Chapter 6: The fight against time is not hopeless, but it is miserable
We did not sleep, we had decided that we will not sleep to rest until we have left this world. We decided that the nights will be used to re-evaluate our plans.
Eldar can go weeks without sleeping and feeling the negative effects, months if one is properly trained into the arts needed to make it happen. We were not trained in such arts, but our limited self study allowed us to push to three weeks before involuntarily crashing down. We had two months, 61 days to escape.
Plans 1 through 13 were abandoned, the circumstances required to make them happen no longer possible thanks to the interference coming from the Webway changing the movement and behavior patterns of the individuals too close to it. Plan 14 remained viable but only just and we've decided to keep pursuing it because it was the fastest of the plans left and that we had already walked partially upon its steps.
Plans 40 through 60 were abandoned as well, the unprompted mass changes in the cult ecosystem making them unviable or too risky.
Plans 15 through 39 remained viable, but they were already unlikely to succeed, the interference only made it worse, with the only exception being plan 20 as it remained abandoned.
All our plans, except the last three ones, plans 61, 62 and 63 required us to create strife through assassinations and use it as cover for our escape. The only changes being the order and location of the murders and strife we created.
The death of target 5, one of the three main Alchemists on this world supplying the cults had ripple effects that destroyed a third of our plans by itself but it was not alone. The deaths of other individuals and the subsequent evolution in the landscape limited our options to nearly one third of what we had started yesterday with.
The hissing of the local song-snakes was starting to subside, the morning comes. The cacophony of multiple insects and the singing snakes heralded the last hours before dawn and their cessation its arrival.
A thought, a word remained stuck in my soul as the conversations we've had in the dark mixed with considerations done under the light of the stars.
Multiple
'Multiple, multiple, multiple what?' A thread of thought came unbidden as connections my mind was only half aware of were suddenly connecting into an image I could not yet see but could feel its rough shape.
The final stroke of the brush came and hit me with all its vile passion, the image now made clear.
"There is another seer interfering with your premonitions and our plans brother."
My words snapped the triplets from the maps they were looking at. Three blank oval masks gave me their full attention.
"It would explain a lot." Was his reply as the other half of our group looked at him.
"Is it intentional?" Aesan whispered, dread coloring the surrounding area.
It did not come from him alone.
All our plans required us to remain unseen and unknown in order to succeed. We had stratagems to maybe get out of tight spots and escape if we were close to the webway gate but we were not anywhere near in a position where enacting them would serve us.
We did not have an answer for a second player on the board, we didn't even have a guaranteed way to win when we were the only one on it.
"No, I cannot guarantee it but the interference is too spread out to be targeted at us. My guess based on what we're seeing is that we have been caught in an older seers machinations and it is trying to clean it, my own premonitions making his cloudier." Came his response after a full minute of silence.
"This might mean they are coming here." Aesan offered.
"Or that their plans involve this world acting a certain way. It does not mean they will be here, only that their plans involve the people here acting a certain way." Our sister retorted.
Silence came as the Sun rose, its ray lighting up the cave more and more heartbeat by heartbeat.
"Can we use it to our advantage?" I asked Guraith. The light started to hit our helmets.
He was the only one of us with the gifts of a Seer, untrained as they are. He was the only one that had a chance of answering my question.
"Maybe, I need to at the very least know what they are planning to say for sure."
"So we can't." Marsa continued grimly.
"We make do, plan 14 remains viable for now. It and plan 28 are the only plans we have left that do not require us to interact with groups while they are near the Webway Gate so if we are lucky the interference should not affect them."
We've already used a lot of our luck already when we stopped our hunt before assassinating target 3 outside the city. If we did, neither of those plans would still be viable and we'd have to gamble even more.
"The two are mutually exclusive, plan 28 presents a higher chance of success now, its targets further away from the Webway by the time we are in position to execute it." Guraith offered as we started to rise.
The last dregs of darkness were being cleansed by the light of the Sun and when they were banished so would we.
"Plan 28 would cut down our margin of error by another three days. Do any of you want to risk it?" I asked.
Yes plan 28 could work, it would be more dangerous and slower but I think we could do it. The issue is the margin of error. If we lost access to the Maton updated map, the only plans that became viable are plans we've already abandoned. If that happened our only chance was running, hiding and praying that the centuries old hedonists with a taste for Eldar flesh more capable in psykery than all of us put together did not find us.
Maton senses gave us an edge, no Eldar thought twice upon them using their sensors on the population, they never stop doing it. Us receiving even a part of this data was a safety net, as we did not have to risk being sensed in return when we tried to determine enemy positions. Even if we did sense it we could not use the information to update each others maps, requiring us to exchange information more and and more and each exchange increasing the chance of being heard and found.
Each plan could suffer delays or perhaps we would have to switch to other plans. The plans were numbered based in order of achievability and the time this requires of us and if we decided to go with 28 then all plans before it automatically become impossible by dint that the timeframe needed to achieve them had passed or became impossible.
"No."
"No."
"No."
Were their replies. Plan 14 it is.
We started to run again, the last dregs of darkness in the cave we had occupied dying alone and in silence.
Plan 14 would require forty-eight days to complete.
The second day passed in silence. Our target, target 13, was on the other side of the city. It would take us two days to reach him. The night was spent evaluating vectors and trying to help our brother evaluate the ripples in fate that the foreign seer was creating.
