**Author's note: Bonus chapter! I had a few weeks awhile back where I didn't update, so here is another extra chapter.**

"You alright now?" I asked Null as he lay transfixed on the bed, watching me in a mixture of both horror and awe. I took a breath, and with a shake of my head, my Corona was pulled back within me in a shower of gold light. Using my Corona was getting easier and easier as time went on, and I was very less drained by the use of my psychic abilities. My vision wasn't 100%, and everything was still very blurry, but I was no longer blind, so I considered this a win for today. The tech-priest remained watching me, his eyes bright green and as wide as they could go in his goggles.

"I... I..." Null stammered, sitting up properly on his bed, still watching me. "You... you..."

"Neat trick, huh?" I smiled. I actually felt pretty great right now, filled with energy and very positive. "So, it's called the 'Sight', short for 'Divine Sight', I think. Or at least, the Emperor just calls it 'Sight' because he hates that whole 'divine' thing. It's some kind of Inheritor-specific psyker ability for critters like me. When he possessed me, we had a conversation, and he gave me some knowledge!"

Null did not respond at all, and continued to gape at me. Oh, hah, right. Null probably remembered nothing after getting sonic-blasted off the side of the yellowed brick road on Nubua. I was in a pretty good mood after my miraculous healing accomplishment and the partial restoration of my vision, so I started to happily explain as the tech-priest began to pull himself to a full sitting position on his bed while still transfixed on me. "So, we won that battle on Nubua! Alberich rescued you from the silt, and brought you and the Silent Witnesses back to the ship. There was this whole fight between Lian and I versus this Chaos Champion who turned into a Daemon Prince when enough of his buddies had died. Turns out, he was eating their souls. Not like how I eat them, but in a daemon-y evil way, you know? Anyway, we killed his ass with my magic scissors and Lian's Lion Sword. Did you know he had that sword? It's a huge thing in the lore, so maybe you know about that? Isn't that nuts?"

"How can this be true?" Null whispered.

"Yeah, I guess it was pretty nuts, but Lian and I, we actually destroyed that Daemon Prince! As in, he's dead forever! He's not coming back to haunt us like the ghosts on this ship, so we don't have to worry about that. We both have Anathema Blades, after all! I may not have a huge cool sword, but I definitely have moxie!"

"No, no," Null quietly said. "You're... you actually are... You really are. I thought that... I thought that you were just..." The tech-priest dropped his eyes and covered his face with his hands.

Virgil chuckled smugly as I went to sit down next to Null on his bed. I put my arm around the tech-priest, and gave him a friendly squeeze. His metal shoulders were trembling.

"Oh, it's true, old friend, and it is glorious! And she's alive, right here and speaking to us! Alive! Active in the galaxy! I was right again!" Virgil chattered with excitement, leaning down to pat Null on the shoulder reassuringly. The astropath then displayed his index finger, and playfully gestured down to the tech-priest as if he were a naughty child. "I told you before. It does not matter the package of the spirit, only the fire of the soul itself. Stop being stubborn! She holds both titles!"

"I-I saw," Null whispered in a tiny metallic voice as he stared away from both of us now. "I will speak of this later, but I saw something." The tech priest continued to stammer, and was hugging himself as if he was very cold with his remaining three arms and his last three mechadendrites. Like Alberich, he appeared traumatized. I became aware that I was probably being inappropriate to someone who had almost been consumed by corruptive programming overwriting his circuits. Null had come within a hair's breadth of death, I realized. Not only was his physical form nearly broken to complete inoperability, but another intelligence had tried to eat him, and it had almost succeeded. I stood up and stepped back, giving him some space.

No one said anything for a couple seconds as Lian walked over to stand near us. I could tell, even with my blurry vision, that his armor had been scratched by Null's flailing earlier. The Fallen leaned over, investigating the tech-priest. Null continued to grip his body, shivering. Something had tried to literally consume his willpower from within, and I thought back to what I had seen inside the tech-priest's mind.

Those metal insects greatly resembled Necron scarabs, I thought. Something of Necron make had tried to take control of him. And now, he was wearing a mysterious Necron-made jeweled belt. I guessed we had confirmation on the culprit

With a sudden cry, the tech-priest then quickly stood up from the bed as he clutched his midsection, and nearly fell over. Virgil leaned over to steady him with a concerned arm, as did Lian.

