Luis DanteHis feet touched down with a loud thud as his jump pack's ignition cut off. He bouhrough the gate with the meook out for this sortie following behind him.

  The portcullis fell dht as the st Mariepped through while the stant firing of auto ons atop the battlements held back the Swarm.

  "My Lord," Mephistoed him, the Chief Librarian having been awaiting his return.

  "Speak," Dante spoke as he waved him to follow.

  "Private," Mephiston said in his dark, whisper-like voice. He always had that certain weako his tone when the sun in the sky. "About what you asked."

  "I see." the two of them walked in silehe fortress was the most sacred of locations to their chapter and they k like the back of their hands. Dante navigated the hallways filled with rushing people, finding a room set aside for privacy.

  The two stepped inside and even if it was redundant, with Mephiston being right o him, Dante engaged all the regur protes against eavesdroppers and psychitrusion.

  "The ward is set," the chief librarian spoke in a whispered sigh.

  "What have you learned?" Da right into it and Mephiston caught his meaning. The two of them had agreed on specific turns of phrases and signals to unicate in during the iation.

  Right as they left, the Librarian excused himself to meditate and dwell on the happenings and grasp the meanings hidden behind the deceitful veil of words.

  Why didn't you kill 'her' or 'incapacitate' her? Was his real question the Chapter Master asked.

  "I failed to sense her presence."

  "She cks a psychic presence?" Dante frowned behind his mask.

  "No," Mephiston answered, the shake of his head only veyed in his tone. "It was there, but out of my grasp, ethereal and beyond my senses."

  "So she is not a bnk."

  "That is certain."

  "What manner of being is she, then?"

  "I do not know," said Mephiston in the same, dispassionate voice. "Her power eludes me, yet I know it is there. She is something I haven’t entered before."

  "Were you able to gleam anything else?" Dante was calm. ess came easily when he faced the horrors besieging humanity for turies with naught but his axe and jump pack.

  "The Bck Rage fears her," Mephiston said with a dark glee. "The bgel hates her."

  "I suspect," Dante residered his words, but no matter how much he went through them, they still rang true. "So does the Sanguinor."

  That wiped the glee off of the pale librarian.

  "Beings of the , both."

  "Indeed."

  "It would be … curious to see how demo to her."

  "Enough of that," said Dante, cutting off the Librarian's musings. "If you had to guess based on what you know, how strong would you say she is?"

  "There are yers to that question," hummed Mephiston with grim amusement. "What is certain is that the defences of her mind made me doubt the success of a telepathic attack."

  "A strong mind is the sign of a powerful Psyker."

  "Indeed."

  "I suppose we will see the extent of her power today," Dante mused. "If she pns on actually aiding us."

  "Her choice of pensation was … ing."

  "Worse people than her have eic material," Dante would have shrugged if he could have.

  Wheical lunatics like Fabius Bile were in possession of pure Blood Angel geneseed, he couldn't be bothered to worry about a few locks of hair to someone who was already a menace even without whatever power she could extract from it.

  Dante’s priority was holding the Fortress for as long as possble, he would have allied with Drukhari if he had to if it meant holding the Swarm for a week longer. Plus, the troublesome woman was likely to end up dead by the week’s end, along with what remained of the Angelic Host.

  The ‘Swarmlord’ was dead and gone, but the swarm of ravenous aliens was relentless.

  Mephiston hummed an aowledgement.

  "Let us see how much she is willing to show us," Mephiston murmured, and Dante agreed with him. He'd been out on sorties to take de bio-forms ever since he left that iation. For some damned reason, there was even a giahworm popping up from time to time around the battlefield that no one could take down so far.

  Let's see whether I make her kill that thing.

  "Hi~" I chirped right as the door opened up. Putting up a barrier that looks like a swirling mass of darkness in the chaotic mass of colours that was the was about as stealthy as an elephant in a birch forest.

  "Greetings," Dante said, and Mephiston gave a single bored nod.

  "We were just going to go out and kiss anything that es close, but I wao ask whether you have anything that needs express killing around here?"

  "There is," he answered after a moment of thought, waving Mephistion away, who went on his way with a nod. "A enormous Worm-like bio-form has been making any rge-scale missions going out challenging. I think yos acquaintance lost quite a number of his vehicles to it, too."

  "Hmm," I caressed my , "Sure, let's go for that."

