“Don’t fault a girl for having a hobby.”

  “My problem is that your ‘hobby’ is putting my quest into unnecessary danger by it meaning you are not going about yhts with all the caution they are due,” Trazyn said calmly, not oo rise to anger without due cause.

  “If you don’t enjoy whatever you do, you’ll live a sad life Trazyn,” I said uantly. “I just so happen to enjoy annoying people who annoy me. Furthermore, I gave the ‘fight’ all the seriousness it deserved, which was about none.”

  “That was a Custodes,” Trazyn provided ever so helpfully, like he was doubting these fleshy orbs I had for visual perception were faulty.

  “It was,” I allowed, nodding magnanimously. It also didn’t have a ce at doing anything to me once I was in the air. Custodes didn’t fly, though that bounce he did once I left him there came close.

  “Have I ehe ranks of those you wish to annoy to death?”

  “Not yet.”

  He let out a static gurgle I took fruff grunt.

  “As long as it doesn’t endanger my quest,” he said after a few more seds of me dragging his metallic butt through the air. “I live with your peculiarities.”

  “Thank you.” I the etric kleptomaniac, willing myself not to let the dozen remarks at the tip of my toually leave it. I liked Trazyn, after all. I could live with him being a bit of a sti the mud at times.

  “Where do you want to go?” I asked, ging the topic with the grace of a runaway train. “Or rather, wait till reen friends find their way down here?”

  “Let’s head to the bottom of the stairs,” he said. “That also just happens to be suitably far away from the Custodes you seemed to have just pissed off.”

  “Great idea!” I excimed, turning us in the right dire.

  *****

  While my other avatar was extremely busy by staring at rocks and watg magma slumber by, the avatar ba the voidship was actually getting some work done. Zedev got his upgrade, which he greeted with a vague note of ‘adequate’.

  I rolled my eyes at the memory. The upgraded bits were leagues ahead of the previous one, outfitted with several sub-brains to enhahe itive capabilities of his fleshy bits and made to keep itself iate I’d made it in. Its genes wouldn’t deteriorate, a small cell-factory would slowly work to repce every si of his biological bits regurly enough that he’d stop agiirely, and I even added some general upgrades like greater resistao fatigue aer eyesight.

  It wasn’t anything groundbreaking, but Zedev didn’t want groundbreaking. He wanted ‘adequate’ and that’s what I gave him. He was still in love with his own prototype eldar-human hybrid thingy, almost as much as with his meical parts and with his dear Omnissiah.

  With that dohough, I dumped a sample of the bio-matter my mind-cores came up with for the stru of my eventual base on his table and told him to e up with ways to improve upon it. He looked to be a bit upset at the sample, and a quick glimpse into his mind answered why.

  In short, he thought I was an idiot. Well, not me, but my mind-cores. He instantly reised how much finesse I actually had when it came to geing and sud almost burst a blood-vessel in his newly made grey matter at how badly I arently utilising it.

  Oh, well. He seemed to have e to the clusion that, since I was so i, he had to give me the right blueprints to make me utilise my capabilities to their limit. He seemed thrilled at the idea of getting to py with a geor of such high quality.

  I’ve been downgraded to a fancy 3d printer in his head. I was miffed by that thought, but as, he was to be extremely useful if he could actually pull off what he wholeheartedly believed he could. Toaster-loving pile of scrap that he is, he does know his stuff. My mind-cores only work off of data and knowledge I have, while he probably has turies more of both to work with.

  I had to remind myself I was only teically a few months old.

  project!

  I dumped a bunch of experimental drones down among the Orks. A lot of them got sughtered before my drones went down and they fug loved every sed of it. So I tinued droppiuff atop their heads occasionally from then on to keep them ooes and, more importantly, to keep them eained.

  Why? Because a bored Ork was just as bad as a bored hyperactive husky locked inside a house. Example: The pilrs holding up the floors separating my ship were near iructible for Orks, which they took as a challenge and threw together a mini gargant to tear it apart.

  Said mini gargant was now beating a whole lot of Orks to mush at the moment, using the torn off pilr as a cudgel.

  Anyway, I repaired the pilr and added another asteroid to a nearby system’s outer belt in the form of a spaced mini gargant. I also spent a few hours mind-diving the pair of mek boys who actually built the gargant and realised that their knowledge was still absolutely useless to me.

  They threw shit together because it ‘felt right’ or whatnot and when I repeated the motions, all I ended up with was a horrendously silly looking bolter replica that I wouldn’t have been able to sell even as a toy gun. It was held together by glue and hope.