"Sit back down, friend. You've been through a lot, I suspect," Virgil said, guiding Null back down to his bed.

"Many of us have recently witnessed wondrous sights. Consider yourself lucky to be able to experience such awe-inspiring things directly, Null, as we rare few live through historical events now," Lian rumbled, and I sensed his eyes briefly passing over me. He trembled in an emotive wave of deference, and turned away, suppressing an urge to kneel once again.

Hearing Lian say this, I was then reminded that the Fallen had also had some kind of spiritual vision when I was possessed by the Emperor on the bridge. I didn't know how accurate his vision had been, but he had claimed to have had seen me with a crown of laurels fighting the enemies of mankind. Actually, wait, no. The Black Legion, the Fallen had said specifically. With a brief shiver, I hoped that Lian's vision wasn't accurate, because I sure as hell didn't want to get in duels with any of those psycho Chaos Marines.

With a start, I realized that many of us had experienced profound spiritual events over the last few hours. I wondered if these sorts of wild experiences were common if one found themselves in close proximity to the Master of Mankind himself? Do people just completely lose their shit if the Emperor shows up? Being a Chaos player back home, I hadn't really studied too much Emperor lore, nor had I read any of the 40k Horus Heresy books, so I had no frame of reference to go by.

"What's this?" Null asked us, a perturbed warble in his synthetic tenor voice as he settled back down. His hands had discovered the Necron belt on his person. "How long has this been on me?"

"I apologize, but you were going to die, old friend," Virgil said regrettably. "Your core was draining, and you had stopped breathing for awhile. Your servitors even began to fail, as you can see in here. After everything we had studied, I did not want to see you die just as a new age is born. It was decided that we would attempt to use the belt in a last ditch effort to save you."

I decided to speak up. "Sorry, the belt is actually my fault. I'm the one who ordered that we use it. Null, you were doomed without it. I just wish you had told me about it. How long have you had it?"

Null appeared put on the spot, and looked up at Lian before sighing in resignation, slouching his shoulders. He was gripping his midsection, repeatedly passing his metal fingers over the elaborate bejeweled artifact. "It came from the Necrons of Kolch, specifically, one of the Necron Lords we encountered in the bunker. Trazyn, I think his name was. When Trazyn had teleported away at the end of our visit, he dropped both this belt, and his staff. I left the staff, and took the belt. I wanted to do a few more tests to see if the xenos tech was safe before I revealed it."

"Now we know that it regenerates metal. Does it do anything else? I uh, saw something in your mind that suggested that it housed an intelligence."

Null stared at me again. "You saw that?"

"I saw enough, Null," I replied, scratching idly at my peeling skin. "We can talk in private later, but for now, just tell me what else the belt can do so we can all be safe."

Null ran his metal fingers over the belt's jewels once again, drumming his fingertips nervously across the surface of the jewels with a soft clicking noise. "What I know is not much, admittedly. This artifact is powered by an unknown source, one that I am still not certain of, and allows the healing of metal flesh, as you must have seen on my body. It also seems to allow the integration of intelligence from the bearer to another machine spirit, but not the other way around. It was a surprise to me that I experienced what I did. Of course, this is why I always vigorously study any new technology I come across, so this sort of thing does not happen."

"I'm thinking maybe you should just take it off now, considering what happened," I suggested. Virgil nodded beside me, and I saw Lian shift his weight. His power armor was really scratched up now.

"Well, you see, there is a problem with that," the tech-priest replied as he began to touch the belt again, tapping it. He then attempted to place his fingers underneath it. Because my vision was still very blurry, I couldn't exactly see what was going on from here. "Come, look." Null waved me over to him.

As I responded to Null's motion, Virgil spoke up in boisterous excitement. "You can see again?!" The astropath clapped his holographic hands. "Null, the Scion was briefly blinded through her contact with the Emperor Himself, but now, even her blindness seems to be resolving itself quickly. Ah, another thing I was right about! Given time, her kind can heal themselves of injuries that would maim or even kill!"

"You were in contact with the Emperor?" Null asked me in shock. "What happened?"

