Chapter 99:

Chapter 99: Important meetings are still less important than ensuring the education of the new generation.



"Khaine is the Lord of Murder and War, to use his principles is to attack, to destroy and to reject. Khaine himself is generally speaking focused on the outside and on preparing us to meet the outside in order to defeat it. To emulate and honor him is to End that which is not yourself, to learn why that is important and become better at it." The creature wearing the skin of an Eldar explained.

Being split vertically in two should have made listening to his words more difficult, but I could understand and think clearly as I stitched myself back together, and I did stitch myself back together. After my 30th​ death I started trying to regenerate myself, and now that I am at my 98th ​death I am capable of mostly stitching myself back from being bisected into multiple pieces.

The current lesson, and it was a lesson, from the man who has killed me 98 times in a day was informative, even if not for me. I don't care for it, but I know that there are plenty of my clan members listening to it intently so that they can better use their gifts.

He explained to me and our 'audience' what each of the gods do, and how using the gods and their domains as the reference point for our psychic abilities allows us to do much, much more than by just categorizing them based on what they do.

Khaine aligned or Khaine-Emulating abilities as the man who has killed me 98 times insists to call them, revolve around strengthening and weakening the conviction of others as well as harming others.

"Wasn't Asuryan or Cegorach the one meant to teach us?" I asked, now that I had one mouth and one tongue as opposed to two halves of each.

I could feel his Will wash over me and correcting flaws in my regeneration attempts as it seem I am still not at the point where I can regenerate myself properly much to my annoyance. I do not like my fate being at the whim of the man putting me near death but it seems I am still not there yet.

"Asuryan and Khaine are twins and they share everything, including responsibilities. Asuryan is a shield and guide by himself, but both can take over the other's duties if needed be to a certain extent. Also all of the gods have some aspect they help another in, or domains that they share, even discounting the twin rulers of the Divinities of the Eldar. And Cegorach first teaches you wrong as a joke, then right after laughing at you. He's better at teaching yes, but I would not trust him as your primary teacher unless he can dedicate himself to teaching you fully." The creature pretending to be an eldar said as he removed the burning sword I rammed through his head.

That is not enough to kill him, that he told me in response to my second question, nothing short of Divine Intervention or a prolonged barrage of ship grade weapons could get through all of his defenses and have the damage stick.

His brain should be char and yet the man couldn't even be bothered to stutter as he pulled the sword.

"This is your tenth point, young guardian, a pity you couldn't win a hundred points and gain the title of hero, you would have been the second I've ordained after the first one, Taraithe Tagasta, nearly killed me with a single strike. Also you should learn more of biology, our bones do not all have the exact same density everywhere for a reason and mixing and matching densities is not something you should be doing early on as it affects our balance." Bessar Agail said as he threw back my sword.

I caught it with the practiced ease gained from being killed nearly 100 times. At least the creature wearing the skin of a man started cleaning up the mess once it saw me slip on my own blood. I've already lost several times my weight in blood and yet he keeps creating more.

Relief flooded me as my children would not need to leave and meet whatever this creature calls kin. I was also thankful to not meet whatever could kill him in one hit. Voidships need a prolonged barrage to kill him he claimed, an eldar almost doing so in one hit is not an eldar I or anyone with sense wishes to meet.

I do not believe he ever lied to me when I asked a question, some instinct in the back of my mind telling me that he told us nothing but the truth but to hear him say that there are individuals in the Empire that are capable of killing things in a single hit that ships aren't makes me very glad I am not in the Empire. I doubt I would survive for long with such creatures there.

"I suppose you wouldn't tell me how you kept manipulating my clan would you?" I asked knowing he probably won't.

That knowledge would have been my reward for 'winning', as if the result of this farce would have been anything he did not want to happen. I still remember clearly our first 'exchange', where I'd used Khaine's Fury for a Mighty Charge to hopefully kill him. It was the fastest I'd ever moved, the most I've ever seen and the swiftest I've ever thought until today.

He moved so fast I did not realize I lost my head until after it happened and the man who decapitated me was more surprised by the fact I couldn't reattach it myself than me for losing it. Even then he held back and had been constantly restraining his abilities to give me 'a chance'. As if the current result wasn't what he wanted in the first place.

Someone with this sort of power does not get any result they themselves do not want to happen well ahead of time.

"Sure I would, most if not all of the people born outside of the Empire's borders suffer from a Disorder affecting your ability to sense certain psychic phenomena. Among the many things your mind can't consciously process is something those in Empire call the Song of Our People, a specific type of psychic song that allows us to coordinate with one another on an intuitive level. You can't consciously feel it, but are still affected by it.

