Chapter 93:

Chapter 93: Coming closer to the End of a Hunt always feels better than it's Beginning.



I will never get used to the wonder of space. I was born in it, raised in it and groomed for it and yet it never ceased to amaze me whenever I saw those bright lights burning in the void, for each time I saw them it felt as if I saw them again for the first time.

Unfortunately I could not enjoy the beauty of the Void properly for now, as there were chores to do and future husbands to nag.

"I do not understand why are we doing this." I said with annoyance thick in my voice.

We should be running or setting false trails, not go and explain what we are about to do to someone that will sell it to whoever wants to know. My future husband's song was filled with exasperation now as it seems he disagreed with the emotion behind my words.

We were now docking at one of the few stations inside what is soon to be our ex-territory that we did not control to talk to one of the five information brokers inside that we did not manage to silence.

'Would it really be so hard to give these stations more personality? I've rarely seen any that looked even slightly different on the outside, and even then most of it was merely the banner of the prince being a different design.' I whined in the sanctity of my own mind.

Some things are better left unsaid and me whining that stations have an easily learned and predictable design is something I should probably keep to myself.

"I do not need to explain to you of the void created by killing information brokers, but have you considered what those outside of it will do?"

I considered his words, yes we did.

"They'll focus on trying to find out what happened to their old contacts and as they find some and the princes start to talk they will learn of at least four cover stories ranging from death to strange marriage practices and as they search and try to confirm it we will be gone."

Mother should have told him this, and yet she decided to take us here for some reason I cannot imagine.

"Then what?"

"Then it won't be our problem anymore, we'll be gone from here and assuming they want to learn more of us they'll have to find us and that's easier said than done."

It wasn't Camaus that replied, but mother.

"Then we also lose access to our medicine suppliers to save our children if they fail in becoming an adult, as the information brokers beyond our ability to touch will eventually find why we kept raiding and what we did with what we plundered. Outside of the Empire those that can provide us with the needed artifacts are few and far between and can be monitored with few issues. And that's assuming we can even find them after we leave and we can't force those individuals or organizations to provide us what we need or take them with us." She said.

The more she spoke the more I grimaced, we did not think of that when planning, or if someone did they did not tell it to me as we discussed it in our family gatherings.

"I see." I replied.

I did now at least.

The process of becoming a ship is painful and difficult and if one is not careful then their soul and mind will be mutilated to a state worse than death as their souls and bodies lose coherency and the ability to maintain a sense of self.

We are unable to make the medicine needed to survive a failed attempt at Adulthood and so we have to raid and engage in a complex trading scheme to be able to get the materials we can buy said medicine with. Without it most that attempt it will die or face a fate worse than death.

"Yes, and when I explained this to your mother and the Matriarch to not cause panic among the rest of us so did they. It's why we are heading towards Shadowmask, to give them an explanation that we can spread along the communities in the shadows and prevent them from putting the individuals you need to contact for medicine under constant surveillance, or worse put a trap on them to try and capture clan members. If we can't establish a proper answer for what happened they won't stop looking for one."

I sighed in defeat.

We should have planned better, but the Khaine-touched creature scared us too much to think clearly. We planned as to how we can run the fastest and make sure we're the least likely to be found but now we need to make sure nobody is going to try and find us or if they try it won't feel urgent.

"So what are we going to tell this man exactly?"

"Woman actually and not much. We'll tell her this is not a purge, it won't be repeated and that it was a result of a migration on the part of your clan. We don't tell her where we're going to or why unless she can pay well for that information." My husband replied.

Pay us? Pay us what exactly?

"We also have approval from the Matriarch to part with that information if this woman can give us any useful knowledge on our hunter." Mother continued.

My eyes narrowed at my husband, as it seems we would be going to meet someone that would compete with me for his affections. I know very well of the stories and mother told me plenty of times of father having to throw women off him that shared his art or wanted his seed. Harlots always lust after ship captains, be they male or female and its best to keep them from yours.

I could feel my mother's song and she encouraged me on my course of action.

