I ied almost all of my brain power into trolling the Drone, only leaving a fragment of my sciousness behind in my Avatar through which I could feel Selene’s hold tighten around my hand.

  The Drone became me, even if my soul-thread remained in the avatar. Its instincts, senses, and movements went directly into my mind without any buffer as I twisted its body out of the spear's way a a cwed strike at his chest.

  He was maybe the slightest bit slower than me, but he started dodging at the first sign of a terattack, so he was more than out of my range by the time the attack would have ected.

  He dodged though. That should mean he wasn’t fident in his armour just tanking the attack while he speared my ass.

  A blink ter he was back at me, spear fshing out faster than mortal eyes could have caught. I dodged, terattacked, threw Eldritch bsts and waves of fire, but our dance tinued without any attading or doing anything worthwhile.

  He didn’t bother dodging the fmewall for example, he just stepped through it even as the fmes tried to tto him a on his vital energy. They were all stopped by a thin film of energy coating his armour protectively as the pentagram-like sigils glowed in response.

  We were going toe to toe, but I was wly aware that he didn’t even fire his spear-gun once, aher did he use either of the two objects hanging on his waist. In parison, my a the hole was not dying if I lost. I wasn’t putting much hope into ht beating him with this Drone, I was just trying to bait out his tricks. Something I tinued failing to do.

  My instincts and superior speed warred with his vastly superior skill, which was only made worse by that spear. Whe almost ected to even my carapace that could withstand the Swarmlord’s attacks, my Danger Sense went apeshit and tore my body out of my trol to evade.

  As the battle went on, it became clear that this Drone was far too weak to do any substantial damage to him. Even if he seemed to be only dodging my attacks by hair-thin margins, he never o hit.

  Let’s py dirty then. I could feel a grin spread on both my avatar and the drone’s bestial face, exposing lines of serrated teeth. The Shadowkeeper couldn’t see either though, as an Illusion overid itself on my Drone a about ag like I had before.

  He struck out to the right while I struck to the left. He dodged right into my strike and my cw dug into his power armour while the scythe snapping out over my shoulder was deflected by his helmet twisting so that it would strike his pauldrons instead of burying itself deep into his neck.

  I jumped back, evading the spear, snapping out at me while my cws were stu his body. I let the arm go, tearing it off at the elbow and leaving the limb stu him. The oxin g the cws probably wouldn’t do mu, but I hoped the pain would be annoying.

  He gruhe first sign of either emotion or that he wasn’t a mindless automaton over all the time I’ve been him. Theore out my discarded arm and chucked it to the side as a bit of blood seeped through the cracks formed in his armour, but it clotted up in a few seds.

  I didn’t doubt that whatever tiny flesh wound I caused would also be healed underh in a few more seds. My strike only grazed his flesh and most of its power went into peing the stupidly tough armour.

  I wasn’t just standing still like an idiot while he healed of course, despite making it look like that. Where his armour cracked, the carefully crafted sigils were now flickering and one eve dull.

  Power armour also worked for resisting some psychic attacks, but those sigils of his were what made up for about 90% of his defences in that regard, and they were ent at that moment.

  When I was satisfied with my creation, I sent out the invisible Spell and it slipped through that crack. The result wasn’t immediate. Hopefully, he wouldn’t eves effects for a while.

  It wouldn’t help in this fight, but I ying the long game here.

  That single Spell would probably do quite well on the Geneva vention’s bingo list. It was the mea, nastiest pgue bined with the most vicious slow-ag toxin I had in my arsenal and to finish that off I added in a personal spice to it.

  Super cer. Not the fast-ag tumour explosion I used on the Orks, but a slow ohat would sit hidden in his body, just draining as much of his energy as it could while his immune system fought against the toxins and the pgue.

  He looked he wiser as he grunted again, taking something out of a satchel hangio the silver orb and stig it right into the cracked part of his armour.

  I felt his psychic shielding mend itself. It wasn’t as strong as the rest of it, but was more than strong enough to hold out against any minor sorcery the Drone could throw at it.

  Not even b to try, I used every energy left over from running Danger Sense and the Psychic Shield at full power to cast more Illusions as we once again pounced on each other.

