13 – AHHHHHHHHH

13 – AHHHHHHHHHI didn't dare move a single muscle as I tried to come up with a possible way for me to survive this, I was nearly panicking so I consciously reabsorbed my human brain and substituted it with a mass of my eldritch flesh. I noticed before that I could 'think' with it just like my human brain but its capacity was heavily dependent on the mass of eldritch flesh I had currently and not on my energy reserves. This calmed me down significantly as my mind slipped into a cold and calculating state. My biggest weaknesses were fire, atomization, explosion and acid. As far as I knew Lictors didn't have either but I couldn't be too sure about the acid. After all, this was an Apex Predator, the result of endless and proactive evolution guided by a god-like consciousness hell-bent on consuming all life in the universe. If there was a perfect hunter then the Lictor was it. Why I wasn't already in several pieces by now while my liquified mind is being absorbed for my memories is beyond me. I didn't take Lictors for beings that played with their food like felines but here we were. My eyeless gaze bore into its dark stare. It was coiled and ready to strike, if I moved but a single muscle I was sure it would rip me apart faster than my shitty senses could register it. Maybe my alien white sight and hearing could pick up on it a moment before it happened but I sure as hell couldn't react to it. I was fast with those tendrils but not as fast as this monster and let's not even talk about how it stalked me while invisible for who knows how long without me even realizing before it decided to play with me a bit. Right now my biggest concern was whether it knew about my ability to recover from nearly all damage and that made it observe me for longer or just my absorption of the corpses. If it was the first then it might e testing my reaction speed which I quite spectacularly messed up by not even moving a single muscle. It shouldn't be able to sense my mind though, as far as I could tell I was somehow 'disconnected' from the warp. That should make it so its psychic bullshit powers don't have any effect on me. If it didn't know that I wouldn't be able to kill me without submerging me in acid I still had a chance. I wasn't willing to risk striking at its exoskeleton with my tendrils, I might be able to reach it before it reacted, those were fast as fuck but I wasn't so sure about eating through it's armour. It was a Tyranid after all and not one of the grunt biomorphs either. Its carapace should be able to withstand anything less than a Heavy Bolter or a Meltagun. I would only get one chance at it underestimating me on the account of this being my first run-in with the Hive-Mind. God fuck, I hope it didn't meet whoever controlled this body before, that would be a shame, though Tyranids couldn't shapeshift like I could so it shouldn't have managed to absorb anything like me. I took a deep mental breath, not letting anything show in my body language before I jumped back with all my strength. My body being at the limit of what a human body could naturally be didn't stand a chance against the monster before me. My sight surprisingly managed to keep track of the being as it didn't bother to cloak itself again. It reached forward with one of its clawed arms and grabbed my body roughly mid-jump without taking a single step. Its other arm steadied itself as it caught me with the other but now it once again stood in its original hunched stance. I don't know if I disappointed it or if it was just done playing with its food but it tore out my throat with its other and stilled again. It observed me with those dark beady eyes that spoke of barely restrained hunger in favour of fulfilling its purpose. Collecting information. Reporting back bioforms that could prove to be problematic to the Swarm. I hope I was not proving to be one of those as that would mess with this moronic plan of mine. I was heavily bleeding out through my half-missing throat, not that it would kill me but I made it look like it was working. I tried working my brutalized throat but only gurgling sounds managed to come out of it and my whole body spasmed in the monster's ruthlessly tight grip. A second later I morphed my head back into my original human head like it was a temporary thing I was failing to hold now that I was dying. I put as much horror and dread into my now human gaze and face as I could before I went limp in its hold, my body no longer receiving neural instructions. I sat, encased in my own skull as a mass of eldritch flesh waiting for the next move of the Lictor. I didn't have to wait for long as in a few seconds three tentacles bore through my fragile skull. One through my left eyesocket and the rest through each side of my head, around my ears. The tendrils secreted some sort of substance that would liquify my brain if I remembered right and I simulated its effects while absorbing the secreted stuff. Surprisingly without much trouble, it was a sort of bacteria maybe? I don't know for sure, Human words were