35 – Consolidation

35 – ConsolidationI sat calmly on the bed in my private room, there wasn't much to look at here as I'd removed obscene amounts of gold and skulls already from the walls before painting the grey material beneath with simple shapes and colors. I didn't think I was some sort of interior decor genius but I at least could confidently say that I had more taste when it came to the topic than Imperial designers. None of that was even worth a trace of a mind-thread as each was occupied with working on the tasks assigned to them tirelessly at the moment. Life was never boring when you had enough things to do to fill up dozens of hyper-cognitive Mind-Cores with, my little trade with Zedev was more fortuitous than I'd hoped but less than I dreamed of. Still, I now had about fifty genetic samples to go through and somehow create a whole-body template from. I got to work on the two I requested first, Ambulls were ugly insectoid fuckers that stood at around two or three meters if I remembered right and there were a few interesting things to know about them. The first being that their genetic structure was so damned stable that you could throw them into the warp for a few centuries and they'd crawl out without a single mutation. The rest were a bit less metal but held much more potential for me. They could live in the most frigid and scorching environments, in the eternal dark and constant radioactive light. But what made them one of my favorite templates so far was their ability to live off of heat and radiation itself. It didn't matter if it was a chunk of uranium they were sitting on or the ultraviolet rays of a star or even pure solar radiation, these insects just lived off of it with a weird process that I could only compare to photosynthesis. It kind of worked and made sense as I watched the process in my first successful clone I was blasting with fire but I somehow felt it was bullshit. Warhammer never cared much about physics but I did, I had to have a basic framework to work in so I just decided it was a biological function so far beyond my knowledge of science that it seemed like space magic to me. After a fair bit of testing with Ambull clones I painstakingly incorporated the ability into all of my forms aside from the human one, I didn't want a shitty carapace covering me at all times. I was sure I could somehow make it work with my skin but that'd need more time than I had at the moment. The Crotalid came next, it was an intrusive species of huge space crocodiles that had the overpowered ability to migrate through the Warp. They could just one day pop out of thin air and start eating, breeding, and all that up until there are too many of them in a single habitat so they come together and somehow Warp-Jump onto another planet. I had not the faintest idea how this ability worked even after two of my Mind-Cores spent relative five Terran months working on it. That was a bummer and I chalked it up to my disgustingly limited Psyker knowledge, all the psyker stuff I was doing I was just doing it out of either instinct or winging it. This worked well when the problem could be solved with soulfire burning it to atoms but this wasn't one such problem. I dejectedly put this onto the top of my 'to-do' list and got on with the rest of the samples. It wasn't that I couldn't replicate a Crotalid but even the dumb animals didn't know how their own ability worked, it was somehow instinctual and all of the above-mentioned conditions had to be present for it to somehow crawl out of their genetic library. Most of the stuff Zedev had me absorb and replicate was useless to me, they were brain samples and the connected species didn't have anything else going for them aside from superhuman cognitive functions or Psyker genes, both of which paled in comparison to my current capability in both. Some extremophiles were also included which I'd have to work on to see whether they had any interesting properties to work into my Forms but it'd have to wait until the more important tasks were completed. This left most of my Mind-Cores working on two projects, one was trying to make the Lictor's memory-eating ability through eating a brain something better. The process worked and served the purpose it was engineered for but I didn't just want glimpses into the memories of the victim without control, I wanted a full transfer of memories preferably without having to actually eat brains. The other project was working on the handful of Eldar samples I'd gotten, Zedev had a diverse collection of the ancient fuckers and he made me replicate each as many times as I was willing. Apparently, turning an alive and well Eldar into an undamaged corpse is a difficult task that Zedev could do without. I was curious about Spirit Stones that housed a fallen Eldar's soul but Zedev said those had zero use for his research so he traded them off to another like-minded Magos already for other samples. A pity but nothing I could do about it. I had gotten two exodites, a shaman and a warrior, two craftworld Eldar of unknown origin and a single dark Eldar sample. The first two were mostly intact while the craftworder samples were rather ragged and I couldn't have told the last one was a Drukhari even with time to examine its body, or what was left of it. I didn't want to bother with the Drukhari and while the full template for the craftworders was complete I got to play around with the exodite forms. The shaman only had his neck slicked open with a thin blade so his template didn't even need any work and the warrior only needed some slight fixes but soon enough I also had her template. I shifted into the body of the shaman first, a shiver ran through my spine as I felt things that should be there go away and an obvious thing between my legs that shouldn't be there appear. I was starting