The third day passed the same the only noticeable change being that our target turned from him to a she again for the 5th time this month. It would not change its behavior.
The third night provided confirmation to our question, the outsiders creating the disturbances would not come to this world.
"The seers' ripples have stopped shifting. It has decided on its plan and cleared my own interference." Our brother announced at midnight.
"Will they come here?" I asked.
"No, the ripples are receding, I think he has accomplished his plans, I am sensing an echo of satisfaction in the pattern of recession."
Gloating, the seer is gloating to all that can hear that it has triumphed in whatever he has set himself on doing.
"How does this affect our plans?" Aesan asked.
"Plan 14 remains viable, no other plans have lost relevancy." Was his answer.
We nodded, relieved that whatever the foreign seers was doing stopped. We were all angry that he gloated in victory after it had unwillingly destroyed our most likely plans to succeed, but we did not bother swearing vengeance. We did not want to actually catch his attention, our egos are far less important than getting off this damned rock.
We rested in an old tower, two stories high and built for and by things that were not Eldar. This world used to hold intelligent alien life long ago. The only signs left of it were ruins of stone for too long has passed since they had died for anything else to remain. There were 3 ruined buildings left on this world that spoke of those that lived here before and not even echoes of their psychic imprints were left to speak their tale.
The songs of nature stopped abruptly two hours before they should.
We tensed, swords and shuriken pistols ready. The maps only showed Eldar on them but one trying to keep themselves hidden could keep themselves so. We had seen individuals that could do so and marked them down.
All such individuals were accounted for, none had gone missing and none were anywhere near us.
The silence was broken by the death cries of a pack of quadrupedal birds, their death coming at the hand of some predator. We did not put our weapons down until one hour after the song of nature restarted, each of us resembling a statue more than a living creature for the entire time.
We avoided the area in which the hunt happened as we ran, the detour losing us minutes but none of us thought those minutes wasted.
We headed towards our target, Guraith decided to claim it. He took the front position, as I ran to the top of tree, it's green and blue leaves not rustling as I ran on its bark. I reached the position to fire from at the same time my brother decapitated his target.
Guraith's target died in a hit as those of our siblings, my six shots striking each of its eyes. Two were on its left head, the third on its right one, the other other 3 centered around his heart. I did not see those eyes as I shot the man from behind, trusting my shuriken pistols coated in poison to maintain their accuracy and penetration.
None of my siblings shot to correct any mistakes, all six shuriken hit.
I jumped from tree to tree, my jumps enhanced by psychic might and landing softened by the same. In six jumps I could see my siblings in formation, by the seventh I had reached it. The ninth placed me in it.
I took the left side.
"Second stratagem is in effect, all my instincts are telling me its necessary." Our brother Aesan sent to each of us.
None of us questioned it.
Our sister Marsa was the best at bladework and physical combat between us. Guraith the seer capable of seeing patterns we couldn't. I myself was the best at killing with psykery among us but the second stratagem required that I abstain from doing so.
None questioned our brother, for he had the best instincts of us all. If he said something needed to happen then that would mean we would die if it didn't, even if he could not articulate why.
The formation shifted, I took the back position.
Somehow I knew this was the fault of the foreign seer. I imagined his face as I stabbed him, my siblings shuriken pistols peeling his skin from muscle and muscle from bone and bone from marrow as I stabbed him one hundred times in each organ. His face looked like that of mine, his words mocking me even in their agony fueled by my sword.
I let go of my hatred for him, it would not help us.
We headed towards the city. Four targets still needed killing.Last edited: Nov 30, 2025 Like ReplyReport Reactions:RedLeafPine, Corvus 501, Ozekee and 523 othersVladicusOct 24, 2025NewAdd bookmarkView discussionThreadmarks Chapter 7 New View contentVladicusSage of reason and incomplete informationOct 24, 2025Add bookmark#79AN: Reader discretion is advised, there is a reason I put the horror tag in and in this chapter you are about to find out one of the reasons why. There will be more to come. To those who are familiar with my writing you know that the first few chapters of about 14-20k or so words of my stories are a prologue establishing character relations and motivations. We're now in an integral part of the prologue and I have decided to be quite graphic to make a point.
I do not apologize for it. This is your only warning, I will not provide more unless staff demands that I do.
Chapter 7: Obscenity is the bastard child of Dedication, none wish to know its father
Eldar are a naturally psychic race, the boons of the Old Ones made it apparent that the Eldar were if not the mightiest psychic species to ever draw mortal breath, we were still the greatest left standing.
We did not develop physical speech despite having the means to do so until we have been striding across the stars for many millennia. We had no need for it as we could converse among ourselves with our minds for as long as we have been aware of.
Despite that, physical language did develop, but not out of a need for speech like most sane species did develop theirs from, but because we wanted to sing.
Each word is a concept, each syllable emotion, each sound something we knew of but other species lacked the means to articulate. There are 500 different words, none having anything in common with each other, to describe the phenomenon my former species associated with the word flame in our most common tongue.
To learn to speak in the simplest of sentences would require others the same effort involved in learning 5 different languages of five different species at the same time. For most Eldar this is a sign of our superiority over all other forms of life.