"Sure was. We all almost died because the Deadly Desert started to disintegrate when we tried to fly away from Nubua. Both Materium and Warp were coming apart, so our situation was grim. Because of all that, I couldn't even steer the ship, so I called out for help. Really crazy, but the Emperor answered, somehow. He was able to possess my body, and steer us away from our doom. The contact temporarily blinded me, burned my skin, and caused more of my hair to turn white, as you can see. It sucks but honestly I'm fine with all that because I'm happy to be alive," I informed the tech-priest, as I looked down to study his Necron belt. "Pull back your robe. Let me see."

Null pulled his ruined robe aside, and I still couldn't precisely see what was going on with my blurry vision. "Hey, Virgil," I asked, turning around. "Come over here a minute. Show me what you see with this belt."

The astropath made a "hmm" sound as he stood next to Null, critically observing the Necron artifact. I then received an image of the jeweled belt itself. It was strange for such a beautiful thing to have been found on a Necron Lord, and its gemstones shimmered with an internal light like captured stars. Emeralds lined the articulated gold plates that made up the belt's structure, and a square jewel about the size of my palm swirled with animate radiance like a glowing cloud. One thing I was now able to notice: the belt seemed to be melded onto Null's metal body as if it were a part of him now.

"As you can see, I cannot remove it. I was afraid of something like this happening," the tech-priest replied. Null cautiously stood up again on shaky legs with Virgil steadying him again. "Xenos technology, while fascinating, should always be adequately tested before being used in the field. Lesser tech-priests than myself will often misuse technology, becoming hurt or corrupted by it. It takes a skilled hand to safely use the strange tools of the Necron race."

"What should our next action be, then?" Lian rumbled behind me. "Should we cut the artifact off of him?"

"Now that I think about it, no, I don't think you'll need to do that. From what I sensed before with my Sight, any corruptive programing that existed before that would've hurt or killed Null has at least been, well, 'nullified'." I chuckled at my own joke, and no one else laughed. "But, yeah. Whatever it was, it can't corrupt you anymore, from what I can see. I do think you should study it further, though. Figure out if it can do anything else aside from regeneration, and maybe figure out a way that you can remove it in one piece."

"Agreed," Null said, turning away from my direct line of sight. There was something weighing on the weakened tech-priest's mind, but he wasn't voicing it. Since most of us had been traumatized by the events of the last day, I decided to not sweat it.

"Hey, so, everyone?" I backed up to the front door frame of Null's messy engineer's suite. "We've been through some serious shit, and I bet that those of you that can get hungry are probably hungry now. Virgil has some ration packets on him, so pick one up, and meet me on the bridge in two hours. I want to have a meeting about what we're doing next. We're on some random dead world right now, but I have no idea where it is. I lost consciousness partway through our escape of Nubua, so I don't know where the Emperor ended up parking us. Hopefully this world is safe and totally dead."

"We obey," Lian and Virgil replied. The Fallen lightly bowed in response, and straightened up again. I watched as Null quietly nodded as he sat on his bed, clearly trying to emotionally navigate his own intense brush with death.

After stopping to inform Ennoia of what we were doing, I decided to take Alberich's rations to him. My vision was good enough that I could now pick my way through the ship on my own. I instructed Virgil to remain with Null, and to keep me informed if anything changed. The astropath informed me that we were running low on food, and that we would need to resupply somewhere, which filled me with dread. We had not had a lot of good luck with safe places recently. Null had mentioned that he knew a few neutral planets that we could visit and pick up some essentials, so maybe those planets wouldn't be so scary and danger ridden like the last two. Lian bowed again and saluted to me before heading off to his quarters holding two pouches for himself.

I felt bad about losing my temper at Alberich earlier, and made a promise to myself not to allow my temper to get the best of me. Something like me losing my temper would not be safe for anyone if I got much stronger, I thought. After asking the ship to guide me, I started walking down the hall, back toward the main living quarters where Alberich's room was located.

Having a little time to think as I walked, I shuddered inside again, wondering about what would eventually happen to me. I knew enough from the lore to know that the Emperor was like, fourteen feet tall. How exactly would that work? Would I eventually lose my temper and suddenly pull an Incredible Hulk somewhere? Knowing me, it would probably happen in an area with low ceilings. Classic me. I thought for a moment, and remembered something the Emperor had asked the ship when he had possessed me. I wondered what that meant.

