' a bright, empty room!

Explore. First lesson my ethereal ass. Yoza was just playing fetch with me.

Turning around, I began to walk in a random direction. I began to try and talk to myself, as crazy as that was.

This place was my soul, isn't it?

Then... why was it so blank?

"Could it be because you have nothing in your head in the first place?" Zara's mocking tone chirped over the empty void. She was there, a good distance away; at least two hundred yards, if I was guessing distances right. Ducking my head down, I began a fast jog to join her. Zara was still standing there, practically laughing at me as she danced about on the spot, and again disappeared like fading smoke. She was clearly enjoying this too much for my own good. Soon enough, she was standing atop a platform, like a catwalk, and beckoning at me. Like a living statue of a goddess, she smiled as her slim hips idly shifted from side to side.

Dammit. She was playing with me. I focused in on her, and began to take a step forward, running at her again. As I came within a half dozen yards of her, however, she quickly stepped back into the fabric of her clothes, giggling as she left me alone again. I began to sprint in a random direction, sure that she was following me. My eyes were dazed by the brilliant light of the surrounding halways, and I wasn't able to see anything.

So when I hit the front door of the massive whitewashed house, it quite literally came from nowhere. I slammed into the surface, which was as smooth as polished glass up until my face smashed into it. Now it had bits of me all over it. I peeled myself off, and stumbled to my knees. Before me was a giant house – a mansion – and it was stupendously simple in design. A white marble brick with windows and doors, if I didn't know any better.

Finding the door, I gave it a hard push, throwing the heavy white panels inwards.

I looked around the atrium of the large house – more a mansion – and , which was decorated in a rather plain manner; simple white pillars supported a blank sky of equally white plaster, and the walls were obviously made of the same kind of material. The place seemed like a house that was under construction, rather than one you'd live in. When you focused in on the edges of the surfaces, they seemed scratchy and unrefined, looking like they had been drawn by etch-a-sketch.

However, there were a few splashes of color in the next room, a square space with a gallery-like feel to it. The walls and the lines that defined them were even less refined now. Not even etch-a-sketch was this

Arranged around this room were pictures and paintings, which I realized were all drawn by my own hands: All that I considered my 'masterpieces'. A young woman sitting by a stream, a blazing sun in the hands of a smiling statue, Mark and Xiao Yang (two of my friends) sharing a seat... oh, and a few crayon doodles from when I was in elementary.

There were also photos, from my brief stint as a photographer. Smiling faces of my family and friends, or the intense gazes of the few models which I had been fortunate enough to work with. I looked at them all, the memories rushing back in. My soulscape, the world in my mind... was this what I was?

A small giggle came from somewhere in the vast room.

I turned to face the source of the voice, but only found a bust of a potato. That was smiling at me. With buck teeth. Grade 2 arts and crafts were kind of like that. I smiled at the old memory, and turned to look at the way I had come.

"Yoza... where are you?"

"He is gone, for now, young psyker."

I turned to see that the black-robed Zara had walked out from behind a pillar. Warily, I faced her. What was she up to? Having been given enough time to here was little doubt that she was about to test me... when and what and where, that was the thing I needed to know.

As I faced her, she allowed her face to crack into a smile that curved her lips, brilliant red ruby eyes shining. It was just as confusing in its meaning as the other Eldar of her race; both full of a fierce joy and also a tinge of arrogance; she and I both knew that she was holding something back from me.

"This is one of the things that you hold most dearest?" She asked, running a hand over a crude crayon drawing. "For such a thing to appear inside your mindscape, it's obvious that you hold strong sentimental value for it, Michael"

My ears burned as my name slid off her tongue. It sounded alien to me (and not just because it was an Eldar saying it). Admittedly, those little works of toddler art were among my fondest memories, but still, to an outsider – Zara especially – this was humiliating.

"Can't we get back to stopping a daemon from bursting out of my brain, Farseer?"

