Chapter 103:

Chapter 103: Teaching others is a privilege and a pleasure.





To teach others is a privilege like no other, for a teacher takes the mind of children and those that know little and they fill it with knowledge and sometimes wisdom and as a priest of the Pantheon it is one of my most important duties, for priests are the purveyors and custodians of culture and it is our duty to ensure that Eldar cultures are healthy, even if the people in them are not necessarily happy .

Happiness is often times a useful metric, as it assists us in judging success, but what an Eldar culture truly needs is consistency. Our cultures must be consistent, they must be artistic, the people in them must have clearly defined paths they can walk if they wish to pursue their ambitions and the ability to choose them to a given extent as well as the option to not walk them if they wish to not pursue ambition.

The best way priests help create or mold such societies is through teaching, and more specifically teaching the young, so that the appropriate mentalities enter society so that they can shape it. This different from indoctrination by a single crucial difference, those we teach are not told what is the correct opinion to have, what the end result of their thinking must be, they are given the tools so that they can choose to approach life in a multitude of ways, but ultimately the end result of how they use the tools is up to them.

It is for this reason that with few exceptions, eldar teachers do not give our students the answers they seek. We bring them close to it yes, we help give them the tools to reach the same answer as we have, but the final step is up to them, because if we do things like that then they might find another more useful answer than what we did. The only exception to this is when we teach them specific skills and even then there's exceptions to this exception.

There are fundamentally three ways to teach an individual that I am aware of, and of those only two of them are used by Eldar.

The first is the education I received in my past life as a human, that which I and many others call the 'Industrial Model'. In it institutions of learning act like a factory, where teachers provide knowledge in a structured format where the knowledge is vomited in the face of the students at regular intervals and it is up to the students self-motivation to do something with it. Sometimes the students are given some assembling instructions, but that was rare in my experience as the system requires students to be willing to self-study to have them be actually useful once they finish their studies.

In this system, the teacher does the bare minimum in spreading knowledge to as many people as possible ensuring that their students have a wide amount of knowledge available to them, structured in a way that should be easy to digest and for them to turn to use. Here the teacher is the one that delivers knowledge, but it is up to the student to find a way to use and for some damned reason humans seem to treat it like the default the moment they get an industrial revolution or two going. The final evolution of this concept is known by many names, Hypno-therapy, Psycho-indoctrination, Mind-Upload and it is where knowledge and viewpoints are just implanted into the mind of an individual in a session or two by machines.

This model produces the worst possible results, but provides them the fastest and requires the least effort from the teacher and the most effort from the student.

The second model is 'Learning on the Job' and in it the student is given tasks to do and is expected to learn things as they do it and slowly accumulate knowledge as they learn more and more of the secrets behind what they learn. Apprenticeships are a form of it in a sense but I consider them distinct as the bond between Master and Apprentice is different from that between Teacher and Student.

To Learn on the Job is to learn skills and knowledge with others near you, to have your teacher show you how something works and combine lessons with practical applications. There is an acclimatization period naturally, as one is slowly given more and more difficult tasks they need to accomplish and the complexity of the concepts involved increases until the arbitrary cut-off happens and the student becomes a practitioner and the teacher's job is ended.

This method provides decent results as far as I am aware, but it produces them inconsistently. The time it takes to teach someone differs from person to person, the end result is rarely more than average, but it is not as dependent on the self-motivation of the student to provide said result and the results are harder to falsify.

You can't achieve much without the student being willing to learn, but the Industrial system is wholly dependent on the individual being highly motivated to achieve anything noteworthy, while Learning on the Job requires them to only be willing to put in the work to achieve the intended result.

The third is what I prefer doing and it is a mix of the two I like calling 'Acquiring Skills'. In it a teacher will showcase a skill, a set of requirements and slowly teach a classroom how to acquire said skill and push it to a satisfying end before moving on to the next.

No timeline, no going past knowledge because you are in a hurry to follow the program, hard to pretend you understand, and even if you somehow manage to cheat and pretend to having a certain skill without having, then that still means you can mimic it well enough to usE it and most importantly there are no written tests.

The last two are particularly important as I don't care for my students being able to regurgitate formulas or knowledge at me, or guess an answer on a sheet of paper, I want them to learn to do certain things and the best way to get them to learn is to do it. There's no books for my students to read about how to do it, no responsibilities that they need to fulfill or quotas or timelines, just the pure learning of the skill I wish them to learn and easy examples they can learn to do.

"Next sentence." I addressed the classroom of eight.

