Fanfic / An Honest Soul

A man said that perhaps victory is in the simpler things; things that require a smaller, more honest soul.

Will that be true in the grim darkness of the far future?

— Intro to An Honest Soul

An Honest Soul is a crossover fic between RWBY and Warhammer 40,000 by Gers the destroyer.

Set after the events of Volume 8, Ruby falls from the portal space created by Ambrosius and into the Warp, the chaotic nightmare realm of Warhammer 40000 universe. However, rather than succumbing to despair, her Silver Eye Powers activate and kill the Daemons converging on her. The God-Emperor of Mankind bears witness to this event, and intervenes on her behalf, rescuing her and her friends and casting them back into Realspace.

Ruby awakens not in the bizarre realm of Ever After, but on a backwater world in the Imperium of Man, called Kanrilla. Looking around, she happens upon a small pack of Orks about to butcher an Imperial Guardsman they've captured and takes them down to save his life. Bringing the wounded Guardsman, who is wary but grateful towards (as he sees it) an unsanctioned Psyker who rescued him, back to the Capital city, Ruby is detained and then questioned by the Lord General in command of the Imperial Forces on the planet, where she learns how dire the situation truly is; the planet is being invaded, the Ork Waagh!! seems to greatly outnumber the Guardsmen and PDF present, and they have no hope of reinforcement any time soon.

Ruby offers her help to this world, and the General, less zealous or pompous than most and aware that this is an unusual and desperate circumstance, accepts. However, this Ork invasion, as impending as it is, is only the first step in a long journey for the young Huntress. For she has arrived on the very eve of the Fall of Cadia, and events both outside of her control and within her power to determine, will shake the foundations of the galaxy. Soon, Ruby and her friends will attract the eyes of Men, Xenos, and Gods of all kinds, and what role they may have to play in their plans is anyone's guess.

An Honest Soul includes examples of:

Arc 1

• All-Loving Hero: Despite being dropped into the Grimdark world of 40k, Ruby is still the Huntress who strives to protect people wherever she is, saving an injured Guardsman and later helping the Imperial Colony fight against an Ork invasion.
• Crisis of Faith: Preacher Berossus begins losing faith in the Emperor's protection when Epidamnus is besieged by daemons of Chaos and the pandemonium that ensues. A daemon appears before him to further mock his faith in the Emperor and try to tempt him to Chaos. It becomes averted when Ruby's Silver Eye's obliterate the daemons throughout the city. Berossus believes it to be a miracle of the Emperor's will^note  not an entirely inaccurate assumption, as Ruby was placed on Kanrilla by the Emperor himself, and with Tears of Joy, he reaffirms his faith in the Emperor and vows never to waver in his convictions again.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Gidim, a mere planetary defense soldier, suffers a particularly gruesome death at the hands of Chaos daemons. As his body is ripped apart, the wounds being inflicted upon him also affect his soul. He can feel his very inner self being torn to shreds as memories of his life are literally being torn from him. His mutilated body is cast aside after being torn apart both body and soul.
• Culture Clash: There are some things within the Imperium that Ruby finds either puzzling at best, and disturbing at worst. She is noticeably unnerved by the presence of the servo-skulls, and when she observes a mass of citizens gathering at a nearby cathedral to worship the God-Emperor, she finds it to be incredibly arrogant for any man to proclaim himself a deity and demand that his subjects worship him. Slightly downplayed in that she keeps such opinions to herself, and given the Imperium's extreme intolerance of anyone who denies the Emperor's divinity, it's a wise choice.
• From Bad to Worse: Lone Imperial City under siege from a horde of Orks? Check. Imperial Guard Regiment and PDF and Ruby on their own? Check. The 13th Black Crusade seeing to the Great Rift expanding and a Daemon Invasion attacking both sides? Double check.
• Gambit Pileup: Ruby has become the focus of a three way race and quest to find her, with Be'lakor of Chaos, Harlequins sent by Cegorach, and Adeptus Custodes by the word of the Emperor himself all in the mix.
• Heroic Second Wind: Ruby's Silver Eyes wipes the floor with the invading Daemons, saving several characters, and turning the whole tide of the battle back in favor of the Imperium.
• Holy Hand Grenade: Ruby's Silver Eyes qualify as this, as they are sources from the God of Light and granted True Death to an entire legion of Daemons; barring their commanding Daemonic Heralds(who were petrified similarly to the Wyvern and Leviathan), and it's commanding Greater Daemon(who was partially petrified, in great agony, and severely weakened, allowing Ruby to banish it with a decapitating strike from Crescent Rose); a feat unseen since the War in the Webway, preformed by the Emperor of Mankind himself.
• Humongous Mecha: The Mega-Gargant that Gurzag brought with him to sack the city of Epidamnus.
• Like a God to Me: In the aftermath of the Battle of Kanrilia, word of Ruby's annihilation of the Daemons of Chaos with her Silver Eyes start spreading like wildfire. The people start referring to her as a saint and even some of the soldiers have been seen offering prayers to her. Even Sister Espasia of the Order of Serenity speaks to Ruby with a tone of reverence. She, however, feels very uncomfortable about this.
• Little Hero, Big War: While Ruby is helping the Arbanian Janissaries deal with an Ork Waaagh! on a remote backwater planet, Abaddon the Despoiler is waging his Thirteenth Black Crusade against the Imperial world of Cadia. Right as Ruby is fighting the Warboss, Gurzag the Hoarder, is the moment Abaddon sends a Blackstone Fortress crashing into Cadia's surface, cracking the planet like an egg and causing the Eye of Terror to spread throughout the galaxy.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": Nearly all of the Imperium collectively shits their pants when The Great Rift starts expanding across the galaxy, opening all of them to a massive Chaos invasion. The entire moment is capped off with this statement:
  Captain Lebanon: "Emperor save us..."
• Off with His Head!: Warboss Gurzag finally meets his end when he is beheaded by Xog'drithuuch and then stomped on.
• Post-Victory Collapse: After using her Silver Eyes to annihilate the daemon hordes attacking the Imperium forces and subsequently beheading Xog'drithuuch a bloodied, battered, and running-on-fumes Ruby stands defiant before the remaining Orks. The Orks are suddenly overcome with fear and begin to flee from the battlefield. Just as the rest of the Arbanian Jannissaries arrive to provide backup, she collapses from sheer exhaustion.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Lord General Eskender Kastriot of the Arbanian Janissaries qualifies as this. While standard Imperial Protocol in the even of encountering an Unsanctioned Psyker (which Ruby qualifies as due to the nature of her powers) is to immediately arrest and transfer them to the custody of the Adeptus Astrotelephatica or the Inquisition, Kastriot realizes that Ruby presents a bit of an exception to the rule due to a)being from outside of the Imperium and not being familiar with it's customs and laws(and, arguably, not being subject to them either), b) that she saved his soldier from certain death, allowing him to return to base with vital intelligence, and is genuinely a good person, and c) the planet they are on is currently cut off from the wider Imperium and cannot make contact with representatives from either organization and are about to face a massive Ork Incursion.
  • Following the aftermath of Ruby's Silver Eyes and the positive impact it has on the troops and populace, he expresses his concern over the enormous amount of pressure that will be placed on Ruby.
  General Kastriot: 'I only pray her spirit is strong enough to not be crushed, either by this cruel, brutal galaxy or by the ever-growing expectations, hopes and judgments of the ones she resolved to protect. Countless men and women have succumbed to despair under similar pressure.'
• Spirit Advisor: The Eldar soul stone in Gurzag's possession helps Ruby during her fight with the Ork Warboss by telepathically warning her of Gurzag's impending attacks. Ruby later returns the favor by saving the soul stone from being devoured by Xog'drithuuch.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Gurzag reacts this way when he realizes that Ruby trapped him in the center of the Mega-Gargant with a vortex grenade set to blow up the main reactor with him right next to it.
  Gurzag: "Oh, ya zogging-"

