Selene couldn’t help but let out a tiny, undignified squeak as the floor dropped out from beneath her feet for the second time in what felt like a minute. It was setting a distressing precedent, but … she would just have to get used to Echidna sweeping her off her feet, wouldn’t she?

  Her squeak turned into a gleeful giggle, a grin stretching across her lips as she grasped the arm-bars forming on the walls and set her feet. She could feel it, the drop, the immense velocity that no human could have remained conscious through. Echidna’s cobbled-together, eldritch abomination of a drop pod was not made to be ‘humane’; it was made to be quick and armoured.

  With her new physique, Selene wasn’t even sure whether she needed a drop pod in the first pce. She might have survived mostly intact even if she just … free-dived from low orbit and tanked the nding with her face.

  No, that was a stretch. She was made of the genetic material of Adeptus Custodes, and even they tended to get pstered when thrown face-first onto the pavement from freaking space.

  No, she would have had to dampen her fall with a bit of Telekinesis, maybe reinforce her body with some of her stored bio-energy. But that’s it.

  On the other hand, she had always loved drop pods. There was just something exhirating about dropping into the middle of enemy fortifications with an armed metal coffin and then emerging from it like some mechanical hatchling of sughter and doom.

  On the other, other hand, she hadn’t tried free-diving into an active combat zone yet, so that would have been a new experience. Oh well, she’d just have to try that the next time the opportunity arose.

  The fmes of atmospheric entry burned past the reinforced windows, holding for a few seconds as the entire pod shook. Selene steadied herself with a grin still lingering on her face, her heart thrumming in her chest, and a familiar bloodlust rising in her veins.

  There were a few things that made her heart race like a good fight, and she’d found no better way to do some well-deserved de-stressing than to go murder some people she really didn’t like and then drag Echidna off to the bedroom. Fighting and fucking. Paradise.

  The fact that both went so wholly against the oh-so-noble, blue-blooded rogue trader dy she was supposed to be only made it all the so much sweeter.

  She could indulge her own desires as a Trader every now and then, but only so much, and it always came with a side of shame.

  It wasn’t that she hated being a Rogue Trader, she knew it was just about the best role a human could reach in life … but it wasn’t her. It just wasn’t. Too much responsibility, too much politics, too many heavy choices, too many people depending on her. Too many people, she couldn’t make herself care about.

  Now, she only had to care about herself and the impossible woman who made it all possible. Just her and Echidna. Partners. As it should be.

  Pying the advisor, the courtier, the personal executioner and even the maid to Echidna was just so much more fun and fulfilling. She wasn’t working to enrich a Noble House that couldn’t give two fucks about her, and was likely plotting behind her back, not anymore, and never again. Everything she did now was for her partner and herself.

  Perfect.

  “Prepare for nding,” Echidna’s words pyed in her ears, making her smile at the pyful lilt in that beautiful voice she had so grown to love hearing. “I’m dropping you right on top of the main force. I’ll be on the lookout for any killjoys trying to ruin your fight. Have fun, honey.”

  Selene grinned, her racing heart suddenly feeling much warmer. What did she do to deserve someone who got her as much as Echidna? Someone who could sound so affectionate and encouraging when her lover was heading out to sughter Chaos cultists?

  “Thank you,” Selene said, her grin turning into a soft smile for a moment as she gave her armour an affectionate pat on the hip. They were simple words, and just two of them, but the meaning was deep, and the Bond made sure Echidna felt every st smidge of it.

  The emotions flowed back her way in response made her positively giddy, as they always did. Selene was rather sure humans couldn’t feel love this pure, she was sure her own love felt thin and diluted in comparison to the one Echidna felt. Whatever she was, the woman was a creature of pure and intense emotions.

