Chapter 10.2:

Chapter 10.2 For the light blinds the brave, yet tricks the fool.


The eldar have danced across the stars for fifty million years, our song graced all but the furthest reaches of Great Wheel and some places beyond it across time and space.

From the Knight Legions of Terra and its Iron Tides, to the Green Whaaghs and Endless hordes of the Greenskins, from the Flesh Moons of a hundred species to the Machine armies of a thousand more, all that lived on the Great Wheel as it spins across eternity knew that the Empire of Ten Million Suns ruled supreme. Its warriors were the mightiest, it's fleets the greatest in both number and quality and its servants the most capable.

It is a pity that its inheritors are the greatest fools of 7 galaxies for I now commanded some of these fools.

"Have you been able to find the group we have refused the parlay of?" I asked as the half scouting party I have sent returned.

A normal scouting party of Anaen consisted of four scouts, two junior and two senior, lead by a fifth individual, usually a Master of the Hunt or a Master of Secrets or a Master of the Hidden Knives.

None such individuals were available for such a low priority mission. Instead they sent me, a Veteran of Fire, not yet a Master of Fire but perhaps in another thousand years I would be able to claim such a title.

I was the only one available that had any experience with the worlds of the Empire and the knowledge to lead raids, the rest were still dealing with the aftermath of a mission in another part of the Empire that I was not told much about.

I had 85 subordinates, an under-strength host for a normal mission in the empire as the only chance of any warrior from Craftworld Anean to return home was traveling in large numbers.

A normal mission would have five scouts. I started as usual with four.

I was not a scout.

Of those four scouts I had placed two of them as my seconds together with my future apprentice because it is quite obvious the seers had sent me something worse than novices for this mission.

They sent me veterans of the wrong type of war.

I can train novices, they listen well enough even if they don't understand the lessons you try to impart. I work with the failures, to triage the mission with their skills something I had had to learn and have become good at. I can even deal with those more skilled or talented than I, despite their egos and the open questioning of my orders or ability.

I do not know how to deal with veterans of conflicts other than those they were facing now.

'Perhaps this mission is also a test? The seers trying to see if I have what it takes to earn the tile of Master?' I thought bitterly.

I long since stopped trying to ask seers to explain their orders, as they make explanations deliberately obtuse just to mess with me.

I'd happily fail the test too, if it meant I could get my idiots home safe to their families. The title of Master means less than the well-being of those I have sworn to protect.

"No Mission Leader, we have their trail, but it feels strange. We have decided to return and report it in case it was a local trap." The other scout said.

"The first good decision the two of you have done today. You have one hour of rest." Was my cold reply.

The rest of my command staff was with me. There used to be more of them but because they could not follow orders I remade the plan of battle. There was me, there were those who could follow orders and then there were the fools that couldn't.

I only had three that could follow orders.

The junior scouts left.

We camped in one of the buildings near the Webway gate, we dared not take the Webway gatehouse lest whoever ruled this world decided it liked killing squatters.

"We're not in the best position, our troops instinctively follow the wrong lessons to fight the enemy we are dealing with, and we have little to no way of figuring out exactly how to accomplish our mission. Do any of you have anything to add to this?" I addressed my command staff.

"What lessons do we need to know? Maybe we can compensate and even if we can't now it might prevent them from doing the same in the future." The younger of the veterans sent by my master offered.

"All of you have only faced orks?"

"I faced Imperial civilians before, but never in a warhost, and Cresistauead pirates once, never faced orks." did my future apprentice answer.

"Only orks." The older scout, Taiacca answers.

"Orks and a machine empire."

"Right, so none of you know much of what to do."

I stood and considered my options and how to frame them.

"The Cresistauead pirates, humans as they call themselves, how did they fight?"

"They fought in groups and power armor, the ship I fought in too small for even the least of their knight warriors. They were small, weak, slow of reflexes despite acting otherwise but they fought with discipline and suicidal stupidity."

"Those pirates way of fighting is more appropriate to what we have to do than the lessons learned from fighting an orkish Whaagh. We are small, we are weak, our reflexes might be better than our foes and our discipline exists, something our enemies cannot claim."

"We cannot claim to be lacking in stupidity either." Was Taiacca's sly reply.

