[Time elapsed since the start of the battle: 24h31m12s]
Huh, okay. That was … fun? My part of the deal was done and Dante already gave me most of what I wanted, whether he would actually hold up his part when the big blue man arrived would be another thing entirely though. Let’s hope I scared them just enough to respect me, but not enough to drop a cyclone torpedo on the planet to kill me.
It wouldn’t work, but it would be a pain. Plus, losing Zedev — the only person whose soul I haven’t yoinked yet — would be disappointing. I sort of liked him. He was willing to experiment and invent, even with the usual abhorrence of such things by his peers pressing down on him. I still owe him some Swarmlord samples too.
After I was done on Baal, I’d need to set aside some free time. I needed to plan, to think about my next moves more carefully. I’d been going off of whims and hasty calculations, predictions.
There is still much to do here, though. Whatever was down in the caverns needed killing and a quick introduction to death. Then Guilliman’s arrival was also looming closer and closer, and most importantly, whatever Selene was worried about would need to be resolved.
Let’s see what can be done about the last. I Blinked, the ripple in reality was truly just a ripple, not the veritable tsunami I sent crashing through the Warp’s surface when I started using the Spell. It did little for its speed or range, but the smoothness would go a long way, keeping me from notice.
“Hi!” I chirped, appearing behind Selene, who disappointingly just turned to stare at me with about as much disapproval as she could manage. I sort of regretted giving her the enhanced senses. Her little yelps when I teleported behind her were precious. “We should tell the Commander that we are out, and then we can do whatever?”
“Alright.” She nodded, huffing as she let her frown drop. “Do you want this?”
I glanced at where she was pointing. A good dozen Carnifexes and other more unique forms of Tyranids laid on the ground. Dead, one and all.
“I won’t eat your kills.” I smiled at her. “You have just as much use for them as I do now.”
“If you say so,” she shrugged. “Won’t you starve? You’ve lost most of your energy when that Necron kidnapped you, haven’t you?”
“I’m doing just fine.” I gave her a smile. As I said that, a single butterfly landed on the back of my hand and transferred all the bio-energy the swarm has collected around here. I still had a bunch of them fluttering about, collecting energy under the Blood Angel’s noses. They had much more pressing concerns than some weird new fauna.
I was almost back to my previous stores already, and that was if I didn’t count the bio-energy I retrieved from my Soul Pond. I was doing just fine.
“No need to worry your pretty head about that.”
She just raised an eyebrow at me, a smile slowly tugging at her lips. She was pristine, not a drop of blood on her armour, and even the silky cloth parts of it looked brand new. Her hair was a touch disheveled though, and sweat was trickling down her cheeks.
“Let’s get that talk with Dante over with, and we can throw you into a bath and a bed.” I said, giving her a nudge. “Before that, though, absorb these.”
“Yeah, right.” She nodded, giving me a grateful look as she turned to the corpses and one by one absorbed them. She was doing it at a snail’s pace compared to me, but just that she could do it was a great thing. This was something that’d keep her alive even when I couldn’t.
“Before bed, I want to talk to you about something.” She said over her shoulder.
“Should I be worried?”
“No,” she drawled, then she threw a caring smile my way. “I don’t think so.”
“Alright.” I nodded. I’d have been rather worried had I not felt the care in her voice. ‘We need to talk’ was always what foreshadowed ‘we are breaking up’, but that can’t be right. She cared for me, on some level at least, that was clear. Did I do something to upset her? Think … think … was it that I bossed her around in that cultist cave? Did my human experiments set her off?
“Don’t worry so much,” said Selene, giving me a swift side-hug. “It is nothing bad, nothing you should worry this much about.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to banish those thoughts, but I fucked up more than enough relationships for the trauma to linger this deep into another life. The doubts wouldn’t go away that easily. Not to say that I had an eternity to dwell on all my life decisions as I floated aimlessly in the void before being dragged over to this galaxy. “Ready to go?”
“As much as I ever will be.” She said with a grimace, but I just formed a portal in front of us instead of Blinking. “Oh.”
“After you?” I waved her forwards, and she gave me a smile before striding through the portal. I stopped, thinking of something. Flicking my hand backwards, a hundred droplets of eldritch flesh transformed into flying drones as they fell, catching themselves with white feathered wings before they dashed off into the distance in every direction.
