I moved, appearing up o the Custodian faster than a heartbeat, faster than he could pull the trigger. Not faster than he could react, though. He pulled his spear back, or attempted to anyway as I grabbed its handle and yanked.

  Surprisingly, the Custodian came along with the spear when I swung it around a it flying right into the closing maw of the dragon oher side of my body. Jagged teeth as rge as my forearms cmped down on the golden warriors' armour, a found no purchase.

  This seemed te the beast, which then swung his head about wildly like a cat would with a mouse to break its spihe Custodian wasn’t oo fall easily, its auramite power armour not having even a scratch despite the abuse. He swung his spear and its humming bde tore through a dozerying to impale him.

  Just as he was about to send himself barreling out of the beast’s jaws, I swung my staff at the two and a gigantic telekiic push crashed into the custodian, sending it dowhroat of the dragon.

  The beast froze, eyes widening in somethiween absolute horror and anger unlike any other, it let out a low rumbling growl and then liquid fury in the way of fmes flowed out of its throat. It probably hoped that would barbeque the Custodian no doubt ying waste to its insides, I doubted it worked, but it was at least preoccupied for the moment.

  It huffed, sending little puffs of fmes out between gritted teeth, it smmed its body into a pilr, then its stomach down on the ground and then started rolling arouually rolling bato the ke of magma.

  Well. That gave me some breathing room at least. I cracked my ned tightened my grip on atiesh, my gaze washing over the cavern. Daemons, hordes of Bloodletters that seemed to have o them, Trazyn, the Samanders, my drones … and the Silver Wyrm that was now getting the Loki treatment from Ka’Bandha.

  I stared, my lips parting in astonishment at the sight. The Greater Daemon was screaming curses, its trunk-sized fingers ed around the tail of the Ne struct. Ka’Bandha heaved, swinging the Wyrm over his head and then smashed it down into the ground.

  He turned, swung it again, and the Wyrm came smming into a magma river this time. He repeated the a, again, then again and again. I saw ks of the silvery metal dent bur and fall off like useless ks of scrap metal. Guess we had a wihere. I just hoped it wouldn’t want to join the ‘let’s group up on Ea’ club.

  I g the dragon, still thrashing around and now busy g at its ow and tearing off the molten rocks coating its thick hide. I had a few moments still, until either the beast mao somehow dislodge the Custodian or died from a sudden case of having all of its internal ans scrambled.

  I moved again, pushing my superior avatar’s muscles to the limit with a grin and appeared behind the Samanders. They had outlived their usefulness, and were annoying Trazyn, furthermore, they were making me waste soul energy by making me shield the kleptomaniac. They had to go.

  “Our acquaintanceship had been short and I didn’t particurly enjoy it,” I said, spinning Atiesh around me and defleg a round of bolter shells aa fire as I did. “So this is goodbye. Have fun in hell.”

  I swung Atiesh in a wide ssh, sending an omnidireal surge of telekiic wave out arou crashed into them like a tsunami, sending them all rolling head over heels into the magma river running around this tral isnd. My drones protected Trazyn from the effects, of course, but some quick-witted Samanders hid behind the dome-like barrier and escaped their rades’ fate of a magma bath.

  Not wanting to have them lose out on the fun, I flickered around the isnd, grabbing them by the hand oer the other and swinging them into the river like they were unruly children weighihan a piece of bread. I cpped my hands, looked around once more to make sure all of them were taken care of, then nodded in satisfa.

  “They could have been worth preserving in a tesseract,” Trazyn whined, speaking up after I’d sent them into a molten grave.

  “Wao fish them out?” I asked, giving him a dry look. “Around twenty of them are still alive … een … seventeen now.”

  “No,” he huffed. “You’ve damaged their armour too much, would have been a waste of a tesseract. Though … maybe that Custodian … or the Fire Drake.”

  “The dragon’s mine,” I said, leaving no room for discussion. “You have the golden boy though, I don’t care about him.”

  “You mean the Fire Drake?” He asked, sounding fused.

  “The dragon, yes.”

  “Yes … the dragon,” he said slowly, shaking his head befng over at Ka’Bandha giving a victorious roar over the fallen form of the Wyrm. “It seems that you have a new oppo now. I will not be wasting further elements of my colle on this excursion if at all possible.”

  “No worries,” I said cheerily. “I’ll get you the spear … staff, whatever, then you phase out of here if you want. I want the dragon.”

  “Losing you, or your avatar here, would be even more of a loss,” he said grumpily. “I will not be leaving without both the artefad you safely secured iesseract.”