She tried to make a joke to lighten the spirit and rise our morale. It wasn't funny, it was the truth.

"Yes."

The silence my comment resulted in was deafening.

"What should be the paradigm we follow?" Asked Curana, she was trying to advance the meeting from its awkward spot.

All three of them were scared now, I could feel it through the bond of command. None showed it physically.

"My initial orders still stand, stay together, never go out of sight of others in groups smaller than five unless you are a scout and if something attacks us, we run first and asses danger after we are safe."

"Any advanced stratagems we could use? That won't save us if we catch the interests of a Mind cult."

Eadon's question had merit, the issue was that it didn't matter if I had or not. I couldn't use them with what I had available.

"None that I can do with the troops available to me. None of you have the mix of skills, experience or mentality needed to pull any of them off. While some might have one of it, you are deficient in the others."

"Can't we leave? We were sent here with too little information and improper tools to accomplish our mission." My future apprentice asked.

The former scouts shuddered in disgust, the very concept that they would not finish a mission repulsive.

"This is a mission the farseer decided we should accomplish. While it is not crucial, it would benefit the craftworld immensely according to his words and we have not yet suffered any significant setbacks. If the madman sent us here as we are then it means we have a decent chance of accomplishing our mission or that attempting this will benefit our people in some way. If that wasn't the case then after the previous poor showing we would already be on the road home."

It was the truth. I could do without the tests, I could do without bothering with strangers and putting the lives of my men in danger in a conflict they were ill-trained to fight in. I could not accept the idea that the farseer didn't know all that and still believed it would be better if we tried and completed the mission anyway.

Farseers are many things, wasteful is not one of them.

"Should we reattempt parley with the group in question? Also what do we know of the world we are on that could help our mission?"

"Yes, they are the most useful source of information available. Maybe the Maton might help us but depending on the orders of the local prince or they might just ignore us as we are not of this world, and technically not of the empire. We know nothing but the fact there are three other permanent Webway gates and that this one is the closest to our objective."

"I will find a Maton, and see if they can grant us any assistance." Curana declared.

"Do so after we finish our meeting." I ordered.

"How do we approach them? Their holofields are better than ours." Taiacca asked.

"We surround and offer parley. Holofields do not provide mobility, no matter how advanced. We give them no other place to be but in our weapon sights and they will stop running long enough to accept parley."

"And if they refuse?"

"We apologize and offer recompense, then ask again regardless of response. If they say no again we offer them the chance to come with us back to the craftworld if they are not members of another organization, I can't imagine they want to be here more than we do, if they say no we let them go."

"Why?" Curana asked this time.

She thought I was being too generous. I wasn't. We wronged them, apologizing is the least we could do to mend relations and not make enemies, especially if they did belong to another organization, but they wouldn't accept that explanation. They could follow orders yes, but they were still fools.

"The chance at local guides is too important for pride, especially if the Maton cannot offer assistance. If they accept to serve as guides we have better chances of finishing this mission with no deaths. If they agree to join us, we can leave with something to show for it the following heartbeat. If they refuse we lose nothing." I rebutted gently.

She had the decency of looking ashamed but did not respond.

"Who will approach them for parley if we do manage to corner them? What do we do afterwards if they agree to serve as guides?" Eadon asked after 5 heartbeats of silence.

"I will do so unarmed, if they agree we tell them of our mission and depending on their answers and knowledge we continue the mission or leave. I will accept no argument on this, we need assistance so we will grant them the chance to feel mighty and bear the indignity."

The three fools did not speak despite each of them wishing to protest. It continued for sixty heartbeats.

"What should we order our Wings and the Vanguards knowing their instincts do not match our foe?" Curana was the first to break the silence.

I turned towards her and addressed both Wing Leaders, they were to my left.

"The wings will divide in groups of 5 or 6, I leave their exact organization to you. Two warriors of each group are to constantly watch their backs for ambushes or unusual things, the rest are to focus on providing firing support and assistance to the two remaining scouts. If any possess the skill have them coordinate with other squads." My order given I then I turned towards the Vanguard Leader to my right.

