There was something strangely unnerving about making eye tact with myself, especially when I was sciously trolling both instanyself’.

  Well, at least I know that I need some further work on my eyes. The glimmering emerald look is nice, but it's a bit chaotid unrefined, as if I had found a k of the gem and amateurishly crushed it into an orb shape before shoving it into my eyes.

  Hmmm. Thoughts for ter.

  “Are you ready to begin?” Trazyn asked, standing a step behih his stupidly overpowered staff held just right to smash it into the bay skull if I tried anything funny.

  “Yes,” I said, both in the human drone and in my avatar.

  The paranoid old skeleton really didn’t trust me yet. I could seomb Spyders spread around the room, along with a ti of Lychguards standing to the side and I didn’t doubt for a sed that there weren’t any optek Wraiths phased out filling the room.

  As, his best bet at winning if it came down to a fight was his staff. The thing was called the Empathic Obliterator for a reason. If he smashed it into my drone, arcs of energy would obliterate anything with simir neural and psychological activity.

  Which probably included my avatar. I wasn’t going to test whether that thing could tto psychiions like that damned disiing spear the Shadowkeeper had, Trazyn had nothing to worry about.

  He gave a nod, and a cryptek walked up to my still-suspended and scale-covered avatar, holding out its metallid as a tiny little gap opened up in the green energy field binding it.

  Trazyn almost imperceptibly stiffened, probably engaging whatever equaled ‘bat readiness’ for a Ne.

  A psychic thread slipped through the gap, tched onto the small vial of Hrud blood, and snatched it aulling it through the gap. Not a momehe energy field returo its uniform state.

  “What now?” Trazyn asked, now standio the drone rexedly.

  “Now es the hard part,” I said.

  The vial floated up to my avatar’s mouth, shattered under my mental grasp and the blood inside floated into its mouth. A hopefully imperceptible thread of white eldritch flesh sucked it all up the moment it touched my tongue and then I chucked an unnecessarily rge part of my mental power at the problem of deg their genes.

  “Iing,” I hummed. “I don’t think I ever tasted such a chaotiecode. It’s a wohey were ever capable of funing.”

  “How so?”

  “Their gene s are a mess, half ected, frayed, and a mismatch of random things I ’t even pce. I think most of it doesn’t even serve a goal … but somewhere uhat pile of trash should be the secret to temporal manipution.”

  It was going to be a slog, even with my new legion of mind cores at the ready. I was still not quite doh Selene’s new form either, plus I was ag to have a new form of my own too.

  Upgrades. So many upgrades. I’m so making a p-wide server farm of brains once I’m doh this mess and the blueberry primarch.

  “This will take a while,” I hummed. “Do you wish to tinue our tour? I don’t think this will be done in a few hours. Might even need some exteesting before I have any measure of success.”

  “I see,” he nodded. “I suppose we could. It would be a shame to bore ourselves here.”

  With that, we set off again. Though, now that I’d seen how receptive he was to trading I wasn’t going to let this ce go.

  “I promised to answer your questions about ‘a’ earth iurn for that sample,” I said after a minute. “Ask away, if you wish.”

  ******

  “So a little like a localised datasphere that every human had access to?”

  “Yes,” I answered, feeling a bit weary after five hours of tinuous versation about the most muhings iehough it was far less sophisticated and held much less data.”

  “That much is obvious,” he nodded. “This ‘I’ of yours was quite the iion, especially for a civilisation only a few thousand years old.”

  “I suppose it was,” I shrugged. “Now, it isn’t that I don’t enjoy learning about new alien civilisations, but I am aware you have some … older exhibits and some that would be much more appealing to my particur taste.”

  He gazed at me, it was impossible to tell what was going through his metallic head with a distinct ck of facial expression or even an aura to read.

  “That is true,” he said, his eyes narrowed. “But my curiosity is satiated enough that I won’t brutalise another exhibit to sate your hunger.”

  “Well, on that note, I see this meeting ending one of three ways,” I said. “One, you annoy me and I melt both this drone and my avatar into sludge, leaving you with nothing aside from the information you already gained.”

  “Two, I detach the avatar from my main sciousness, which would leave you with an intact but mindless and murderously explosive bioon.”

  “And three, you offer something that makes the tinued security risk that is a captured avatar worth it.”

  “Hmmm,” he tapped his thoughtfully. “Which oute would you go for if we eeting short at this moment?”

  “The sed,” I said. “An avatar takes effort to maintain, and it's useless just sitting around in stasis to me. But as a gesture of goodwill, I would leave it funal enough that you could throw it at a group of people a bit too alive for your liking.”

  “I see,” he mused. “And what would you think of as appropriate pensation for not doing that?”

  “I heard you got your hands on a perfect e of the Primarch Fulgrim.”

  “Whole or a sample?”

  “Sample,” I shook my head. “Letting him run around would cause more trouble than it's worth. Plus I like the Imperium just on the brink of colpse as it is, o give them too much of an edge.”

  “Done,” he nodded. “You will get a vial of his blood iurn for keeping your ‘avatar’ fully funal.”

