Of course, before going down to duke it out with another horror that crawled out of the asscrack of this nonsensical galaxy, we had to spend two hours in mind-numbing strategizing.

I regretted not taking Selene with me, if at least so she could suffer this torture together with me and alleviate some of my own with her presence. Alas, I was alone and promised to only teleport her here when there was going to be some immediate fighting.

Valenith would probably also love to come along… as for Zedev, the old Magos only came out of his claimed laboratory to check up on the servers and surveillance once a day ever since I dumped the promised samples on him.

A piece of Swarmlord, Eldar, and a little bit of everything else I had.

I could have just… left him behind. Dumped him somewhere since he mostly outlived his usefulness, but I didn’t. Maybe it was just sentimentality, or maybe I was just curious what manner of chimeric horror he could come up with if I gave him every tool and sample he could ever need.

Who knows, maybe he could even make something that would inspire me to add new functionality to one of my forms?

“- of course my Lord, what a splendid idea. We shall do just that!”

And there they go again. I was sure if I looked close enough, I’d see shit on all the human officers’ tongues from how diligently they were licking Guilliman’s ultramarine butt. To each their own, I suppose. I shouldn’t kink shame them.

It does stretch this boring meeting far longer than it’s supposed to be though. Not that I doubt he is doing it on purpose. Silly Primarch, I really don’t give a shit how you organise this raid.

I was quite literally watching mold grow in one of the upper corners of the strategy room, though sometimes I also paid attention to an especially nice looking crack slowly creeping its way through the rockrete one nanometer every ten minutes. In just a few hundred years, it was going to reach the wall. So exciting!

Why they even planned so much was beyond me. If that Norn Emissary was even half as strong as they thought, anyone aside from the handful of Custodes who bothered to come help, Guilliman, Mephiston, and maybe me, was just going to be free biomass for the bugs.

Well, who was I to stop them? Maybe Astartes plot armour kicked in when they set their minds on doing stupid suicidal shit like this?

I’m going to have to test that … Plot Armour or Fate or whatever else you might want to call it. I was about 99% convinced it was bullshit, but I would have to make sure. Maybe see if I can murder some named characters I remember from lore?

I glanced around the room. Dante, Guilliman, Mephiston, and the Ultramarine Librarian whose name I forgot, something to do with tigers? Anyway, They could have been an option for testing, but I wasn’t really up to spitting in Guilliman’s soup that much.

Later. Someone smaller and much more inconsequential. Maybe a regular human who was important somehow. That could work. Either a meteor or some such drops on my head before I could squash said human, or I would know fate is a lie.

It would be worth the loss of a drone …

“ - Lady Echidna?”

“Yessss?” I asked distractedly, blinking at … human officer #5 who was …

[Note: In charge of organising the transportation of the troops.]

Right.

“Would you wish for a Thunderhawk of your own?” he asked, somehow managing to sound devoid of emotion and 100% neutral in both tone and facial expression. “Or would it be alright if you travelled together with someone else?”

“I have two tagalongs who also need slots, but I don’t mind not having one of my own if you can’t make space for all three of us.”

“Understood,” he nodded and went back to tapping on his dataslate.

The gist of the plan was for the Astartes to spread out and burn and explode everything on the upper levels while an elite group headed down into the depths to clear out the ‘main nest’ as they called it.

Apparently, Guilliman spent the last week sending numerous scouts, servitors, and just about any manner of surveillance down into those tunnels and now had a rather comprehensive map of the whole thing.

The only missing section was around where I met the Norm Emissary, but one lucky scout caught sight of a slumbering Norn Queen in a gigantic hidden chamber somewhere around there.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

Right now they were arguing about whether to take a detachment of Space Marines down to fight the Queen and its guard or not. I thought it was a silly debate, seeing as we knew the Norn Emissary could tear a new asshole to even Custodes, but who was I to stop their suicidal glory-mongering?

All I needed to know was to follow the big blue man and hit the big bad bugs until it stopped hitting us back. Because that was the core of this plan. Go in, kill big boss bug, win.

Simple and stupid will probably work with Guilliman’s Primarch aura bending fate over and spanking it like a disobedient brat.

Because even if the capital F Fate was unlikely to exist, the Primarch Aura was known to warp reality so the Primarch wouldn’t die a lame death. Though it was debatable whether getting shanked by a Norn Emissary was a lame death …

Minutes ticked by and the spot of mold spread slowly until finally, finally, someone said the magical words I’d been waiting for. “Alright. Let’s go.”

I jumped up, barely holding back a grin. My one contribution to this planning was asking ‘Why don’t we just bomb them from orbit’ and got the most venomous look from Dante imaginable for my trouble. I didn’t even understand his answer, to be honest, something about … preserving the planet? Like it wasn’t beyond fucked already and an inhospitable wasteland even before the bugs wrecked it even further.

Not that it mattered. I would have had to scrub the rubble for a drop of biomatter from the Norn Emissary if they went with my suggestion so I didn’t really want them to accept it.

Anyway, Battle.

