57 – Realspace, I missed you.

57 – Realspace, I missed you."Whooooh," I shuddered as my feet touched the floor. The change was self-evident. As soon as I stepped through the gate, air pressure reasserted itself. The scents of stone and nature changed to something new and distinct, but the most striking change was how the Warp felt. For a few weeks, I was blessedly disconnected from it, either by the Tyranids' shadow or by being in the Webway but it was once again clear and as disgusting as ever. The Navigator's Eye within my chest turned, surveying our esoteric surroundings for any dipshit demon lying in wait to ambush us, but I found none. About saying that the Eye was in my chest, well, I found out it didn't have to be uncovered to actually work. Turns out most Navigators had fancy headbands and stuff to cover it so the hapless mortals didn't lose their mind gazing into the Warp. Instead of covering it with an ugly headband or something, I had an idea: 'why shouldn't I hide it away inside my body instead?' At least that was my thought process, not that it was wrong. It worked perfectly. The only downside was that I couldn't scare people shitless by looking at them with it, but I could live with that. "Grrrr," Selene groaned behind me as she screwed her eyes shut, I turned to her with narrowed eyes, daring any demon to come close to her as my Third Eye easily located her soul in the Dark Sea below. "Whew," she sighed a few moments later, "That was... unpleasant." "Was?" I raised an eyebrow. "It's like jumping into freezing water," she shrugged, "it still sucks but the first few seconds were the worst." "Alright," I nodded, "if you feel anything weird don't be afraid to talk to me." "Okay," she nodded with a wry smile, I did tell that to her a few times already. "So," I clapped, "Where are we?" I asked the other two who might have some way of knowing. "I am unsure," Val shrugged. "Standby...calculations in progress...." Zedev's Vox sounded even more lifeless than usual as he stared upwards into the night sky, surprisingly we ended up on a planet with an atmosphere and we could even see space. I somewhat expected to end up on a space hulk infested with something nasty or on an Ork world but there might still be something fucky here. Our surroundings were... sparse to say the least, the gate stood on what seemed like an old Greek temple with only the pillars still standing but it also seemed to have a ziggurat as a base so it gave us an elevated position which let us see much further than usual. The world was bare. I'd imagine the Himalayas would look like this place if there was no dirt and snow on it. Steppes of grey rock spread around us, leading to the horizon where enormous mountains rose like jagged spikes towards the heavens. The place was surprisingly calm, with only a gentle breeze blowing through my hair. My head faced upwards to the sky and I saw the same scene as before from space. The Milky Way extended along the night sky just as I remembered it from my childhood, well, minus the gaping wound that cut tore it in half. As I stared at the wound I felt something brush against my mind and slip off of my shield but it did not feel pleasant at all, I imagined this was what it meant to stare into the Abyss. Even though I ignored the sensation and stared into the incomprehensible maw I couldn't tell what color it was... but trying to describe nonsensical phenomena such as the Warp with real things like 'color' was futile at best and moronic at worst. The Warp didn't adhere to the rules of physics or other such mundane constraints. Even the Chaos gods struggled to understand it in its entirety. "...Calculation complete: We are on Dagan Minoris, a derelict mining world at the edge of the Baal System." "How far is it from Baal?" I crossed my arms under my chest as I started to think, "Is there a settlement on this rock? Spacedock?" "The database states it is abandoned as its mineral deposits have been mostly exhausted, some might remain but it is not stated and the planet only had a small space station even in its prime so I doubt it has any at the moment." "Great," I sighed, "fucking stellar," I rolled my shoulders, "Whatever, we managed to reach the system, can't be too hard to hop planets." "I could try reconnecting with the Noosphere," Zedev... offered, "Baal should be close enough to reach the network." "You do that," I nodded at him, but narrowed my eyes, a smidge of trust couldn't hurt, "If you can get someone to ferry us over to Baal try it, they should bend over backward for a Magos Dominus and a Rogue Trader, even if both of you are alone." "...Should I not include...an Inquisitor?" "No," I said with an amused smile, "not until I can make a better Rosette or get my hands on a real one." "Understood." "Until then," I turned to the other two, "for one, Val, can you put on something that'll keep the lowly humans from pouncing on your noble self the moment they lay their eyes on you?" "I'll manage," he grumbled, "It's been a while since my illusions came in handy." "Because you fight like a brute," I added sagely. "I do not," he glared at me. "You are a glorified turret." He opened his mouth to retort, but then closed it, seeing my teasing smile. He turned away with a huff. Soon after, his form shimmered as he slowly started putting together a believable form. "What can I do?" asked Selene, looking at me with a serious glint in her eyes. So cute. "For now the same as me," I threw my arm over her shoulder, "sit still and look pretty while Zedev calls for a lift." "Didn't you want to turn into a voidship or something?" she looked up at me dubiously but didn't squirm out of my hold as she would have a couple of weeks ago. "I could do that," I averted my eyes to look up at the sky, "but the risk of being blown to bits before reaching another planet is substantial, especially with the voidship closely resembling a Tyranid bio-ship." "And normal missiles could blow you up?" she raised an eyebrow and for a moment my paranoid eldritch instincts warned me that she might be probing me for weakness she could exploit later, "My body is only as strong as what I'm copying, I can modify it later but in the end, it's still just bones, flesh and a carapace." "But only your 'body'?" she stared at me with a bit of innocent curiosity