Just as Stand Users were drawn to one another, Hogg, who was basking in the praise of his offspring after the battle, also felt an inexplicable calling.
His enormous beast form had shrunk back to its original height of two meters and twenty centimeters. Hogg didn't disturb his offspring's celebration. Instead, he set off alone to find the source of the feeling.
The Blackwatch around him happily scoured the battlefield, gathering Necron weapons and corpses. The sight infected the newly joined Eldar warriors with their enthusiasm.
The Eldar, strengthened and modified by G301, looked at the wreckage strewn across the ground and suddenly thought that some of the junk might come in handy later. They set aside their usual elven elegance and joined the scavenging party.
Cole was a shield guard and a veteran of the Blackwatch, with plenty of experience picking through junk and assessing its value. He watched the Eldar recruit in his squad search only for worthless scraps, completely missing the useful salvage.
To educate the recruit, Cole called over the Eldar who was rummaging through the wreckage, deciding to help him gain some experience.
"Roland! You rookie, get over here. That stuff is all junk. Even if you hauled it all away, you couldn't trade it for more than a few Servitors. Once those Tech-priests show up, there won't be anything good left."
The Eldar Striking Scorpion soldier named Roland stopped scavenging the wreckage at his feet when his superior called him over. He carried a Gauss Rifle to Cole.
Roland took off his mask, revealing the Eldar's characteristic warpaint. Faced with a field he had never encountered before, his eyes held a clear, innocent confusion. Still, he respectfully asked Cole, who had always looked after him:
"Sir! What's valuable?"
"Valuable? You came to the right person. Let me tell you, Xenos—though I don't mean you, of course—their creations are completely different from our technology. Their cultural limitations mean they tend to have all sorts of strange decorations.
"For example, the weapon you're holding is obviously meant for cannon fodder. We just took down a Necron tomb, so this thing is a dime a dozen. The really good stuff is always flashy and explosive, just like us Blackwatch, with our awesome hairstyles."
Cole led Roland to a spot he had already picked out and pointed to a box in the corner, encased in a mass of shifting cubes. "See that? I don't know what it does, but look at those moving patterns and all the cables connected to it. You can tell at a glance it's worth a fortune."
The intricate lines and the sparks of energy flickering across it convinced Roland that Cole wasn't pulling his leg. This was definitely a valuable find.
The two of them started taking it apart, using the boost from their Power Armor to strip away cable after cable. But no matter what they did, they couldn't twist off the last three. They saw several black-robed Tech-Magi entering through the passage. Their time to scavenge was running out, so after a quick discussion, they decided to cut the treasure free with plasma Melta weapons.
In the Warhammer World, scorching plasma was treated as an extremely effective way to break things open, much like acetylene, the holy relic of construction sites.
As the blue plasma began to cut through the cables, the first one snapped. A violent ring of energy burst from the device before them, and the raging shock wave flung everyone nearby off their feet. The two closest were blasted into the wall by the excessive energy.
Hogg, who had been searching for the source of the calling, was also caught in the energy pulse. The familiar energy stirred his memories. It was a "C'tan Shard."
Years ago, the Emperor had fed Hogg a fragment of the Void Dragon. It had been tiny, but its unique taste had still been etched into Hogg's memory.
Hogg rushed to the corner where the energy had come from and found two unlucky Blackwatch soldiers embedded in the wall by the blast. He casually pulled the two of them free, then went over to the shard.
The C'tan Shard before him had been sealed inside a Dimensional Tesseract by Necron Technology. It served as the tomb's power source, and had also obscured Hogg's ability to sense it. Claws sprang from his right hand and plunged into the Dimensional Tesseract. He strained, and pulled out an orange shard radiating scorching energy.
Dark red Psionic Energy coiled around the shard. Hogg's thoughts reached into it, and he saw a hazy nebula drifting through the pitch-black universe. Stars were its food; the souls of living beings, its dessert. The laws of the universe served it. He—or perhaps it—was a god of Realspace.
As his thoughts continued to probe, Hogg saw the carnage of the ancient War in Heaven, the anguished cries of C'tan devouring their own kind, and the shattered physical forms of the C'tan after their defeat of the Old Ones. Their former slaves, the Necrons, had broken them apart and sealed them in Dimensional devices, turning them into pitiful slaves and power sources.
A figure wreathed in flames that would never die appeared before Hogg's consciousness. The frenzied C'tan charged at him, intending to devour him and take over his physical form in Realspace.
But black tentacles emerged from the void and wrapped around it. Dark red Psionic Energy slowly ate away at it, assimilating it, until all that remained was a furious, resentful howl.
After devouring the C'tan Shard, Hogg felt a little bloated. He also learned the shard's name: "The Burning One."
As a relatively powerful C'tan, the Burning One's shard had boosted Hogg's overall energy level. Dimensional Lightning, which he could previously use only as a special effect, had finally been strengthened. Hogg felt he could now use Dimensional Lightning to tear through the barrier between Realspace and the Warp, while immense electromagnetic force warped everything around him.
At Hogg's thought, his battered Raider armor began to melt. Metal from his pocket dimension turned to liquid and flowed into the damaged parts, repairing them. The armor on Hogg's body emerged renewed.
After stopping his tests of his abilities, Hogg surveyed the Necron tomb, which had been completely cleared. According to the Tech-priests' scans, most of the tomb was still buried underground, and the entire structure was made of Blackstone.
He left the Tech-priests to excavate the site and returned to the Blacklight with his legion.
During the battle, the Necrons' firepower had pinned the Blackwatch down so badly they couldn't raise their heads. As someone with a severe case of firepower-deficiency anxiety, Hogg decided his troops needed more firepower.
For massive weapons platforms, there were the Knights and Titans, so he had nothing to worry about. But they were seriously lacking in firepower in confined spaces. They'd definitely struggle against ancient overlords like the Necrons, let alone Chaos, their future great enemy. Some Chaos Daemons had tremendous resistance to ranged firepower.
The Alaitoc Eldar who had joined them were only a tiny Craftworld Eldar faction, nowhere near as powerful as the later Alaitoc Craftworld.
The so-called mothership Craftworld parked at the spaceport wasn't a Craftworld at all, just a large colony ship, barely bigger than the Blacklight. They were so poor they didn't even have a Phantom Titan, only a Wraith Titan to match the Knight Mechs.
Yet this thing was called a Titan, even though it was barely taller than a Knight. Besides, in an underground environment like that, not even the slender Phantom Titan could get in.
Hogg wandered aimlessly around the Blacklight, deep in thought. Suddenly, he saw several Dreadnoughts with anime pin-up pictures stuck to their armor, playing cards beside the Fourth Company's barracks. One of them seemed to be a former Fourth Captain. With nothing better to do, Hogg decided to have a little fun.
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