‘Time to go,’ I sent Selene a psychic nudge. ‘The blue man is blitzing his way through the tunnels. We’ll be late.’

I was reluctant to pull her away from her fun, but we would really be cutting it close if I didn’t just teleport us after the main strike group. Not something I really wanted to do down in these tunnels, especially with Mephiston basically vomiting right into the surrounding Warp to disrupt the Shadow of the Hive Mind — supposedly that was why he was doing it at least. It certainly worked for disrupting teleportation, too.

Narrowing my eyes at the dark corridor, I grabbed ahold of the veil and tried to force a portal to open. The air hissed and shuddered, then bent as a crackling small portal opened up. I couldn’t help but frown at that as I let go. If I went through that portal, I’d find myself scattered through the planet, if not the star system. I knew that just from having held it open for a moment. Crafty old monster.

‘Understood,’ she replied absently, and I could tell she went into overdrive. Slashes were more precise, brimming with energy, and went for the kill every time. I grimaced at one kill, where her blade cut a Lictor in half not because of how sharp the blade was, but because of the brute strength behind her strike. She only took a minute to clean up the leftovers. ‘I’m done.’

She was next to me a moment later, oozing satisfaction tinged with just a bit of nervousness. She had every right to be nervous. I wasn’t sure her pseudo-immortality wouldn’t be tested today, even if everything went right. The Hive Mind was not stupid. It had to know we were coming, and it had to have some plan or hope of victory if the Norn Queen was still down there, unmoving.

I projected some assurance her way, which seemed to calm her somewhat. She gave me the wisp of a smile, about the closest she would ever come to showing affection with unrelated people around.

Right.

I gave a minute glance at my two golden shadows. I couldn’t help but poke around at all the little knick-knacks hanging on their armour and under their flowing cloaks with my mental fingers, fearing what I’d find hidden there.

So far, there was nothing. Not a single sign of them having even that energy-spear and I certainly couldn’t find a creepy black skull hanging at their waist, either. It only made me more nervous.

“Will the two of you fight?” I asked neutrally and felt the faintest hint of surprise from the red-cloaked one — Octavian, I think? — while the other continued practising his masterful portrayal of a statue.

“Our duty is to protect you from undue harm until your purpose has been accomplished,” he said, which sounded entirely like non-committal garbage to me. He seemed to realise it too, as he paused for a moment. “We will. I will know when the time comes for the Emperor’s will to come true. Until then, you can assume we will protect you from all undue danger beyond your own power to face.”

“I see.” It took a monumental effort of will to not roll my eyes. Beyond my power to face my ass, if we found something like that, the two of them would be slaughtered, anyway.

Then there was ‘The Emperor’s Will™’. I had a nudging suspicion the senile skeleton wanted me to resurrect him, or at least heal up his corpse, to be a fitting vessel for him. Surely, he couldn’t know where I’m from, right? So he must have been just guessing and putting out feelers to figure out what my intentions were. Or did he already know?

As we set off, with me dashing off at just above the speed a marine would have been capable of, an even worse thought struck me. What if he planned this? If he put some control commands into the artefact that was now my body?

That was a worrying thought, one I would have dismissed a week ago … but then I absorbed the Shadowkeeper’s blood, and then Clonegrim’s. The fact that those templates were inside of me, faded and out of reach up until the moment I absorbed those samples without me having even the faintest idea, was worrying beyond belief.

If I missed those, what else could be hiding in the depths of my eldritch body? I already knew there had to be a treasure trove of Primarch templates hidden just beyond my reach. With so much to gain, I couldn’t just … stop absorbing new stuff.

We reached the drop, a tunnel arcing into a steep decline and then into a nearly vertical shaft. I reached down with my aura and felt dozens of animalistic souls, tied together in an ephemeral web scuttling up the steep walls and beyond them, hundreds of metres down, a large cavern opening up.

‘Ready?’ I asked Selene. She just sent a nudge back through our bond, urging me to stop stalling. Oh, well. I huffed, rolled my shoulders, and then hopped into the dark pit with a sleek bio-sword forming in my hands.

Selene jumped right after me, with the two golden warriors following a beat later. I so hated how impossible it was to faze them, and that went for Guilliman too. Annoying bunch.

