Mara woke up with a start, jerking awake with her heart thundering in her chest. She swept her gaze around, wide-open eyes jumping across the small wooden room she found herself in.

  This wasn’t her room, the bed she sat on was also far too bound the sheets too soft. It looked exactly like the shack she’d grown up in though … no, the shack she lived in. Mara was just a girl, after all, barely into her teens. Even now, a tiny part of her just wao go back to sleep a herself enjoy the silky smoothness and warmth.

  Maybe in a bed like that, the horrors would leave her alone for a night.

  It was tempting, and that was how Mara k was a lie, an attempt at trig her into sleeping aing the horrors defile her mind again. The purple-eyed witch must have pced a spell on the bed. But Mara found it out, she was smart like that … but what if that just meaorment would begin sooner? Without even the daze of dreams to muddle them?

  Swallowing the lump ihroat, Mara slowly and with the utmost stealth she could manage, slid off of the bed. As her bare feet touched the wooden floor, she bent her ko dampen the sound, but grimaced as the whole flave off a tortured creak.

  Her heartbeat thundered in her chest, she heard it in her ears, felt it pulse ihroat. Mara took a shallow breath, trying to tre herself and hold off on panig.

  She didn’t remember why, or who … but she just knew someone evil was out there, lurking just beyond the shoddy walls of her little shack. So she strained her ears, twitg at every rustling leaf or chirping bird.

  They had to be out there; he had to be out there …

  Mara stared at the door of the shack, biting her lips as she thought and thought. What to do? Stay inside, or peek outside?

  The door creaked, and with a startled yelp of utter horror, Mara scampered into the furthest er of the shack. She didn’t dare take her eyes off of the door, staring at the handle and dreading the moment it would move and he would e in to desecrate her final safe pce, her final stronghold.

  Except, was this even her home, with the weirdly silky and fluffy bed? She couldn’t be sure. She couldn’t ever be sure of anything. Not with evil witches and even more vile things skulking about in the woods around the shack.

  Five seds went by with the door remaining firmly shut, even as wind swept by and made it rattle ominously. Then ten seds went by and the door remained as it was.

  Mara held back a whimper, the suspense was killing her.

  When a full minute passed without anything happening, small birds tinuing to sing outside in blissful ignorance of what lived in the forest among them, Mara started to slowly calm down.

  Well, as much as getting tired of being on full alert for a minute, b on hysteria could be called ‘calming down’.

  Over the course of the half an hour, she slowly inched closer and closer to the door, creeping up to it like the evil witch or the horror in human form that anded her would jump out from behind it at any moment.

  Despite knowier, Mara’s heart betrayed her and a hint of treacherous hope began to blossom and corrupt her like a spreading iion.

  With that, came dread and the knowledge that it would be crushed like every siime before.

  Then defiand a soul deep fury. She would not give up her st tiny embers of hope. She would not allow herself to be broken so thhly. She was Mara the … the …

  She couldn’t remember, but she knew she was not ohat gave up easily, if ever and so she threw the door open. Hinges barely holding and screeg iallic agony, the door flew wide open and the vibrant green sery of a deep forest opened up before Mara’s eyes.

  Suspi lined Mara’s face as she cast her narrowed gaze about the primal forest surrounding her from all sides. It was only due to her intense scrutiny that she’d noticed the oddities that made little sense.

  One was the ost sounds. Sure, the leaves rustled in the wind and birds sang unseen, but there was no loud chattering of a hundred and one different is.

  Sed, despite the forest lookily like the juhat had once housed her shack, the bst of humid air so de made it hard to breathe was just straight-up ent wheepped outside.

  Mara took a deep breath, taking in a lungful of refreshingly crisp air she would have expected only on a mountaintop.

  Curiosity came, beating back her dread as she chewed on her lower lip in thought.

  She wao iigate. There was just something deeply odd about the world arouhat she had to unveil, for better or for worse.

  *****

  A small fragment of my attentio following Mara’s adventures as she wahrough the tiny forest realm in my own now-o of soul energy. The woman- irl, rather, was in a surprisingly healthy mental state sidering her mind is merely a tiny little fragment of the woman she had once been, a repeatedly beaten and broken final part of it that heless kept resisting fully shattering areated into the deepest depths of her own mind.

  She had fotten the vast majority of what had happeo her, but some vague memories lingered from the few surface thoughts that were strong enough that I could feel them with only my passive empathy and telepathy turned her way.

  I didn’t know how to help her heal, or how to put her mind back together without breaking it even more thhly than it already was, so this was a weight off of my chest at least.

  Sure, I could have just wi, but that would have more than likely ended up with her very dead. Alternatively, I could have used the currently atose mind of my pocket Inquisitor, but likewise, he would have died from that, as would have the couple hundred or thousa subjects I would have o perfect my methods.

  The mind was a fragile thing, and a mortal human’s mind who didn’t even have their souls and telepathic powers to defend it, was even more so. I could just send an erraal cough the wrong way and obliterate the minds of every single human in a smaller city with practically no effort.