For me it is an annoyance I could do without, especially when multiple song languages have developed since then and according to what we have learned, one would be considered incult if they did not speak at least 7 of them.
The common tongue was the oldest and simplest of the song languages in circulation, no wordsmith daring to make something easier to learn lest they be labeled as lacking in ability and mocked by their peers.
I had done it though, I have created a simplified form of speech created by butchering the common Eldar tongue and its 8.3 billion words into a beautifully efficient contraption of only 300,000. It is a battle-tongue meant to be spoken by me and my siblings and perhaps any companion we might pick once we leave this world. Learning it would take an Eldar days if not weeks of light study as opposed to the 50 years of constant study to achieve proficiency, years which we did not bother with, instead achieving a middling level of proficiency most Eldar assigned to their 8th language.
If any of the wordsmiths that had spent centuries creating their own monstrosities they call language were to become aware of my dark deed they would flay my soul for 100 lifetimes, mocking my creativity every second of it and they would take turns doing it, each subjecting my soul to this treatment until there were none left to do it to me.
It is this type of mentality that built the city before me.
The Orphanage in my old life would have been called a monument to beauty, kindness and serenity. It was built to provide a serene and welcoming environment to homeless children that had been left without a family to look after them. Each centimeter of it was build with care and love for those that would sleep within its halls, eat in the rooms or play in its gardens and pools. Its walkways were made to encourage community, its murals teaching lessons young children had no one left to learn from and speaking of stories that stand as the bedrock of many literary genres that most Eldar have abandoned and rediscovered a hundred time over since they were written on the walls of the Orphanage.
It was a dilapidated shack compared to the city in front of us.
Eldar do not build based on function, no this it seems had been relegated to 'lesser' species. Eldar build their buildings based on emotions. Each building in the city was built to represent a mix of emotions and concepts unique to the artisan that had built them.
Each was a song made on marble, Wraithbone, flowers and glass and together they said a story and said story was in the middle of being desecrated by its inhabitants.
We had used this story as a learning aide in our quest of proficiency with the Eldar common tongue.
Seeing it from afar, the story sang the ballad of a hero from birth to her death and her 70.432 years of life spoken in acute detail, each minute of her life recorded in song and terrifying detail.
We were unable to find any knowledge of the foes she had defeated outside of the song of the city.
The area of the south-south-east was chosen as our entry point on the 5th day of our trek, our targets changing their pattern of movement due to the foreign seers interference.
Plan 14 remained viable only because the location where targets 13 and 22 died did not matter, only the timing between the two. We needed them to move in a position where we would be able to get from one to another in two days.
Entering the city was done with little fanfare, at one point houses started to appear, separating the forest from city with their presence.
Target 13 was a normal looking Eldar man. He was bald, the only uncovered part of his body being his head. The rest of his naked body had been taken over by red and pink tattoos and despite wearing no clothes was somehow more presentable and dignified than the half the city that still bothered with actual clothing.
He was an outsider, coming from another world or Webway port 25 years ago, the most remarkable thing about him and reason for being chosen as target thirteen being his familial relation with targets 3, 7 and 40, each women, each his daughters and each a mother to another of the three, as well as target 22.
Our targets for plan 14 needed us to kill targets 13, 22, 38, 40 and 41 in that specific order.
Target 22 was target 13's mother, and also mother of target 3. She had come to this planet before her son. The entire family bar target 40 were not born on this world.
Target 22 was chosen for a simple reason, she was the favorite concubine of one of the sword cults. If she died the madmen would be guaranteed to go on another rampage when she failed to reach their favorite spot.
Target 13 needed to die so that target 22 would go and mourn his death like she did with that of her other children, by making another with his siblings. Each event where she would gather the materials for pregnancy would take two days and we needed to strike just as she finished and left, leaving her spawn in a pool of their own liquids.
Target 22 must die so she would miss the meeting and cause a violent event we could use as cover to kill target 40.
Target 38 needed to die because he liked to travel too much in the areas target 40 and 41 dwelt in and could spoof Maton sensors, we would have to kill him when he slept and the time-frame when he would do so was fast approaching. Him staying alive was too great a risk.
He did not sleep regular intervals, sometimes he would sleep days, sometimes hours.
Target 40 was the favorite plaything of an Alchemist, her dying would send her lover on a rampage where she would poison half the city again and this time go into conflict with the Sword-cult. This was our distraction as we made a run for it.
Target 41 lived in the house closest to the Webway gate, the road leading to it a spiral that passed through his house twenty-two times. He was the last obstacle between us and the Webway, we would not take the chance that he would live and follow us out of boredom.
We approached the area as target 22 continued to paint herself in the skin and blood of her still rutting progeny. There was no soul left in it, its bodily functions kept alive by the same body it had came from.
She was singing and we were forced to listen. We couldn't kill her until she had finished in order to maintain the plan.
"Where are you my son, the light of my life, the furnace that kept the engine that kept my love warm and my breast painfully full,"
She said and covered her breasts in the blood of her child.
"Where are you father of my child? Man who had kept the cold from touching my heart, whose love is the same as mine."
His heart beat inside her mouth, the song continued even as she chewed.
"Where are the days we danced together in the starlight, the days we swam under the warm face of the sun. Where is the soul who would be my moon?
