One day, when Calder was saying his morning prayers, Trazyn decided to try something. It was a bit dangerous, he knew, with this kind of dual possession… if Calder truly became aware of him Trazyn might be forced to either abandon the body or overwrite his personality completely, taking over. And while Trazyn was actually a very good actor, he didn't think for a moment that he could fool Loki. Well, not for longer than a few minutes at least.

You say that Loki's beliefs in the Norse gods are foolish nonsense. But this is not? Trazyn murmured provocatively to his host.

"Oh, Loki doesn't believe in that nonsense. He goes to church like a good lad." Trazyn decided not to point out that he was reasonably sure Loki was only going to church to please Calder. "He's just obsessed with his name… his parents shouldn't have named him after a piece of entertainment, who does that to a child."

But how do you know God is real? Trazyn persisted. There was a pause, as Calder tilted his head to one side.

"I suppose I don't. But that is the nature of faith… believing in things that have no true evidence to be true. Can it be proved that God is real? No, but it cannot be proved that he is NOT real," Calder said after a moment.

Cannot all these things be said about those who believed in the Norse gods? So why are their beliefs nonsense while yours are true? Trazyn murmured provocatively. There was a buzzing sigh from his host.

"I suppose in a sense, there is no difference. This is the kind of thing that should be taken to a priest… I am but a warrior, my faith is simple but true. I can only say that we must believe in something. To think that there is nothing after death… I cannot bear it. Also, what of justice? I know there is often no fairness in life, no true justice, for all that we try. Am I to think that the sinners go unpunished? That there is no hell awaiting them for the horrors they have done?" Calder stopped for a moment, looking at his cross. "I could not live with that, after all the things I have seen. I have seen…" Caldar fell silent and Trazyn could feel the roiling emotions this was bringing up in him. Muted, from his biotransference, but still strong memories of life. "Although, I am told the souls of the drukhari go to a goddess of lust when they die, to be tormented forever. So there is that. There is that." Yes, indeed, that was completely true. Trazyn thought it was a sad commentary on organic life that the Ruinous Powers were so strong and blatantly existed, while 'positive' things like 'God' could not be said to have any proof of existence. "…Who am I talking to?" Whoops.

You are talking to yourself, Trazyn murmured and Calder tilted his head to one side.

"I'm talking to myself… that's strange. I rarely have such deep thoughts. I am just a simple soldier, living for the moment. He might be insane, but Loki has much deeper thoughts than I do. Odd…" Calder hesitated a moment before shaking his head. "No matter."

Calder left his quarters to go spend time with Loki again, but this time they decided to have an early morning spar with power weapons. Trazyn felt the impacts and felt a small moment of worry… not for this spar, but the main way he could lose his host was if he went for recall again.

Loki was wild and unpredictable, as Trazyn would have expected from his personality. Calder fought in a more measured manner, weathering Loki's attacks and aiming to find a weak point. Trazyn approved of that style and it paid dividends when Loki tried a clever move but overbalanced slightly. Calder took advantage of it, shoving him violently and knocking him down. Loki ended up on the ground with Calder's sword against his throat, humming gently.

"Do you yield?"

"Not only do I yield, I pledge my undying loyalty to you! I will follow you everywhere! I will sing your praises – ulp." Calder had deliberately grated the sword along Loki's necrodermis, raising a thin line. Trazyn was impressed with his control. "Right no singing, no singing. Uh stop please?"

"Of course, you just had to say yes." Calder turned off the power sword and pulled the blade away. Loki was relieved and bounced up as his friend let him go. "Best two of three?"

"Oh yes!" And they were at it again. Trazyn rather enjoyed watching the two of them at play, giving Loki high marks for creativity. He managed to win this time, by tossing a strange object in Calder's face. It exploded over him, catching him off guard long enough for Loki to knock him down and win the match.

"Why are you carrying around water balloons?" Calder complained as Loki laughed.

"Hey, we have glue canisters!" Glue canisters? "And the Tyranids spit acid balls and stuff, you need to be ready for anything!"

