Chapter 36:

Chapter 36: Family and the bonds of care are most precious.



Wounds are a strange thing in the Empire of Ten Million Suns, as some that would be crippling to other species are things you can recover from in a few days and others that some species won't even feel are crippling to Eldar.

I am a medicine peddler by craft, and what I deal with are soul injuries, more specifically the disease of Boredom, the cancerous tumor that Slaanesh was infected with and that now afflicts our people and I what I make is not a cure, for that already exists in Khaines' flames and Isha's warm embrace.

Khaine in my past life would have been called both Firewall and Antivirus of the creature that is the Eldar species, for it is his job to ensure that whatever foreign infection wishes to use our people as carriers fails to do so, but he failed in this task due to enemy action for the Followers of the Vortex, our counterparts in Unreality which decided to target vulnerabilities in our soul design and did so with the virus we had dubbed Boredom.

I hope they are enjoying have their local unreality be the White Hole of every single Black Hole in our galaxy across all time and space.

Boredom is a horrific virus, one that hollows you out bit by bit until there's nothing left and you constantly try to fill yourself up with the sensations you keep on missing and craving until you end up mutilating yourself to feel anything as nothing else works and eventually not even that works.

For other species this disease is survivable, something they can fight off with some difficulty, but for Eldar it is deadly for the only cure is Khaine's flames and in all but the earliest stages of the disease the cure kills you.

Isha on the other hand nurtures, she nurtures life, she nurtures love, she nurtures family and health and all the things that grow and she would normally nurture that which would fight off the corruption and cancer of Boredom, but we as a species have been partially handcrafted by the Old Ones and while we had gained many things out of it the process has left us with no means to actually defend ourselves from this disease.

Boredom as an emotion is something we struggle with, but we have options to find fulfillment through reincarnation, experiencing new things and if life becomes too bothersome we can even have Vaul and Khaine cleanse our souls of all memories so we can experience things all over again, but Boredom as an illness causes even the youngest of us to feel like the souls that have experienced a million years of life and hollows us emotion and feeling and there's no part of our psyche or soul that can resist it and so Isha has nothing to nurture to fight it off.

Slaanesh is not at fault for boredom, and we didn't even know she was infected with it when we decided to abort her, as she was merely an unwanted child whose domains and identity the rest of the Pantheon did not wish to bother with.

Her original domain were Revelry, Carnality, Obsession, Sculpting, Shame and Joy, all emotions meant to deal with boredom and all of them something that we either did not need a god to regulate or that were covered by multiple gods, and so the decision turned from welcoming her to either having one of the Gods eat her to gain some complementary domains or aborting her. It wouldn't have been the first time such a decision was called for.

Eldrazor, Addaioth and others were eaten by Khaine before they could be born to enhance his fighting prowess and his cleansing flames. Atharti and Anath Raema were eaten by Isha and Kurnous to gain or reinforce the domains of pleasure and the hunt and others were either looked upon to be devoured or were aborted.

Slaanesh had nothing any of the gods wished for nor was she in any way shape of form interesting so she was aborted.

After the War In Heaven only one divine was allowed to rise up properly and that is Lileath, and that only happened because she was useful and having a Goddess dedicated to foresight was too good to pass up while nobody else wanted to take on more domains.

Hoeth himself came close to devouring her before she was born but ultimately he was convinced by Isha not to, as the domain of Foresight would serve the Eldar more if it was 'purer' as it would serve his own planning ability more if the one finding our information had no biases and better information meant a better ability to plan. Lileath forever thanked Isha for this by calling her Mother upon birth, and her husband Kurnous father by extension.

Despite all that, Lileath's followers and those of Hoeth, when he still lived, were friends for what Isha advised became reality and we had worked together a lot until Slaanesh became a problem and Hoeth killed himself to give birth to his son Cegorach.

Cegorach himself was born as a weapon against Slaanesh as he took the domains the Slaanesh would feed her own from so she would be born weakened and incomplete so that the disease she was infected with would erode her faster as well for Slaanesh is Eldar and not even her is immune to her own disease.

I have accidentally managed to create something that is immune to it, the Dark Soul Pits, for they are an experience that closely matches that which Boredom does to us, for it the sensation of Emptiness where no joy, no sadness, no enlightenment, no love, no will to live or will to die exists and it is also what Boredom eventually leave us with.

The Dark Soul Pits is an immunization from Boredom, for if an Eldar can survive it and take the sensation within their souls then the virus cannot spread inside the Eldar Soul, for what it tries to slowly turn us into has already happened and our soul is now capable of finding the virus and extirpating it from itself. This is important for no Eldar has ever fully experienced the feeling of true emotional emptiness before myself and if they did do so, they did before being Eldar and they had chosen to forget it.