"Vanguards are to divide themselves in 4 groups. One is to represent half of them, the other 3 will be divided equally among the remaining. First group is to be the largest, they will take the front and corral our targets. Groups two and three will serve as protection for the Wings, last group will respond to threats."

I then addressed all of them

"You three will do your best to avoid combat, your duty now is coordination, not glory."

The meeting ended. The maton were ignoring us and our attempts to gently ask for assistance. I had to make one of the fools trying to be forceful with them slap himself till he lost a tooth then apologize to the machine. I forbid him from growing it back until we reached home unless he wanted to find out what it feels like to have each individually extracted, multiple times.

His commander grew it for him unprompted when I was not looking. I was proud of the fool that did so and it reaffirmed my decision to take him on as an apprentice. He will regret doing so then.

There were no other incidents as we pursued our charges. They did not run far.

I wish they did, we might have had a chance at life otherwise.

What we saw was the picture of a master instructing his pupils. I had been a part of such lectures both as master and a student.

The master sat down and still and sang of the accomplishments and failures of his charge as said charges then accepted them and wrote them upon their very souls, one sword stroke at the time.

They were standing. Each sword stroke was both a character and a kata.

It was not a normal lesson however, or at least one would not consider it so if they knew who gave it.

The Chosen of the Bloody Handed God did not do such lessons, they learned as they killed, each stroke of their swords a new lesson, either gleamed from the blood of their victims or their own, or at least that's what I thought until today. I was obviously wrong because if any saw such lessons as that which I was witnessing now, then they did not survive to warn the rest of the empire of their existence.

My warriors knelt at my command as we saw the pupils of the Voice of Khaine listen to the wisdom of their master.

The two fools were brought to kneel by their own common uncle to prevent their stupidity from killing the rest of us.

I could feel where the shot of the scout hit, the Masters' face yet glowed but now the mask showed an expression I did not wish to know gods other than Cegorach could show. The Mask of Khaine smiled, its teeth the still burning plasma that my subordinate fired upon it as it tried to parley.

A chosen of Khaine, one of his own Masks asked for parley and we shot it.

Cegorach nor any of his followers could have invented such a play, the absurdity of such thing impossible to even comprehend, let alone accept as fiction, let alone reality. But reality did not care for what we believed it should be, it simply was.

'We are dead, the entire world is dead, if we don't find a way to atone or redirect its wrath our craftworld is dead too.' I thought numbly.

The Master continued to sing, I did not know the Mask of Khaine could contort into something other than hate and shouts but now I could hear it sing.

Song was the birthright of all Eldar, the one true universal constant that even the gods' decrees were forced to bend around. It seems even the followers of the Bloody Handed God did not hesitate to bend divine mandate to continue being able to sing. It was just that they did not let anyone survive to speak of it.

It did not sing with words it sang with the murder of the soul, the murder of our targets.

We were sent here for two individuals, two souls, one a blessed healer that our farseer claimed would be able to return those stuck as spirit-stones back to life if properly nurtured, for some reason believing that such a gift would be of great use. You didn't need a healer for that.

The other he claimed would one day be his peer, a fellow farseer, the second our craftworld would see. He claimed he could see the ripples of his future covering his own past, each attempt at divining their future showing the life of another.

The two were siblings, the two were meant to be on this world, the two were dead. The Mask of Khaine spoke in their deaths to us as it transferred knowledge of his charges' inadequacies through the memory of their days. It would show the memory, then kill it with profane precision until the memory of the words the two young souls spoke the words the master wished to convey to his pupils.

The Masks of Khaine could not speak without others dying, their very words murdered that which could hear them but the one before me had found a foul way around it.

'Kill someone then have their dying screams speak what you mean to say afterwards.'

It was ingenious, it was obscene, it was the most holy way to praise the Bloody Handed God when even your speech was the result of murder and others could hear to appreciate it. Doubly so when you could use it to sing.

A day of relaxation, the chance of an older brother to teach the younger one how to swim turned into the grim recollection of their 22nd​ victim and her songs of sorrow as she cried at the death of the son they had also killed.

It spoke in prideful tones of another one, the memory of one child learning to read physical characters describing how their Master was proud they did not need to hide as they killed their next target.

The three were one, they were triplets, the favored scions of the Mask of Khaine and his apprentices in the worship of murder and dealing death.

