I do not own Warhammer 40000 nor any of its characters. They belong to Games Workshop.
Fire flickered in a place of absolute darkness. In a realm beyond the ken of mortal minds, where paradox reigned supreme and madness was law, seven souls – one living and six dead – fought together to survive. They had fled together into this place, seeking to escape the hound sent on their trail by those who would destroy them before they could fulfill their potential. The escape had been a desperate one, a reflexive flight without even the barest of precautions. By all rights the seven bound spirits should have been destroyed long ago, consumed by the monsters that dwelled into this twilight realm of pain and fury. But through will and wisdom they had survived, their essences forged together by the fires of the Sea of Souls until they were inextricably linked.
The seven who were one did not remember how long they had been in this place, fighting against living shadows and fleeing those which could not be fought. Time had no meaning here, and the progress of events could only be measured in how their spirits became closer and closer as the winds of the Warp hammered their essences closer to each other. Memories lingered, of an existence before this nightmare of endless flight, one that had had a purpose beyond survival. When those memories returned to the surface of the seven's mind, their surroundings flickered with images of a great war, of cities dead and dying, of giants in armor bringing ruin to all that they cherished.
Once there had been more spirits with them, souls they had saved from the claws of the predator sent after them. At the time, it had seemed kinder to risk bringing them along than to abandon them at the nonexistent mercy of the nightmarish hound. But these had vanished one by one, either taken by their hunters or just dissipating in the Sea of Souls. Now the seven who were one were alone with the nightmares pursuing them through the shapeless corridors of this infinite realm. They had gone far, if distance had any meaning here. They had gone away from the raging inferno where they had entered this realm, fleeing the countless hunters that had been drawn to its flames. Then they had sought the darkest places, where no light shone to draw the beasts. All the way, something had driven them, an half-remembered instinct that had pushed them forward. They did not think about their destination – there was no pause in the battle for survival that gave them the time for reflexion.
Then, after what seemed like an eternity, the seven who were one saw a circle of light in the darkness, that the hunters dared not approach. Its light was anathema to the beasts, burning their spiritual bodies whenever they tried to get close to it, lured in by the succulent soul-scents that emanated from beyond the luminous circle. For the first time in an eternity, hope blossomed within the seven, and they rushed through the opening, leaving the Empyrean behind.
Pain waited on the other side, pain like nothing they had ever felt, as their combined essences struggled to adopt a physical form after so long spent as a pure collection of spirits. The six who were dead faded away, their consciousness receding as the seventh returned fully to the land of the living and, overwhelmed with the nearly forgotten sensations that came with a body of flesh, promptly passed out in front of the Webway Portal through which he had just emerged. He did not hear the cries of alarm, nor the footsteps of the Guardians rushing in to investigate and neutralize the intruder who had somehow entered Craftworld Mian-Tor.
Mian-Tor floated gently in the blackness of the void. Great wings spread from its prow, catching distant light and turning it into motion – though the Craftworld was so far from any star, its advance was more due to sheer momentum than anything else. Towers of wraithbone rose, sung into existence by Eldar builders. Artisans worked in open workshops, their wares laid around them for the eyes of those who might desire them. A vast city covered nearly the entirety of the Craftworld's available space, dotted with artificial forests and lakes that, despite their true nature, seemed as natural as could be found on any world ever known to Mankind. There, more than a billion eldars lived, at peace in their isolation from the rest of the galaxy.
Beyond the region of space Imperial cartographers knew as the Azarok Sector, the Craftworld sailed the solar streams as it crossed the immense distance between two stars. Its journey had begun almost a thousand years ago, and it was still only half-complete. Both the star at its starting point and the one at its destination were huge, far too hot for the rocks orbiting around them to be of any use to the greedy humans. Had the pilots of the continent-sized vessel wished to reach their destination more quickly, they could have used the Webway and arrived hundreds of years ago, but this journey wasn't about their destination. It was about being where none could find them who had not been told where they were. At least, none had been able too, until today.