The fact that I enjoyed my short few hours spent with a senile kleptomaniac skeleton more than with any member of my previous species — aside from Selene, but she didn’t count — was just … sad. Disappointing to the echo of my mind still thinking itself as one of them.

My sword spun, lashing out lazily as I fell and turned the occasional screeching alien into bloody chunks. Even with no psychic cheating, butchering my way through anything short of a Hive Tyrant was effortless.

I slowed my descent as I felt the shaft’s end closing in. I launched myself over the gory remains of a dozen Tyranids that fell quicker than me. Telekinesis really was turning out to be my favourite psychic power. Flying and doing action-hero-like flyby stunts had a strange charm to it.

I grabbed hold of Selene with a mental hand before she smashed face-first into the gore and quickly snatched her out of the way. A moment later, two half-ton golden giants smashed down like meteors and only the quick conjuration of a psychic shield saved the two of us from a literal bloodbath.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

With that done, I let my aura flow into the cavernous halls and the many tunnels. Down here, the Shadow was dense, making the Warp murky and thick with dark power.

My third eye opened up as I looked around and, while squinting, I could vaguely see Guilliman’s radiant soul dimly shining through the heavy darkness. This was something else. Not even the Swarmlord had been a potent enough node for the Hive Mind to set up a Shadow this heavy.

Well, I guess I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. I stifled a grin. While it would surely trouble Mephiston and the rest of the regular Psykers, it also meant I could drink in the power of the Warp with impunity.

If I couldn’t see through this darkness, neither could the Daemons.

I reached out, gingerly at first, with a few thin questing tendrils extending down from my Soul Puddle. They brushed up against the surface of the still Warp, waiting, watching for any reaction.

When none came, they plunged into it and drank heavily. The lecherous energy of the Warp, slowed and sluggish as it was from the Shadow, still surged to corrupt the pure soul energy. The fervour with which it rushed to taint it was still the same.

I held the tendrils in a vice-like grip, mental hands clamped down around them lest they widen and form a tunnel firmer than I would want. This limited the throughput, but with dozens of tendrils touching down, it didn’t matter. Accidentally forming a permanent connection to the Warp would be a nightmare.

Selene froze for a brief instant, her eyes widening and glazing over. I watched with some measure of amusement as her tiny soul awoke in my forest realm and rushed to the edge, looking out through the barrier.

She stared, agape, at the dark waters climbing up through the tendrils and surging into the sea of energy down below her secure little heaven. Feeling her worry, slowly growing to border on terror, I gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

Selene snapped out of it, most of her consciousness snapping back into her body as she turned to stare at me. ‘What is happening? Are you in dang-’

‘I’m recharging,’ I sent, projecting calm confidence through our bond. Nothing reassured people quite like others viewing something shocking with disinterest. ‘I refrained from doing so since I added the tw- three of you into my ‘realm’, but all that energy doesn’t come out of nowhere and this is the safest possible way for me to get my hands on the stuff.’

‘But it's… dark? Isn’t it corrupted? Chaos infused, or something?’

‘Watch,’ I nudged her soul a bit, guiding its attention down to the chaotic darkness down below. The energy tried to lash out, eat through my soul energy to grow, expand, corrupt, but instead, it was getting pushed back. The mass of darkness was only growing slowly, and even that was just because I was drawing in more and more of it with each moment.

I wrapped a chunk of it up in a layer of soul energy and pulled it up, setting it down right in front of the barrier through which my worried lover was staring. She stared at the violently swirling darkness as I let it go.

It dimmed, however much it lashed out and tried to sink its fangs into, it didn’t matter as the imperious white light of my soul pushed it back relentlessly. Effortlessly even. I didn’t need to focus on it. It just happened. The chaotic Warp energy just couldn’t exist for any length of time near my soul.

‘ … How long are you going to keep doing that?’ She asked once the chunk of darkness turned into nothing right before her eyes.

‘Until the lead synapse creature dies,’ I said. ‘The shadow is keeping the daemons and the nosy psykers away for now, but they would come running like moths to a flame without it.’

‘So this will continue throughout the upcoming fight?’

‘Is it bothering you?’ I asked. ‘If it’s too uncomfortable, or will distract you, you might have to sit out the fight.’

I felt a hint of frustration at that, with even a tinge of betrayal.

