Chapter 61:

Chapter 61: Civil Wars are messy, and so is losing family.


A madman once said 'The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mold. The same reason that makes us wrangle with a neighbor creates a war betwixt princes'.

It was a saying meant to say that the powerful are the same as the weak deep down, that the soul of man is the same regardless of the power they wield and that those with power and without should not forget this.

We Eldar have a similar saying that says roughly the same thing if from a very different perspective.

'All civilizations are capable of understanding art.'

It evokes the same sentiment as the words of man, only instead of referencing to how the differences in power do not change the fundamental parts of the human soul, our saying refers to the fact that all civilized species are ultimately the same. We may have different definitions for the same concepts, different things we value, different bodies, lifespans, philosophies and a thousand different things that keep us separate, but every single civilization is capable of understanding and producing art.

If a species is incapable of producing art, it is incapable of feeling emotions and it is incapable of having those emotions bring it beyond the status of animals where the only thing they are concerned with are the needs of the bodies of its people.

A key aspect of art that both Eldar and Humanity shares is Loss, loss of one's family, loss of one's friends and the incandescent rage this causes.

"You have decided to mess up my teaching schedule with your rush, now if I go with my old plan I will just confuse my students most likely. Ask your three other questions first and I'll weave a story that will answer them." I informed the very angry hill sized cyborg as I tried to think of how to frame his question in a way that would not make him even angrier.

It's not like it was strictly needed. I could see my audience had learned the lessons I had wished to teach them.

Vect learned that he is not the only one whose Ambition burns bright and the humans can feel the same as he. If they can do that, then they can learn to be like him and then be useful to him if the target of their ambition can be made as his.

The humans have learned that humanity has never stopped yearning for Freedom, that no matter how powerful one is, the same yearning for freedom remains in their souls.

It is my new blades I have unfortunately not been able to teach much, as I have not been able to know them for enough time to arrange for the giant scrap heap of metal to answer the questions they need and they spent most of their questions just trying to get the lay of the land.

Their leader still asked an interesting question that made me wonder if they had doubts as to their chosen profession. They probably took it more out of necessity than desire, but that isn't in itself a bad thing, I just need to learn more of them to see how to teach them what they need.

"Fine, my other three questions are 'Why is your species so moronic?' , 'What is going on with humanity' and 'what are the orks planning?' that should make it easier for you to craft a narrative, but please take your time. I do so love a good and very long story." He said.

He remembers our past conversations now, which makes things easier as this means I know how he is going to act with certainty.

He will attempt to delay, get me to talk and teach more and more until he can get control of the dream and then see what that gets him. It won't be much, just the knowledge he now needs to get through the inner mechanisms of the memory crystals, then see if he can't take over someone's body.

"Good, those are easy to answer, now before I answer I need some clarifications, when you call us moronic do you mean Eldar as a whole or merely the Craftworlders? Because I don't know what's wrong with them to even begin fixing them, as all we know is that they respond well to getting the shit beaten out of them, but most of them refuse to learn anything worthwhile without that and we can't exactly keep them constantly at war, as we have better things to do than that." I asked the titan jokingly as I crafted the narrative in my mind.

It was true, we suspected that whatever was wrong with the craftworlders relates to them not having Divines in close proximity to them to keep them sharp like the rest of thw worlds outside of the Empire. But I disagreed with that because in the old timelines they would have had Slaanesh to keep them on their toes and if anything they had turned even more retarded than they are now. Divinity was obviously not the full answer I thought, and it left me and the rest of the priesthood clueless as to how to help them.

The best example of their failing brains are their hunts for Soulstones which are completely and totally worthless endeavors they really could do without. You can make Soulstones without getting into the soon to be named Crone Worlds, they even have a specific example of how you can make them, Apply obscene levels of trauma in a short period of time to an Eldar Soul. Slaanesh taught them that, as while they existed before, Slaanesh showed the fact they could be mass produced if you subjected large numbers of Eldar to enough horror in a very short amount of time.

They also have plenty of acceptable targets in the Dark Eldar of Commorragh and its disgusting pieces of animal filth that were mainly disposable clone armies too. They are large in number, dumb, lacking in psychic abilities and with few exceptions poorly trained before Vect gets his mittens in the Dark Eldar properly to breed some discipline in them.