Eight bursts of light, each a different color appeared and quickly died in random parts of the classroom that was given to me. Each burst of light was half of a sentence out of two thousand sentences that continued to glow around my pupils.

My pupils would have to quickly read it, then find the next half in five heartbeats and I am happy to say that after five days, all of them managed to do it this time.

The sentences changed and in the next breath I spoke.

"Next."

Let's see how they handle four heartbeats.

The students managed to read the new blips of light again and I smiled as they continued the sentences appropriately and without hesitation.

This was the third time in a row and I made sure they can't coordinate psychically this time and leech of their leader, despite the boy wishing to provide for his new Warband of readers.

"Excellent children, you can relax for now, oh don't act like that children, this session only lasted six hours." I said with a smile.

My congratulations and light cheer were genuine but it seems my adorable little students were tired and impatient and wanted what I promised them.

"Teacher what will we use this speed reading in the future for?" Their leader asked bravely.

He asked me the first time we met on the importance of reading and I told him that it helps him make sense of the weird scribbles in front of his face and that if him and his classroom managed to learn all I wanted them to know of Reading I'll elaborate and show them an example. If they disagree with the fact that reading would be useful in that scenario then they get to ask a favor of me.

So far none of my classrooms could rightfully say I taught them useless things, even if it took them several classes before they learned right. This class learned the slowest because the boy was too helpful to his friends and managed to find a way to multitask and help them. I did not tell him off, in fact I congratulated the boy for his achievement, but I did have to tell him that I am stopping this from happening again after he managed to get it working once.

I am perfectly fine with cheating, especially as it makes at least a few of them better at that which I wish to teach them, but I do want them to actually learn what I am trying to teach them.

"Reading the battlefield. If you manage to become adults then you'll to take in vast amounts of data into consideration, see changes quickly and react to them immediately. Now come near me I'll show you a nice little dream like I showed the others." I explained.

The children were quite eager for the dream in question as their friends and cousins boasted about the rewards I gave them and this group wished for some of their own, because getting to experience a vivid dream is a much better reward than just getting to watch a movie, especially as the kids can remember it with ease and show it to others.

I did tell them to only share it among those that have also completed the lessons until I leave to help me get others interested in and all of the cute little children agreed and proceeded to show their parents and ask them not to share it either.

A bunch of wanna-be heroes these little brats, but at least their parents did as I expected them to and shared among themselves that my lessons are not harmful and that the reward is quaint.

This was the third classroom that managed to read at what I considered a basic standard, as the clan has gotten used to what they call my 'stern' teaching model. I am incredibly soft with the ten years old as far as I am concerned, as I would have normally psychically stimulated their bodies to prevent tiredness until they got all of the exercises right five times in a row and the session would not have stopped until they did.

By comparison, six uninterrupted hours of learning then letting them go without having fully learned was downright indolent. If psychic powers can keep you up and alert as well as fix any damage with ease then they can and will be used for that purpose without any mercy, and at least back home that's how they were meant to be used.

I've decided on a softer approach here, at least as far as reading and writing go, as while they are very useful skills, they aren't exactly things I can argue to the local culture require such methods to learn.

The eight of them obeyed and brought their cushions closer to me as I decided on what memory to show them. Each of my classes would get a unique memory they can talk about and show to each other that what I teach them has widespread use.

'Hmm, I suppose I could ask them what they want to see, they did manage to learn more than I intended them to with the way their leader managed to get one over me once.'

"I promised you like all the rest a memory that shows you how useful the skills I taught you are, what would you like to see? Space based knowledge, planet-bound terrestrial or aquatic?" I asked the gathered pupils after they sat down.

The little children in their cyan onesies were downright adorable as they struggled to think on what to pick and consulted one another voicelessly. Eventually they seemed to have settled on an answer and their leader as always seized the day and spoke for them all.

"I've never been on a planet, what the difference?" He asked in slightly broken eldar.

Our language is difficult to learn at the best of times and inflections take some time to master as they require both speech and body language to get right so children just… don't use them until they are certain they can get it right. I don't care what others say or of how the youth is butchering the eldar language or other such nonsense, I find it cute.

"Planet-bound terrestrial is similar to being inside a park somewhat, but aquatic is a combination of ship-bound experience and walking." I explained.

"Then I want to see aquatic." The boy replied immediately and his warband agreed.

They wanted to feel what it's like to be an adult as the adults won't let them and my giving them something that's close to it was something all of them wanted to experience.

I smiled. I liked the decisiveness.

The eight fell asleep the next heartbeat as I stopped keeping them awake and entered the dream I prepared for them. Their parents entered shortly after they fell asleep right on time.

