Chapter 70:

Chapter 70: Dialogue needs not be done with calm speech, sometimes shouting is enough




All Eldar are psykers, and all Eldar are by default powerful psykers capable of depopulating continents if they choose to apply themselves properly. This is something most people, including most eldar forget but each of us is a weapon molded in a war where gods died and species and stars were used as weapons or armor.

Unlike other species which happen to produce psykers that can't control their powers and randomly lash out, eldar have the opposite issue, we can't use our power to our full potential. It is so because living alongside millions if not billions of psykers that each have the potential of being an extinction level event on the same planet at the same time is a bad thing, and so accommodations had to happen.

All Eldar instinctively leash our psychic ability to a given extent, not to remove it from ourselves like my third apprentice's future pain-addicted kernel of drug addicted half-animals, but to mold it to a specific shape.

It is both tradition and common sense that you mold your psychic potential for the tasks you find most agreeable in order to enjoy your life and not be hunted into your next one by the people you might have accidentally blown up when you had a nightmare, or a bad day, or something else happened that might have gotten you to blow up a continent.

I myself have been doing the same my whole life, I have been molding my abilities to being able to manipulate souls, breaking and regenerating pieces of my soul for my craft and preparing myself for my post as a diplomat and all that representing my people in front of other species means. I am not a warrior that can cut mountains and leave slashes that can be seen from orbit, I am not a sorcerer that can bring ruin to star systems and I am not a bonesinger that can create celestial objects out of wraithbone.

I am a priest, a soul healer, a diplomat, a teacher and a logistics officer, and among all of my skills and titles none of them represent something that would require or help me survive on a battlefield. I am still capable of dealing with civilians though, because civilians do not apply themselves to any skills even closely aligned with combat while my own skills are at the very least tangentially related to combat.

Civilians on the other hand turn their prodigious psychic potential to things that might not have any combat application at all, like how to make the perfect perfume, how to move only at right angles, how to make it seem like each of your words perfectly encapsulates all of your emotions you've had or will ever had on a given topic or how to see the most minute differences in shades of ultra-violet to critique someone's poor drawing style. These and more are things most civilians would not find strange to have and they are things I cannot do.

I am quite envious of them though, for they do not need to turn their prodigious abilities to war, destruction or self-mutilation, as they can just enjoy their lives in a way that is barred to me in this life. What I can do though, is enough to make the fools regret having been born in this life for my voice is murderous and filled with scorn.

"Come out you filthy animals! Use the door like people, and not failures you damned creatures! To call you Mon'keigh would be an insult to Mon'Keigh, for at least their foolishness is not something they can control, but you have chosen to be fool, you have chosen to be mentally retarded and dumb and deaf and now it is up to me to deal with your mental illness!" I shouted at the wraithbone fortress.

It was built by the would-be settlers as they tried to settle the world while it was still inhabited by another species.

The edifice of Wraithbone and normal stone was already breaking from my shouting in the voice of Khaine as my anger peeled its outer layers as they died and turned black and I could feel the screams of fear and anguish. Another bunch of their poor excuses of warriors try to jump at me.

Two women and a man in colorful armor that reminded me of a badger came towards me as they ran armed with a sword, a shout and a glaring lack of armor. All three of them had red hair, orange clothes and strangely round facial features, and no, they were not fat, only much softer than I would expect of most eldar.

I ripped the soul of the first woman out of her body, ripped it to pieces and burned it back into shape as her body fell to the ground and tripped the second woman.

The man reached me the following heartbeat and I ripped out all of his bones with a telekinetic pull except his skull, then proceeded to rip his bones to pieces and used them to stab the woman that tripped as the man's screams were drowned by his burning body.

They shortly started to burn in black flames and the three souls went into my Soulstones for my third and final attempt at creating Anathemic Energy.

My Sword of Light was my first attempt where I tried to apply the logic of turning pieces of thought, emotions and souls into light and what I got was a diagnostic tool for the soul. It is useless for most Eldar but it will serve my apprentice and the future Murderous Medicine Peddlers and other soul healers well in the future as they get a unified frame of reference for soul maladies.

I have taught my apprentice and son-in-law Cipanni Oiair to make them show both my perspective and his to notice the differences and asked him to use mine as the default and teach future apprentices to show theirs for personal use. In doing so my vision is universal, while their perspective is theirs alone to serve as a status symbol and trickery for any that wish to know.