Gone are they now, gone are the silent moments of joy, the kind whispers we would say to one another the only thing to remember you by, for you left alone among kine.
Where is my love and my sunshine?"
She said and danced, the phallus and balls of her partner detaching from his body and continuing to pump in her as did a pirouette.
"Why why why? Why did you have to lie?
Why gods oh why, why did my love have to die?"
Each of her steps done on the corpse of her son, each dance done perfectly as she never once stepped on the floor.
"To live and to die a gift given by the divine,
Pain and pleasure, love and and a grief a spice so sublime,"
The phallus changed holes as the dance continued, her naked body covered in the skin and blood of her partner. Blood splatter reached the ceiling.
We realized with horror that the man used to dance and sing as well before we arrived, two distinct footprints showing on the blood walls, roof and floor. The skin of his feet was still attached to the ceiling.
"Gone are you now, gone with little to remember you by,
You left, left me alone without a goodbye."
She turned and now stood on her own hands in one fluid movement, her legs in the air as fluids other than blood started dropping on the rest of her body as the dance continued.
"You went to where I cannot follow
You left me alone and hollow,
To face dreaded life without your warmth
With nothing else to restart my beating hearth." Were the last verses of the beautifully haunting song.
She ended the song her face facing the mutilated one of her son, skin and eyes looking at their own desecrated corpse. We could not see her face, is it love that showed on it? Sadness or grief?
She kissed it on the muscles that were once used to move the lips.
The skin and eyes fell back on their rightful place as the kiss ended. They did not look as if they were ever separated, the only hint being the fact that only the white of the eyes could be seen from above.
"My beautiful son, why did yo leave your poor mother alone?" The eldar woman wept as she started walking on her feet again and left the scene where she had killed one of her progeny while mourning another.
She died two hundred meters from where her song ended, my 3 siblings swords cutting her into pieces as two souls left her body. The phallus and balls of her son cut into pieces with her as well. We were not there when they reached the floor.
I never saw her face.
We decided to travel by rooftop from now on. It would take longer than it would otherwise do, as Eldar were prone to look up often, and down far less so, but we were too scared to travel on the ground floor anymore.
There's too many eldar there.
AN: I am not an artist or song composer but yes this was done by myself with no AI. Sorry for the shitty quality. I have provided the uninterrupted song sequence below.
Spoiler: Song lyricsLast edited: Nov 30, 2025 Like ReplyReport Reactions:RedLeafPine, Ozekee, Shance and 480 othersVladicusOct 24, 2025NewAdd bookmarkView discussionThreadmarks Chapter 8 New View contentVladicusSage of reason and incomplete informationOct 25, 2025Add bookmark#122Chapter 8: Motherhood warps the mind of child and mother alike.
I remember target 13.
It was a normal looking Eldar man. He had tattoos, a single head with two eyes and he died in one hit, my siblings did not correct my aim with the shurikens to ensure he would not see his killer even in death. My muscles remember putting six shurikens in him, one for each eye.
I do not remember him as having six eyes, I remember the spread of the shurikens. Two in the head, one in the head, three around his heart. I shot from the back.
I remember his face yet I never ever saw it as I shot him in the back.
He was a she when she died. He died a man.
History did not match my muscle memories, I ignored it. My siblings the only ones that knew it too. They did the same. Now was not the time. We were in a hurry.
There were too many eldar. We ignored it.
Target 38 had gone to sleep alone. We were not in position.
"Outside minimal timescale." I sent to my siblings.
They knew it, I knew it.
I needed to feel their souls, make sure they are real. They knew I needed it, I knew they knew.
They replied back in affirmative.
They needed it too. I knew they needed it, they knew I knew.
We jumped from building to building. The Maton provided a new filter as we jumped. The adult eldar's field of view. It showed mine as well.
We jumped from a pyramid whose soul sang of the death of a lover to a tower describing a child born after his father died.
From there the funeral song of a mother haunted us, we made a detour.
We were six hours away from our target, there were too many Eldar, too many looked up. The targets' minimum sleeping hours was four hours, maximum was sixty-six, median seven, average nine.
We were cutting it too close with six.
We reached it in time, the target was yet asleep.
"Marsa." was Aesans' only word.
She wanted to go but her hand shook. Aesan offered to go instead, his hand didn't.
"No."
She stopped shaking and we entered the building.
There was no gravity, matter was not matter, light was darkness and touch a question of the mind, not the body. We did not speak, the soulscape did not matter, we knew where our target stood and this wasn't his soul, it was not bright enough. Something frayed, it was not reality.
Distance died, smell replaced it and we had no more noses. We continued walking, we knew how the others would act, coordination was dangerous.
A room came, we had bodies again. Marsa stood 5.2 centimeters from where we had estimated she would be. Her blade was red, we shot her and reality broke.
Target 38 was awake, I took the lead, stratagem 2 was still in effect, I could not kill him. My siblings turned into swords as I sang. My voice was death.
Reality shuddered, our sister returned, the target was dead. Seven swords stuck out from it. Marsa created 4 of them, Aesan 1. Neither had the time to do so.
Guraith and I burned the corpse and we could not find a soul. We ran, we lost three days in target 38's house. Seven less than expected.
One day later we found a safe house. Aesan and I fell into meditation, Guraith started to look at the map, Marsa took first shift.
