Chapter 21:

Chapter 21: Recovery and final preparations for leaving family take as long for they do the same thing.

Master deceives and manipulates others as easily as he breathes, but he does not lie much for when he does so he does for the benefit of those he does it to, and he can rarely lie for long for it hurts him to hurt those he loves and lies do that.

And so he deceives and tricks and holds secrets so that he can help others in whatever madness his craft demands of him today and I serve him tea so that the fools that don't appreciate it don't cause Khaine to ask for Clemency from him again.

I have become very good at it, and the princess promised me a position to teach her family how to do so properly once I am free.

I am boy, formerly known as 'Rocky' and said in song and not word because master told me to not think of my former name in language anymore, for it is a name who Master insisted is an insult in his own tongue and one other.

I don't know why, Roach is a perfectly good name and I am not a good slave so I think of it as I prepare to swindle my master out of my slavery.

So far, things are going just as planned, even if Master told me to not utter those words ever again for I am no kin of farseers and that is their and their kins' favorite phrase and that it belongs to those madmen and to those that would fight them on their turf alone.

I will continue to do that too for as long as I am his slave and after I have no more need to swindle him, even as I feel he is somehow tricking me for I know he wants it too.

Also, insulting farseers by stealing from them and not getting caught is a civic duty in the Empire of Ten Million Suns and one worthy of song and praise and I want a lot of it. Master and his siblings told me so, and when I asked others in the street and at the house of Mighty Gua Bis they told me that they never heard of it but would make it so.

It fits too well to what we are for it not to be, and it isn't so because we are fools and Cegorach is a fool too for he forgot to remind us of it.

We will forgive him for that too.

Master gives me what I desire, for he was the first to give me that consistently, as before he owned me compliments and thanks were few and far between each other, and he continues to give me plenty of them.

My 'swindling' is a farce, master wants it to happen for it serves his vengeance and my liberation is the central point to it, and he did it so for he knows that I like serving him and that I wish to continue to do so to make him proud of me and not fail him, for he is kind and loves me for it and I love him too.

He plans, I think, to give me to the clan of Lestean Bairu the Crafty, for he and his master across all of reality and unreality and all that exists in-between has created in the first month of his Apprenticeship to the man among men the greatest nonsense one could do as a seer. He hid himself from any that could see him for he looked at them and none other but his Master could see him and because none could see him that would stop him and was not acting in any way to tell others of it Lestean Bairu acted as if none saw him.

If he wasn't planning it for me to join her home, then Gua Bis the Mighty does for she always plans for such.

For a full month, Lestean Bairu the Crafty acted across all that exists and doesn't as if he was the only seer in existence and earned two blessings of different gods for it, and thus became equal to his master and the Divine had to tell that-which-walked-as-divine who told Mortals of it.

'Bessaric Nonsense' the princess called it in whispers once she was told of this, for none but herself and those by blood a part of the clan of Lestean Bairu knew of it for we tricked the world itself that the Clan of Mighty Gua Bis had not been subsumed by the clan of her own son Lestean Bairu the Crafty.

It will be remade anyway, for Gua Bis is Mighty and already wished to forge her clan for the tenth time before it happened, all that changed is 'who she must steal and trick her rights as Godmother from' she told me.

That which-walked-as-divine and was asked for clemency by the Divine, and mother and Matriarch of the Mightiest clan on the world of a thousand names bowed in song and dance to the act Divinity acknowledged.

Master found it hilarious, his own daughter told me he laughed for half an hour in private once he spoke of it to her. He laughed for another half once the princess explained what Bessaric nonsense meant and thanked her for her gift and told her that hers is almost done as well.

Everyone was confused but the princess just nodded and smiled and suddenly all in attendance knew things are good for master was happy and didn't need any tea, for laughter had cooled his fiery tongue that day. I still served him some, for he likes it and he thanks me for it.

Master will open the doors to his house today back to me only, after he forbid all others but himself, his siblings, his daughter and apprentice from entering it.

The entire world heard the cries of Cipanni Oiair and how he begged to be allowed to feel despair for almost two days.

Master told me as he ordered me to pack my belongings and move to the House of Gua Bis that it should take a month normally, but believes it would take his apprentice a week to learn that which he would teach him.