Showing my own perspective is proof they know how to make it but they will treat it as the most common, while their own is easy but will be treated as if it is the most precious and this trickery and others my son-in-law will heap on the galaxy will serve to keep my craft alive and remain respectable in the eyes of mortals and divine.

My Failed Son was my second attempt and was a failure, a salvageable and lovable one still, but he did not rise to what I hoped of him. With him I tried to make something out of Divine Fire that burns the soul and human flames that could deal with Slaanesh and perhaps Chaos. What I got was a small soul burner and warp entity I'll probably turn into a lesser divine to help the fools on the craftworlds make Soulstones once Slaanesh is born. I hope Khaine will appreciate his nephew I have given him, who is half human too, because I know the craftworlders won't as they never appreciate what you do for them.

They couldn't learn anything from the birth of Slaanesh that Asurman didn't spoon feed to them and so I have to give them a way to make the damn things. Slaanesh served as a lesson on what happens when you do not value your gods, and she even taught them how to avoid paying for their mistakes by showing them the easiest way to make Soulstones, just put an Eldar Soul through extreme trauma in a short amount of time and nobody thought to see if it could be replicated by mortals means.

Neither of her lessons stuck and what they did manage to get by what I assume to be complete accident they never did try to build upon. Technological progress is a tower built of tiny little things adding up, and the Craftworlders never seemed to realize what they were building up to or should be building.

As soon as Iyanden makes their Infinity Circuis and spreads the knowledge to everyone else they'll find that various craftworlds, chief among them Anaen, have also developed a way to make the Soulstones that go into them and that technological exchange will hopefully serve as the basis for future cooperation between craftworlds.

My third attempt will be to try and see if I can't make my own Anathemic Chimera by purifying souls of all their history and memory, bashing them all together with the intention of having them fight Chaos and see if that doesn't work. If it doesn't make an Anathema then I will admit defeat and acknowledge the cavemen and tribal barbarians of Earth as superior to me in soul crafting and stop bothering with it.

I have better things to do than make an endless number of Eldar lesser divines. Slaanesh will just eat them if they get ideas so they aren't that useful anyway.

"I will not ask again." I shouted.

Some children tried to run through the back of the fortress and their souls left their bodies as my Voice killed them.

That seemed to finally get the fools inside to to listen and move out, and so all of them went through the gate of their keep that I have kept intact and not through the massive holes I have made in it.

'Good, they can finally listen.' I thought in relief.

I did not want to kill more if I could help it as this is the third keep I have been to and the second I've scorched and killed the inhabitants of.

The first I have burned after they tried to shoot me with a starship rated laser cannon but my shields held and so thousands died because I can't be bothered to spare people shooting void rated guns at me. I know a no when I hear it after all, and there's nothing saying it like void rated weaponry when you offer them mercy.

If the keep wished to say No to my mercy I would respect that and I did as I allowed none to escape alive from it be they man, woman or child.

The second keep agreed to surrender without a fight as they had a young man that Saw what I did and sang about it to his clan and so when I came to them they were proactive and waited for me outside to surrender. They now go to other keeps and try to reach the idiots in orbit before more of their ships crash into one another.

There were 41 eldar civilian ships in orbit, the humans managed to kill 10 at the cost of 50 of theirs since they came around and 7 others smashed into each other once the song of this world stopped assisting them and instead actively sabotaged them. There's now 28 eldar ships in the void and they've already agreed to send a representative to the humans discussing the end of this conflict.

This keep is the one that was both the most belligerent, and the one that didn't want to even bother talking with anybody else and so I made my third trip to these morons. It was also thankfully the last spot of Eldar resistance to my Younger Sister's rule over this world.

The thousands upon thousands of Eldar continued to march out of their keep under my Stern gaze.

One bald woman split from the rest of the group and she was followed by a few other individuals with similar facial features to her but that had a wide array of hair colors of varying lengths.

"Why do you and your clan approach me?" I asked the woman.

It was obvious they looked up to her and from their frightened eyes and nervous hand movements each of them were incredibly scared, yet none were willing to let her go alone. A blessed of Isha, being followed by a large group of her family members did not leave me many options as to what she and those following her were. I was dealing with a clan leader.
They all knelt in front of me so deeply their foreheads touched the ground.

