I pulled enough soul energy into my body to strain what my soulbone skeleton could hold, and to rupture blood vessels all across my fleshy bits. A telekinetic bst ripped out from me, a simple omnidirectional shockwave that travelled at the speed of thought and threw back C’tan shards and nearby Necron warriors alike.

  A tendril of eldritch flesh ripped out from my back so fast it broke the sound barrier, and the ball-like appendage at the end of it smmed into the ground right in the middle of the newly released Tyranid swarm.

  Dozens of tendrils erupted from the ball-shaped tip, plunging into the nearest Tyranids before they even knew what hit them. The organic mass to bio-energy conversion happened in a blink. The unfortunate bio-forms got slurped up through the tendril and sent back to me. The tendrils split, then split again, seeking out the nearest targets. Hundreds of Tyranids fell in seconds, and with the synaptic creatures having been some of the first, they had no hope of putting up even a token resistance. In three seconds total, I had converted a swarm of a thousand bio-forms strong into bio-energy.

  The hundreds of split tendrils snapped back into the mace-like end of my new appendage like rubber bands, then that tendril did the same and merged back into my body. I grinned, feeling the energy vibrate through my organic form and repair any damage, then transform it to my newest Avatar tempte, minus the full soulbone skeleton, of course. My ankles were still just regur bones, which annoyed me to no end.

  “Trazyn,” Orikan said warily. “What manner of creature is that?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” Trazyn said cheerfully. “But she is the most powerful wielder of the Empyrean I have met since the st of the Old Ones fell.”

  “And you thought it was a good idea to feed it one of your armies?” Orikan asked, still busily working but taking a moment to give the archivist a look that I could only describe as tired. “We could have used those creatures.”

  “Patience, my dear colleague," Trazyn said distractedly. “Just watch.”

  Orikan made an aggravated sound, and I set him a sideways grin just before I blurred into motion. I felt the need to prove myself a bit. Orikan the Diviner was perhaps the single most powerful being on this side of reality, aside from the C’tan and the occasional denizens of the Warp who pop in. In the original book describing the current events, he single-handedly defeated the C’tan I was having trouble with. A lot of things came together to accomplish it, but he had still beaten up a Greater C’tan Shard in a fistfight.

  I didn’t teleport, but I moved so fast I might as well have. I disappeared in a blur of motion, and then Atiesh’s glowing energy bde was lunging into the previously weakened Deceiver’s chest. It sank in deep, easily, too easily.

  The shocked look on my would-be victim’s face twisted into a mocking one as the incredibly lifelike illusion evaporated and a pilr of bck fme erupted out of it. I swung Atiesh to the side, utilising its slight reality-warping abilities to wrap the explosion of antimatter in a bubble and send it bsting off to the side. Right at the Necron weapons ptform, I’d sensed that its systems corrupted unusually quickly.

  I split apart, two clones of my current Avatar — minus the soulbone skeleton — darting out of my body, psychic shields and Norn Emissary-grade boneswords brimming with power. They darted for the Deceiver shards while I shot off towards the third cloaked one. A small bubble of space had curiously remained unaffected by the antimatter explosion that devoured the weapons ptform.

  My give tore through the space microseconds after I’d noticed it, and a crescent of silvery fmes shot forward. They were meant to cling to and devour Warp creatures, and at the sight of such obvious sorcery, I’d instinctively defaulted to their use.

  As, the C’tan didn’t use sorcery. Their power was pure energy manipution, born entirely of the material realm. My fmes struck, but they found nothing to truly tch onto and failed to pierce the shield the Deceiver wore around himself. I needed something better. Shoving Atiesh up his ass and unleashing the mother of all Eldritch Bsts might kill him, but that might be challenging to achieve.

  Didn’t I manage to create a psychic fme once that devoured the potential energy in solid matter to burn? I forgot what I’d called them, but I remembered making use of such a thing against that overgrown worm on Ball just before Trazyn kidnapped this Avatar of mine. How hard could it be to make a fme that ate pure physical energy? Each of these C’tan shards was full of fuel; they glowed like miniature suns to my senses. I didn’t know what type of energy C’tan were made of, perhaps the same sort found in stars? Heat, kinetic, electromagnetic, gravitational, nuclear and a few more.

  The Necrons used them as infinite batteries. They were just bottomless buckets of gasoline. It made sense to me that they would burn.

  So, I willed the Shard closest to me to burn. My soul energy hummed, vibrating in agitation as it flowed into nothingness, and then an abyss-bck fme with curling ash-grey plumes bloomed into existence around the Deceiver. It went from a thin shroud of fire clinging to its skin to a roaring inferno; there was pouring oil onto a hot fire, and then there was throwing that fme onto a Star God.

  The other two Shards reeled back warily, keeping both me and their burning kin in sight.

  “Nice trick,” one of them repeated my words back to me with a shit-eating grin. The other continued where the first one left off. “But only a fool tries to burn a star.”