"Discontinuity." Guraith said the first word in three days.
We already knew, but we needed confirmation.
"Severity?" I asked
Marsa and Aesan switched places, Guraith refused.
"Three cuts, reality is the same, it's us that changed." Worse than expected.
Something changed in us, something came and went and left its mark, we changed and we knew not how.
"Meditate." Was my only response. He obeyed.
"We should be dead." Aesan came as our siblings re-acclimatized to reality. It would be temporary but we need firm ground before we acted.
"Target pretended to sleep, we survived." Was my response.
The focus was lifting and I was very very tired. The Eldar mind is capable of pushing itself for two weeks without damage normally. We could push it to three. We pushed too hard and too fast, personal reality was fraying now, we were out of phase with reality thanks to target 22 and 38's manipulations.
The more we thought the more out of phase we became. We remembered father's written instructions on how to deal with dephasing from reality.
He went through it once, the Eldar Empire he remembered had a Phoenix Empress, when he returned we had a Phoenix King, nothing else he could remember changed. The Eldar Empire decided the Ghoul Stars will remain outside its reach afterwards.
Father swore new oaths to the King, the Pheonix King already received them before he left on the expedition. Neither made any comment of it to the other.
"Reality is water, your connection to it a string and the string is you and because it ceases being you it must be cut. Dephasing happens when you lose connection to said string. To regain it you must sever the force separating you from the ability to hold to a string. You will not return to the same reality if you are lucky, if you return to the same reality it is not you that returned, you must cut again." Aesan recited from memory.
The words came with his own memory of his 72 cuts.
Something must change, we are not who we were, we needed rest before we cut together to where we were sent.
"One hour more of rest then we cut." I said curtly, we were not real, reality was and we did not match. Integrity was breaking as we stopped being tolerated by reality. Unreality would not have us yet.
The hour passed in silence and as soon as it fully passed we begun to cut, my siblings and I became sword. I was the longer edge. Aesan was the shorter one. Guraith became the handle. Marsa the core, she was the most sword of us all.
We cut and reality fell in pieces. We were one being, one body four souls.
The string still held, we cut again. It shattered, cause came before effect.
We were back to reality, we were Eldar, we cut again.
Reality turned into hues of red, we were too purple to stay.
We were a spear, we cut again.
We were not meant to be a spear, swords did not exist in this reality, it was not what we should be.
We were sword, we cut again.
"We are where we should be." Aesan broke the silence as the unity ended.
Three degree of separation meant four cuts, one for each degree and one to heal the wound. We were Eldar again.
Guraith, Marsa and Aesan fell asleep on the spot, I gently placed them in a comfortable position from the contorted messes they fell in. I kept guard ,we were not where we left from. We used to be North of the Webway gate, now we are South. We did not move, the city did.
The story of the city spoke of twin heroes, both men, history remained the same. Targets 40 and 41 remained the same, both still needed to die. We had one day of sleep before we would be losing the margin of error gained from Assassinating target 38. We were closer to target 40 than before.
My siblings slept for 12 hours, so did I when they awoke. I was in a more comfortable position when waking up than when I fell asleep.
Awareness came instantly, my soul hurt. My siblings were the same.
"Reality cuts the edges in three dimensions, the dimensions are not uniform but the way they separate to sword are." Marsa said as we prepared to leave.
She is the most sword of us, she understands what we did there the best. Guraith guided, I cut, Aesan kept things coherent but Marsa was sword, she understood what we cut and why. We did not understand the meaning of the phrase she used but we were relieved she instinctively knew it.
If she didn't, then we would need to cut again until she did, we were already where we should be, the result would see us cutting for an eternity.
The rules of this reality are the same, we are the same individuals from before, we are siblings. Our memories are now the same, we are in just as much danger as we were before killing target 22. The greatest danger had passed.
We were relieved and we silently swore we would not go near the family of too powerful a psyker again, they bend reality too hard to make it fit their delusions and we did not know how to defend ourselves from it. We could only heal the wounds inflicted on us.
We started running as our souls were in pain. It will heal, target 40 needed to die, we were two days away from it.
We reached our target after jumping on a tower. It spoke of regret, what it regretted we did not know, the Alchemists erased it.
Target 40 was a young girl, twenty years of age. She was not bipedal.
Three tails came out of each of her eyes, the snakes were not snakes, they were Alchemical cauldrons shaped like snakes. The girl looked like a 12 years old human child but with pointier hears. Her face was not eldar but human, her soul eldar and this was not her first body. She was pregnant with something not Eldar, something bigger than her, yet she stood on her three spider like legs. She was humming a happy tune and she had no mouth. Her hair was green it grew and shortened by the second. One hearbeat it was longer than she was tall, the next it was a bobcut.
She was the only one I did not wish to kill among all our targets, she still needed to die.
She was herself the only target younger than all of us as she stood on three legs made of death crystals, the progeny in her belly was kept in the air by the power of the snakes as their stingers bit into her belly and they then bit into both brain and braincase from the inside. Both the fangs we could not see and the stingers we did see pumped her full of chemicals. Aphrodisiacs, pain enhancers and sugar pumped into her at regular intervals of 7 heartbeats.
