I gave Selene a quick rundown of what I knew of Psychic Blanks. Fuckers with negative souls that repelled warp energy, reinforced realspace, and made anything with even a fragment of psychic power in them loathe their very existence.

 

I could understand why, even if to a lesser extent, even if it affected me in an entirely different way than it did human psykers.

 

If a powerful Blank walked up to my face, I’d probably just be cut off from my drones or even my Avatar as I couldn’t exert my psychic control in their null-field from my Soul, but a regular human psyker would be stuck on the other side of the field, locked into their bodies without being able to call on their power and utterly separated from their souls.

 

I remember reading about psykers gouging their eyes and slitting their throats just so they wouldn’t have to live with the sheer discomfort and emptiness that losing their connection with their soul would induce.

 

Hopefully, I could avoid that.

 

Selene made me promise to avoid getting myself caught up in that field when I fought the Shadowkeeper even if I was sure — mostly sure, I was about maybe 70% sure if I rounded it up — that my soul-thread could withstand the suppression.

 

Stronger psykers on the level of Mephiston and such were known to be able to maintain their powers even under a null-field, though they were still weakened from its influence, and the Emperor was said to be able to directly affect Blanks with his Psychic powers which was fucking crazy. He could force power to manifest where reality itself fought against its existence.

 

Blanks had levels of powers though, just like psykers. It was a scale, psykers were on the positive side of it and Blanks on the negative with regular weak mortals right in the middle at zero.

 

That black skull the Shadowkeeper had was powerful, definitely in the upper ranks based on that scale. Still, Blank’s powers were supposed to stem from the negative nature of their souls … so why did an obviously dead skull show those powers? Was it a stolen Necron technology masked as an arcane artefact? Or did they imprison the soul of an unfortunate Blank in that skull?

 

It would hardly be the worst thing the Imperium did, far from it.

 

Now it was time for me to see how I held up against the Custodian myself, with my Avatar and full power behind it. I decided to mention getting ready to bolt to Zedev and Val just so they would be prepared if we needed to leave quickly.

 

The latter just accepted my order, but Zedev said something that surprised me.

 

‘The fleet reached vox range,’ he reported through our telepathic channel, his mental voice coming through livelier than his vox ever could. ‘A communication channel hasn’t been established yet, as the signal is still corrupted by leftover radiation and warp energy, but it is becoming clearer and clearer by the minute.’

 

‘How long till they can have a conversation?’ I asked. ‘Does Dante know who is trying to communicate with them?’

 

‘He knows it is the Macragge’s Honor, but he remains in the dark about the one at the helm of it. It is doubtful he would even believe it if I told him.’

 

‘Right,’ I mused. ‘Alright, be ready to be teleported away if things go to shit. I’ll be wrestling with what could possibly be an advance party of the Fleet sent to hunt me down.’

 

‘Seems … illogical.’

 

‘Maybe,’ I shrugged. ‘Either way, it is good to be prepared. I can’t fight a crusade fleet.’

 

‘Understood. Preparations will be made.’

 

The line cut off, and I thought I heard something ominous in his voice at the end, something I never would have caught if we had been speaking face to face with his vox speaker as our interpreter.

 

I shook it off. I had a Custodian to murderize … or at least take a bit out of.

 

If he really was acting with Guilliman’s blessings, everything I was trying to do here could go to shit real quick. A sample of Custodian blood could be my grace prize as I ran away with my tail tucked between my legs.

 

Should I? For a moment my degenerate brain wandered. I could certainly do it, but should I? Make a fluffy tail for myself, I mean? I was always more into elves than catgirls and stuff, but they had a charm of their own. Maybe Selene would appreciate it. Thoughts for later.

 

I wrapped Selly up in a tight hug, squeezing her a bit for good luck as she huffed in what I could tell was mock annoyance. Then, laid a goodbye peck on her cheek before letting go.

 

She gave me a look again, one that held a promise in it for the future.

 

“Good Luck, and be careful,” she said earnestly, and I was tempted to wrap her up in another hug, but time was of the essence.