  The roaring inferno imploded, colpsing upon itself as if a singurity had been born at its center. Instead of a bck hole, there stood the third Shard, jaws wide open as it inhaled my fmes.

  Well, fuck. That didn’t work out the way I expected it to. I mused, my fingers tightening around Atiesh’s shaft. I suppose I’m going to have to shove my staff up their asses after all.

  Trazyn struck the Deceiver Shard, still licking its lips after eating my fmes, his Empathic Obliterator smming into it with enough power to send it skipping forward a dozen metres. Then his weapon’s secondary effect, the one that gave it its name, rippled out, and an empathetic copy of the strike crashed into the other two Shards, no matter how they tried to dodge.

  I knew its true power would only show if he managed to kill one of them, but even this much was impressive.

  I burned bio-energy again, blurring as I moved faster than sound but parting the air before me escaped, causing a sonic boom. The energy bde shifted into a spearhead moments before it pierced the C’tan’s body, not stopping until the entire bde was lodged in its chest.

  If trying to be smart about it didn’t work, I just had to return to the basics. I grinned, soul energy surging through me, ripping through Atiesh with predatory intent before exploding outwards in an omnidirectional bst of raw, violent soul energy from the staff’s head.

  Mephet’ran’s mouth parted in a silent scream. His eyes were wide and filled with endless hatred as he gred at me. They turned pitch bck, precluding the twin beams of antimatter ncing out from them and seeking to burn a hole through my head.

  I retracted my head into my torso like a turtle, converting it into bio-energy and then remaking it in a moment when the beams cut off. Spiderweb cracks, all glowing a bright silver, had spread through the C’tan shard’s body, crisscrossing it in its entirety. Then it exploded, a cataclysmic shockwave with the power of a sor fre ripping out, only to sm into a dome barrier I’d pced around the two of us.

  It held out only for a moment, but that was more than enough. I stood in the middle of the scorched crater. The only thing remaining of the obliterated C’tan Shard was the shadow of its contour eternally burned into the bckstone floor. I turned to the other two as they broke through my barrier, bloodthirsty grin still on my lips as Atiesh held zily in one hand.

  “One down,” I murmured, as if speaking to myself even though I knew everyone could hear me. “Two more to go. My first Deicide, how exciting!”

  The first of many, many more to come. Hopefully. Did the shard of a god count? I mused on that thought for a moment before dismissing it. I made the rules, and I decided that it did … it was just a minor act of deicide. Major deicide would be getting every st shard of this absolute cunt and preventing any hope of it ever haunting this gaxy again. You've gotta aim high and all that.

  The two Shards gave me a cold, calcuting look, then they shared a gnce. I was already pouncing on them, the ground shattering behind me as I kicked off it and unched myself like a rocket, air parting before me to negate air resistance.

  The two Shards dashed in opposite directions, each one leaving behind dozens of afterimages as they flew. Said afterimages shifted, gaining autonomy and substance. Illusions, but ones too close to being real to ignore. They swarmed me while the originals fled.

  I snarled and gave chase to the one that felt slightly more powerful. Atiesh lunged out of my grasp to spin around me on its own, ripping apart all the false Deceivers that tried to bar my path.

  I watched my target plunge into the back-line of Necron immortals, flowing through them like a spectre as it dismantled all in its path with contemptuous grace. Its form flowed one moment like liquid, snaking around strikes, and the next it turned solid, its arm coming down in chopping motions like a hatchet. I could feel physics retreat to cower in a corner as the hand-chop passed through the body of a Necron Tomb guard with the force of an unstoppable object. Gauss fyer beams struck it, trying to unravel molecur bonds in its form, but the necrodermis shell of the fallen god refused to give way.

  Above in the sky, a frenzied dogfight was in full blow, hundreds of strike craft fighting each other as thick beams of energy burned through the air. I could feel Orikan’s touch upon one side, directing each fighter like a masterful conductor, micromanaging every st thing about every st of his minions.

  Trazyn was down in the middle, tearing through a massed group of Fyers, and each swing of his weapon sent dozens of them flying back with their core matrices fried.

  Atiesh smmed into the ground ahead of me in the middle of a group of Fyers, cracking the ground with thick spiderweb cracks that flooded with silver light. The condensed energy exploded outwards, throwing back dozens of Fyers as I touched down and snatched up my staff before lunging after the Deceiver, my path now empty of obstructions.

  Fyers lunged in, leaping and kicking each other like feral beasts, fighting each other just as much as they did me for the right to be the first to rip my flesh from my bones. The Deceiver’s fingers moved to an unheard rhythm even as it ran, tugging at invisible strings and, in turn, I sensed the swarm of Fyers colpsing upon me from all around shift, becoming more in sync and cooperative.

  All around them, glowing blue optics fshed and turned amber, the honourable immortals who’d watched over the entombed Deceiver Shard for 65 million years succumbing to the most insidious affliction that could still affect their unliving metal shells and core matrices.