The death crystals carried her signature. Her body was aged and killed, only to be brought back into a copy and done so to it again and again until three legs, each 3,2 meters tall were created. Her legs were amputated and turned into wings on her back as he new prosthesis were attached and rose her up into the air, her frame now reaching 4 meters tall.
We could still see her faces on each of the legs, each kept in a horrifying death scream, each was a different age. There were 3 faces on each leg.
We were unsure if she had blood in her veins, her skin was purple, her veins neon blue and glowing. Guraith turned her on fire as he stabbed and cut her. Aesan started removing our psychic echoes from the area as Marsa started carving the floor and walls with the symbols of the death cult.
The memory of why my heart cared came unbidden.
I remember the day I was reading, no I was not reading books, I was looking into the Maton networks for books of those that thought like me. I remember telling my siblings what I was doing upon being asked. When I responded my siblings were confused, they did not understand my request but were willing to help.
I was forty years old, they were thirty-seven. I opened my mind to them. I did not just open it to talk, I went deeper than that as I showed them how I thought.
It was that day that I understood the difference between my former race and my current one. I was Eldar, my soul was eldar, my mind was Eldar, but my perspective human.
The Eldar did not care for other peoples' actions in the same way as humans. Humans did care in a dimension the Eldar did not understand. The best way to explain it was to think of primitive civilizations.
When ancient humans would hunt, they would show thanks to the gods, to the spirits, to their teachers that taught them, the tools they used or to the beast they had slain. Human celebrations would sometimes show apologies to the beast they had slain, for it had done the human tribes a service in feeding us and our families and we killed it for it. The act of touching our emotions in some positive way was enough to make us care and feel sorry for that which we hurt or killed, even if by doing so it is how it had served us. We sought to make amends, to make its passing easier as even as we understood that what we did was necessary we still thought that to harm that which had helped us as inherently wrong and despite that wrongness we would continue to do it again.
Eldar were not Man.
Their celebrations praised the hunters for their services, it honored them for serving the tribe. They thanked the hunters, the tribe, the ancestors or the gods. Compassion was reserved to those injured in the hunt, to those left without family and rarely to those who had crafted the tools or armor that saved someone's life as well as for the tools themselves. The thought of the slain beast's emotion mattering did not cross their minds, for it was too strange to consider for why would a foe need to be thanked for fighting them.
I looked upon the maps of the city when I still had access to Maton updated maps, and I saw others that fought to survive and not give in to the cults. I grew attached to them, their struggle proving to me that my new species still had a heart and a soul to fight against the corruption. I mourned them as they died, my siblings regretted the loss of a possible ally but did not think much of it, but I did.
I showed them why and they thought I was ill.
They took me to be checked by every single nursery apparatus twice over and then took me to the medical wing to be subjected to other battery of tests. They brought the Maton to look me over, I showed the Maton the same perspective thrice until the Maton agreed that I was healthy. My perspective was different than that of my siblings and the girl that now burned was the only other creature that could have possibly shared some of it on this world.
She was born with the gift of healing. So was I, but killing my father on my first day of life robbed me of it, said act granting me a new gift in return. The girl that was now ash was the closest Eldar could get to being like me, she cared for others in a way that was almost alien to Eldar. She had healed five individuals that came to her when her Mistress was not there for the simple reason they were near her and needed help.
Even in death she was giving a mouthless scream, begging us, anyone, to save the abomination growing inside of her, to save her child. My siblings did not.
Neither of us would look at the abomination, it hurt too much to do so and we deleted the information from our mind as soon as it entered lest it scar our minds too much. Our minds weren't in the the best condition anyway.
We did not need more damage. We already took more than we thought we could survive.
I wished that I could have granted her, her dying wish but we had decided that both mother and abomination needed to die to convince the Alchemist it was the sword cult that killed her lover and even if it wasn't necessary the unborn still needed to die, it was too much of an abomination to be allowed to live.
I prayed for her soul to reach a better life. It was the only prayer I have given in this life. I did not apologize and I'm scared of the fact that I might need to give more in the future.
I couldn't help my siblings in this, even if I was allowed, I do not think I am capable of doing much more than I could right now, my heart aches too much.
My siblings finished their tasks, we started running. We needed to wait two more days for the Alchemist to return to her lab, four more to re-enact her previous schemes or come up with another equally horrific way of getting revenge on the sword cult.
Once whatever she planned was in motion target 41 would die and in the following hour we would be free of this world.
AN: I am incredibly disappointed in my audience. None noticed the discrepancy.
Also, two more chapters, and the prologue will be over.Last edited: Nov 30, 2025 Like ReplyReport Reactions:RedLeafPine, Corvus 501, Ozekee and 502 othersVladicusOct 25, 2025NewAdd bookmarkView discussionThreadmarks Chapter 9 New View contentVladicusSage of reason and incomplete informationOct 26, 2025Add bookmark#137Chapter 9: Unannounced strangers do not make themselves welcome in the house of brothers.
The screams of target 40 haunted my consciousness.
"Bessar, you must sleep. The wards you made will kill the dreams." Aesan told me as we rested and hid.
It was a waiting game now.
"We will rest in shifts. I'll take the last shift, we will keep them in order of reverse age." I responded.
"We know killing target 40 affected you deeply, our souls fray but yours is the worst of them now." Marsa retorted harshly.