I could hear whimpers, my soul felt the world around me. The Mark of Khaine was slowly starting to appear across the city, it was painted by the locations the Mask of Khaine described in his charges murders. The air slowly gained a dark tint as the mark started to slowly attempt to form into reality.

It talked of how it was disappointed in them. It could not kill, lest his charges fail their training assignment, it spoke of our meeting and of the foes his apprentices now faced.

The first question was asked, did they accept failure? Will he have to kill in their name? It was willing to accept divine punishment for the sabotage.

The three who were one remained silent as their learning dance continued. I spoke before they could doom us.

"We accept the parley that was offered and apologize for the tardy response, we agree to offer our swords and my soul so that they may accept to resume their peaceful passage."

My fools used their psychic abilities and planted all their weapons in two straight lines with space enough for multiple Eldar to pass through, they did not reach it but pointed towards the Webway gate.

The mask retorted in amusement. A foolish offer, useless weapons of the craven, a meaningless soul. The memory murdered to create speech spoke of the death of an older sister.

"We accept. You will keep your life and soul in exchange for guaranteeing we are not bothered." One of the bodies of the three souled mind said. The dancing stopped.

It offered mercy, we could smell disappointment. Both smelled like piss.

"I thank you for your generosity." I said as I knelt.

My troops rose, I was the last to do so.

Weapons were reclaimed by hand and we walked back towards the Webway gate. The city continued to burn as it did before we reached it, the Mark of Khaine receded fully as we reached the Webway gate.

The triple bodied mind stopped just before entering it and stopped. They knelt at the entrance. They awaited for their master to leave first.

Their master did not, instead it headed towards one of my scouts.

The Mask of Khaine approached the fool who had shot him. His smile yet glowed of plasma. My warrior stood unmoving and looked at her murderer. It put a red hand upon her face plate.

It left a red imprint. She continued to stay standing.

The mask left her there and entered the Webway, its apprentices followed. She yet lived.

"Thank the gods we live."

I do not know who said it but I agreed and did so, fervently so in fact.

~~~~~~~~

Craftworlds started as the domain of trade princes and princesses. They objected to the creation of the Maton, the abandonment of money and tradition for leisure and free access to that which those that received it did not work for. They tried to prevent it, they failed miserably so they took their slaves and servants on grand ships too large for even the Webway to easily accommodate and left.

They were mocked mercilessly for one hundred generations for their stupidity. The trade princes eventually died, the descendants of their servants and slaves ruled the moon sized ships they created. They created the same system they had left from, only without the Maton to serve them.

They also were now forced to trade their skills in war and the materials they could mine to 'lesser species' in order to pay for passage and good will.

Their technology was less advanced, their psychic arts less refined, with them having to start back from near zero as servants and slaves were not on the top of the list to receiving the legacy of our people.

To be a Craftworlder was to be the laughing stock of the Empire, for even the Exodites have chosen their fate knowing fully well what it entailed and still stuck to it, stubbornness their one trait the rest of the Empire admired and respected. The Craftworlders failed in keeping to their own promises of living in the misery of their own creation.

Some even ran from them to join the worlds of the Empire or the Exodites.

This only fueled the endless fountain of mockery they were receiving, and now with my final act I had created one more grain of sand upon the monumental heap of insults given to those born in the failed dreams of failed princes.

Fooling the craftworlders was easy but expensive, a perfect metaphor to their own current existence. We had prepared what days to sacrifice of my memory in advance. We made copies kept by my siblings, and they would be returned once we reached safety.

Each cut I placed on myself hurt still despite the future promising healing. The present did not provide such luxuries.

My skin was flaky and dark, my veins a deep glowing red. I am unsure if I still had eyes, as I was not using them to see, I was not using muscles to walk for the same reasons either.

I am a Whisper of Khaine at best, the first step towards his murder priesthood and perhaps the chance of greater boons. I pretended to be on the last step. This has consequences I now pay for in full. I didn't care, it was a price well paid for freedom.

My siblings wept for my sacrifice, blaming their own inadequacy for my suffering as we ran while trying to find some safe space across the rainbow.

I laughed in joy that they did not need to experience it.

We had our freedom, now it was the time to enjoy it.