Chapter 11:

Chapter 11: The new world comes with new dangers.


We have eventually settled on a world to take as temporary refuge. It was not a decision made because the world was an actually suitable place to be. It was too deep in the Empire. It wasn't just that I couldn't run anymore, I had one more day of running left in me thanks to my injuries. They will heal, I just need rest.

'All oaths fulfilled.' the memory came unbidden. It tasted of regret and hope.

I promised my siblings that we were to be eating cake on their birthday as we reached safety. Their birthday was to start in one hour. I would not be made a liar and an oathbreaker. The craftworlders don't count, to mock and deceive them is educational, a civic duty the entirety of the Empire has taken upon itself in order to help them learn I had found.

They were poor students I would also find, and so the lessons must be applied regularly. The empire was very enthusiastic to provide a learning opportunity on fools as nothing made Eldar happier than finding fools bigger than themselves and mocking them for it and if the others were Eldar then that only made them even happier.

We settled on a world whose name changed depending on the language, each language spoken by its inhabitants called this world in different sounds and meanings for it represented something different for all who beheld it.

For us it was a temporary stop point to rest and recover so in order to keep up with tradition we called it Staseashsolanu, for it is a lovely place and deserves the consideration.

My siblings gained the protection of the Maton the moment we set foot on it and gained access to the same maps we had back on our birth world. I gained the attention of a red colored Maton taller than two Eldar combined and its Eldar comrades meant to safeguard the Webway gate.

"You escaped much young one." One of the eldar, a woman with the prettiest face I have seen in two lives and long green hair that reached the middle of her spine, told me. She spoke in the common eldar tongue.

I nodded, my armor kept most of my condition from outsiders but my siblings and I had devised a way to avoid suspicion. We broke it, chips and cuts in the armor that reminded one more of a violent beast's violations upon the unwary graced all of our otherwise blank armors.

Mine was the worst and thus it seeped with the Murderous intent of Khaine.

It was suspicious, it was shoddy, it was again so obviously a deception that it looped back to being believable. Any madmen followers of the Bloody Handed God capable of actually creating such energies that suffused me and ravaged my body would not need to bother with any deception.

The Masks of Khaine ended worlds, they did not send Orphans and their older siblings to scout.

And so the eldar guardians and the Maton assisting them decided to focus on the least likely explanation, that said children and their older brother survived near a clash between a Mask of Khaine and its victims, said older brother taking the brunt of the damage themselves to protect his still child siblings.

And yes, victims not foes, for the Masks of Khaine have no foes, only victims to their depredations.

The cuts did not look right, they were purposefully made not to, the energy seeping from me, a poison that felt partially self-inflicted. It did not matter, the Maton confirmed my age and I was not even sixty years old.

I could not have normally created what happened to me and those that did would not do so as part of a scheme.

The strangeness was an unimportant backdrop to the portents I brought.

"Craftworlders and fools, to repeat myself in both retelling and their description, have angered a Mask of Khaine. A hero dressed in red and blue painted a smile upon the mask of Divinity and it had learned to sing. We ran before its mark touched us." I said.

My siblings stood behind me, pretending to cower behind their adult brother and not brandish guns, we destroyed our swords and scabbards to sell the story. Dileath mimed the making of an oath to stay away from swords for a lifetime.

"Masks that can sing…" Was her dry reply. She looked unimpressed as if we were hiding something.

She believed us I figured. If she didn't, she would not have offered to be serving us a meal in her own home to try and calm us down, nor left us leave to anywhere but an interrogation dungeon.

She thought we were hiding something, but whatever she believed we were hiding was something that would provide clarity to our situation and help her world, not incriminate us. And so she took us through lively but non-fluid or screams covered streets to give us a hot meal.

I made sure we did not need to either hide our flinching nor exaggerate it as we moved in the open. Each attention placed on us as uncomfortable and unwanted as a Shurkien strike and made us feel even less safe than if we were threatened by one.

The walk through crowded streets is not meant to be safe, not when the crowds were Eldar. But safe it was under the watchful eyes of one of the Guardians of this world.

I saw some onlookers look at us in fear and some in pity. The worst were the ones filled with compassion and empathy for a quartet of lost young souls and wishing them well. I had seen chefs give that look to what they called meals. Said meals had more in common with us than what rested inside our backpacks. It still moved as their clients ate too.

They searched them, our backpacks, they were very polite and a bit dismayed at what they found. Food bricks with only the barest of flavor, a nutripaste synthesizer made to feed the newly born and the very young, its life giving liquid red as opposed to white.

They asked me why red, I whimpered and remembered, they didn't want me to answer them in speech afterwards.

They looked upon our trinkets, they stopped at a cylinder each of us had but had never used. They asked us what it is.