He told me it is too dangerous for me to stay there while I do so and that mighty Gua Bis and her family will look after me as the apprentice learns his final lesson. I went there because she and her family wanted to learn how to make mint tea and serve it in such a way that it would make Master calm down.

It took the too talented apprentice two days to learn it, two days in which he screamed and begged to be allowed to feel despair at what he learned and his Master and his daughter refused to allow it.

"I don't think anyone will bother Master with apprenticeship request and favors after this, Mighty Gua Bis and man among men Ulthuan." I said respectfully as both individuals were escorting me to the dwelling of my master.

I sang to my fellow slave friends as I saw and heard them and told them in five days we will swindle my Master for our freedom.

"They won't, many had offered me favors to help me plead their case, now they offer more to not even mention their name to master Bessar." Mighty Gua Bis said.

I wished to call her mo- mistress, but Master told me to listen to all she told me to do and say as long it does not reveal any of his secrets and plans I know of, so I call her Gua Bis because she insisted and Mighty because she earned it.

"Two days of this was too much, and your Master thought it would take seven." The man among men continued.

"It took his siblings a month to learn this lesson from him, a week is how much they expected Cippani Oiair to need to learn, he did it in two." I revealed.

They didn't like the answer but didn't hold it against me.

The two were escorting me to my Master's house because his siblings had sang I will be allowed first in to make him tea, for the apprentice cannot do so for now and once he has drunk some he will allow friends and family to come and speak to him.

Once I have done so and Master is calm he will allow people to talk to him and petition him to see his apprentice who is being looked after by his wife-to-be.

We reached it, the house is dark grey and black and there are cuts coming from inside and burns and worse corrosions.

Wraithbone is alive and the secret Master taught his apprentice killed it as the Apprentice screamed. It will return back to life later as his siblings sing it back to life.

I have tea to make.

I entered the home and the gun-swords of my master, his siblings and their apprentice greeted me warmly in song for they only existed there.

They quarreled, they were tired, they were chipped and cracked and were slowly breaking apart as they broke themselves and each other trying to stop the screams of the apprentice and they failed miserably. Still they greeted me warmly for we were tools in the service of the same masters and they missed me and wished to say their goodbyes before they fully died. They are dying now and I will miss them and sang to them such. I was surprised they had survived so long as the house didn't and the swords fought for longer than that upon which they were painted and sang to life on.

They told me not to cry, for they died a good death even as they failed in their final task. They protected me in my dreams, they sang me lullabies with their rampage and said rampage sang sweetly at their older brother who will be left to look after their master, now that they will not be able to do so.

I promised them that if my masters make more younger brothers that I will teach them of their deaths and valiance as I shed tears and prepared tea. They thanked me for it as the last of them finally succumbed to their wounds and I presented the tray of tea to our Master and his daughter and his apprentice.

"I will miss them too boy, they served me well, even as I gave them few chances to do so well. Once you are done here and open the door, you can go back to your room, for we have cleaned it and brought it back to life, in order to mourn them. I will do so as well after I finish dealing with the foolishness that's coming for me." My master said kindly

I nodded and I poured tea to all three of them as it looked like all of them needed it.

I stopped crying by the time I finished pouring it and presented it to the three before leaving.

