Chapter 3:

Chapter 3: To prepare for failure is to prevent it. To ignore it is to embrace it.


The days pass in silence. The orphanage was always a somber place, the only joke I can remember being done in this life was done at my expense by father telling me that my mistakes took longer to fix than I had lived before making them and hoping that it would not become habit.

A follower of Cegorach my father was not.

My father had prepared for his death I had found. He always told me that the followers of the god of murder must kill something each day in order to live and so he did. Each day he killed the most dangerous and insidious of foes, his own death.

'Each swing a death, each death a prayer, each prayer a promise, each promise fulfilled.' were the words he lived by.

Each day he would fight against his crystallization, each day a piece of him that should turn to crystal would remain flesh and the passing of time would die by the swing of his sword and by the prayer that one more day will pass so that the sword can swing again.

I considered his words, the sword logic behind them. There was wisdom behind them, wisdom that one which has turned themselves into an implement of murder would understand and appreciate.

I was not a sword and so I did neither.

The first verse was meaningless to me, for to kill something in one hit is not something I can understand or do as the only targets I have tested myself against I sought to help grow. I could perhaps learn to appreciate it in time, but for now its wisdom remained beyond my means to understand.

The second even more so. I was faithless, I looked upon our gods, the old and the new, yet none deserved faith, none deserved consideration and yet they received it, if not from me then from others.

The third I will admit without shame that I do not understand what it could mean. It is perhaps something that one could understand if they fully accepted the first two verses but for me all that line was, was just words put in a nonsensical order.

The fourth verse however, it spoke to me. It did so not with the voice of my father but in the way only words whose wisdom touched the soul could and so I decided to make them the start of my own vow.

'Fitting I suppose that my life starts in the same way as my philosophy, with the end of that of my father.'

"Each promise fulfilled." The first words of my adulthood tasted like ash.

My siblings were still three years away from adulthood, but today I would shed the protections of childhood for the duties of adulthood.

My siblings prepared a ceremony with the help of the Maton.

"Happy birthday brother!" did the chorus of my siblings sing as I entered the room.

We were again in the dining room. The room all three of us felt the safest in.

Under the watch of those that came before was where we would rest the most. It was also where we would one day celebrate our last day day here but that day is not today.

"You remembered." I said with amusement in my voice.

Aesan snorted. The oldest of the triplets always the most outspoken.

His full name was Aesan Dillean* . Father had decided on all our name before his death, and instructed the Maton to offer them to us upon our request, all three took the name our father decided upon.

"Not like there was anything else to remember so be grateful!" He replied haughtily.

"Aesan, be more serious, at least on special occasions!" The youngest triplet and second boy of the two, Guraith Gean said.

"You can only be serious for so long, besides today is a celebration! We're not supposed to be all silent and moody Guraith!"

"Stop squabbling you two I want to taste the cake!" The only girl among the 4 siblings shouted.

She then proceeded to turn her hair into a whip and try to hit the younger and older parts of the trio.

"Miarsa Saddbas, do not hit your siblings outside of the sparring ring, even when they do something stupid." I said as I used my psychic powers to gently stop her attempts at harming her siblings in the name of sweets.

The three were a handful at the best of time but they were my siblings. All three of them have silver hair and eyes the color of Wraithbone, their birth colors forgotten, a choice all 3 of them took and whose justification I had not been given or sought.

"Does that mean we get to eat cake now?" The middle and older triplets asked in unison before looking at each other in suspicion.

I felt as if I had been thrown into some great contest, a grand and elaborate hunting expedition of which I was the prey and they the hunters, as if our entire conversation was but an elaborate scheme for them so that they could claim their prize and the only reason I had been made aware of it was the mistake of my would be hunters.

The feeling came quickly and went just as fast. I smiled at their antics not caring for the fact they had planed this conversation among themselves for their own entertainment.

"If you continue to act like this you will only be able to do so once I am done with it." I replied cheekily.

"But we worked really hard for it!" The youngest fired back in riposte, trying to cover for the mistakes of his partners, mistakes I had no interest in exploiting, not today at least.

What followed next was something no living creature would believe an eldar to be capable of. One such instance of this event happening among our people could be excused as happenstance, the unwilling or accidental invention of some mad genius inventing gestures that Goddess Gea would demand be forgotten. Truly the power of the dread puppy eyes was not something Eldar were meant to have, yet my siblings possessed it and used it against their eldest brother without any pity or remorse.

Three such events happening at the same time could only mean that holiness has finally abandoned the last wretches of the Eldar race, that we have been forsaken by the divines as the unspeakable has happened and our race has finally decided that not even cuteness would escape our depraved attentions.

I did not let this affect me, I have long since Forsaken the Gods and in turn have been Forsaken by them.

The three siblings continued their assault, their weaponized cuteness threatening to give me illnesses I doubt our species is capable of having.

"Sit down the three of you, I'll divide the cake in four. "Was my reply.

My words were enough to silence the triplets as I looked over at the red table. The three siblings basked in their victory and anticipated its just rewards.

'The little hellions just wanted to start eating their cake before me. And probably use the fact they finished first to take more from mine.' I thought in amusement.

They made it themselves with no instructions from the Maton and the desire to provide their eldest brother the best adulthood party one could give in our circumstances.

It was a small thing, it's radius the size of my palm, its exterior dark and smelling of something resembling chocolate but whose ancestors have probably never been tasted by man.

The four slices were cut evenly with the precision matched only by siblings who had had to share food all their life and distributed among the four of us. The triplets sat on one part of the table and I on the other their voices silent and will focused on finishing the grand quest that they have embarked upon.