I headed out after Guilliman with a spring in my steps and grabbed myself one of the human officers to lead me to my assigned ride.

Watching the handfuls of baseline humans that came with Guilliman try to place me somewhere on the Imperial food chain in their minds was endlessly amusing. Like the man now sending confused glances my way every few seconds.

Somehow, my complete disregard for Imperial etiquette, looking like a human woman and not having been blasted into oblivion by the Primarch yet, left them all in a stump.

I only remembered having agreed to share the transport with other people when I found a frowning Mephiston surrounded by a squad of Librarians waiting right next to the Thunderhawk my guide was leading me towards.

This ride might be a bit awkward … I relaxed my facial muscles, letting everything go lax and leaving my face as still as a statue’s.

“Hi,” I said, then walked past the towering transhumans, and with a distinct lack of any seats with even the tiniest padding on them, I plopped down on one at random.

A few minutes later they followed me in and sat down one after the other. Without as much as a word. Then they stared at me and continued staring at me silently even as the ship rose into the air and transported us to our destination.

I’m glad I decided to leave the others behind… this is awkward as hell. I sat with my eyes closed and just focused on letting bio-energy and soul energy course through my body and applying some finishing touches to my new muscles.

The bones had to stay, and the same went for the neural network so I could keep up my psychic ‘conductivity’, but I could upgrade the muscles a bit with my new special sample without degrading my Psychic Form.

The Combat Form though, was going to get some more extreme upgrades … especially since Fulgrim’s sample worked the same way the Custodian’s had and the finished genetic template just popped into my mind the moment his blood touched my avatar’s eldritch tendril.

Better yet, I could use parts of it to combine it with the Custodes template to finish Selene’s new prototype body. I just had to actually give it to her.

The ride took only half an hour, but it felt like half a day. Still, we got there finally, and I did my best to not look like I was running away from those staring weirdos.

The ship landed atop the high mesas with hundreds of others still in the process of landing or vomiting out Space Marines.

While they did their thing I quickly went about teleporting in Selene and Val while Mephiston continued to loom in the distance with a single-minded focus.

Val stepped through first with a grin that didn’t dampen even as he bowed to me, then turned on his heel to enter into a staring match with the Chief Librarian.

I could feel their auras flaring and clashing in some psyker measuring contest I was unaware of, but it left me without Mephiston’s gaze stuck to the back of my head so I was happy.

Then came Selene, already covered in her armour.

“I have something for you,” I whispered, leading her further away from the still-arriving Thunderhawks landing around us.

“Oh?” She asked. “What? New weapons? Did you get something interesting from that ne- “

She yelped as I sent a tiny jolt through her armour and glanced meaningfully at the dozens of space marines doing absolutely nothing about hiding the fact that they were there to keep an eye on us.

“A moment, please.” Soul energy surged and rushed out of my body, constructing a small dome around us which would let neither light nor sound escape it, but would let both enter so we could still see the Marines busying themselves. “Okay, now we can talk without them listening in. Sorry for zapping you.”

Her helmet melted away, and she gave me a grin. “So, what do you have for me?”

“The first prototype for your new body is done,” I said. “Do you want to test it now? I don’t think we’ll have anything even half as challenging as these bugs to fight for quite a while.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?” She asked, frowning. “Testing isn’t usually done in a life and death battle.”

“Ignoring the fact that you are just about immortal, yes it is. That’s why I’m asking you whether you want to do it. Though I think with the bio-energy stored in your armour, you can hold any minor fault down until the fighting is done.”

“Hmmm,” she stared out at the many Space Marines already descending into the narrow ravines. “You’ll have my back, right?”

“Of course,” I smiled. “Though maybe just in a drone if you don’t want to face the things down in the caverns.”

“What are those anyway? Did they figure it out?”

“Apparently something called a Norn Emissary protecting a Norn Queen. The Primarch will be heading down there to mess them up so it's sort of a done deal.”

“I do want to see him fight,” she murmured. “We’ll see. I guess it’ll depend on how quickly I can get used to this new body.”

“It’s just like getting new armour,” I shrugged. “Takes a bit of practice, but not that hard.”

“Easy for you to say,” she took a deep shuddering breath. “You change bodies quicker than I change socks. I’ve had this body since I was born, it’s a little different. I think.”

“Sorry,” I grimaced. “You are right.”

She gave me a smile and nodded. Then slapped her cheeks lightly. “Alright. Do it. I’m ready.”

I grabbed ahold of the eldritch flesh of her armour and fed it the template, then went about gently and slowly applying that template onto Selene’s body after I shut off her pain receptors and sent her brain into a coma for just a few short moments where I shifted her body into the new form.

I pulled back my makeshift sleep spell and then slowly turned her nerves back on as she blinked awake from her quick nap.

I felt myself grin as wonder and joy radiated off of her soul in waves. She clasped and unclasped her armoured fists and I heard the Hive Tyrant carapace her armour was made of crack.

Selene froze in shock.

“We will have to get you stronger armour,” I said gleefully, and she turned a teary-eyed gaze toward me.

“Thank you,” she choked out before she gave me a radiant smile.