  He was deceptively quick, if not fast. He was always where I least wanted him to be, his spear always ing at me just so I couldn’t leave more than a hissing graze at his ceramite armour.

  It was infuriating in a way, but it showed me how much I relied on instincts where I cked skills altogether. ‘If Tyranids could do it, why ’t I?’ was how I thought, but that entirely ignored how much more powerful I could have been if I actually knew how to fight.

  I o put that memory-eating project ba the rail rather soon.

  With time, my illusions started losing their effectiveness as he ht ignored all illusory es of myself and only pursued me. He still sometimes fell for feints I made with illusory limbs, but even those were quickly losing effectiveness.

  I had to have had a tick, a tell maybe that he could use to decide which attack was real and which was not. My illusions just weren’t up to par. I regretted only fog on attack spells as he ignored another illusory strike ing at his neck as he deflected the real one.

  Then my Danger Sense fred up in furious arm. My reflexes went into overdrive to get me out of whatever he was about to do, but it was all too te. The energy on his spear exploded outwards in crag arcs of lightning as a blinding beam of energy shot out of the spear’s tip.

  I watched in near slow motion as the beam turned on my shoulder and then overpped with it. For a moment I saw both my body, whole as it was, and the bloody remains of what once was a quarter of my torso. My paiors instantly turned off, but the agony the on induced was more than physical.

  The attack didn’t have quite the same metaphysical force behind it as it had physical, but my mind was still sent reeling as the energy electrified every thinking node in the body and burhrough the nervous system.

  I felt the telepathic el fray as the energy was deteriorating it. Then the beam cut off, fizzling out like it was barely held back from destroying anything and everything that existed.

  I gritted my teeth, a Selene’s fiighten around my hand, so much so that I’d have some broken fingers already if I were a human.

  Fuck you then. As bio-energy rushed to remake the lost part of my Drone, a makeshift rifle unched a spike filled with the energy right at the Shadowkeeper still rec from his attack.

  He probably thought himself safe from the spike, or was just sure of my drone being down food, and took the attack as a st desperate attack.

  The spike burrowed into his chest pte, not too deeply, but just deep enough to touch the skin. Then it exploded. Bio-energy densed into the spike, sending fragments of it burrowing deeper into him as the energy itself spread under his armour and scorched into his skin and flesh.

  I stumbled to my feet, mind once again ba the Drone, and pounced on him without waiting another moment.

  Just as I was a moment away from sinking two dozen jagged cws into his flesh, his hand so his waist. It wasn’t the silver orb he touched, but the bed skull.

  I felt an echo of an arm from my Danger Sense before it died, just as the telepathic el was utterly obliterated. I lost all sense of the Drone, remembering only a brief dark light fshing from the skull.

  I was sent reeling, gasping as I clutched onto the couder me. I was whole, as whole as I could be, a I felt like something was torn away from me. A part of my mind that was wounded in a way it never had been before.

  “What the fuck was that?”

  With a thought, a dozen bird-drones with no eldritch flesh flew closer to the site of the battle. Some desded from the clouds while others crested over the t walls of the valley while I opened up my third eye food measure as I stared in the dire I st felt my Drone.

  There here of nothingness, both in realspad in the that my psychic vision couldn’t sense.

  Then the first birds id eyes on the pce, finding something that weirded me out. My bat Drone was there, fit as a fiddle, but fallen over lifelessly as the Shadowkeeper climbed to his feet.

  As the birds circled him from above like a flock of ravenous sgers, he stood atop my fallen Drone and struck down with his spear. The crag energy once again exploded outwards, pulverising the Drone cell-by-cell and leaving nothing, not even carbon ash.

  An illusory afterimage lingered where the Drone once id and then the beam died off, taking with it the eerie illusion.

  He activated it a few more times food measure until not even dust remained from the Drone. Only then did he tap the bck skull again.

  The sphere of nothingness dimmed and shrunk, pulling bato the depths of the skull like a furious bear heading bato hibernation after it dealt with the creature that dared rouse it.

  “What happened?” Selene asked, and I whirled on her. Right, despite how weird that experience was, I was alright. I squeezed her hand, just to be sure. “Ea?”