Those little doves would look around the planet for me and see whether there were any other nests like the one I found.
I followed after her a moment later, casually disregarding the sea of butchered Tyranid corpses littering the white sand as far as the eye could see. My little rabbit has been busy.
On the other side, what greeted us was an empty storage room deep inside the fortress, possibly abandoned because it was so far out of the way. I could have teleported us right into our room, but a bit of a walk could help us unwind.
“Sooooo, how was your day?” I asked as we walked. Boring twisting hallways were quickly becoming one of my least favourite things.
“It was nice,” she hummed with a happy lilt in her voice. “It is … rejuvenating, fighting like that.”
“Like what?” I asked. “Didn’t you grow tired of fighting in the Guard?”
“I grew tired of fighting with flashlights and under idiots.”
“Fair enough,” I giggled at the nostalgic frown on her face. “How are you doing, by the way? I hope that … procedure didn’t leave any side effects.”
“Oh, it did.” She gave me a long look before shaking her head. “Though none of them are negative per se, and I’d have traded those whispers for anything, really. Thank you for that.”
“Mind sharing what those are?” I asked, my curiosity getting the best of me as it usually did. Plus, maybe I could help her, maybe I could even remove those side effects.
“I can feel you now.” She wasn’t looking at me now, just staring in my direction, her gaze looking somewhere far deeper. “The real you, I can feel it, always and constantly. Even with that barrier you put up, I can feel your presence whenever I draw on that realm’s power.”
“Oh?” I was confused for a moment, didn’t she already feel me through our telepathic connection before? My internal question must have been written all over my face, as she took it upon herself to answer.
“You know, there is a reason that Eldar started worshiping the ground you walk on.” She said. “I think all of us can feel the quality of your soul now, and the stark contrast between it and our own. You are powerful. We knew that, I knew that, but this is something else.”
I gave her time to speak, just walking beside her as I listened to her talk, drinking in every word.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“I have felt the Space Marines in this Fortress, I have felt Librarians and they are so much less than you.” She frowned. Frustration? “How do I say this?” she murmured, before sighing. “You are … different from everyone else, you are just more in a way I can’t really describe. You- You feel like a God.”
The last word was barely a whisper, but I heard it as well as the tremble in her voice as she said it. I pulled her in for a hug, our armour dissolving into thin silky robes. She stiffened at first, but relaxed into my arms.
“There is nothing godly about me,” I said. “And even if there was, the term would be ‘Goddess’.”
“You are-” She snorted. “You are weird.”
“Goddess of Weirdness, that’s me.” I shrugged with a smile. “And Beauty, don’t forget Beauty.”
“You certainly have a level of narcissism bordering on the divine.” This time, she hugged me back and laid her head on my chest.
“I aim to please.” I raised my chin in mock pride, but then I dropped the act. “Does it worry you?”
“Of course it does.” She said after a moment of silence, turning her head to look up at me. “I don’t know how exaggerated the Emperor’s and the Primarch’s feats were, but from what I saw from you, you aren’t far behind and you just keep getting stronger.”
“Hmm.” I smiled to myself. Could I take a Primarch? A weaker one, like Lorgar maybe? Hmmm, once I can incorporate the Swarmlord’s genes into my Forms I probably could.
“I don’t know what you are thinking about, but please don’t.”
“I don’t know whatever you might be talking about?” I tilted my head in mock confusion. “I could certainly take a Custode though, even if Primarchs are beyond me.”
“Urgh.” She groaned. “Could you stop thinking about killing demigods for a moment?”
“Custodes would be a quarter god at most. Is ‘Quarter-God’ a word?”
“It isn’t.”
“Unfortunate.” I shrugged.
“Anyway.” She glared at me, but with her still being wrapped up in my arms and having her chin on my chest, it was really just adorable. “What makes me … worried, is that I can feel how only a fraction of your true strength can be channelled through this body of yours.”
“Really?” I raised an eyebrow. “I can’t really tell, to be honest.”
“How?” She looked incredulous. “Don’t you feel, I don’t know, suffocated in this body?”
“Nope.” I said. “If anything, this body grounds me. When I was just a soul, everything felt so very distant. I was detached from everything, I still am. Living through this avatar is what makes me alive.”
