I gave Selene a quick rundown of what I knew of Psychiks. Fuckers with ive souls that repelled energy, reinforced realspace, and made anything with even a fragment of psychic power in them loathe their very existence.

  I could uand why, even if to a lesser extent, even if it affected me in airely different way than it did human psykers.

  If a powerful Bnk walked up to my face, I’d probably just be cut off from my drones or even my Avatar as I could my psychitrol in their null-field from my Soul, but a regur human psyker would be stu the other side of the field, locked into their bodies without being able to call on their power and utterly separated from their souls.

  I remember reading about psykers gouging their eyes and slitting their throats just so they wouldn’t have to live with the sheer disfort aihat losing their e with their soul would induce.

  Hopefully, I could avoid that.

  Selene made me promise to avoid getting myself caught up in that field when I fought the Shadowkeeper even if I was sure — mostly sure, I was about maybe 70% sure if I rou up — that my soul-thread could withstand the suppression.

  Stronger psykers on the level of Mephiston and such were known to be able to maintain their powers even under a null-field, though they were still weakened from its influence, and the Emperor was said to be able to directly affeks with his Psychic powers which was fug crazy. He could force power to ma where reality itself fought against its existence.

  Bnks had levels of powers though, just like psykers. It was a scale, psykers were on the positive side of it and Bnks on the ive with regur weak mortals right in the middle at zero.

  That bck skull the Shadowkeeper had owerful, definitely in the upper ranks based on that scale. Still, Bnk’s powers were supposed to stem from the ive nature of their souls … so why did an obviously dead skull show those powers? Was it a stolen Ne teology masked as an are artefact? Or did they imprison the soul of an unfortunate Bnk in that skull?

  It would hardly be the worst thing the Imperium did, far from it.

  Now it was time for me to see how I held up against the Custodian myself, with my Avatar and full power behind it. I decided to mentioing ready to bolt to Zedev and Val just so they would be prepared if we o leave quickly.

  The tter just accepted my order, but Zedev said something that surprised me.

  ‘The fleet reached ve,’ he reported through our telepathic el, his mental voiing through livelier than his vox ever could. ‘A unication el hasn’t beeablished yet, as the signal is still corrupted by leftover radiation and energy, but it is being clearer and clearer by the minute.’

  ‘How long till they have a versation?’ I asked. ‘Does Dante know who is trying to unicate with them?’

  ‘He knows it is the Macragge’s Honor, but he remains in the dark about the o the helm of it. It is doubtful he would even believe it if I told him.’

  ‘Right,’ I mused. ‘Alright, be ready to be teleported away if things go to shit. I’ll be wrestling with what could possibly be an advance party of the Fleet sent to hunt me down.’

  ‘Seems … illogical.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I shrugged. ‘Either way, it is good to be prepared. I ’t fight a crusade fleet.’

  ‘Uood. Preparations will be made.’

  The li off, and I thought I heard something ominous in his voice at the end, something I never would have caught if we had been speaking face to face with his vox speaker as our interpreter.

  I shook it off. I had a Custodian to murderize … or at least take a bit out of.

  If he really was ag with Guilliman’s blessings, everything I was trying to do here could go to shit real quick. A sample of Custodian blood could be my grace prize as I ran away with my tail tucked between my legs.

  Should I? For a moment my degee brain wandered. I could certainly do it, but should I? Make a fluffy tail for myself, I mean? I was always more into elves than catgirls and stuff, but they had a charm of their own. Maybe Selene would appreciate it. Thoughts for ter.

  I ed Selly up in a tight hug, squeezing her a bit food luck as she huffed in what I could tell was monoyahen, id a goodbye pe her cheek before letting go.

  She gave me a look again, ohat held a promise in it for the future.

  “Good Luck, and be careful,” she said early, and I was tempted to her up in an, but time was of the essence.

  If with the arrival of the Fleet I found not an amiable trading parthankful for all the effort I put into keeping his boy Dante alive, but a foe hellbent on killing me and shoving my soulless body bato a taihen I didn’t have much time.

  After the Custodian was dealt with, I could worry about navigating the rest. If he wao hunt me, he had to be prepared to bee the huhe role of the prey was one I didn’t like o, aher did it suit me for that matter.

  A Blink took me away, by now merely a blip on the s ay’s veil that would hopefully slip uhe radar of all but the most observant Psykers.

  As my armour flowed over me, c me from head to toe, I sidered what I’d learned from my previous frontation with the Shadowkeeper.

  He was more skilled than me, but not faster. In my Avatar, I could hopefully bridge that gap with overwhelming power and speed ing from soul energy enhang my body along with a much rger store of bio-energy.

  With not needing to be sal with soul energy and being able to pull even more whenever I o, I wouldn’t be strained in what sorts of Sorcery I threw around. He would be eating Eldritch Bsts that made Greater Daemons stumble and with me Blinking around the battlefield like a hyperactive squirrel.

  Blinking. That would probably be my most important tool with my much greater speed ing in as a close sed.

  Whatever the fuck that beam of energy his spear shot out was, the Psychic Shield my Drone had was like a piece of flimsy paper in front of it. I could jure up stronger Shields in my Avatar, but not that much stronger. Evasion would be key.

  The same would go for the bck skull. Whenever his hand as much as twitched towards it, I’d have to Blink the fuck out of there even if I trusted my soul-thread to withstand its overbearing effects.

  Best would be if I could steal it off of him, along with that silver orb. I didn’t know what the orb did, and assuming it would only be useful for holding my body in chebsp;after I was already taken care of would be a mistake. A mistake that could y life.

  All in all, I knew what not to get hit by and had much more power t to bear in our rematch. I rather liked my ces. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t everying to get a rematch.

  I let my senses spread out and cover the barren pins I stood on, my aura wasn’t something I trained overly much, but it still provided me with more than enough information and sensory input.

