I got the name of the pnet Cain had st seen Octavian at from his head. I had a Navigator’s map of the Jericho Reach in my head already, having extracted it from the minds of the Navigators in Tetrarchus’ fleet, but I double checked it in the mind of the Navigator that ferried Cain’s group across the Warp. My mind-cores cross-referenced them, evening out the differences and adding in things any of the maps had that the others cked.

  Once I was done, I had the location of the pnet. Both in the Warp and in realspace, but just to be sure, I ever so carefully poked my nose into Amberley’s mind and sniffed around a little. Her mind was much more ordered than Cain’s, clearly sharpened by decades of practice with exercises that helped resist mental influences and intrusions. As, it was clear Amberley focused on keeping her thoughts unmolested rather than on keeping all her memories safe. Space Marine minds tended to rather break than bend, destroying most memories held within if you pushed too hard. Luckily, the blonde Inquisitor valued her life a bit more.

  She too thought Octavian remained on the same pnet. Octavian even confirmed it to her in a private conversation that he would stay on the pnet while the negotiations happened.

  Curious. Was that an invitation for me, or perhaps bait? A trap? I had to be careful. Constant Vigince. Eh?

  It was a bit energy-intensive, and I grimaced at the thought of breaking my vow to be less wasteful with my soul energy, but it needed to be done. Space warped around me, the fabric of space itself bending over for me like a little bitch the moment the psychic force of my will smmed into it like a sledgehammer. Distance became a suggestion, star systems fshed by as I crossed light-years in nanoseconds. I wasn’t aware of the exact hows and whys of what was happening. I didn’t need to know the exact physics of it when my power worked specifically by telling physics to sit in the corner and mind its own damned business.

  The ‘spell’ spat me back out near my destination, in high orbit of the pnet I’d seen in both Cain’s and Amberley’s minds. It was just as ugly in real life as did looked through Cain’s eyes. A ball of rotting metal with humans living in it like a swarm of vermin. It was a Hive World, the world that was the centre of Mankind’s operations within the Canis Salient and from where Sebasticor Ebongrave commanded humanity’s war-machine on the Greyhell front.

  The entire pnet had a near cohesive aura, one that tasted of fear, paranoia, desperation and hunger. It was a shithole, but a shithole that had a lot of fresh bodies ready to be thrown at the enemies of Mankind and one with the military industrial complex massive enough to fuel the warmachine that was the Greyhell front.

  Factories littered the pnet, building anything and everything needed to wage war aside from voidships, which I heard were produced only back in the Iron Halo. Lasguns, grenades, armoured vehicles, shuttles, carriers, missiles, artillery, fk vests, uniforms and of course, military rations. Rations which were made from a distressingly high percentage of vermin and human meat.

  I spread out my aura, repeating much of the same extremely rigorous inspection I’d done in the previous system, but now limited to the pnet. I felt nearly a dozen psykers react to my unsubtle scrutiny, cowering under the weight of my attention and doing the psychic equivalent of rolling up into little balls and baring their necks before a predator greater than any of them. I found a single spot of empty void, a space where my aura was repelled and made a wild guess that I’d found our missing Jurgen.

  Right across from the Null, in a room just down the hallway, I found my target, standing in the middle of the room in full golden regalia with his hands csped behind his back and Guardian Spear lodged into the floor next to him.

  I felt him stiffen. His mind was a diamond fortress, but his body was still human enough to show his emotions. Nothing any regur human would notice, just micro-expressions, his heart rate picking up pace, hormones indicating he was focused and preparing for a fight flowing in his veins.

  I didn’t teleport in like an idiot. He was clearly waiting for me, so teleporting there like an idiot would likely end up with me walking right into his trap, if he had one.

  Well, it wasn’t like I needed to be physically present to talk. With incredible psychic power came … the ability to project my voice across a pnet. Among many other things.

  “Long time no see, Octavian.” The Custodian stiffened ever so slightly as my voice echoed from all around him. Making the air vibrate to make words was not too hard, but that creepy echo effect took some practice to get down pat. “I hear you wanted to talk.”

  He looked around with the barest hint of a frown, but visibly restrained himself from grabbing his Guardian Spear.