 

If with the arrival of the Fleet I found not an amiable trading partner thankful for all the effort I put into keeping his boy Dante alive, but a foe hellbent on killing me and shoving my soulless body back into a container, then I didn’t have much time.

 

After the Custodian was dealt with, I could worry about navigating the rest. If he wanted to hunt me, he had to be prepared to become the hunted. The role of the prey was one I didn’t like one bit, and neither did it suit me for that matter.

 

A Blink took me away, by now merely a blip on the Warps and reality’s veil that would hopefully slip under the radar of all but the most observant Psykers.

 

As my armour flowed over me, covering me from head to toe, I considered what I’d learned from my previous confrontation with the Shadowkeeper.

 

He was more skilled than me, but not faster. In my Avatar, I could hopefully bridge that gap with overwhelming power and speed coming from soul energy enhancing my body along with a much larger store of bio-energy.

 

With not needing to be so frugal with soul energy and being able to pull even more whenever I needed to, I wouldn’t be constrained in what sorts of Sorcery I threw around. He would be eating Eldritch Blasts that made Greater Daemons stumble and with me Blinking around the battlefield like a hyperactive squirrel.

 

Blinking. That would probably be my most important tool with my much greater speed coming in as a close second.

 

Whatever the fuck that beam of energy his spear shot out was, the Psychic Shield my Drone had was like a piece of flimsy paper in front of it. I could conjure up stronger Shields in my Avatar, but not that much stronger. Evasion would be key.

 

The same would go for the black skull. Whenever his hand as much as twitched towards it, I’d have to Blink the fuck out of there even if I trusted my soul-thread to withstand its overbearing effects.

 

Best would be if I could steal it off of him, along with that silver orb. I didn’t know what the orb did, and assuming it would only be useful for holding my body in check after I was already taken care of would be a mistake. A mistake that could cost my life.

 

All in all, I knew what not to get hit by and had much more power to bring to bear in our rematch. I rather liked my chances. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t even be trying to get a rematch.

 

I let my senses spread out and cover the barren plains I stood on, my aura wasn’t something I trained overly much, but it still provided me with more than enough information and sensory input.

 

I felt the entire plains, every stone, rock, piece of dust, and sand, was crystal clear in my mind for miles all around me. I didn’t need to close my eyes and focus, or zoom in and out on a mental map. I just knew where everything was and what everything was.

 

That was just part of what it did, though. Aura was a power of the soul, so it was intrinsically linked with anything psychic. This made it all the more easy to feel the crack in reality much earlier than it was visible to the naked eye.

 

I did not know how he made the rifts, but feeling it form was effortless. It was hard not to notice it. The rift felt to my aura like what being slapped in the face would feel to my body.

 

As he stepped out, he stopped. The spear was in his hand already, brimming with energy as he lowered himself to readiness.

 

Still, he stood in place without pouncing, even as I stood leisurely with my arms crossed under my chest and feet tapping on the ground.

 

“Not what you expected?” I asked, my voice reverberating through the wasteland. “Not quite the Xeno monster you were hunting, am I?”

 

He didn’t answer, and I just tilted my head.

 

“Not much of a conversationalist, are you?” I rolled my shoulders as Atiesh appeared floating behind me. The faithful little staff was always close by and ready to fight. “You must be fun at parties.”

 

I took off my helmet as if it were a simple object of metal and looked at him with my perfect mimicry of a human face.

 

“What did I do to deserve you coming after me?” I raised an eyebrow at him. I of course had my assumption, but it was good to make sure. Plus, I actually really liked Shadowkeepers as a faction, so I sort of just wanted to talk with him, even if we’d be killing each other in a minute. “I deserve to know that at least, don’t I?”

 

“You deserve nothing, thief.” He hissed, his voice oddly boorish.

 

“Thief?” I smiled. “What did I steal?”

 

He said nothing, but I could feel his gaze harden into a glare as if telling me ‘You know damn well what you stole!’.

 

“I mean,” I twirled a lock of hair around my finger. “I know what you want. Probably do at least, but I don’t really know what it is. You get me? Like, would you enlighten a poor girl? Pretty please?”