  “Alright,” I grinned. “I do reserve my right to go ba that should I sense y to use it as a duit to attack me.”

  “That is uandable I suppose,” he gave an artificial shrug. “Was that all?”

  “We could also iate some sort of a deal on you putting my avatar into one of those Tesseract Labyrinths you have, I would be more than willing to offer my assistance when needed, seeing you have more than enough iing things here to make the energy expenditure worthwhile.”

  “Let us put that on hold,” he said. “If I ever have to do such a thing, you would be pensated. But I have no need for su agreement as of now.”

  “If you say so,” I shrugged. “I’m still ied in the Great Crusade era exhibits you have, or any that you have kept from before the slumber.”

  “Let us tihen,” he said with much more enthusiasm than he had while iating. “This exhibit is of a group of Dark Eldar raiding a … “

  *****

  I snapped my eyes open, just in time to make eye tact with a sheepish-looking Selehe cause of said look possibly stemmed from the fact that she held a tiny arc of electricity between her fingers, which was just a moment away from poking my right boob.

  I gave her the most unimpressed look I could mahen my eyes flew wide open as I caught a mischievous glint in her silver eyes.

  “Oh no yo-“ I jumped up with a yelp as she poked me anyway.

  The jolt was just about what I would have expected from toug arice. It was far from dangerous, but it stung.

  “Oh you are so going to get it,” I growled. Eyes narrowed at the giggling little minx.

  “Ahem,” she cleared her throat. “That squishy thing had been squealing at the top of its lungs for five minutes now.”

  I jumped to my feet and reached out to it. Through the squish toy, I saw how Guilliman was squishing the living daylights out of his terpart of the thing.

  “This isn’t over,” I poi Selene. “But it seems the good Lent has something to talk about. Wanna e?”

  “Not now,” she shook her head with a smirk. “I’ll let you deal with whatever this is. Just teleport me in when you get to the fighting, if there is any?”

  “Sure,” I said, feeling a little disappointed. “See you ter?”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  *****

  Latg onto the psychiioweewo stress-balls quickly gave me a feel of the p the other side and I decided to go with a fshy portal instead of a Blink.

  Opening up a portal whinous preseh fshy e light and a burning hiss was just a touch more courteous than appearing out of nowhere.

  As I stepped through, I had to suppress a smirk as a nearby group of Librarians scowled at me.

  “ry,” I told them like a mother soling a child for an effort well done, even if their interdi field athetically weak. Then turo Guilliman who had his regur statue-like expression on. “You called?”

  “Yes,” he said, finally letting go of the ball of estic goo, which sequently stopped squealing. “I’d like to take you up on your offer of assistan assaulting the beasts in the caverns.”

  “Sureeee,” I smiled. “Iurn for what, exactly?”

  “The corpses you make in the process.”

  I clicked my tongue. Here it was, the downside of being so forward with my wants. He figured out I wanted any powerful thing’s biological matter. Oh well, it just meant I couldn’t get rewarded for something I would have done anyway … not that I couldn’t let Guillima injured just so I could sample a bit of his blood like with the shadowkeeper.

  “Every corpse being made in the fight,” I tered.

  “I won’t have you eating the remains of my men.”

  Just a look at the dangerous glint in his eyes told me that wasn’t up for debate. “Then any Tyranid, or other corpse of Xenin. With the exception of your pet Farseer, if he does kick the bucket somehow.”

  “Done.” he hen spun on his heels. “e, we are attag in two hours.”

  “We?” I asked as I struggled to keep up with his titanic gait without breaking into a jog. After a few seds, I opted to float along beside him.

  “Yes,” he threw me a side-eye.

  “Did you find out what the big thing was?”

  He gave me a look that said ‘who the fuck do you think you are to have me report to you?!. But instead, he just gave a wave and one of the men behind him answered my question.

  “Records show this bioform has seen battle on at least two previous battlefields. Both times as ae unit sent after generals and anders. It has been dubbed the ‘Norn Emissary’.”

  “Huh,” I tapped my as I flipped onto my bad tinued floating. “How strong is it?”

  The man who answered gave a look to his Primarch, but seeing him give a minute nod, answered again. “The only oo ever have been killed was sin by Captain-General Trajan Valoris of the Adeptus Custodes after it butchered some of his men. It could be said the creature has immerength eclipsing even Custodian Guards and a serpentine speed that hardly be tracked even by Astartes.”

  “I see.” That’s really fug strong … but with Gulliman here and with what I got from that ky old skeleton as a st resort … “Two hours, you said?”

  “Yes,” Guilliman said. “Transports are being readied. This has to be done before it kills more of my men.”

  “Sounds good.”

  He gave me another look that let me know I wasn’t quite endearing myself to him. Not that it mattered, he rogrammed to be xenophobid the best I could hope for was that he saw me alive and powerful as a boon for the Imperium.

  Now I just had to make sure I appeared petent in the ing fight, but not too petent.

  This is either going to be a pain or very enjoyable … I should get Selene.

  P3t1

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