What I did to prevent your clan from organizing properly is to interfere in the process of your clan members to gather in groups and prepare to strike me with the false safety of numbers by seeing your song shifting and interfering with my own by infusing it with Khaine's Song and introducing doubt with my very presence. Imagine not being able to see and someone using that sense to tell what you're about to do and preemptively acting to stop it." He claimed.

"What? You expect me to believe we lack a psychic sense this important?" I asked back with indignation.

We are ignorant, this I knew more than ever before, but we are not that ignorant that we would not know of an entire psychic sense that important.

"I thought that you weren't that ignorant either, but I've met people that thought that there's a single psychic sense outside of the Empire, so I can assure you, plenty of our people outside the Empire are ignorant of things that the people of the Empire find so common as to not need to be said." He answered.

Shivers went through my spine as he responded to my thoughts before I was fully conscious of them. I knew he didn't look through my mind or soul as I kept track of that, and yet he could just know what I thought.

"Yes, I know what you think to a certain extent, because you sing it quite openly to those that know how to look for it. What you feel is normal and is a common enough feeling to experience for non-eldar when dealing with eldar and for eldar outside of the empire when dealing with those from the empire." He continued.

My body and soul were the best they ever were as with each death the man healed me better than I was before and in a moment I was back into the fray and my blade met the glimmering gold of his Asuryan-Emulating Gauntlet.

The man did not move like an Eldar, our movements were a dance, they had a choreography, a rhythm, a way for a step to follow another towards an Anointed end. His movements were not that, they were simple.

They were each the bare minimum of motion, his legs could barely be said to leave the white floor of the arena, his unarmed limb couldn't even be said to exist if one wasn't paying attention to it and every single part of his body except his armored hand might as well have not been there. I am not fighting the man, I am fighting the gauntlet that protects him and I am losing.

I dance around him as my sword tries to move beyond the gauntlet and at each time it is being parried and I barely manage to evade it striking me back. My sword isn't even the one I started with, but one crafted for me after the previous one broke when I tried to block one of his strikes.

"Do you not have another question for me? The last seven strikes you asked none." I asked after making room between ourselves.

He stopped bothering to move beyond his current location, giving me room to maneuver. The only movements his body makes is to spin towards me.

His two eyes twinkled with mirth.

"No, I've gotten enough lovely and embarrassing stories of yourself and your family to get my fill, I'll give my questions to my sister to ask you what she thinks will help her to know. You'll love her I think, the two of you are a bit alike, even if her soul is blessed and aligned with Gea while yours to Morai-Heg." He replied.

"Gea is the conductor of an orchestra and dancer wasn't she? She makes sure that the gods interact appropriately between one another and removes the normal friction between their domains." I observed.

Great, a woman even better at manipulating others than the man in front of me.

I charged again, my sword in one hand and the other turned into a black knife of entropy. If I can disrupt the Asuryan ability with the death-logic of Morai Heg like I did before, then I can get another hit in properly.

"Yes, but don't worry, she's far less duplicitous than I am. She'll just find you something to do that both helps her and that you enjoy, because she tends to like doing that. She dislikes my method of learning through what you would call half-truths and deception, even if I don't call them such." He replied with a smile.

My shadow-knife hit his gauntlet and it was my knife that fizzled out and my head and spine that were ripped out of my body.

My body had a bit of a surprise this time as it moved without being attached to myself and tried to stab the creature whose hand was too busy holding me to react in time.

"Nice trick." Said the man who had a sword through his heart.

"Why didn't the knife work?" I asked with annoyance.

I stopped caring about my death, much to what I felt was the horror of my clan, but die enough times and you no longer cared. I thought I understood how to turn the death-logic into a weapon and I am more annoyed at it nor working properly than at my body being separated from my head. It happened far too many times today for it to be noteworthy.

"That does not count as a proper question just so you know, explaining you about our gods and categorizing our abilities based on them covers it. Morai-Heg's death logic does not lend itself to weapons as well as the Order logic of Asuryan lends itself to being a shield. When the two logics meet, Asuryan's is better suited for a weapon and so it acts at its given purpose with greater ease. If you wanted to use it offensively and deal with my Asuryan Emulating piece of armor you need to combine it with that of Hoec to bypass it or Khaine's to shatter it. I do love the fact you managed to control your body despite your head no longer being attached to it, as so few people realize we don't need our bodies as much as we think we do." He said as he put my head and spine back where they belonged.

"What are your plans for my clan?" I asked.

My sword was already out of his body and I silently moved back. Abusing the rules to get a cheap shot, is how he makes sure I start feeling pain again as he rips my body in pieces and repairs it. I know better than to do it again.

"No plans on my end, they just need to do what they do naturally and hopefully help my sister's organization and I won't care what else they do. I've done enough to help set her up, if I do much more she might get spoiled."