The mon-keigh laid on the ground, surrounded by a dozens Guardians. He was on his back, unconscious, yet the Eldar warriors kept their weapons trained onto him at all times. Behind the circle of Guardians stood the Webway Portal, humming gently with the resonances of the Infinity Circuit. The runes of warding that kept the children of She-Who-Thirsts and the other Ruinous Powers at bay shone softly, unbroken and unmarred despite the intrusion.
Two eldars stood apart from the circle of Guardians, observing the situation. Their aspect immediately marked them as leaders among their people, though each of them walked a different Path. They both looked at the intruder, who was the first human being either of them had ever seen in the flesh rather than in recordings, but their reaction to his presence were very different.
'We should kill him,' said the first of these two.
To a human observer, he would have appeared the pinnacle of calm and self-control, but to the attuned senses of another eldar, his body language betrayed his anger and nervousness in a dozen subtle ways. He wore armor similar to that of the Guardians, but far more elaborate, and a sword hung at his hip, sealed in an exquisite scabbard. His face was obscured by the helmet he wore, decorated by a feathered crest that rose more than thirty centimeters above his head.
'Why do you think so ?' The tone of the other Eldar leader was gentler, and carried an undertone of amusement, like that of an adult facing the demand of a petulant child. The softness of her face and the curves of her body revealed her as a female, and she held no weapon, though her robe was engraved with runes of protection, and all who looked upon her knew she was far from defenceless. Her long, silky black hair was arranged in a ponytail that still reached her lower back.
'He is a mon-keigh,' said the first eldar, as if that was all the justification needed – and indeed to him, it was. 'His mere presence here insults us all.'
'Does it, though ? Does it really ?'
The second eldar took another look at the humanoid lying down on the ground. The intruder was tall for one of his brutish race, with shoulder-length silver hair – something that the eldar had no idea whether it was common or not. His eyes were closed, yet a glow of the same grey color could be seen through the lids of his eyes. Scars ran on his body, both old and new, and the old ones had only half-healed, while the most recent still bled the man's life onto the white stones that paved the ground. All he wore was a tattered, blood-stained vestment that barely preserved his modesty. But what truly draw the attention of all the eldars in the vicinity was the mon-keigh's right arm.
'He brought back our kindred to us,' she added, pointing toward the appendage with a thin, graceful finger.
Six gemstones were embedded in the human's arm, fused with his flesh and linked together by a network of black metal that meshed seamlessly with the skin around them. The inner glow of the gems betrayed their true nature : soulstones, the vessels in which the souls of dead eldars took refuge to escape the ravenous hunger of the Youngest Goddess.
'Then let's cut off the arm and set our brethren to rest in the Infinity Circuit. This is an aberration, and more than that – a threat.'
The female eldar shook her head. She could not fathom the circumstances which had caused the human before her to be bonded to the stones, but she could see the currents of energy that went from him to them, forming a circuit where each sustained the other. Without the human's own living soul, the spirits resting within the stones would have perished long ago; and likewise, without the power of the Eldar ghosts, the mon-keigh would wither and die. The warlord sensed her disapproval, and guessed at the motivations behind it. Still, his anger at the human's presence did not lessen, and he pressed on :
'Mian-Tor has been served well by our choice to depart from the regions of space claimed by the mon-keighs' empire. We have been able to avoid conflict for hundreds of years, living in peace here, with naught but this Ork wandering flotilla two centuries ago to trouble us. I do not know what you see in this individual, Farseer, but mark my words : his coming will bring violence to our home.'
'Perhaps,' admitted Farseer Elythrea Minias. 'But all the other Farseers have sensed the same lately. A great tempest lies close in our future, Irithiel. It cannot be prevented or escaped, but we can and must sail its currents as best we can for our people. If this human is a sign of the coming tempest, it is at least not one in service to the Great Enemy.'