I didn't do so, for when my siblings told me what they had felt the day our former sisters decided to kill herself to roll the dice again for a chance at a good life I had told them that things could get worse and when they did not believe me I showed them and nearly killed myself for it.

I realized I could use it as a weapon then, even if I could not make something I could actually carry before Cipanni Oiair managed to show my siblings and I how incomplete the knowledge of our own craft was, for his mind was perfectly made for making Gun-swords and whenever he would find a place to struggle in we realized that it was our fault and not his.

His own struggles and his apprenticeship to us is the reason I can actually carry multiple gun swords for before we took him as apprentice even my Swords of Valor and Murder Dream Charms which are the smallest of my tools, took us a sizable slab to make and use them on.

Before his apprenticeship to me, as slab for one Sword of Valor needed to be 3 centimeters thick, 20 centimeters in length and 10 in width and all of it was Wraithbone and there were carvings both inside and outside of it and after we had finished his apprenticeship a Sword of Valor could be made to be as thin as a fingernail and as long and wide as a pinky and is why we punished him when he called himself talent-less.

If he wasn't talented I would be dead, as my body keeps reminding me, for I would not have been able to wear so many gun-swords and I would have lost more than just an arm and some blood when facing that prince.

"Here my love, eat." my wife said as she fed me some of the nurturing red liquid I had spread to her people.

I drank it slowly as my wife, Cuhacta Yamara looked after me as my queen-wife tried to calm her people down from seeing the husband of their queen come back nearly dead. She was doing that while also organizing them for the swearing ceremony.

I was resting in our royal bedroom, the red and white bedding a soothing balm on my soul as my wife looked after me and nursed me to health.

Physical wounds are easy to heal for an Eldar, for with the exception of lost limbs and organs all we need to recover from them is time and the only thing left of them being a light discoloration of the skin if even that.

In my case, thanks to my blades preserving my arm, all I need is a few days of rest to recover from my injuries and the tiredness of my muscles.

My wife stood to my right on orders of our queen-wife to look after me with a tray near her that held some liquid food in bowl which she offered to me.

"Thank you my dear." I sad as I finished eating the liquid in one sitting.

"Someone has to take care of you if you won't." She said slyly as she put the bowl on the tray.

I knew where this was going but decided to play along for my wife obviously didn't.

"I do take care of myself my dear wife, and of our people." I replied.

She did not like that.

"Someone that takes care of himself would not scare us and come to our doorstep half dead and missing limbs!" She said vehemently.

"I did not plan for this to happen, the prince that came to me, came from the north and ambushed me and my blades as we were heading towards you from the south."

She won't like that answer or that which comes after it but she and our queen-wife needs to hear them.

"You could have fled! Your own blades would have covered your escape!" She all but shouted.

"I have taken those under my wing to look after you two, not me! Also even if I did try that the prince would have caught up for he had the ability to manipulate space and was faster than me, not that it would have helped if I did manage it." I continued.

"How? You have armies that would have killed him and not leave us worried that our children will be born without a father!"

That hurt me for I did wish to be a better father than the one I had killed.

"He has armies too, and when he escaped your attempts at an ambush he would return with them and our position would be even worse."

"We have 8 million sirens ready to fight and die for you, even excluding the non-combatants and children we still have more warriors than what is estimated to be his army."

"His armies are united under a single banner, they have experience in war, coordination and traditions of fighting together, and we don't. We have disparate warbands barely capable of cohesive action not armies and tell me, can you lead all of our troops? Can you organize them to fight and are you even aware of all that you have available and do those troops and commanders respect you to follow you into battle?" I asked as I looked into her blue eyes.

She averted her eyes from me.

"Hoeth is the god of military planning and knowledge and I was taught his ways and so I know that I know little to nothing of actually running a military and even I can see that we do not have one worth the name yet."

The fight left her as I spoke and when I finished she sighed.

"I can't win an argument with you husband." She said tiredly.

"Not yet, but you'll get there as you gain experience I lack." I said as I pulled her slowly into a kiss.

She leaned into it and gave me light kiss as I slowly rose up to meet her. She tasted of fruits and had a faint floral pattern I did not recognize. The kiss itself lasted little but it said a lot that I was willing to kiss her even while exhausted and that she wasn't mad enough to refuse me and that meant a lot.

"Join me on the bed my wife, for I so missed your touch." I invited and slowly guided her to lay to my left on the bed.