That was the truth, I knew it to be true deep within my bones and yet I did not believe it. My clan if could have looked beyond the horror at what they saw would not believe it either.

At least it won't be my sons being near him or living in fear of having to join his sister's crew and that was enough.

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


A white snake stood coiled in bliss as it basked in the heat of galaxies. Its dark wings carved gently into rock of the grand stone which has seen stars live and die and it hummed in bliss as it waited for time to pass and its sharp tail played with a small sword that did not know how to sing

Its scales were mountains, it's dark wings made out of charred bones that existed only when it pretended to malevolence could hold worlds beneath their shades and yet the rock it stood upon was larger than it still and far more solid, for not even its sharp wings could do nothing more than scratch softly at it as the white snake continued to bask in the light of the Divine Flame of Asuryan.

Narrative Momentum is a strange thing to perceive and something I've only recently been able to See properly and consciously. The Snake I looked upon told me that each individual sees it differently. He sees it as celestial objects that danced across the heavens, with the larger ones orbiting the smaller ones and the difference between gods and mortal was the difference between worlds and stars.

He could see their size, which he called Importance and their density which he called as Plot Armor, a way for them to avoid accidental death, but other details were things he needed to infer as his perspective did not allow him to see more.

I did not see it like my adoptive older brother.

I saw the Narrative Momentum of others as shapes, sometimes of animals, other times of objects of nature and rarely as weapons. I could see the size the same as my brother, but I could not see their density, I could not see how delicate or hard to damage they were and so I had to guess based on long term observation. I could however see their Purpose, I could see what their stories would have them do and what they were best at.

Bessar has to guess as to purposes I could see with ease and he can see how easy things are to break while I can only see this after they break and it is so by design. My perspective is flawed, incomplete in a way that cannot be repaired and yet it is sharp, and it allows me to see better than if it were as close to complete as I could make it.

And yet I chose it to be flawed, I made so that what I truly care for can be easily seen and what I do not care for as much is not and I knew that my older brother could cover my deficiencies if he chose, at least until I can learn to work around them myself.

A change, the snake no longer rested, but hissed in joy as its friends approached and small little songbirds came out of the water funnels to meet him.

"The snake rustles its feathers as it rests upon it's peak and the songs of a thousand birds sing their welcome." I whispered as I looked in awe at the snake long enough to swallow worlds.

"What does that mean?" A male voice whispered to the only other living being near him.

Said voice did not respond and instead waited for me to do so.

Rinceor Geallai, the voice belonged to him. An eye meant for travel and coinage and the only creature I've seen that is neither weapon, object of nature or animal. It is a coin made out of bronze with only single side ever visible and a cat's eye on the side one could see. Useful for learning the local value system primarily with a secondary scouting role.

Useful and likable and understands at least part of my Obsession.

'My brother knows I like him and wished to see us marry but how can a one sided coin and a rainbow snake marry? The shapes must fit one another but where would we fit? Maybe he could become my eye?' I mused.

I stopped Looking into the Warp and I was back into reality as my crew watched me mutter nonsense.

"Bessar managed to get the ship eldar to come and has signaled for us to stop hiding in the shadows and come meet him." I said softly.

He's also terrorizing some fools while showering them in gifts but that just means he's in a good mood. It's his favorite way to pass the time short of teaching a captive audience but based on how he was playing with that sword he might have been doing that too.

I saw with my eyes and not my soul and saw that Reality is crooked, for it does not fit into easy shapes and purposes, it simply is in its imperfect glory. There is beauty in it, but not even the insides shaped by Bessar with purpose were enough to satisfy my craving for an ordered and purposeful existence.

'Purpose is birthright of all things, for Beauty comes from ordering of chaos.' Was the creed of my Obsession.

Bessar told me he needed decades to find one that fit him, it took me months to understand my own self enough to put it into words. I do not understand myself fully, I do not understand the full implications of what I say when I speak it but yet I know that it is right and yet that is enough.

My crew were relieved they would no longer need to wait in the darkness between the stars.

"Finally!" The danger addicted navigator exclaimed with joy.

The danger she craves has been in scant supply recently, especially in space as every eldar we met sensed my brothers continued good mood and instinctively tried to stay as far away as it could or was very respectful and subdued when they did interact with him.

One would think that's his bad moods that would scare others, but he starts acting as a villain when he's happy and for some reason that scares most beings a lot more than when he pretends to be heroic. I can understand why but it's still strange to see it now that I've lived with the man for so long as he never stops helping people, but when he needs to put some thought into it, that's when things are getting bad.

Him pretending to be acting heroic and selflessly makes my skin crawl for I know that its a front to get you to walk towards a course of action he finds useful, while when he acts like a villain he just has a good time and wants little from you that you weren't already planning to do.