I unclasped mine and a red light came from it as it floated and illuminated the gray wall of wraithbone in front of it in a single point of red light. Machine and flesh looked at it in curiosity. The Eldar wished to ask what purpose it served but I answered before they could vocalize it.

"It keeps fools distracted." I replied my voice as serious as a grave.

I was very serious in its purpose, as red narrow points of light had no other source in our world, except perhaps the Maton. It would keep the new experience junkies distracted for precious heartbeats, and we could maybe even trade it as a novel experience if we were cornered.

The Eldar laughed believing it to be a joke and the guardian now escorting us into her home told me that it had earned us a warm meal. They made no comments on the cakes each of us held at the bottom, we told them my siblings fiftieth birthday approached and we wished for a quiet celebration among ourselves only, they put them back once they finished checking and apologized.

We reached her home. It was quaint by the standards of the empire. It was three stories tall and white, red flowers that grew on purple barbed vines snaked throughout its surface. There were painted flowers as well as living ones, but the painted ones were done so well it was difficult even for Eldar to see if they were not moving.

The Door was made of Silver.

She opened it wide with a short song and welcomed us inside.

"Please follow me to the kitchen, my husband and youngest are home. I'm sure they would love to meet you." She said in a singsong tone, happy to be home.

She had us stay at a white table and dark chairs. She started to cook as we stared in silence and looked at each other then my siblings turned to me as one.

'What now?' My siblings asked me through the body language or our battle-cant.

'We wait and gather information.' I responded plainly.

We couldn't do anything but that. The guardian was friendly and from the way she moved through the streets respected but not feared. The onlookers on the streets all looked at us with different emotions but they all turned to confidence and kindness when they saw her.

They trusted her and thought we were in good hands.

We continued to wait, a man whose hair was as silver as mine but eyes red as opposed to my grey one looked upon us. We tensed, he went to help his wife with her cooking.

"My love you return to grace our home with laughter and sobriety."

"I do, my verdant forest."

"And what of my youngest my shield, won't he join us to greet our guests?"

"He sleeps, he helped his nephew and daughter of Lillea to relearn how to walk again, today marking his fifth uninterrupted day of doing so as they both first learned to walk with their gifts and not their muscles and our boy helped the two learn the difference between the two."

"Their mothers must have been very distraught!"

Their conversation continued as my siblings started to become more agitated, the scene remembering us of too many such scenes we have seen throughout our childhoods. The guests rarely lived to leave and those that continued to live left with their heads attached to the bodies of their hosts to serve as clothing.

I tried to calm them.

"They are not cultists, they are trying to calm us down." I sent to them through our soul.

They just tried to hide it better, their souls believed me, their bodies did not, instinct ingrained from decades of looking upon horrors and more than a month of living among them.

I am unsure if our hosts noticed.

They finished preparing the meal, I looked upon their work and tasted it with the sense of my soul. I had looked at them with a keen eye as they prepared it and inspected each ingredient as it was added and combined. It was probably rude but they did not question it. If anything once they noticed what I was doing they started adding little flourishes to their movements.

It did not help my anxiety, nor that of my siblings.

The meal was served, a thick stew of vegetables and three types of meat. None of it smelled like Eldar.

I took a taste with my spoon, my siblings waiting for me to do so first, my condition making me far more sensitive to poisons and strange tastes. Meat and vegetables I have never tasted before met my tongue.

My siblings waited for my signal. If I was to give it too soon they would know I was compromised and shoot our way to safety, too late and it was not me that was giving it and they would avenge me.