  “That’s so sweet of you,” I said, ughing before I hopped back over to my dragon.

  It was standing still now, eyes burning with hate, but n to crush the Custodian i. I watched it breathe in a long, deep breath, its chest visible expanding as it did and then … it exhaled a tremendous gust of fme apanied by ah-shaking roar.

  Surprisingly, in that gout of fme that had been aimed at where I stood a sed ago I caught a glimpse of a golden form. I smirked, watg him go and sm into the distant wall of the cavern.

  The fmes let up, but not without effect. The ground was reduced to sg wherever it passed and the whole dragon was visibly radiati so intehat its entire body caught on fire and was glowing a whitish e.

  Then a bloodthirsty Greater Daemon smashed into it, lodging a great axe into its smouldering shoulder with a roar.

  It seemed Ka’bandha thought the beast a worthier foe than I, which was a misception I didn’t feel obliged to correct at the moment. While he battered the dragon, I had an angry golden warrior shooting back right towards me, practically gliding over the ndscape even in that unwieldy armour of his.

  A man that big and wearing that much stuff on him had nht to be that fast. Well, I also didn’t feel like pying with him at the moment, not when I had a dragon to nibble ht there.

  Staff swinging, I bsted him in the chest with a beam of untrolled soul energy. An Eldritch Bst, as I’d called it before and trolled it to around him like a cw.

  It didn’t harm him, not with the paltry amount of energy I was b to waste on him. But it was enough to swing him about at the end of the pole of energy and club Ka’Bandha over the head with him.

  The daemon roared in response, letting go of the horn of the dragon it’d been trying to tear off to swat at the Custodian.

  It didn’t go quite as the daemon expected though I presume, sihe Custodian lu him and pierced him through the palm with his spear. That was when the daemon tore the axe out of the dragon with a furious roar and swung it at the golden warrior.

  I watched in mild amusement as the custodian ripped the spear out a himself fall off of the daemon, spinning around to kick off of the dragon’s fnk to lu me again.

  “You’re quite relentless, aren’t you?” I mused, while in the background the dragon whom now was freed from the daemon’s grapple retaliated and ped down on its knee. “Didn’t aeach you to catch a damned clue? I’m not ied in whatever it is you are selling.”

  “The Emperor’s will is absolute,” he said barely audibly. “And he wants you.”

  “Then he should get in the damned line,” I chortled, throwing a g Ka’Bandha who has not long ago procimed the Blood God’s i in adding my skull to his throne. “It seems I’m getting quite popur, as, I have a girlfriend so please sod off.”

  “You da-“ he started then his spear on me, smming down from above with the weight of a mountain behind it. I slid to the side, carefully trolling my white lock to not be left behind and fall victim to the powerbde.

  Moving faster to dodge was much more energy effit than parrying or blog a strike of that calibre.

  I poked at him, sending a surge of bio-energy over Atiesh to form a bde at the tip. The Custodian swung around, a flurry of strikes ing at me ihan a heartbeat and I danced around them with a growing grin.

  I poked under his armpits, at the elbows, at the crotd just about anywhere I felt his armht give way. It didn’t, and even the baanoeuvre that one webnovel I’d read so long ago swore worked every time, failed.

  Who knew, Custodian armour had double yered assptes.

  Still, it annoyed me a bit. Just a bit. I’d gotten stronger since I’d fought that Shadowkeeper, a fair bit stronger, and this golden t ushing me back while being weaker than that Shadowkeeper. Sure, I was being very careful with my energy expenditure, seeing as I had a dragon and a Greater Daemon to fight after being doh this guy.

  Well, ‘be done’ was retive. Let’s just get him out of my hair for a bit.

  With a flick of thought, the anic bde’s stru ged minutely. Only the edge, that wickedly sharp bde, ged as I disassembled and reassembled it in a nanosed. I didn’t have anywhere near enough bio-energy to remake the entire bde out of the Norn Emissary’s sword, but a few molecules thick bde-edge? I could do that.

  The Custodia something, I didn’t know what, how or why, but he did. Maybe it was a minute ge in my stance or something innate like that. As, it wasn’t enough. My strike came faster, stronger as I elled a bit of bio-energy into my muscles to empower them.

  The results were gratifying, my more powerful bde cutting through his powerarmour with a tortured shriek of metal. One of the most powerful armours the Imperium had couldn’t halt my bde, it made me smile.

  Still, the result was a fihick gash running across the Custodian’s torso from shoulder to hip and not bise like I’d half-way hoped. He pulled away, mao lean bad twist his body just enough that I only left a flesh wound on him and didn’t rend half his ans.