"I am not sharing you with some harlot that happens to share your occupation Camaus, if she tries to hit on you she dies." I declared.

He was looking outside when I told him that and his green eyes turned to me in amusement thinking it some form of joke to diffuse the serious situation we found ourselves in.

It wasn't.

He is to be my future husband and captain, and captains only have one ship and the last thing I need is a commodore or worse an actual admiral to have to fight others for the attention of. He will be my captain and be thankful for it and whoever thinks they can make him be more than that will die.

He looked bemused at least which was good, my husband will always look at his best when he smiles.

"I am not going to just jump on the first woman I see that happens to like secrets Fiochar." He said among pearls of laughter.

"That's not what I am worried about Camaus." I replied.

Father said the same and it was true, it wasn't him that was jumping on women, but them that were hunting him and mother has two sister-wives for it and my gene-line has at least a dozen bastard lines in the Empire because my father had to infiltrate a cult and the cults of Isha liked to mingle and share.

We don't and I am not going to deal with that nonsense if I can help it. My captain will have eyes only for me and whoever tries to change that will be a corpse.

We're now inside the station and I can see the atmospheric distortions created by our passage inside the port.

"I am surprised you know little of him either, as I would expect someone that scary to be well known." Mother observed airily as she changed the topic.

Camaus laughed at this too and I turned towards him and took him in fully. He looked quite fetching in those black pants and loose half-top.

"Unsurprising honestly, there's at least four individuals with that exact name that I am aware of, this Khaine touched, a dead priest whose tomb was raided recently and that caused another religious war inside the Empire, a young prodigy and medicine maker that made a new form of psy-automata and psychic medicine before he even turned 100 years old and cured Craftworld Anaen of some sensory malady and some pirate in the core worlds. There's over seventy people I know of with the name Bessar too, as it seems to be a common name in the middle worlds."

That's a lot of notable people named Bessar. It would be suspicious if I hadn't met seven women and two men with my own name just in the last year.

"Any chance he's one of the other three?" I asked.

I was reaching I knew, but perhaps we had more information on the man hunting us and we did not know.

"Maybe? The priest is dead, on that the rumors are pretty certain and I doubt we're being chased by someone who is not even one hundred years old, but maybe he's a pirate in his spare time?" Camaus joked.

He did not believe that for a second as the Great Wheel is a large enough place for multiple people with the same name to make a name for themselves.

"Could you tell me of those three regardless? They sound like they might be interesting." I asked as we descended.

Camaus liked sharing what secrets he knew, and while some thought that made him a bad information broker that only made him better at it, as people would come to him to squeeze him dry of all he knew and he could control what people knew and how it was told.

"Sure, which one do you want to know about first? I know the most about the prodigy as stories of him circulate the fastest."

"Then tell me of him first."

He proceeded to do so eagerly and I turned half of my attention to his words and the other towards the eldar on station.

The port was the same as all the others, filled with Eldar, with merchants trying to sell or buy things and filled with far too many scantily clad women looking at my man. Thankfully me gripping my sword was enough to stop the harlots from being too obvious about it.

It'll be only the two of us on this mission to not arouse suspicion, but that doesn't mean I just let any woman look at my husband like that. If they want a man like him they can go look for one and dress them like that.

This one is mine and everyone who does not respect that will soon learn why.

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

The Crone of Hospitality and Perseverance is an old station, some actually say it is among the first of its kind to have been brought outside of the Empire to serve as a landmark for traveling armies and groups of travelers, wanderers and miscreants.

Nobody knows for sure, as peering into the past millions of years ago is beyond all but the most skilled and Ancient of Seers and none among them could be bothered to check. But what everyone knows is that its prince is a creature none wish to challenge as all that did died and so even the clan, or The Fleet of Brisea Amada as I was recently told its called, are forced to leave the man be.

It also doesn't help the fact that the man has been a source for stability for 10.000 years and his death or attempt at subjugation would throw most of the nearby systems in disarray and bring the baleful eyes of those that want this stretch of the void to be as peaceful as life outside of the Empire can allow.