I waited for two and a half heartbeats before nodding. My siblings started to cautiously eat as well.

~~~~~~

My foolish wife brought strays into our home.

I looked over the four all but feral younglings as the younger three waited for the eldest to give the signal that it is safe.

'As if these younglings could detect any poison I would put in their meals.' I thought in indignation.

Indignation that I sent to my wife.

"I demand an explanation." I sang, our souls in a choir only we could hear and feel.

"You need not move from your perch my lovely stone statue, the four have just come with an interesting story and I am trying to loosen their tongues with warmth and safety so that I may learn what they hide." My foolish wife sang back.

A stone statue, a term of the world with a thousand names to describe men that have decided to guard their homes in eternity used with both derision and affection.

I know what it means to lose ones home then spend centuries without any to call your own. I have moved through places I long to forget and ate things best left unremembered before meeting my love. The warp, the gods and not even the Phoenix King will get me to move from the home we have built together and if I am to die, I die here or wherever I can to ensure my family are safe.

"The four are all but willing to shoot us, the eldest ready to sacrifice his life and his younger siblings torn between avenging him or making use of his death to escape."

"Oh… I did not realize they were that bad, the oldest of them seemed quite well put together."

'He has to be woman, his siblings look up to him and he after them.' I thought in irritation but did not send it to her.

Some things are better left unsaid even if I cannot hide the feeling of irritation I felt.

"The oldest one took that bite like it would be a death pill on an altar. The younger three were not about to thank him for his sacrifice or us for giving it to him. Not from what I was able to get from their street-cant."

"Can you understand their conversation? I cannot do so." My foolish wife tried to change the topic.

"No, there's as many variations of street-cant as there are urchins to speak them, I get the general feeling of their conversation because I know a thousand of them."

She was ecstatic.

"What are they saying? Are they spilling their secrets?" She all but babbled at me as if I held the secrets she sought to find.

"No, I understand only the general emotions of their conversation, their words elude me." I replied annoyed as we too started to eat slowly to not spook our guests.

They still twitched as we ate.

"What are they feeling then? Your lovely wife would be very grateful if you could share with her your secrets, grateful enough to help you pay for your penance to the princess."

I owned a great penance to my liege.

I came to this world 451 years ago as I too escaped from a cult controlled world. I found a world that fought the cults, its princess wise in devising stratagems to reduce the influence of the cults and prevent them from being reinforced with madmen from afar as she and her retinue strangled them slowly.

I swore myself to her as her blade in the dark so that I may take my vengeance on those who had wronged me. I have done so for 300 years.

On the 301st​ year of my servitude I have come on a night under a starlit sky and asked for leave to marry.

Her anger was mighty and the stars dimmed from white to red under her wrath as I remained kneeling.

'Deceiver, monster, broken blade, FOOL! You promised yourself to me as my blade in the dark! If I knew you were a family man I would have refused and told you to marry. Penance! You must pay for the 300 years you have deceived me for you buffoon.

No it is not you that is a buffoon but me, cause I sent a family man to missions that should have gone to a blade! Five of them, FIVE YOU FOOL so you can remember! Five children for each century of lies and hidden humiliation you owe my world.

You have made a fool of me, of my mother and grandmother for they taught me well to spot fools and make use of my blades and that there are missions only a blade should do and you have done them even though you are not!

Leave! Leave you arms and armor, your oaths and you clothes, your pride and your dignity and feel a thousandth of the humiliations you have given me each day of your service for 300 years!'


Were the words she told me that night as I once again obeyed her orders. She remains my liege, my oaths reinforced each time I bring my children to her to coo over and to play with her own.

Now, 150 years later I still have 200 more years to atone for.

I returned to the conversation with my wife about our guests.

"The three are blood bound to each other, triplets most likely, they speak among themselves in sibling-cant. The older one is not related but loves them much and they have lived together. They look up to him for even as they are scared he tries to calm them down. Their souls' trust fights the fear of their muscles. I cannot tell anything more than that."

"So only three of them are siblings?" She asked.

I could feel my left eyebrow twitch. That was not what I said. I sent further annoyance through our bond.

"I didn't say that, the younger three are not related by blood to the older fourth, they are still siblings." I replied.

She sang me a song that smelled of a kiss and tasted of love.

We turned from the music of our soul to physical conversation with our guests.

Our bowls were half empty already.

"May I know your names honored guests?" I asked the three.

The four looked at each other. The oldest once again took lead.

"I am Bessar, I thank you for the meal and for letting us into your lovely home. I could see that the flowers outside were made with love."

I nodded at that, the young man was polite. It will serve him well.

I was quite proud of my work on the flowers.

"My siblings are from oldest to youngest: Guraith, Marsa, Aesan." The polite young man continued and pointed to each of his siblings that stood to his right.

Half names and the ones they used for each other but not the full ones. I used to give the same.

"I am Scarn Laddon*, I believe you have met Gua Bis, my lovely wife, albeit I doubt she had introduced herself properly as she always forgets to do so. I apologize for not introducing my youngest for he rests now and it would not do to introduce him to those he cannot see. He is tired and won't be joining us for lunch."

The four relaxed by a fraction and my wife swooned as I started making progress.

All they need is greater shows of trust than they offer. They shouldn't be too large lest they grow suspicious but be noticeable enough that they are unmistakable for anything but an attempt at mending distance and creating bonds of trust. They aren't the only ones I've helped with such.

My wife makes a habit of helping traumatized newcomers and placing her work on my shoulders.

I love her for it and so much more.


AN: Welcome to what I like to call the proper first chapter. No we have not moved to another reality. I have decided to explore and expand on Imperial Eldar culture that isn't just the cults and for that I need a world that still somewhat functions. Thankfully those still exist somewhat, even if they are not free of the cults.

Scarn Laddon= scáth dílis → stalwart shadow
Gua Bis= guth binn → sweet voice.