I had a whole slew of nasty things in my arsenal, a fair few of them also being more than ready for some stress testing.

  For example, I had fleeced Trazyn out of Hrud, Khrave and of course the Fulgrim samples. The st of which was already perfect, but the previous two had some hiccups along the way.

  For ohe Hrud’s genes were deg and had more holes ihan a piece of Swiss cheese. Meanwhile, the Khrave were these fucked up vampiric bats that had insane psychic potential.

  The problem y in that st word. Potential.

  The Khrave grew stronger as they aged and only after eons did they even stand a ce against a regur Eldar Psyker. The one super Khrave that had been giving trouble to the Primarch of the Dark Angels had been alive before the War in Heaven 60 million years ago.

  So, I had these tles. One was from a race that used psychic power to age their eo death, while anrew strohe lohey had been alive.

  My brilliant idea had been to, of course, age my Khrave drones with some Hrud-based Sorcery. But it didn’t work, just like my Bnk experiments.

  The reason seemed to be obvious in hindsight, just like with the Bnk genes. My drones didn’t have souls.

  Which meant I’d have to put my experiments aside until I got some … test subjects. Some assholes who no one would miss if I just experimented on a bit.

  “Why are you grinning?” Selene asked.

  “Becauseeee,” I said, spinning her around and pointing at the p floating below us. “You remember how I had to stop some of my most fun experiments because I didn’t have test subjects? Well, would you look at that! A whole p full of dumbfuck Chaos worshippers who no one will miss. I am hereby volunteering them for my experiments!”

  “Careful there,” Selene said, dousing my excitement with a cold bucketful of her on sense. “You were worried about the few cultists on the ships getting under your mental skin, there is a whole pful of them here.”

  “Actually,” I said, squinting at the phat ever so faintly reminded me of pictures of earth. Of course, the tis were all wrong, and it had three moons instead of one gigantie, but the colour theme certainly had some resembnce. “I think only about a tweh of the popution is beyond saving … the rest has only some minimal Chaos corruption and the p is still a long way off from being a Daemo.”

  “Less possible test subjects,” Val mused, the me a measuring gnce. “If you still hold to your pre-established rules of course. Oher hand, that’s about two billion possible new citizens. If I’m ting them right.”

  “You are,” I said, the ba admonishing gnce. “And I am.”

  “Uood, Mistress.” He bowed subserviently, his hands spyed to the side like some actor’s from a renaissance py.

  “Think they know we’re here?” Selene mused, and I rolled my eyes as we watched the three rge frigates in orbit fire up their Void Shields to full bst and turn to level their broadsides at our tiny ship.

  With my Lictors slurping down the brains of every captain they’d found on the ramshackle ships attag our System, and a good number of what went for officers with Saneshi cultists too, backtrag where they came from was effortless.

  The sole Tau ship above Vallia hadn't even sehe new fleet entering the System before we were already heading off to this phe downsides of your sensors being forced to obey the ws of physics I guess, luckily, my gravitational sensors and the few buoys I’d left spread out through the asteroid field didn’t suffer from that weakness.

  Space magic for the win.

  “The Daemon Prince seems to be on the surface still,” Val said, gazing at the three frigates in apparent boredom. “Mistress … would you allow me to occupy her? I would not wao be an annoyance while you experiment.”

  “Think you handle a Daemon Prince?” I asked.

  “A newborn one which is as ed by their debased God as this one?” Val snarled down at the p, disgust ing his features. He might have been free of Sanesh, but his hatred for the Prince of Pleasure remained and would likely stay with him till the end of his days. “Yes, yes I . Just give me your leave and I will sughter that debased wench.”

  “Well, have at it then,” I said. “But don’t risk allowio infiltrate my Realm. If there is even the slightest risk, you e back here and I obliterate the bitch.”

  “Uood,” Val said, then at my nod Blinked out of existence. A moment ter, I felt his psychic presence appear down on the surfaot far away from the Daemon Prind surge with pulsing power that I could see even from this far up.

  “Well, he is making a mess of things, isn’t he?” I mused, watg an actual thuorm f above the pary capital with thick ropes of lightning gathering and bsting buildings apart. “Wanna have a fight too? I could teleport you onboard one of the ships.”

  “No thanks,” Selene said, shaking her head. “I don’t want to see what they ed those ships into.”

  “Okay,” I said softly, giving her a quick shoulder hug that she accepted with a mock huff of annoyance. “I’ll take care of them.”

  Which is exactly what I did. After weeks of farming Orks and syphoning off whatever overflow of bio-energy there was in my geothermal energy farm, I had an abundance of the stuff. Not enough to be popping out Custodians by the hundreds, I was faaaaaaar off from that — plus I suspected my Custodians werely the ‘real deal’ either — but I could make three temporary, but fully funal bat Forms and a dozen Lictor droo apany each.

  Pierg the Void Shields anti-teleportation fun was a walk in the park. Those shields weren’t made to prevent teleportation, they just did that as a side effect of how they worked.

  So, that was how my three war hosts, each led by a bat Form droarted their sughter through the insides of those ships.

  To eborate on why I thought my Custodians were sed-rate knockoffs at best, well, the metrics just didn’t add up and I had lore tidbits to give me some ideas of why.

  Each Custodian was a unique piece of art, handcrafted to perfe and irrepceable. I suspected there was a soul aspeaking ohat I wasn’t uandihey were made frur human children after all, and not vat-grown as Custodians.

  Each body had to be fitted for the soul inhabiting it, and I suspected the soul also had to be special in some way. Maybe even further enhanced by indoation or some weird bio-sorcery.