The Fleet tried to find who that is but gave up when a box with a small harlequin on a spring was found near the wraithbone core of the Matriarch. That wasn't the worry of my new family right now, but more specifically the name of Bessar Agail and the many strange things related to those that bear that name.

"How is it possible we don't know more of the priest? I can understand not knowing about the medicine maker, but the priest married royalty, someone should know more about him!" My future wife whined as we walked the white hallways of the station that was old before most species of this galaxy learned how to read.

It was uncanny how similar the interior design of this station was compared to the one I have spent most of the last century on. I could almost feel that in three turns I would be back at the old bar and knew that there would await me another.

I'll miss that place, yes it drove me mad with its unchanging nature but it grew on you, like mold and it could become fine cheese or trash depending on how you treated it.

"We truly don't, none of the other brokers I talked with would tell me if they even knew something when I inquired through letters, which might as well have been an admission that they did not know anything about the man." I replied.

Wars happen constantly in the Empire and desecrating the Tomb of a priest is hardly noteworthy as far as events in the empire go, and compared to the reasons the Imperials normally find to go to war with one another it is downright respectable. But marrying into Royalty is noteworthy and yet nobody knows much of the man who managed to marry into the newest royal bloodline of the Eldar on his death bed.

She was frustrated by the answer but I truly had none other to give to her. What happens in the Empire is strange at the best of times and few bother to learn more of it and tell others. It's a wonder so much has even reached me, but I have little doubt that there's a lot of things I'm missing.

The Empire of Ten Million Suns is too large to know everything that happens in it.

"And the medicine maker, do you think his medicine might help us with our issue?" Fiochar asked.

"I don't know, we can check if any merchants are selling any after we meet Shadowmask, but from what I have been told his medicine works on Murder Principles, as it kills foreign contaminants to a body and soul. It does not actually heal as much as it kills whatever tries to infect the soul faster than it kills the soul. "

"So much knowledge and so little of it useful." My love huffed.

"And yet so interesting to know. We are close to Shadowmask's wine-house my love and we've been obvious enough to her that she should be expecting us by now." I replied with a smile.

She and her subordinates were always watching those on the station and to say her name was to invite her attention onto you.

We were in sight of her wine-house now.

The building was an ancient thing of bone covered in greens and reds and blues and a variety of other living things. It was something built before the almost-living curved and shifting architecture of the Empire became what it was today, but long after the Eldar stopped using the harsh architecture of War and Death of the War in Heaven.

It was something built at the transition between our people only knowing to build things that are meant to help one kill and us learning to make buildings that would make one enjoy living.

The guards in their blue and black armor pretended to only notice us now and I nodded at them for it.

Once we were fifty steps from it I plucked five of the blue fruits from the plants on the wine-house and brought them to me. I gave two to Fiochar and I kept three on me.

'Only eat the fruit three steps after we enter the door, give the other to the Guardian on the left.' I sang to my love.

She sang back in agreement.

I was on the left and thus had to give the fruit to the guard on the right.

"Something for your hard work noble warriors."

Both of us gave the fruits to the respective warriors and they took them with grace and let us in. The inside was a beautiful garden filled with tasteful décor, plants, tables and few people. It was beautiful yest, but something I had seen far too many times to think much about.

If you've seen too many breathtaking gardens, eventually they grow dull, but the small waterfall was at least a novel thing as it wasn't here the last time.

'There's too many secret meetings and meaning within meanings in your art.' My love huffed as she ate the fruit.

I sent a burst of agreement and did the same even if I did not fully agree with her, but I could see where she was coming from.

Those who spend too much time among secrets and hidden codes learn to live with them and even find joy in creating such, it came with the territory truly, but it could get grating and the many possible what ifs in regards to asking for a meeting with the woman were too many to count, even if they were useful to make sure that the people coming to speak to you were who they were meant to be.

The Fleet was indulgent of me doing so, but they could not deny my methods worked no matter how they might grumble. For me they are just good fun and an excellent policy.

