We tinued our dance. He went at full power from the start, striking with the io cleave me in half clear in each of his swings as I slowly dialled up my own power. Or well, what I was dialling up was my toolkit aility.

  A simple sword vs spear quickly became something much more fantastical as I started incorporating anything from illusions, bursts of speed, extra limbs jagged cws, gusts of matter-ing fmes, and bsts of pure energy.

  He had to defend himself on multiple fronts. I came at him from the front while my spells arced around him and struck at any sign of weakness he dared show while Atiesh targeted his back at all times.

  Then he used the beam.

  “Nasty,” I clicked my tongue as I watched it burrow through the wastend and draw a new ravio its ft face. “Too slow, though.”

  I Blinked ba, just as I Blinked right out at the first sign of energy gathering in his spear.

  He didn’t relent. Any sign of doubt, hopelessness, iving up — that any normal human would have shown after I danced around him for half an hour — was absolutely absent from him.

  His mind wasn’t just a fortress. Space Marines’ minds were fortresses, with gates, walls, weaknesses, and soft squishy humans inside of them that I could attack if need be, but not him.

  The Shadowkeeper’s mind was a single piece of unbreaking and unbending diamond. Any telepathifluence slipped off of it or spttered against it helplessly and direct attacks on his body weren’t much more effective.

  Every fibre of his beied being altered or affected by sorcery. It was just that though, resistanot immunity.

  I could still feel my gestating spell w in his body. It was doing its dam the fortress that was his body crashing down from within. It was a slow process, but it should already be sapping his stamina.

  He struck out again, this time a pierg attack aiming to impale me through the belly, but a push of Telekinesis sent his pierce to the side and I kicked him in the chest with all the enharength I could manage.

  Fmes danced on his freen, red, white, and bck, all tched onto him and ate into whatever they could find.

  “You aren’t looking too good,” I noted. “Want to give up?”

  Stupid question really. The answer was obvious, and it couldn’t even annoy a single curse out of him.

  Not that he was looking all that bad — if you ighe fmes, not that they were doing much with his sigils and power-field holding them off for now — I struck him a few times but never drew blood.

  All he had was some scratch marks on his armour, ae my repeated attempts to skewer him at speeds he had nht to react to, he still did so anyways. At least he was struggling to keep up, every defleing at the st possible moment.

  “Out of curiosity,” I hummed as he fended off Atiesh b him with a variety of Spells. “What would you do if I ran? You do know I am faster than yht?”

  “I am one of many,” he said, his voice sounding only the slightest bit strained. “You run, but you ot hide.”

  “So talkative,” I hummed, eyes going wide as Atiesh threw a huge fuck-off fireball at him that exploded into white fmes, burning away all the residual energy in the viity. His sigils shined bright, but fizzling light a lightbulb right befoing out. “Am I to be pying cat-and-mouse with you guys for the rest of eternity?”

  “You are nothing but a tool,” he said gruffly. Sigils flickering, but as the fmes died down, they went back to being as they were. “A broke that.”

  “You know how to hurt a girl’s feelings,” I hummed. “No wonder your kind never gets married.”

  “We are iile.”

  “I know.”

  Maybe he was trying to py for time, or just fishing for information. I was certain I was not what he expected to find at the end of his hunt. Maybe he was curious?

  Instead of tinuing to bahough, he did what I was nervously waiting for sihe start. He touched the bck skull.

  Goosebumps rushed ay skin even if my Danger Sense remained eerily silent, only giving me a faint foreboding sense of impending doom. I blinked away, a good dozeres further than the maximum radius of the sphere he previously jured.

  Before the dark light could even emerge from the skull, I aimed my palm at it a an exploding spike flying at it. Then, just to be sure, I sent a dozen birds flying out of my body and taking up positions all around the Shadowkeeper.

  Oer the other, they all transformed into bat Drones I could jump into if by any ce he destroyed my Avatar. Even if I didn’t like trolling multiple bodies at o was an unmistakable edge I had over my enemies and not making use of it would be foolish.

  I debated morphing my Avatar too, but having it as a Psychic support to keep up the pressure on the Custodian was just as important as the pure strength an additional bat Drone would have provided.

  Instead of the sphere activation on touch, it remained densed deep within the skull as he raised it. A deep pit formed in my stomach as I looked into the dark eye-sockets of the long dead and defiled Bnk.

  It held my gaze, and I felt stupefied by the malice I somehow felt from it for a single fleeting moment.

  Then its jaw fell open and a soul-searing scream bsted out of its ent throat. I tried blinking, but my ever so faithful soul-energy refused to answer my call, no, it couldn’t answer.

  A beam of white light washed over me and my third eye went blind.

  Then came a white light, and I screamed. I screamed as my mind frayed and my body shattered.

  Disiing energy pushed into my body, peeling back my armour, fying my skin, and iing my flesh until only my marble skeleton remained. I somehow still held some sciousness in it, my mind protected deep inside my skull.

  I called on whatever I could. I pulled on energy I trusted with my life so far and where one failed, the other answered. Bio-energy fought back, building yers upon yers of the hardest, thickest armour between me and the beam.

  My mind dimmed along with the thread that ected me to my soul. My soul, which was only an echo of a strange sensation now in the bay mind.

  I tried reag out, jumping to another drone, and esg into my back-up Avatar, but I felt her.

  I screamed, desperate and furious. The pain was unimaginable, but I could bear it. But death? Here? No.

  My soul-thread thied just a bit, and I regained a fra of awareness for the briefest moment.

  Two split minds smashed together as memories mixed before my will frayed and I was back to being alone.