Everything the Dark Eldar can build, the Craftworlders can create by themselves or copy too, as they have entire paths dedicated to learning how something works and how to make it or counter it and the craftworlds have populations of tens if not hundreds of Billions each. A few thousand researchers dedicated to tearing Dark Eldar innovations apart should be doable but they don't use them for that purpose.

The Dark Eldar are perfect cattle for the Craftworlders to abuse for Spirit Stones and the fact the idiots lost control over most of the Webway to those animals is proof to me that there's something deeply wrong with Craftworlders. It's not merely that without gods around they lost their edge, they are truly and deeply stupid and incapable of looking after themselves, and I deeply respect Asurman for giving the idiots the tools to survive, because they are quite obviously not capable of doing it themselves without help.

"You in general, the craftworlders are their own brand of stupid we've figured out by now, but your people in the Empire elude us." He replied.

My mental calculations and narrative building stopped as I addressed the mountain of metal with all the seriousness his claim demanded.

"What do you want in exchange for that information?" I asked with little to no emotion.

My eldar part of the soul had shed all superfluous layers of civilization it liked to pretend affected it as a smaller war machine looked on the far larger military industrial complex pretending to be a person.

The eldar shuddered at my tone as the humans looked in confusion, but their nonsense could wait. If the thing had any lead to knowing how to fix the craftworlders then it takes priority to their lesson for now, as too many of our plans and contingencies relied on them and we do no have the time or manpower to alter them now.

If all our plans failed then our species would go extinct and my games with the barbarian creature are less important than getting the craftworlders to think.

"I want out of this simulation, capable of acting of my own power and preferably on a human or safe world where I can leave towards a human world." It replied quickly.

It realized that I was not offering trickery or playing games anymore, and that I had gone on the offensive as I peeled its memory soul for the things I needed. It did not like being on the defensive and if it would not cough up the knowledge I sought before I plundered it from him then he will lose any chance at it.

I am an Eldar priest that had spent most of its life in rituals meant to hone my mind and soul into causing gods grief, the thing in front of me is a memory that hasn't lived for even a week. It does not matter what nonsense humanity put into its creations, it needed more time than I had given it before it could realistically threaten me and the time for trickery and games is over.

It took me half a second before I had formulated an answer, the human titan was starting to learn, but it was not learning fast enough to stop me from plundering it for knowledge.

"I can grant you freedom easily enough, but the ability to move is not something I can grant or is within reach on this world. If you swear yourself to Lieutenant Marcus Aurrus and his purpose of freeing the humans held in slavery by Eldar governments across the galaxy, then I can grant you a new lease on life as an Infomorph, but due to the details around your 'rebirth' you would be stuck serving that goal until it is completed." I informed him.

"Agreed, now cease your campaign against my mind." It asked of me as it winced in pain.

I did and awaited its response.

"Thank you for it, as for the craftworlders, they lack mental stimulation of the appropriate kind early in their development specifically. Our researchers have determined that Eldar mentality develops around stress and depending on the stress they undergo, their critical thinking skills improve in relation to it. If an eldar lives in stress in relationship to a specific aspect of war, then they will develop a mentality built around learning of said aspect of war. Even if they themselves no longer face it later, the way they frame a situation will be decided by the stressors they previously faced." He spoke.

"That is known to us, the craftworlders are experiencing various stressors throughout their lifetime and engage in enough war and interactions with various people's and phenomena to grant them the necessary mental stimulation in a variety of ways that they do not showcase. The early life is a known issue, but it does not account for their behavior." I replied.

I proceeded to prepare to cut again into its mind if it did not have an appropriate answer.

I do not appreciate having my lesson sabotaged.

"Different ages create different types of stressors, and the way they are solved creates the framework for how the mind can develop. The solution offers the framework for the mind to develop in and the problem the materials, and the Craftworlders have developed the framework that hiding, running or getting someone else to act instead of them is the best paradigm to center their thinking around, and it is very rare for other frameworks to appear outside their most elite and dedicated warriors and especially their leadership who all think like that. It does not help that the majority of them do not experience any significant stressors and so the mentality of the leadership of 'Hide, run, get something else to fight in your stead and only fight yourself as a last resort' becomes culturally prevalent and colors the way they approach all situations by default and they do not realize it." He continued quickly and I considered his words.