The bed was large enough for seven times the amount of people that occupied it now, so she had plenty of room for herself.

"Won't my poor husband wait until birth to ravage his poor defenseless wife?" Said the warrior with 500 years of training to the 60 years old man that can barely even walk from exhaustion.

"I do not wish to ravage you my beloved, I just wish to feel your body right next to mine, for I have missed you and the nights were cold and lonely without your touch." I said as I hugged her.

She froze, for she was weak to tenderness unlike her sister-wife which always asked me to be harsher, but I didn't need sexual intimacy now. I just needed to feel warm again, for my wounds left me feeling too cold.

One could be excused for thinking the Sirens' skin color was naturally red if they looked at the blush covering her face.

"Y-yes, I suppose I could do that, if you would do your wife a favor." She stammered slightly.

I hummed to hide my annoyance with her.

'I am not made of glass woman, nor can I make myself warm with you so far away.' I thought in annoyance.

The Siren snake body created logistical issues with intimacy between partners, issues that could be solved by her coiling herself around me, something which she did frequently and without prompting before I left but now treated me as if I would break from it.

"I suppose I could do so, on the condition that you make yourself comfortable as well." I teased.

She hesitated.

"I am not budging on this my beloved, this moment is to be tender for both of us." I spoke and sang to her.

The Sirens loved coiled around each other and while Eldar could be intimate and close in private without hugging each other with our lower extremities, sirens considered it rude to not do so. She blushed again and whatever argument she had against it died before it could touch her lips for I attacked them to keep them silent.

The attack lasted until her struggles ceased and she slowly started coiling around my legs, for I would only break our kiss when she too was comfortable.

I was ambivalent to coiling at first, for I liked having my legs free to move but it had grown on me especially as my wives started to learn to coil lightly around my legs to allow them some liberty to move and make themselves comfortable too.

I imagine we made for a strange pair to any that would be unlikely to see us now, for on the right there was a young eldar man wearing a simple white blouse and pants and on the other a snake woman in a black and red dress slowly coiling her tail around his legs as if to prepare to eat him and yet she was on the defensive. When she finished coiling comfortably around me I brought her into my own hug and put her head to my chest and stood there for a bit before I spoke.

"What favor does my lady-wife wish of her lord-husband?" I asked kindly.

She continued to make herself comfortable as she turned her back to me to stand more comfortably on account of her large pregnant belly, and I could feel warmth returning to my body. It was still incomplete for there was only one individual to hold in my arms as opposed to two but one is better than none.

"Could you tell me a story about Hoeth? He did much for us and we know so little of him." She said softly.

I stood to think of a story to tell, one that I hadn't told her of. I had never met Hoeth, none alive did but stories of him remain among his followers, for we are the only ones left to remember him.

"Have I told you the story of the White Tower of Hoeth?" I asked.

I knew I didn't but this sort of thing requires a certain ritual to be told appropriately.

"You didn't my love, would you please tell me now?" She asked as she kissed my soul and I kissed hers.

I thought of how to start it properly for a few heartbeats and when I did I used my best 'teacher' voice that both my wives adored.

"In times past, the greatest redoubts of our people were not the Palaces of Asuryan or the Death Fleets of Khaine or even the Shadow Fortresses of Hoec, but the White Towers of Hoeth! From inside their walls the greatest of seers could see doom before it had even decided to harm our people and from them great minds would find the best way to either destroy them or turn them into friends.

All mortals had seen the Towers of Hoeth and his followers knew to call their white walls home, but one day they realized that their god had no home or if he did he never showed it to his followers.

And so a man whose name we only know as 'The White Voice' approached the divine and asked him.

'My lord and master, your followers all live in the towers we had made in your honor and called them our homes, but yet as you are welcomed in our homes, we had never seen yours. Do you trust us so little as to not show it to us? Or have we made our homes for ourselves and left our master without one?' Spoke the man.

The old man, for Hoeth is the oldest of the divine and he always appeared as an old man clad in the robes of the lore masters of our people for they all dressed as he and he as them, for none can remember if he came first or they did, spoke to him gently.

' O'Learned man, do not worry for this old one, for each of your small homes is my home too as my home is where my family is and you have seen all the homes that I have and know that they are lovely and filled with those I love and I know that love me too' the god replied.

This answer satisfied the man's mind but not his heart, for the heart of all Eldar is mischievous and the answer of his lord had given him an idea.

And so a grand conclave had been called for mortal to plot and scheme against their god without his knowledge.

