Author's Note: Alas the long delay for this chapter is not mere idleness on my part but the near complete loss of my fanfics on my pc due to a reformat. I'm afraid this proved sufficiently demoralising that before writing yet another version of this chapter I hadn't sat with a word processor open and an idea stretching before me for three months.


Life was simple aboard the ship, simple enough that it gave people time to think and reflect, their personal illusions not lasting long when they had little but time on their hands.

Even after all these years Isenda didn't know it's real crew complement or it's full size. She suspected she never would.

And now she was about to find yet another room, one she'd never even known existed despite passing by the door every single day. She wondered what trick had kept it hidden from her all these years. John had a seemingly endless supply of these 'tricks', his name for them not hers.

She'd asked him why he called them such once. He'd smiled at her, as if she were young and naïve despite her two millenia of life, then, in a gentle voice, he'd explained, "Because everything is a magic trick until you know what to watch for." And that had been that, no deep explanation, just a simple sentence. Even Teefsmasha was a better conversationalist.

Now she knocks three times on the door. It opens soundlessly, and then she steps inside, the door closing just as quietly behind her.

The lights are dim, but bright enough to see by, and it takes a mere moment for her to realise where she has been invited to. Their leader's own quarters, hidden by technologies sufficient to befuddle the mind of an eldar farseer, and yet bleak and without personality. A simple bunk juts from the wall, and just from a glance she can see how uncomfortable the slab must be. And that is all there is, this is not where John lives, it exists merely so it can be said to exist, a place to stay with no intent by its owner to stay there.

And yet for once John is there, sat nonchalantly on the bunk, naked from the waist up as something crawls in his veins, the flesh crawling and contorting as he fights back an unnamed thing, face screwed up in concentration, eventually it calms, going back to normal. Isenda has her suspicions, but the idea is almost blasphemous. She may not truly know their leader, none do, but the idea he might be some thing of Chaos feels wrong, and yet his words confirm it.

"A daemonhost." He says simply, "I won, this time." His eyes are tired as a shirt forms on his body. "It was a mistake to host another."

"Another?!" The farseer gasps, the implications horrific.

"This is my fifth, for this body." There's a grim smile, "A lesson I learnt from an Inquisitor of the Ordo Malleus, though not one he intended to teach. The easiest way to keep a demon out of the way is to bind it, and the easiest way to bind it is to flesh." He frowned as the farseer backed away, fear evident. Perhaps she could have faced a single demon but five is too much for nearly any single creature. "Be calm Isenda, I won't hurt you. The nanites give me control even in the face of their minds, they try to control my body, and they do, my mind is not powerful enough to stop them beyond the brainstem, and yet the nanites respond only to me and they work faster than neurones. And so the trap remains perfect."

"And the contortion of your skin? You can't tell me that wasn't daemonic." Isenda accused shrilly.

"Oh it certainly was, petty vengeance for their entrapment. They warp my flesh, and the nanites counter it. A constant war of spite you could say." There was a shrug, for what could one do about the malice of demons.

"Is this why you invited me here?" The farseer asked cautiously.

"No... but it helps. I think it's going to make things easier to explain... what do you know about what I'm doing?" He asked quietly.

"Absolutely nothing, you've made sure of that."

"You're intelligent Isenda, I'm pretty sure you can manage an educated guess after all these years."

"Well... you seem to be trying to influence events without being noticed." A glance up at his face, with no expression displayed to her, nothing to indicate how close to the mark she was. "And you seem to be... I don't know... collecting us for some reason?"

There was a nod. "Good, very good." He murmured softly, "And does that worry you?"

"Incredibly so." The eldar admitted.

"I think it's time you got some sort of explanation." John told her solemnly, "What you hear here cannot be spoken of outside these four walls unless I say otherwise. Is that acceptable?"

Still standing cautiously by the door, Isenda took her time to mull this over, finally she replied, "Yes."

"Very well. Sit and let us begin." The human said quietly, waiting until the eldar complied. "I was born in the year 13,626. Mankind had spread across the stars, our potential boundless and our technological prowess almost equal to our potential. Immortality was ours if we so chose, illness a forgotten pipe-dream of our dark past, war anathema to our minds. Like locusts we spread across the galaxy, colonising, building, dreaming. An age of enlightenment. From that age a few of us sought to explore past the galactic rim, our eyes upon Andromeda."

He paused for dramatic effect, before continuing. "We missed the collapse of humanity, travelling faster than light it wasn't until we ran into the tyranid hive fleets that we turned back, our surviving ships crippled, slowed, travelling at mere light speed we ran into the signals of the death of humanity hundreds of years after its passing. A lot of us chose death, a mere few hundred ships surviving and scattering ourselves amongst the stars to supervise the rebuilding of humanity."

Another dramatic pause, over twenty millennia of life apparently having taught him stagecraft at least. "And then we discovered Chaos, the eternal enemy preying upon all sentient life. And like fools, so utterly convinced of our technological superiority we declared war upon it. A few hundred became a mere few. Since that we've kept to the shadows, a small interference here, a slight change to the course there. Nothing noticable, we've learnt that to apply a small lever in the right place is far better than a large lever in the wrong." He smiled self-effacingly, "Still noone can go without company for centuries without going mad, that was how it started for me, someone to talk to. Over time it became something more, a chance to help those who deserved a second chance at life. Though that's a hopeless goal, I'd need a ship the size of several solar systems to house them all, so instead I pick those who have some sort of spark, something to intrigue me. And that's how you all ended up here."

He waited for some sort of response but the farseer remained silent, her thoughts conflicted as she slowly levered herself off of the bed and walked out, leaving John worried and uncertain for merely the fourth time in his very long life.


Author's Note: Figured some explanation was in order in terms of plot so decided to put some of the big reveal before chapter ten as originally planned. Also John Smith isn't as Gary Sue as he seems on the surface, he can die and depending on how the mood takes me probably will die later. He's simply got very specific weaknesses.