  “Echidna,” he said, voice devoid of emotion. “I did.”

  “You went through all that effort, drafting Cain and his Inquisitor girlfriend,” I mused while my aura swept out, rolling further and further out through the system. I wanted to know where every st atom was located. “All but lured me here. I’m curious. Do you have a trap for me? Is there a Shadowkeeper killsquad waiting for the moment to tch onto my teleport and shove an Athame into my kidney?”

  “There is not,” Octavian stated. “Your paranoia is understandable, which is why I went through the effort of sending the only humans I knew of with whom you had a somewhat positive interaction with. I do not wish for there to be bad blood, or further conflict between us, and neither does My Lord.”

  I froze at that. “The Emperor managed to pull enough of himself together to give you a vision?”

  “I am a Dreamer,” Octavian announced with an uncharacteristically proud air about him. “I have … misunderstood his edicts. That is what prompted our unfortunate previous encounter. Since then, I’ve reconvened with my brothers and the Captain-General. We wish for there to be no more conflict between us, and if possible, peace.”

  I thought over his words. They were … a whole lot of meaningless nothing. Peace. Like I was ever going to head over to Terra to fuck with the Adeptus Custodes. The only reason there could be conflict between us was if they came after me.

  He must know it too. I thought, my Ethereal-granted political instinct telling me what this was. A first step, he just wanted me to be more comfortable and willing to engage with him before he broached the subject he actually came for. Probably something with healing the Emperor … which I already promised to the Lion.

  I felt myself grin at the thought. I was going to scam the shit out of him if my gut instinct was right. Selling the same promise twice and making me get paid for it twice over. It was tickling me pink just thinking about it. Yes, I’m petty as hell, bite me.

  Speaking of, it was an awfully frustrating experience, feeling like I was a puppet dancing to someone else’s tune. And now? I felt like I’d been dancing on Octavian’s strings, following the little nuggets and clues he left for me like an obedient little rat.

  I wanted to change that. Send him reeling, panicking, rip his carefully constructed pn to shreds. Maybe then I’d see who he really was under that stoic facade. What would annoy him the most? How could I inconvenience him in such a way that it didn’t ruin the possibility for peace but gave him a headache? … I know just the thing.

  A Portal opened up behind him, the other end leading right beside me. The sudden vacuum tried to reel him in, but he was a Custodian Guard; he grabbed his spear and held his ground easily … until I grabbed him in my telekinetic grasp and yanked him through.

  “Well, I would hate it if all your work setting up that peace negotiation went up in fmes,” I said, grinning as the man stopped breathing and smmed his helmet on his head. “Let’s go make sure it goes well, why don’t we? We can merge this shadow meeting with the real one.”

  I didn’t give him time to respond, once again making the fabric of space my bitch to send us flying through interstelr space. I opened a Portal the moment we reached the system I’d left not so long ago, walking through and yanking Octavian after me. I plopped him down on the Imperial side and took my spot on the opposing side of the table with a grin.

  Not a moment ter, the doors on each side opened up to reveal the Tau and Imperial delegations walking in, only for them to freeze as they found us already there.

  Selene sent me a look that was halfway between amused and exasperated, but the prior quickly won out, and she pstered a little smirk at the edge of her lips.

  “What is the meaning of this?” It was one of the Ethereals that spoke, one of the Three Twats, and he pierced me with a look, then looked suspiciously at the Imperial delegation.

  “I just thought the puppetmaster who facilitated this entire peace summit thingy should be here to make his case himself,” I said, turning a smirk back over at Octavian, who slowly removed his helmet now that we weren’t in the void of space. He looked a little red and had an expression like he’d just stepped into dogshit. “Oh, Ciaphas and Amberley! I’d have thought the two of you would be on your way out of the Reach by now.”

  Cain’s already stiff smile turned entirely wooden, and I could almost taste the sheer primal panic running through his mind. He was a smart cookie, already having realised that I had just gone and grabbed his Custodian boss from dozens of star systems away and dragged him back despite the man’s visible unhappiness about the fact.