"I will take the brunt of it, do the two of you wish to be here for it or rest more?"

~~~~~~~~~

"We will stay here father." My daughter told me.

All three of us were tired. My hands trembled from that which I have done, my daughter now used the wheelchair she had made for me and her beloved was responsible for it even as he was but a few stepts from catatonic.

The two swords swung as one and healed each other as they did so. Tomorrow the mind of my apprentice will exit out of the Grey wastes fully for he now moves back and forth from one edge to the other of it and with each swing he goes a bit further to its edges until he will escape them.

My daughter spent too much of her soul to be able to control her body fully yet.

"Very well." I said and sung to those that waited outside that my door is now open.

My apprentice took control of my craft and tried to use it to end himself, I was too busy stopping my fifty blades from being taken over and we fought with them as I tried to imbue his mind with ten heartbeats of the Dark Soul Pits. Twelve now rest in him for the too talented fool created two of them before I could stop him from inundating his soul with them.

My daughter united her soul with his to try it and stop it from swinging for his mind and body and paid for it but she will recover in two weeks enough to dance again and one other to fully recover.

The first to enter were as tradition the boys' mother and father.

They came and kissed their son in both soul and body and cried as they saw he could barely respond.

"He will recover enough to feel emotions properly by tomorrow." I said simply as the two were slowly taken over by despair.

"We must take him to healers!" The father said.

"They will only make it worse, or worse spread my lesson to the chorus of the healers and you've seen what it did to this house." I replied annoyed.

There's multiple reasons I pay healers to leave me alone, the most pertinent and easily explained is that if they try to look at my soul enough to heal it they will die.

I have enough heartbeats of Dark Soul Pit in my soul that I cannot hide them enough to be healed properly and not kill my healers.

Souls grow in density and size as they age, all that you have been through is written in the soul. The Heartbeats of the Dark Soul Pit are an obscene poison almost perfectly crafted to kill Eldar souls and things like them. I am sure it is not so, but each day I see what they do to those that touch it I doubt it more, for it is like the Eldar soul is allergic to it to such an extent a single heartbeat of it is enough to separate soul from body or make it wish for it to be it so.

I have lived for less than one hundred years, I would need to live to one thousand to be able to hide that which I have already so that I could be healed by any but myself and others with Dark Soul Pits within themselves. My apprentice does not know how to hide it yet and by the time he will learn he won't need them for this.

I am quite glad it is so effective even if it is annoying to make use of it in my Wards of Darkness to guarantee people other than those with the heartbeats of the Dark Soul Pits could use them and not die for it.

His parents suddenly turned very pale.

"Take him and my daughter to your home, do not allow them to be separated for a few days and all should be fine. The boy will come and learn to make the Wards of Darkness with me as I make them for the princess."

They nodded at my words and took my daughter and their son with them. The father took the wheelchair with my daughter and the mother made sure to hug her boy and lead his steps out of the dark corridors.

Ulthuan and Gua Bis came after them. The princess was awaiting next.

"I greet you man among men and clan sister, please sit and let us talk, but first I thank you for looking after the boy." I welcomed them warmly.

My arms were still shaking but I didn't need them to drink tea and I needed tea. I took a sip.

"We greet as well clan brother, and do not worry he was a pleasure to look after and is so close to calling me mother too! He's just so precious!"

My clan sister, thanks to Eldar clan shenanigans said. They will never stop being funny.

"Yes, it was no problem, my wife adores him as well and Eldrad and his nameless brother enjoy his presence as he taught the gun-sword sing in their rampage."

The man among men said. I am still impressed he lives up to the title and managed to use some of my crafts as he did so and combined our two works.

We have made each other a set of the results of our combined crafts in secret and swore we would only make more for ourselves for my brother Guraith had seen how they were made and can make them too now.

I made sure to give Ulthuan the Unlucky multiple gun-swords of various uses to combine with his craft as well as my improved Interior Displacement Packs. My siblings and I have managed to improve them until they can fit inside ten times the volume and reduce the mass the wearer has to be able to carry to 10%.

Craftsmen capable of making better ones exist and we had to prove to them that we could make some ourselves before being allowed to dismantle that which they make to learn how to make them ourselves and not cause feuds. We decided to only use that which we can make as we leave, easier to fix or replace them if they got damaged.

Trying to learn for yourself a craft is perfectly normal, and many try to replicate my own yet fail. You can do so freely with no repercussions but you cannot destroy the work of apprentices or masters or practitioners of the craft to learn unless you can prove you can already make something similar to it.

My siblings and I proved it to the princess six months after we had come to this world when our apprentice told us he heard of that which we could do, then explained to us the proper rituals that we have to do to be recognized as practitioners of this craft and be allowed to learn.

We still can't teach it to others, except our own children, because we need to pass a test before being recognized as masters and allowed to teach. The test is to Reduce the Mass by eleven times and increase the volume inside the pack by eleven times as well.