  Her senses alerted her to the imminent impact and cracked her mind open to the energies of Echidna’s silvery Realm. Power flooded her body like a tsunami, a wild but leashed torrent under her control that she shaped into what she needed. Physical reinforcement and impact dampening. At the same time, a ripple went through her armour and it flowed over her body, turning into ‘combat mode’ as Echidna would say. The parts covering her vitals thickened, and the helmet sealed her head inside.

  Half a second ter, the impact she’d sensed smashed into the pod from below, but Selene merely bent her knees and flexed her fingers. Her very own psycho-active bonesword formed in her grasp, a design she’d spent days on end perfecting. The materials might change as Echidna’s knowledge of biomancy evolved, but the shape, weight and bance would likely stay the same.

  The powers the Immaterium granted to the precious few who were blessed — or cursed, depending on who you ask — with the ability to channel them, were numerous and varied. Selene knew there were abilities like pyrokinesis and divination, just to name a few, but she found she didn’t have much talent for the less straightforward applications.

  Physical and mental enhancements were her strong suit, an application that came almost effortlessly. Then came telekinesis as a close second, and pyrokinesis gging behind in third pce, but only because both Valenith and Echidna seemed to love that one. Selene herself much preferred cutting people up with her sword to burning them or electrocuting them.

  Her eyes panned about, looking for the exit, and nded on a distinct, boot-shaped mark on the wall. ‘Kick here’, it said above, with an arrow pointing down at the artistic footprint that just so happened to match Selene’s boots.

  She smirked under her armour, an amused snort almost escaping her before the thrill of the oncoming fight overwhelmed it. She didn't waste another second, putting her boot through the wall. Almost betedly, the wall exploded outward in a cloud of shrapnel, revealing the damp scenery of a swampy forest beyond.

  Selene burst forth from within, following in the wake of the debris, guided by her Empyrean perceptions. She couldn’t sense minds per se, not as a telepath would, and certainly not without deep focus and meditative exercises, but she could feel the ‘aura’ every living thing radiated. All around her, the twisted auras of a thousand tainted humans stood out from the background, and she wasted no time in dashing for the closest one.

  It was a man lying on the ground, having been knocked over by the drop pod’s nding and then further inconvenienced by shrapnel deciding his thigh would make a fine burrow.

  Selene had no mercy for him, even though he was injured. He wore the mark of Chaos proudly on his chest, and his aura held its taint. Her sword took off his head, and she was gone even before the man’s mind caught up with his body and realised it was dead.

  Another fifty died before any gathered enough of their wits to even attempt to fight back. Selene was fast, blindingly so, faster than the human eye could track. Her body was the size it’d always been, looking rgely the same on the outside, but not a single cell of the woman she’d been just a year ago. She’d been remade from the ground up. Echidna cimed she’d probably be able to give an Adeptus Custodes a run for their money even without Psyker enhancement, and probably beat the regur ones bck and blue with its help.

  The rabble had no chance. They might have been disciplined and ferocious, armed with better weaponry than regur Imperial Guard regiments, but they were chaff before Selene.

  They had nothing that could harm her, no one who could even track her and nothing to stop her. Some ran, probably the smart ones; others saw the human blender, the flying limbs and crescents of blood, and charged towards it. Unsurprisingly, they had a chant she was unfortunately familiar with.

  “BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! BLOODBLOODBLOOD!”

  She swung her bde in a wide arc, flexing the silvery energy flowing through her, and she channelled it along its edge. A silver crescent hundreds of metres in length swept through the battlefield, bisecting the rushing lunatics, cutting down dozens of ancient trees caught in its path.

  It was simple telekinesis, just a ‘force-bde’, as Echidna called it. But it only took a thought to make it more satisfying, more … stylish. And what the hell, she was here to enjoy herself, so she wasn’t going to be boring about it.

  It’d been barely a minute, and hundreds already lie dead at her feet. Selene kicked off the ground, her sheer physical strength catapulting her through the canopy and up into the air, and her telekinesis halting her descent while she focused, extending her perception.