" Rinceor Geallai, please inform the rest of the crew that they are to prepare themselves for shore leave, they have two days from the moment we dock the station to relax there or do whatever deals they want in their own name. If they think to be late again they will be left behind and be expected to reach us at our next stop if they don't want to be hunted down for treachery." I ordered the newest member of the crew.

For some reason the crew was more scared of me than Bessar which was strange, I am harmless in comparison to the man that can depopulate worlds of Eldar life when annoyed, but show just a bit of Sternness to Eldar and they start being scared of you.

The man nodded and fearlessly proceeded to do what every single coward in my service wouldn't wish to and relayed my instructions.

'It was me that made it so they have a chance to reach us at our next spot as opposed to just hunting them down for running unannounced. Not like they can't leave whenever they please provided they tell us ahead of time.' I thought in annoyance.

Part of it came from my crew fearing me, the other came from piloting this ship, even with the navigator helping.

Most ships follow simple patterns to emulate for a reason. The fish patterns of the craftworlders and the eagles favored by most corsair and pirate clans establish an ease of movement and stealth that affects everything and smooths over the vast majority of operations on a ship.

Bessar's ship body does not operate on the Emulation of Shapes but the Obsession of Translating Experiences. To control this ship is to control Bessar's psychic might and the associated Bessar-logic. Needless to say we were not having an easy time without the man in question here to guide us, but we could fly to where we needed to go and assuming we did not need to fight could even pretend to know what we were doing.

This will have to change, but for now we can handle it and each time we piloted the ship without Bessar present it became marginally easier to control the might of the Malevolent thing.

"The body misses its soul." Geinna Mara observed.

The ship no longer fought us at least, but it was sluggish compared to what we knew it could achieve when motivated.

"Yes, which is strange to see, when the other body just walked out without care." I observed.

We continued to fly towards the Webway gate as we were far from the rogue planet it was on in order to avoid being accidentally detected.

"It is also sluggish because we are far from the local star." The other woman replied.

"We would be having different problems if we weren't." I agreed.

This ship's design is in no way shape or form usable by anyone that isn't Bessar, it fights you every step of the way and the more it likes you the less cooperative it is, because it going along with what you want means it's not telling you how to do things better because it has some strange idea you need to do now or else. The ship becomes less useful the more it adjusts to you and it is infuriating and counter-intuitive to use like the man that made it.

It having limited energy was more of a boon than not now as being forced to move at 1/10th the normal speed was less important than the ship actually doing what we want it to for once.

"Why do you now keep your ears peeled away from song?" I asked the woman.

We were minutes away from the gate and ever since Bessar started to look after Ship-eldar I noticed she used her ability to filter out song more and more and now she filtered it almost always when Bessar was not present.

"It does not feel safe to listen, it feels like something is about to happen and it is safer if I am not listening. The feeling is lesser when both of you are near me but when one of you is gone it's back and when neither of you are here I am scared to even try to listen so I don't."

That makes no sense whatsoever, you're always safer when you can hear whatever comes, but I'll let it be for now. We can get to the bottom of this once this whole ship-eldar nonsense is over, we don't need distractions now.

The Malevolent creature I'm calling a ship could feel that we were getting closer to the Webway gate, its instincts giving us firing angles and possible ambush points waiting for us despite its sensors not showing us anything that would threaten us.

"The Sharp and Valorous continues its paranoia, think it will ever not be like this?" Geina Mara asked as we went through the gate.

"Only when Bessar won't be." I replied.

"Bessar doesn't act like this."

For someone who has spent the last few years flying across the stars she continues to misunderstand the sort of man he is.

"He hides it better but the ship is Bessar, it thinks like him, acts like him and was made from him because it is him, it is merely a part he detached from himself. He constantly waits for an ambush or some nonsense to hit him, he's just very good at pretending not to."

"The ship does not monologue anywhere nearly enough to be him."

I snorted at that, she had me there.

"Give it time, it will learn to speak without the soul being here and then each of our orders will be accompanied by half an hour of monologue explaining how each move serves some master plan."

Pearls of laughter met my words as the woman remembered of who we're speaking of. Bessar is too fond of Monologues.

"I want to say he's not that bad, but you and him don't like it when I lie."

A sense of amusement from the ship, it might soon learn to do just that.

The Webway continues to energize it somehow. The energy does not come through the sails and yet there was energy in the capacitors that turns the energy of stars into both thrust and the psychic energy keeping everything running.

Our speed started to increase from our lethargic pace and slowly approached the maximum speed we could reach. Soon we will reach the space station and find out what sort of Nonsense we missed and figure out exactly what the problem with the ship-eldar is. I'll also have to figure out what sort of divine nonsense awaits us, because my danger addicted navigator has a single type of danger it does not eagerly welcome and that is the Divine kind.

I did not doubt that the two are related somehow.