“Yes,” I said, tone clipped and tinged with irritation as I gred at the Inquisitor. “Yes, for the up tenth time: it will work, even if you eat it while nibbling on Jurgen’s toe. This is a purely anic process that no anti- fuckery will e.”

  “That’s a mental picture I could have lived without,” muttered under his breath, looking queasy and pale.

  They dragged their feet, clearly worried I’d done something nefarious to their healing pills and even had the audacity to request a fifth one so they could first test it on someone else.

  “No,” I said firmly, finally having had enough. “Eat it, or don’t. It’ll turn to ash the moment I step out of this room. So you better be quick about it if you want any payment at all. I think I’ve been more than aodating.”

  The two goons still had very dangerous lookia rifles poi the artifact, but that would prove worthless if they couldn’t pull the trigger in time.

  Even without soul energy to enhance my body, just being supercharged with bio-energy would allow me to move faster than they could see. Their ‘threats’ of destroying the artifact was empty and worthless.

  I didn’t ht say I’d take the thing with me when I left and that if they kept being obtuse, all they would be left with would be a pile of ashes and a new, dangerous enemy.

  By the look in Amberly’s eyes, they heard me loud and clear though. My clear disregard for their choice also seemed to calm her somewhat, which might be why, in a quick burst of movement — like she didn’t want to allow herself time to sed guess herself — she popped the pill into her mouth.

  I leaned back, a slow smile f on my lips as she tried to bite down on it but her teeth found nothing. The tightly coiled hair-thin tendrils inside unwound and surged into her body the moment the pill touched her tongue.

  Telepathically eg to the bits of my flesh in the pill wasn’t in lih the spirit of reement, but I still did it. If I’d messed up something and the process needed a quick, scious fix midway through, at worst, Amberley could depose into a pile of goop.

  No, I couldn’t allow the process to go sideways after I’d bothered to ihis much time and effort into this retionship. Sunk-cost falcy, and all that.

  Luckily, I didn’t eveo intervene as the process went as smoothly as could be. In just a few short seds, it was over and the Inquisitor was left hale and whole.

  “Holy Terra,” muttered, staring wide eyed at his lover who went from looking to be ie thirties to 25 at best.

  All blossoming wrinkles evened out, slightly loose skin hanging on muscles past their prime now wound tightly around her picture perfe. Even her hair turned more silky and lustrous as the final wave of bio-energy washed over her.

  The remaining energy settled safely in her heart, ready te down along her veins and heal whatever wounds she sustained iure. My smile widened a bit. Everythi perfectly.

  “See?” I asked with just enough smugo make my opinion of their dithering clear. “She didn’t grow a sed head, nor did she turn into a pile of goo. If you are still worried about some corruption, have your psyker and that healer check her out but get on with it.”

  Annoyingly, they took me up on the offer and had the psyker check for any hint of Demonic corruption on the Inquisitor. Of course, they found nothing. Which theed iher three eating their pills oer the other.

  ’s wizened, battle-worn look disappeared and in the pce of the turies old issar who’s seen it all was a youthful man who looked to be on his first outing after finishing his studies. At his request, I didn’t repce his meical hand with an anie. Apparently, its steady aim and perfect trigger trol was something he’d e to rely on to save his life when it came down to a firefight.

  The others had no such holdups. Jurgen still looked like he’d a yer of mud baked onto his skin and had his face bashed in with a hammer a few times, but now he had a mane of thick hair and his skin was bereft of any pockmarks and ae.

  Rakel’s ge was the least outwardly visible one. Sure, she’d also been de-aged by at least one and a half decades, but that was it. She had aged remarkably well before too, so the visible ge came down to her skin turning firm and supple while her tour evened out a bit.

  I paid close attention to her though, as her genes felt the most … ‘fragile’ out of the four of them. Jurgen’s were as solid as his thick skull, unbending and firm even after the turies of wear and work they’d been through. I suppose denying the was less straining on the person than eling it.

