“She’s a bladebelle. Let’s bring her to the Castle, while your people handle the investigation. That’ll allow the Sapphire to scrape some shreds of relevance out of this, while we keep the information flow open properly.” Philius nodded agreement, not having much desire to mess with the shillers of the Sapphire and their arrogant superiority about the primacy of the Coronals, while completely disregarding the fact that finding the truth of stuff was what the Umbrals did best.

“I’ll get a team over there to wait for her arrival.” He gestured, and the Strikers maglocked their rifles to their backs, broke out a blanket, and without much care rolled the unconscious girl into it. They both heard the whine of the power gauntlet of the man who pried open her hand and pulled her Focus out of it. Philius held out his hand, and it was slapped into his grip. His eyebrows rose as his hand fell, and he passed it over to Dorval, who took it with much more respect.

“This is quite heavy. Tinted adamant?” The copper and gold of its lines were simple and clean, bereft of the ornate pcircuitry that often adorned a Focus, including his own. “It has to weigh nearly ten kilos...”

Thinking that, he held out his hand, tried to summon his mindblade, and could not.

“Well, now we know that she fought them before this Null came down, possibly disrupting whatever happened above,” Philius mused, watching closely.

Dorval nodded, and tried to send his blade into this Focus.

His hand spasmed, and let go the Focus, which fell to the ground with a hard clunk, not bouncing in the slightest, and left a dent in the floor tiles.

“Well,” he winced, flexing his hand. “I won’t be trying that again...” He stood aside after bending down to pick up the Focus again as the Strikers carried the girl out, not being particularly gentle about it.

“Bound Focus, eh?” Philius shook his head. “Well, it must have been Called to her, that’s the only reason she could have one here. Makes sense.” His eyes narrowed, thinking.

“Something not right?” Dorval asked rhetorically. They were dealing with the Warp... things were never right with the Warp.

“Madame Kiovati’s computer files were left open and unwarded in her private chambers.”

Dorval blinked despite himself, and started running through the implications. He looked up at the shattered ceiling, past it to the auditorium far above, and the signs of absent demons, young girls pseduced into a foul cult, and the marring of the signs of the Warp and psi here.

“Either something not friendly to the Warp was here, or there’s a very big bluff going on.”

“Branding Axiomatic Runes onto a young woman?” Philius thought aloud.

“That is strange. Anything I need to know?” Dorval asked, glancing at the pcircuit around Philius’ ear.

“We are going to have a very busy night.” Philius clapped him on the shoulder, just as his wrist Band beeped at him. He hit it up, and bright letters flaring silver with urgency came up on holo. Dorval read them, and his calm expression began to frown very quickly.

It was going to be more than a busy night...

-------------------------

While the sector was getting abruptly turned upside down by the revelation that most of the Wendlerton Academy’s alumni for the last generation were Amourae cultists, and a rather large number of people were getting shot for it, I was unconscious.

Sort of.

{Welcome! To begin, please swear at me.}

Was that my voice? Whatever it was, it had a fucking sense of humor...

{Authorization accepted! Prepare for a download you really don’t want to hear!}

Well, isn’t that appropriate...

[HEY THERE.]

Holy shiznit!

[Sorry, toning it down. Bit of a rush when I recorded this.] %^*%*! [Yeah, yeah. Buck up.

[First of all, welcome to the land of the living! This is your birthday, so memorize it for future parties, cakes, and tea.] If this was me, I really had a weird sense of humor... [You’re a Sama Rantha human Exemplar Lite, imprinted with my basic knowledge kit (just like I was), piggypacking on the ‘new Hag’ birth rules to come into existence with the Karma of a Seven Hag.

[Your soul is your own, have no fear, and since I’m your mom, I get to name you. Welcome to life, Sama Rantha II! When you get a 30 Cha, you should be able to recall your last incarnation if you have one (you shouldn’t), so until then, put up with it!

[Now, your mom and original’s a total bitch, because she’s giving you absolutely no time at all before you have to accept a big ass quest.

[To wit, I’m too Heavy for the mortal realm right now, so I’m stuck here serving as a great big diversion. Our mission, handed to us by Mithar Himself, is to kick the Warp Gods off their throne, free up the Warp, and return it to its original purpose.

[That can only be done from the mortal realm. Welcome to reeeeally long overarching quest goals!

[Your job is to Level up; Think Big; take control of everything you can; and beat the shit out of the gods of the Warp. You’ll probably have to save the galaxy a few times on the way. How you go about it is totally up to you, adapt as you go!

[I’ve set up all the backstory obfuscation that I can for you. The only material help I can give is Chalice... keep her safe, she’ll stay with you forever.

[You know what you’ve got working for you, because it’s very close to what I had working for me. You’re coming in at Rantha/3, Expert and Melee/3, Null Psion/2, Psi-Warrior/2 (Bladebelle), Null Soulshaper/2. You’ve got enough Karma left to take one Level in one Class of your choice.

[Your Marks contain nine Levels at Ten, and will bleed it out to you at a goldweight equiv a day, even if you don’t earn anything yourself, so you should be able to Level up quickly even if you can’t find a high Karma zone. Naturally, find a high Karma zone! Become uber! Rule the galaxy! Raise puppy-kittens!

