I arrived back to our shared room with Seleill in a bit of a sour mood. I learned, advanced, and became better today. That wasn’t a question. But I also lost, which was grating to a primal part of me.

  Better to lose against allies in spars and training than against enemies. I reassured myself, but the sour taste in my mouth remained.

  I opehe door with a bit of TK and stopped. Sele with her legs crossed on the bed, dressed only in her night clothes and with her eyes only now crag open. She bli me.

  “e!” I threw myself at her and she fell bato the bed with a yelp as I snuggled into the hug.

  “You are …” a sigh reverberated through her chest, then her arms ed around me fly. “Did Val beat you up again?”

  “He did not!” I protested, though not toly. Then whispered. “Maybe a little.”

  “You poor thing,” she said, her melodic voice tinged with affeate sarcasm. “How will you recover from this?”

  Her fingers slowly started pying with my hair and running along my scalp, sending tle tingles down my spine. I rolled away, then pced my head on her p to let her work her magiy nerves, which she did with a smile as I settled in.

  “I don’t think I ever will,” I hummed. “Though this certainly helps.”

  “I imagine,” she smirked. I did not know where she lear, but I suspected she was using space magic with her fingers despite me not feeling even a hint of energy from them. They were just divine. “Anything iing happeoday?”

  “With our blue friends, you mean?” I asked as I closed my eyes to enjoy the scalp massage.

  “And the rest,” she said. “Things have been in a bit of a lull tely.”

  “Yeeeeeeah,” I agreed. “Not that I mind. Guilliman is pying cat and mouse with the remaining Tyranids and the reverse with whatever’s down iunnels. I heard scouts have a fifty-fifty ce of returning from the depths. Nothing too iing. Things have been rather hectic ever since you arrived on that hive-world, so this bit of peace is nice.”

  “Right.” I could practically hear her eyes roll. “And you lived peacefully and in harmony with nature right up to the moment I arrived on Folx IV.”

  “If you t the occasional mutant nature … along with a Lictor … “

  “And you murdering them aing their corpses as harmony.”

  “Nature is savage.” I gave a little shrug. “They should have been stronger if they didn’t want to get eaten.”

  “That is …” she started, her fingers stopping. “How do humans measure into that philosophy?”

  “I mean,” I said. “The same applies, but I won’t get anything from eating humans aside from some bio-energy. So if they aren’t being a pain in my ass, I’m not going to eat or kill them.”

  “You know that's a very … ambiguous rule to live by.”

  “It isn’t really a rule, per se. I just do what I like.”

  “Rules,” she whispered. Her fingers resumed their work. “Would you be opposed to establishing some ground rules for yourself? I think that could help with your … problem.”

  “Huh.” Meaning my stupidly malleable soul and personality. “I guess it would. Any ideas?”

  “ing civilians?” She asked though I could tell she didn’t expect me to accept it. She was treating this like haggling, starting with a price far above what she wanted.

  “If they don’t have any powers or traits, I want and they aren’t in the way of murdering soldiers or other people I want to kill,” I said. “I refuse to limit myself to avoiding colteral damage. That would be crippling in this gaxy, especially sihe Imperium would be more than willing to use its own civilians as hostages if they figured out I wouldn’t kill them.”

  “That’s fair,” she said. “And I don’t expect you to limit yourself. Killing with a goal be … uandable. But I think senseless sughter and the sort would be dangerous for you. That taints even the most virtuous humans.”

  “Even normal killing does,” I murmured, trying to imagine how being in the Imperial Guard would ge the average 21st-tury teen.

  They would either break or bend, adding to the suicide rates of the guard or being like them, desensitized, broken tools to be wielded by their anders. I suspected my earth self would have been among the first. I wasn’t good with pressure back then, at all.

  “You know what I mean,” she huffed. “Killing for the goal of killing, or for pleasure. That’s the sort of twisted thing I’d imagine a Drukhari doing.”

  Yeeeaahh. With the strength of my soul being as it is, being as depraved as those Saneshi degees would probably have rather disastrous sequences.