Zara's bemused smile turned from the crayon sketch to me. "Of course. But first.."

She walked over to me, her legs shimmering under her robes as she came face-to-face with me for the first time. The other times, it was when she was the size of a miniature and had to climb a small building's worth of shelves to reach my nose. She was about the same height as I was, if a little taller, and while she wasn't as well endowed as most women, she was strikingly beautiful when she got up close. Like a dancer... a very powerful one at that. I found myself swallowing spit just to keep myself in check.

She didn't stop at two feet, though. Zara's face was plastered with a vampish grin as she practically walked into me, her leg stepping between my knees as she saw me backing up. Another step from her resulted in another two steps from me. My legs propelled me backwards as she continued to advance, but our chests kept bumping together as she pressed on.

Soon, I had run out of floor and she was pressing herself up against me, her loose fitting gown giving me quite the view as she chuckled at my plight. The woman before me knew how uncomfortable I was, even though it was a place where a lot of guys would have killed to be at. Zara's smile widened as she looked into my eyes, her right leg curling around my left, her ankle hooking around my waist.

"I suppose I should thank you for that compliment, my dear."

"Look, I only agreed to going in here because you'd teach me how to fight off daemo-ack!"

She threw us sideways, sending the both of us tumbling to the ground as she straddled my stomach. Her breathing was already ragged and shallow as it washed over my face, filling my nose with her dizzying scent. Zara grinned as she leaned down until her body was pressed against mine, her red eyes alight with daring as she looked up at me. The Eldar Farseer was grinding her hips against mine, and my ear felt like it was burning up as she kissed it.

A few things clicked into place in my mind.

"Zara?" I was breathless in her delighted state, and was happily beginning to claw at my shirt, her hips bucking excitedly as I gasped for breath. She wasn't heavy, but she was crushing my ribs with her knees, dammit! I looked up at her twisted smile.

"Yes, Michael?"

"You're not Zara, are you?"

I twisted my free arm, and swung it around, connecting at her left temple and forcing an immensely satisfying yelp from the thing on top of me. I was surprised in that my punch was managing to stun her that badly, so with that in mind I began to wriggle and shove, so I could get out from underneath her. Grabbing Not-Zara's waist, I heaved it off, sending the slim, female figure tumbling to the ground.

The Zara lookalike looked up at me, and blinked a few times as it re-set its neck. It was a bone-white liquid for a heartbeat, before resetting to a flesh-like pallor.

"First lesson, expect the enemy to take any shape and form." Yoza's voice called out to me. I looked around, but could not find him as I backed away from the Not-Zara

"Daemons will pick the forms of your friends, your family, those you love and those you hate... I'm not sure which I am, mon-keigh, but I do hope you learn this: to cut off something's influence to a dreamscape, you must kill its representation."

The half-sane incarnation of Not-Zara arched its back as it tilted its head, a jaw half-open with craven delight. Its foosteps were chaotic as it walked unsteadily towards me, and I began to look around, hands searching the various walls and displays.

Weapon... I needed a weapon.

I saw a little red box in the distance, inside of which was a trusted weapon: A CO2 extinguisher.

Not-Zara followed my gaze, and hissed.

We both broke into a full out sprint as I legged it for the box. Odd, that I hadn't noticed the fire-engine red box before. Again, my mind popped up with the explanation: This world was mine to make. I was the deus ex nox. The God in the Dream.

If so...

"Burn!" I waved an arm in the direction of Not-Zara's running form, my mind's eye imagining its entire body igniting, burning the Not-Zara into a crisp. That in itself would become a fondly remembered thought later, but right now, I focused less on thinky, more on burny.

But the Not-Zara wasn't burning or... anything. In fact, I think it actually got its black-haired head down and sped up from hearing my shouting.

Dammit.