  “I’d killed a Shadowkeeper, golden boy,” I said teasingly. “You’ll have to try harder than that.”

  “I think not,” he said with a calm ferocity, a hand reag over to his waist in a way that set off arm bells in my head. He was entirely ign the wound I had inflicted, and food reason, as his superhuman healing was rapidly w to stifle the bleeding. For a moment I saw the Shadowkeeper’s form overid over him, and that damned bed skull of his.

  I was oher side of the cavern in a blink, having pulled on my soul energy to teleport away with all due haste. I peeked out from behind a t pilr, looking at his distant form.

  There was something in his hand, something I couldn’t decipher the use of. It vaguely resembled one of those self defeasers.

  Alright dipshit, that scared me. I glowered, the feeling of having my mind torn apart and my soul mutited by that adriatic spear the Shadowkeeper used eg through my his went from fun and games to serious in an instant. “Maximum effort it is!”

  I created a score of drones, all taking on the shape of my bat form and had them rush the guy. I had to know what the hell that thing in his hand was before I stepped within a kilometre of him with my avatar.

  He quickly caught on, his gaze log onto the vague dire I was in. Not that it was hard to, with twenty angry drones rushing at him from there.

  Still, I wasn’t going to half ass it. I activated all stealth biotech I had and threw an Illusory cloak of invisibility atop it, but before I slipped away to hide under some rock I made an autonomous copy of me a it behind.

  It had a telepathik to me and would take orders, but it’d y mannerisms and such to distract the golden boy for a bit if he rushed there.

  I circled around the cavern uhe cover of invisibility and blessedly the Custodian failed to track me with his gaze as I did so.

  After a moment of hesitation that didn’t even st aire tenth of a sed, he lu one drone. In a blink, he on it and I watched through the drone’s many eyes as he sent his spear right through its neck, but not before the drone’s cierced five nail sized holes into his armour.

  He tore the spear out, swinging it to the side and leaving the neck of the drone hanging on to dear life by a thin strip of flesh. Then he jammed the ‘taser’ into the open wound.

  I felt an invasive energy rush out from it, flowing into the drone and trying to push me out. That was new. Dangerous too, since while I could fight it off for a bit, it rapidly drained my stores of bio-energy to do so. The thing he was filling the drone up with felt like some kind of anti-bio-energy.

  Well. Fuck you. I blew the drone up in his face, sending him sliding back as his heavy boots dreair of grooves into the rocky ground. What did he think that thing would do? Forcefully drain me of energy and put me into a a? Purge ‘me’ from this body?

  Depending on the answer, I could very well imagine myself airing his brain a bit before I leave here. Dragon, Trazyn, and the Greater Daemon were sedary, this golden fuck made things personal.

  You didn’t just go up to a girl and try to kidnap her with a fug taser without getting kicked in the balls hard enough to have your life fshing before your eyes.

  In the en or so seds, the Custodian swiftly and elegantly dismantled my remaining 19 drones like they were a bunch of children trying to wrestle an adult and not bioons capable of sughtering thousands ur guardsmen.

  I blew them all up in his face though, and he was left there scorched all over and with a dozen new holes across his body in varying sizes. None of them lethal, sadly, only two even managing to make him bleed for more than a sed before his supernatural blood scabbed over the wound.

  He seemed to take a breather, then shot off towards where I left my decoy. I thought about what his goal was, what he was trying to achieve here.

  If I wasn’t wrong, he was one of the Custodians who’d been shadowing me ba Baal. He’d been annoying, but not murderous. Even now, he probably wasn’t trying to kill me, but he’d seen me regee from a pile of bones so going easy on me in fear of killing me would have been foolish.

  That taser though, what was its purpose. What would happen to me if I got hit by it in my avatar? Would it sever my link to it?

  Doubtful. Trazyn’s Tesseracts failed to do so, so I doubt this would, but it could make the avatar powerless.

  If I ran out of energy, the avatar would either turn to dust if it still had enough power to fulfil my pre-programmed orders. Alternatively, if that taser worked like I thought it did, my avatar could go bato its hibernation state where the tiny glob of eldritch flesh inside would gobble up the avatar and then harden into a fist sized orb.

  He could store me in a biomass depraved ste, then carry around the powerless me like a pokemon. He’d just have to pour some blood on the orb to wake me back up.

  If I didn’t forcefully sever my link to the avatar, which I would if it ever came to that. The only thing he’d be waking up, would be a rampaging avatar on the loose with murder on its mind that even I had no trol over.

  P3t1