"You're not allowed to touch the glue, but point taken… I'll be ready for that next time. For the third round do we want to go hand to hand?" Trazyn wasn't particularly interested in that, hand to hand techniques tended to be universal for humanoid species.

So it proved and this time, Calder won. The two of them were dusting themselves off when another pwi-necron ran up to them. He seemed quite excited.

"Have you two heard the news?" he asked and Calder shook his head and Loki tilted his head questioningly. "We're going to Mandragora! The Death Seekers have arrived and they're taking over from us."

"Hoo-wah? The Death Seekers? Why THEM?" Calder asked, shocked. Trazyn had researched the units of the pwi-necrons and knew why they were shocked, that was an odd choice, to say the least.

"They were just available, they got resouled first." Resouled? "Don't worry, really, it will be fine. Diarmuid is with them, he'll make sure they behave." Could you go back a bit? What did 'resouled' mean?

"Huh, well, I feel bad for the orks," Calder said and Trazyn scoffed internally at the thought. The orks would enjoy every moment of it. Trazyn was overjoyed though. His plan was finally bearing fruit! He would get to see what was happening on Mandragora. And what did 'resouling' mean? He knew what it SOUNDED like but surely not. Szeras research aside, souls were generally considered to be impossible to study. "When are we leaving?"

"Within the week. It's pretty short notice but you know how things are, we're little toy soldiers getting moved around on the board. Captain is kind of pissed about all this, but what can you do." Trazyn could understand that. He'd seen Revalt a bit, the commander of the pwi-necrons here and he was a highly intelligent man with extremely good social skills. He'd built up good relations between the garrison and the town, as well as Luminous in general. It was so effective, in fact, that many of the soldiers here had gotten married and settled into the town. Trazyn was vague on the specifics, but apparently there was a subsidized housing plan for the married men. There was also a bit of talk that Luminous' status might eventually be upgraded to serf instead of slave, and recruitment into the Hopian units would be allowed from the native population. Trazyn wondered how far Imotekh's forces could eventually be expanded this way. The great limitation would be the recall facilities, were they really building more of those?

(the Crypteks of Mandragora were working very hard at that. If they hadn't been needed elsewhere, Iplanen and Jan would likely have been trained specifically on that and placed on that project)

Trazyn vaguely knew that he should warn the Nihilakh Phaeron of how extensively the Sautekh were employing the biotransference of humans. He knew perfectly well that most of the nobility of the Nihilakh were dismissing the idea. Some thought it was disgusting, others thought it was absurd, but none of them were really taking the pwi-necrons seriously. They were also thinking of it as simply a few aberrant units, only a small number. And compared to the hordes of true necrons they were a small number, but even the least of them was more equal to an Immortal than a Necron Warrior. And they were expanding, ever expanding, as the recruits vastly outweighed the losses. Sautekh was expanding via organic growth, not just by taking new dynasties and adding them to the empire. He really should warn the Nihilakh Phaeron.

Yet, Trazyn was disinclined to do so. Firstly, they did have the information themselves, they could figure it out on their own. But more importantly, if he fully outlined his tentative projections of the organic growth of the Sautekh forces, they would send that information to the Silent King. Just as Imotekh was not the greatest fan of Szarekh, Trazyn wasn't either. He was quite loyal to Nihilakh, but that was a matter of family ties rather than loyalty to the whole and he could disagree with their plans.

So Trazyn decided he would keep that to himself, and patiently waited for the trip to Mandragora. Hopefully he could maneuver his host to avoid that one pwi-necron, General Duleth. If there was one person who might detect Trazyn's presence, it was that one.

Fortunately for Trazyn, after they left Luminous, events would conspire in his favor.

Diarmuid had an eye on one of his warriors.

He had a fine nose for trouble, which was needed for a commander of the Death Seekers. They were a lot of things, ranging from the bent and the broken, the ones twisted with rage and pain, all the way to the utterly deranged. Those who couldn't control themselves at all tended not to last, going up on charges or just being dispatched by his hand.

The one Diarmuid was side-eyeing was a new recruit from Hive Antioch. He seemed to be fitting in. He'd passed the gauntlet, not exceptionally well but not anything close to failure. Manric was always frank about the recruits he sent Diarmuid's way, though, so he had it on good authority that the man was a sadist and more than a little deranged.

