Chapter 2.
I hovered in the air as I softly hummed the ethereal pieces of the staff in front of me into existence while my first drone and its first drone hovered around supplying the material pieces as required. The result was a black marble like stone being the majority of the staff with the wraithbone infused Necrodermis making it seem like some mystically forged artefact of some tribal banner pole before the pitch black blade of an executioners wing of a great axe emerged.
The single bladed great axe was gripped tightly once the final touches were done. Like most of the technology I'd somehow instinctually created with the combined knowledge I'd been born with it would look rather distinct.
Black stone, forged, carved or crafted in certain ways with anything that couldn't be made of the stone would be of the shaped Necrodermis infused Wraithbone while a blend of quite a bit of the technology from the Imperium of Man, the Necrons and Aeldari it seemed all of its own. Some futuristic ancient beyond belief necrotechlogy from beyond the stars. I loved it.
Honestly I kind of liked the idea of it for my own personal forces. Unstoppable and inexorable. Alien and unknowable.
This particular weapon was an invention of mine I'd had rattling in my mind for about three days while I didn't have a body. Designed in a way after the Custodian's Castellan Axe as it had been Samael's preferred weapon while he had been among the Custodians.
While without an integrated bolter it would have its own extra options. The Blade's shape and size making it seem more a badge of office tacked onto a mystics staff of station. I liked it that way, the blade and some of the stone having softly glowing light blue, purple and green runes up the haft. Silver and gold and pale or black gems inlaying in masterful details.
With Aeldari and Necron forging technology working together I'd managed to make a true work of art with this weapon. Even if it was more proof of concept than any refined work in truth.
Neural interface, integrated control systems, Hyperphase axe blade and an electric discharge through the creation of a proto-Witchblade. While I hoped to have the Rod of Night and Voltaic Staff systems integrated in the future. A few other systems helped allow me to make the axe head disappear so I would have a staff instead when there wasn't a need to go fully lethal.
It finished just as the sun was starting to rise and as I gripped it and felt it connect into my mind, I smiled.
No scarab would now be without my control, so no uncontrolled 'devouring of everything' around them should occur. My first scarab I'd named Sekhet as I wanted to somehow distinguish him from the others besides the fact I had a mental connection to him and through him to every other scarab in the budding network. I don't know how he'd done it but I found him with slight golden and silver highlights to his edges when he returned from the last mission I'd sent him on after I'd named him. I'd had to spend a tiny piece of myself so that he would stay corporeal long enough to build his scarab construct body from salvaged material on his own.
Perhaps I shouldn't have?...
I would have the sunken ships underwater in the boat graveyard stripped down to make more scarabs of several sizes from half-a-head to fist sized to finger and even fingernail sized. Through the sunken ships and what could be safely extracted from the yard I would have work crew's, so to speak, with those like the smaller version of Sekhet that had aided in the creation of my staff.
This ones crew of subordinate scarabs were helping to rearrange, retrofit and restructure the basement into a small storage area with a command centre, augur station and housing generators and storage for the short term. It would take a while to get it going,
Dad might be pissed when he saw this but right now this is what I needed to do to accomplish my goals and it was something needed anyway. I twirled the staff around after retracting the axe blade as I got used to it in my hands, having to augment my body with psionic power to even raise the thing off the ground had me frowning at my own body.
With a sigh I let go of it and it took up a hovering perch next to me behind my shoulder. Still connected and held in the air through my own psionic abilities acting in conjunction to its inbuilt anti-grav systems.
I looked at the round table or what some might consider a pedestal as I'd rather liked the design aesthetics of Necron and Aeldari technology. A beautiful spookiness to it all once blended that had me captivated over it.
Fingers danced over the table in the centre of a third of the space available. Green sparks and mystical circuits came to life in esoteric patterns before fading and a slow building of a model started in the centre above the table.