  I was tempted to fix the girl up a bit, but I was no charity and they didn’t even wao do it. The girl might also just die of a heart attack if she felt my power touch her.

  “Looks like everything’s in order,” I observed, giving them a x smile. I allowed them a few seds to marvel at their new bodies that not only felt spry and young again, but better than ever. “Meaning, we get on with the part and don’t even think about doing anything … stupid.”

  I gave a meaningful look at Amberley, then gnced down at her fingers h above her sidearm in an almost casual-seeming manner.

  “You have my word that I will destroy the artifact,” I said, putting some of my soul into the promise. Hopefully, an Inquisitor would know what it meant and assume the exact things I wanted her to assume because of it. Even if said assumptions would be wrong. “Either by nightfall in a few hours, or when I’m doh my experiments. Whichever es first. o try something you’ll regret. You have five whole turies of life to look forward to now, you all do.”

  Amberley nodded slowly, and gingerly moved her hand away from her holster, though she kept staring at the artifact with an indescribable look on her face. Inwardly, I could tell she was torn about going along with me, her mental walls having weakened from the shoy rejuvenation therapy.

  “S- so, how will this go?” She asked, stumbling over her words a bit at the first sound of her new voice. IT was familiar, but of a higher pitd just alien enough to give her pause. “The ‘experiments’, I mean.”

  “I take a test subject,” I said, snapping for show as with a faint pop, a man appeared o me a metre off the ground and fell into a heap at my feet. The man groaned and hurriedly tried to stand up, but I pressed my palm against his sweaty forehead caked in dry blood — e — and made him woozy enough that even just trying to touch his face would end up with him smag himself in the mouth by act. “And I see what happens if I use that artifa him. In case you’re worried, this man led one of the smaller Chaos cults in a town not far from here aheir atta the local hospital. I also made sure he wasn’t ied by Chaos enough that Daemons could look through his eyes, not that they would be able to with Jurgehing down his neck.”

  “I … see,” Amberley said.

  “Well, if there is nothing else?” I asked, raising an eyebrow and the Inquisitor shook her head. “Well, then. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to throw the Bnk out the tent so I get results?”

  “I’d really rather not,” Amberley said dryly, though I could tell she felt she had little hope of keeping me here if I really wao leave. I had, after all, just teleported a whole ass man right into a Bnk’s null-field.

  I just shrugged, and with a small wave of my hand, the artifact appeared in my hand. Tendrils of energy extended into the cultist’s body from my palm on his forehead, roiling through his nervous system and numbing it all enough that his body refused to obey his ands but I left his brain untouched. I’d noticed before that unsciouseo weaken the e between body and soul a bit, likely some evolutionary defence meism so as to lessen the likelihood of possession when most vulnerable.

  No, I needed him awake and scious. I tensed his muscles, f him to sit on his knees and remain rigid before I put the golden s around his ned let the gem rest against his ragged shirt. The artifact tried to ee again, but it stopped when I let got. I felt it faintly touch the man’s soul, thereat into the gem, returning to its hibernation.

  My eyebrows twitched faintly, the picky little gem didn’t want the weakling I offered it. That’s what I assumed at least.

  Let’s see. Is it a problem of fuel or soul-strength? I mused, then stepped around the man and with a fiip against his bare neck, I infused him with some of my soul energy. I couldn’t strengthen his flimsy soul, but I could provide the needed fuel, if that’s what the silly gem wanted.

  The damhing roiled instantly, and I ses feelers surging through the man’s body, ing around my tendrils of energy and rag along them. For a moment I thought it did what I wanted, but then I noticed all the feelers were rag towards my hand instead of spreading out across the man’s body or reag for his soul.

  I pulled my hand back before they could reach me, cutting off the supply of energy and watched. The feelers froze, almost like they were hesitating, but more likely, they were just recalg and running through whatever ‘algorithms’ guided them. Slowly, almost relutly, the feelers pulled back, looking like they might head bato the gem and wait for my supply of energy.