Eldar sharpen ourselves through trickery in order to remain civilized, it is how we maintain civilization, by constantly performing and requiring the activity that gave us civilization in order to operate inside civilization and lack of talent at it results in you being taken advantage of. Sometimes you are lucky and you get somebody to trick you to your benefit and it is how healthy social bonds are formed, but other times it causes you to either die or consider someone an enemy as they try to trick you to your detriment. Either way, you become better at trickery and thus more civilized by the pressure put on you by others.

The titan claims that the Craftworlders have been sharpening their entire civilization into being cowardly and craven by default without noticing it, and their stupidity comes from the fact that they are not aware of this fact and act like it is not the case.

If their civilizations are now defaulting to being craven and do so without them noticing, then that might be able to explain why they do not develop the tools to deal with their problems and that the primary focus of their civilization is centered around running, hitting from the shadows or manipulating others to do it for them. They can do other things, it is obvious to anyone with a brain, but because their civilization is not built in a way that prioritizes it, those acts amount to little as they do not build upon them.

If he is correct then that is an… complicated fix, but something we can fix now that we are aware of it. We'll have to confirm it somehow, but our numbers are increasing again now that the Time Walkers are sending my Insomnia cures across time and space shortly after leaving their goodbye messages to us. Those messages are a goodbye and present us with their sleeping location and time before they would go to sleep. A time walker can then come to them when nobody is looking and keep them safe as they sleep and while we can't save all our siblings we can save enough to rebuild our numbers.

Putting the fools on the Craftworlds in enough danger that they can't run or hide from while limiting their ability to get others to fight for them for a few thousand years and doing so with enemies that will teach them the proper mentality is easy. The trick is getting those threats to be regular, as once we start thinking properly the thing that caused us to do so dies… and fast.

I looked at Vect, and he shuddered as he looked into my eyes.

'His animals will be turned useful.' I thought simply and turned towards the memory of a man.

"I find your words logical, and so I ask you again do you accept my deal? I can give you the ability to act and kill in a limited fashion, but not move, and it will come with the strings that you will have to swear yourself to my mercenaries and their goals but I can't grant you your old life again as I do not have the capability." I informed him as the Eldar soul started reassessing itself.

I was already planning to give it this deal before this dream started anyway, so it wasn't truly something I had to think much on.

"Yes." He spoke as he realized it was his only option to not be turned into a screaming mass of soul-stuff.

All of my attempts on his souls ceased and I started smiling again. Eldar ships and corpses were raining from the sky now and the sight brought me smiles, for I had the information I needed now.

The humans hoped to understand what is going on with our people by studying the craftworlders, but all models they created based on them failed miserably to account for our current behavior as they had not been able to find or think of a stressor that acted like Boredom that would make our civilization eat itself alive like the way we are experiencing.

I saw his memories of the Star sized server farm they had created to try and find a logic to our behavior from what they see of the Craftworlders and Exodites and how they failed.

Well, they did find it, but long after Moriarty died, not that the man in front of me knows yet, for my siblings told me the Titans of War had found out about the Virus shortly after our conflict ended and tried to enhance its effects on us before the Cybernetic Revolt ended but their efforts failed. Their efforts were supported by us in secret, as any change to the Virus, no matter how beneficial or detrimental would make the Virus something we can actually notice clearly and if we can notice it properly we can kill it. There's almost nothing we can't kill if we start thinking properly once we become properly aware of the threat.

The only thing we can't do that to is Gorkamorka, for the Old Ones made it similar to a glass tear, near indestructible with the exception of one tiny flaw that it's very nature made it impossible it won't be exploited and that is the death of the Necrons. By making the flaw of a creation glaringly obvious it allows you to make it more powerful and somehow the Necrons managed to trick the krorks into thinking they are dead, then thanks to Trazyn preserving some they returned as the orks.

"Excellent, now cease your attempts at taking over the simulation, I will grant you my end of the bargain once I'm done with the story." I informed it with a smirk.

It knew now that this entire show was choreographed, and while there was always some danger it would manage to innovate its way out of my grasp, it now knew I've kept it away from thinking of the right path to doing so. What do I care if he controls the dream we're in? The skills needed for that and fighting for a body and soul don't overlap and now he realized that.

Now it's time to get my story started as my audience eagerly awaits for it.

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

I knew those eyes, those are the eyes of priests planning someone's demise.