  “Alright,” I said. “Rule 1: Always ask myself whether killing a person has any reasonable goal behind it and never gh with it if it doesn’t.”

  “Would getting more bio-energy be a ‘reasonable goal’?”

  “Not if I’m not starving,” I shrugged. I believed I would have acted acc to this rule already without stating it out loud … but putting it into words might make that more perma.

  “I suppose that’s good,” Selene said. Then added softly. “Yes. That is already better than the rules most issars and generals live by.”

  “Not much of a challenge,” I said.

  “It really isn’t,” she said regretfully, then shook her head. “Any other ideas for rules? That was about all I had in mind.”

  “I suppose I should extend Rule 1 into other things aside from killing. I am more than capable of making people regret ever being born without killing them.”

  “So you want to include pointless cruelty?”

  “Something of the sort would probably be worthwhile to establish … though I ’t say where I’d draw the line,” I said. “I … might have enjoyed seeing those cultists I experimented on screaming in agony a bit more than I was supposed to.”

  “… if you need an outlet, better them than someone unworthy of that agony.”

  “I suppose,” I said thoughtfully. “Though these things tend to spiral out of trol.”

  “Do they?”

  “Where I e from there had been studies,” I said. “Like, people exhibiting cruelty in childhood — as in killing and t pets and animals — are more likely to act with cruelty against their fellow men ter in life.”

  “I … ’t say I would feel sorry for cultists and the sort even if you tortured them for days,” she said, once again showg the i differeween 21st-tury people and someone aced to the Imperium’s way of life. “But I see your point. Do you want some threshold or some such? So you don’t sink into excess?”

  “Yep,” I said. “Excess of anything is a dangerous thing in this gaxy.”

  “That it is,” she murmured. “If you put any sort of limit on indulging, that should be enough. Right?”

  “Maybe?” I said. “There aren’t any studies around there looking into what ts as ‘excess’ when it es to that horny daemon, but I assume it's always retive to the person themselves.”

  “That does make sense,” she agreed. “That limit should be something for you to decide on.”

  “Hmmmm.” I frowned in thought. “Well, let’s say … If there is no goal to t someone … I have to put them out of their misery after an hour at most?”

  “Without a goal?” She raised an eyebrow, judging.

  “I mean … for information and stuff?”

  “You read minds, dear,” she admonished. “There is no use t anyone for information for you.”

  “I think the way I do it ts as torture,” I said, though I agreed with her. Thinking on it … was there anything I could gain by just inflig pain on anyone aside from maybe some sick sense of satisfa at giving pain back to the ones who usually spread it? I couldn’t think of anything.

  “So?” Selene asked.

  “I suppose … I shouldn’t torture them?” I said uainly.

  “If what you said about what happens to souls after death is true,” she said. “Everyone you kill has a fate far worse ahead of them than you t them for a few weeks.”

  “Trueeee,” I murmured, blinking sleepily. I didn’t need sleep, sure, but massages had a way of rexing my mind along with my body. Especially when done by the cutie I had for a lover. “That’s Rule 2 then: No t people.”

  The sigh Sele out was filled with relief. She gently slid one palm down and caressed my cheek with her fingers. “Thank you. I … “

  I leaned into her hand, much like a cat asking for scratches. “I know, and thank you.”

  I gave her an affeate smile. She was worried, I could feel it clearly, worried for me. There might have been personal preferences involved in her wantio establish these rules, especially in the no senseless murdering of civilians part, but she was mostly worried about me turning into something she couldn’t reize as ‘me’.

  It was o feel someone cared. And I cared just as much about remaining myself, if not more, than her. I was just … weak? I don’t know how to describe it, but I doubt I would have ever given myself iron-hard rules to operate under if I didn’t have her pushio do it.

  This would be good for me.

  With that thought, I felt two obelisks form in my mindscape ale on a close orbit around the tral pyramid of my mind. Two obelisks, with the two rules inscribed onto them to forever remind me of the promises I’d made today and would hold myself to.

