Chapter 89:

Chapter 89: Lullabies are meant to put you to sleep.





The event is forever ingrained into my mind, I can feel it like the midday sun that shines over a cloudy day, always there and even if it can't be clearly be seen it's effects and presence are unmistakable.

It is the day I first saw the Divine, the day my new life begun under the employment of Bessar Agail and a day that has defined itself so deeply in my mind and soul that I cannot think of my life as anything but before and after it.

A council of divines looked upon two dancing ships. A demonic Warrior of red flaming skin and hair whose Darkness twists reality and its twin brother who was a Golden phoenix of radiant Light discussed on the nature of Mercy. Three ladies, one made out of Dreams and Starlight, another of Bones and Death, and another of Nature and Motherly Love gossiped on the nature of Love and Family. A man of a thousand masks that laughed and cried in a thousand different ways and another being of shadows and secrets debated the nature of Truth.

All of them stopped and watched in fascination as the wife of the demonic warrior and the golden phoenix, itself a noble vulture, stopped its own daughter from crying by giving her a toy to dance with, and that toy was Bessar Agail.

A comment, four words had forever etched themselves into my mind

'We still love you.' The mother of the crying child whispered and did so in a way none but themselves should have heard, but I and one other did.

We shouldn't have been able to hear it, not even the man through which it was spoken through could have heard it, but the two of us were made part of the audience of two plays and due to our seating were entitled to see both.

The dance, the endless dance of mortal and divine continued, now in another form, a new one too, for the Golden Phoenix looked upon the performance and muttered.

'An interesting idea, one that should have come to others far sooner.'

'The result of mercy.' its brother answered boisterously to the agreement of the Pantheon.

The Pantheon turned, it turned towards an abomination my mind refused to acknowledge as cognizance ended and only the present remained.

I was singing a lullaby of darkness to small birds who were ill. I felt the notes leave my throat gently and travel across time and space until they found one of the small birds whose skin and flesh and bone was infested with parasites. My throat was hoarse now for I have been singing this lullaby for hours.

I sang it to sleep with the gentleness a father holds for his baby son and its skin softened as it relaxed under my song and slowly its bones cracked, it's flesh melted and its wings separated from its body as the poor creature was put out of its misery.

My throat hurt, my eyes bled and my skin was numb.

"That's enough my navigator." The song of despair whispered into my mind.

I was no longer the bird of prey who put down its diseased kin with a song, I was an Eldar looking over the tactical map.

"There's no more ships in hiding." I observed.

The phantom pain was gone, I could no longer feel it, but my mind did not allow itself to forget the fact that it and the body should hurt.

That was the sixth ship we broke with the priest's strange ability to kill off Wraithbone. I could see that the ship was scattering into pieces after his ability killed off the wraithbone in the mast, thus cutting off the wings of the ships and separating the ship from it's only propulsion method. This ship, like the rest the lullaby killed, split in two and its systems stopped responding as cracks spread through it's hull that removed the atmosphere and all systems stopped running due to a lack of power.

"The two of you overestimated their competency and I underestimated their ability to think." The priest observed in amusement.

I can feel his soul as we are now, pilot and ship, I can feel the creeping feeling of despair that sits at his core and colors his thoughts, I could feel his thinking and the echo of what his body feels. I should be looking at a man screaming in fear and pain and yet all I see in the dream-reality is a tired man looking in amusement and pride at a job well done.

The only times when the mask is broken is when he interacts with the mathematics of relativity and his mind and soul recoils from them as if they are acid and for a single heartbeat I can feel the terror resurface, only to have itself be eagerly hidden away by the great wave that is Bessar Agail.

"I suppose we did." I admitted without shame.

The fleet would have either broken off by now or found us, but instead the enemy fleet lost cohesion and the hidden ships stopped hiding after the third ship was lost.

Most captains and crews in the fleet would have felt fear at the prospect of facing 36-to-1 odds but we've already turned what should have been an ambush on us into something approaching a civil war.

"Twenty-nine ships now." Bessar laughed.

Two of the ships started firing on each other and the rest of the fleet shot on the bigger one to my surprise.

"The cult turned on its leadership." A third voice interjected from outside the dream.

I stopped dreaming and rose. My eyes were blurry, my limbs numb from hours of light use and my back felt too light compared to what it knew it should have experienced. My body was a contradiction of tiredness and rested where parts that felt the phantom pains of tiredness clashed with the parts of my body that have never felt more refreshed.

I knew the exercises needed to dispel this sensation from experience and started doing them as the ship continued its lesson.