"Married life has been good to you Camaus Silverblade." A voice said.

It did not come from a physical direction but straight from my head.

I knew where to turn to see the one who has sent it and so I did and turned towards the woman who sang those words.

"The prince truly couldn't even keep a secret for a few days?" I asked the woman in the black dress.

It hasn't even been a week.

She was at her throne she pretended is a normal seat as was looking at me with amusement.

"One would think he would wait a few days before revealing such, or at least give us time to actually get married." My future wife said, her voice thick in annoyance.

"One tends to speak fast when the Armada sends an officer to get you to talk, and you should probably give me a very good reason why I shouldn't just get you to said officer considering he set foot on the station minutes ago."

"T-the Armada?" I stammered.

Even Fiochar was frightened. A Khaine-touched being after us is one thing, the Armada is another.

"Yes, Bessar Agail is a member of the Armada and it seems that your former prince is not a particularly good secret keeper as he spilled far too many things in his presence and now it seems that I am on his itinerary as well, now take a seat and tell me exactly what did you and your new clan do to get the Armada of Ten Million Suns to even notice that you exist, let alone decide to send someone to find you." She ordered.

The entire wine-house pulling out their weapons made it quite clear that this was not a request.

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

The Webway is the most distinct feature of our civilization.

It is a series of tunnels and labyrinths carved into the Warp and capable of protecting its inhabitants from just about anything as long as it stands and as long as its inhabitants are welcome, because the Webway is alive and more of it is being made at any given time by itself as it endlessly grows, and it changes and remakes itself every day.

That being said, there is order in it, there is a way to make sense of it and its inner workings have been categorized and standardized for a given meaning of the word.

There are generally speaking six types of tunnels in the webway, four of them for mortals and two reserved for divinity and while there are some tunnels that do not neatly fit into any of those categories, they are one off freaks of nature more than an actual category in and of themselves and calling them merely as others feels wrong.

There's too many types of them for that to make sense.

Those tunnels reserved for Divinity are reserved for either their Avatars to travel discreetly through or for the Divines properly in all their mighty glory and are kept away from the rest of the Webway by Asuryan's Divine decree.

The other four types are those reserved for the military and civilians, with each having one reserved for Eldar and another for our ships and other pieces of infrastructure and while there are some hybrid tunnels meant to service both eldar and voidship scale pieces of infrastructure the military and civilian tunnels are kept entirely separated and civilians are forbidden from ever traveling through military ones.

This is done primarily for their safety, because while civilian tunnels are kept entirely separated from the Warp in order to protect the civilians, military ones are more permeable and have been created so to assist in the training of our warriors and to cleanse the warp around the galaxy of various types of warp-borne vermin created by species whose gods are either too lazy or too non-existent to keep their spiritual emanations in check.

As a member of the Armada traveling incognito I can get away with using the civilian tunnels as to not draw attention to myself, but thanks to that damn prince letting it be known publicly that I am a member of the Armada I have to travel in the military tunnels. Said tunnels are orders of magnitude faster than the civilian ones, thus allowing someone to travel from one end of the galaxy to another and back in hours, but there is a particularly glaring problem with using them.

The military tunnels in the Empire are kept clean by Maton War-forms, princely hosts and various warbands allowed to campaign in them, thus keeping the daemonic population at a low to non-existent level.

Outside of the Empire though? They are filled with things that make greater daemons look cuddly and I was forced to go into them alone because I cannot guarantee the survival of my crew if I were to go there as a ship, as void-ship scale daemons are an entirely different thing to handle compared to infantry scale ones.

Due to this my sister and the ship's pilot gets to travel in comfortable tunnels made for eldar comfort and me? I have to travel is tunnels that haven't seen cleansing in centuries.

"Fucking die already you filthy half breed of a mud slinging half snail!" I screamed as I cut a thing of too many slimy tails and an eye of Mud.

The tunnels were burning around around me as the black flames continued to burn.