A holographic display that was booting up for the first time with a third iteration of coding for its operating program. Simulations of the consequences of its two predecessors hadn't gone so well. I looked over at two specially modified scarabs intended to see the originals coding on the hardware side, the fact their smoking remains were being deconstructed spoke of how poor the other two attempts had been. The slight fine tuning needed to basic operating system was worth it.
Small droplets of ethereal blue dripping upwards to join a slowly growing aqua sphere as a simulation of its installation process. With a few commanding thoughts I sent the scarabs their missions. Scouting, prep work and multiplication orders to the different small scarab swarms sent out quickly through my new staff acting as radio tower.
With that I headed up the stairs after leaving Sekhet with orders to build another generator as well as sensor obelisks and other equipment I'd require to plan out where I'd set up and how later.
For now dad would be waking up soon. Breakfast sounded nice.
I still hated the colour blue.
-/-/-
Danny had worried when he'd looked in on his daughters bedroom and seen the unused state of it. The scent of simmering bacon, sausages and herbal spiced eggs assuaged his worry. As he came down the stairs and entered the kitchen he saw his daughter and swallowed a little.
It was almost unnoticeable but there seemed to be a sort of slow refining process occurring to her features and physique, discounting the obvious ones of course. The way her black hair seemed more vibrant and voluminous now. Alongside the almost vibrant green reptilian eyes that had a soft near malevolent green under-glow to them that made him notice she wasn't using her glasses.
Then there was the quite obvious floating staff that looked like some fantastical Necromancer / Techno-mystic staff, complete with a small slow crawling electric energy of black lightning that crawled up and down its length. A rune pulsing in the middle of the somehow strangely skull shaped head of the staff.
The rune pulsing in a soft blue light that pulsed out following a mystical circuit path throughout the black obelisk like structure of the staff. It's shape oddly symmetrical he noted, refined yet raw and primal at the same time. Eight lines forming a cross with two crescents rising and falling to meet in the middle, creating a disjointed flowing x, with the other four dedicated to creating a circle that almost encompassed the ends of the other lines but left them jutting out in angles of the circle. It invoked strange ideas in his head, like a rune that meant chaos in order, the infinity of the path ahead and the entropy that would fight back.
Infinity and finality all in one, yet as but a single part of an unknowable whole. It hurt his head to look at for long. His evaluation of what he'd been told the night before coming back to him and everything was now once more being rapidly reevaluated. Fear gripped him for a moment as he wondered just what his daughter was becoming and how in the world was he going prevent her from becoming something worse than the slaughterhouse nine. The fear almost stopping his heart.
His heart almost halted but started right back again when she opened her mouth. "Dad?"
He looked from the staff hovering at his daughters back as she placed the food on the table and looked at him with a slightly shy expression. "Um I made breakfast and I've been thinking and I've got something to show you after breakfast. And kind of an offer for you?" She said hesitatingly as he sat down and slowly nodded.
He watched Taylor as he had what was quite possibly the best breakfast of this type he'd had in a long while. Taylor occasionally took hold of the staff as she ate herself to which Danny did note that there was quite a bit of food on the table. Buttered Toast, waffles and extra bacon.
He'd been too absorbed in just his own plate he hadn't noticed everything else aside from his daughter and before long he was almost groaning from the full yet content stomach. It lifted his mood so early in the morning. It had been a long while since they'd had a family breakfast like this.
Still though he was amazed it had all been scarfed down mostly by his daughter who was patting her own stomach contentedly opposite him.
"H-how did you get the breakfast?" He suddenly asked. He remembered the contents of the fridge, they'd had eggs and sausage sure but no bacon and certainly not enough or in such quantities for the feast of a breakfast they'd just had.
"Necron matter energy conversion technology. We can literally almost kiss the grocery bill goodbye." Taylor said with a sheepish yet slightly amused grin. Danny blinked. As if reading his mind she continued. "I've set up two generators of sustainable and clean energy in the basement which I then converted into the raw material I then cooked for our breakfast.