"Unsurprising truly, cults are not a military or para-military but something less. They are an organization of individuals brought under a common ideal or the threat of force and community into serving a specific ideal. Those ships are more than ships to them, they are communities, families, siblings, friends and rivals and a sixth of them died without even being able to spot the one who did it or how. Them turning on their leadership was expected and the only thing that wasn't was that it happened so fast." The teacher explained.

The younger priestess nodded at this and I could feel both of them turning at me as I brought my body in harmony with itself.

"Training exercises, the dream reality stimulates various parts of the body in different ways depending on how the ship's systems are used and certain parts of my body are feeling phantom tiredness and others aren't. I need to make them feel the same to stop the sensation." I explained as I stretched backwards and my body contorted into a circle.

"That is not what we wanted to know, you have a question you wish to ask and its presence looms over you like a cloud of screaming blades." Laciena Fiora asked.

I should probably not be using her full name in my mind, for both of us had experienced the same thing as we watched upon the play of Divinity, but despite she being the reason I am on this ship we have barely talked to one another.

"Why are they here?" I asked simply.

The song of our people made my thoughts difficult to hide, but the two priests both seemed to hear out of it more than I could. I imagine it is something trained, but even the junior one who learned to hear it at the same time as me can seemingly hear more than me.

All I felt from the two of them was curiosity unless I directly interacted with their souls, but I was like an open book to them as for some reason their ears could hear better than mine.

"To hunt me most likely." The man replied.

I did not need to hear their song to know both of them were laughing at that and my eyes narrowed and breath hissed out of my body.

"Why exactly are they hunting you down?" I asked again.

"What do you know of the current conflict in the Empire?" The ship asked back.

My irritation tried to rise but I crushed it down with the efficiency of habit. The seers enjoy to dance around questions and take you far, far way from where you wished to go with their words as they meandered away from any useful information. My current employer liked dancing around the questions you ask of him too, but unlike the seers he wishes to dance towards the answer by taking a more scenic route as opposed to making you drop the question.

It is an annoying thing when you want answers now, but unlike the seers he actually likes answering your questions, he just also likes taking his time doing it and teach you more while at it.

"Little, I know that there is some sort of conflict around worlds caused by Cegorach but little beyond that as I've heard far too many contradictory tales to tell for sure." I answered.

There's too much rumor to know more, not that I can be bothered to care. The Empire can burn for all I care and I know I am not alone in my opinion on this.

The Empire mocks us, it's people hunt ours and the deranged lunatics do not see as their society crumbles around them for they are too busy reveling in it as the psy-automata try and fail to keep up with the decay.

"Less than I was expecting, but such is fine, for it means there are less things to unlearn. The current conflict started when the priesthood of the New Divine decided to raid the Tomb of a Senior Scribe of Hoeth, which is incidentally also my current rank in said priesthood. We've retaliated and burned thousands of worlds for the offense and hundreds of others joined our cause to teach the sacrilegious bastards the consequences of their actions. This is the first phase on the conflict, the second is a bit more complicated to explain."

I should have probably felt bad for the many that died in it, I imagine many back on Anaen would have been horrified at the thought of thousands of inhabited worlds dying but I do not care for them. I know they would laugh at my home's demise and so the greatest dignity I could afford them is not doing the same.

It's more than they deserve.

"Complicated as in why is Cegorach and his priesthood involved in it?"

"Yes actually. For most of the Empire Hoeth is an old mask of Cegorach's, one where he used to be an elderly man meant to teach the young and humble fools from his White Tower to which most went at least once in their life in the search for Wisdom, which is similar enough to what his priesthood do now only they laugh at you while you do it and mock you when you don't. This is where the complicated part starts…" He said as he trailed off.

"There is a priesthood of Hoeth and one of Cegorach, yet both are active, both claim to follow their god which are real and judging by the way you say it is complicated I would assume one of you claim the two are not the same, and it's not the troupes of Cegorach."

"Incorrect actually. Both of us claim to serve different Gods and we claim that Cegorach is the Son of Hoeth and the actual New Divine, while the one currently gestating has stolen his place and crib to be born in and Hoeth had to kill himself and turn his own flesh into a crib for the young boy and now Cegorach seeks revenge on the creature that took his father from him and pretends to be Eldar."

I had to stop the exercises as I took that in… that makes absolutely no sense to me, unless Cegorach is playing some sort of prank as that actually made sense.

"Cegorach is playing a prank." I claimed.

The two priests of a maybe-dead divine that may or may not have ever existed nodded in amusement. I don't know how a giant ship core nodded as it did not move in any way physically but I could feel it do so.

