Well, I've been gone for awhile. School started up again so I've been having a hard time getting the motivation to do this. Chapters will be coming out rather infrequently during the school year. I will try to get another chapter out in November during thanksgivings break, and when winter break comes around I'll try to give a few more. As always comments about what you think are appreciated.

I don't own 40k, I can barely work up the motivation to write a story, you definitely won't find me running a company

City life

Once I got into the city I realized I had a problem. Where was I going to stay hidden? People definitely wouldn't be happy to just see me walking about, not to mention if they did the Inquisition is half liable to blow this entire planet to kingdom come. Well, they probably wouldn't do that. But either way, it wouldn't be good for me to be seen.

I racked my brain for an idea of where to hide, then I started to rack through other people brains for a place to hide, and I found one. When the caravan wound back into the Despon estate. A large and well kept sandstone manor with a courtyard in front of it, walled off from the street. I sent an order through telepathy to the brothers and the soldiers. They took the cart and brought it to the side of the manor and pushed it into a large shed, or a small barn. It wasn't a glamorous place by any means but it would do to keep me hidden. There was various pens for animals, people also wouldn't question hearing noises from a barn. And people usually didn't randomly go into closed barns. Overall it was a good place to hide, temporarily. It might have not been a half bad hiding place but I would need a more permanent and well hidden place if I wanted to start expanding my cult.

I spent the next few days mulling over what to do next. There was so much to do for me to have any chance of subverting even one entire city, much less an entire planet, and the more I thought the larger that list became. Back when I was outside the city I had a clear goal, get into the city. Now that I'm inside, we'll, this isn't like some game where you always know what to do next. After a few hours of mounting dread I decided to stop thinking too far ahead, I couldn't do much about things that far in the future, I had to think of my immediate next priority right now. Finding a place to set up as a headquarters for the cult.

I sent a request to the brothers Hadro and Jelk to find a map of the underground parts of the city if one existed. A couple days later one of the male servants came with a dead creature for me to eat, as they had been doing for each day I was here. After dropping off the creature he knelt on one knee and said. "Great one, the brothers have completed the assignment you gave to them." I nodded and sent him off. I proceeded to look back into the brothers minds to get a look at the map.

It was less difficult than I would have thought for the brothers to get their hands on a map of the underground parts of the city. Apparently after the Imperium came to this planet they tried to make things a bit easier for the various officials they were setting up, so they made sure things like censuses and maps were completed. The map was held by the Dereli family, Lugan resident master architects. But all it took was a few coins in the right pockets and a couple of favors and they got the map. I didn't really feel that bad about doing this, it seems partaking in corruption is a lot easier when your very existence is grounds for execution.

The image of the map was clear in my head, the catacombs were quite expansive beneath the city. However as the river blocked off the sides and back of the city the catacombs actually expanded outward, even past the walls. If the wrong person found this map they could tunnel into the city with very little effort. This might have been bad news for the city, but it was definitely good news for me. I would have easy access to the city, as well as the ability to go in and out of the city whenever I want, not to mention these catacombs were the perfect place for a headquarters.

The next goal was going down there myself and scout for a good place to locate the headquarters. It would need to be pretty deep in the catacombs so as not to have anyone find it too easily. For a bit I thought about sending some of the infected people to go search the catacombs but I threw that idea out pretty quickly. These catacombs seem like the perfect place for criminals to hide and most of my cults current members were servants, housewives, and other such people. Not really the fighting types, and the few soldiers I did have weren't at Saradiels or the brothers control. The soldiers helped protect the caravans of the Despon family, but they did it under orders from Saradiels and the brothers parents, the current heads of the Despon family. So getting the guards to do the catacomb searching would tip off the parents that something is up, and they were much closer to the current monarch of Lugan, and tipping them off that something was wrong was the last thing I wanted to do. So I decided to do it myself, I was much stronger than most anyone else was anyway. I had spent a good amount while outside the walls hunting, occasionally I had to fight an animal, with the instincts already there I had improved very quickly. While I wasn't a amazing fighter yet, with my strength and durability I was more than a match for any common criminal.

Hours passed and soon night fell over Lugan, the three moons rose, and the amazing vista of the night sky revealed itself. No matter how many times I saw it, it never failed to make me pause and just stare at it for a second. I snuck out of the barn and climbed over one of the side walls of the courtyard into an alley and began sneaking my way to the nearest entrance to the catacombs. With my new body came not only amazing strength, speed, and durability. But an amazing memory as well, I could recall exactly what the map looked like. Over the last few nights I had been in the barn I had snuck out to scout the town at night, so I had a pretty good idea of where to go to get to the nearest entrance to the catacombs. So I slunk through the shadows of Lugan, there weren't many people about at night and I stayed well hidden when I came across any. I steered well clear of any tavern or brothel I came across, such places were busy even in the middle of the night. Soon enough I came to the nearest entrance to the catacombs, a small hatch in a alley that opened up into a dark stairwell.