The tunnel born creature screeched but I was tired of it and its kin's screaming as they made a distance that should have taken me three steps to walk instead take hours. The creature was the last of its kin as it seems they were born here from all of the trash that I am now burning.

"Why did you invade our home?" It cried.

It was the first emotion and words it and its kin said to me. I ignored its words and willed it to burn faster.

If they would have been willing to talk hours ago before I started to kill them I would have been willing to talk but my clothes are gone, my armor is shattered and I am thankful I had to presence of mind to leave my packs with Laciena, because otherwise they would have been gone for good by now.

I looked at the Rainbow dimension and continued burning the trash until all that was left was bone white walls and screaming echoes. The warp would eventually seep back through as the tunnel was designed for it to happen.

A new creature crawled through the walls in front of me, it was a creature of ash that tasted of tears of a fallen people. I crushed it in a heartbeat and took one more step and reality bled around me. I was near a colony of ants with the heads of stars and legs of shadows. Another colony of half-existent tunnel creatures which were born in the tunnels.

"Leave my presence or die." I warned in the voice of Murder.

The screams of a thousand different creatures echoed off my words.

I could feel them shuffle and they faded from my perception as they went outside the tunnels to wait for me to pass. They would be back but these creatures at least were capable of understanding when resistance was futile.

"Eagganm Neamhis, I sincerely hope the gods have taken notice of you and your talents." I hissed as I took another step.

The tunnels turned black and a sludge slid off of them that smelled with the stench of the Chaos of Despair.

I burned it and it left behind pristine walls and took another step.

In front of me stood… me… or at least something pretending to be me, or some time shenanigans were happening. This creature at least had the decency of being clothed. Good, as I'll be needing those soon and if it looks like me, then when it dies it will leave behind things that I can use.

It didn't attack me, instead it smiled smugly at me, which meant that it most likely wanted to talk before I skewered it.

"What do you want?" I asked with annoyance in my voice.

"Why do you still run?" It asked.

I could feel a tug at my heart, which meant this creature spoke for the gods.

"What am I?" I asked it mockingly.

"A hybrid creature of Familial Love and Endless and Divine Ambition, one who if they were to get one of them then they must give up the other and yet in doing so will keep neither, a priest and a Disciple of Morathi that walks her path." The Divine talking piece said back to me with my own voice.

"Then why are you asking?" I asked again.

The thing's face smiled at me and I looked miserly at it.

"Because you are choosing ambition when you are being offered family."

"And what do I do with my ambition?"

That made it think now as it seems the Divine were not expecting that question.

"You feed its fruits to your family."

"Yes, the Ouroborous, the snake that eats its own tail endlessly in human myths is that which I am partially Emulating."

It looked disapprovingly at me and I could feel for a half a heartbeat who or what was beneath it.

Isha continued meddling in my life and tried to force me into staying with my family.

"A creature of Mindless Avarice, a half-dragon who makes more of itself as it treats itself as its own nourishment. Eventually you will not be able to continue this cycle and you will feed on yourself to such an extent that you will run out of materials and die." It explained disapprovingly.

"And my family will be left Safe and Mighty to mourn me as my Ambition is to see them Mighty and Safe and if the cost of that is me… well nobody said that the Ambitious aren't willing to pay any cost they have to in order to realize their ambitions." I replied back with a faint smile.

It's just that nobody with sense is expecting it to be them to actually pay for it.

Most disciples of Morathi either learn to cut their losses and accept some form of limit in what they get or endlessly crave for more and more and eventually can't find a way to get others to pay the price for it. I don't do either, I make sure I pay the price of whatever I am getting and then I am making sure my family gets to keep it, and if I am not around to enjoy it with them?

Well, then past a certain point that's no longer my problem.

My doppelganger's mood worsened with each word and thought.

"You can give up your position and power and still enjoy the benefits of having a loving family. You do not want to be on the run, you do not want to be away from them or suffer like you are. You despise this life and have despised it for most of the time you have lived it and will continue to hate it so why do it?" Isha asked.

"Having doubts?"