  The spear, or maybe the skull, split my body from my soul and with it, cleaved my mind in half. A part stayed with my dying Avatar while the rest remained in my soul and was desperately trying to fight off the mind-searing white energy that used my soul-thread as a duit to strike at the core of my being.

  It was trying to fracture my mind and erase my parasitisciousness from the Emperor’s artefact.

  It was failing so far, but I saw the Custodian stumble towards me for a brief moment. It was fighting off my feral bat Drones, but it was steadily making its way toward my prone body with the silver sphere levitating in front of him.

  As my desperation started to mount, threatening to overwhelm my scious thoughts, I felt it all die down all of a sudden. I felt nothing but a cold, vengeful fury at something daring to e this close to snuffing out my life.

  My will hardened, my resolve pushing back the white light seeping into every fibre of my being. My body is my own. I am the master of my body. GET. OUT. NOW.

  I felt Atiesh, not through any physical sense, but I just k to be right o me, trying to protect me from the beam. I pulled on it; I pulled on its power and on the power of the one part of my body that still remained intact.

  Feeliurned into my body, I was aware I was nothing more than a brain, a tendril, and some tendons remaining on a white skeleton, but that would be enough. Soul Energy might refuse to help me in this null-field, but reality obeyed even without it when my will crashed into it.

  Reality ed as I felt the Soulbone surge with power. They ed.

  I didn’t move, but space bent in front of me and the twin beams bearing down on me were suddenly firing not at me but far to the side.

  The tiny tendril still protected deep inside my skull, bristled and energy burst out of it. Tendons, ans, and muscles stitched themselves back together over my skeleton and with a st surge of power, skin covered it all as even my hair grew back.

  Then the ed spaapped bato how it was like a rubber string. The rebou both me, my Drones, and the fug asshole Shadowkeeper flying back with a resounding shockwave.

  I crawled to my feet as my soul-thread ever so slowly widened. It was weakened, and as my minds merged again, I uood why. The white energy of the spear attacked both body and mind, it ravaged through whatever it could toud the soul-thread was what held my being together. It was like throwing a spark at a mountain of kindling.

  The only reason my mind was still intact was the fact that my soul protected its core like an impregnable fortress.

  Memories of a war that spread over more dimensions than the human mind could prehend rushed into my mind.

  It would all heal. It would. I khat.

  But that didn’t stop the liquid fury p into my veins as I stumbled to my feet. I gred at the distant form of the Shadowkeeper who stumbled out of a cloud of dust, skull, and spear held in each hand.

  “You will pay for that.”

  He scoffed.

  My Avatar was whole, the physical substance was there, but I was weak. I felt like a truck ran me over and the back to do it again food measure. Despite every cell of my body bursting with energy, something deeper was barely holding on.

  It’s all his fault. I gritted my teeth. Then I calmed down, the irrational anger slowly seeping away. I stepped into this fight knowing I might die and now I got angry that I got close to it? That was … pathetic.

  Still, that didn’t mean I wouldn’t make sure he went through the same pain I did.

  But I wasn’t a beast, shing out mindlessly. I was better. I was supposed to be more. I wao be more.

  I gant; I thought I knew all his tricks. I assumed he could only make a sphere-shaped null-field and that assumption nearly got me … what? Dead?

  No, my soul was fihe only reason it even got into a bit of danger was because it wao keep the soul-thread active and take back the mind-fragment in the Avatar.

  I wouldn’t have died, but I would have certainly lost a part of myself. Knowing which part, or how such a thing would have affected me was impossible. Maybe I’d have gone back to being as I was with an hour of healing, it could have healed by itself. Or it could have left a perma sy mind.

  Having two sets of memories was so weird. I was both the Avatar and the Soul, even if the two were separate at some point. The two were one now, they merged back together, though the seams were still frail. Something I would hopefully only have to worry about ter. It seems to be healing at least, even if slowly.

  I had to be careful. I could not take another hit like that. The stupid skull had to die, where even did the spike I shot at it go?

  Narrowing my eyes at it, I saw that now the dark ium was adorned with a deep scar running along its side. The fucker must have tried defleg the spike, but it still hit his precious skull.

  Gingerly pulling on my puddle, I grimaced as soul-energy came streaming through the thread. I felt droplets falling out of the thread, leaving my puddle but in no way making their way into my body. The el I had trusted so much before otty and filled with holes and not only that, it felt like someone just poured molteal right into my skull.

  The pain was manageable, but I would have much less energy to go about until I healed back up. Annoying. Still, I was already pnning to switch tactics before the fucker bsted me in the face with his spear.

  “Alright,” I growled. “The ol’ reliable it is.”

  When psychic power failed, one only had pure, unadulterated physical violeo lean ba. And tech.

  I blinked, bio-energy already surging to transform my measly Psyker Form into the bat Form, but I held it back for a moment. How one fot something that was literally stored iheir bodies was a mystery of its own, or maybe I was just an idiot.

  The Ne Fyer I’d kept stashed ahased in my body, jumped into my hands and I fired it without any further fanfare. I should really use this phasing for something more useful than a budget store dimensional ste box.

  The Custodian only had time to cover his torso with a gau before the beam of sickly green energy smashed into him.

  His power-armour held strong against the alien tech, annoyingly enough, but to be sure I kept the beam going until the thing started fizzing and giving out in my hands, its green energy ste spent.

  I let the on phase bato my hand ahe transformation gh. It was worth a try. Still, I was growing increasingly jealous of that auramite power-armour.

  With what soul-energy I had, I reestablished my trol over my remaining bat-Drones and handed over trol of each to one Mind-Core.

  Time for round two, asshole.