Curious, I decided to ask as I picked my way along through blast doors, and dodging the occasional ghost. "Divine Retribution, progress on Captain Ascension, please, and tell me in my mind, not over the whole ship," I spoke the query.

3 out of possible 9. Minor physical changes. Sight: low. Potential: Alpha+, the vessel responded to me telepathically. Okay, nine steps, and I'm a third of the way there. And, I had the potential to be an Alpha+, which both frightened and excited me. With where I was headed, the Imperial Inquisition and I were probably going to have a date soon, and I wasn't looking forward to it.

A translucent ghost breezed by me, looking like it was in a hurry on an unknown errand. This whole thing that this ship had freaking ghosts now sure was great, I thought sarcastically. At the very least, it didn't look like these entities wanted to bother us.

"Okay," I replied. "Divine Retribution, status on current captain psyker level," I asked, curious.

Captain psyker power level: Epsilon/Delta

Null had graded me as a high Eta or a low Zeta before, so I was definitely increasing in ability. Divine Retribution, how many souls would I need to chow down on before hitting Alpha+? I asked the ship in mind.

Cannot be quantified at this time, the ship responded to me. Well, I guess that made sense. Different souls had different weights, and if they freely gave themselves to me, I'd get a lot more energy than if I just ate them via proximity. If I consumed a bunch of Grey Knight Librarians who had sacrificed themselves to me I'd probably level up to Empress immediately.

I came to the heavy blast door that separated the engine area from the main body of the ship, and passed through. Another ghost floated by, and this time, when it passed through me, I felt a sense of brief fear coming from the phantom. I could somehow tell that the ghost was afraid of something.

Using my telepathy, I reached out, searching for Alberich's presence when I reached the general living quarters. The beastman sensed me, and I heard him respond with an I'm over here. I am in my room.

Can I visit? I asked the beastman. I've got some food for you.

Are you alone? Alberich asked me. I sensed that he was dressing himself, and watching his reflection in the mirror.

Yes. I was just spending time helping Null down in the engine area. He came close to dying, but he'll pull through now. And, I got some of my vision back. Not all, but some.

I know. I saw that. I remote viewed it from here. I warned him about the alien artifacts, but he will not listen to me, the beastman mentally drawled. You can come to me. I have to apologize for my behavior anyway.

A door opened to my right further down the hall. Here, I heard Alberich instruct.

As I started to make my way down the hallway, another ghost appeared, this one seeming to materialize out of Alberich's room. This one had a tall staff topped with some kind of bird with spread wings similar to my eagle staff, and was wearing dramatic robes as if he were a monk or a mysterious wizard. He seemed to radiate the same sort of anxiety as the other ghosts that I had seen earlier, and was about to pass by, until he stopped right before me as if he could actually see me!

I halted my stride. The ghost pulled his hood back, and his face was oddly coherent, even with my blurry vision. He was a thin older man with sallow cheeks, and bright eyes. He wore a serious expression that turned to confusion as he looked at me. With a cautious hand, he slowly reached forward to touch my face. I began to back away, and then, I heard him speak to me.

"Can you see me, phantom? Can you hear my voice?"

I nodded in surprise. His voice was very distant, as if spoken to me through a radio with poor reception, but I could hear him.

"Tell me, why do you haunt us? Who are you, ghost of the Intervention?"

"Haunt you? You're the one haunting us. I think you're confused here," I said back to the ghost. This was very freaky.

The ghost man was not pleased to hear this, and he angrily tapped his eagle staff against the floor before sneering at me.

"Do not trifle with me, wraith. Attempt to play games, and I will scorch your essence until nothing remains of you. You will not be evasive with me. Now, I demand your identity and your purpose here, lest I become even more upset and banish you to a hell even worse than the Warp," the ghost growled at me, before a glow of energy surrounded him.

I had had enough bullshit for today already, I definitely knew then.

"Excuse me? Don't you threaten me, buddy! This is my ship, and you're definitely the ghost in this conversation," I snapped back at the threat, and nearly instantly, my Corona was alight again. Just after I had promised myself that I wouldn't lose my temper, I had lost my damn temper.