  Disgusting, tainted auras popped up in groups in every direction, disparate, scattered, but Echidna had told her she would be dropped on top of their main force. There had to be a rger gathering of them … and there was, a mere kilometre to the north. There was a group of auras there, eclipsing any of the rabble. Chaos-tainted psykers, perhaps, or maybe even proper Chaos sorcerers who’d studied the diabolical ways of Chaos and learnt to bend them to their will without giving up every st smidge of their sanity.

  Though it was always up for question whether anyone who decided to serve Chaos had any sanity to begin with. But the point stood. The Sorcerer who could think, pn and strategise was much more dangerous than the maddened Psyker whose sole thought was ‘blood’, or something to that effect.

  Selene kicked off, using a panel of hardened air as a boost, and wrapped herself in a bubble of telekinetic power. Flight was amazing, one of the most incredible things she’d ever experienced, and it would also be her best tool for mobility until she learned to Blink properly in active combat.

  Not wanting to just leave the rabble she was flying over without something to remember her by, Selene started dropping telekinetic hammers on the nearest groups. Like her ‘force-bde’, this too was a technique without much finesse. Just a lot of kinetic force pressing down on an area from above, which had the rather predictable result of compressing everything caught within into paste. Humans, vehicles, weapons, trees and dirt, all pressed into a pancake.

  Selene felt a prickle against her perceptions, a bunch of auras beyond her regur sphere of perception fring up with unholy power. Ten, twenty, forty … and then she felt them, all of them, focus on her with murderous intent. At the same time, her targets too surged in power, their souls warping, and what had been medium levels of Chaos taint surged into something truly twisted.

  “Hmmmm,” Echidna’s voice rang in her ears thoughtfully. “Nothing you can’t handle yet. Though I think they are summoning Daemons en masse too. You might get drowned in a horde if you don’t do something about it.”

  Of course, despite that, Selene felt the wards around her mind thicken substantially. Echidna was such a worrywart, but she had to admit it was well deserved. Against Chaos, every precaution had to be taken.

  It was suspicious. Not Echidna’s worrying, but the actions of Chaos … why did they empower the Psykers near her? Sure, they were stronger now, but not strong enough by the feel of their auras. They’d gone from a ‘slightly rger insect’ to a ‘speed bump’ level threat. Even together, Selene didn’t feel like they had much of a shot at her, especially as deranged as such a forceful power infusion tended to leave the recipients. It didn’t feel quite right.

  Selene frowned, her hackles rising as she slowed her advance and instead shot upwards, away from the surface, to think.

  A trap. It had to be. Or a distraction. It could be either of the two, depending on whether the Four knew Echidna was currently possessing her armour.

  Or perhaps they knew, and they were preparing a trap for them both? If anyone knew of a way to hurt Echidna, the pseudo-immortal Warp-deity, it would be the Ruinous Powers and their favoured servants.

  “What do you think?” Selene asked, projecting the thought towards her lover.

  “Hmmmm. I’m not sure yet.” Echidna mused, still unbothered. “The daemons are getting rowdy. I’m seeing a growing number of Tzeentch's, so I don’t think there even is an obvious answer. A trap within a trap within a trap. A scheme with dozens of variations, a plot with a hundred twists. We might as well assume any choice we make leads to a trap … which means the only choice we have is to bst through it with overwhelming firepower … and the power of friendship!”

  Selene raised an eyebrow under her helmet, amused, but unimpressed. She waited for her partner to continue, which she did, but without the exaggerated cheeriness. “I think it’s a good rule of thumb to do what your foe wants you to do the least, isn’t it? We can’t be sure what someone as fucked in the head as the Changer of Ways wants, but we might as well give an honest try to ruining his pns, no?”