 

I could tell he was feeling maybe the slightest bit put off. There was a word in this galaxy for the sheer primal dread, the mere sight of a transhuman put into regular humans. It was ‘transhuman dread’, very creative, yeah, but it got the point across.

 

No baseline human could resist this mental effect, and with the custodians being the crème de la crème of the transhumans, I — as an outwardly normal human, if you didn’t take into account my weird armour — should be shitting my pants and screaming in fright.

 

“Hand over the artefact,” he said. “And I will give you a painless death.”

 

“With that creepy spear of yours?” I hummed. “That thing gives a death as painless as a Drukhari Haemonculi.”

 

“So be it,” he said. Ignoring my comment like he did all the rest. “You have stolen from the Emperor of Mankind, and so you will die.”

 

He leapt into action without waiting another moment and I just shook my head in mock resignation, trying to hide the bloodthirsty grin spreading on my lips. It was madness, by old 21st-century Earth standards I was batshit crazy.

 

I could die here, I knew that, I could die for real here, but I didn’t care. Not only did I not care about the danger, I walked right into it. I could have teleported off planet, I was sure I could outrun this blocky Custodian and his hand-me-down teleporter, but I didn’t.

 

I stood right here and faced down what was, to most, death incarnate. When a Custodian accepted a mission, the Imperial bureaucracy preemptively stamped that mission as a success, such was their unbreakable faith in the strength of the Ten Thousand.

 

They were the Emperor’s finest servants, and doubting their success was akin to heresy. No, it was Heresy.

 

And I would be fighting not the weakest member of the Adeptus Custodes, not even an average one, but the best of the best. It tickled a primal urge deep inside of me, the threat of death and beating something so dangerous, so revered, to death.

 

He rushed at me, and my twin energies were already surging in my body, circulating and enhancing. I wasn’t pushing myself to the limit. Breaking apart my body like before would be stupid and I didn’t have an opportunity yet to test the threshold just yet. I’d have to be on the safer side with that.

 

Still, it was more than enough. Time slowed, not to a crawl, but to a sprint where it was a speeding train before.

 

His spear flashed out, drawing a large arc as it came down from above. I sidestepped it easily, slipping through his guard and hopping away as a fist came to crash into my stomach in retaliation.

 

“Just so you are aware,” I said, continuing to act casual. “I stole nothing. I am what was stolen.”

 

Even if he hadn’t confirmed it, I was about 99% sure of my theory being correct. It all fit together far too well to be wrong and while what I said wasn’t exactly true, it was the story I’d go with rather than me being some extra-dimensional spirit summoned into this galaxy by the sacrifice of a quadrillion innocent souls.

 

He ignored me, of course. Though I liked to think he was brooding over my words in that stubborn head of his. Can’t even have dramatic conversations with your enemy in this galaxy.

 

I plopped the helmet back on my head and quickly formed a bio-sword in my hand, a long-sword this time instead of the usual one-handed sword. Atiesh floated behind me through it all, ready to be used.

 

As my sword snapped to deflect a spear strike. Even as I was pushed back by the sheer force behind it, my trusty staff counterattacked in my place.

 

An Eldritch Blast burst forth and punched the Custodian right in the chest, making his sigils flare up and struggle as the nearly three metre tall man took a step back.

 

The sigils held out, but my sword struck again before he could recover. Not that it mattered. Instead of piercing his armour through the armpits, he twisted himself so my blade only drew a shrieking line on his chest plate.

 

I felt my heart thrumming in my chest, a useless action for the most part, but I liked the feeling of it. It made me aware of when I was anxious, angry, or excited. I didn’t know which I was at that moment. It could be neither or a combination of them all, but what I knew for sure was that I was alive. I felt alive.

 

I felt truly alive in a way I only felt a handful of times, all of which happened to be in this second life.

 

It was nice. For a moment, I felt like it was all worth it. An eternity in purgatory and a life that was no different before.

 

It was all worth it if I could have a life filled with moments like this.