"Hrrh... my lord, we are about to reach the target star region."
On a bridge steeped in distortion and blasphemy, a twisted daemon crewman with two heads and strange bony horns stared at a console overgrown with proliferating flesh, loudly reporting in a slurred voice laced with growls.
"Heh heh heh, the wails of the dead echo in the depths of the void. Flesh is stripped away, wreckage drifts, and terrible distortions fill the dark heavens."
The piercing, unsettling laughter mingled with a bizarre prophecy. The voice belonged to an Oracle.
These pale, living bodies, bound within recesses in the walls, bore distorted humanoid shapes. Their flesh had withered and shriveled terribly, as though their life force had been drained dry. Runes-inscribed protective bands held them tightly in the recesses, preventing them from moving freely.
Their eye sockets held no eyes, only endless darkness churning within and radiating a spine-chilling cold.
The skin occasionally exposed between the Runes-inscribed protective bands was the grayish white of a corpse, covered in countless tiny cracks, as though it might split apart at any moment.
They gave the impression of humanoid shapes pieced together from scraps of flesh forcibly held in place by the Runes-inscribed protective bands.
Threads of faintly glowing energy filled the gaps between these pieces of flesh, weaving into their surroundings as though countless streams of mysterious information flowed through their bodies.
Listening to that raucous laughter, Abaddon felt inexplicably irritated.
Oracles were special beings, unlike ordinary daemon crewmen, a few of whom he could casually crush to death whenever he was in a bad mood.
Moreover, these Oracles were blessed with the power of the Chaos God Tzeentch. They could occasionally glimpse dangerous futures, helping Abaddon win battle after battle.
Yet Abaddon could hear no good news whatsoever in these