  "Aside from that, the more Xenos you kill, the better. I have no more targets that need killing more than the ones swarming the walls."

  "Cool," I shrugged. "I’ll go get on with it then — Oh, I almost fot!"

  I pulled his fancy poweraxe out of my chest. The huge thing barely fit into my body, so it ain to carry it arouo that gauss fyer. I really should have gotten a spatial ste item like all those OP transmigrators instead of this shit phasing. Oh well, better than nothing.

  He stared at the extended handle for a long sed before he ed his fingers around it aly pulled it out of my hand.

  "Thank you," he me and I just gave him a polite smile and a "I'll see you ter!"

  "Indeed." he nodded, his gaze following the two of us from behind his mask until we disappeared behind a er.

  "Armor up," I hummed with glee as I let my armour flow over me. It had gotten no further upgrades yet, as analyzing the new geic samples was going to be a slog and a half. That Swarmlord was a bitake a tempte out of and reverse engineering a gene seed out of some locks of hair required no less perseverance.

  I was going to have to step up my game hard and fast if I wao use that thing in active bat before Dante died of old age.

  I had ideas, of course. Many a warhammer fanbirl ridiculed the Tyranids for their apparent stupidity. The aliens should have been more than capable of geing biomass in rge quantities if they just settled down and started farming algae on an o world, for example, or just photosensitize.

  It wasn't quite the same for me as I'd learhat bio-energy was more like life force or vitality than biomass turned into energy. I could gai's say, 1 unit of bio-energy from 1kg of moss. That was good and all, but at the same time, I'd gain 10000 units of bio-energy from a single kg of termagant flesh.

  The plexity and quality of the biomass pyed a huge role in how muergy I could get from abs a certain thing.

  Still, if I could be stantly making more biomass without much cost on my end and giving myself a tinuous, passive regeion, then I'd be set to live forever. No more w about expiring like a home-made bread.

  There would be annoyances with getting bio-energy to the avatar I was using, but it shouldn't be too much of a problem if I perfect that Crotalid -jump symphony thing.

  "So we are killing that Worm?" Selene asked, now covered in that beautiful armor I made for her from the neck down.

  "Mostly me, I think," I smiled at her enthusiasm. She was being a little murder rabbit and I couldn't get enough of it. Having shared hobbies and is is good for a retionship, that is an Ea approved fact.

  "Why?"

  "The Hive-Mind probably made that thing to ter my powers, I think," I mused. "It didn't really t with me being as powerful a Psyker as I am though, so I should manage, but you might not."

  "I see," she said, and a pit formed in my stomach at the disheartened aura she was radiating.

  "After that, I am going to need some … unfortuesting subjects."

  "For?"

  "I … am sorry, Selene," I g her so she could see the siy in my eyes. "I should have started w on this much sooner, but I won't be procrastinating on it any longer. I want to get it done before the fleet arrives."

  "What are you talking about?"

  'You Psychic powers.' I sent through a newly made telepathik.

  'What are you going to do with them? Didn't you say that all of your ideas were far too dangerous?'

  'They are too dangerous to test on you because they might not work out exactly as I hope, but that is why I o do some tests beforehand.'

  Betweeep and the , Realspace rippled around us and I pulled Selene along with myself as we rode the waves of the shallowest yer of the .

  When my feet ouched ground, we were out in the depths of the wastend with nothing but white sand and dry dirt visible for kilometers on each side.

  Selene groaned a bit, and I grimaced. I thought the transition would have been seamless by now, but it seemed I still had some training to do. Using Blink like this would broadcast my preseo any nearby psykers as even if they 't naturally feel my soul energy, what they could feel for certain was the ripple of realspace that the Blink used to teleport.

  Not that the main reason would be that if I had better trol, it wouldn't give a migraio my girlfriend.

  Was she my girlfriend? We kissed, and she said she'd try out this retionship of ours. That meant she was, didn't it?

  "Hey Selene," I asked. "So we are sort of together nht? So we are girlfriends nht?"

  My answer was a weak gre as she massaged her head with a hand and swallowed something back down with a srima her lips. Oops.

  I let a soft stream of bio-energy numb her pain and soften her nausea.

  "Thanks," she said with a sigh, still massaging the bridge of her nose. "Yes we are, and didn't I ask you before specifically to NOT use Blink on me? And could you keep the dumbass questions for when I'm not vomiting my guts out?"