  Which is why I went back to Zedev shortly thereafter.

  “So, you do it?” I asked, arms crossed and one foot tapping oal floor.

  “Affirmative.” Zedev said, not even gng at me. “I’ll require the rept of the ‘sub-brain’ iion.”

  “That’s given,” I said. “So?”

  “Done.” He said, and a thin white tendril pierced into the fleshy part of his ium, not a moment ter. I very gently examihe sub-brain iion. Watched the neurons firing and then dht into it through a thin telepathik I established after I isoted it from the rest of Zedev’s mind.

  Inside, I found the most b thing I could have ever imagined. A library, but the most dreary, soul-killing kind with those old metallic drawers from the 80s filled with files. The shelves reached up to the sky and there were thousands of them.

  Okay. Fuck this. I thought after looking at it all for all but a sed. Mind-core unit, this is a job for you. Get to copy-pasting. Don’t hurt the rest of his mind under any circumstances.

  Soon, white spectres appeared around me by the hundreds. They had my vague shape, the tour was the same, but they were all pure white and faintly translut with robotients and a disturbing ck of anything that could be called a face.

  They flickered all over the pce, rifling through thousands of pages of recorded knowledge in a sed. Nodding to myself in satisfa, I pulled my main sciousness bato my avatar.

  It only took a minute for them to be finished, and I gently disentangled my mind from Zedevs before letting the rest of his miablish tact with the sub-brain I abused. It only needed a little healing since I’d been careful, but it still suffered maybe a dozen aneurysms and a tiny stroke while I was in there.

  “Done, healthy as ever,” I said. “Thanks, see you around.”

  Zedev just waved a hand my way, buzzing lightly as his mind no-doubt reviewed the sub-brain, double- or maybe triple cheg it for anything wrong that I might have missed. It was rude, but this was Zedev we were talking about. Rudeness was his st remaining personality trait besides his obsessions.

  Now gh all that and remove all the fluff for me. I don’t give a shit about ‘proper rituals’ and their dogma. Give me the pure knowledge. I ordered, pushing the priority of that task up to the top. Making a halfway det biomaterial for my voidships could wait, especially since I nning to dump that task on Zedev too once he was doh his current one. And once he does them all, I’ll be able to infer some stuff from the results. He might be better at that than me now, but I’m a quick learner, if nothing else.

  I was cheating in the ‘learning’ department, of course, but everyohat wasn’t cheating somehow in this gaxy was deader than Horus. As a smart man once said: Always be cheating.

  Words to live by, truly.

  I was humming, hopping back towards my room with Seleo get back to watg over my other avatar when my instincts screamed at me. I was ba the other avatar with my full focus in an instant, leaving ship-avatar to fat in the hallway.

  Looking up, I felt an unscious shiver run down my spine, which almost made me scoff. My body was still far too human to be having instinctual reas like this. Primal fear and trembling hands were a bit much, weren’t they? I mean, sure, a big fuckoff tear iy was f right above me, but e on. Have some spine, fleshy body of mine.

  “This plicates things,” Trazyn observed, having taken a few steps back to watch the swirling rupture. I wasn’t sure how much his unliving visual sensors could perceive, nor could I infer much. He could have beeher unbothered by it because he khe danger of it and didn’t care, or because all he saw was a mildly trembling gravitational vortex.

  “That it does,” I murmured, using a smidge of bio-energy to forcefully shut down my panic-stri body’s natural respoo a fug Greater Deam to materialise atop it. “I don’t think I am paid enough to fight that thing.”

  “You is strength just from the distortion?” Trazyn asked, sounding mildly surprised.

  “I see the ugly fuck tearing into the veil from the other side,” I said, a third eye opening up on the middle of my forehead. It ure white, with her a pupil nor an iris. “It’s a big one. Whatever’s hiding down here must be pretty important … hmmm, this guy looks a touch familiar.”

  “What grade is it?” Trazyn asked, a hand reag into his robes and flig through the tesseracts held there.

  “It’s a Bloodthirster,” I said, squinting at the thing as it roared and sshed forward. A single cwed fist tore through the veil and grasped the edge of the f portal. I took it as my cue to step out from underh the portal lest I got stomped on by the daemon. “Greater Daemon of Khorne, and a pretty nasty looking one. Hmmmm. Where did I see this guy before? Damn it, why do they all have to look so simir?”

  “It just so happens that I have something just for this occasion,” Trazyn said, clig his fingers on a tesseract he held up to eye level. “No need for you to exhaust yourself just yet. Their loss will be painful, but they are just the backup for one of my exhibits.”