Can't really conjure up a five star meal or more processed foods as they weren't really interested in that being a function but the raw materials for one is very doable. Of quite fine quality too."
"Huh." He grunted then ruminated on that and the amazing applications that might have before stuttering a little and looking at Taylor who was grinning mischievously. "Wait you mean to say that…" He trailed off as the strange bone-metal scarab construct appeared and created a perfectly cut ruby the size of a fingernail out of thin air through some mystical means of 3d printing it through constant blue electric shocks.
He did note then the strange change the strange tech had undergone. The green, grey and violet lights of before slowly being given over to this ghostly ethereal blue instead. Something about it speaking of ongoing refinement as things were fine tuned so to speak.
"Material wealth is literally as optional as we need it to be and only a matter of waiting… and energy." Taylor filled the silence that followed and he shook his head.
"Not yet. Things haven't devolved to that point and I'm sure there would be some sort of investigation and this would somehow entirely be made illegal and you'd be taken away. No we'll have to figure out some other way to make money but this at least speaks well of you being able to find out a solution to reviving and revitalizing the DWA. If that is still your plan that is?" He said with a smile which was reciprocated by a soft but bright smile in turn. Taylor softly nodding but in thought. He was proud that the first thing she'd wanted to do with her abilities was help people, the fact it was the Dock workers association was just the cherry on top.
"So what have you done to the basement?" He asked after the silence had grown long and companionable and Taylor cringed visibly. He still had time before he'd have to go to work.
When he noted the change to the basement he hummed a bit. The fact most of its contents had been neatly stacked and packed away in one corner was a pleasant sight but the alien tech taking over two fourths of the room with just a fourth of its space really traversable. The technology looking so advanced it seemed more mystical than technological to him now.
And magic it was as he descended the stairs to see the main command table. Looking like some ghostly water holographic display that also held sparks of blue electricity coursing through it.
A soft pulse through the entire thing and suddenly a very detailed display of the entire Bay was on display in front of them. Alongside the ground beneath with a detailed map of the caverns and alcoves littering the ground beneath. This continued to expand until they had a comprehensive map of the entire above and bellow ground area in a full 6 miles radius around the basements location.
His daughter now walking with the staff in hand as she circled the table that would easily seat eight or even double that if it wasn't a strange table obelisk holo-projector. Her stride, the slight under-glow of her eyes and the staff evoking ideas of mystic malevolence hidden with a veneer of humane benevolence. He shook his head of the thought.
"So here's what I'm thinking." She said pointing somehow with a wave of the staff and the hologram changed to display one of the larger half submerged caverns beneath the city. "I'd build a sort of Forward operating base that I could build upon more in the future. For now with the access I have to spatial warping technology now I'll be able to have it as data storage, temporary main energy generation, astral auspex station, special quarters, personal lab, library and workshop." She said calmly as she showed a ziggurat like building that grew up and down that filled the cavern chamber rather snugly without touching a single wall. Its architecture reminding him somewhat of Egyptian, Aztec and Persian architecture. He was about to ask how it was suspended in the air when he noted the slight tap of the butt of the staff on the ground had bony sprouts grow outwards from the ziggurat. They spread out and formed the middle of eight other smaller ziggurats in the middle of some strange coral, bone spider web.
"And these would be?" He asked slightly numb with awe at just what sort of huge leap in capability his daughter had just had. As well as the already rather vast idea of her lair she had for the start.
"Secondary power generation, secondary labs, libraries, workshops, manufacturing and other facilities, storage and archives. Accessible through the Aether-paths." She said looking somehow maliciously smug about herself at the name of the last impossible magically named invention to be dropped on him.
"How are you going to accomplish all of this?" He asked trying for some real world quality problem to the impossibility in front of him.