She, or perhaps this part of her did not like the role she would have to take in the future. She nodded using the facsimile of my face.

"Don't, either your family is worth your sacrifice and thus your suffering has meaning or they don't and thus you don't do it. My family is worth my misery and I know very well that they would say the same if I couldn't force them to not be miserable for me."

That made her smile, she knew her own kin were jealous of her future role but this part of her couldn't articulate why.

We are Eldar, a life of misery means little if we achieve our goals as we can always just get another. What's the most important for us is to achieve our goals, for mere pleasure has long since stopped mattering to most of us. The Disciples of Morathi are merely those who could not decide what to pick between family and power and thus decided to greedily take both, but most of the Empire is like us and they merely have other interests, even if most of them have already decided on the target of their obsession.

It is the people outside of the Empire that forgot it and don't understand our thought processes and call us self-destructive and counter-intuitive, but it is them that just don't understand that an individual life is meaningless when you have an infinite supply of them. The only thing that matters is what you choose to matter and everything else is irrelevant as long as it does not help you with that.

I want a family that is safe and strong and I want power, and unlike the vast majority of people that would sacrifice their family for power I am perfectly willing to sacrifice my life to empower my family and thus get both power and family. I can always get another life if I somehow start feeling it was not worth it after all.

"You did not say why you refuse to give up your role. You have the option and your family would grant you protection as they are mighty enough to survive what comes."

"Can you guarantee it to me? Can you promise me that my family will survive what comes? That they won't just be killed off and forced to suffer in fear and uncertainty at the Unborn's tender mercies until it is slain?"

That earned me a bitter smile. She couldn't and neither could I.

My family has a military ship to guard them, an entire star-faring nation at their beck and call and hundreds of millions of Sirens brought from around the empire and millions more Eldar coming to join them and we cannot guarantee their survival in what is to come, because what rises will be enough that their death is very much possible. Due to this, I cannot stop, not until the possible becomes impossible and my family's only worry will be how to handle their increasingly large number of children they have to look after and not how to survive whatever comes to eat them.

"I can't promise you that you'll exit this tunnel alive." She declared and unsheathed her blade

I smiled at that, I loved where this was going. I was meant to clean these tunnels of everything not Eldar, and as Isha had to pretend to be something pretending to be Eldar, it meant I had to kill this copy of myself.

"Good, because I need some clothes and the gods as always provide!" I screamed and lunged.

Isha is not a warrior and whatever small fragment of herself she put into this false copy of myself did not have warrior instincts or the ability to fight like me. It tried to fight, to cut at me as it jumped back.

I could admit that the god puppeteering a body that did not fit it could move with greater grace than me, but while she could move better than me, she did not know to use those movements well

She danced around my attacks with ease but while this gained her openings she could not use them.

And so I Cut and she dodged and danced around me as the walls turned into the floor, and the floor into just another wall as we danced and the floor shifted underneath us. She made a mistake and left an opening for me to exploit as her blade was now too low to block my cut and I punished it by decapitating the body in a single cut.

The body now rested in front of me as the head disappeared and I took the robes and weapons off my own corpse and put them on and relaxed as they fit me well. And they were clean of blood too!

I took another step and I was at the gate now. There was nothing around me but the bone-white webway made by Eldar and thus I opened the gate and stepped through it as if taking a leisurely stroll.

I was in an alley as it seems that this port had not integrated its military infrastructure into its design properly. All things considered they probably forgot they even had it and the gate wasn't even visible now that I was looking for it.

"Now, how do I find that information broker?" I asked the empty hallway.

I would have to find someone to ask for directions but that shouldn't be too hard as this is a space station and naturally full of people.

"That's some nice looking robes you have there my friend. Do you think you could give us everything they hold in them?" A voice shouted from behind me.

I turned and looked at the four young men that each held a mono-filament weapon and pointed it at me.

"Oh gods am I being actually mugged? This is the first time this has ever happened to me!" I exclaimed in false worry.

The four men seemed just as amused by my words as I pretended not to be.

I've never been mugged before, how exciting!