The ghost took a step back, appearing to be intimidated by my anger-halo. Before he could say anything else, I very distantly heard another voice call out to the apparition before me. "Mal, hurry! He's getting worse!"

Whoever Mal was then evaporated into bright vapor, and relieved, I dimmed my Corona once again. Mal? Wasn't one of the people I had overheard in my dream named Mal? Short for Malachi, I think.

Or Malcador.

I stopped in the middle of the hall, and I took a few deep breaths to calm myself down before Alberich called out to me, "Are you coming or not? What's going on out here?"

"Did you see it?" I asked, walking up to the door. "There's ghosts in here now! Virgil and Lian had see- oh!"

Alberich was sitting sadly on his bed, and he had indeed been dramatically changed. His hand was nervously moving across the haft of his daemon glaive, Valkyrie, which lay beside him on his bed. Once he saw me, beastman then leaned over, placing both of his hands on his head. His feathers had been completely bleached! Instead of his normal deep cyan-blue velvet and shimmery colorful head feathers, Alberich was now silvery white! "Holy shit!" I said in surprise. "What the hell happened?"

"Firstly, I will now formally apologize for my insubordination on the bridge. It will not happen again," Alberich quietly apologized with a shake of his white feathery head. "I am at least happy to see that you have regained your vision, my leader, as you are able to see me," the beastman (I didn't know if I could call him a Tzaangor anymore, since he looked nothing like one now), said, looking at me with pained blue-gold eyes. "How did you get your vision restored?"

"I-I don't know, really," I replied, still stunned at Alberich's new appearance. "I was trying to find a way to heal Null and wake him up, and suddenly I could see again. Everything is blurry, but I'm not blind anymore."

Alberich nodded pensively, and said nothing.

"Do you have any idea on what caused this change in your coloring, and the loss of your horns? I was thinking that the ship damaged you when it cleansed you of Warp taint. Or maybe the Emperor did this just by touching you." I walked further into his room and shut the door.

He shook his head, and then, I saw his ears rise up. "I'm not certain. I felt a burn inside my body when I as initially attached to my throne, and the ship did warn that I could suffer damage if I was attached to it. I suppose it was correct. Either that, or the daemon that attacked you did this to me."

"That really wasn't a daemon, Alberich," I corrected the beastman again before handing him a psyker ration packet. He curtly thanked me, and with a swipe of his claws, he began to eat. "Like, what he said on the bridge, he's the furthest thing from a daemon."

I sat at one of the two chairs at the table next to Alberich's bed as the beastman slowly ate. A quick look around showed that his quarters were somewhat like mine, with a small living space and larger bed. A mounted display on the wall showed an animated image of the system we were currently parked in, which looked like a small, blessedly boring system of five rocky dead worlds around a yellow star. Alberich's quarters did not have a washroom, but these were clearly officer's quarters when compared to Ennoia's spartan room back near the engine. "I'm serious. The presence that possessed me was literally the Emperor of Mankind, the guy who made all the primarchs and went around conquering everything for humanity over ten thousand years ago in this reality. Remember when we talked on Levant? That guy. The damn Emperor of Mankind. He's an enemy of daemons, for the most part."

"An enemy?" Alberich asked me, turning his dark beak my way, and studying me with his gold-ringed blue eyes. He put his food packet down. I had to admit, his new coloring was somewhat striking. He looked a lot more natural than before, much more like an anthropomorphic white falcon rather than a malformed Tzaangor with filed horns. This probably wasn't going to go over to well in his prayers to Tzeentch, I thought, looking at the daemonic glaive that lay on his bed next to him. Those two were probably going to have an awkward conversation soon if they haven't had one already.

"Yeah. He hates daemons. When you called him a daemon, I could tell he was thinking about killing you, but I said no, so he didn't."

"While I thank you for that, isn't that reaction somewhat extreme? What did I ever do to him? Why would he want me dead?"

"That's just him. He hates things that aren't human, so welcome to the 40k universe, I guess. Hate the alien, fear the alien, as they say here," I observed with a shrug, standing up. "Hey, can you stand up for a second? I want to see if your height changed. I couldn't really see you on the bridge before."

