78 – From the Ashes … sort of


    “Ehm,” I nced up at Selene, “I can’t really make drones to catch me the test su- *cough* escaping cultists. Could you collect some for me?”


    “Sure?” Selene looked at me weirdly. Was there something weird on my face?


    “Thanks,” I smiled at her.


    “Okay then,” she shrugged and let go of the man, letting my TK take over from her. “See youter?”


    “Yes,” I gave her a wave. “I’ll have an interesting story to tell too.”


    “Sure,” she shrugged. “I<em>am</em>curious why you are like<em>that</em>.”


    “Mhmm,” I hummed, “Bye~”


    Then she was off, throwing another curious nce at me.<em>There must be something on my face.</em>


    I reached up patting down my cheeks, chin, hair, ears. Everything was there.


    “Do I look weird?” I asked the woman, who was still holding her malnourished daughter behind her like a protective mama bear.


    “No?” She was giving me looks mirroring Selene’s.


    “Really?” I tilted my head, turning my psychic senses on myself for a moment, just to make sure. “Aha!”


    My facial structure was all wrong, I still looked simr enough to my Psyker Form to be easily recognisable, but my cheekbones were a bit too high, my chin was a bit too low and my nose was a bit too wide. Plus I had freckles on my cheeks.


    <em>God I hate freckles.</em>


    If there was one thing that topped the list of things I wanted to change about myself in my previous life, it was freckles. They were worse than my all too wide nose or my boring shade of brown hair.


    Thankfully, a quick surge of bio-energy washed away those imperfections and brought me closer to my ideal image.


    I conjured up a small mirror, Psychic Illusions being more than capable of the task.


    “Hmm,” I turned my face left and right. “It will do for now.”


    “Excuse me?” spoke up the woman, looking at me like a weird animal. Then she nced at Bob, suspended mid-air as he was without being able to twitch as much as a finger. “Uhm, I can see that you wanted him, right?”


    “Not quite,” I shrugged. “I wanted souls to experiment with, and the runaway cultists will serve me well for that.”


    The woman gulped, she’d been staring at me like I’d bite her daughter’s head off at any moment. If that could take a turn for the worse, it did as I finished my sentence.


    “So,” she cleared her throat, standing up straight and aiming a resolved gaze at me. “Can we go then?”


    “Go where?” I asked, my lips curling in amusement. “These caverns are dead ends and all around us is only wastnd for hundreds of kilometers.”


    “I, we- , we will find a way,” she muttered.


    “Stay here,” I offered. “In a few hours I’ll open up a portal leading to<em>Arx Angelicum.</em>You know what that is, right?”


    “Y-yes,” she answered with a trembling voice, her eyes wide in what I thought was disbelief. “Yes, thank you! Erm- I mean Thank You My Lady?”


    “You are wee,” I smirked.<em>Once again, I am acting like something I am not. It’s more of a misunderstanding this time though.</em>


    Sanctioned Psykers were a thing, a known thing. All Psykers were feared as witches or something like that, the popce atrge both feared and hated them for their abominable power. This of course, applied to those Sanctioned by the Imperium.


    Even if they wouldn’t run away screaming or get their pitchforks when they saw a Sanctioned Psyker — like they’d do with an unsanctioned one — the hate and fear remained. It was something beaten into humans through many millennia of Psykers being born and causing cmities.


    <em>And the Imperium not only doesn’t do anything for their Sanctioned Psykers, they condone the hatred.</em>


    I got it, I understood it. During the Age of Strife when Psyker numbers multiplied rapidly, the only worlds that survived were the ones that put them onto stakes and burned them.


    I understood it, but I didn’t like it.


    Magic — and Warp Sorcery was Magic in my eyes — was something fantastical, it was something to be loved. I might have been more into Science Fiction in myst life, but that was mostly because I didn’t believe fantasy could be reality.


    Nano Swarms, Arcologies, colonising Alpha Centauri and whatever else was something that was within the realms of possibility for humanity’s future. Whereas, flinging fireballs and teleporting, was not something I considered possible.


    <em>Yet here I am, flinging fireballs and teleporting. And so much more.</em>


    “Settle down,” I waved her off. “We’ll be here for a while, and I can’t do anything exerting until we get out of this hole.”


    “Y-yes,” she nodded, sitting down against the wall and pulling her daughter into herp.


    Now on giving her a closer look, the girl didn’t look too good. I grimaced as I let my psychic senses wash over her, yikes.


    A flick of my wrist pushed Bob against the wall, I lessened my focus on him and only fixed his four limbs to the wall along with a face mask that kept his mouth shut. Then, I walked over to the two, both of whom were looking at me with a great deal of wariness.


    “I cannot exert myself,” I reiterated, “but healing her up a bit should be doable, I have enough energy for that.”


    “Yes?” The mother blinked at me, uprehending. “Heal her? Is she sick?”


    “That she is,” I kept the grimace off my face. Sci-fi fantasy gut worms were even more disgusting than the regr ones, no wonder the poor girl was skin and bones. “Nothing too severe of course, I can heal her sickness now, but I can’t give her back all the weight she’d lost.”


    “Please help her!” The woman said, begging me.


    “Alright,” Iid my palm on her abdomen, the little girl shrinking back from my touch, but her mother kept her in ce. “It won’t hurt, you won’t feel a thing.”


    Tendrils phased into her body, spreading into a hundred hair thin tendrils that located every damned worm in the girl. It was honestly disgusting, but it was just a bit of free bio-energy and some good samaritan work at the same time. Good for the body and good for the soul.


