Chapter 9:

Chapter 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.