“That’s-” She frowned, lips pulled into a taut line. “I can’t really understand how that might feel.”
“You don’t have to.” I gave her a peck on her forehead. “It is more than enough that you are even trying to. Thank you for that.”
“Of course.” She said with a slight flush rising to her cheeks.
I just stared into her glimmering grey eyes, and she stared back into mine. By then, I’d long forgotten my stupid worries of her wanting to break up with me. Doubting her felt stupid. She was so good to me, she wouldn’t leave me just because of some annoyance. That doesn’t mean I can’t be a better partner.
“We should probably go.” She whispered, but she didn’t move and nor did she remove her gaze.
“Should we?” I playfully raised my eyebrow.
“I’m tired and I stink.”
“I can fix that.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “No.”
“Alright.” I pulled back as she twirled out of my hold. I watched on thoughtfully as the tension that settled into Selene’s body when she said the word ‘No’ drained out of her.
I see. I thought sadly. She was nervous about saying no to me. I had no idea what to do about that. I didn’t know how to reassure her. This wasn’t a situation where something along the lines of ‘trust me bro’ would be enough.
The power dynamic in our relationship was rather skewed, and there wasn’t much I could do to fix that. The most I could do was give her a body similar to my avatar, but she’d refused any biological modifications before. Maybe she’d change her mind, maybe not. Even that wouldn’t change the fact that my soul is basically a god compared to hers, if her senses weren’t playing tricks on her.
Maybe just seeing for herself would be enough, just me accepting any boundary she sets as an iron hard wall. Actions spoke louder than words, and when words weren’t enough, all that remained was action.
We walked briskly, our talks turning into mundane small-talk from there on. The hallways slowly grew more populated. Some people threw us wary and confused glances, but most of them had no idea who we were. All they saw were two women walking down the halls in far too pristine clothes for the situation and with little regard for any of them.
Selene put on her stoic mask as she always did, seeming unapproachable and cold while I was putting a soft pressure on everyone’s minds to not bother us. It wasn’t anything that would keep them from noticing us, but merely a suggestion that not being annoying was for the best.
Soon we reached the parts where instead of ragged humans, the towering transhumans scuttled about. The Space Marines were harder to influence. Their minds were thick and tough, but even a rock could be moulded by a gentle stream.
I only dropped the telepathic suppression when I knocked on the open doorframe of the command room.
“Hi.” I smiled as a dozen centuries old veterans engineered for war turned to me. “The day is up, I thought to give a report?”
“Yes.” Dante said as he turned to face me, his expression hidden behind his golden death-mask. “Is there anything that would need my attention?”
“Maybe.” I said as I thought about the thing hiding in those caverns. I wasn’t sure about killing it, and throwing some named Space Marines at it to see what it’d do could be a good idea. It’d also show Dante how nice and cooperative I was. Which he would hopefully report to Guilliman once he arrived. “I did find something interesting.”
Maybe I could even throw the big blue man at the problem. Whatever that is, there is no way it could handle a Primarch’s plot armour.
“So be it.” Dante nodded, then he turned to the others who were watching on intently. “I will be back within the hour.”
I gave a single nod towards Seth, whom I saw standing menacingly in the back, looking at us like we were both mud on his boot and the most interesting animals in a zoo. He had such an expressive face, though he might just have mastered frown-glaring.
I let Dante take the lead. It was as much a show of respect as me not knowing the nearest place where we could safely chat was.
Selene followed a step behind me and I just trotted after Dante like a little duckling following her mother. Pride. That was what would demand me to stand shoulder to shoulder with him, or even have him acknowledge my superiority.
I was disregarding that pride rather easily now; I suspected it’d be much harder if there wasn’t a purpose for me acting like this. Hmmm. If this fucker doesn’t pay me back for me showing respect later though …
I was even acting like he was my superior in front of his men, despite us merely having made a deal. There was a fine line between looking subservient and respectful, and I wasn’t willing to step over that line. Subservience was … revolting to a primal part of me.
“Here.” He spoke and headed into a room with a circular table with far too large chairs around it. “Sit.”
“Sure,” I hummed, flopping down into a chair I pulled out with a touch of TK, both for myself and Selly. She stayed standing behind me for a moment, but sat down with a soft sigh.