Side-Stories

• And I Must Scream: Weiss is trapped in stasis by Trazyn, and is completely aware of her surroundings but is completely unable to do anything to influence her situation.
• Cool Old Guy: Ynnôk acts as one, a Kin separated from the Leagues of Votann due to the Warp Storms and acts as Blake's Honest Advisor.
• Defector from Decadence: Captain Ramutha was once a member of the local Planetary Defence Force of Doromoros before she and her unit deserted over refusing to set a building with children in on fire. She's now one of Blake's lieutenants.
• Final Solution: The Governor of the Hive City of Maltax on the Planet of Doromoros, in collusion with the Adeptus Sororitas, enact a genocidal campaign against the entire population of mutants, abhumans, and other undesirables after the Great Rift opens.
• Hero of Another Story: The other characters from Remnant seem to be getting these.
  • Weiss lands in the middle of the Solemnace Galleries, and gets captured by Trazyn the Infinite, who finds out quite a few fascinating facts about his latest exhibit.
  • Blake leads a revolutionary group to protect mutants, abhumans, and other disenfranchised in a Hive City from a purge being enacted by a desperate Planetary Governor and an especially zealous group of Soritas, and gets an envoy from the T'au Empire when things start to get hairy.
  • Yang has been captured and enslaved as a gladiator by a Drukhari Kabal and is being forced to fight in the Crommorragh arenas for the entertainment of the sadistic Archon who captured her.
• Hope Spot: Weaponized by K'shaic, the Drukhari Archon, against Yang. He offers to set her and her "sister" free if she wins ten consecutive gladiator matches in a row. However, K'shaic has no intention of freeing her, and every time she makes it to her tenth match, he sets her up in a fight she can't possibly win. She gets defeated and is forced to start over, and K'shaic revels in her despair each time.
• I'll Kill You!: Yang utters this to K'shaic as she is being dragged back to the dungeons after her match. She manages to say this in perfect Aeldari.
• The Reveal: Trazyn's Crypteks, after analyzing Weiss's atomic structure, reveal to him that she, and by extension, the rest of RWBY, can't be traced back to the Big Bang that created the universe. Meaning that Remnant is in a parallel reality to that of the 40k universe.
• Wham Episode: The sidestory, Fairy Tale, takes place as a flashback where Summer Rose is telling a young Ruby a bedtime story of a little girl with a silver mirror and a silver knight that saved the girl's village from a horde of demons. Little does Ruby know, the story was real, and Summer was the little girl and the silver knight was none other than Kaldor Draigo, Supreme Grand Master of the Grey Knights.

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