Alberich obliged, and stood up. His height had not changed; he was still somewhat taller than I was, but I had definitely gained a little bit of height. "I see you are taller," he also noticed. "Are you at risk for an infection for your broken skin? I worry for this."

"I don't think so," I said, further observing the beastman's new coloring. He still had a small ruff of pale longer feathers around his head and neck which made up his "hair", but there were no unnatural shades anywhere in his white plumage. He did seem to have few areas of speckled black and grey feathers here and there, reminding me of a pale gyrfalcon. My skin was itchy, so I lightly rubbed an area of exposed skin on my forearm. Another swath of dead skin fell off. The new skin underneath was very smooth at least. "Knowing what I am now, I'll probably just heal anyway."

Alberich cocked his head at me. "And what are you? You are certainly a human. One that is a psyker Traveler, they call it here, correct?"

Oh, did he not know yet, I realized. I settled back down in my seat in preparation for explaining what I had discovered recently. The beastman also sat back down.

"So, listen, Alberich. You know how sometimes people call me Inheritor or Empress or other weird things?"

He nodded. "I just considered that they were confused. There is a lot I admittedly do not understand still about this universe, but I accept where fate has brought me. My philosophy is that God's plan will be revealed to me in the allotted time."

"Do you also remember when I described to you who the Emperor of Mankind was?"

Alberich nodded again.

"So, I only just found out about this like, yesterday, so forgive me if I mess up explaining this. The Emperor, I just found out, is actually a sort of superpowered psyker that was transformed and ascended by this piece of ancient technology." I reached over, and tapped the metal wall of the ship with my fingers. "He was the last captain of this vessel a very long time ago, and he was a Traveler, like we are. His name was Sebastian, and he came from a universe like ours to this one. Sebastian had the Key, like I have now." I removed the Key from under my robe, displaying it for Alberich.

Alberich appeared very interested, and leaned forward on his bed with interest as I continued to explain.

"The Key here, as you know, functions as a Key for the Divine Retribution, and it cannot be removed after it is bonded to you. It marks a pilot as a symbiotic part of this eagle's function, as I'm sure you sense when you are attached to it as a copilot. The Key also devours souls, and stores them like a battery so that the captain can feed them to the ship for fuel. And, each time Sebastian ate a soul, he and the ship got stronger, and after awhile, he got obscenely powerful. He ended up conquering what was once Earth in this universe, and spreading out to conquer the galaxy. He's still around too, in a really vague sense." I took a breath, steadying myself. "So, parts of history seem to be repeating, but I'm the one with the Key this time. I'm transforming into whatever creature the Emperor became, even if I don't want it. I don't have a choice. As long as I'm attached to this vessel, and I keep feeding it, I'll keep getting stronger."

Alberich watched me finish explaining this with rapt eyes. "This. Is. Incredible," he responded, absolutely enthralled.

"Wait, what?" I asked. This wasn't quite the reaction I had expected.

"You're going to conquer the entire galaxy." He said that sentence as a statement of fact instead of a question. He leaned back, and began nervously clutching Valkyrie again. "I was right all along. Your soul is that of a conqueror and a leader, meine Führerin. Perhaps this is why you were poisoned in your home dimension?" He cocked his head at me slyly, and then, a massive grin pulled across his short beak. "I think I understand now."

I didn't quite get it until I realized what "meine Führerin" sounded similar to. Wait, does this guy think I'm a reincarnation of... of...

Oh hell no! Before I could object, he started speaking again.

"This indeed would make sense. I have been wondering for some time now as to why anyone would assassinate you from what you've told me, and my intuition has led me down an interesting path. I don't mean to disparage you, but if you were a normal woman, you'd be beneath everyone's notice."

Alberich then stretched as he began to fidget with excitement, his white "hair" ruff standing on end. He grasped his ration packet, and started eating again as he spoke to me. "It has been my suspicion that you, like me, carried some inborn psychokinetic ability in your home reality, and you were simply ignorant of this. My theory is that the American psychotronics program has been scouring the world, searching for souls of power, and seeking to eliminate them wherever they should be reborn, therefore strangling great leaders and Christ figures in the cradle. The Americans are likely determined not to allow another great leader similar to the one I served to rise, as it would subvert their iron grip on the world. This would even mean killing one of their own, if they deemed you inadequate to their goals."