  "It was a very important question," I huffed. "And I thought I could cast Blink perfectly already." I scratched my cheek.

  "Well," she sighed, shaking her head with a slight smile. "You definitely 't."

  "Yans remained in the right pce." I defended myself.

  "It felt like my brain was rolling around in my skull."

  "Mhmmm," I nodded, leaning in to look at her head. A trickle of psychiergy flooding my ocur system — my eyes and their tral trol system — allowed my sight to pierce through her soft skin and ium to have a look at that brain inside.

  Oooops. I gave her a cussion.

  "Yep." I turned off my x-ray vision and suddenly found my faly inches away from Selene's, so I took the opportunity to give her a quick pe her cheek before leaning back. "I gave you a cussion by act, somehow you brain gained some extra velocity during the Blink."

  She me, while giving me a look.

  "I'll have to figure out why that is." I tapped my .

  "How is it that only I got a cussion?"

  "My brain is much less important for thinking and trolling my body than it is for you, plus I made some precautions." I shrugged. "For one, I fixated it in pce by tendons eg it to my ium, and the fluid it floats in has some noonian properties, which helps a lot."

  "I see," she nodded. "What's noonian?"

  "This," I shrugged and made a bit of it in my palm. It was the same as those high school chemistry projects where you made these from flour and whatever. That is if you ignore where these e from.

  I toyed with it, making it flow like a liquid before squeezing it tightly, causing it to escape my grip and show properties like a glob of wet sand.

  "And that is inside your skull?" she asked with an obvious show of morbid curiosity on her face.

  "Yep," I shrugged, reabs the stuff.

  "I see." she looked thoughtful, but shook her head a moment ter. "So, what am I to do while you go worm hunting?"

  "Well, if you are willing, of course, I might have a … mission for you," I said with what I hoped was a mysterious smirk.

  "What is it?" she asked with a glimmer of glee in her eyes. This girl loved the pave her, maybe even a bit too much, but oh well, so did I.

  "I want you to procure some of those previously discussed test subjects."

  She looked left and right doubtfully, then gave me a look. The white waste on and on until it dipped below the horizon a few kilometers away. There was nothing here but b sand.

  Or so it would seem.

  I could see all the living souls on Baal and a bit beyond quite easily, so I saw the few dozen human souls right below our feet huddling together like ants in a . It might feel like I am bullying these obviously -tainted assholes, but they'd be excellent targets for Selene.

  My one worry was whether they could somehow use her Psyker nature against her. I knew some Psykers went mad and fell just from looking at heretical runes and scriptures.

  That could be a problem.

  Would chaos cultists even work as test subjects? I'd o see ter, buuuuut they also had some untainted people down there. Initiates or prisoners maybe? Sves or sacrifices?

  Bad Ea. If they are i, you shouldn't be ripping is’ souls from their body just to test your ideas …

  That would be the optimal course of a though, and I couldn't say I wouldn't be willing to test my idea on some sorry sods that turned into unwilling sacrifices if it meant I could keep Selene away from the demonic quartet's grasp.

  Selene was just about to say something, but she stopped midway, her mouth hanging open as three tendrils of thick soul energy pierced into the ground below me.

  I hummed as they burst into the underground rooms and caverns, questing for any denser tration of chaos taint I could feel down there and washing them away with pure overwhelming power bined with a touite weaved into the tendrils.

  I cared not as the cultists wailed, their single Psyker bursting into bloody ash under my power along with books, ink, scrolls and such joining him in his new asheence.

  It only took five seds before I stopped, sing the whole thing awo times before I gave myself a satisfied nod.

  Telekinesis flowed along the tendrils as I tore them out of the ground and with them came tonnes of sandstone and the rockrete wall of the underground hall closest to the surface.

  "Chaos Cultists," I provided helpfully as Seleared at the newly made gaping hole in the ground, probably also starting to hear the panicked shouts eg out of it.

  "I see," she gulped. "Okay."

  "You do this," I gave her a sideway hug. "I took care of anything that would have Inquisitors on your ass just for looking at them along with their lone Psyker. The rest should be run-of-the-mill cultists with sguns and such."

  She gave a more resolute nod to that. Good.

  "Good hunting." I said with a smile.

  "Yeah," the edge of her mouth quirked upwards. "Good hunting to you too."

  P3t1

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