We are stuck at ten after dismantling plenty that do both by twenty and so we can't call ourselves masters and teach any but our children. A shame but it is what it is.

"I am glad to hear it, are your preparations ready?" I asked my two lead conspirators.

"Yes, boy will be ready in five days to enact his Swindling and will attempt it with the same thing he tried last time, sight. We are both ready for the mockery and pretend we look at that which he does and pretend to see nothing of his and his friends cheating."

Gua Bis truly was the best. She understood a fraction of my madness and knew how I operated and I once again regretted I couldn't call her mother by the time I left. Calling her sister would suffice I suppose.

"Excellent, thank you clan sister. Ulthuan is the princess ready to receive her gift?"

"Yes for I have laid the foundations and she knows it is approaching."

I turned towards m sister and gave her the most serious look I could while shivering in pain and shock.

"Good, Gua Bis please stop trying to kill the followers of Cegorach, they complain to me about it and keep pestering me. Yes, they are not welcome in my house and homes of my family but it is for their own good, so please stop hunting them down like animals or at least stop trying to kill them when you do so." I asked the woman who is like a sister to me.

"Why?" She asked simply and squinted her eyes.

She was not happy with my request. She knew I didn't like them and that they keep pestering me for it but I couldn't tell her why.

"They are annoying and drive me to anger with their pestering, but they are helping me with my part of the plan for they owe me some favors, they can't repay me if they're dead." I tried to explain reasonably.

"I will wait until our war with the Incompetents is over and you and your siblings leave then. I will not stop until I have my answers on this matter Bessar Agail, for I do not tolerate such behavior from them as they were told they are not welcome and refuse to see sense and as you do not tell me I will get an answer from their corpses and screaming souls." She said sweetly with a voice so sweet it could rot sugar.

Yep, half as mad as I am and I her loved for it. It is annoying this time, but once I leave it'll be the fools problem to deal with.

"Very well, I thank you for it then."

That solution is acceptable as I doubt there will be any of them left where she can see them once I leave and they'll be too busy. I'll have to lose their tail but that is easy enough to do so.

"Do any of you have anything you would like to ask me?"

"Yes I do, that which you you taught your apprentice, how dangerous is it?" Ulthuan asked.

"One heartbeat of it is enough to separate the soul from the body of weak and very young Eldar if surprised and on those stronger makes them wish to do so. The princess knows of it and my siblings and I have made wards of it to protect her palace, the Webway Gate, the roads between them and our clans homes as well as multiple ships that will serve as an escape route or weapons once you decide to run.

Also crafting them isn't difficult once you have that which I taught my apprentice, he'll recover and be able to do so before I leave."

They were silent at that.

"You won't wait for him to teach you the craft he created." My sister in all but blood and oaths made to each other said.

"He did, the fool already made it, at least partially before I gave him my lesson and tried to use it to kill himself and its why his beloved is in a wheelchair. It was easy to learn as I saw him craft it and saw it as true." I revealed blandly and hiding my anger as I did so.

I did not like the boy hiding what he learned from me for a reason.

I knew what he would try to do and the surprise was unwelcome and so I told him to not hide it from me if he has made it and the fool wished to surprise me and surprise me he did and now his love and my daughter can't walk for a few days.

I would be angry at him, but I saw that it was not fully done when he tried to first use it, his soul just filled in the blanks to his 7/10ths completed idea as he screamed.

The thing was the gun-sword equivalent of a screwdriver, it's goal was to make interacting with any possible gun-sword crafts easier by directly attacking the control mechanisms, removing the language to soul-logic barrier and allowing for manual control and inspection of soul-logic that hid directly behind the language used to code it to do what he wanted.

In more sane terms, he made a tool that ripped out the interface to stop bothering with it because it is often times made to be too bothersome to use, and that allowed direct control of the soul-equivalent of writing in binary. That is useful because soul-binary is easier to work with for an Eldar than learning a new language without any sort of context while it is encrypted.

I called it Soul-Screw, because it certainly screwed up a lot, and it was also brilliant and made as a gift to me to allow me to keep on top of my art by disassembling the works of others that try to mimic it and learn from it.

He used it to take control of my swords from me and try to kill himself. My daughter kept his soul attached to his body as she healed him and I tried to take back control.

We exchanged pleasantries and they left.

The princess came and entered the door

"If the followers of Cegorach are pestering you, tell them I said no and 'run you fools.', that should take them off your back." I spoke.

She left through the same door without a word.

"I need to rest."

I really did, but first to make some swords to keep the boy company once I left, I missed the bloodthirsty maniacs and I'm pretty sure at least one of them became self-aware even as they tried to hide it from me.

Why they did so I do not know, for I would not hold it against them or disassemble them or love them any less, but now they're too dead to tell me and I did not have the heart to harm them for I knew that my own swords loved me and my family too.