"Oh... so when I sang Sekhet here into existence." She said gesturing to the subtly more ornate and mystical of the strange scarabs. It seeming to be preening from the attention. "I had him move into the boat graveyard and completely scrap the fully submerged ships. He created slightly smaller versions of himself at each submerged ship with orders to fully deconstruct the ships and make a certain size of scarab from half the material while supplying the rest into the generators. With one of them left with orders of moving through the graveyard and picking through the things that won't be missed or noticed missing before returning to base." Talyor had moved and was absently doing something like a mix of tapping her fingers and scratching lovingly at the top of Sekhet's head.
He nodded and started to think of things from a logisticians point of view, one he hadn't gotten to flex for a long time properly. Even had a bit of mystical future tech flair to it all now. "All right what are the results? How many of these?"
"Swarms"
"Swarms.. that this produced and outside that last one's orders what are the others doing? Like what are you actually working with right now and how are you using it."
"Currently that action resulted in possibly twelve swarms in all. Two of which will be here in the basement working on the foundations and structure needed for better control and fine tuning during the Forward Keeps construction. Four of them for the chamber intended for the Keep and preparing and setting down the preparatory foundations required for its construction.
Two others for preparing and making one of the secondary smaller ziggurats that connect to the main one, this one dedicated solely to material storage and energy generation."
"This is aimed at future efficiency and bottleneck prevention?"
"Exactly. Two to go out salvaging the ocean floor and the last two to be placed in the moon." She finished with a proud nod, Sekhets head mimicking her.
He nodded along with her, she hadn't minded his interruption and had just kept powering through taking it into account even so it took a short moment to catch his thoughts back. He paused and looked at Taylor as she fidgeted a little.
"Did you just say, 'in' the moon?" He asked calmly, flicking his eyes to the hologram as it showed one of the ziggurats nearly in the core of earth's moon. It was larger with thick black passage way's leading to four smaller ziggurats acting almost as sentinel towers to ring the main structure. One leading from the top to a small pyramid on the moon's north pole, just beneath the surface.
Taylor nodded and then spilled the metaphorical beans. "Yeah a primary sensory fort that will allow for in-depth scans of the solar system but also capable of growth of about every system in about 200 light year radius if I dedicate a good portion of the fort towards it. Only problem is I'll be stuck with the immediate star system for now until I can manage to fully merge the technologies for it all and I don't really need to look outside the system until I've finished with it."
He swallowed and realized he wasn't thinking fantastical enough apparently. "All right and what are your immediate plans for the system then if you get this Star-Fort? up and running?" He asked somewhat dreading the answer.
"Well, mining operations on Mercury and the asteroid belts, basic forward bases constructed on Phobos, Pluto, Ceres and Eris with a main base constructed on Titan. I'm… kind of drawn to that one somehow. Maybe terraforming operations on Venus and Mars." The hologram expanding once more and displaying what humanity had mapped out of the solar system and marking the objects in turn as she spoke.
He barely kept himself from being floored at the scope of it all. "And how long do you project all of this would take?" He asked trying to get a timeline to the scale he'd just been exposed to.
"Hmm well." Taylor began flipping a hand and four holograms showed up. The basement they were in, the Forward Keep as she'd called it, then the secondary energy and storage location and the one in the moon. "These will all require at least a week to complete them up to any usable degree, likely a full month to get them all fully up and running and of any real use in the basics. Though they could be made operational sooner if you'll let me make more scarabs to go on scavenging and reclamation missions. The moon would begin in a month and a half. Complete by the end of the year I think. If you let me?"
He sputtered and looked at her incredulously. "So now I get a say in the matter?" He cursed himself internally as Taylor shrank a little in on herself at his rebuttal.
Then more calmly and softly as he slowly closed in to hug her to him in reassurance again. "Taylor the scale of this is… huge. Mind boggling in just how-how short a time you've had now and how much you've set in motion already but… you need to slow down honey. Okey?" He almost whispered down at her.
