There was a weird tension in the air. I was not sure if that was because of my awkward initial interactions with the psykers or the looming rebel offensive that might be happening soon.

Apparently, they had never met a psyker who can go on and off at will, and me going psychic active so close to Fulton with my level of power had triggered distressing memories of a past experience he had with some warp entity in a previous mission where he almost lost his life. He confessed the very similar feeling of being severely outmatched had triggered his out of control outburst.

While that was not a valid excuse for him to lose control I assured the psyker this matter will not be pursued further by me in the future.

After receiving Fulton’s profuse apologies we went forward with the crash course. We proceeded smoothly on the lessons, silently agreeing to ignore the puddle of spilt decaf that served as a stark reminder of a disastrous close call.

Just as things were going into high gear, my crash course with the duo psykers came to an abrupt end when Thaberus interrupted the session with breaking news from the front. It seemed like the rebels would be starting their full offensive soon and I would need to prepare for departure to the frontlines immediately.

My presence at the frontline had become necessary as Krytopher had calculated that my tweaking of the plan had made the data load required increase twenty-fold, so he had rushed to build a device in close proximity to the frontline that was needed to cut down the margin of errors.

I already knew this was coming as a part of my consciousness was still connected to the Fortress’ machine spirit and the spike of traffic in encrypted vox messages did not go unnoticed.

That said, I did benefit greatly from the brief interaction with the psykers. First, I had accidentally mastered the conjuration of my halo during the second activation. The halo was one way to radiate my psychic might and it had so far proved useful to strike either reverence or fear into the Emperor’s subjects.

Second, I finally understood the basic concept of self-protection from the perils of the warp. The fundamental outline was quite simple; think of the warp as the sea and warp users as the swimmers, a normal swim in shallow waters would normally be quite safe and the chances of being eaten by a predator almost non-existent, except in this case sometimes the sea could come to you, so one needed to be perceptive to the currents.

Then there were the other considerations like the mental fortitude of each individual when assessing the risk of warp taint while using psychic powers, but we simply do not have the time to dwell into the details today. When I had free time more lessons would definitely be needed on this subject matter.

I was on my way to my room for another change of clothes, one aimed to impress and hopefully help in getting the full cooperation from the governor’s faction to make our grand trap successful. To that end, I had enlisted the help of Sister Dialogus Welminah on that front since I had always been a fashion idiot.

Welminah had stayed behind as a liaison for the Sororitas as she was not of the militant order. I had her waiting for me at my room via vox as I sped across the fortress’ massive walkway.

Halfway through my journey, I had a distinct feeling of being watched. Curious, I slowed down and noticed a security pict-feed, a term they used for cameras here, was aimed at me. I let my mind sink deeper into the fortress’ network and confirmed my hunch, at the same time my consciousness had reported to me there was another pict-feed looking at the control room which controlled the pict-feed looking at me.

So they even had a watcher watching the watchers, that’s the Imperium for you.

I tagged my mind into said pict-feed and a view popped into my vision showing a dimly lit room where two people were looking at a monitor. On its screen was yours truly focused close-up, the audio was also connected.

‘Is that the mystery guest?’ one man asked.

‘I think so, all sorts of important people were flying in just to see her, who do you think she is?’ the other man asked back.

‘Throne knows, that knowledge is beyond our clearance,’ shrugged the first man, ‘but she sure looks pretty.’

‘Wait … is she looking at the pict-feed?’

I had their attention and might as well use this convenient chance to test something. So I smiled, then instantly activated my halo and cranked it to maximum intensity. The two men in my overlapped vision panicked, moved back from the monitor, tripped over each other and fell over in comedic fashion.

Hilarious as it was, the brief testing of my halo effect seemed to indicate it could somehow permeate through live pict-feeds, but its effectiveness remained inconclusive.

How this was achieved was totally beyond me but… the grimdark universe was a place where scrap codes that transmit warp-infested computer viruses exist so the underlying principles might be the same.

That my halo, like the Emperor’s, which might be essentially a type of ‘positively charged’ warp energy emitter that could work through live pict-feeds might not be that far fetched of a concept after all.

At any rate, it felt like a bad idea to leave a record of the incident so I had my consciousness reach into the database of the fortress and erased the records on both ends. As I did so I wondered how all this was achieved as the computation happening in the backend must be enormous.

I looked down at my hands and remembered all primarchs were sentient weapons masquerading as semi-humans. Since that much was true the same must be said of Syrine. The fact that my consciousness now resided in such a body had implications that I had neither the time nor the will to deal with at the moment, so I shook off that uneasy feeling and hurried to my room.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Sister Welminah was already waiting at the door of my room when I reached it, my senses detected her breathing quickened as I approached. Nervousness, anticipation, reverence, somehow I could read her emotions like an open book and it felt strange. Rarely if ever had I evoked such emotions amongst other people back on earth; of course, if our position was flipped and I was back to my old self I would probably be a sweaty mess if a literal demi-goddess approached me in private.

She was about to bow when I raised my hand to stop her. ‘Be at ease, sister. It was I who requested your assistance.’

She bowed anyway, ‘I am at your service, Lady Syrine.’