I stood up, backing away from the terrible insane thing that Alberich seemed to be suggesting. He simply smiled as continued to eat his psyker paste rations. All traces of anxiety and upset seemed to be lost on him now, and he radiated satisfaction. "It makes perfect sense! I imagine that, as a soul of power, every time you tried to stick your neck out, the United States government was there to cut it. If you made the slightest wave, the smallest perturbation in the collective unconscious, they would find and quietly murder you to maintain status quo. And so, you eventually did something, ignorant or not, to finally upset them enough to act. Ah! I enjoy being correct, and now, I am filled with happiness and gratitude that I can serve someone like you once again. Peculiar that you were an artist in your old universe as well!"

I shook my head, and started to sputter as I stood up. I was not having this psychotic psychic Nazi conspiracy shit right now! "You're confused, and I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm not Hitler. Come on," I said simply. "I'm..."

"No, you're not," the beastman elucidated, happily eating his rations. "Not precisely. But you are an archetype of something like him. Whatever your belief, Adolph Hitler the man was only an archetype of a breed of powerful soul that many of us followed. He was a conqueror, like you will be soon, and a being of spiritual power, like you already are. He utilized the symbol of a great eagle, as you yourself fly under. The Great Architect has put me on your path to guide you, and I see every day that his wisdom is sound. You are a force of great change and upheaval, just as my former charge was. I am very pleased to serve such a powerful anointed soul such as yours once again."

"Look, Alberich," I replied to his crazy talk, starting to become distraught. "I'm not what you think I am. I'm-" I shook my head, getting upset. Why was he talking like this all the sudden? "I'm going home as soon as I can! I'm not conquering the galaxy here or anything like that!"

"Don't you understand what you said earlier, my leader? You do not have much of a choice in this matter. You've been chosen by fate to conquer, to subdue, and to rule, no matter what universe you're in. This is your soul's destiny. Why do you think you even have that Key in the first place? Why were you put in that specific body, and why was I placed directly in your path? Fate has deemed you to be this symbolic conqueror and herald of change in this majestic universe, and as I served under Hitler, I will gladly serve you to my death. Meine Ehre heißt Treue, as I said to you."

Hearing myself be directly compared to Hitler, I snapped, and my Corona immediately blazed to life around my head and shoulders in distress, causing my skin to tingle uncomfortably. Of course, this display of power only made Alberich smile even more.

"Why deny this glorious mantle, my leader? Look at you! Chosen by God himself to mete his retribution on His enemies. Even this glorious spaceship's name is the Divine Retribution, Erika! I even hear from Virgil and Lian that they fear that the great human empire of this galaxy is in danger of failing, and that you are needed to bolster it! You have a divine calling, and you need to answer it!"

"Stop it! Stop talking!"

"Behold, the anointed one! Your halo as bright as the sun, and your voice is as powerful as thunder!" Alberich fell to his knees on the floor, looking up at me in rapturous glee. "Look where we are in this glorious new universe, Erika! A universe of strength and war, and a shining example of the potential power of humanity! I find my wildest dreams have come true here, living somewhere where I can use actual magic and speak to spirits effortlessly as I fly through the stars. I couldn't have asked for a better universe to be reborn in! And, to follow a leader blessed by fate itself!" The beastman folded his hands in praise.

"I told you to stop it!"

Alberich was then thrown across the room, his back slamming against the front wall of his suite. He staggered, falling to the floor, but actually remained smiling up at me, his gold eyes sparkling. "Oh, the raw power of it all. Divinity in flesh!"

My heart was beating heavily with furious adrenaline as I stood over the beastman, and ripples of golden light were now leeching out of my skin, which I began to scratch at nervously. No. No, no, no. This is not... this is not who I am! This is Tzeentch screwing with me again!

At the very worst time, a terrible whisper from within dragged through me, But it is who you are, and what you will become...

I turned, and ran out of Alberich's room, making my way back to my suite. As I hastily walked down the corridor, I struck a section of metal wall with my fist, slightly denting it as I fled back to my room.