  My metrics were only about 30-40% off from what I’d expected, so I wasn’t all that upset. Plus to fix it, I’d have to somehow bee a biomancer matched only by the Emperor himself.

  paratively, ing bnks was something random lunatics with a pent for worshipping gods from hell could do. So I utting my efforts towards that goal first.

  The first ship’s shields went down, my host of drones inside having been dumped as close to it as I could manage. I probably had a nasty grin on my face as I reached out and twisted space before me, telep about three hundred humans into the hangar bay of my ship.

  I let my aura sink into them, then with a twist of my wrist, I squeezed a fifth of them into fist-sized balls of flesh and bohere were just cultists so suffused with their Patron’s power that their souls weren’t usable … or at least I didn’t want to risk toug it. Even if it didn’t open up an avenue of attack for the Chaos God at the other end of it, toug those disgusting things would have been icky and gross. No, thank you.

  I Blinked over to the hangar bay and gri the fused and horrified mass of people below me. Some stared at the balls that probably used to be their bosses, some ughed, some screamed while some seemed to be in shod were just looking around in befuddled fusion.

  “Hi, hello and wele!” I said, my voice resonating through the open spad drawing their attention. “gratutions are in order, with your choice list of horrible decisions, you all have nded yourself a position as my obligatory volunteers for some of my nastier experiments. Isn’t that great? Yes, I know, you’re filled with joy and whatnot… what’s that?”

  “You will face the wrath of the Eternal Queen for this!” one of the idiots answered, looking just about apoplectic as his bloodshot eyes stared at me like I was the lunatic out of the two of us.

  “The Eternal Queen,” I mused. “Would that be the baby Daemon Princess you all are serving?”

  The man was about to shout at me again, which retty rude, all things sidered. I hadn’t once raised my voice, had I? What right did this Snnesh-worshipping, sed-grade human waste of oxygen have to do something I didn’t allow myself to do?

  With a small infusion of soul energy that zapped out of my fingers and smacked into the head of the idiot, his mouth disappeared. His jaw worked, pulling at the now sealed mouth where not even lips remained and he gave a horrified moan as his hands snapped up to feel out his face.

  I always wao do that. I thought to myself, the sadistic part of me relishing in the spreading horror and fear among them. Still no torture. I had promised that, and I was going to keep to it … but I also wasn’t beyoing these things that were below even the worst of humanity have a taste of their own medie.

  Meaning, I had absolutely no iion of blog their sense of pain as I experimented.

  “Well, it seems someone wants to go first,” I said aloud and with a fliy wrist and invisible force, dragged the mouthless man up into the air before me and had him with his limbs spread. He couldn’t move an inch. “My first goal for the day is to figure out how to someone’s body in a way to iheir souls. In essence, I am attempting to create Bnks, Pariahs. Creatures with ive souls, or as rumours say, without one. As an aside, if I succeed, this will tear whatever e you have with yod in an excruciatingly painful way.”

  I heard a few giggles of expectation, some among the crowd clearly found the idea of dying aremely painful death fun.

  Seems like I got the basic cookie-cutter Saneshi cultists on this p. As far as I khey could have been more than just basic BDSM enthusiasts who pushed the boundaries leagues beyond just ‘far’. Sanesh was the God of Excess, not BDSM. That included anything from the overwhelming Excess of noise, music, art, tyranny, power, kleptomania, wanderlust and just about anything. Anyone who loved something could fall to Sanesh’s temptations. Anyone who didn’t know where to stop, who didn’t have self-restraint and temperanbsp;

  Which was also why I was super careful with how close I got to her more dangerous minions. I felt Sanesh was the God who I was most liable to fall for, if I wasn’t beiremely careful. I already had some problems with self-restraint and trolling myself.

  I was doing much better than a few months, or just weeks ago, but it paid to be careful in this gaxy. The moment I let down my guard was the moment I got jumped and mugged by a bunch of Daemons. Possibly, any nearby Inquisitor, Drukhari, Ynari or just about any Imperial sub-fa would also be more than happy to join in on the fun a me into oblivion.

  Hell, with how powerful my soul supposedly was, I didn’t doubt that the Drukhari would love to just lock me in a cell and torture-farm my agony to power their fucked up society. The Ynari also had a tendency to try to sacrifiything with a suitably powerful soul to their death god.

  Anyway, with a touch I ed the geic code of the man suspended mid-air before me into that of the sole Bnk whose genes I had on hand.

  I immediately felt something going wrong, there was a reje his soul and his face tore apart, a new bleeding mouth opening up that gave a primal howl of agony before the body went sck. I stared, wide-eyed, as the soul ractically ejected out of the body like a rocket a barreling into the where a bunch of nasty Saneshi daemons lovingly greeted it.

  Meaning, they ate it. But that might as well have been what ‘loving’ was for those things.

  Anyway, it was safe to say that the first experiment was a bust on at of the newly Bnk body rejeg the previous soul.

  What was the trick?

  I k ossible. I was absolutely sure I remembered that one Bnk girl who followed Inquisitor Eisenhorn around in his ter books having been ed with her powers intact.

  ing usually gave the e a minuscule soul, but apparently, they mao e a Bnk.

  If I remembered anything beyond those facts above, I would have sidered hunting down whoever did the ing to pick their minds about it. As, it had been years since I read those books and I couldn’t even recall the girl’s name beyond the fact that she’d been hot enough that people still thirsted after her despite her repulsive Bnk aura.

  Yep, my mind was a strange pce.

  Anyhow. Time to get back to experimenting. Maybe it was a hing and only o of a thousand souls will be patible with getting turned into a Bnk. Or maybe I just had to be slentler.

  I let my predataze wash over the crowd of test subjects and I watched them shiver iher terror or delight. No matter. None of them would be walking out of this room alive, aher would the ones I’d have to nab from the other ships and the surface this lot perished.

  P3t1