  “Yes,” I shook my head, snapping out of it. “Yes, I’m alright!”

  “What happened?” she asked. “The hologram you kept up disappeared, and you looked like someone spped you in the face.”

  “I don’t really know …” My mind turned, and a metaphorical lightbulb lit up in my head. “A Bnk? But how?”

  “A bnk?”

  “Yes,“ I said. “He has orapped onto his waist, or at least the skull of one, whiehow still has the same effect as a living one.”

  I thought for a moment, pulling up everything I remembered about Bnks, Psychiulls, Pariahs, whatever you wao call them, a my mind-cores rush over them and make sure I wasn’t missing something important.

  “This is bullshit.” That was the clusion I came to. “He has a fug Culexus strapped to his waist like a fug fshlight?”

  I sidered myself a strong Psyker, not the best, far from it, but I reasoned my pure power usually made up for my ck of experiend skill in using it. I mao make one of the stro Greater Daemoreat, fod's sake.

  A weakling null-field shouldn’t have obliterated my telepathic el that easily. I should have been able to hold on to it at least.

  “What’s an Culexus?” Selene asked, looking like her worry was mounting by the sed as I babbled on.

  I took a breath, eye twitg as I felt one of my bait drones once again flicker and die. He is already back at it. What a relentless asshole.

  “So, let me give you a quick rundown on Bnks and how the Imperium of Man makes use of them … “

  Luis Dae sat in his and chair. The defence was going eerily well. The Tyranids had fewer Synapse units as of te and no smaller bio-forms to make up for it with pure numbers.

  That made it so his presen the and room was much more beneficial to the overall war effort than him going out to the wall for extended periods. Even the baseline humans could down the creatures rushing at the fortress with a few well-aimed shots, so there was no need for him to go out and risk his life taking dowe units.

  A regrettable course of events for which he knew just exactly the Xeno to bme.

  He leaned back, reports ing in and going out every sed with him only needing to approve of the most important ones ahere in case of an emergency to direct a quick response.

  Aside from that, he also had to worry about dealing with whatever monstrosity scared their weird ally. He’d sent some elite men to scout out the ravines and found the exact same thing the woman had shown him.

  He didn’t send anyone down into the caver, resolving to take her advid wait.

  Still, every sed he spent waiting and overlooking a battle, he was growing increasingly … anxious. The guardsmen were already talking about victory being only a matter of time and he knew some of his men started to feel the same way.

  Hope was creeping bato their hearts, but Dante knew better.

  Mephistoed shadows gathering again. The Shadow was slowly, carefully, and much more importantly, stealthily re-verging and spreading over Baal.

  Something was out there still that could hold the Swarm together, a Synapse creature that had enough sway to hold back the high-tier bio-forms.

  Any moment, any sed that flowed by, could be the st before the iable storm finally arrived. He could feel it in his bones, in the beat of his heart. He was sure. Now he was waiting for the iable report that crushed all hope.

  “ander Dante,” a lifeless voice sounded out, the meical vox eg in the and room and effortlessly sileng everyone. “We are receiving a le transmission request.”

  Dante didn’t know why, but the Magos called Zedev ied himself into the and about a day ago. He took over almost all unication and teology, radars, voxes, bat vehicles, and anything that had to do with his Order, which he now was in and of.

  Dante didn’t like it. He was doubtful of the Magos’ allegiance, but just as with the Xeno, he let him be. All help had to be used, all avenues exhausted and his personal views and values disregarded. All in favour of taking as much from the Tyranids as possible before death cimed them all.

  “What?” He asked, his voiing out as a croak. Was there perhaps another hold-out of his men on one of the moons? Anything closer wouldn’t be ing through the le vox. “From where? Who is it?”

  “Authentication codes have been verified, the sender has been firmed as the Gloriana-Css Battleship ‘Macragge’s Honor’.”

  The world seemed to crawl to a halt as that single sed lengthened iernity. All the while, the word repyed again and again in Dante’s mind as doubt and hope warred in the a man’s heart.

  Then it was over, and time flowed again. Having had ay to think, Dante only had a sihing to say:

  “WHAT?”