This is Our Warhammer Journey

"What's going on?"

Arthur rushed over immediately. The warp lightning crackling in the air didn't affect him in the slightest.

He grabbed Ramesses and looked at his face—only to find a white void staring back at him.

No way… did a Chaos God get to him?

Arthur's eyes filled with concern. As if responding to that, the Thousand Son's chaotic gaze began to focus, and Ramesses opened his mouth.

He raised his hand, and his voice echoed through the Navigator's Sanctum—ancient, resonant, as if it had traveled through time itself.

"v me 50."

"…"

Arthur wordlessly pulled his hand back. Romulus fought the urge to shoot him in the head with a melta gun, while Karna sighed, as if he'd expected this, and retracted his ready-to-throw power spear. Then all three transferred their points over to him.

"Ahhh—back to life again."

Ramesses exhaled a long breath, having just absorbed the quantized souls. He twirled his staff and lightly tapped the ship's hull. A wave of unseen energy rippled out through the metal. The blood and flesh coating the floor disintegrated into dust and vanished into the air.

At that same moment, Arthur and the others felt a mysterious force pulling them from the warp into another realm.

Then, a sudden feeling of weightlessness rose from their feet. Everything inside the Navigator's Sanctum began to float. A moment later, the ship's artificial gravity reasserted itself, and everything crashed back to the floor.

Arthur rolled his ankles a bit. He still felt connected to the safe house—not weakened in the slightest.

Bang!

The armored shielding over the Navigator's Sanctum slid open. Through the glass, the chaotic, shifting lights of the warp had disappeared. In their place was a quiet, endless starry sky.

Then, the Thousand Sons psyker—wearing his 30k-era Cataphractii armor—landed smoothly on the deck.

"What the hell happened?"

Arthur clenched a fist and stepped forward. If this guy couldn't explain himself, he was getting a punch to the face.

"Whoa, whoa, calm down! Don't be hasty!"

Ramesses raised his hands in surrender.

"If I hadn't reacted in time, we'd all still be stuck in the warp until the ship disintegrated. A void whale passed right in front of us. If I hadn't burned some soul energy to reinforce the shields, we'd be boss mobs in some space hulk by now."

"…So what was that screaming about earlier?"

Arthur released his grip, rubbing his forehead irritably.

Anyone who didn't know better would've thought Ramesses was possessed. He nearly gave everyone a heart attack.

"It flashed right into my eyes."

Ramesses sheepishly wiped his mask.

"That void whale was huge—it blocked out the Astronomican's light. I thought I was looking at Big E himself, but I got the light confused. I was almost blinded, man."

Turns out, it had just been a false alarm.

"...Looks like you're doing fine. Still cracking jokes."

Romulus pulled up a chair and sat down.

"What, you take fifty from us and don't even treat the gang to a Crazy Thursday?"

The reinforced servo-muscle-wrapped backside crushed the chair's armrests instantly. The contrast between his massive body and the tiny seat was almost comical.

Nobody cared though. Everyone relaxed into the most comfortable poses they could find, forming a loose circle.

Sure, the 40k material universe wasn't much better than the warp, but at least it was safer by comparison. At least you didn't have to worry about the floor suddenly growing a mouth and biting your leg off.

"Oh—right, Crazy Thursday. Eat, go wild."

A feast of fried chicken and cola materialized in the space between them.

Ramesses took off his psyker mask, took a long drink of soda, then looked at his three friends—familiar, yet strange—and let out a loud, heartfelt laugh.

"At least someone here gets my references."

"Oh, the poor bastard on the Golden Throne probably gets them too. Shame he's welded to that thing—past, present, and future—stuck watching this shithole of a universe rot away."

Ramesses was still laughing, but gradually, his laughter turned into sobbing.

"Goddamn it… to live in a place like this, alone… Did you see those mutants? Those things weren't even human anymore. And the servitors—I can't even look at them without wanting to puke."

"All the people in the Navigator's Sanctum were just resources with their tongues cut out. Did you see all that meat on the floor? They were sacrificed before I even had time to react. And all that 'For the Emperor' crap—this is a cult, not a civilization! I can burn daemons without this kind of filth, thanks."

"It's the 41st freaking millennium. How did humanity sink this low?"

Everyone knew: games were games. In games, nothing was real. You did things for your own emotional satisfaction. Ethics didn't matter, nor did reality.

But real life was different.

In real life, people stopped their cars for pedestrians. Before having kids, they'd worry about whether they could provide for them. People longed for order and beauty. No one actually wanted to live in the Warhammer universe.

But since waking up here, everything they saw had been brutally assaulting their moral compass.

Back with the Astra Militarum, Arthur and Romulus had consciously avoided looking at the servitors assisting the Sisters of Battle with logistics.

They respected the Sisters' faith. They admired the Astra Militarum's courage. But they just couldn't handle the half-human, half-machine horrors walking around mumbling nonsense.

"Good thing you guys are here… I'm not alone."

Ramesses grabbed Arthur and Karna by the shoulders, sobbing uncontrollably.

Unlike the others, whose lives back home were mostly peaceful, Ramesses had been a real-life ultra-rich kid—the kind of guy who could afford to buy custom game miniatures. They hadn't met in person much, but through conversations, they all knew his life had been exciting and carefree.

Even Arthur missed his cozy little home deeply—and he'd been sprinting forward on pure autopilot since arrival. Imagine the shock for someone like Ramesses, suddenly tossed into this hellhole of a universe.

Arthur patted him on the shoulder, sighed, and grabbed a box of nuggets.

He stared at the packaging, then opened his helmet's air system and took a slow sniff.

His brain parsed the scent—so complex, yet strangely familiar.

Aside from his companions, this box of fast food was the only familiar thing Arthur had felt since waking up in this universe.

But…

"Sigh…"

Arthur put the nugget back down.

Even this familiar food—they had conjured it using some power they didn't even understand.

He looked up.

The deep starfield beyond the viewport. The ornate, alien architecture around them. The four of them, encased in armor, no longer resembling their old selves…

Everything around them served as a constant, unrelenting reminder:

This was no longer the world they once loved.

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