"Why have you targeted my people merciless one?" The clan leader asked me with tears flowing from her eyes.

"You have refused to talk to me as I sang to you and demanded that you cease your attempts at colonizing this world, for I am a priest of the Pantheon and the priesthood has plans for this world. My Younger Sister took this world as hers as is her right for coming from a princely lineage and thus allowed me to not kill all of you for the insult and she instead extends her mercy to you." I replied harshly.

They have refused to listen to a request to speak from an official of the empire and a priest. Laciena Fiora might think she unleashed me on them but the truth is that she restrained the response I was mandated to heap on them due to their own ignorance and stupidity.

The Empire of Ten Million Suns has laws, mortal laws, that apply to its population and while they are rarely enforced in this age, priests are forced to enforce them if we wish to maintain our power and position. Unfortunately for the fools of this world that have been refusing to even hear me out, refusing to even acknowledge an official carrying out their duties when they cordially ask to talk to you of them when they pertain to your actions can be considered Rebellion when done by an entire world, and I quite frankly have little way of redefining it as they won't even talk to the humans to maybe get them to make a convincing tale that they tried doing anything else.

The Punishment for that starts at decimation of the population and only goes up if that doesn't stop it or they try to fight back.

Laciena Fiora allowed me to reinterpret the situation from Rebellion against our people to a spat between the Eldar clans trying to settle this world and her family, and as her Older Brother, diplomat and Master I am considered to be representing her and her family and not the Empire. Thankfully for them this means that they could in theory leave without me having to kill anyone.

Unfortunately theory and practice rarely match, because the eldar without a shred of humility are all fools.

As for why they did it? They were outside of the official bounds of th Empire and thought my authority ended there, and thus decided to ignore me. Unfortunately for them the Authority of Officials extends wherever we go and there are Eldar citizens to look after, especially if we are priests.

"How is this a mercy? You have destroyed our homes we built to escape the chaos of the Empire and now we are forced to be at the mercy of the Mon'keigh!" She cried.

I did not sigh at her words, even if I wished to, for I understood her pain. Unfortunately for them my hands are tied. I pulled out the twelve soulstones filled with the souls of the individual eldar souls that had decided to try and kill me in melee and projected their insides for all of the Eldar to hear. The smell of piss shortly followed to accompany the screams of the dead as they were cleansed in burning flames of all that they once were.

"This should have been your punishment, all of you, be they man, woman or child!" I shouted and dang to all of them.

They were all frozen in shock at the screams. They were not screams of mercy, or to get me to stop, no they were a primal cry of pain devoid of all reason and intelligence and that scared the Eldar more than my previous words and assaults on them. We died and were reborn, death didn't matter as much, but the forceful cleansing of all memories and intelligent thought until their soul was as new was deeply disturbing to an otherwise immortal species.

"Instead of receiving your rightful punishment, my Younger Sister, Laciena Fiora, gave you the chance at mercy so that instead of being killed you may leave her world and join Craftworld Anaen.

Oh what great punishment you have been given to leave as free men and women, to join a home that will welcome you with open arms, due to the actions of the fair princess Laciena Fiora. You should have received the reward of all that do as you did which is genocide or a fate worse than death, for you seem to think that it is kinder!" I continued and mocked them as I spoke.

She and her people remained silent but I could feel the relief in their song as I told them they will not be enslaved by aliens and instead go to a safe space.

"Go back to the rest of your people." I ordered in the harshest tone I could manage.

I turned back to them and started walking to the humans waiting in fear behind me. They knew their situation and have been near me to process the eldar on the ground as well as guard the prison camps I was tired, not physically, but spiritually. I dislike killing, my people, be they old or new, specifically and all I wished was to go to sleep and pretend the last week never happened.

I miss my wives, I miss sleeping in and feeling safe, I miss they love and I wish I could take the offers given to me to just rest and go to the home of my wives and being safe but I can't, not until I can make sure our people won't be going extinct due to our own madness.

"Sir, some ships have reached our system. Our telescopes tell us they're eldar and the Admirals want to know if they should be worried." One of the men accompanying me said.

I did not bother still to remember their names or how they looked, the only exception being General Alexander. I don't know why the man's name remained in my head, but it did. It was probably because I found the man funny, or because he was the first living being to speak to me on this world that was born here.