  I felt the inklings of a simir mixture of emotions from Amberley, though she was much better at keeping both outwardly and inwardly stoic. Sure, she was probably reevaluating the chances of her getting out of this meeting alive, but she wasn’t nearing a mental breakdown like her favourite boytoy was busy doing.

  “You would dare betray humanity, to side with these treacherous xeno scum?” Ebongrave — whom I had almost forgotten about — butted into the conversation, chest puffed up and outrage radiating off of him in waves. His hands twitched towards his holster, fingers barely stopping before grasping his pistol. Octavian frowned, his initial surprise and constipated look having long melted back into his usual stoic look.

  And on a man of his stoic disposition, that frown was the equivalent of a more expressive man shouting in outrage. The Commander didn’t seem to notice though in the height of his ‘righteous’ outrage.

  “Betray humanity?” I mused. “No, I don’t think I ever did such a thing … betraying the Imperium, on the other hand?”

  I grinned viciously, letting the silence grow thick. “Still no. I would have had to be a part of the Imperium of Mankind for me to betray it, which I never was. Nor am I much of a human anymore, aside from my mind. This form you see, this humanity you perceive is skin deep, for beneath the surface are muscles strong enough to tear apart the hulls of spaceships, bones strong enough to withstand standing on the surface of a star. Just because I’m not nine feet tall, it doesn’t mean I’m any less dangerous than Octavian, whom you are probably relying on to protect you from my ire. Let me banish that misconception.”

  I stood from my seat, stepping towards the little man, and my body bulged, my clothes shifting and stretching as my body grew. My hair turned silvery white, my face grew leaner, my expression a mask of serene superiority. I grew to nearly ten feet tall, obviously male, and radiating perfection.

  “I have not been idle these past few months,” I said, my voice velvety sweet, containing a lingering malice. “I have stumbled upon some lucky finds, treasures of sorts. I have been growing, but what about you, Octavian? You don’t grow, you are made ‘perfect’ and stay that way. I wonder, with how I don’t have his unique soul that empowered the original, could you beat me while I am wearing his skin? Could you beat a Primarch?”

  “How?” Octavian asked, and the only signs of surprise I could see on him were the slight widening of his pupils and the ever-so-slight tensing of his muscles.

  “The Clone Lord has been rather busy these st few millennia; it wasn’t hard to get my hand on a sample of his most successful work,” I said conversationally, letting the genetics and the lingering muscle-memory guide my movements. Fulgrim was an absolute drama queen, and he had enough charisma to drown entire worlds in it. He was a natural, the kind of person who thrived when he was the centre of attention, when there were hundreds of eyes on him. “The one I’d taken the sample I based this form off of was the only perfect clone of the Phonecian. The only one that had his Primarch Aura.”

  Now that little tidbit drew behind itself a silence so thick with tension you could have cut it. Clones of Primarchs were not common, but they popped up every so often with how much of a busy little bee Fabius Bile had been for the st ten thousand years. Horus, Fulgrim and Ferrus Manus all had Clones of themselves running around at one point or another, but not a single one of them had the Aura of a Primarch, that ephemeral thing that made them unique, that made them great. None of them were recognised by their Legions as their Primarchs.

  “But, truth be told, I don’t quite like this form,” I said. “His talent y with self-healing, speed and grace. None of which I ck the ability for in my own form. But-“ My form shifted, hair turning dark grey, beard growing over my face as my features shifted from graceful and handsome to gruff and severe. “-I also have this one. Now this body had been made for war, and I got this right from the original.”

  “You broke into the Rock?” Octavian asked, and I couldn’t quite make out his predominant emotions on the matter. Oh, he still thought the Lion was sleeping? So much for their famed intelligence network.

  I shrugged. “No, he came to me on his own two feet and gave me a lock of his hair of his own free will. It seems your Lord didn’t want to put all his eggs in one basket, as they say.”

  With a thought, I snapped back into my original Avatar form, giving the gaping peanut gallery a smug grin as I plopped down into my chair and kicked my feet up onto the table.

  “So!” I said, adding as much fake cheer into my voice as humanly possible. “Peace! I think we have established that it doesn’t matter whether you want peace or not. It only matters whether I want it or not. So convince me!”

  P3t1