in her eyes, how a battle-hardened guardswoman could have such a look was a mystery that was lost on me but I still felt some heat gather in my cheeks. I could have stopped it, of course. I was the master of my own body, and there was no such thing as even a cell I couldn't control. But I chose not to. I am more a being of the soul than of flesh and blood," I said. "I wouldn't die even if my body was atomized but if I was a ship you three were currently in I'm not so sure you'd survive." "Oh," she blinked, "right, I don't think I'd survive that." "And so we are asking for a lift," I nodded, "but that'll take at least a week," I observed, glancing at the Magos lost in thought. "So we just sit around until then?" "That is mostly the plan," I nodded, "we can of course continue your training after a bit," I flicked my right hand which was not wrapped around Selene to the side and hundreds of tiny white pearls shot out of my fingertips, as they soared through the air the bio-energy infused into them got to work and every one of them transformed into bird-like flyer drones. They quickly oriented themselves as my pseudo-broodmind snapped into place and shot off into all directions to explore this planet, "Oh, do you still have that harlequin toy?" "Yes?" Selene said as she raised her right hand, a streamlined steel claw burst through her bio-armor and poked out from her closed fist, I squinted at it and saw the tiny hole at its point which would shoot out hundreds of mono-molecular wires once the poker was stabbed into something. "Cool," I nodded, "did you train with it?" "A bit?" she tilted her head, "I didn't have it for long but I was trained to use gauntlet weapons." "Want to spar?" my lips curled into an expectant smile, "we could see if there is any department in which you are lacking." "You just want to beat me up," she glared at me weakly. "I can't deny there is an appeal to it," I gave her a foxy smile, "but I'll limit myself so we are mostly equal, I want to see if I can find a flaw in my own fighting style." "Why do you even fight yourself if you have your drones?" I opened my mouth to give her the obvious answer that...okay, why am I fighting myself? "Because as I said this body is just a drone too, it is the main one anchoring me to realspace but it is still just a drone." "So there is no danger to you at all?" "There is," I shrugged, "my mindscape which would be inaccessible in the Immaterium is partially in here within this body so a competent enough Telepath could mindfuck me but that's about it." "Mmm," she looked at me tentatively. "Yes?" I raised an amused eyebrow at her unusual meekness. "I was...thinking," her eyes moved about, "you have that pure energy that works as a replacement for Warp energy...and you could use it to fuel my armor...could you not give me some through it?" "Maybe," I considered it, more importantly, the likelihood of the Warp energy flowing into her reacting violently to my soul energy being in the same body, I could easily banish the insignificant amounts of Warp energy that seeped into my body bout could Selene? "I could perhaps, but you'd have to entirely cut yourself off from the Warp." "Why?" she frowned. "Collect a bit of Warp energy in your palm," I instructed, raising her hand to face palm-up in front of us. She complied, concentrating with a focused frown. "Arghhh," a pained yelp escaped Selene as the Warp energy was instantly torn out of her control and leapt out of her palm and onto the floating white ball of pure energy, intent on defiling it. "If the same thing happened inside your body," I said as I played around with the shifting ball of contrasting energies, "I don't think it'd end well." "Y-yeah," she stuttered as she held her aching hand, I ran a bit of bio-energy into it to douse the enflamed tissue and fix the light damages, "Thanks." "We could work it out," I squeezed her a bit before releasing her and hopping back a dozen meters, "but I want you to train your control before I try it, alright?" "Okay," said the woman as she glanced around, "So you want to do that spar now?" "Yep," I glanced at Val and Zedev still standing around, "Let's go down there." "...Okay," she said as she followed my gaze, a lower layer of the ziggurat. It was a monstrously large building similar to old Mayan temples but with the Gateway at the top instead of a sacrificial altar, I wondered for a moment how it was still standing with the Imperium occupying it for so long but there must have been a reason for it. "Catch me if you can," I smirked as I jumped into the air, only using a tiny bit of my Psychic strength to propel myself with a bit of TK but even that sent me soaring through the air. A moment later Selene followed me, she flew in a nice arc but crumbled as she landed like a sack of potatoes, "Your landing could use some work." "I was taught how to lift and throw rocks not myself," she grumbled as I healed her strained ankles. "What use is having Telekinesis if you can't use it to fly?" I asked as I once again leapt into the air, doing a little backflip as I reached the apex of my jump like an athlete and landed in a T pose fifty meters away, "come on, it's fun." With a bit more grumbling she jumped after me and soon enough we were halfway down, standing on the largest step in the pyramid which was about a hundred meters wide. "This should do," I nodded, "come at me, you don't have to hold anything back." She must have taken the advice to heart as on her right hand the Devourer morphed into being and her Harlequin's Kiss poked through her left fist like the claws of Wolverine, cool. Time for a short training arc I guess, I don't want to be beaten up by the Swarmlord or Ka'bandha when they show up on Baal. I might have said this was for Selene's training but I wanted to test out a bunch of improvements and ideas I had with the hundreds of new genetic templates at my disposal combined with my expanded Psychic knowledge. I wonder how long we have till the Tyranids arrive.

I've posted up to Chapter 69 on Patreon (nice), you can read 2 advanced chapters for 1$ or all of them for 5$ here:

I hope you enjoyed the chapter~

~I just reached 100k words in it so it is just a little shorter than this story.

Some Tags for it: Female Lead, GL, Action, Adventure, Progression Fantasy, Magical Realism.