  Maybe more would joiwo iure, but the baseline had beeablished. With time, the rules would bee a part of who I was. Intellectually, I uood being someone who lived by these rules and not just obeyed them would be a … positive ge. Even if some primal, beastly side of me felt revolted by the mere idea of ing to rules and not indulging my base nature.

  Stupid instincts. They mostly worked well and in my favour. Other times, they were a weakness.

  No matter how much that braindead, murderhobo instinct felt shackled by these rules, the pragmatic part of me could tell these instincts would be a much more dangerous thing to indulge than some rules, making me show some basic human decy.

  Or whatever-I-am-now decy. I should tease what the actual name of what I am is from that stone-faced Custodian.

  “What are you thinking about?” Selene asked curiously, probably feeling my o end the previous topic. Small steps.

  “How I still don’t have a name for what I am,” I said. “I could maybe get the official he Imperium had for the thing that makes up my body … but I am not just my body. It’s like calling you a k of coal because you are made of mostly carbon.”

  “You are unique, aren’t you?” she asked. “That means you have to e up with your own name.”

  “Name,” I snorted. “I guess I am just ‘Ea’, then. That fits.”

  “Does it mean something?”

  “Ea was a monster in an a mythology oh. A half-snake, half-woman born to two deities. They called her ‘The mother of monsters’ for she birthed some of the most dangerous monstrosities of the a mythology.”

  “That fits,” she said with an amused lilt. “You chose it because of that, didn’t you?”

  “Yep,” I nodded. “Though it was funny at the time. How I procimed myself to be a maker of monsters right in front of an Imperial captain and she couldn’t tell because her own imperium buried history.”

  “I see the irony in there,” she huffed. “Though I don’t appreciate being the captain iion.”

  “Did I mention how beautiful the captain was?” I batted my eyes up at her. “How her sweet voice tamed the vicious alien from the distant past?”

  She rolled her eyes, then flicked my forehead pyfully. “Silly alien.”

  “I need more taming now,” I whined. “Get back to work, please.”

  “Truly the terror of the Milky Way,” she sighed, but her fingers went back to pying along my scalp. “I ’t believe how the Imperium isn’t trembling in fear already.”

  “Me her,” I mumbled, mouth quirking into a smirk. “I’m terrifying.”

  “That you are,” she said fondly. “I ’t help but tremble in fear in your presence.”

  “As it should be,” I huffed in faux arrogance, pulling on my inner ‘young mistress.’ “Only your divine massages save you from my wrath, human.”

  “Oh, I know more thh massages your alienness,” she purred. “A full body experie will refresh you both inside and out.”

  I opened my mouth to reply, her husky voice doing all the things to my body she wished them to do and more, but I froze.

  Seleiced immediately, her fingers stopping as she looked down at me with a serious frown. “Something happened? Is everything alright?”

  I worked my jaw, then gave a slow nod as I reinforced my e to the avatar. “Yes, everything is fine.”

  “But?”

  Slowly, my mouth stretched into a wide grin.

  I’d trolled dozens of dro once, having experienced splitting my attentioween multiple bodies. But avatars were different. They ected right into my soul, while drones only ected to the avatar.

  So when my one avatar suddenly became two, it threw me for a loop.

  “More than fine,” I jumped up, giggling. “Oh, this is going to be iing.”

  While one avatar picked Selene up and spun her around in glee on Baal, the other avatar was halfway across the gaxy, deep underground on a p of metal and maery from before time.

  Solemnace.

  My eyes cracked open as I reinforced the e that had just beeablished after weeks of inactivity. Sickly green serpents of energy coiled around my body, log my limbs in pce, coiling around every iny body, and suppressing even my supernatural strength with ease.

  My gaze nded on the sole form aside from me in the dark underground room, illuminated only by the faint light of my teagical shackles.

  He was a man of metal, rge staff held in hand, with a hood behind a face covered by a smirkih-mask. Even if I didn’t know who he was from the pce I found myself in or didn’t suspect him already of running off with my avatar, I would have reised him in a moment.

  Soul energy surged in my body, uo escape it, but easily sinking into my flesh and g my vocal cords with unnatural power.

  “Trazyn, the ohey call the Infinite. What an ued surprise.”