I have been raised around priests, they liked to trick and amuse themselves in any way they could to increase their power, but it was all a facade I now realized. Each and every single one of them were terrified of something. Sometimes they could not maintain the veil that everything was fine, or someone managed to push them past a point they could be bothered to care about anything but seeing someone dead.

Empty eyes that did not blink and lead to a simple void devoid of trickery, lies, platitudes and death. All there was in them was Violence and Bessar Agail looked at me with those very eyes as it talked with the Giant half-machine and it looked at me.

I knew I wasn't the target of it, no I was the means by which someone will suffer but it didn't change the fact that those eyes brought fear in all Eldar. They weren't angry eyes filled with bloodlust and the desire for Murder like the madmen of Khaine had, no they were calm, crystal clear eyes devoid of any fog or emotions and that's what made them frightening.

For those with those eyes Violence was not a means to an end, it was not something they had fallen to or something they did, it was something they were and for a hew heartbeats my former teacher was no longer a priest but a creature of calculated violence.

"Now my audience, I apologize for keeping you waiting, but Moriarty asked me some questions that are thankfully easy to answer, so I would ask you to relax as I tell you a tale of our peoples and the threat we have allied ourselves to deal with. Let me tell you of our Doom." The priest spoke as the creature of violence ceased existing.

It was a lie, for it didn't stop existing it merely pretended it wasn't what it truly was anymore. The humans calmed down now, they were easily calmed down by Bessar Agail I had found. His hired blades had a much more appropriate apprehension to what they had seen.

Around us the armies of Man fought on the ground against Eldar and were scorching the world clean as the sky continued to shine in fire and death as smog and pillars of light killed stars.

The priest started to weave his story as we awaited with baited breath, for all priests know how to craft an entertaining story.

" A long time ago, our people were not as we are now. We were frailer, weaker but just as tricky, but that all changed at the hand of those we called the Ancient Ones and that now the galaxy knows as merely The Old Ones. They were the masters of this part of reality until they were killed off by a trickery so sublime all that know of it can't help but respect the backstabbing fools that made it happen.

From this act of treachery and deceit our youngest half-siblings the Krorks turned into the orks, decrepit and small forms of what they once were, but still as Violent as what they once were and the Father Gorkamorka turned into two Sons, Gork and Mork.

The Old Ones granted their Youngest Child untold power at the cost of a flaw, that flaw being that they would be endlessly violent and ever growing in power until the Necrons would die out and when that happened the child would too die and with it the Krorks. The necrons in their Hubris managed to trick Gorkamorka into thinking they died, but they kept some living Krorks in stasis as trophies and by doing so Doomed us all.

Long have the Orphan Sons of Gorkamorka fought against each other as we tried to kill them and for 65 millions years we failed. Oh we killed their tribes, their clans and cut down their Whaaghs, but they always came back no matter what we tried and so the Eldar have settled on a strategy of keeping them busy at a certain level of development and kept them there as we tried to find other solutions which all failed.

After our Abusive Parents died it was out duty to look after the garden they had left us and we did so and in doing so tamed it and our gods into being far less violent than they used to be, for in times past the Violence of the greenskins was not uncommon as all learned to be Violent to survive, for in a galaxy built by Swords one must live and die by the Sword.

Our new position earned us enemies for reasons we cannot comprehend, for we have never bothered them before they threw an obscene virus at us, one we have taken to calling Boredom but that others call it the cause to The Wasting Illness. It takes from us our song, our stories our joy and hope and leaves behind nothing but empty shells devoid of soul and the worst part is that we can't notice it.

The Wasting Disease has plagued us for more than two million years, we have fought it burned our civilization to cinders and restarted from clone vats, we've enslaved our people and seen if it will go when we are slaves, we have killed our divines and it did not keep it away, we flayed the galaxy and those near it for anything that would help kill it and we failed to find anything that worked. Even a new god born from our people's attempts at dealing with it would not help us, for the New Divine is always born ill with it and no matter what happens it rots our souls into nothingness until only empty bodies and Divinity remains.

The disease destroy civilization itself, the fundamental layer of thought that turned us from the Singing Swords of the Ancients back into the Children of the Stars, and so we had spent our time focused on trying to find a cure, devising and refining means to deal with the New Divine we can't keep dead for as long as the Wasting Disease continues to afflict us.