She wanted to play the bodyguard, and while that was sorta cute, I didn’t need bodyguards. I needed my cute comfort rabbit sitting close to me.
“I appreciate your help. You have possibly saved the lives of hundreds of my men today.” He started out. “Now, what have you found that you believe would need my attention?”
“I don’t know.” I tilted my head. “I don’t know what it is, but there is some sort of advanced Tyranid Bioform hiding out in an expansive cave system some way around in that direction.”
He just nodded, glancing in the direction I pointed. There was a question in his aura. I could tell he wasn’t too pleased about being pulled away from his command, so he was waiting for something worth his time. As if just talking to me wasn’t enough.
“From what little I could gleam, it seemed stronger than even the Swarmlord we fought.” I said with a mental eye-roll that managed to grab the ancient warrior’s attention.
“Are you sure?” He asked, audibly holding himself back from sounding demanding, but there was still a bite to his tone.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’d say it is considerably stronger, taller, tougher, stronger, stealthier. It is an all around menace. Plus, those caverns were eye-catching too, covered in Tyranid gestation pods and other similar stuff.”
“Where exactly was this?” He asked, now deathly calm. That was some professionalism.
“I’d say about … “I thought about it, calculated and tried to come up with the best way to tell the exact position I was referring to. “Don’t you have maps here?”
“We have some in the war room.” He said after a moment. “Come.”
“Wait.” I stopped him as he started to rise. Selly was tired already, I wanted to be done with this quickly and head for a bed. Being hung up in a command room with a dozen giant transhumans talking about combat strategy for hours was not what I wanted to be doing. “This one?”
Illusions were unfortunately something that got pushed onto the sidelines in favour of more explosive psychic Spells, but they shined when a problem couldn’t be solved by blowing it up. So despite my lacking training in this school of psionics, I could easily replicate the same map I could see through my aura in the command room.
“Yes.” He sat down, only taking a brief moment to stare at the illusion before he just accepted it being there and disregarded the ‘how’. Though, he is probably rather used to seeing weird space magic bullshit.
“This region.” I drew a red circle around the region where I saw the cave openings. “Is where I saw at least fifty cave openings scattered around the deep gorges and wherever else. I descended into this one.”
A single dot lit up in blue.
“And this is what I saw.” This time, a hologram lit up that replayed what I saw through the Drone’s eyes. I blurred the image a bit and modified some things on it so it was impossible to tell that it wasn’t actually me there.
The replay stopped right as ‘ I ‘ laid eyes on the giant Tyranid. Then I cut it.
“That was my ‘report’ Commander, do with it what you wish.” I said as I stood up to stretch. “If you send a kill team down there, I’d recommend waiting a few days. Or just dropping something big and explosive on top of it, not sure if that thing is something that can be killed by anything less than a cyclonic torpedo.”
“Thank you.” Dante nodded, he too stood up and gave us a nod. “If we send a kill team down there, would you be willing to accompany them?”
“If the kill team is sent … “ How much?
[Indomitus Fleet ETA: 2d1h3m]
Wait what? How?
“More than two days and one hour from now, then yes. Before that, no and I don’t recommend sending anything, but scouts either,” , mentally thinking over whether I was losing track of time. Maybe my initial calculation was way off or Guilliman was dumb enough to Warp-jump inside the system? Thoughts for later.
“Very well.” His demeanour revealed nothing, but confusion marred his aura along with a touch of frustration. “I’ll be in the command room if you change your mind.”
“Sure. Ah, and by the way, I killed that worm thing that’d been bothering you along with a tiny Chaos cult I found along the way. You are welcome.” I gave him a smile. “Anyway, remember, two days, Commander. You’ll see that there are still some miracles to be had in this dark galaxy of ours.”
With that we departed, heading separate ways. Dante dashed off to his buddies to plan, and I headed back into our room with Selene.
“A bath sounds nice.” I hummed, giving Selene a side-eye. “You know, since they are rationing water here, shouldn’t we just take a bath at the same time to not waste water?
“No.” she said without even looking at me. There was still a tension in her shoulder as she said that, but significantly less so than before. “You can probably just conjure up some water anyway.”
“Killjoy.” I rolled my eyes, smiling to myself as her stoic mask melted away with our room’s door coming into view.