  Atiesh zipped through the air, spinning around a central axis and appearing like a massive runaway saw bde made of pure energy. It tore through the horde of Fyers in a wide, cyclical arc around me, fractal shields popping and imploding around the fallen Necrons the moment it touched them.

  I sped up, burning more bioenergy, and gained ground on my prey. The Deceiver felt it too, snarling as it swung a hand behind itself, once again calling down a pilr of abyssal bck fmes from the heavens. It was easy to dodge, but having to turn broke my momentum a bit, giving the fucker a bit of an advantage.

  Atiesh brushed against my hand only for a moment, and I used that window to channel my power through it. A wall of pure force smmed into existence right ahead of the Deceiver, and like before, the Star God failed to see it coming, smming into it face-first.

  Trazyn smmed into it from above, Empathic Obliterator tearing into the necrodermis shell of the C’tan between the neck and the shoulder. Did he just jump down from a Doom Scythe? I reviewed my memories, and sure enough, a Doom Scythe had zipped through right above the Deceiver, and Trazyn had been clinging onto its underside like a tick.

  But to hit the Deceiver despite him smacking into my wall halfway through his fall … my eyes locked onto the strange cloak hanging from Trazyn’s shoulders. It was practically buzzing with a type of esoteric energy that I was unfamiliar with, but I think it had the faintest simirity in feel to the sensation I got when using Warp Speed.

  Time manipution? I mused, slowing down and coming to a stop next to Trazyn. No, what was it? I remember it from the book … something about resisting Chronomancy? No, I mean yes, partially, but … probability manipution! That was it! The fucker has a cloak that always chooses the best possible future timeline for him. No wonder he hit the Shard and wounded it so much. He’s essentially giving himself infinite luck.

  The C’tan roared, reality itself quivering around it, but the Necron Overlord only twisted his ancient weapon, his metallic mouth curling into a sneer.

  “As I said,” Trazyn said gleefully. “We. Kill. Gods.”

  I smirked next to him, which prompted a wordless scream from the fallen god. He lunged at me, cws outstretched and wreathed in abyssal fmes. Atiesh smmed into his face like a missile, throwing him back against the wall and bouncing off of it.

  Trazyn smmed his Obliterator give into the C’tan, impaling it to the ground. He then turned to give me a gnce. “Would you be so kind as to make sure he doesn’t struggle free?”

  I raised an eyebrow, then my eyes widened when he produced a Tesseract Labyrinth from under his cloak. An empty one, by the dullness of its glow. Well, who was I to stand in the way of his hobby of collecting the most dangerous Pokémon from all across the gaxy? I gave him an easy nod.

  “Do hurry up, though,” I said, mentally keeping some of my attention on the massive battle still happening all around us. Hundreds of Necrons, Fyers and loyal Immortals cshed, fought and died in droves. “The st Shard is trying to leg it.”

  Trazyn gnced to the side, his optics squinting thoughtfully, though he never stopped working on encasing the Shard in the stasis field. “Orikan can handle it.”

  “If you say so,” I said, then hummed in interest as the Trazyn surrogate next to the dimensional cupboard reached in and pulled out a rge spirit stone housing an Exodite World Spirit. “Ah. A bit cruel, isn’t it? I could handle it without feeding all those souls to your friend.”

  That was an entire Maiden World’s worth of Exodite Eldar souls.

  “Oblivion is the best fate those wretches can expect,” Trazyn said dispassionately. “If not Orikan today, then a C’tan tomorrow, or that new abomination they birthed into the Empyrean. I can tell you, they won’t feel a thing, and I think I am quite an expert on how getting your soul eaten feels like.”

  There was some truth in that, if you ignored the fact that I could take them all into my Realm. I shuddered at the thought, not daring to imagine what an entire World Spirit dissolving into my Realm would do to me. I hesitated, for a moment too long, as it was already too te.

  The World Spirit was gone, the thousands of Eldar souls held within converted into pure energy, and with that power held under his tight grasp, Orikan rose into the air. He was not a Necron, not anymore, not like this. He was a being of pure energy, barely constrained within a necrodermis shell.

  The exact same words he’d used to describe the C’tan.

  I slumped a little, not sure whether it was from guilt at failing to save them or relief at having the decision taken out of my hand, probably a mix of both. Billions were dying every second all across the gaxy, and I didn’t feel guilty about not stopping those deaths — and these Eldar were already dead besides — so it was stupid to feel guilty about these only because they were erased from existence right before my eyes.

  At least Sanesh didn’t get them. I thought as I watched two Star Gods crash into each other high above the battlefield. But I could have.

  Yet I didn’t. I think I deserved the guilt weighing on my shoulders. If nothing else, I could have used the World Spirit as a paperweight while protecting it from daemons, or given it to a Craftworld to safeguard.

  Idiot. You should have thought of that sooner.

  P3t1