Irithiel Arthes, Autarch of Mian-Tor, finally conceded to the Farseer's words with a slight nod, but again, his anger did not vanish completely from his aura. That was to be expected. The Path of Command had less anger in it than the other Paths related to conflict, for directing the armies of the Craftworld required a cold, clear mind, but there was still much pride on that Path. It had been Irithiel who had led the defenders of the Craftworld when, two hundred years ago, Mian-Tor had been under attack for the first time in a millennia. After centuries of peace, the Paths of the Warrior had only been threaded by a handful of souls, and Irithiel had been the only Autarch aboard the entire Craftworld. But he had rallied the Aspect Warriors and the Guardians, and together they had repelled the Ork boarders and bought time for the Craftworld's weaponry to destroy their ramshackle flotilla. Without his leadership, the greenskins would have inflicted far greater wounds to the vessel that they had. That he still walked the Path of Command after all these years worried many, but none dared to question the hero to his face.
All of this explained why, to him, seeing a human intruding through a supposedly secured Webway Portal had to be galling. How exactly that had happened, Elythrea wasn't sure, but she suspected he had been guided there by the spirits in the soulstones. These ghosts were powerful, though their light was weakened by the ordeal they had just gone through. She reckoned they must have been Warlocks when death had claimed them, trained in ways of drawing as much psychic power within themselves as they could without drawing the attention of the Enemy.
The human too had suffered : his life-force was a wounded and twisted thing, weakened by too many injuries over too short a period of time, only a fraction of which was visible on his body. She knew little of human physiology, yet she suspected that without the support of the soulstones' energy, the man would already be dead. The eldar ghosts and the human were one now, for better or worse, and she would not let Irithiel destroy the mon-keigh and potentially condemn the spirits to a fate worse than oblivion. Even a hero could not be allowed to take matters of such import as the fate of seven Eldar souls into his own hands.
As the Autarch finally abandoned the idea of killing the mon-keigh – for now – he began to stir, and opened his shining silvery eyes. Only the pupils of his eyes had been tinted by the psychic energy coursing through his body and soul, and he looked at his surroundings with a strange calmness to him, as if he had somehow known where he would be when he awoke.
The Farseer broke through the circle of Guardians, Irithiel on her heels. The mon-keigh looked up at her from the ground. Already the psychic energies coursing through him were quickening, fed by his now active mind. His wounds had stopped bleeding, though they were still raw.
'Who are you ?'
She had taken care to speak her question in Low Gothic, the base language of the Imperium. It felt inelegant and vulgar on her tongue, but she needed answers. The man took several seconds to reply, his eyes gazing at nothing as he tried to remember. When he spoke, however, his voice was firm, and to the shock of both Farseer and Autarch, his words belonged to the Eldar tongue, albeit with a strange accent that neither of them had ever heard :
'I am Tarek of Parecxis. Where am I ?'
'This is Craftworld Mian-Tor, home of the Children of Isha. I am Elythrea Minias, and this is Irithiel Arthes.'
'Eldar,' sighed Tarek before muttering to himself : 'Of course. Where else would they guide me ?'
Slowly, carefully, the mon-keigh rose to his feet, wincing as new pain flared in his wounds.
'Tell me, Elythrea of Mian-Tor. What year is this ?'
The question was hardly surprising. Time flowed strangely in some portions of the Webway even under the best conditions, and this man's travel through the Labyrinth Dimension had been under anything but those. If any of the knowledge of the spirits in the soulstones had passed on to the human – and the mere fact of his arrival was evidence enough that it had – then it was to be expected that he would ask how much time had passed in the material realm during his journey.
'We haven't made contact with the Imperium in many a cycle,' she said cautiously, 'but by your calendar, it is currently the 741th year of the thirty-second millennium.'
Shock was plain on the man's face. For several seconds, his mouth moved wordlessly as he tried to process what she had told him. Her curiosity grew, only to be partially sated – and simultaneously increased – by his next words :
'I lost twelve centuries ...'
It took several minutes for Tarek to draw himself out of the stupor the revelation of the current date had plunged him into. That was surprisingly quick, considering how much longer twelve hundred years must seem to a human, with their exceedingly short lives, than to an eldar.