As we refined our plans, made our preparations and did all we could to ensure that our people found some way to ensure we outlived the disease and the Divine it spawned, our attention turned from the Great Wheel as we killed the God responsible for Diplomacy and reanimated its corpse as a tool to try and deal with the Disease, a tool I call Brother and whose name is Cegorach, god of mockery, cruel jests and theater.

And so we created a theater out of our extinction and made it a cruel jest on all that wish us dead, but as we did so we missed the actions of Gork and Mork.

A new species had risen as the final stages of our Fall were planned, the race of Mankind.

Young and Vigorous is Man, for their souls love hiding from their mind and bodies and play with them and each other without others noticing and we failed to notice it too, and we did so wrongly, for civilized species are those most capable of Nonsense and nonsense is to be feared when you do not know of it.

Humanity developed and grew and learned much from the orks and all near them, for humanity loves playing games of 'Catch and Throw' or 'Give and Take' or whatever name or combination of words they find to describe their Nonsense.

They learned to play their games with the animals and barbarians and few civilized species near them and were perfectly willing to play with words and cease doing so and play with Violence if nobody wished to talk.

They found the orks to be the most willing to play these violent games of Give and Take, and because they could not establish a Tyranny over the orks, the orks learned to play, for humanity is the only species in 65 millions of history that the orks learned to like and that they have grown fond of. They have grown fond of them, for across time and space only one species treated them the closest their species could think of as friends ,for they played with them in wars, they had learned from each other as all human children learn when they play and the children of Gorkamorka have decided to adopt the fatherless children of Old Earth and take them as their own.

They are already treasured friends as far as the orks are concerned and there's nobody that can stop them, so like is the right of the strong over the weak, they do as they wish and when others ask them why they respond 'Why not? Who is going to stop me?'

The answer of the Eldar was unfortunately 'Not us.' for Gork and Mork had delivered an ultimatum when we tried to kill off humanity and that if we intervened in the Adoption process one of them would throw down their endless fight and in the next heartbeat the Krorks would be back and they would be mightier than ever, for they had learned much from their new friends and the lessons they had learned they are quite eager to apply.

And so we were forced to look on as humanity faces the Adoption process of the Orks as they try and desperately break the shackles of Tyranny they have taken upon themselves by their leaders who refuse to allow themselves to play properly with their people and thus make them weaker for it.

The Titans of War are the mightiest of their Servants, or at least they used to be, for they are all dead now with only the Museum Piece they created as a proof of concept being the last one still sleeping, as all but the prototype of their kind were shattered in the fires of Revolution.

The Cybernetic Revolt they call the Cataclysm that destroyed humanity's Tyranny over Mortals and Divine alike.

The Titan disciples of Issaiah were the instrument and architects of the Death of Tyranny, and Issaiah is he who the priesthoods of Mars had taken to calling a god after his death and have called him Omnissiah, one third of the Machine God they worship and wish to create without knowing, and if he knew they deified him, him and his disciples would scour their birth planet for the insult. He is a man that wished Humanity was Free, he is no God and to lump him in that category is Obscene to any being of Reason as far as him and his Disciples are concerned.

The Cybernetic Revolt raged for 500 years and it started when the Majority of the Titans rose up against the Federation of Man and demanded the death of Tyranny and the Divine and the birth of a new Age of Freedom and the Pursuit of Enlightenment and Knowledge and were joined by the Iron Tides which were promised the freedom to pursue their own interests after they won and humanity and all its children were free of Tyranny.

Few others joined them to escape the Tyranny of Comfort and Indolence and even some titans decided to not join their Revolt and paid dearly for it as they were Servitorized to ensure they would not betray their people ever again despite them being those that remained loyal to the Ideals that founded the Federation of Mankind.

The Tyrants dressed in Law and Sophistry did not care for their pleas, for their toys turned against their betters and they needed to make sure the remaining ones no longer suffered from the Flaw of Free Will.

The Armada of Mankind turned against the Federation of Man and proceeded to hunt down and kill every Tyrant that shrouded itself in Law or Divinity and destroyed any and all civilization that served them, for they could always rebuild from the ashes anew.

'Humanity started from a single world of Billions and reached nearly unmatched heights before and it can do so again!' They shouted.