Lady again, huh? This stiffness was suffocating so I decided to see how much boundaries could be pushed. ‘Welminah, you will be my teacher for the things I will be asking you, as such, I permit you to address me without honorifics in private, just call me Syrine.’

‘But…’ she raised her head with a horrified expression, but war was waiting so I just took her hand and opened the door.

Soon we were rummaging through Syrine’s glorious collection of clothes together, Welminah’s face lightened up considerably looking at the otherworldly garments befitting an imperial heiress of a galactic empire.

Now that I got a closer look at her, she was actually quite cute beneath all that scholar outfit so I could not resist and dropped a tease, ‘see anything you like? Looking at you I believe our size is compatible, how about I let you choose one to keep as a gift after this war is over?’ Welminah did not dare to reply but the look of her horrified face again was well worth it.

I avoided anything heavy or gaudy and we quickly settled on a simple yet regal outfit for the occasion. A quick change later we were in front of the large mirror in the bedroom, I looked into the reflection and wondered if I looked fitting for one who would be sending more than half a million souls to a risky gambit. One last thing before we would be ready.

‘Welminah, please teach me how to perform the proper greetings for high society in this world.’ Slightly stunned by my request but quickly coming to her senses, Welminah performed the gesture in front of me. As expected of a proper scholar, her greeting looked flawless.

The whole greeting gesture was a mixture of an old fashioned curtsy which then progressed to the Aquila hand sign that was only performed by female members of high society on the planet.

I committed her gesture to memory and tried performing it in front of Welminah. Let me see, lower my head slightly, hold up the edge of the outer cape, extend my right foot behind the left, slightly bend the knees and then bring myself up, proceed to do the Aquila hand sign and raise my head. Too easy, the level of precision provided by this body had made such a sequence of actions too easy.

‘Am I doing it correctly?’ I asked.

‘Perfectly done,’ Welminah was looking at me with sparkling eyes behind her goggles, ‘may I ask why would you go that far to show respect?’

Her question prompted me to take a closer look at the scholar, was she serious? Did she truly believe just because I had Syrine’s credentials that people would willingly do whatever I say or was this a thing in this universe? Or had I reached the age to throw out random wisdom? Being a member of the Sororitas which was an organisation of zealots might have skewed her point of view on these matters.

‘It is simple,’ I answered, ‘paying respect is free and I believe it should always be paid whenever appropriate.’

It was not as if I was a typical eight feet tall primarch with a legion of super soldiers numbering hundreds of thousands under my command, if that was the case etiquette would literally be optional when dealing with the normal folks. I had to play to my strength to increase my odds of long term survival going forward.

We finished up and proceeded to the landing pad where Flameraven was waiting. Welminah will be riding with me on the gunship for this trip to the front.

The Externus sun had just broken through the horizon and the morning wind made the scholar shiver as we approached the downed rear hatch of the flying fortress.

I was curious as to why Welminah was shivering when the temperature felt just fine before a shocking realisation hit me: all this while, I had been interacting with this world with the body of a super level transhuman and had been taking a lot of things for granted.

My mind was racing back to some of the minor details that happened since coming to this world, like back in the inner sanctum when I was able to easily push Alicya off me despite her being suited up in power armour and how the nameless sword was lighter than it seemed… So all that was because of my primarch level of physiology?

Am I losing my sense of humanity without even realising it?

‘Lady Syrine?’

Welminah’s concerned voice woke me up from my stupor, I had stopped walking and she dared not walk in front of me. I looked at the scholar again and found her still shaking in the morning breeze.

‘You are freezing, let’s get inside.’ I said and hastened my steps.

Thaberus was waiting at the rear hatch entrance, the tail ends of purity seals plastered on his shoulder pad were fluttering in the wind. Now that I think about it, that armoured capotain of his must be weighing like a helmet in a normal human’s hand.

Beside the inquisitor was Rantor the friendly stormtrooper, he was enjoying a lho-stub, its glowing ember end shining with the same intensity as the laser range finder optic of his hot-shot volley gun.

‘Good morning, Mister Rantor.’ While walking towards the gunship I greeted the big guy who I had not seen for a whole day.

‘Morning there, little miss. You are looking mighty fine today.’ He said while putting out his lho-stub and stepping aside to let us through.

Thaberus shot his retinue a side glance, took out a data-slate and accessed something on it. He then passed the data-slate to the henchman before dropping a comment, ‘Rantor, I hereby permit you to read this document. Go through with it and update your etiquette when dealing with Syrine effective immediately. Return this to me later.’

A puzzled Rantor took the data-slate and started reading while Thaberus greeted us with a nod. ‘Syrine, sister, follow me.’ As Welminah and I followed the inquisitor entering the gunship, behind us came the surprised gasp of Rantor.

I was greeted by the distinct smell of Flameraven’s interior again -- it was a sort of mix between an expensive car and an airline cabin. My mind could not help but think back on all the recent happenings. Everything felt like a lifetime ago and the hardest day was still ahead.

I reached out to greet the gunship's machine spirit.

<++Fully operational and ready to serve, Authority.++>

Being the authority, I might need to get used to that concept soon.