  The energy itself had surged down along the feelers and into the gem itself, making it glow with a bright ethereal light that forced my human onlookers to squint. When the feelers coiled up somewhere in the man’s chest and reached up along his spiowards his brain, the edge of my lips twitched into an echo of a grin. It was not going back to rest.

  The artifact was reag for the tendril linking the man’s material form to his immaterial soul.

  I was tempted to link my realm with the below housing the man’s soul … but then I cast a g the deathly pale Psyker trying to be as far away from both me and Jurgen as possible. I didn’t know how much she was feeling this close to the Bnk, but I retty sure she would feel it if I did as I wanted.

  Instead, I opened my third-eye on my forehead and an additional two on the palms of my hands and aimed them all at my test subject, peering through the veil and trag the thread eg him to his soul as the artifact’s energy raced along it.

  “I’d reend not looking into any of my eyes,” I said absently, not even gng at my onlookers. “You might see something you’d really wish you hadn’t.”

  I cared nothing for whether they responded, or did as I suggested. Instead of the mind-twisting , they’d see my realm if they stared into my eyes, and while it too would likely break a weaker will, I retty sure these four would survive.

  And I also had something more important to watch. The energy reached the soul, floating deep within the and I roused a thousand mind-cores, merging them all into my primary thought-stream to boost my focus and ition to truly supernatural levels. Nothing would escape my notice.

  Twisting tendrils of energy spread through the tiny soul like a web, smaller still veins of energy f away and spreading the artifact’s power to every nook and y. The rger arteries stayed thitil they reached the threshold that separated the soul from the rest of the , keeping the majority of their energy to themselves instead of letting it ihe soul.

  I narrowed my focus, examining that ever so faint threshold that would hold up until the man’s material body perished and his true soul rebounded into the . Another split part of my mind watched as the same infusion of energy happeo that true soul, through without the rge arteries.

  No, the most important bit was happening in the , to that shadow of a soul. I watched as the rge els of energies linked up to the threshold and unloaded their sizable amount of payload into it, infusing it with power, stability and strength. Then, with a final surge of energy, the flow of power stabilised and the threshold proteg the soul from outside influence was left magnitudes better for it.

  There was only one problem though.

  A quarter of a sed passed, then a half and then a whole sed as I kept my eyes focused on every vein and every lioving energy, memorising, quantifying and analysing. Then the energy ran out after only another sed and the veins dried up, the threshold weakened and the man was left with gapiy ravines crisscrossing his soul.

  His soul quaked and shuddered, clearly in immense agony as its eructure had been mangled beyond saving. When I stopped the man’s heart a moment ter and shattered his mind with a quifusion of bio-energy, I sidered it a mercy.

  “Curious,” I mused aloud, eyes still gzed over and distant as I reviewed every single memory and recorded data with my merged thought-stream before letting it separate into its stituent parts. “How very curious. I wonder how a normal human is supposed to keep fueling this thing, or even a regur Psyker.”

  I suppose they would have to make use of their somewhat fortified soul to take in more energy. If the fortification is multiplicative, its scale depe of the i power of the recipient’s soul, it could make a sizable difference for even a mediocre human Psyker.

  My mind-cores ran through a slew of calcutions, ing to the clusion that a Psyker as powerful as Rakel could feed the artifact’s appetite just with four hours of dedicated daily meditations focused purely on taking in as muergy as possible and eling it into the artifact.

  I ’t be sure. I need more data. Someoh a notably stronger soul to make sure the fortification’s magnitude truly scales with it.

  I reviewed my short list of prisoners and chose the sed-best didate, a woman just barely falling short of being a true Psyker. There were still hours till nightfall and I was determio get as much out of this as possible. For all I khe method the artifact used to fortify souls could be applied to my own soul, or to Selene’s.

  She’d be thrilled to have her Psychic potential further enhanced.

  Goals set, I teleported the unfortunate woman over and paralysed her.

  “This will hurt,” I said to her. “On the upside, it’ll leave your soul so mahat it’ll fade into oblivion before Daemons could rip it to shreds, which would hurt so much worse. So, you’re wele.”

  P3t1