    Once I was done, I sent a fraction of the new bio-energy back into the girl and fixed any pressing health issues in her. Even if I didn’t do another round of healing — which would mostly include me regenerating her muscles and fat — she’d recover if she ate well and slept well for a few months.


    “Should be good,” I stood up, patting myself mentally on the back for a job well done.


    “Thanks,” I caught the little girl’s murmur and sent her a smile.


    “You’re wee.”


    Then it was time for the main course. No, that is a very bad choice of words with me being a man-eating alien, so let’s go with the main show, the main attraction!<em>Doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.</em>


    “Stop being annoying,” I flicked my wrist, raising Bob away from the wall and smashing him back into it. The fucker was trying to twist his joints to get out of the shackle-like bindings I’d put on him.


    Now, you might be thinking: ‘This guy is like, a hundred years old, don’t bully the elderly!’ BUT, I could feel the vitality coursing through this fucker, it wasn’t muchpared to me or even just a regr Astartes, but it was a good chunk above what Selene had.


    <em>Curious. How? Why? Why did he have this? Why did he call it ‘Her’?Why was he protecting it? Intriguing, so very intriguing.</em>


    I pulled the shiny blue gem into my hand, having had it floating around me like a little moon. Now, why would I do such a thing when most things were straining on this low-power-mode human form? Because it seemed to infuriate Bob to no end.


    [~ding!~Personality Trait Unlocked: Sadism!]


    <em>I’d have thought these shitheads would go into hibernation in low-power mode. Don’t waste energy on bullshit!</em>


    “You know,” I caressed the thing gently. “I thought I’d have to take one of these off a fuckwit Eldar that decided to fuck around, but this is just what I need right now. “


    “So Bob, I think you deserve a reward for generously giving this to me and I think I know just the thing you’d want,” I smirked at him. “Objectively speaking, I am probably among the four best flesh crafters in this gxy.”


    His eyes flew wide and his struggling calmed down.


    “I think I know what you want, but I haven’t bothered looking too deeply into your mind so I want you to tell me just to be sure,” I slowly removed his face mask made up of solidified psychic power. Green Lantern had nothing on these force objects. “I want to hear you say it.”


    “Bring her back,” he wheezed, eyes going bloodshot as he stared without blinking. “Bring her back!”


    “By that you mean,” I ced a hand on my hips and started yfully throwing the gem up and catching it. “‘Please oh so mighty being, forge a new body for the unfortunate soul trapped in that spirit stone’, right? Or is it more like: ‘Please make a new body for my steaming hot totally-not-heretical Eldar girlfriend, I hadn’t gottenid in over a century!’?”


    His mouth fell open, then closed. He repeated that for a while, mimicking a fish out of the water.<em>Even his wide eyes are matching.</em>


    “How?”


    “Dumb question,” I chided him. “I asked you a question.”


    “Please,” he scrunched his eyes. “Give her back to me.”


    “Fine,” I rolled my eyes. “I’ll take pity on you this once, I will ept that answer.”


    He slumped in my hold, stopping his struggling for the first time since Iid eyes on him.


    “Now then,” I rolled my shoulders and cracked my neck. “Will you be a good boy if I drop you Bob?”


    “Yes,” he said, his face twisting as if he bit into an unripe lemon.


    “Good.” I dropped him. “Let’s get walking then, group. It is a long walk from here back to the surface.”


    Then we were off with me leading the way and the other three following after me a few meters back, though Bob kept some distance from the mother-daughter pair.


    My clock was ticking, I wanted to summon up my refreshment bio-energy from my Puddle ASAP. Then I could go about fiddling with souls and maybe by the end of it I’ll have a way to not only shove that Eldar Soul back into a living body, but also to fix Selene’s problem.


    Because that’s what it was, if you haven''t realized already. Bob here was protecting a Spirit Stone like his life depended on it, just like the one Val had embedded into his clothes around his chest. Though, his was purplish and not sapphire blue like this one.


    Fun times ahead.<em>How would the Eldar react to seeing my real soul in its entirety when I shove it into my puddle? Will she freak out? Proim me the incarnation of one of her dead gods? Or will she just do/say something entirely stupid and idiotic?</em>


    I was leaning towards thest one based on my not-too-extensive knowledge of Eldar lore, Valenith was far too normal and had far too muchmon sensepared to the Eldar I’d read about. Basing your actions on idiotic visions of the future that won’t evene to pass is the go to n for most Eldar.


    There was that time when they sent an entire group of Rangers just to kill the baby Primarch Angron when he crashnded on Nuceria, just because their Farseer saw a future version of him wreck some Eldar.


    Now, this seems entirely rtable and understandable right? But as it turns out, killing a baby Primarch is beyond the capabilities of a centuries old trained group of Eldar Rangers. Yes, they failed to kill a damned baby, but they managed to weaken him enough so when human vers found him, he couldn’t resist capture.


    And that was the start of his path down a spiraling path of anger and destruction which also included wrecking more than ‘some’ Eldar.


    <em>Idiots.</em>


    Good thing I was better than them, there was no Farseer who could exceed my ster foresight!


    [~ding~ *snort* ‘<em>foresight’</em>]


    <em>Oh shut up!</em>


    I red at nothing in particr, my feet stomping just a bit stronger than before which made the little girl jump up in fright.


    “Oops, sorry,” I threw a smile back.<em>What did they do to that poor thing to have her react to just that little expression of annoyance.</em>


    Caverns turned and bent but we kept on walking, even the little girl wasing along on her own two legs with a growing feeling of vitality, probably not having been able to even stand for a good while before I alleviated her ailments.


    I oohed as the flickering light of a faroff torch sent long shadows over the walls, contesting with my tiny orb of light which floated along a few centimeters above my head.