to manage with entirely inhuman forms as those were so alien that there weren't any familiar things about them aside from an overall humanoid form but this felt different. I tried it out with human males too and I felt just the same, the fact that I didn't feel weird about turning into a Lictor but did when doing the same with an average man was weird but understandable. I shifted into the body of the female Eldar, feeling my chest fill out the bodyglove and the tightness on my crotch going away. I assumed this was soul dissonance, I viewed it at first but the revelation now just makes me smile. If I had dissonance with a male form I had the self-image of a woman still, a woman that could turn into any monster she eats, yes, but a woman. My joy at the discovery rushed through me like waves and I felt like singing and giggling like a schoolgirl, it was just fantastic, life was fantastic. Then I slumped as I remembered the predictable incoming demise of everyone on the ship, the repair was going too slow and it was making me anxious. Then I got angry at the lazy tech priests and just before I could smash my hand into a wall my secondary Mind-Core tasked with observing my emotional state blared an alarm at me. Ah, damn, those heightened Eldar emotions are somewhat crazy. Why did this body affect my mind even with my soul directly connected to it? Well, that could be because an Eldar's body was a very potent psychoactive material while it was alive. My soul energy flowed effortlessly into realspace and controlling it all has never been easier, damn these sexy space elves, they are cheating. The fact that an Eldar body is a better conduit for my soul than the human replica I made needs further consideration later. I easily disregarded the fact that I was the biggest cheater that existed in the galaxy. I brushed my fingers across my skin, shivering at the distinct sensation, it felt like my whole body was being caressed by feathers only my whole body was the small area of my skin where my finger touched it. Eldar had it hard, and that's not even taking into account the chaos god the murder-fucked into existence who wants to nibble on all of their tortured souls. This form was cathartic in a way, I felt connected to everything around me, both the material and the immaterial that no human could ever imagine. Even with my enhanced emotions being suppressed by my own Telepathy I still found myself smiling from ear to ear. I decided I'd learn to control this, discipline and time would help me get used to it without stiffing my emotions like I was doing it now. This was an actual challenge that I couldn't just blow away with psychic might or eat away. I could modify the genetic template but I knew that fiddling with it could only make it worse, their supreme psychic might partially stemmed from their emotions, heightened emotions meant more willpower and more willpower meant a greater effect on the Warp. I could try changing the base of my human form into an Eldar body though, I'd lose some of their agility and fancy pointed ears with that but that was viable. I wouldn't be changing the base just adding more onto an already built caste. Yeah, the little towers I'd add onto the magnificent castle would be laughable and wouldn't match the rest but in the end, they'd help defend the castle. I also had to take into consideration that the heightened emotions would help tie me to my humanity, every tiny bit of empathy would be multiplied and while the negative emotions would also be enhanced, those were also what'd help me stay grounded. Eldritch space monsters didn't hate, love or were happy, those were mortal things and I was willing to grapple with the upcoming hardships for me to stay the way I was. No it wasn't humanity, humanity such a demeaning descriptor. I didn't want to stay human, I wanted to remain sapient with a full and balanced range of emotions and empathy but I didn't have any other words to describe that state of being than remaining human. Not a problem I expected to have a few months ago, to think referring to myself as a human feels demeaning. I spent the next week with all of my minds sped up several folds and deep in the process of working out the kinks of my new humanoid form. When the craftworder's templates were finished too I added them into the genetic mixing pool, if I was making an Eldar the base of my humanoid form it'd be the best Eldar I could make from the genetics at hand. To my slight disappointment, none of the two new templates were of bonesingers so I'd have to nab one of those in the future. While clawing through my memories with telepathy I remembered that those guys could turn pure Warp Energy into a material, Wraithbone which was the main building and weapon material of the Eldar. I didn't want the Wraithbone as much as I was curious about what'd happen if I tried to apply the same process for Soul Energy. "Inquisitor," I heard a voice say behind my rather thick metal door that was also overgrown with chitinous material so random people wouldn't bother me. "Yes?" I called out, pushing down irritation which was much harder with this new body, "What is it?" "The Captain wishes to speak with you, if possible." I sighed, this message guy was smart enough to say the only thing that'd manage to make me come out of my room. The extra biomatter got quickly reabsorbed before I threw open my door to look down on the mousy man in a boring gray robe, Administratum. "Where?" "Please follow me?" "Fine," I huffed as the man scuttled along, making himself as unnoticeable as possible while glancing back at me every five seconds as if to check whether I was actually following him. I rolled my eyes at him and followed along. Let's see what dear Selene wants from me, I was just getting into testing the exact capabilities of this new form.