"Yes, the Divine are aware of the Abomination gestating in the subconsciousness of the Empire and they've done what they could to ensure it dies or it turns useful before it dies for good and they've decided to recognize the Priesthood of Hoeth as not only distinct from that of Cegorach but to separate the identity of Cegorach from that of Hoeth. Now, depending on how one sees it they could see it as merely the conflict between two divines, or the revenge story of a scorned youth or in many other ways that would end up with the Abomination scorned, killed off for good or no longer Eldar but a parasite.

The two of us are assets in the order that seeks to manipulate reality into making the story that Hoeth and Cegorach are two distinct entities as the only truth, that Hoeth is the older of the two and that Cegorach was unjustly wronged by a parasite pretending to be Eldar but isn't and thus should be killed for it."

I considered his words but it felt like if he was hiding something, but this also didn't explain why he specifically was hunted.

No matter how pitiful the enemy fleet which now numbers twenty-six ships is, thirty-six ships is no small force to send after someone, but it is also not the type of force you send after an existential threat, not by any faction of the Empire that is.

"This is interesting but it does not explain why these ships are here for you specifically."

"You know there are things I am hiding, are you not curious as to why or what that is?"

I could feel his curiosity war with his amusement and even the younger woman fought a similar battle.

"No. You like answering questions, I can feel it in your song that you like answering my questions, as such I will treat you going around my questions and hiding things as me being better off not knowing."

My instincts were also screaming at me, not that it was dangerous, but that it was something I was better off not bothering with, like my father's attempts to teach me pottery, or my mother's attempts to get me to paint.

I cared nothing for that, and the same instincts that steered me away from that, did the same here.

There was an undercurrent of uncertainty coming from Laciena Fiora but it was quickly gone. I did not have time to focus on that as the Senior Scribe started speaking again.

"That is true enough I suppose, as to why these ships were here for me specifically, I would assume that's all the True Priesthood of the New Divine can afford to send after me as they currently have to deal with a vengeful Divine I sicced on them after they broke our deal to leave me alone for a bit while I pursued a project of common interest I can't say much about. All I can say was that the insult was so great I decided to reveal a secret the Vermin Priests have kept from the Goddess and that made her hostile to them and their interests. "

"What secret?"

I should probably not ask that, but the sense of curiosity I felt burning in my mind compelled me to.

"The secret that almost nobody has ever loved her, that the only reason anyone would ever love her is because she is useful to their plans and can help them satisfy their desires and I revealed such because they dared interrupt one of my lessons with their asinine meddling by cordially inviting me to a meeting. Such an insult could not be allowed to stand and so I had them be hunted by their own Divine."

I did a double take at that, for his words made no sense but then I remembered the two priest's words 'Priests are built different.' and took in my two experiences with them. For priests to sleep is to put yourself and those around you in great peril and to sing a sweet lullaby to kill them, so perhaps for them sending a cordial invitation is an insult or even a death threat.

I also made a mental note to never interrupt one of his lessons, if he decided to start an Empire wide war for that I would rather not find out what he would do to me.

There was something else niggling at my thought about his previous comment when he called them 'True' Priesthood as if there is a False one.

"What is the True Priesthood? And how do you tell a true priest from a false one?"

"Sit down on the chair, I'll explain when you are comfortable and when I'm done explaining it we'll go hunt the vermin down as it seems they've reached below the threshold they can break through my shields by now." He instructed and I obeyed.

The chairs themselves were something between a pilots chair and a bed where they were one solid pieces of wraithbone one could comfortably sit in with a soft exterior that made it far more comfortable than one would expect but I knew a pilots' chair when I saw it and this thing was not it.

It could act the same as one and allowed one access to the same kind of information if asleep or awake. No other Eldar pilot seat I've been in had a visual interface for the one in them to see the information if they wished it, as all of them transmitted the information directly to the mind. All of them but this one, where if you wished to view the information awake you had to use a visual aid, and if you wished to see the information the normal way you had to sleep.

Just one more strange way that imperial priests handled things.

"All priests, be they True or Pretender are individuals who are learned on the nature of the Divine and seek to emulate some aspect of it. The main difference between Pretender Priests and True Priests of the Pantheon is that True Priests can act in their interests, they can commune with the Divine and understand their wants and needs as well as that of the people and serve as the Bridge between the two, as well as do so consistently enough that they are empowered by it as the echo of their past actions carries them forth into the future.

Pretender Priests are either incapable of this consistency, lack the mental faculties to serve as the link between the two or are incapable of understanding Mortals or the Divine and are thus incapable of serving as the way the two can understand one another."