She did not like us coming to harm and considered it a personal failure when anyone did.
"Brother, you need sleep more than us. We will sleep in shifts, you must sleep until you are fully rested then meditate. You will not take shifts until you don't need to be told to stop clenching your fist. We won't allow you to die before us, not on this world." Guraith finished, my sentence given.
"You are united on this matter." I replied numbly.
All of them nodded as silence fell.
The Wraithbone in my palm had long since cracked and I subconsciously stopped any bleeding. I did not notice either action until they had been pointed to me. I did not look at my hand or mind, I did not let any emotions show but I ceased clenching my fist and healed myself.
"Very well, I will sleep. You will wake me if an opportunity to leave emerges." I offered.
"No, we will leave when you are capable, we have time." Marsa retorted her voice much gentler now.
I nodded and went to sleep. I did not dream.
~~~~~~
"He fell asleep." The eldest third of me observed.
"He pushed himself and his mind too harshly." The youngest continued.
"We all did, his mind just took the brunt of it." I finished.
Our older brother was not like us, he was not three thirds of one being made out of three souls. We weren't even related and his mind did not even think like an eldar, he showed us once.
The Maton panicked when he showed them too. It was the most emotion our mechanical caretakers had ever given us and that only scared us more. They never showed emotion before or after.
Aesan in his weakness prayed to the gods for help. We did not correct his foolishness. Guraith and I very nearly did the same when the Maton ran their third scan.
The result came the same, he was healthy. He was eldar, just different, his mind different in some strange way.
We loved him anyway, he was the only one that stayed. Father died and left us all he could, the other caretakers did the same before we could meet them. Older former sister just ran. We had nobody else but him and ourselves.
Older brother stood with us, guided as he was able and loved us and now his ailed mind was fracturing under the weight of his alien compassion. We did not understand it, the feelings were shallow but they existed in a dimension we did not think in.
Didn't change anything but the fact we needed to care for him differently when he was wounded in certain ways. He remained Bessar, the unreasonable being who cared too much for those who had done too little. We loved him for it.
"We continue with sleeping in shifts in the pattern he provided." Our younger third broke the silence.
He joined our brother in sleep. We all needed it, we could not afford to sleep at the same time.
Two thirds of me remained awake, the older one turned to the Maton provided maps. The foreign seer stopped their interference, the Discontinuity muddled all our predictions. Something changed beyond the identity of the founding heroes. The name of the world was the same.
The city was not the same as we left, our path was different but those we killed except target 13 remained as our muscle memory remembered. The path we took did not.
We traced the steps, our muscles did not remember the exact number, they used to but do not anymore, but the number the maps provide is too low based on what the muscles remember remembering.
The Orphanage was where it should, it did not move, nor did it change. Our muscles tried to forget it too, the Discontinuity requiring sacrifice to escape safely. We refused to make that sacrifice.
Whatever else was lost was not important.
We needed to ensure the plans remained viable. We had 2 plans we could still take before the Matons' care ended.
Plan 14 remained viable, we had decided it was our most reliable chance. Plan 33 also remained an option. We would need to cause strife between alchemists. They shared playthings to keep the peace. One or two of them dying would cause strife. The other plans' time-frame were no longer viable.
Stratagem two remained in effect, our steps and rests painted the same image from a different angle.
"The sword cults have started their rampage." My older third observed.
He did not need to, but we had gotten used to speaking, it made older brother happier when he could join our conversations without being awkward. He liked to speak more than he liked to sing.
Seeing the songs of our people on the street as they painted the legacy of heroes in white and red and pinks made us understand why. Speaking was preferable to hearing those songs, for it covered up the screams.
Our younger third awoke unprompted, twelve hours had passed, I join my older brother in sleeping.
I trust the other parts of me to protect us.
~~~~~~
The middle part of me went to sleep, The oldest part was joined by the youngest.
Our older brother continued to sleep. We continued to look after him and ourselves.
We ate the nutrient block at the second hour of our awakening. The oldest continues his attempts to divine the future and our chances of success. I made sure he ate too.
We might not be able do so in the webway and whatever peril caused us to adopt the second stratagem had not yet passed.
I do not know what caused me to speak those words, I rarely do. I only know that they had not steered me wrong and they do not come from an outside force.
The other parts of me and older brother checked, they only found our voice whispering on perils the rest of me did not know about. We decided to trust it.
We've never been to the Webway, the caretakers memories called it the true home of our species. Home had a table with three corpses sitting at it and was filled with our laughter and that of our older brother telling us we need to study.
The Webway was filled with Wraithbone and eldar. It was a chance to escape, it was a tunnel towards the chance at safety. It would never be home.
Home was gone. The Maton were aware of our plan, they supported us. The Orphanage closed, we kept the Matons' care.
I kept guard, my senses alert. Two threats have disappeared off the map. They were not killed. They evade Maton senses. They are known to do so, they do so regularly to surprise friend and family. Neither is near us.
It meant nothing. They continued being threats, they will be watched.
The twelfth hour of cognizance comes. The oldest part of me sleeps, the youngest awakens.
I take his tasks. The predictions have stabilized, plan 14 remains viable, the Mistress of target 40 has found out about the death of her plaything. I did not sense danger, we were in the opposite direction of the cults compared to her.
