I hat. I sighed, taking care not to wake the little beauty sn with her cheek on my shoulder and legs iwined with mine. She thhly exhausted herself, and while some bio-energy would have given her a sed wind, I decided that some sleep would dood.

  I only now realised she might not have taken beien, kidnapped, and drugged as well as she’d shown. Some peaceful rest was more than deserved. Not that I disliked her soft skin, almost melding with mine uhe b.

  It was bliss. Not as much as what came before *cough*, but it was like a calming balm to my ag soul and mind. Having her so ade me feel more like myself and less like some alien eldritch horror.

  Her presend closeness were the magic keeping me myself. And she was magical in more ways than one.

  Despite myself, I felt my cheeks flushing as my rebellious thoughts pulled up memory after memory of what we’d do was different from any experience I had before, this wasn’t sex, that was too base a descriptor for it.

  It was … it was something else I had trouble grasping. It made any previous experience I had ba earth feel bnd and grey, lifeless. Those were, at most, flings, acts of pleasure.

  What we had done involved our minds and souls just as much as our flesh and blood bodies. I could feel her mind brush against my own, her emotions, feelings, aions twisting and twirling around my mind and sinking into it as if I was the one feeling them and it wasn’t a one-way thing. For a moment, we might have just bee oh the other. It was … nice.

  Enough about that, I decided as my body started tingling again. Selene was sleeping. Stupid horny aliens had to be well-behaved and stay still to not wake her up. Especially the one she was using as a body pillow.

  The pragmatic part of me was a touch embarrassed at having ‘wasted’ almost two hours, but that part of me was stupid and I’d beat it up if it had any thoughts like that again.

  Still, the fact remaihat I now only had at most a day until the big blue man touched down. A while ago I felt yers upon yers of veil-thin psychic shielding go up all around the building we were in, so at least Dante and his ckeys shouldn’t be b us until then.

  They weren’t the problem. What I o know going forward was what was the stance of the fleet, what they po do here, and what they knew about me. Dante and Mephiston were clearly ordered to keep me alive and safe. Even if they went about it in a heavy-handed way, the fact remaihat the ‘Regent’ — Guilliman — ordered them to keep me alive and protect me even from the Shadowkeeper.

  Why? What does he know? I mused. Did he meet with Eldrad before ing here? Valenith’s nosey master was someone I knew he worked with at times. If my memory wasn’t pying trie, Guilliman should even have his personal Farseer onboard as a courtesy from Eldrad.

  Maybe that fucker saw something in the currents, or maybe the Shadowkeeper worked together with them befoing rogue. I had to know what motivations were at py, and what goals the big blue man had io even e up with a viable nen.

  That meant doing some reaissand information gathering. For once, luck was on my side. The drone I sent out to scout the fleet was still chilling in the inner asteroid belt which the fleet should have just passed through not too long ago.

  If I had it burn bio-energy on overdrive for a bit, it’d quickly catch up with the fleet. Blinking was out of the question for now, especially on a drohat was damned far away. My poor mind o be left to rest and recover if I wanted myself to be in top dition if omorrow.

  Some Illusions and such were in the pack, but nothing batshit crazy like the stuff I was fav nowadays, such as giant explosions, psychic fireballs, or anything simir. Just some harmless Illusions.

  In the meantime, I had most of my mind cores work on Selene’s and my own upgraded Forms. She wao be a human-sized female Custodian basically, with the ability to tinue using psychics woven iween physical attacks and I just wao upgrade everything I could with Custodian ans without messing with my monstrous psychiductivity.

  With the drone busy swimming through the void of space, paddling at space itself to catch up with the fleet, I let my sind wander. I had the tempte of a Custodian. A Custodian.

  The way I unlocked it still felt stra was as if an echo of it lingered somewhere deep within, and when I absorbed the droplets of his blood, that echo solidified into a true memory. Or, well, a tempte.

  The one problem was that it was just the tempte of this single Custodian, and since each of them was unique, I felt somehow strained by that fact. If I ainter, it was as if I could perfectly replicate a single painting, say, the Mona Lisa, but nothing else.

  I had the end product of a long-winded artistic journey and borious research, but not the way there. Knowing how to replicate this single unique Custodian — because each of them was a unique masterpiece of bioengineering — didn’t give me the ability to make a bunch of them.

  It was strange. I could create a dozen drones with the tempte, but I felt that somehow they would all e out the same. What that meant, I didn’t know, her did I know whether replig a part of the brain or nervous system was safe.

  From what I knew, I might just make a droh geically coded Emperor fanaticism ected right to my soul. There were a hundred ways being careless could g, which was why I took the time to let my mind cores carefully pick apart each gene sequend maybe uand how they work.

  Even if they didn’t, I hoped they could find which parts would give us problems in the long ru from brainwashing or from that strange psychic stabilising effect Custodes had.

  I’d have to have a drone made of that stuff ready, or a Form I could use if time allowed me to make o could e in more than handy if a Daemon or Sorcerer decided to be a pain.

  A Bnk would work better, but it would have to do until I got my hands on one. Preferably, ohat didn’t seriously mess with my soul thread like the bck skull the Shadowkeeper lugged around.

  promises, promises. The Custodes-derived Form would be a good one.

  Hopefully, my zy mind cores could e up with good temptes before the fleet arrived. I took Selene’s idea to heart, and verted the lingering biomass in my little realm ira brain power, easily multiplying the number of mind cores under my trol. That ought to speed up the process, even if the information bei bad forth between my Avatar and the bio-server in the realm somewhat limited the speed.