  “True enough,” Selene mused, her eyes narrowing. The gathering of powerful auras that had been her destination had the stink of a trap, and a btant one at that. But the many lesser auras converging on her position from all around? Were they meant to box her in? Maybe stall her? Her knee-jerk reaction was to go around sughtering them first, but that might just give the main chaos-cunts the time they needed to summon up something nasty. “Do you feel any rituals happening over there? Are they trying to summon anything?”

  “Yep,” Echidna replied easily. “I’m feeling a bunch of summoning rituals going on all across the pnet, the rgest of which being right where you were headed. But the gap’s only wide enough for Lesser Daemons … they’d need to modify it to drag through something bigger, I think. Hmmm, let me check real quick …” her voice faded away for a few seconds, then came back with a new, disgusted tone, “apparently, the veil isn’t thin enough yet for any of the bigger daemons. They’d need a long, super-nasty ritual to thin it and then break it. You should be safe for now, though they’ll keep summoning as many Lesser Daemons as they can.”

  A smirk tugged at the edge of her lips, and Selene turned to the side, then shot off towards the furthest out aura of the lot coming her way. If it was not a stalling tactic, they were her best targets. The tainted rogue psykers were faster than regur humans, boosted either by their unholy powers or just riding some vehicle. Selene was faster. They turned to follow her once they noticed her change in trajectory, but she was just a hint short of breaking the sound barrier with her flight speed. She out-sped them all easily enough, and then arced downwards when she closed in on her target, crashing into the psyker like a meteor.

  The woman was wreathed in Warp-lightning, half her face scorched raw, and the other holding a vicious gre.

  Selene’s sword went through the psyker with ease, and then the force of her impact crashed into her. The woman went skidding back, with Selene perched on top like a surfer as she tore out her bde, twisting it on the way for good measure.

  She noticed it glowed a bright silver, and that the psyker’s flesh sizzled wherever it touched her body.

  “Ensurance,” Echidna whispered in her ears, malicious glee hidden in her velvety voice. “No second phase for these fuckers.”

  Selene shrugged, then with a flick of her wrist cut the psyker’s head off as a st torrent of Warp-lightning washed over her armour. It didn’t even leave scorch marks on its pristine white surface.

  “I doubt she’d be getting back up after that,” Selene mused, jumping off the headless, sizzling corpse to take care of the confused cultist rabble loitering nearby.

  “You’d be surprised,” Echidna said simply.

  Selene shrugged inwardly. Perhaps that was right; she was no Inquisitor. She didn’t know what made these cultists, or daemons in general, tick. She’d have assumed cutting the head off would at least banish the daemon, even if the psyker she’d killed had been a daemonhost, which she was reasonably sure it had not been.

  But if Echidna said her shiny silver light made sure they didn’t get up again, Selene was more than fine with using the shiny silver light to murder the shit out of them just to make absolutely sure. It wasn’t like she needed to exert any effort when Echidna was infusing it into the energy she was channelling. Paranoia saved lives, and maybe if she’d been more paranoid, she'd still have The Wanderer. Well, Echidna usually had enough paranoia for the both of them, and Selene was no slouch either, most of the time.

  With a bounce in her steps, she hopped into the air, caught herself with telekinesis and unched herself up into the air like a missile. Behind her y only corpses, and ahead were many more corpses-to-be.

  She’d bounce between the furthest out groups, kill their psykers, sughter the cultists and chaos guardsmen. She’d keep circling them, picking them off one at a time to thin the herd. If she were lucky, the stronger ones would come for her and leave whatever preparations they’d made behind to chase her down.

  Drawing so heavily on the Warp was not usually helpful for maintaining one’s patience, after all. With how those lunatics were bursting with the Chaos-tainted, even nastier version of that stuff, they had to have short fuses.

  Just the thought of giving the local Chaos Lord and his prime ckeys migraines made her happier. Let them seethe as their pns fell apart while she enjoyed herself. Who knew ‘be as annoying as possible’ could be a viable combat strategy? It was certainly more fun than the stuff they taught at the academy.

  P3t1