  “Whie, if I may ask?” I asked, settling io the invisible Ne with a thin cloak of cealment of my own f around me.

  “I officially call it ‘The First War eddon’,” Trazyn said. “Though, the more apt name would be ‘The Death of Angron’ I believe.”

  With that said, the tesseract glowed, and I cast a brief gnce up at the Samanders streaming down the wall. They were hurrying now, throwing down ropes and starting to grapple dow stretch of the way as they quickly set up formations and readied ons.

  The tesseract glowed o time, and then the light escaped it, bursting forth towards the grouh the portal. Three dozen forms a head higher and signifitly bulkier than the Samanders materialised.

  They wore unique and massive grey power armour, with runes and various runic Wards glowing across their silvery grey their armaments. fusion only sted a few seds, as the rgest one of them looked up and stared at the portal for a single sed before shouting.

  “DAEMONICURSION IMBOUND. SET UP THE FORMATION!”

  The orders tinued, and just as the demon’s other hand tore through the veil, a formation was already drawn up on the ground and the bunch were busying themselves by spraying some sort of a holy water on each other.

  Grey Knights? I hummed, tilting my head curiously. There were only a little uhirty of them, and while I didn’t doubt their effectiveness against most daemons, this was a Greater Daemon, and a big o that. I guess I’ll take a bite before they are all eventually annihited. It’d be a shame to lose out on Emps’ personal geneseed.

  I didn’t even fully finish that thought in my head when my golden friend crashed onto the edge of the little isnd we were oook a sed to collect himself before he shot off towards the Grey Knights and stopped o the rgest one.

  It seemed the big guy wasn’t ser focused on only finding me. Maybe with his help, the gathered group could actually send the Daemon bato the without much trouble even without our help.

  “I will provide you some assistance,” said the Custodian. “Afterwards, I will be needing your services for my own mission. Is that agreeable?”

  “Yes, honourable custodian,” said the rge Grey Knight in a gruff tone. “Might I ask what mission?”

  “Capturing and subduing a Xeno Psycher,” the Custodian said, and I had to roll my eyes. “Alive. His Majesty wants her.”

  “Uood,” the leader of the Grey Knight squad nodded briskly. “After we banish this daemon, we will be at your service.”

  “Maybe I should help the daemon instead,” I mused aloud to Trazyn. My eyes gring into the Custodian’s skull. He twitched, his helmet swinging around, but being uo find me by the looks of it.

  He probably could have, if I wasn’t standing hundreds of metres away. Those instincts the golden boys had coded and trained into them were something else.

  “Mutual annihition of both sides aside from the Samanders would be the optimal oute.” Trazyn nodded, his hands once again flig through his colle of tesseracts. “We’ll see how the fight goes first, but I agree with assisting the side that would seem to be on the back foot.”

  “You could just give me a few Tyranids and I’d solve that issue for you.”

  “Not yet,” he huffed. “I only have a siesseract with Tyranids in it and I’d really rather keep it if it's at all possible. Last resort, as I’d said.”

  “Fine.”

  “AAAAAAAAAAARGGHHHHH!!!!!” With a mighty roar, the two cwed crimson hands tore at the fabric of reality like it was made of on cloth. Reality gave way before the might of the daemon, a tremble running through it as smaller fissures formed all around the room and vicious, r crimson daemons swarmed out from each. Bloodletters and other daemons of Khorne surged forward, their primal fury driving them on as their eyes nded ohered marines and the Custodian. “Tremble little men, tremble at his hate and curse your Corpse God for I, Ka’Bandha have e to cim your pathetic skulls!”

  The gigantic demon stepped through the gaping wound oy, obsidian horns, blood red skin, thousands of sharp teeth and a pair of eyes filled with malid hatred. He towered over even the custodian easily, wielding a titanic axe in one hand while the other sent out a fming whip towards the Custodian without further ado.

  The Custodian stepped aside, then charged, and the Daemon ughed.

  “This might be worth making an exhibit out of.” Trazyn noted, and I couldn’t help but agree. The fight that broke out looked quite epibsp;

  They are so fucked. I thought, watg on curiously as Ka’Bandha sent the custodian rolling through the rocky grounds with a simple kick. Only by pierg his guardian spear into the ground did he mao stop himself from taking an impromptu magma bath. So that’s where I remembered the daemon from. He was on the first moon of Baal. He was the daemon hellbent on making the sons of Sanguinius suffer at his hand and he was also the daemon who could go toe to toe with the angelic Primarch.

  They are so fucked.

  P3t1