  Not like they o unicate that much, they just had to decide roblems to outsource to the new server.

  I once again decided to shelve the damned miing project for ter. It took too long and showed no sign ress, well, aside from my mind cores suggesting I start experimenting instead of letting the simutions run in circles with far too little information to aplish anything.

  I’d o see how an ability like that worked in practice, which meant turning into a knock-off Space Marine and starting to p down on unfortunate corpses. Now, without my white tendrils, only using my teeth aing the dumb Astartes physiology do its dubious sci-fi magid pull memories out of dead flesh.

  It made no sense, but it didn’t have to. Nothing had to make sense in this dumb gaxy, it was infuriating … but also freeing. My powers were strained, but much less so than I first thought, or than I probably still realised.

  There was much growing to do, in many different ways. I only had to stumble into those ways first, or well, have them smack me in the face as they teo tely, like my rather panicked application of space ing back with the Shadowkeeper.

  For once, I was going to make use of Illusions and stealth and throw some Telepathy on top, just to make sure. Guilliman and his presumed array of batshit overpowered onry and supernatural followers — like more Custodes — were not a problem I could solve by banging my head against it.

  Some problems needed more than brute force, ae my previous attempts at using the ‘softer’ applications of power, I was willing to learn. I had to learn if I ever wao be more than some brute with far te a psychic potential to throw around.

  Thankfully, the Imperial voidships were rather slow — pared to my drone or -speed, anyway. So it barely took an hour for my little droo catch up with them.

  As soon as it sehe ships, still astronomically far away, I engaged all of its stealth capabilities. Lictor carapace flowed over the outer shell and the camoufge quickly flickered on to hide the drone from any le … stuff. I just now realised I barely knew how sers and radars worked in this gaxy, something else I would have to pry out of Zedev’s head.

  No matter. Tyranids routinely mao sneak up on Imperial ships, especially small crafts, and Lictors could sneak onboard voidships rather regurly — though I only remembered that being the case for civilian mert vessels, and not battleships.

  A veil of invisibility ed itself around the drone, hopefully tilting the odds in my favour. I desig to cut off aromagic radiation from the drone and to defley ing at it from the outside to the sides.

  That should take care of the infrared heat radiation from the body … and hopefully, fool any active radars they have. I was running off of assumptions, assumptions of how futuristic sci-fi tech was imagined w ba the 21st tury. I was a nerd back then, arguably I still was, and so I was somewhat familiar with a bit of the physivolved in such stuff.

  If there was some bullshit pseudo-tech sensing the gravitational waves, my drone geed or other such teobabble bullshit that worked in this gaxy because of course it did, then I would be in a bit of a pickle.

  I crossed my fingers as the drone gained ground, or well, space, slowly closing the remaining distahe fleet went from an array of distant bckish dots gleaming in the dim light of the Baal system’s red sun to the colossal monstrosities that they were iy.

  No gunfire, missiles, hters came to intercept the drone, but I didn’t let my focus grow x. Fooling the le sensors would be the easiest part of my impromptu mission.

  I couldn’t help but gape a little as the drone finally caught up. As it slowly swam aloweeanic battleships, I just looked around. All arouhe droo be exaot that there was much of a difference — were these things that people decided could be called battleships.?

  They were idiots. I khe sizes of these things; I read the wiki at times, but god damn. When you saw a buildiending on for almost two kilometres nguidly float along with ahousand of its kind as the only backdrop in the darkness of space, that was very different from reading dimensions online.

  The ships had nht to be as huge as they were. Somehow, I wasn’t this shocked by the size of the Tyranid Bioships, but the alien nature of those somehow desensitized me to their gigantic size. Or maybe it was the rush to kill them ahe battle over with back then.

  I had time now, not all the time in the world, but more than enough to just take in these architectural marvels that also worked factic travel. The oo my side was mostly of a gleaming greyish colour, with a tral brick-like shape ending in what could only be described as a … battering ram? It also somewhat reminded me of a cowcatcher that they used to mount on the front of a train to kick aside anything that shouldn’t be in the way of the train.

  The fact the thing looked scraped aed all around spoke of the dubious ramming tactics beloved by the Imperial Navy. I held back a grimace at the thought. They had missiles and artillery that could hit things further away than the human eye could see, why they so loved to get into melee in spabsp;was one of the great mysteries of this universe.

  Oh well, that was hardly the weirdest part of the ship. The damned churches and gothic cathedrals lining both the top and bottom of the craft easily took that po, I won’t even boing into the use of those, aside from looking mildly cool.

  I gave it a mental shrug. Being cool was the point of most thiing iting. If I had a for each stupid, useless, nonsensical thing that existed in this gaxy, I’d have a p-sized hoard before long.

  I decided that my first target would be one of the ships further towards the tre of their formation, where I suspected the fgship would be. This close up it was hard to really take iire fleet, so I mostly just guessed.

  The idea was that stronger ships would guard the perimeter and even stronger ones apahe fgship at the tre like some huard. Meaning, that the weakest ships with the shoddiest voidsmen and guards on them should be somewhere halfway betweewo.

  With no sign of anyone having noticed my drone, I navigated it between the ships until I found ohat’d fit my needs. A little ship with an outwardly battered hull and some of the buildings on it broken off in pces.

  It would do.