  Anyway, while Mara would take some time to handle, Zara was looking like a surprisingly lucky find. So much so that I had to use my more active telepathid empathic abilities to ensure she wasn’t lying through her teeth … then had to take an even deeper look to make sure she wasn’t making herself telepathically believe she was telling the truth, while lying through her teeth.

  That had been a plot point I remembered from one of the books I’d read in my life as a human. I was curious about the measure of truth to it, but I wagered I’d only find out once I had the ce to visit the Imperial Pa Holy Terra.

  The wards on that pce, after all, were supposedly able to ascertaient of the oering and the Alpha Legion had only been able to slip through them by some very resourceful trickery during the early days of the p’s siege during the Heresy.

  After I’d mao get it out of Zara why exactly she was so ameo the idea of servi made sense. I was just surprised she owerful enough to catch true glimpses of the and remain as sane as she was. The girl had been watg every single one of her rade’s souls be ripped apart by either the currents of the or ravenous daemons, after all. That was less than ducive to one’s mental wellbeing.

  Still, I would not be granting her wish just yet. She was going to remain ected to the true for a while more while I got to make sure her soul’s inclusion to my domain wouldn’t bring with it other problems.

  Mara’s inclusion had been a bit of a rush job, and a spur-of-the-moment thing, but the girl couldn’t cause many problems with her not even knowing about her own psychiature in the degraded state she was in.

  That wouldn’t be true for the , but my little slice of the Immaterium was much less treacherous and dangerous to wield. At worst, she would actally tear the tiny realm she was in at the moment to shreds, but no daemon would try to tear its way through her soul and materialise in realspace or whatnot.

  Anyway, onto more lighthearted topics, Coldstone finally fucked off of my new p after I handed over to him some of the goodies I’d gotten from the Inquisitor’s vault that were of Tau make. He had been particurly livid when I handed him the fahereal Honour Bde, which quickly transformed to appreciation whe the puzzle pieces together and came to the rightful clusion that I had taken the prop from the Inquisitor and was handing it ba as a show of good faith.

  Hopefully, his fellow Ethereals would take it, and my show of for my st battle, as a good thing and be more ameo my tinued existenot that they could do much about it at this point, but they could try and that would be a pain.

  At least most of my short-term projects for my new p had been pleted while I was away on my excursion, and the p now sported a suitably whole ecosystem with airely breathable atmosphere. Even my fortress was finished, as was the basic road system around it and the beginnings of the t walls that would surround it from all sides, proteg it from some of the nastier beasties I’d let loose on the world.

  The rest of the buildings in the eventual city would e in time, but now the foundations were set. All that remained was to wait and see when or if anyone would even want to settle. I didn’t care all that much either way, to be ho, and was much more ied iing into further building out my secret energy infrastructure.

  Already, the spikes of Ambull carapace driven into the molten blood of the p were proving their use, more than c the cost of my maintained web of tendrils eg me to almost every bit of flora on the p and the deep caverns now spread through the crust of the p.

  The Tyranids let loose iunnel system underh were trying their best to break out, but with all of their synapse creatures encased in unbreakable bedrock like living statues, the lesser bio-forms had little hope of breaking out. Thanks to them, I could practically feel the cws ah on the -currents around the p, signifying the presence of the Shadow of the Hive-Mind.

  I suspected that sooner or ter, that stunt would get a Hive Fleet to e knog, but I wouldn’t pin about the Hive Mind delivering my means right onto my doorstep. Anything short of a massive Hive Fleet with a Norn Emissary was just free bio-energy to me at this point and I would be teag that to the Tyranids that dared to enter my System.

  It was a touch risky, as I could easily see the Hive Mind wanting me gone enough to send a Norn Emissary sooner or ter, but it was worth it. Even now, I had a dozen smaller tendrils syphoning energy to be purified in my realm with impunity while the few lesser daemons still around could only watch. The few that tried to be annoying quickly got obliterated with little fuss.

  Other than that, in some other caverns I could see thousands of Orks setting up their primitive settlements as their raiding teams headed out through my web of tuo hunt Drakes and Dragons. Whenever any of either creatures fell, a tendril was there to drink up their corpses.

  The surface was much more normal in parison, only the few wildlife and fauna imported from death worlds making it iing, but I couldn’t actually earn any new energy out of those, as the surface was much easier to keep under surveilnd I had little doubt the few satellites in the moon’s orbit that Coldstone had left behind were doing just that.

  I could have removed them, but that would have sent the message that I had something to hide — which I did, but they didn’t know that for certain — and that wasn’t ducive to establishing diplomatic retions.

  In time, I’d get to set up a Shadow c the entire System a up a Dyson Swarm around the star while setting up simir heat saps on every p. Perhaps, I could even turirety of Vallia into a bio-energy farm. It would be pretty easy to facilitate an endless war on the p happeniween the local wildlife, some of my experimental bio-forms and a bunch of Orks.

  Hell, if I got a good enough war going, some more Orks might even deliver themselves into my p and serve themselves up as another source of free bio-energy. Those green muscle heads had some sixth sense for any iough happening anywhere around the gaxy.

  Yes, that could work.

  But first, I had a new ‘house’ to furnish appropriately with my girlfriend and a new underling to help settle in.

  P3t1