Kratos5627
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Cutting Tongues and Frayed Nerves
🕑 Added 2025-05-16 03:30:01 +0000 UTCWord Count is back from now on. You can check it down below. As always love you all. Enjoy.
Faevelith stood across the room. Her gaze slid to Farron, and there was no pretense of subtlety in the disdain curling her lips. Nursing alien wine in her hand.
"So," she said, voice cool as wraithbone, "the cog-priest actually agreed to this idiocy."
Farron didn't look up from the slate-etch he was reviewing, his mechanical fingers clicking lightly as he adjusted a line of code. "Your tone implies surprise. And yet, here you are—draped in feathers and poor decisions, standing beside him."
Faevelith's smile thinned. “Feathers at least breathe. Unlike cog-flesh.”
Cassian sighed. Loudly. That did nothing.
"Ah, yes," Farron continued, finally glancing up, one glowing optic whirring in slow irritation. "The elegant alien way of saying 'I don't like this, but I won't explain why, because emotion is superior to logic.'"
"And yet logic brought you here," she snapped back, stepping closer, not quite glaring, just... watching, like one would a misbehaving servitor. "To bind a daemon, no less. Perhaps you mistook madness for mathematics."
Cassian raised a hand. “Okay, let’s not—”
Farron overrode him with a buzz-click of artificial derision. “At least madness can be graphed. Unlike whatever courtship rituals you're halfway performing.”
Faevelith narrowed her eyes. “Careful, Mechanicus. I’ve incinerated planets for less.”
“I've rebuilt them,” Farron said flatly. “Your point?”
Cassian pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Okay, both of you—can we maybe not start a culture war in the middle of living room?”
Faevelith turned her glare to Cassian, arching a sharp brow. “You brought us into this, Cassian. If there’s fallout, it’s your fault.”
“Yes,” Farron said. “Like most things are. Including your wardrobe.”
“Oh, please,” she shot back. “You're one robe short of being mistaken for a laundry accident.”
Cassian clapped once. “All right! Enough! If we keep going, one of you’s going to bring up someone’s mother, and I don’t think any of us are drunk enough for that.”
They both stared at him.
“I have no mother, I was created artificially” Farron said.
“Mine’s been dead for six thousand years,” Faevelith added.
Cassian threw up his hands. “Of course. Great. Perfect. This is going well.”
There was a silence.
Cassian, now started speaking tired with the banter, “We’ve had enough insults about wardrobe and barbs flying back and forth. Seriously, if one more jab comes, I’m out. We need to focus before this devolves into a roasting session nobody signed up for.”
Farron’s optic flickered with a sly glow, the barest hint of a smirk playing on his lips. “Speak for yourself. I like the burn.”
Faevelith shot him a sideways glance, lips twitching in reluctant amusement. “Of course you do, cog-flesh. With how you tin people replace body parts with machines. I wonder if you are secretly masochistic.
Cassian shook his head, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Alright, alright. Now that the verbal fireworks are settled, let’s get down to business.”
Farron didn’t even glance up from his slate-etch, his fingers pausing as if weighing the moment. “Fine. The body has to be more than strong. It’s got to be a fortress. The kind of shell no daemon claws or fire can crack.”
He finally looked up, his glowing eye reflecting something colder than the metal that made his hand. “I’m thinking layers—thick plating reinforced with self-repairing nano-machines we found in the STC. With my research I could certainly program them to do that. This body won’t just hold the daemon, it’ll cage it.”
Faevelith crossed her arms, her voice low and steady, but sharp enough to cut through steel. “The body is just a shell. The real trap is the concept—the warp. The daemon isn’t flesh and bone. It’s raw psychic energy, a storm bottled inside a cage. You can build walls, but if you don’t bind the storm within, it’ll tear those walls down from inside.”
Her eyes darkened, glinting with something ancient and dangerous. “I’ll weave the daemon into a psychic anchor—a lattice of power that will bind its will. Not just trap it, but hold it tightly enough that it can’t break free. I’ll use runes and psychic seals, layered protections so thick they’re like armor for the soul.”
Farron snorted quietly. “So, you’re going to babysit a demon’s mind? Sounds like a nightmare.”
Faevelith’s lips curled in a thin smile. “You try doing it without losing your mind.”
Cassian stepped forward, folding his arms, voice steady but tired. “What about Fail-safes, Contingencies. No matter how solid our plan maybe, there is still a chance of failure”.
Farron’s mechanical fingers clicked as he added, “Fail-safes won’t just be simple explosions. If the daemon stirs, sensors will detect psychic spikes, and the body will shut down critical systems. Maybe even purge the daemon’s vessel with a controlled meltdown.”
Cassian’s gaze softened a touch, but his tone stayed serious. “And if the psychic bond falters? If the daemon strains against the anchor?”
Faevelith nodded. “That’s where my role comes in.”
Faevelith continued, voice like steel. “I’ll build secondary psychic leashes. Emergency ties that yank the daemon back to warp if it strains too hard. They’re weaker, but enough to buy us time.”
Farron grunted. “And I’ll make sure the body’s tech can pick up where the psychic side leaves off. If those leashes snap, I trigger the kill switch—incinerate the whole thing.”
Cassian glanced between them, the tension barely contained under the surface. “So, you’re both building different layers of the cage. Faevelith with the psychic locks, Farron with the physical, mechanical ones. Good enough for now.”