What was rousing Diarmuid's suspicions was the man's lack of bad behavior. With a description like that from Manric, he should have been a problem, fighting constantly and attempting to slake his thirst for pain. That was fine, as long as he kept it in the unit, but Diarmuid had observed nothing like that. Instead he seemed quiet and a touch disconnected, almost the model soldier. Suspicious. Was he quenching his thirst elsewhere? Diarmuid did understand that, if so… true sadists found the responses of necron bodies to be unsatisfactory in the extreme. But it was always extremely discouraged.

So Diarmuid put a few of the Canoptek Scarabs to watch this particular soldier. They signalled to him when the man slipped away in the middle of the night. Ah, hunting was he? Diarmuid trailed after, a much greater hunter than this poor fool could ever dream of being.

Indeed, he was hunting. Diarmuid watched with dead eyes as he took a woman from the mutant side of the settlement. To Diarmuid's eyes she was a prostitute, and surprisingly young and pretty for a mutant. Her mutation that he could see was her hair, which was rich brown interspersed with bird like feathers. Either she had other mutations hidden beneath her clothes or her family had been particularly harsh, such a minor thing was often considered within the allowable standards for humanity.

Kidnapping a young whore was not quite a matter for discipline, but it led directly into many things that were. Diarmuid followed but did not intervene just yet. He wanted to see precisely what charge the man would be up on. If he just wanted to beat her, that was significantly less serious than murder. Although given their strength, there was often a fine line between the two.

To Diarmuid's surprise and mild annoyance, his soldier had planned this well. He took the woman to a small shack in the woods. Diarmuid had to carefully sneak inside. It always shocked everyone, that something as large and imposing as he could be so good at such things.

When Diarmuid saw what was going on, he just stopped and stared in puzzlement for a moment. Oh, he knew what was going on, intellectually… rape was part of war and they did take drukhari prisoners sometimes, although the men had to be quite courageous to dare it.

(on one particularly notable occasion, a witch had taken the life of his soldier with the shark teeth in her vagina)

(Diarmuid had curiously asked her how many male drukhari she'd accounted for that way, before taking her head)

(the answer had been 'quite a few')

Still, that was back when they had had functioning penises. It seemed utterly bizarre to Diarmuid, and he was sure most of the men would agree, to engage in such things without genitalia. Yet that was what the man was doing, using a prosthetic. Was it just because this was an excellent way to inflict non-fatal pain? Or was he truly gaining some form of sexual satisfaction from it? Those parts of their minds were functionally removed, but was it based on memory?

It really didn't matter. If Diarmuid had caught him beating her, whipping her or a multitude of things, he might have let the man get off with a vicious punishment that would amount to a very stern warning. Oh, to be sure, they'd both know it had been a prelude to murder but he hadn't done it yet so a warning would be sufficient. This, however, was Not Done. Manric had made it clear to him and so Diarmuid enforced it with an iron hand, that civilians were not to be sexually interfered with. That had always been the rules and it had never been revoked, despite their lack of genitals.

The soldier felt it as Diarmuid disengaged his recall functions and he jerked away from the whimpering woman in pure panic. Diarmuid rose from the shadows, a specter of darkness and foul light, axe in one hand.

"You knew better," Diarmuid said mildly, not bothering to listen to the incoherent pleas. He felt his own pleasure as the axe bit deep, sundering the power core and spilling liquids and flux. That wasn't immediately fatal, so Diarmuid followed it with the removal of the pervert's head. Ah, he very much enjoyed that, he truly did. Diarmuid did so love to kill things and it was better when it was entirely earned.

Speaking of killing things, Diarmuid turned to look at the woman. She was staring up at him and he knelt beside her, resting a hand against her throat. The practical thing to do would be to break her neck, dispose of the body and say nothing more about it. Then they could avoid any awkward questions from the authorities and Diarmuid did believe in practicality.