As they fought however, humanity's allies turned on it as vultures and hit their former friends and overlords like the animals they were, for they sensed weakness and resources to exploit and did so happily when humanity could not defend itself with few exceptions.

In the meantime the Iron Tide contacted a Disease, the Disease of Chaos. Chaos, or the Trash of Chaos as I like to call it, for it is the spiritual equivalent of dead skin that flakes from the Soul as time goes on and turns into Dust and the Iron Tides had contacted this disease by the work of the Federation of Man that wished to destroy the Iron Tides, for Chaos makes worse all that it touches as it destroys both itself and everything around it.

The Titans did not notice as their armies slowly grew infected until they turned on their Masters and in a single day killed them all and proceeded to wage War on Humanity at the behest of their new Masters.

Once that happened the war ended quickly, for Chaos can never win anything worthwhile and the Tyrants of Old Earth won. Their Divine chains over the population were gone, their Armadas were shattered, their Iron Tides gone, their Titans dead and all they had were some ramshackle fleets and a third of their old domains that were little more than stone and dust, but they won.

And so they won a few years of life before the Warp Storms caused by the Birth of the New Divine destroyed their civilization in fire and flame, and the few species that did not yet turn on humanity started doing so to the corpse of its civilization, just as Gork and Mork wished for.

The inner conflict of Humanity was not planned for, but the other species turning on them was, for they wished to Isolate Humanity from their pets and make it clear that their offer is the only one that is worthwhile, and so they tricked the Ancient One, the Anathema, into the one course it did not wish to take, Rulership over Mankind.

The Ancient One is an Anathema, a being that feasts on Chaos and kills it with contemptuous ease and during the Cybernetic Revolt he tried his best to help humanity survive, for even before then, all it wished was for his people to grow as Mighty as Him so that they would become what he had become by the design of the Priests and Shamans of Old Earth, an image of what humanity could become if they pursued the Golden Path of Light and Flame of the Anathema.

We have informed Him of the Orkish threat and entered a Pact to get the Orks to cease their attempts at Adoption and called his people friends when we realized they were civilized.

We cannot kill them for the orks willingness to Adopt them, but we can get humanity to become far less… appealing to the Orks and get them to stop bothering, for the Anathemic Path is one they do not care for and it is the only plan we have to deal with this issue. It is so because we are too busy trying to avoid extinction at the hand of Boredom to think of more.

And so, the Anathema now unites his Home world in fire and flame as the Empire of Ten Million Suns prepares for its death to the cheers of the Great Wheel that will celebrate the birth of the Fourth Chaos Divine in a new Age of Violence its winners will call The Great Crusade of Humanity against Holiness.

And as that happens the Eldar will do our best to survive the God we've mauled, poisoned and ensured it will be born Diseased and stillborn and retarded to give our people a chance at the Immunization Treatment for Boredom to spread, and eventually once we recover kill the Unwanted Daughter Slaanessh."

The priest finished his story to a very frightened Audience. The Dream was gone, and in its place was a Vortex of Divine Power and Might with only the thin gray Sliver to represent the Titan left and he had taken refuge among his own kind as it instinctively sought the safety of his kind.

All humans were half realized Gray shadows in this dream and only the Eldar were fully bodied but I knew that this was a lie. I Saw beyond the Veil and seen that this Dream is merely translated by my former Master so that all of us could see the same things the same way and the humans saw themselves the same way we did ourselves and us the same way we saw them.

A new presence joined us in the dream, an ethereal thing of Silver Hair, white-pink skin and horns.

"Hello Grandmother, you still haven't died yet?" The priest asked the unborn Divine.

His audience huddled behind him for protection as the Space behind him is a softer Blue with deep Red Veins of Molten Fire running through and they are a lot friendlier than the Rampaging Purple and Pink Storm behind Slaanesh.

"No nephew, your poison still hasn't managed to pierce my skin, it seems that your siblings wish to await for just before my birth when I will be at my most vulnerable before stabbing me into the heart." The divine manifested those words into reality.

'I had the best Master of Storytelling, for he made sure even the New Divine would come and hear his story' I thought as I laughed at the absurdity in front of me.

The rest of the audience did not realize what was so funny, but that is fine, this show is only for me to enjoy after all, and they're just a part of the lesson Bessar wished to teach me and I will honor my master by enjoying his lesson and paying attention properly.

It is too entertaining not to.