I listened to the Song of the Void and I heard them, the marching cadence of War, the Drums of Hope and Fear of Anaen. Lammor had sent us our escorts.

I sang to them to send unarmed transports if they had them to retrieve the civilians and get them to their new home and to keep a ship to retrieve me and my Younger Sister when we finished here.

The Commodore in charge of the five warships replied promptly with an acknowledgment of my request and told me that was what they were planning to do as those were their exact orders already.

Good, farseers continue to be just as useful as my siblings' songs claim they were when we were still on friendly terms. They knew exactly what you wanted to happen for they had foreseen it and so they made it happen.

"Inform them that the new ships are the transports for the Eldar refugees and their escorts, and they have orders to retrieve them and leave. We will leave with them, but only after my Younger Sister finishes setting your civilization up for what comes ahead." I informed the dark haired man.

"Yes sir, I'll inform them shortly." He shouted and saluted.

I just sighed at his words. I was not a part of his command chain and so did not bother to salute him back.

"I am not a hexan soldier corporal. You don't need to salute me, go inform the admirals." I informed the man that continued to look at me awkwardly.

He nodded in embarrassment and did what I asked him to do. The rest of the soldiers left me alone as they went to their duties.

'The humans in this galaxy are too fast to just fall back on procedure' I thought.

I went to some of the men playing a game and unceremoniously dropped myself in their circle. They've made me room without even thinking about it. I waited for them to finish their round of the card game, I think it was called 'A home among Stars' and it was similar enough to poker and was simple enough in theory.

There were four colors representing four social strata, gold for royalty, red for criminals, green for soldiers and silver for merchants. Each of the cards represented a part of the household, a father a mother, an elderly child, a middle child and a baby for each color as well as 7 animals for each color and giving you points depending on what family somebody called, with some animals only giving points depending on their color.

The round finished when a man showed that he had managed to gather a red hound and the red father, as well as the golden and green mothers and the silver middle child, giving him the most points out of those gathered.

Groans met his hand as they realized he won with the worst hand he could have possibly won with.

"Like the Founders intended baby!" The black haired man said happily as he collected the worthless jetons from his two friends.

He'll collect his real earnings later from his friends as the regulations forbid such game with actual prizes, but friends giving you part of their rations was allowed and as long as nobody could link the two the men were safe and I wasn't about to snitch, not when they offered me some way to pass the time.

They also had the best beverage as far as I was concerned on this planet.

One of the men with red hair gave me a small glass of wine, the only wine I'd found in a long time that contained the thing that Gua Bis gotten me addicted to, Love. I drank it and the terror and fear and pain the eldar of this world had thrown at me washed away.

I was once again happy as the gentle love of 700 years of legacy and struggle and familial love slowly made itself known to my soul once again and I stopped feeling miserable.

"It's creepy how you change after you drink that thing." The red haired man said as I finished drinking it.

The shuffler started shuffling the cards and gave to each of us two of them as I drank. I took mine with a smile. The red mother and green baby.

We start with two cards, and pick one up each round until we have five cards and we can either raise the number of jetons, leave it as is in each round or fold and lose the invested jetons to be added to the winner's hoard. We each start with 50 jetons and the session ends when one man collects them all.

"I know, but this thing is more precious to me than refined Adamantium is to your society." I informed them.

The man whose family made the wine looked confused as from his perspective it was good wine, but nothing special compared to others.

"The mothers." The shuffler with blonde hair said.

He didn't like to talk much and I did not press him to talk to me, which seemed to make him like me more.

Whoever has the most mothers, or oldest daughters of which there are only two, the red and golden oldest child, wins. We each put one jeton down.

I was lucky all of the men had different hair colors so I could tell them apart because I had purposefully messed with my visual perception of them to see them as indistinct white pinkish- grey blobs.

"It's wine, good wine sir as my mother and her line would not have had our farm if it wasn't but its not that good." He said as he poured me another.

I could feel how all of them were paying attention to me as I took a sip from the second glass after downing the first and the man resealed the bottle.

"It's not the physical taste, for some eldar piss would physically taste better and even to me it's not that good physically, but I can feel the 700 hundred years of history of your family, parents starting out and making do with a plot of land everyone thought was worthless but that they made work. I can feel the joy of children as they started to help making it, the pride of parents that had seen their children happy to learn the family trade, the last words of a man dying near this bottle praying that the cellar it was in will continue to provide for his family after he was gone and so many stories and love shared because of the room this bottle had rested in for twenty five years.