She sniffed a little and looked up at him. "No mission to mars?" She asked almost like a wounded puppy. He almost scoffed in amusement at the sight and sound.
"No mission to mars just yet. I'll... have to allow for these projects for now. The one in the moon does worry me though."
He paused a bit deciding to get her to micro her plans down a little with something she'd said she wanted to do. "We need to find some way to maybe help the DWA with this if you feel comfortable about it and are still so intent on it. This will all be… foundations for now. Get a handle of everything and set up a good foothold so that you don't stumble at the next steps. This might not be something the PTR or even the government should get their hands on already." He breathed and let out another breath, this was shaping up as one bizarre morning.
"We're also going to have to talk about… the presentation of all of this. This all sort of…" He paused trying to find the words, couldn't and decided on honest and blunt instead. "Taylor, honey. Your technology screams Necromancer mystic aliens of ancient eldritch unknowability." He said bluntly.
"I know." Taylor said with a mischievous but huge grin. "Isn't it awesome?!"
-/-/-
I sat on my staff as I hovered in place in the air while staring at the hologram in front of me. I'd gotten dad involved in much of the groundwork I'd planned out, even given him a gadget of his own to have. Currently I was looking at the coding for a virus to provide me a backdoor into every system on earth.
I'd require it if even half the shit I'd heard or sensed was true before joining with Taylor's soul.
I'd made Dad a stylus that looked like some custom ever so slightly larger pen.
What it did have was a small personal computer with a neural interface that would allow him to work better, keep in contact with me during the day and use it to write. I didn't tell him about the minor personal shield it held but it being able to save him from a bullet or three was enough for now. I'd need to make a dedicated shield generator like a Rosarius or something… maybe a belt buckle for him?
I'd just make sure he wouldn't be aware of the communication feature until he was out of the car and inside his office.
I looked over the completed processes so far. Already I had four full swarms ready from the twelve already tasked to be formed from the boat graveyard. I set two small scarab swarms to scouring the ocean floor into motion. They would alternate between making secondary swarms from the wreckages they found and reclaiming matter to be used. Already with them having found two large wreckages I set them to make a secondary swarm made from the entirety of each of them.
These two new swarms would be tasked to some underground mining I'd queued up from the sensor data I was getting now of the underground surrounding the city and to reinforce the cities foundations just to be sure. Then I just had to wait.
I hummed and hawed a bit over what I was supposed to do but in the end even if Necron tech had some huge snowball effects, things still took time if I wanted things built properly. With the scarabs scouring for material and replicating I wouldn't have to worry about resources or a sufficient work force for the time being at least.
The fact I had to steer them clear of some sensors on the ocean floor to remain undetected had me looking more outside of earth to keep myself as undetected as possible. If all or most of my operations were outside of earth it'd minimise the chances of earth discovering me in some round about way. At least before I started acting as a "cape" on my own.
Then there were my compulsions that perhaps were a big part of my Neverborn nature. Some Mystic numerology that I somehow needed to tie into myself. Or perhaps aspects of my being I had to channel in some manner? Something to think about. I was still coming to grips with them.
Already much of the power I'd stolen from the shard and had brought through with my birth had been spent. A mixture of possession, integration, starting the changes to come in my body and the creation of Sekhet and my staff had spent almost every drop now and I could only think it a sort of relief. I had been able to at least build up a foundation when everything I knew of warp-craft had to be re-examined in its entirety with how different the warp was here.
Still things had to be made, had to be known and I also just had to let things settle.
What should I make though?
I huffed and got off my staff. I'd noted that the green and that strange purple blinking had changed entirely over to the strange ethereal blue now. I only scowled at it, I'd gone to the bathroom earlier today and at least my eyes had stayed green so I had consolation for that. Part of me wondering if more unpleasant changes were in store. I'd liked the green aesthetic of the Necron's technology this blue gave it more a washed out ancient feel rather than the malevolent eldritch nature of its usual illumination.