The Not-Zara reached the fire extinguisher first, grinning madly as it twirled on the spot and stanced itself to block my way. I panicked for a second, before realizing something from my early years of Physics with Mr. Nickel. Kinetic energy equals half mass times velocity squared., or Ek = 1/2mv2. I was at a dead run compared to Not-Zara – who was standing still - and at more than 150 pounds, I was probably a bit heavier than my attacker was, since I had the chance of having it bouncing about on my stomach, I guessed that it was at 100 pounds soaking wet. Therefore, I had a lot more kinetic energy.

In other words: If we collided, it would be far worse off.

My left shoulder slammed dead center on its torso, throwing Not-Zara into the wall. My momentum carried me into her, slamming into her a second time. I felt a spinal disk pop out of joint as its back hit the edge of the emergency toolbox. Feeling her recoil, I reached out to smash the glass of the fire extinguisher. My fist went through the thin glass panel, shattering the clear pane into a thousand cubes, but as my hand stretched out to grab the red cylinder, a strong arm coiled around my neck.

Limber legs wrapped around my waist and squeezed the air out of my lungs before I could scream. Not-Zara had recovered from being run over, and had jumped on to my back. I gagged in the stench of its sweat and blood, and tried to shake it off. The malevolent carbon-copy (Then again, had the original been benevolent in the first place?) had run an arm around udner my armpit, keeping that arm pinned. The other was flailing uselessly as I staggered about, trying to grab its hair.

With a roar of defiance, I stopped, steadied myself and jumped over backwards. Air rushed out of Not-Zara's lungs as I landed on it. It went down, and I manged to get up on my feet for long enough to regain my balance and give Not-Zara a much remembered kick to the jaw. Scrambling over to the emergency box, I reached in to find a replica of Big Red IV, the fourth fire extinguisher that I had bought to keep the armies (and their fires) suppressed.

Behind me, Not-Zara hissed.

Hefting it, I brought the full fifteen pound cylinder down on Not-Zara's head. The etheral doppelganger kept on moving, trying to claw at me, so I repeated that motion again, sending the red tube down on its mouth. Bloodied teeth skittered across the floor. Again Big Red went up, and again the red cylinder came down. Something audibly cracked. Up again, down again. Again, again and again. I don't know if it were spinal reflexes or conscious pain that jerked its arms and twitched its legs, but I kept on going until the body stopped moving.

The results were... messy. My fingers were slipping on Not-Zara's blood when I stopped, and looked down at the results. Her face had been smashed right in, and... well... I'll spare the details here. I reached down and grabbed a clean section of her robes to wipe off the bits stuck to Big Red IV. As I was doing just that, a voice came from beside me.

"I think you enjoyed that a little too much, mon-keigh." Came Zara's rather shaky voice.

I turned to face Zara and Yoza, who were both looking at the results of their tests. Yoza was goggling at the near-decapitated body on the ground, and Zara was trying not to stare, with her blue eyes dark and brooding. I looked from one to the other, and pointed Big Red IV at them.

"Your fault. You sent this... thing to vamp me."

"An illusion, it was. A lesson, you learned." Yoza sighed, and waved his hand. The illusion of Not-Zara disappeared, and I found myself sighing in relief. To my surprise, Zara reciprocated the gesture.

"We'll call it 'even', as you mon-keigh say."

"Alright, fair enough. So, what was the lesson here? Is it that all Eldar are this weird?"

"No. The Dark Kin are, in some ways, worse." That statement from Zara sent shivers down my spine. I looked at where Not-Zara had 'died', and again shuddered from the thoughts of what might be 'worse'.

"O-kay... besides that, I'll guess that another lesson here is that nothing is fixed? I never spotted the fire extinguisher until I needed it." For emphasis, I hefted Big Red IV's ethereal copy, and sat down on the ground. There was a temptation to wish a chair into place, knowing that I could change reality. God of this place... wow. I smiled to myself, wondering how I could find this place outside of Yoza's spell-circle thingy.

Zara nodded and looked around her, where the brickwork of the walls were now visible; red brick with white mortar inside. When she spoke, her voice was grave as she explained the nuances of this place.

