[Excerpt: The Wicked and the Warped] Orikan the Diviner disrespects the lasgun. Hilarity ensures.
Context: During the course of their misadventures, Trazyn and Orikan find themselves on a downed human ship (which seems to be a troop transport, from context). Trazyn asks Orikan if they've recovered from recent damage, and Orikan reacts entirely predictably...
Excerpt:
Ah… but surely it is better to be on a vessel than not. Are you reassembled? We should move presently. I would not like to be cornered here when the humans and their lasguns arrive.
‘Lasers?’ Orikan crowed aloud, breaking the silence. He stood, joint actuators creaking, and stretched his lower spine. ‘That is why we are cowering here? You’re afraid of a few lasers?’
‘But…’
Orikan staggered upright, shoving him to the side.
‘Corralled and left whimpering by a few low-wattage lasers. Incredible. And I mean that in the classic sense – I do not find it credible. Move fast enough, and in the correct pattern, and there is no danger from a few lasers.’
‘Orikan…’
The astromancer crouched down on all fours, limbs out like a crustacean, or some form of insect. His tail curled up to sting, like a desert insect. He opened his mouth, and crackles of energy formed within his saw-toothed maw. The raw energies of reality coalesced around him.
He bolted out of the hatch, scuttling up its side and leaping into the chamber beyond, the click-clatter sound of his limbs speaking of the evasive path he was taking.
A howl of las fire covered the contact sound of his limbs. First an irregular splintering of fire, then a kettle-drum cacophony of shots that drummed into the open doorway in an almost solid pulse of red light.
A creature scuttled back through the opening, its carapace blackened and smoking. Carbonised in places so that it was little more than spongy, charred metal. Its tail hung by a cable.
It grabbed a hatchway door, slammed it shut with a scream of rusting hinges, and screwed the locking wheel tight.
‘How did it go?’ Trazyn asked.
‘It was in fact a great many lasers.’ Orikan reached up and bent one of his hood vanes forward. ‘It turns out your assessment was accurate. Thankfully, they largely were not.’
‘One can fault the humans with many things. They are brutish, ignorant and self-defeating. But none can fault their utter commitment to the maximalisation of firepower.’
(And a little further along)
‘Did you provoke them? Are they coming?’
Orikan gave a performative sigh. ‘Once they work up the courage. I atomised several and fixed a countertemporal hex on the mouth of the corridor. I expect the strangeness of the anomaly will delay any pursuit through fear as much as time distortion.’
‘Surprising that you took so much damage, given your divinatory ability–’
‘It was many lasers. We should quit this place.’ He pointed down the corridor, casting a basic scry. ‘That way, away from them.’