'Our lord had told me that our houses are his, but our houses small for him and so as he has helped us make a home for each of us, so shall we help me get a home appropriate for him!' Said the man to the conclave which in a heartbeat desired to conspire against the divine.

And they did so because the heart of Eldar is as filled with love as it is with the desire to subject others to trickery and their god in his kindness has given his children the perfect opportunity to repay his generosity with trickery!

And so the Followers of Hoeth plotted as their ilk does, they gathered the support of the Forge Masters of Vaul to help build him a house, they brought in the shadows of Hoec to obscure it from his sight before it was done and the followers of Lileath and Khaine to help keep him distracted as they built a house worthy of a god.

And so it went for 1000 years did 4 gods and the followers of 5 gods built in secret a house for Hoeth and they built him a mighty tower, the mightiest to ever exist!

On the surface of a small naked star did they build its base and it was was 8 times as long as the diameter of the star it stood upon and it was white, no it was whitest something can be for it would become the White Tower of Hoeth!

And so one day as they finished building it but had not yet furnished the god learned of the trickery of his followers and came furiously to look upon what they had hidden from him.

He expected deceit, for he was given many lies. He expected treachery, for what other reason one could have to hide things from him, but he did not expect for his followers and family to have built him a home!

And so 'The White Voice' greeted the divine with joy as the Divine looked in wonder at what his followers had kept hidden from him.

'My lord look upon what he have made for you, a home big enough to enter fully and not claim any house of yours as too small for you, for the White Tower of Hoeth is the Mightiest across the stars and if it's not then we'll make it so and if we can't do that then we'll make sure it is the heftiest!"

"One thousand years of trickery and manipulations on a divine for a dick joke?" My wife interjected as she laughed.

"No, one thousand years of trickery and manipulations for the greatest dick joke in all existence and a home!" I proclaimed proudly.
Both of us started laughing out loud at this.

"Tell me another, one that is as fun!" She demanded.

I stopped to consider it before I had an idea.

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


Wraithbone and rock met us all around us as we stood in a queendom that did not belong to us and yet we stood in it. I know it so, for I am Thrax the Eldest, chief of the 'Mist Whisperers' one of the Great Six Clans of the Skin Walkers of the the World of Clashing Blades.

We are the vassal pets of the sirens, who until now dreamed to be the same to the eldar and now they are.

'What awaits us now?' I wondered.

The few shamans we do have tell us of the songs of the Sirens who claim that various noble lines and clans now wonder if they should feed us now that they have no more use for us. Our former princesses, now turned noble ladies in the service of the queen defend us still, but for how long I do not know.

"Father, you have just turned 80, please rest." Nakra, my foolish daughter said.

I looked upon her, she was healthy for her age, for she was still old at 60. Her skin was the dark grey of our people her features the not-quite-eldar ones that our masters and mistresses bred into us and she was still tall unlike me who once towered over her but could now barely reach her chest. Even as tall as she is and as tall as I was once, the tallest of us could only reach the chest of the eldar if even that.

Her feet were even sharp still, while mine had dulled and melted.

All six of the clan heads were standing and waiting for the lord-husband of our queen to come and as is tradition we cannot stay standing until we have been told to sit.

"Foolish daughter, we will stand up for we receive a lord and such is tradition. Our traditions are what kept us in service to our masters and we will not be found wanting or unpious." I told her.

None of us clan heads was younger than 70 and we did not care to stand, even as our joints ached.

If we did anything that would displease the king then our people were dead and not even our noble ladies' could save us. The Young knew not of this, as for them this era was one of prosperity and hope and we kept what the shamans told us from them.

It would not help if they knew, and if they didn't then they could act as if things were good and happy.

We could not do anything even if we rose up, for there were less than 20.000 of us and now the realm of the Queen was growing by millions each year. All we could do was either succeed and convince the lord-husband of the queen to let us live, or fail but keep our people happier for a bit longer before we die.

The other clan heads had their own heirs try to get them to sit as well but they were rebuffed in the same way.

The Lord-Husband of the Queen had heard of our situation and had told us he will come and talk to us of it and is on his way right now.

We only had to stay up for half an hour which isn't that long.

The Lord-Husband of our queen entered and we bowed as one be they ancient like me or merely old like my daughter.

"We great the Great and Mighty Bessar Agail." We said as one.

He was tall, even for an eldar, if not the tallest I've ever seen. He also wore the loose white blouse and pants the stories of the shamans said he usually wears, but without the tabard of the smiling blade.

'I greet you as well clan leaders and thank you for your consideration but please next time we talk await me sitting down for I do not wish to know I caused my vassals pain when it was not intentional. Now please sit.' The eldar sang into our minds.