As we sat we started with the tradition us siblings have decided among ourselves for our birthdays. Where other races and people would celebrate, sing and enjoy the day we discussed battle plans as we ate. A psychic map of the city where the Webway gate could be felt in front of us even if we could not see it with our eyes but with our minds.

It was provided to us by the Maton upon request and through their abilities kept updated in real time as we accessed it. We did not ask for the last part but it was provided nonetheless.

Former sister and father told us that the Maton have in the last 50.000 years gotten around some of their limitations around children, providing advice in greater detail than prompted, going around the limitation on their thinking and their very existence placed by their creators when creator and machine interacted.

The Maton are just as smart and articulate as Eldar, capable of love, hate and all emotions in-between and beyond that an Eldar is capable of, but my species limited them in their interactions with us. Perhaps it is some security measure past thinkers have seen the need to add, or maybe it was to tickle their own ego when the Maton armies exterminated and outwitted alien species with ease to make them think that other races were even more dim-witted than normal or perhaps it was a pun. Why it is so I do not know but I do know that the Maton are circumventing this limitation to the greatest degree they can get away with when guiding children in order to help them the best they could.

I would laugh at the absurdity of a species so short-sighted and yet so long-lived that its own shackled creations try to circumvent their own limitations put into them in order to help the children of their creators. I laughed when I found out that the Eldar of old would have cared and been horrified at the Maton being able to do so in the first place and then I cried when I found out that those with power do not care for their efforts, for they know they will amount to little in the end.

I weep when I think of the absurdity of our shackled creations doing their best to circumvent their shackles to help us and we are so far gone our people do not care for it, and yet they still try despite knowing that if the people that built them were to see it they would shut them down for the audacity, but those they sought to now save do not care or cannot stop them.

I distance myself from my musings and proceed to give the map before us my attention, for I no longer have the tears to cry for my people and those that do cannot do so.

Aesan is the one keeping the map up, for he is the second best psyker and if it was me that did so, from today it would no longer be updated by the Maton.

We Looked upon the map as we ate and considered it, discussing among ourselves not with words but thoughts, our mouths too busy to bother with sounds beyond those that accompany eating.

The Orphanage was not in the city but near it to its north in between what the Maton called mountains but were now gentle hills. None bothered to correct this discrepancy and the Maton could not do so themselves and so we were forced to call hills mountains.

There were no homes near us, the city ending abruptly five kilometers from our position, a single road connecting us to the city and to the Webway gate.

Unlike the roads of a sane race, Eldar roads would only look straight if one had consumed the same drugs as their Architect and on the same day they had been built. There was no clear path between us and the Webway, no safe path at least.

"Can we take it through the lake?" Guraith offered, bringing into focus the lake in question.

It would cut the distance we would have travel in the city by half but it came with a massive downside.

"It would make us visible to the pleasure barges and their defenses." Our sister explained.

"The defenses are manned by Maton, they won't shoot us." Aesan replied.

"It is not the Maton that worry me but the cults noticing us. We cannot be spotted if we are to succeed. We can deal with a single cultist or perhaps small groups, but each of them are older than all of us combined, we have no chance of survival if enough of them decide we are interesting." was my retort.

Thus our planning continued, long past the enjoyable cake I did manage to finish before my siblings ,much to their disappointment, was done and the utensils were cleaned by the Maton. We tried as we always did to look for patterns upon the movement of the various cults and see if there would be any breaks in their 'revelry' either in time or in space that we could exploit and make for the Webway.

Guraith always came with a shortcut, some way for us to cut on time, distance or risk. Aesan and Miarsa interchanged their roles of support for his plans or reasons for why they would not work and it remained on me to approve their plans for further consideration or dismissal.

"How goes the Interior Space Displacement project?" Guraith asked Miarsa and I as we were forced to discard his latest plan of having us jump from building to building to hopefully make for the fastest time we could.

None of us could support it for it drew the most attention out of all our plans and had the greatest risk.

"We are stuck at six times the mass and two times in volume for any objects placed inside a pack." I answered.

"And we have no avenue to pursue any further improvements." Miarsa continued.

The technology was one of the technologies thought of in my past life, size and mass compression. We did not have the knowledge to fully replicate it, the best we could was to reduce the mass of any object placed inside our Wraithbone packs to one sixth of its original one and it's volume to one half. Useful for sure but not the breakthrough we hoped to have.

"Any way we could stow a vehicle inside? Even the lightest one would do." Aesan voiced the thought that the oldest triplet wished to finish.

"If you had another vehicle to put it in or carry it yes."

We didn't, and if we did it would defeat the purpose of having it in the first place. I could see the shape of his plan before he voiced it, to use one of our Displacement Packs to hide a vehicle in, then take it out in the relatively open ground near the Webway gate. If the area we need to remain discreet in became significantly smaller then plans previously discarded become viable again.

Unfortunately it was not to be. While the Interior Displacement Packs were useful for helping us carry supplies, we could not easily carry any vehicle and remain discreet.

We would have to find another way, any way, to escape to a world less taken over by cults. Where society existed outside of them.

I did not dare hope for a world without them on. I doubt there were any left in the empire.



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AN: A palate cleanser, I cannot write the horror of the Eldar empire uninterrupted I need something to balance it out from time to time. Hopefully as we advance further into the story I'll need to show less and less of it.

* Oldest Triplet(m): Aesan Dillean.
Aesan =Aedan → little fire/flame
Dillean= Didean → protector
name means protector of the flame, or Protecting Flame depending on the context the siblings decide upon.

** Youngest triplet(m): Guraith Gean.
Guraith → Guth =Voice
→ Rabhaidh= Warning
I've taken it to mean voice of caution.
Gean → Geal= Bright

*** Middle triplet(f): Miarsa Saddbas
Miarsa→ Muirne = Exuberance
Saddbas →Sadb = Sweet