Chapter 448: HISSSSS!
Kian settled into the cockpit and lowered himself onto the mechanical throne.
The Preceptor's throne automatically extended its neural cabling, plugging into the interface port on his power armour, completing the neural link between man and machine.
Since this was a freshly reforged engine with no battle record yet, there was no accompanying ritual for the connection.
With an older Knight, the pilot would need to recite a litany, composed from the machine's past deeds. Here, all Kian could do was sit still, eyes closed, and let the connection form naturally.
He dropped all his guard, evened out his breathing, and quickly drifted into a hazy, dreamlike mental space.
The choices a person makes while half-conscious like that are said to be their truest, most instinctive ones.
Kian's consciousness slipped into the shared mindscape and found a blurry, half-formed presence there, staring right back at him. Wary. Guarded. And underneath it all, an unmistakable curiosity it couldn't quite hide.
This was the newborn machine spirit. Naive, uncomprehending, but at its core, still a war-machine, and violence was simply its baseline nature.
It circled Kian, staring him down for a long moment, sizing him up the way a cheetah sizes up prey.
Kian stared right back at the Preceptor's machine spirit, then crouched down and clapped his hands at it.
"Here, here, kitty kitty, c'mere!"
The spirit froze for a second, then erupted into pure fury.
It had no idea what a "kitty" was, but the mental link meant it could pull the concept straight from Kian's own mind: something small, soft, and covered in fluff.
There was absolutely no way something as mighty and terrifying as itself could be that!!
Enraged, the spirit lunged at Kian and slammed a headbutt into him hard enough to send him flying!!
Back in the real world, a massive surge of electrical current and psychic feedback shot through the neural cabling straight into Kian's brain, and his body twitched faintly in the throne.
Outside the Preceptor, a tech-priest holding a data-slate rushed up to Tech-priest Boothe, voice tight with worry.
"My lord, the machine spirit is rejecting him! Should we force-abort the ascension rite? Otherwise his brain will burn out!"
Tech-priest Boothe's eyes burned with resolve.
"No. Do not abort. He can tame it.
Haven't you seen him pilot the squire-suit, moving it like it's an extension of his own body? He can pilot the Preceptor. He absolutely can.
Keep chanting! Recite the requiem, soothe the spirit!"
The order given, the hundred tech-priests around the Knight surged into motion, red candles blazing like a mountain of fire, incense burners cranked to maximum.
Through the drifting white smoke, a binary litany of ones and zeroes echoed through the chamber, and Tech-priest Boothe kept striking a small bell in rhythm, over and over.
Inside the mindscape, having just been knocked flying by the headbutt, Kian was furious.
"This thing thinks it's got some attitude, does it? Time to put it down before it becomes a real problem!"
Kian roared and drove a knee straight into the ever-shifting shape of the machine spirit, then clasped both fists together and brought them down hard onto the top of its head.
The mindscape had no fixed rules to begin with, and since Kian was mentally treating it like some overgrown internet cat-meme, it obligingly warped into exactly that: a round-headed, ancient-looking cat creature, except scaled up to enormous size.
Kian rained down heavy punches on that round head, then followed up fast with jabs to keep the damage ticking.
The creature hissed, and Kian answered with a knee straight to its jaw, snapping its gaping mouth shut with a satisfying crunch.
Then both fists slammed down on its skull again, driving it into the ground, followed by a stomp for extra damage.
Stomped a second time, the creature let out its second hiss, and lashed out with a massive claw.
The claw raked a deep gash across Kian's chest, and back in the physical world, that translated to a fresh surge of data flooding through the neural cable straight into his brain.
Between the raw electrical shock and the overclocked psychic feedback, an ordinary person's brain would already have suffered permanent organic damage by this point, the kind that leaves you drooling for the rest of your life.
But as far as Kian was concerned, this was just his toy running a little hot.
In the mindscape, Kian executed a flying takedown, dropping his full weight onto the creature and pinning it, legs locked around its body, arm looped around its throat in a chokehold.
The creature thrashed like a bucking bull, twisting and flailing wildly, trying to throw Kian off.
But Kian's grip held too tight to shake. So it dropped and rolled instead, grinding Kian into the ground under its back, over and over.
Kian couldn't hold on any longer and let go voluntarily.
Free of Kian's grip, the creature let out its third hiss.
As anyone who follows these things knows, a third hiss means the buff kicks in: attack power spikes, speed surges. It closed the distance in an instant, mouth splitting open impossibly wide in this dreamlike space, and sank its teeth into Kian's shoulder.
Kian felt a searing jolt of pain rip through him. In the physical world, sitting in the mechanical throne, his brain took a peak-intensity surge of electrical and psychic feedback, and his eyes rolled back as his whole body convulsed.
A hit like that should have cooked an ordinary person's brain outright, smoke and all. But with his abnormal physique and sheer force of will, Kian gritted through it and held on.
Outside the Preceptor, the tech-priest with the data-slate cried out in alarm:
"No! The machine spirit's resistance has spiked to its peak! The throne is overloading, it, it's trying to kill the pilot!"
Sweat poured down Tech-priest Boothe's face, his long-atrophied sweat glands kicking back into gear for the first time in ages.
He had no idea Kian was Immortal, but he knew full well the man's standing was extraordinary. If Count Voss died here, the fallout would be catastrophic. He was already starting to regret ever letting Kian attempt the ascension rite.
But there was no turning back now. Forcibly severing the neural link mid-surge would only cause worse damage.
"Keep chanting the requiem! All we can do now is trust him!"
Back in the mindscape, having just been bitten, a wave of searing pain and numbness ripped through Kian's mind, throwing him briefly off balance.
But the bite triggered something buried deep in his DNA: the no-hit-run instinct.
When a human hunting a wild beast takes damage, the flawless run is already blown, so there's nothing left to lose. Time to go berserk.
Attack speed spiked 300%. Strength spiked 300%. Pain became irrelevant. It was time to fight like there was nothing left to protect.
Kian bit straight back, sinking his teeth into the creature's head, tearing and shaking at its fur with everything he had, stretching the hide clean out of shape.
The spirit yelped in pain, and before it could even finish that yelp, Kian's fingers were already jabbing straight into its eyes, followed by a string of punches straight into its throat.
The creature howled and howled, taking one devastating hit after another.
Outside the Preceptor, the tech-priest let out a cry of pure astonishment.
"By the Omnissiah! I have never seen anything like this!!"
Tech-priest Boothe asked, tense. "What's happening? Is the Count dead?"
The tech-priest shook his head.
"No, no! It's, it's the Count, he's, he's fighting back against the throne with his own body's bioelectricity!!"
Tech-priest Boothe froze. What in the Emperor's name did that even mean, fighting the throne with his own bioelectricity?
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