That made little sense to me, but I do lack a lot of the background knowledge needed to understand why any of that is important and it does not seem that important, especially as I do not want to ever have to deal with the Divine.

One experience was enough for me to understand that there are types of danger I do not care for and Divinity is for now the single way I do not want to get involved with.

I nodded to signal that I listened to his lesson and prepared to take my duty as pilot and navigator once again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What is Truth and what is a Lie? This is a question that has plagued eldar philosophers for as long as there have been any to be bothered by it.

Each has managed to twist logic and language until it fit whatever they wished, to the confusion of everyone but themselves, but the priests had managed to settle on a simple definition. Truth is that which is real, while Lies are that which exist that contain more than that.

Nobody else seems to agree with us on that matter assuming they've given the subject any thought and I myself am unconvinced by it in certain regards, but it explains my position as a deniable asset to the Pantheon.

I act in a way that allows the Pantheon to pick what is truth, and what is false, I give them ideas, I find loopholes and abuse them and reinterpret the past, future and present all in service of my people and allow my people to reinterpret their place in the galaxy when that is necessary.

The best way to do so is through the principles of Cegorach whose storytelling allows one to reinterpret their situation depending on what they know and more importantly through pranks.

An old saying describes what the gods gave to the Eldar, all but three of them Hoec, Gea and Cegorach.

"When the Eldar first rose from the bosom of the ground, nourished by the tears of Isha, the gods came to them and each offered them a gift. Asuryan, lord of lords, gave the Eldar Wisdom, that they would know themselves. Isha gave the Eldar Love, that they would know one another. Vaul gave the Eldar Artifice, that they would make their dreams a reality. Lileath gave the Eldar Joy, that they would know happiness. Kurnous gave the Eldar Desire, that they would know prosperity. Morai-heg gave the Eldar Foresight, that they would know their place in the world. Khaine gave the Eldar Anger, that they would protect what the gods had given them."

This is so because Gea and Cegorach did not give us much, for Gea convinced the Pantheon what to give to each of us and Cegorach? Cegorach played a prank on us by making us forget that we already had all that the gods have given us, because Cegorach's greatest gift to the Eldar was the ability to reinterpret our situation, the ability to turn defeat into victory and tragedy into comedy.

Hoec on the other hand? He hid all that from the rest of us.

When taking all of that into consideration as well as the nature of truth as the priests think of it, it says that truth can be changed from what once was by simplifying things, by removing details and knowledge and having what was once truth turn into a lie by the fact that the new truth has less information in it.

This fights against my sensibilities and just to think about it makes me ill, but such an illness will be cleansed in the screams of vermin.

My pilot and Younger sister joined me in the war dream as we looked over the date I have managed to gather on the enemy fleets. There are twenty-three of them now spread in three blobs I dare not call formations but that still act like one.

"What are we going to do? We are several hours away from them and if they see us they might reorganize or run." My Younger Sister asked.

I could feel my pilot think the same question but it remained unasked.

"You remember Wraithgates, the small Webway portals for infantry? You are now going to find out why they are a restricted military technology." I informed her.

My Pilot was confused and she saw what I was planning as I was doing so.

"Wraithgates are infantry grade webway portals." She vehemently claimed.

She was correct, but by Law I wasn't just a ship, I was an Eldar warrior and so Wraithgates could still take me towards my enemies.

"Civilian technology relies on Imitation and Emulation and thus allows itself great amounts of grace and refinement over a short period of time, but military technology relies on Obsession and your are correct in your comment that they are fit for infantry, but I am infantry now, more specifically I am an armed warrior that needs to go hunt Vermin."

Wraithgates are the smallest Webway portals used by the Eldar and they aren't that small because someone managed to find a way to connect to a galaxy-wide FTL network with something that can be carried by one man by replicating natural processes. They made them so small by distilling the Obsession of Warriors to move through a portal and reach their foes into a single gem, then gave said Gem to other warriors so they can do just that.

Craftworlder ones required one on each end but Imperial ones just opened a temporary portal to the Webway through which they could move through and then opened another from inside of it at the coordinates you wanted to go through. It could not be used to get into the webway like this as it always made a portal outside of it for you to follow but it was very, very useful in battle even if it could only be used there.

Obsession based warp technology breaks the normal rules of reality and common sense and it is for this reason that they are feared and why Wraithgates are highly restricted. If everyone could know of them or make them, then they could do what I could do now.

I don't understand how the Craftworlders got access to them or something like them, unless the madmen did manage to make something like the Imperial Wraithgates through Emulation, which might explain the reduced capabilities they are aware of compared to what I know they are capable of, but it matters not now for there is vermin left to kill.