All of it, the love, the history, the subtle taste of struggle, the bittersweet passing of the torch from one generation to the other and rising above the bad times with love and determination give this beverage a taste that makes it feel like the best beverage I have ever tasted. Their physical taste does not even come into consideration as far as I am concerned, but the spiritual and historical one is enough to make me feel as if I am in the coils of my wives again." I answered fondly.

Nobody folded or raised as I got my third card. The red older daughter.

"Coils?" The red haired man asked dubiously as he put the wine away.

I already told them I won't drink more than two small glasses.

I could feel the men's befuddlement at my words. They stopped being confused at me knowing more than I should of their history and I promised them I would not cheat at cards with my psychic powers. They were my security detail while on this world after all, so I had to tell them something and make arrangements to our temporary cohabitation and I could use the opportunity to check if my old life's socialization holds in this one as well.

So far it seemed like it did.

"Yes their upper body is like mine, but lower body is that of a sea snake and it is very long. They love coiling around you, and it feels like a very big hug. I wasn't quite sure how to think about it at first but my wives were quite happy to show me how pleasant it can be. I wish I could be near them and look after my children, but I have to deal with the messes of morons and the mad and salvage our foreign policy because it's on fire and the fools like those of this world are actively adding more promethium to the flames."

My complaints earned me chuckles.

"Yeah, wish I was near the missus too, also how does it work?" The blonde asked.

I gave my most majestic raised eyebrow to the man. I knew exactly what he wished to know but it was too funny not to let him ask his question openly.

"You'll have to elaborate, as I can't exactly read minds during our games as I've agreed not to." I said in my most serious tone.

Red hair and black hair snickered and my fourth card was given. I looked over it and it was the The Green hound. Useless for the Wives, The cats were the only animals that helped me with it.

I looked at my game buddies, I don't know their names, and they don't know mine and are loving every moment of our quasi-legal gambling game. Nobody folded.

Red Hair hair pushed ten jetons

"I raise to eleven!" He cheerfully told us.

All of us squinted our eyes and I took the chance to take one more sip from my small cup of wine. Love is addictive to Eldar, well… most things are if we start liking them.

Each of us falls into an obsession and delusion as we seek to become more than just what the Old Ones made of us whether we know of it or not. My obsession had become family thanks to Gua Bis and my delusion the goal given to me by the Followers of Hoeth.

"How do the nightly activities go?" Blondie finally got the courage to ask his question as we each drew our fifth card.

The Golden Daughter.

Four points from the wife, and two others from the daughter, with an additional one because two cards that give points share a color.

Seven points is a respectable amount and as long as none of them has the golden father and any of the two wives I will win.

"I'll add another two jetons." I declared.

Everyone did the same, for they thought I was bluffing. I did win a few games with just bluffs after all.

And lost just as many.

"The change from flesh to scale is sudden at the hips, but it's not a straight line, there's a curve around the front area, there's no ass but there's a kitty that purrs if you play with it right." I said with a grin.

The rest of the men snickered.

"Twenty in total." Black hair declared.

The other two men folded, but I matched his.

We both put our cards down and he showed me his hand and I sighed. Golden wife and husband were the only points. Nine points versus my seven. I sighed and handed him the jetons.

"Lucky bastard." I grumbled.

I like these people, they're good people trying their best and don't hold the fact I can melt fortresses by shouting angrily enough at them against me.

The sound of a familiar pair of running steps greeted me and I sighed.

"Someone's coming, so we'll have to cut things short as it seems someone needs me." I told the gathered men.

The Black haired man grumbled at being cheated out of his winning streak but did as all the rest and stowed the jetons and cards into their boxes as we rose.

None doubted my words and I took it as proof that my former people form another reality and this one are roughly the same, which was good, otherwise my first published booklet on eldar-human relations would not have been of much use.

My booklet was quite simple and short too, it had 4 chapters which served as steps detailing a general approach to interactions with a human.