'We might actually survive.' I thought with hope.

We obeyed and sat down. The ancients sat down on cushions and the old had moved to the back and sat on wooden stools.

The lord-husband of the queen himself sat on the giant green cushion fit for a Siren to coil and uncoil as he or she wished.

'I thank you for the welcoming reception and in thanks to it I will be brief, your people will continue to serve, but your oaths to your Noble Ladies no longer properly apply, for you have sworn yourself to princesses and they are no longer as such.' The eldar continued in a kind tone.

It was the same tone I had used to talk to my own children when educating them which gave me further hope that we would survive.

"What are we to do then mighty one?" I asked.

I was the oldest of our people to ever live and so the clans have agreed I will talk for us all. The other clan heads will only to interject when they have a question it does not seem likely I will ask.

'Your tasks will remain the same, you will serve in whatever fashion you have served the princesses before, the only thing that will change is the fact that I will make use of you as well and the rewards for doing so.'

'Rewards?' I and probably all the others thought and asked ourselves.

Our rewards for serving the sirens had been plenty, safety, security, the chance to live past 30 years old and the chance to feast on eldar flesh and safe places to breed in. These were things we did not have before and now we do, will we receive less now?

"Rewards great one?" I asked.

'Yes, the people of this world are poor, and the sirens the poorest and least capable before my coming. I am a servant of dead divines fighting against that which has not been born yet and I know plenty, including the fact that loyalty is to be rewarded and it is ordained so by Divine Decree if not Divine Law."

That was promising, but what more could we receive that we did not already have?

"Then what do you have in mind?"

'To start with, you will be given the choice of swearing yourself as my vassals or those of my queen-wife. Your status to your noble ladies will change to subject and not pets, for while I have found a use for the institution in the past it is not one I am comfortable subjecting intelligent species to. The second is that once the New Divine is dead you will be given a choice of your continued service and its rewards." The Eldar revealed.

We did not care for gods, be they old or new, or living, dead and unborn. We had no gods, only our ancestors and the despair we feel each day when we pray to our ancestors that we will not be hunted to extinction.

"What would the vassalage oaths entail?" Kmern asked.

He too was like me, a clan head and a small thing of melted feet and a raspy voice and ever whitening skin. He spoke out of turn for I did not even get the chance to think about asking a question before he did so.

'Vassalage to me means that you will be mine to rule and look after and Vassalage to my queen-wife means she will do so. Both of us wish for you to continue to live but if you choose to do so under me it is I who will be responsible for your well-being, but if you choose to swear yourselves to my queen-wife she will be responsible for it and will have to answer to her people's concerns for it.' He revealed.

"We will require more knowledge of what each entails to choose, but what about the second part?" I asked.

I was curious about what sort of reward we will be offered and what we needed to do for this.

'The rewards are dependent on who you choose to be a vasal of. My queen-wife is willing to offer you worlds, once she manages to conquer such, where you can live in this galaxy and in service of my plans from where you can decide whether or not you wish to continue this arrangement in the future. I plan to turn your species into a vassal race, a species recognized by the Empire and protected by it but forever subordinated to it.'

We knew the ways of the Eldar and the Sirens, we knew very well that the first one meant death if not now then in a thousand generations after the New Divine is dead.

Eldar and Sirens have the same souls and they do not tolerate that which they do not control. All the waters on this world used to be ours once so many aeons ago and we numbered in the hundreds of millions once. Now we number less than 20.000 as vassals to the sirens and perhaps double that on the rest of the world.

We did not die peacefully or fast, but die we did.

"I believe I speak for all of us, when I say we wish to swear ourselves to you, Lord Bessar Agail for promises of protection matter more to us than dreams of independence." I said.

Independence has been bred out of us a long time ago, all we had left was the hope for safety.

"We call ourselves you vassals, Bessar Agail, and beg of you to not let us die out." We all swore as one.

We had no other choice really. It was either serve forever or die later.

'Then know that I accept your oath, and that I am truly happy to see and hear the song of your loyalty." He sang to our souls and bowed slightly.

We bowed too and our fate was sealed as a silver chain appeared on our neck.

AN:

Skin walkers are not a species in the canon of 40k, but one I've decided to create. They are the natives of the World of Clashing Blades and have evolved there. They don't swim so much as use their bladed feet to walk on the bottom of swamps and in small rivers.

To be clear, the concept for that which I call skin walkers comes from me even if the term doesn't, the image itself has nothing to do with me and I had no hand in making it or commissioning it, I just found it. I have chosen it because it fits too well with my idea not to.