  I felt the entire pins, every stone, rock, piece of dust, and sand, was crystal clear in my mind for miles all around me. I didn’t o y eyes and focus, or zoom in and out on a mental map. I just knew where everything was and what everything was.

  That was just part of what it did, though. Aura ower of the soul, so it was intrinsically linked with anything psychic. This made it all the more easy to feel the cra reality much earlier than it was visible to the naked eye.

  I did not know how he made the rifts, but feeling it form was effortless. It was hard not to notice it. The rift felt to my aura like what being spped in the face would feel to my body.

  As he stepped out, he stopped. The spear was in his hand already, brimming with energy as he lowered himself to readiness.

  Still, he stood ihout poung, even as I stood leisurely with my arms crossed under my chest aapping on the ground.

  “Not what you expected?” I asked, my voice reverberating through the wastend. “Not quite the Xeno monster you were hunting, am I?”

  He didn’t answer, and I just tilted my head.

  “Not much of a versationalist, are you?” I rolled my shoulders as Atiesh appeared floating behihe faithful little staff was always close by and ready to fight. “You must be fun at parties.”

  I took off my helmet as if it were a simple objeetal and looked at him with my perfect mimicry of a human face.

  “What did I do to deserve you ing after me?” I raised an eyebrow at him. I of course had my assumption, but it was good to make sure. Plus, I actually really liked Shadowkeepers as a fa, so I sort of just wao talk with him, even if we’d be killing each other in a minute. “I deserve to know that at least, don’t I?”

  “You deserve nothing, thief.” He hissed, his voice oddly boorish.

  “Thief?” I smiled. “What did I steal?”

  He said nothing, but I could feel his gaze harden into a gre as if telling me ‘You know damn well what you stole!’.

  “I mean,” I twirled a lock of hair around my finger. “I know what you want. Probably do at least, but I don’t really know what it is. You get me? Like, would you enlighten a pirl? Pretty please?”

  I could tell he was feeling maybe the slightest bit put off. There was a word in this gaxy for the sheer primal dread, the mere sight of a transhuman put intur humans. It was ‘transhuman dread’, very creative, yeah, but it got the point across.

  No baseline human could resist this mental effect, and with the custodians being the crème de crème of the transhumans, I — as an outwardly normal human, if you didn’t take into at my weird armour — should be shitting my pants and screaming in fright.

  “Hand over the artefact,” he said. “And I will give you a painless death.”

  “With that creepy spear of yours?” I hummed. “That thing gives a death as painless as a Drukhari Haemonculi.”

  “So be it,” he said. Ign my ent like he did all the rest. “You have stolen from the Emperor of Mankind, and so you will die.”

  He leapt into a without waiting another moment and I just shook my head in mnation, trying to hide the bloodthirsty grin spreading on my lips. It was madness, by old 21st-tury Earth standards I was batshit crazy.

  I could die here, I khat, I could die for real here, but I didn’t care. Not only did I not care about the danger, I walked right into it. I could have teleported off p, I was sure I could outrun this blocky Custodian and his hand-me-down teleporter, but I didn’t.

  I stht here and faced down what was, to most, death inate. When a Custodian accepted a mission, the Imperial bureaucracy preemptively stamped that mission as a success, such was their unbreakable faith irength of the Ten Thousand.

  They were the Emperor’s fi servants, and doubting their success was akin to heresy. No, it was Heresy.

  And I would be fighting not the weakest member of the Adeptus Custodes, not even an average one, but the best of the best. It tickled a primal urge deep inside of me, the threat of death aing something so dangerous, so revered, to death.

  He rushed at me, and my twin energies were already surging in my body, cirg and enhang. I wasn’t pushing myself to the limit. Breaking apart my body like before would be stupid and I didn’t have an opportunity yet to test the threshold just yet. I’d have to be on the safer side with that.

  Still, it was more than enough. Time slowed, not to a crawl, but to a sprint where it eeding train before.

  His spear fshed out, drawing a rge arc as it came down from above. I sidestepped it easily, slipping through his guard and hopping away as a fist came to crash into my stoma retaliation.

  “Just so you are aware,” I said, tinuing to act casual. “I stole nothing. I am what was stolen.”

  Even if he hadn’t firmed it, I was about 99% sure of my theory being correct. It all fit together far too well to be wrong and while what I said wasn’t exactly true, it was the story I’d go with rather than me being some extra-dimensional spirit summoned into this gaxy by the sacrifice of a quadrillion i souls.

  He ignored me, of course. Though I liked to think he was brooding over my words in that stubborn head of his. ’t even have dramativersations with your enemy in this gaxy.

  I plopped the helmet bay head and quickly formed a bio-sword in my hand, a long-sword this time instead of the usual one-handed sword. Atiesh floated behihrough it all, ready to be used.

  As my sword so deflect a spear strike. Even as I ushed back by the sheer force behind it, my trusty staff terattacked in my pce.

  An Eldritch Bst burst forth and puhe Custodian right in the chest, making his sigils fre up and struggle as the nearly three metre tall man took a step back.

  The sigils held out, but my sword struck again before he could recover. Not that it mattered. Instead of pierg his armour through the armpits, he twisted himself so my bde only drew a shrieking line on his chest pte.

  I felt my heart thrumming in my chest, a useless a for the most part, but I liked the feeling of it. It made me aware of when I was anxious, angry, or excited. I didn’t know which I was at that moment. It could be her or a bination of them all, but what I knew for sure was that I was alive. I felt alive.

  I felt truly alive in a way I only felt a handful of times, all of which happeo be in this sed life.

  It was nice. For a moment, I felt like it was all worth it. Ay in purgatory and a life that was no different before.

  It was all worth it if I could have a life filled with moments like this.