She screamed, we could hear it. The city turned silent at her wrath for 36 heartbeats. The revelry continued. There was no discontinuity.
The cults did not care.
Older brother stirred, we sent him whispers to remain asleep. He did so.
Another shift passed, my older self awakened, I slept.
~~~~~~
The skein of fate is distant. The future memory of all things leaves shadows upon it.
My instincts tell me it is not so, that the skein of fate is what could be and what is and maybe what once was.
Older brother told me to stop being an idiot, if all things are one, if all could be caught in a single web then there would things that already put us there to devour.
The old caretakers notes confirmed his statements. Daemons they were called, creatures born of the emission of the soul, the same as if the crystals we excreted grew legs and wished to punish us for their creation.
The skein of fate was not all. It wished to be so. It is not my duty to stop it, but it wants me to help it.
The youngest part of myself went to sleep with older brother. He awakened two hours later.
His soul healed somewhat. He was back to where we were before going to sleep. Middle and older part of myself looked at him sternly. He cannot look after us before he looked after himself. He would do the same if we were as wounded.
He would look after us all and make the unreasonable demand that he stay awake while we rested. One mind looking after another, a fair thing he insisted.
He meditated now.
I continued tricking my would-be predator. The skein of fate cannot be trusted, it wished to devour me. The caretakers notes have said so.
Those that had fully given in and thought they had become its masters were called farseers.
Father called them mentally ill, older brother called them shortsighted. The other caretakers had a view in-between these two extremes. None, be they living or dead, disagree in principle with either of the extremes only in the degree to which they applied.
They were better diviners than me.
I tricked and slithered in shadows I was only half aware of, shadows that were created by that which I did not comprehend. I fought and tricked for answers and patterns I needed help to decipher to compensate for training I had not received.
The older seer was a farseer, he served and ordered in the light of things I dared not think of, his own shadows things I feared.
We were mending, the frightening grip of individual loneliness receding as three linked individuals became one segmented whole again until I returned.
Hours passed in silence as shifts came and went.
The city burned pink. Three bodies under one mind prepared. Older brother was already armed and on his feet.
We were not as whole as we started, Bessar even less so than I.
It mattered not, we had our chance.
~~~~~~
Half the city burned pink, we were not in the half that smelled of vanilla and sad tears.
One target was left. Target 41 was an older man. He was half crystal by volume already.
He liked drinking. Blood, seawater, other bodily fluids, souls, poison and every single fluid he had been offered to him he took.
We considered giving tribute to allow for our passage.
He was the proud guardian of the Webway gate, placed there by the prince of the world to ensure that they paid the proper respects to his august self. Now he drinks, either their tribute or those that wish to pass and rarely both.
In the last year he had killed 3 individuals that had offered him tribute in exchange for passage. We decided that he will choke on his own blood and see if he likes it.
His guard post stood besides the webway gate as it stood in the open with no other building near it, or better said inside of it.
The guardhouse was in the shape of a giant mouth. It looked orkish, the maw of a great warboss made out of Wraithbone. It had no teeth besides its left tusk, two swords sticking out of its eye sockets, their tips framing the Webway gate in light they did not emit and yet appeared around them.
The guard stood asleep at its post during midnight, it had not moved from this space since before I was born. We could see him behind the benches we used as cover. Two bodies behind each bench. We used them as cover as they were made of wraithbone and carved from one block.
"Something comes." The oldest of the triplets said.
A warband came through, eighty-six individuals. They were dressed in a panoply of colors. Red hues, blue and green feathers blinking lights and more adorned their armors. Each whispered of something, some sort of accolade we could not understand.
'Craftworlders.' Came the unanimous conclusion.
It fit what we knew, their colorful yet tactful styles, the presence of a farseer meddling with fate and the fact they moved in warhosts on lightly defended worlds.
We barely noticed it when the guard died.
They were either Craftworlders or particularly poor pirates, neither of which we would object joining up with if it meant we could leave this world.
We signaled to each other what to do, our holofields running at full strength to keep us hidden.
"Talk?" I signaled to my siblings with my left hand as I was the furthest to the right. Affirmative answers reached me back. We had nothing to lose by talking, they were not cultists.
My head rose from behind the bench, my right hand near it in the 3 fingered sign of peace and parley. It was one of many such signs and one of the most common ones. My left hand was free of any weapons and both were in their holsters. It would not do request a parley while armed.
The archives said you only did that when you were in a position of strength.
I did not even manage to rise fully that I lost my balance.
My head was warm, I was missing teeth and had a concussion before even dropping to the floor.
I didn't reach it. My siblings used their powers to catch me and I started running, holofields now turned from keeping us hidden to making us look in 13 places at the same time.
My mask continued to burn as the plasma tried and failed to eat through it.
I gave our assailants a one fingered sign I learned transcended species and realities as my siblings and I abandoned all restrictions on speech.
"We now know why the second stratagem was important." Aesan said as we were followed by twenty armed individuals.
More were trying to flank us or position themselves somewhere they could shoot us from afar.
I'll have to get very good at whispering and very fast. I just hope I could regrow my teeth before I had to, I've already swallowed them and I hated bringing things up the way they came.
"I was right in giving us thicker armor." Was my only verbal reply as we formulated possible responses in our soul communion.
I'd be dead if I didn't.Last edited: No