I went down the stairwell, closing the hatch behind me, it was a little small and I had to bring my larger pair of arms closer to my chest but soon enough I reached the bottom and the hallway opened up a little. It was pitch black and any normal person wouldn't be able to see anything, but being a Genestealer also gave me night vision, because why wouldn't it, the hive mind packed in about everything an infiltrator could possibly need into the Genestealers, so I could see just fine. I proceeded to scout around the catacombs for a while, trying to find a good place to use as headquarters, my vastly improved memory was able to basically make a mental map that I was soon enough able to place onto the map the brothers had gotten to find out where I was. After that I started heading to various places that seemed big enough and hidden enough to use as a headquarters. After a couple minutes and a few disappointing spots that wouldn't work I found my way to a large chamber deep in the catacombs that looked like a perfect place for the headquarters. It was large, and had a pretty tall ceiling covered with stone artwork, around the room were columns holding the ceiling up with more artwork on them. And lo and behold in the middle of the room was a fire with a group of people camped around it.

They were all wearing rather ragged clothes, and I could see some weapons beside them. As I thought, there are criminals in the catacombs, and I was gonna have to either kill them or infect them. There appeared to be around 15 of them, a few of them appeared to be asleep with only about half of them still awake. Still that was seven people to fight, even as a Genestealer I was a bit apprehensive about those odds. So I decided I would use some of my Genestealer powers to try to even the odds.

Using telepathy I called out to one of them.

"Hey, over here." The one I called to, a male, jolted his head up.

"You guys here that?" One of the others responded.

"Hear what?" The guy I called to looked confused for a second before saying.

"I think there might be an intruder." This got a few of the others a bit worried, while one of them looked exasperated.

"We didn't hear anything, you're probably jumping at shadows." The guy then said back.

"Does it hurt to be cautious? Wake up the others and we'll do a short round and then we can all go back to sleep knowing we're safe." The others nodded their heads and muttered in agreement and while the guy was still exasperated he went along with what the group had agreed on. They got the other eight people up and while a couple of them were annoyed they all split up into five groups of three, each group grabbed a torch, and they set off into the catacombs in different directions.

I followed the group with the guy I called too as they set off down one of the hallways. I followed for a bit until I was sure they were well away from any of the other patrols then I made my move. I used my claws to climb on the ceiling and made my way towards the group. The sound of my claws sinking into the stone was quiet but not silent, and when I got close the one I recognized as the guy who had been complaining turned around. But before he could see me one of my larger hands lashed out and knocked the one torch the group had out of its holders hand, it tumbled down the hallway and I swiftly crawled over the ceiling and dropped down on top of it, snuffing out its light. The one I had called went to cry out for help, but once again one of my larger claws flashed out and impaled his head. I quickly grabbed the other two over the mouths and stabbed them with my tongue giving them the Genestealers kiss. The whole "fight" lasted less than thirty seconds.

It was only after the two newly infected were unconscious on the ground that I had realized what I'd done. In the midst of everything I had killed the one I had called to, I had murdered a human being. I just froze for a second as the realization dawned on me, then I began trying to rationalize what I'd done. They were criminals, right? They would have harmed innocents, right? But no matter what I tried to tell myself, I knew why I had done it. If he shouted the others would have came and I would be in for a hard fight, I most likely would have won, but I could have died. I murdered him because I didn't want to die, didn't even want to chance dying. After that realization a wave of guilt swept over me, but I pushed it back down. I couldn't break down now, I don't want to die, so I need to focus on the now.

I repeated what I had done with the other patrols. Sometimes I was able to do it with the same success as the first one. Other times I had to kill two to take one, one time I managed to take an entire group. After I had ambushed each group I dragged the still Irving into the main room, and dragged the corpses to a corner of the catacombs, guilt was with me the entire time, especially as I waited for the newly infected to wake up.

When the newly infected woke up they, like every other infected they praised me, called me "Great One" and swore their loyalty to me. But I knew it was all hollow, still, I tried to focus on the here and now and told them about them my story about beings in the void. About how this would be the headquarters for the cult that would return Riln to greatness. And that because they were at the very least rudimentary fighters, that they would be its first guards. This made them quite happy, and they showered me even more of their empty praises. It still didn't make me feel any better. But, now the cult had a headquarters, and from here we could begin planning our victory.