inadequate to describe the complexity of this simple fluid. It waited for a moment and I mimicked the effect the stuff should have on a human brain and turned my flesh into a liquid state, mostly just incredibly small tendrils interconnecting with each other. The being sucked somehow, similar to how I would absorb biomatter through my skin but it had small tunnels in its tendrils for this purpose and I graciously went along with it. I could only control a single, connected biomass and the shithead was sucking with three tendrils but that wasn't much of a problem. I was still connected to all three as I controlled them all simultaneously. The moment I reached the end of the fleshy tunnel and I found myself inside the soft, flesh body of the Lictor I struck. I reconnected my separated parts and withdrew myself from my previous shell and left it for the monster to do with it as it liked. Not that it had long to do anything now. I used as much of my energy as I had to expand myself in a single fragment of a second. The flesh and muscles of the Lictor didn't give any resistance as they were ruthlessly absorbed into me much to my delight. A part f me was already imagining the possibility that even its insides would be resistant or even immune to my powers but that fear proved to be unfounded. I made sure to analyze every single cell that made up the body of this being down to atoms. I heard it shriek once but it cut off quickly as I made sure to tear my way to its head and feed on its brain as soon as possible to make sure it couldn't make use of any sort of safeguard it might have against beings like me. I wasn't arrogant enough to think Tyranids didn't have some sort of protection against parasites or something that would try to eat them from the inside out. Its brain if you could still call it that was huge, several times the size of a human's and much more advanced but it didn't make it last much longer than a human's would against my ruthless tendrils. Not before it managed to activate some sort of immune reaction to me though or maybe that didn't have anything to do with its brain at all. Flesh-melting acid splashed out of thousands of pores through its massive body making me lose some of my hard-earned energy but it didn't matter much. It was far too little far too late to save the already dead apex predator. The acid ate through my flesh but I could absorb it and toss it out of my body outside the Lictor even if it took some energy to constantly heal myself throughout the process. It took away weeks from my total lifespan, not that it mattered to me at the moment. A few moments later the only things left were its skeleton and its hardened carapace which both proved to be a bit more of a challenge to absorb. Still, the only thing it took was time, I could feel both being corroded away at noticeable speed through my senses. I could still absorb the stuff as it was, letting it dissolve inside my body instead of having my tendrils spread across its surface from both sides. It didn't make any difference. I just now realized that I could have done the same thing to its carapace as I did to the walls before, that sort of eating without absorbing stuff didn't seem too physics accurate but who was I to judge? No, it could have reacted in time and torn me off of itself before I could invade its body so this was still a better alternative. A mere ten seconds after I first entered its body I now stood alone in the room, the howling wind once again making itself noticeable as I reformed my human body. I grimaced at the chill in the room a bit and swept my gaze over my previous body, lying dead on the floor. Its one remaining green eye still reflected the horror it felt at its last moments but the once vibrant glow of it gave way to a hollow and lifeless gaze. I felt a bit uncomfortable staring at my own corpse and I also kinda needed its clothes so a few tendrils made quick work of it and slipped my trusty body glove over my body much more efficiently than human hands ever could. I fixed my tactical belt once again around my waist which also somehow survived all of my previous activities, unlike my coat. Poor coat got torn to shreds days ago while I was still getting used to my high-rise parkour routine. I felt a grin forming on my face even though I just got through an experience many would call traumatic or horror-inducing and yet I couldn't school my facial expressions. I didn't even want to, who was here to judge me if I grinned like a maniac while letting maybe even a few giggles escape me? The Lictor was perfectly analyzed and its unnaturally nutritious body extended my lifespan by years even though I lost a few weeks due to the acid. The monster that could terrorize entire planets, slaughter space marines and sneak up on some of the strongest people in the galaxy was now all mine. Aeons of tireless work went into making this biomorph. Random mutations, guided evolution, testing and rebuilding. All of it done by a Hive Mind that devastated galaxies. And I stole it all in less than half a minute.