Farron leaned forward, voice dropping into musing. “The vat body needs more than just strength. It’ll have adaptive shielding that reacts to psychic waves. If the daemon tries to use its own powers, the shields dampen those waves, buying us time.”
Faevelith nodded thoughtfully. “That’ll help, but the real fight is on the inside. The psychic matrix I’ll weave will have layers—primary control held tight by me, secondary by failsafe runes. I’ll be the anchor and the leash. The daemon will feel tethered, unable to spread corruption beyond the body.”
Cassian added, “And I’ll help calibrate that matrix. I’ve got enough psychic skill to assist you, Faevelith, and enough understanding of tech to coordinate with Farron. Bridging the gap.”
Farron gave a short snort. “Looks like you are the odd man out is the one keeping us sane.”
Faevelith smirked. “Odd man who’s somehow managing to keep his head on straight. For now.”
Cassian shrugged, with the weight of it all settling like a stone in his gut.
---
Farron’s workshop squatted at the edge of the Craftworld, deep in a forgotten docking blister that hadn’t seen real use in centuries. Wraithbone ribs overhead were half-patched with rusted Mechanicus plating, dull Martian steel stitched like a scar into the sleek alien architecture. The Eldar hated the look of it—he could feel their disapproval every time one passed by without stepping in.
He didn’t care.
As long as no one disturbed him.
The central tank pulsed with heat and bio-gel. Inside it floated a body—long-limbed, raw, incomplete. Thick bands of synth-muscle flexed along the reinforced skeleton, twitching in slow pulses as nerve growths connected strand by strand. The shape was vaguely human. But only vaguely. This was no person. It wasn’t meant to be.
It was a cage.
He moved between consoles, running checks. No servitors. No magos. Just him and a few mechadendrites hooked into his spinal port.
The design wasn’t built from scratch. Farron was using Cassian's body template. His body being as strong as an Astartes meant he could imprison the daemon. The specialized Nanites from the STC has made many improvements to Cassian's dna. If Cassian ever had kids, they would all be born enhanced.
Magos was blown away by the discovery when he discovered this, it could change the Imperium as he knows it. But Magos kept that information close to his sleeves with him only telling Cassian about it. The Imperium would probably shoot them on sight with the amount of heresy they have committed, rather than reward them for it.
Magos shook his head. Getting rid of his Errant thoughts.
He tapped through data-slates. “Muscle strain response nominal. Nerve filament reacting. Scaffold taking root.” He glanced at the vat. “Not bad.”
The skeleton was adamantium weave—dense, triple-reinforced, built to hold its shape under pressure that would tear a tank in half. The muscle was grown over it in layers, bonded with nano-repair threads. Tiny black specks swam through the gel—maintenance drones on the cellular level, programmed to tear out infected tissue and rebuild within minutes.
He leaned in, watching the chest expand slightly as lungs formed.
“Internal grid’s next.”
He opened a hololith schematic. Thin silver wires arced through the virtual model of the body—each one tied into a micro-fusion core buried in the sternum. If the daemon got too strong, too smart, or tried anything clever, the kill-grid would activate and burn the body out from the inside. A controlled implosion.
Failsafe-deadly. Just the way he liked it.
He checked the trigger system. Triple-layered encryption, locked to his own gene-key. If anyone tried to override it, the system would fry. There wouldn’t be time for regrets.
Farron moved back to the vat. The body floated still, the barest flicker of motion along its spine. Not alive. Not yet.
His mechadendrite hissed open. The claw extended, holding the final piece—a spirit stone no bigger than a thumbnail. Faevelith’s work. A psychic fuse.
He stared at it. He didn’t like warp-tricks. Never had. But they needed it. Needed her.
He muttered something under his breath and clicked the stone into a slot beneath the collarbone. A hum rolled through the vat, deeper and colder than before. The body flinched—just once—then went still again.
He didn’t smile. Not really. But there was a sense of grim satisfaction as he stepped back and looked at what he’d built.
Bone. Muscle. Metal. Fuel lines. Neural lace. Dampeners. Traps. Kill-switches. Not a soldier. Not a servant.
A prison.
And if it all went wrong, if the daemon inside started to turn, then the whole thing would go up in smoke.
That was the point.
Farron folded his arms, watching the bio-gel swirl around the body.
This thing wasn’t meant to live.
It was meant to survive long enough for them to use it. To chain something that should never be caged. And if it failed? Then it would die screaming and be sent back the way it came from.
Either way, his job was done.
Almost.
He glanced at the psychic resonance chart again. Faevelith’s warding grid was syncing. Slowly. He’d have to check it against the neural imprint matrix later—Cassian would be back with the payload soon. Sneaking a possessed Farseer out of his cage. Typical idiocy.
Farron muttered, “Hope you’re faster than you are clever, Cassian.”
Then he turned back to his tools. The spine still needed reinforcement. And the braincase had to be triple-wrapped.
Just in case.
—
Word Count- 1829
Comments
Darth Bane
Hey so the nanotechnology enhances his partner too? Kinda like a good std story lol
Kratos5628
Nope. Cassian is equal to a standard astartes in warhammer in raw stats. Even then he would get curbstomped 8/10 due to the vast difference in experience. Astartes live for centuries after all. And there are so many entities above astartes that it is not even funny. I have posted a power tier list when I started this fanfic. You can refer to that to get an idea. It is at very beginning.
Jonnylawz0
Hell yh dope chapter! But hey kratos isnt cassian gonna be to op after this...