They have children in both my reading and writing classes thanks to the mother being a bit too ambitious.

"Have they learned well?" The children's father asked.

Their mother could only come with an avatar which was unfortunate as I disliked the things.

"Slower than I expected, but they did learn what I wanted and some extra to help them coordinate. They should awaken in ten minutes from the dream I gave them. Twenty four hours is far too much time to learn basic reading in my opinion." I answered with a shrug.

They would have been faster if I was allowed to keep them learning until they succeeded, but the parents of the first group told me that was too harsh.

"Your standards are too high." The mother declared with a grumble.

That was most definitely not the case.

"Your standards are too low, even the one I put on them was too low compared to what I was raised with. I was taught reading before I turned one year old and it took me half as much time as it took them." I explained.

The woman did not believe me, the man did not care as he was focused on the children.

"Would you be willing to teach others how to fight?" The annoying woman asked.

I had little incentive to bother, but if she did offer then it might mean that the Matriarch might have wanted it which gave me pause as I considered it.

'She should know what that entails.' I thought suspiciously as I felt not a single trace of her trying to go around the orders of her mother.

The standards for teaching martial knowledge was far more strict compared to teaching children how to read and the Matriarch has lived in the Empire in her past lives and must have seen how the priesthood or worse the part of the Armada that holds Khaine as Dear to their Hearts does it.

"I am unwilling to teach others until I have tested their resolve. If they pass my Trial I'll give them some basic combat lessons, if they don't I won't bother." I agreed simply.

A Trial of Valor is a safe enough thing, and it would be easier to present as not as abhorrent as putting their children through what the Murderous side of the Armada considers combat training.

"What are they seeing?" The father asked.

He had no intention of letting his children near my training, his own instincts told him to explicitly not allow it and if the woman's were as well developed she would not have to suffer the mental lashing her husband was putting her through. He did not approve of me teaching here at all, and did not want me learning more about them.

Neither trusted me, but one wanted to get some use out of me while the other just wanted me to leave and of the two, the one wanting me out was more likable of the two.

"One of my memories on my wives home world when I was learning how to hunt a specific type of fish in the seas. The fish had a form of psychic camouflage that would only fail when it sprinted from cover and the experience is similar enough that my lessons in learning how to read were useful." I explained.

The Bloodtail usually tried to sprint towards anything not itself so it would insert itself or its progeny into the skin of others so that their prey could be eaten from inside. My adoptive daughter Rinceo told me of them and I was curious enough about them as Cuhacta loved the taste of them and I thought they would be easy to catch some for her as a little treat.

The things were not easy to catch as a matter of fact, because they also had a danger sense and their stealth was so good I could only get their general location in my senses when near me. The children are just seeing me catching one for the first time as I tried to catch the runner and I cussed at it to become dinner for my wives. It had no blood, no death of anythign but a fish and it involved me trying to quickly read the subtle changes in the warp and water to try and tell where it ran over the course of an hour as I hunted it in my Siren form in complete darkness.

The two nodded at that, it was a harmless enough memory.

"I would like access to an arena for it as well as to have it be private. Tests are only for those taking them and I do not need them to be distracted by outsiders." I demanded.

They did not like that either, but I will not budge on this one. This is tradition and tradition beats their sensibilities.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I hate walking in this life.

Nothing good ever came from me walking somewhere especially after I have shed my flesh and blood body for Wraithbone and am forced to walk into annoying to use avatars.

"Grandmother, I don't believe this is necessary for dealing with our guest." My granddaughter said nervously.

"My presence here is not meant to deal with him, but prevent you from doing a mistake." I explained.

The priest had offered 'basic lessons of martial nature' to any youth willing to take them and today was the pre-selection he insisted on before he would give proper lessons. He's been here for a month and has spent the entire time walking around, teaching children how to read and write with a grandfatherly smile that made him seem like a kind elder looking over a small village.

His mission here was to assess out culture and see where the faults were that made the Gods demand immediate action and so I went to gather the clans for a Moot to let him find what's wrong. I left clear instruction of my clan to not provoke or cause him to wish to fight anyone, him or his apprentice because I remember perfectly well what priests do when they no longer feel welcome. I also remember legends of what the disciples of the White Tower do when you intervene in their lessons and duties even if I've never met anyone that saw it first-hand.

I do not want my clan to be put in that position. I've organized a Moot, whatever the priest needs he can do, then he can leave after he convinces the other clan leaders whether or not to agree to bend the knee to the new Queen.