But instead of just doing that, Diarmuid stayed still, contemplating it. Having a soul did seem to make a difference, even for him it seemed. It made him truly suspect the drukhari HAD destroyed his original soul, or damaged it somehow, because as a child of ten he'd have broken her neck without a thought. But now, he hesitated. Yes, it was a black mark against him that this had happened but Manric would infinitely prefer he let the woman live. Should he truly follow the path of pure practicality, when the general would try to make things right?

Diarmuid came back to himself to find the woman was shaking like a leaf, staring at him with wide eyes, tears leaking down her cheeks. From the smell, she had soiled herself. An appropriate reaction, given how close to death she'd just come. He drew his hand away.

"It seems I have grown something that might be a conscience. You'll live a bit longer," he told her and she heaved a sob. As she quietly wept, Diarmuid mentally prepared his report to Manric. Diarmuid would catch a bit of shit for this, but only a bit. Manric knew what kind of filth he sometimes dumped on Diarmuid's head. Still, it was up to him to shape them up and this was a failure.

At least he'd caught it early, before too much harm could be done.

Diarmuid reported the incident to Manric the next day, via FTL communication. He also reported that the local authorities did not remotely care… as far as they were concerned, the woman was mutant filth that they could do what they liked with. It was a sad thing, but the laws on Luminous did not consider mutants to be human.

Manric though was shocked, horrified and disgusted by Diarmuid's clear, concise report of the incident. It caused him a great deal of discomfort and hard thought before he finally decided this needed his personal attention. And that meant he needed to speak to Imotekh. Manric requested a meeting and it was granted. When he met with Imotekh in his quarters, Manric bowed deeply before making his request.

"I regret that I must ask for permission to go to Luminous. There has been a most troubling incident with one of my men," he said and Imotekh waited for him to elaborate. Manric sensed a bit of curiosity in him, and also skepticism that anything on Luminous could be important enough to require his presence. "One of the Death Seekers was caught assaulting a civilian woman in a most bizarre and unseemly manner. I want to investigate this further and decide what should be done with the woman in question." It seemed it had all been left up to them, from Diarmuid's report. And Diarmuid was not suited to such a decision, his most likely inclination had been to hack off her head. Manric was a little surprised he hadn't just done that, honestly.

"Bizarre and unseemly? Be more specific," Imotekh rumbled and Manric winced internally before using glyphs to express his extreme discomfort.

"Please, I do not wish to… this may be extremely disgusting. It was a sexual assault," Manric said carefully and detected both disgust and a cold amusement from Imotekh.

"Organics, pfah. Are you not past such things?" he jibed and Manric placed his hands together before bowing deeply.

"Yes, Stormlord, we are. That is why this is so intensely troubling. The Crypteks can support what I am saying to be true… pwi-necrons are even less capable of such things than true necrons," Manric said carefully. "The portion of our minds that govern such urges is completely removed. For necrons, it still exists, but walled away. For us it is gone." That was a very important point, to Manric. "Our current theory is that he was just a sadist using it as a very effective way to cause non-lethal pain, but I wish to investigate further. Also, the problem of the woman… apparently the local authorities have effectively surrendered her to us. Diarmuid has no idea what to do with her." Aside from hacking her head off. He'd even suggested that in his message, the psychopath.

"Idiocy! Hmm…" Imotekh considered for a brief moment and Manric was sure he was running through mental projections, to see if he could be spared. "I believe we can allow you this. All of the ensouled Crypteks are progressing well in their efforts." Yes, they all took a bit longer to ensoul another necron than Manric did but it was not difficult for them. "We are beginning to run out of ghost wood and souls, so your absence should not be too troublesome." Also true, there was a bit of a supply crunch starting in that area. Manric and the others were assisting by making ghost wood and sending it to Hope for the cloning operations. "You have my leave to go and attend to this matter."

"Thank you, Phaeron. I will return as quickly as I can," Manric pledged before bowing again and leaving. He specifically called Sehenna back to the ship, by a personal message, before calling all the others. When they were all safely aboard his flagship, he had them set a course for Luminous. That done, he sent Diarmuid a quick FTL message that he would be arriving soon and to take no action until he got there.

It was unfortunate that Diarmuid had executed the miscreant, but Manric would investigate as best he could.