I was changing, into what I wasn't overly sure but I knew that all of the souls that made me would leave their mark. Somehow.
Obviously the knowledge I had access to thanks to them but some other part of them would survive somehow and I was starting to wonder just what parts of those beings would be amplified as one's remnant behaviour or instincts fed on anything similar from the others to strengthen itself.
I just hoped I wouldn't end up as some caricature in the end.
I breathed in and started to hum to begin with.
I'd decided on trying and feed and channel on the warp into a creation to see how I'd have to or if I'd have to change the arts of the bonesingers to work the aether of the warp here.
I took hold of the staff and used it to link myself with Sekhet and a smaller, newer nanoswarm.
I breathed in and fixed the image in my mind, compiling it and building it as I began to sing.
A soft droning dirge that somehow echoed a spring for life, a desire for a joyous dance in the prime of life yet bound to the inexorability of the grave marble. The soft saps of blue sparks from the scarabs and the occasional black electric sap from my own fingers worked as strange musical undertones to my droning song.
When I was done I looked over with guilt as I leaned heavily on my staff. I felt the exhaustion and it took Sekhet hovering up to clasp onto my back to help keep me standing. Mixing Necrodermis, Void silk and this type of Necro-Wraithbone took a lot of energy both to make as mater and from the warp to be created properly.
I reached out and felt the smooth silk slide up my arm, the liquefied plates of Necro-Wraithbone following adding their own strange sensations before I looked down at myself.
I looked…
Well I looked like some necromancer warlock in armour if I was honest with myself. The knightly flair to the thing had quite a bit of inspiration from the Custodes own armours though the black faceless mask that I saw had four glowing eyes and a glowing outline of my lips making it rather eerie. A test with a harlequins Agaith mask and a Warlocks own Ghosthelm following my idea of Kabalite and Ghostplate armour mix for this prototype.
Still the metallic bone plates and otherworldly clothing underneath and over those plates didn't help not sell that image. The light Runic power armour wasn't the best I knew I'd be able to make but it was far beyond what humanity tinker or otherwise could bring to bear just yet.
Hopefully.
I ended up slumping into a chair I'd had the forethought of having brought down while I worked and I stared into the hologram. Planning, refining and evaluating as I rested.
I'd probably have to retrofit quite a bit of my tech in the end but for now I had the bare minimum of what this new technology could bring to bear at my fingertips. It would have to suffice.
For now, at least.
-/-I-/-
I shot up in surprise as I realized I'd dozed off. My frantic gaze running around the room until they landed on dad's soft eyes as he looked at me. I'd somehow gotten to my bed from passing out in the chair in the basement.
"Little owl are you all right?" He asked softly.
I was about to respond when I yawned hard and noting his amused expression just let my head fall onto the pillow behind me. "I'm going to have to learn some time management." I groaned as I rubbed at my face, hearing the chuckle of his amusement.
"I think staying up all night because you're excited to test out your new powers and start planning was the kicker." Dad chuckled as he moved and sat down on the bed as I adjusted to give him space to do so.
"When did you get in?" He then asked me with worry, running his hand gently through my hair.
"I think… maybe an hour after you left… I think?" I muttered weakly in reply.
"You think?" He responded a bit sternly.
I guessed this week would be an adjustment to be sure.
Sekhet hovering into the room and helpfully showing a timestamp hologram of himself and several other scarabs hovering my unconscious ass into bed well in the afternoon. My face flushing rather heavily when I realized my suit had been removed and I had a very simple top and bottoms underwear on and that was it underneath the sheets of the bed.
Sheets my pride whispered thanks to for keeping my modesty in check while I was unaware.
"Taylor…" Dad said a bit sternly as I noted his eyes were fixed on the time stamp.
"Yes dad?" I asked with growing worry.
"Your grounded." He said with brows growing close and lower on his face.
"Fuck-shit." I grumbled.
-/-/- = POV Change
-/-I-/- = Time skip