The priests of Vaul can argue on how that bit of nonsense is possible, I don't have the time or inclination to do so.

My weapons were primed, my Broadsides glowed hot, my torpedoes were in their tubes and my four sails unfurled and in a Kaleidoscope of Lights I entered much to the shock of my Pilot only to reappear in seconds in the center between my enemies who now surrounded me and were in the perfect range for my weapons.

'The ships were once so beautiful.' I thought with sadness.

They were emulating a bird of prey from our home world, the Stalwart Crimson Faochu, a bird who occupied the same role in our cultures as the human hounds occupied in those of humanity as defenders of the home and hunting companions and the ships reflected that.

On great wings they danced across the void as they turned the power of the Stars into energy and life and despite their low weapon's count I knew that these creatures would have been terrifying to fight in the hands of someone that knew how to use them and respected the great legends after which they were made.

But their masters did not know to appreciate them, they desecrated them with profane imagery and obscene rituals and for that and more they will die.

My pilot ignored her shock and gave me the targeting calculations which I greedily took.

The vermin still fought one another and in their bloodlust and cries did not notice that I was in their midst until it was far too late. A single dual broadside barrage took two ships, one on each side of myself and before the vermin could recover my barrage continued and they were down to twenty ships.

Eighteen.

Sixteen.

Fourteen.

My Pulsars continued to glow how but my enemies now started to return fire and so in a new portal of light I headed and returned away from their weapon's fire.

I was now in the center of one of the Vermin formations, the largest of them that still held six ships and those six ships each died in a torpedo hit and before their former kin could react I was in the second group of four ships.

This bunch of vermin reacted far quicker than the other and their shots actually managed to land on my shield, but to little damage as while they had managed to ignore my holo-fields with their targeting systems, somehow, I had shields that they required at lest twenty of their ships to continuously fire to break and they no longer had that.

They still fought with valor, but their valor would not save them though, for they died to my Pulsars too fast to do anything but despair at their inadequacy.

Each of them died in a single broadside and I turned towards the last of my prey.

The last group was trying to run now, they were heading towards the first world and ran towards it but they were slow, too slow to run even if I didn't use the Wraithgate but I would not be sportsmanlike to Vermin.

The vortex of Light took me and I was once more in their midst and my Pulsar Cannons roared and the vermin died before they could even respond but not before they knew what killed them.

Twenty vermin ships dead, thousands of corpses now flew across the battlefield as I awaited for the next group of vermin to die by my weapons and I could feel my blood lust rise. I felt my Younger Sister's humming calm both me and my pilot down as we surveyed the empty fields of cooling corpses. The enemy was dead, killed by my guns as well as by their own failures.

My sensors bathed the entire system now to search for any hidden threat. No enemy ships were still capable of flight or fight and the last few survivors were crying and begging for mercy as their life support shut down, the air stopped being recycled and the various systems meant to keep one alive in space failed.

Something drew my sight.

Two of the ships I destroyed still had power, one of them still had a power coupling to one of their sails, while the other had their life support intact as they were one of those I sung to death.

The mad pilot of the first ship used his last reserves of oxygen to sail to the second ship and try to connect it to the relatively intact power system it still had. I felt the cries of a Father more than I heard them as the bonesinger tried desperately to keep his own ship running with his own life. As he did this his own son rushed towards him in an attempt to try and save something of their family.

"We should leave." I told my crew.

We were far from normal weapon's range and what most would bother with scouting when considering a different foe. I could easily make them think they got away with it and I merely left, they have no way of knowing otherwise.

"We should kill them." My navigator vehemently denied.

I could feel my Younger Sister wish to agree on it but did not do so. She knew what I wanted to do and knew perfectly well what my heart felt.

The dying man reminded me too much of my father who ripped out his own heart to power the wards protecting me and my siblings from the cults outside and now I see a similar sacrifice happening among vermin. Something too familiar and close to my heart to be anything but divine meddling and if the Divine meddled like this then it meant that they wanted these fools to live.

"We should leave." My Younger Sister said and thus sealed our next course of action.

I nodded in relief as when the crew is divided on a topic than the ship gets the tie-breaker vote and I voted to leave and not think about what just happened.

I now knew what Gea wanted out of me, she wished to use my new form to reunite family, a specific type of family who lives in the same bodies as I do. She wants me to find the nomadic ship-eldar clans and prevent them from becoming like this.

I headed towards the Webway Gate closest to me now through the Void as I thought about how to even the find these clans. I know little of them beyond the fact that they exist and so I'll have to find out more.