I did not expect the tame monster to offer martial training as that is far, far harsher than anything they've ever had to learn. I myself have never experienced it but I have seen the results and they're always bloody. The more worrying thing was them accepting the offer, I expressly told the adults not to allow such things.

"We're only worried that we can't hear our children." One of my boys added.

Not thinking their names hurt, but I need every advantage I can gather to prevent my descendants from making a second mistake. The priest is benevolent but priests are bound by rules and perception, and the moment the rules or perceptions demand they act a certain way then they will act in that way and I know exactly what I'll find in the charnel house the priest call a teaching room.

I've seen the same before.

"I know, which is why it makes it worse that you allowed them to come here."

"He is stern with the children when he teaches them to write with both hands and song at the same time, which is a skill even I struggle with, especially as he changes writing implements, but surely it is not that bad?" My other grandson asked.

He misunderstood what I was trying to do. I am here to stop them from trying to kill the priest for what he's putting their children through, I am not here to stop their objections to the Trial of Valor as this Trial should not have happened at all.

I continued walking and my steps left echoes behind as I left his words unanswered, for silence was far harder to misconstrue than words in this case. I've had some of the descendants I have given the incomplete but correct instructing to look over the re-education of the others through different methods and Cegorach has been fat too active, so active that they've noticed how all the new children being educated always skew towards a given direction as if pulled towards it.

Whatever is making Cegorach this direct can't be anything but a warning, one that the priest has noticed and has started making his own checks by teaching people how to read and write.

Cegorach is the god of duplicity and fools, when he is doing something the result is always something else than what people are expecting. If he's sabotaging our learning and doing it in this barely hidden way then he's informing us of something and it's for this reason I allowed him to teach in the hopes the priest will learn what it is, do his duties and leave.

It seems he's decided to escalate things if he decided to offer martial training.

"Why did he offer martial training?" I asked.

"He didn't, one of my cousins asked if he would be willing to offer it and he said yes to those that can pass his 'Test of Valor'." One of my nephews answered.

I did not like that answer at all. I told them to not give him any reason to fight.

"Why? I told you, you can ask him to teach your children things that would help them. They don't need to learn how they fight until after they try to become adults. I also told you to not give him a reason to fight anyone." I asked tiredly.

Divine intervention was getting more tiresome and worrying with each instance I spotted.

"You would have to ask the woman, but we all felt like it would be a good idea to allow our children to learn how Imperials fight and let our most martially inclined of them to apply when we were told of it." The youngest of the bunch answered.

I am unsure if I've failed them that much that they thought this was a good idea, or gods other than Cegorach were this obvious with their meddling. The man is Khaine touched, his black hair constantly emitting a half real heat haze that both was and wasn't there when you looked at it. Individuals misunderstanding or misinterpreting orders so they can go fight sounds to much like something Khaine would approve of for him not to have a hand in it.

If both Khaine and Cegorach were messing with us then the situation might be worse than I thought.

Staying calm was difficult and my children and grandchildren noticed when my song locked in place and it made them more worried.

We were close to the arena the priest was teaching now and I still didn't have a plan as to how to proceed properly ahead. At least the arena was fully enclosed and out of the way which allowed it to remain away from the rest of the clan as the Priest did his 'Trial of Valor.' There should have been screams, and yet there was only silence as we approached its gates. The arena was one for private duels, one made so that young boys and girls could settle their differences without letting their emotions and bitterness simmer or losing the respect of their peers in a public humiliation and it was meant to allow for only a small number of viewers to verify the result.

The gates opened and a terrified girl jumped through them. The girl was only half a girl, for her lower half was missing, her face captured in an image of fear and pain as she silently screamed and crawled away and left behind a trail of her own blood.

Her bone white armor was pristine if one ignored the fact that it was cut in two from her stomach down.

There was no sound, no song, no voice, for it was as if she was just a series of images passing by in quick succession.

Her green eyes eyes met mine and I could see hope in them as they met mine before it was quickly snuffed out by the priest's words.

"You have not proven yourself to be a coward yet girl. I promised you that you would prove yourself to be valorous if you managed to land a hit on me, or a coward if you managed to escape, and yet only half your body escaped. Get back in, you are no coward yet!" the demonic voice of Khaine thundered.

The girl's soul left her body and tried to run towards me but tendrils of dark flames caught it and put it back into its body as both the soul and body screamed in silence as they were dragged back into the arena.

The girl fought and her fingers left deep marks into the wraithbone floor as she desperately tried to hold on but in seven heartbeats she was back into the charnel house my descendants put their children in.

Inside our children fought the divine creature as they tried to either hit it or run. Some were also in pieces, some were a Maelstrom of Psychic might and one of them was near the second half of the girl that was just pulled in, but I could see no more as the doors closed themselves back in.