Step 1 is bring food, their status being inversely proportional to the quantity. The more and lower ranked they are, the more food you need to bring and as long as it is edible and in bulk the quality doesn't matter as much, but if there's only one of them and they are high rank then the quantity must be low and the food in question very precious or rare. There's also a small warning that if you poison their food and they survive and remember future diplomacy will be all but impossible too.

Step 2, Alcohol, it never hurts to bring some as long as its both tasty and both of you can enjoy it as there's few social interaction that aren't made smoother with a bit of it. If they don't drink it, find other vices they enjoy and share some with them.

Step 3 is games, humans like to play, the moment they invite you to play with them its a great sign of trust and you should agree to it, and not dominate at least at first, as the equation relating to social status likability and game proficiency depend on the individuals and you need to start with some losses to gauge exactly how they work.

Step 4 is the mutually beneficial deal, when making a deal inform the individual(s) you've been talking with of at least some part of how you benefit from the deal, ideally after it was completed as a show of trust for future endeavors. The more of steps 1 through 3 happen beforehand the more they trust you and if the one you negotiate with goes straight to this point then they're very likely to betray you unless they lose more by doing it than if they don't.

There's also some 1000 words talking of inbreeding and how that just makes a mess out of human's ability to logic or remain consistent as an afterthought but that's the least important part of it. You're almost never negotiating with the inbred after all, but their handlers. You're playing with the inbred to keep them happy and talking the actual important stuff to whoever is keeping them in check and its them you need to apply the actual four steps on.

I put it dead last and called it 'Afterthoughts' to mess with idiots that can't read my booklet fully before they engage with humans because I thought it would be funny and messing with people that haven't read your work in full is the funniest thing you could do to your readers.

The colonel's secretary and gopher came to us running and panting from the light physical exertion. I could feel my temporary guard's amusement at her tired and disheveled state as they do not like her.

The military of this world does not like its people I have found, especially now after they've found peace and many are rioting. From their point of view it looks to them like they are not pulling their weight and complain about rights while they'll have their toothpaste taste of dirt and shit if they look at their officers funny when they speak. That and the fact that when all of them were in danger of going extinct on this world it was only them dying to stop it while the civilians whine of rights and democracy. It's unfair to the civilians which did not wish to fight or can't, but the soldiers have earned their opinion and blood and suffering, for they did not wish to fight either. Only the idiots I have prepared the transport for wished for it and they are the ones that will pay the least for it.

If the civilians wish to have an opinion on what war does to their civilization then they should bleed defending it, not whine from the safety of their homes once everything is done and they are no longer in danger of going extinct..

"Sir, the new princess is about to make her television statement, and the colonel wishes you to be with him to see it." She said as she panted.

'Is that it?' I thought in annoyance

We could have played another round before going there, but now nobody is going to bother pulling it out again. I already know all my Younger Sister will say anyway as we sang to one another the entire thing.

'Your reward for winning is the knowledge that if you wish to continue to serve as we have talked previously, take some of the beverage I enjoy and give some of the bottles to a member of the clan of Gua Bis if you find any. That might earn you a favor from the one you give it to and perhaps the patronage of the winery by her clan, for its matriarch and patriarch will enjoy drinking it as one. Use those exact words, 'drinking it as one' or it won't work and they'll think it a prank or trickery done to their detriment on your part. You may use this information in whatever way you wish.' I sang to mind of the winner of our game.

Gua Bis is addicted to love, and Scarrn Laddon to subtlety, and if they drink it as one, they might be able to enjoy it as much as I do together. Getting those two an activity they can enjoy together is bound to help the two as their interests rarely meet, except when they help young feral children find a warm home that will make them civilized.

The man nodded to me and thought of gratitude.

"Good, I will join him, please lead the way and please don't rush, for we have time surely." I spoke to the woman kindly.

She nodded and did her best to hide the fact she wants to stab me, as her parents and husband were killed by my people and now she hates all of us.

I pretended to ignorance, as her emotions and feelings about me did not matter, for she was a coward that would only attack me if she knew I was weaker than her, and as I have proven I am stronger attacking me had never crossed her mind despite her hate for me. She also had no knife or any sharp implement to stab me with but that mattered little to someone that wishes you dead. Love and Hate always find a way.

"Yes sir, please follow me." She said meekly.

We followed the woman silently as the sky above was filled with the Dance of the Divine as they cheered for the knife aimed at my grandmother's heart grew ever longer and sharper.