"That is correct. As this is your soul, its contents can be just as dynamic as yourself. If you are a what your society may call a 'douche', then the place will be set like stone, unable to change nor adapt. You, however, have some flexibility in you, so you can influence and change the flow of reality in this plane."

Yoza stepped forward, and picked up Big Red IV from my unresisting fingers.

"Dangers, such changes hold. Careful, you must be. Change your soul, constant influence creates. Chaotic, your inner world will become. Easy to change, easy to corrupt."

I looked at Yoza, and nodded. Of course, never was anything that easy, even if I were a god in this world. I stared at Big Red, and placed it on the ground. "Alright, so this mindscape is going to be a bit tricky to defend. I can't change whatever I want without repercussions, right?"

"Correct. Explore this place as you wish, go and dream of a world that you will protect with your life. Constructive changes are just that, mon-keigh; they will help build you up. As well as that, a part of us will stay, and be on call to help you when you need us, mon-keigh."

As if on cue, which they probably were, the two shadows cast by the Eldar psykers detached themselves from their sources. They were both obviously copies of the two, yet had a less serious feel to them. I looked from one, then to the other.

"I sense a 'but' coming up here..."

"How perceptive, for mon-keigh." Zara smiled. She seemed more comfortable now... I guess it was because she had been talking to a skyscraper earlier, her ego blunted by the fact that she didn't come above my ankle. She looked at me now, her eyes bright with arrogance. Yoza stepped forward and patted his shadowy doppelganger on the shoulder.

"Severely limited, we will be. Substantial help, we cannot provide. Only advice, we can give. Fight for you, we cannot."

"I understand... mostly..." I replied, throat dry. Dammit, I didn't want to have to fight alone... or fight at all, really...

"For now, enough it is. Rest, we must."

Again, we were in a world of white. In the distance, though, I saw my mind's mansion. Staring at it, I sighed as I found my body exhausted. Turning to face the two Eldar, I again saw them hazing from existance, and looked down to find my own body doing the same thing.

I blinked, seeing the ceiling of my house. I blinked again, and decided that now I was awake, and so looked down (past my feeth) and saw Justicar Amadeus, Librarian Vasili and the majority of the Grey Knights standing between the Eldar any myself, their many and varied psychic weapons and oversized automatic rocket launchers poised to strike at the Eldar, who were similarly stanced with their own wierd and wonderful weapons. I gave a loud cough, turning a few heads.

"Easy, guys." My voice sounded off, squeaky. Like when you pinched your nose while talking. I realized that my nose was plugged up wtih tissue.

"Michael! You're unharmed?" Amadeus asked, turnning to face me, although his dual-barreled storm bolter were still aimed towards the Eldar.

"Fine. Better, even." I waved off his concerns, and looked aroudn for the others.

"We were certainly worried when your nose started bleeding." Vasili reported, hefting his force staff. I realized that the tissue 'bullets' were tipped with my blood, and I quickly tossed them into the small wicker waste basket. My ears burned as I looked at Zara.

"It is simply the after-effects of our training, mon-keigh. I trust we were not away for too long?"

From behind me, Vincent shouted out.

"Nah, you weren't gone for more than half an hour... Uh... Michael... do you know anything about this hunting hobby the Chaplain has?"

Vincent was in the kitchen, dangling a decapitated rat from its tail, and holding open a plastic bag to drop it down into. A rather guilty-looking and bloody-chainsword wielding Chaplain Morteus sitting down on the kitchen counter-top, his body language radiating a rather dejected vibe about it. I gave a sigh. He had been hunting rats since day three.

"At least let me keep its head to mount on the wall..." He looked up and asked, hope lacing his voice.

"For the fourth time, Chaplain Morteus: No. I'm pretty sure that Michael would not like a rat's head mounted on the spare bedroom door!"

"Emperor's Pauldrons, you're a stubborn one!"