"Stop." I ordered.

The fools were already marshaling their true bodies and children to come rescue the ones they put in harm's way and were prepared to shoot his half-corpse soulless body.

My ship directives were absolute however and with a torrent of will the fools were stopped before the call for a general emergency reached the rest of the fleet and I forcefully brought them back into their avatars.

"I told you to not give him any reason to fight someone, this was not limited to having people challenge him or him entering in duels, it involved any and all possible situations where he could be given an excuse to pick up a weapon and use it, and that included him training people, now you find out why."

"We have to do something!" My daughter shouted.

"No, I have to do something, and that something is stop you from being fools. You will sit right here, you will not call for anyone to come make things worse, you will not bring or call anyone here and you will do nothing else but wait for your children to come out. Regardless of the result you will do nothing to the priest, say nothing of what transpired here and do nothing in retaliation to anyone. I will go inside to complain, you will not do anything to make things worse, am I clear?" My voice thundered back.

My children were cowed by the intensity of my words but they nodded. They at least seemed to realize that my words meant something and I intended something else, because I am getting the children out of there one way or another.

I took a deep breath to center myself and the hopeful eyes of my descendant whose name I did not know flashed through my psyche. It strengthened my resolve and turned it into a weapon. I kicked the door off it hinges with a loud crash as it flew all the way until it reached the feet of the priest.

I could feel the song shifting as the priest acted surprised at my intervention and I realized that he was surprised as he could feel I did not approve of what happened.

I could feel him preparing to fight as his own psychic ability reacted instinctively to the breaking of the ritual and prepared to unleash itself in a Maelstrom of Violence and Death as his Song turned toward me with resignation even as he prepared to fight me.

"I remember specifically ordering you to not fight the priest you brats! I don't care for your excuses, you are to go back to your parents where both of you will be punished, YOU FOR GOING AGAINST MY ORDERS AND THEM FOR ALLOWING IT. LEAVE NOW WHILE I TALK WITH THE PRIEST BEFORE I MAKE YOUR PUNISHMENT WORSE. NOW MEANS YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE ALREADY!" My voice and song thundered as one as the fight left from the eyes of every single fool I call family and guest alike.

The children's bodies and souls were fully mended now as the priest realized what happened and took the out I gave him.

It's been one thousand years since I had to use this voice after one of my foolish daughters got themselves pregnant while being a ship and I had to tell her to kill the baby so that the Matons won't start killing our clan for losing citizenship and having planet cleansing arsenals near Eldar worlds.

The children started running before I finished speaking and left me alone with the creature that decided to emulate the Divines so much he became like them. He was prepared to fight me for breaking his tradition, but by transferring the blame on my children for going against my orders then if he tried to uphold tradition he would be helping others break the local law and would be going against the implicit position of trust and care I've entrusted upon him.

"Priest, explain what is happening with my clan, you've had weeks to give me a preliminary diagnostic and I want to hear what made my clan go around my orders." I demanded harshly of the creature that could easily kill me.

Priests act and think in terms of propriety, status and tradition and not power. They are constrained in acting in ways they can justify their position allows them to act in, and as he has come here to fix a problem he is bound by his own position and mission to answer me.

The priest sighed.

"There is no problem, some things I don't like yes, but your society is a healthy society by the standards of the Empire." He declared.

If someone that has only lived outside of the Empire of Ten Million Suns were to hear the Empire has standards and that it's possible to break them they would have laughed, but the standards, as few as they are, are very real and very tightly enforced by priests with an Iron Fist.

"Then what caused this?" I asked as I pointed at the arena with my open hand.

The gods do not cause this sort of messes when there's nothing wrong. The Arena did not show any sign of fighting now as the priest covered it all up but the fact that I am here was proof enough that something is wrong.

The man started pondering his answer and I narrowed my eyes. I do not like him trying to get around answering by giving a carefully constructed answer.

"Your best guess, as in the one you feel the most likely priest." I demanded.

I would not allow him to weasel himself out of this.

The priest sighed even deeper now.

"The gods have seen your people and their struggles and abilities and have decided to try and tip the scales in the favor of your survival." The priest said tiredly.

I paled.

"No." I declared.

'This can't be happening, how, why? We've done nothing to gain this sort of attention.'

The priest saw my fear and his features turned softer as he declared our sentence.

"Yes, I am sorry to inform you that your are being conscripted by the Gods into fighting in the War in Heaven. They have declared you to be both useful and entertaining enough in the reforging of our civilization."