‘Selene,’ I had to cut off that line of thought. ‘The warp might have been endless, unconcerned with however many billions of psykers drew on its powers every day, but my little puddle of energy is decidedly not so. With three of us using it, it will run dry if I don’t replenish it every so often.’

‘I understand that,’ she said slowly. ‘But must it be now? During the fight?’

‘As I said before, the Shadow this thick is basically an invitation for me to do just that,’ I tried to explain. ‘I might be able to fight off the daemons, but I don’t exactly want to do so if I don’t have to. Plus, every psyker in this sector would have felt my presence otherwise. I can’t not make use of this opportunity.’

We walked in silence for a bit after that, with me guiding our little group through cavernous halls and twisting tunnels, aiming vaguely in Guilliman’s direction. My aura senses were almost useless, so I had to resort to sending out a swarm of insect drones to scout out the path.

‘I see,’ she seemed to sigh mentally as the tightly coiled emotions in her aura slowly unravelled. I held back a sigh of relief as every hint of betrayal or resentment was gone, only leaving a vague frustration and a steely resolve. ‘I’m sorry for acting like that. It … it feels horrible. I just don’t know whether I’ll be able to focus on the fight like this.’

‘How does it feel?’ I couldn’t help but ask. I myself certainly felt the repulsive energy. It was like being coated in shit inside and it. It made me feel disgusted and violated in equal measure. With that said, I learned to ignore it and couldn’t imagine Selene, having been a guardswoman, wasn’t used to feeling disgusting.

‘I … don’t know,’ she hesitated. ‘It’s not a feeling I can describe, but it’s horrible. Like staring down a blaster’s barrel. I … think it feels like doom, if that makes sense. Like a promise to take everything good I have away and violate it before my eyes.’

‘Huh,’ I tapped my chin, resorting to telekinetically shoving everything in our way away to clear our path. The custodians made short work of anything that survived my gentle, sound-barrier-breaking shove into the walls. ‘The Warp is a nasty piece of work. I’m sorry this makes you feel that way, but doing this any other time would be magnitudes worse. If you think this sluggish warp energy is bad, you can’t possibly imagine how having a daemon forcing its way into your soul feels.’

She shivered at that, a wave of disgust washing through her aura. ‘ … that was an atrocious attempt at consolation, Echidna.’

I held back a grimace. ‘Sorry.’

She just shook her head, faint amusement flashing through our bond as she smiled. It looked a bit forced, but she was at least trying. ‘I wonder how the others are handling it.’

I blinked. Right. Others.

Stupid tunnel vision. How was my mind so one-tracked when I had more than a hundred mind cores? I swear I would have forgotten about that Eldar girl if Selene hadn’t reminded me, and even Val occasionally slipped my mind.

Feeling a touch guilty, especially after having let him rush off to murderize his way through the Tyranids, I reached out to him. Then quickly shut the connection off after an instant of his feelings surging through it.

He was enjoying himself. Immensely. Somehow, feeling the touch of the Warp put the Eldari into a gleeful frenzy. It reminded me of a man gloating over his ex about how good his new life was without her.

The fanatical girl I left somewhere on Baal with her human boyfriend, on the other hand, was horrified. For me. I almost facepalmed once I cut my connection to her, too. The girl thought I was fighting some ‘great evil’ and was praying in terror for my success.

Why is everyone so weird? Or is it me? Do I have a curse that attracts weirdos to me, or is this just how this galaxy is?

I followed my scouting drones’ directions absently for the next few minutes as I tried to forget what I’d just learned.

Then one of the little drones, one looking like a beautiful white dragonfly, rushed back to me. It didn’t even slow, sinking into my skin and dissolving into my body as the tiny mind core that controlled it reconnected with the rest.

I straightened my back and increased my pace into a sprint, Selene and the two custodes mirroring me with a start.

“I found Guilliman,’ I said out loud, then let some bio-energy burn away to push my body beyond its natural limits. “And he is already fighting the Norn Emissary.”

Selene gained a grim look, her helmet flowing over her head again as two swords formed in her hands as the two golden giants grunted in affirmation behind me.

As I followed the route my drone gave me, I felt my heart racing in my chest thunderously. A primal thirst for battle surged within me as an expectant grin stretched across my lips. My fight with the Shadowkeeper might have been a fluke and ended with Mephiston barging in on it, but this fight would not.

Let’s see what the ‘strongest Tyranid bioform’ has to offer.