[Got to go, Reality is getting kind of ephemeral! Might be able to drop in if the area is appropriate for it! Hugs, kisses, best wishes for the leveling grind!]

{This message is now ended. Would you like to assign your remaining Level now?}

My thoughts were definitely on complete overdrive. I was interfacing with my Visual File and an implanted memory. I literally was listening to myself talking to myself, as I’d cloned myself up to a certain point and then downloaded me into me.

-No.- I didn’t know what I needed, and I’d get a one-time Skill Point drop of multiple points by taking that Level at Character Creation.

This universe didn’t allow Levels to drop in knowledge like that... unless you were creating a demon or some other creature with immense psychic power.

Or a Hag?

I was a splinter soul of my mother-me, created from absorbing random soul remnants in the Warp, gathered together, and a body spun together to suit them, based on her own original one. Part clone, part daughter. Would I even have a last incarnation that wasn’t just shards of other souls?

Ah, but I’d said that to verify that fact that I was Sama Rantha II, not Sama Rantha Mark 2. My soul was my own, cloned memories/body or whatnot. So even though I remembered being Sama, I was definitely a different Sama.

Kinda like how Mom’s body had been born, before it ate her... and she took it over.

She had fucking suborned the Hag Curse into making a stand-in for her! I had to stifle my mental laughter. I was effectively a Rantha Hag!

Was there any better way to screw the Hag Curse than to make it work for you? Damn, I was good...

She’d arranged my Karma and Feats so as to give me enough Ki, Soul, Mana, and Psi to trigger a Mark IV Diamond Vajra. If I was an Exemplar Lite, that also meant I had a very high starting gate, which I certainly wasn’t going to argue with. The DR and Fast Healing alone were going to be incredibly helpful, and who knew what else was hidden in my genetics?

However, the recording was over, it was time to wake up...

============

“Huh!” My eyes snapped open, and I sat up hard.

Tried to. The restraints on my arms kinda prevented that from happening, which meant I rather slammed back down to the mattress I was bound to.

My heart was racing for some reason, like I’d just come off a really big exciting fight I couldn’t remember all the details off.

I also felt like I’d been poked and prodded all over. Which I supposed was par for the course.

I manifested my soulclaws.

They were claws because I couldn’t manifest a blade, it would stick too far outside my Vajra. They snapped into existence, and shredded my restraints as they did so.

I sat up, quite pleased at how easily I could move, and brought my claws down on my ankles at full extension.

The blades cut through my flesh harmlessly, like it wasn’t there. The metal restraints, not so much.

I swung my feet off the bed, landed on the cool tile floor, hands up, golden claw-gauntlets up and ready to shield and punch.

Okay, I was wearing a hospital flimsy and pretty much nothing else. Somehow I was not surprised. Aren’t newborns supposed to be almost naked?

The room was otherwise soft white, any decorations were recessed into wall sockets, with a single closed door of metal, a plethora of soft white lights and recessed cameras watching my every move. There was a ton of circuitry underneath my feet, and as I watched, the columnar support for the bed I was in lowered down into the floor and a seamless cover slid over it quietly, leaving me alone in the otherwise empty room, with a LOT of humming machinery and electronics behind the floors, walls, and ceiling.

Ooo-kay... someone was definitely watching me. They had found me, moved me to this place, and put me in restraints, but not uncomfortably. I hadn’t woken up in prison cell or torture chamber, or naked on a hillside, or in some nightmare mockup of a nursery from a horror story or something...

“Your colors have been noted. Please drop your claws before we enter the room.”

The voice was male, firm, precise. I turned my ear to it, looked down at my claws.

A person’s mindblade was the color of their soul. My claws were a deep, polished gold, like metal. I couldn’t see my reflection in them because they were made of psychic force, but they were hard and embedded with resolve and conviction in my beliefs.

Oh, yeah, I had definitely inherited a hardass line of morals from Mom. Gee, thanks, Mom. Maybe I wanted to be a flighty Rainbow or a stick up the arse Silver, or a totally in it for myself what can you do for me Green?

On second thought, not.

It took me a few breaths to calm down from my fighting readiness. I flicked off my claws and lowered my hands carefully, then decided to take some initiative.

“Table, chairs!” I called out, stepping aside and back from the door.

There was a moment of hesitation I took as surprise. Then a part of the floor slid aside, rose up, and there was a simple metal table and three chairs, one for me and two on the other side.

I seated myself, ignoring the cool metal on my bare butt, folded my hands on the table, and waited.

The main door hissed open, I could see it was at least six inches thick. Air pressure equalized, and there was a hum as the two men outside stepped inside calmly, but alertly.

The one in the front was in a uniform of whites with dark blue trim, an odd combination of ceremonial and workable, definitely made to be seen. He was tall, broad-shouldered, blond-haired, green-eyed, and had the air of a man who didn’t know he was good-looking.

He was also holding a silver-hued mindblade. Huh.

==============

Glossary:

Vertex: The Nadir of a psion’s psychic ability, from which he broadcasts his power. Basically equivalent to Caster Level.

Reserve: The amount of psionic power maximum and current that a psion has.