It was Elythrea's understanding that humans, like eldars, had another name in addition to their own, marking their belonging to a family. But when she asked, politely and after introducing herself and the Autarch at her side, still glaring at the human from inside his helmet, Tarek claimed that he had no recollection of his family name, and of many other things as well.
'I wandered through the Warp with the guidance of my friends here,' he explained, rising his right arm to display the soulstones embedded within it. He frowned as he looked at the soulstones : 'They weren't like this when I got into the portal, though …'
'How did you come by them ?' asked Elythrea, Irithiel towering at her side, his posture radiating readiness to strike at the first sign of danger.
'It was … a crown, I think,' said Tarek, running his fingers upon the black tendrils of metal running through his flesh, his expression thoughtful. 'They were embedded in it like precious jewels. I took the crown from an enemy, a Chaos psyker who was using it to enhance his powers.'
'That is quite an accomplishment,' noted Elythrea, fractionally raising an eyebrow in what she believed was the human expression of surprise. 'Did you have psychic abilities of your own before …' She trailed off, gesturing at Tarek's right arm. He shook his head.
'No, I just got lucky. Well, that, and he was too arrogant and tried to toy with me rather than kill me when he had the chance. He got close, and I was able to kill him while the crown's spirits fought against his control. I took the crown off his corpse – there was a battle raging around and I didn't want to risk it falling back into the hands of the enemy.'
The Farseer detected no lie in the man's words, yet she also sensed that he was still holding something back. In time, she would investigate further, but for now there were more pressing questions. She had made some quick calculations while listening to Tarek's explanation. Twelve hundred years ago, the human empire would have been fighting their devastating civil war, when half of the Emperor's sons had been turned to the service of the Great Enemy. She had not been born at this time – she was barely three centuries old. But she had read the archives that spoke of the so-called "Horus Heresy", as if it were the first time a champion had been turned against his people by the whispers of the Primordial Annihilator. The Farseers and Autarchs of the time had watched from the sidelines, unwilling to involve themselves, but equally unwilling to remain ignorant of what was happening.
'Did you fight against the Legions of the Warmaster, then ?' she asked, forcing her mouth to speak the title in Gothic, its crudeness made even greater by the elegant Eldar language surrounding it. The Eldar had their own names for Horus, none of which flattering, all of which laced with varying degrees of contempt, hate, fear and power. But she doubted Tarek would recognize any of them.
'No,' answered Tarek, 'the Heresy was over by then. But the Wailing Storm engulfed Parecxis, and the entire Trebedius Sector according to our leaders. Then came the Forsaken Sons, Traitor Astartes in armor of black and gold.'
Dread rose within Elythrea at his words. Space Marines, the brutish gene-bred warriors of the Emperor of Mankind, had long been a potent foe of the Eldar, whether they still served the purpose for which they had been created or had been brought to kneel before the Dark Gods. But the visions of all Farseers who dared to look upon the galaxy's future had brought knowledge of the Black Legion, the traitors clad in black and gold under the leadership of the one known as the Despoiler. Were these Forsaken Sons a splinter of the great host contained within the Eye of Terror, having somehow escaped their infernal prison ? But no, that was impossible. There had been no Black Legion twelve centuries ago. What game were the Ruinous Powers playing ?
'They were waging a war of conquest,' continued Tarek, unaware of Elythrea's racing thoughts, 'and Parecxis was the only system in the whole Sector with a chance to resist them. We had Space Marines, armies, hives turned into fortresses. And yet, we were still losing when I … left, our last city broken into by the forces of Chaos. I cannot imagine even the Sons of Calth turning such a desperate situation around.'
'And once Parecxis was secure, the Forsaken Sons must have conquered the entire Wailing Storm. And they won't stop at that. Their leader, Arken, hates the Imperium to the point of insanity. He will not be content staying in the Storm and ruling over his slaves. He will come for the rest of the galaxy eventually.'
'This is a matter for the mon-keigh and their empire,' said the Autarch. 'It is no concern of us. We are away from your worlds in this region of space, isolated enough that this "Arken" will never find us. Let your kind slaughter each other – it is no concern of ours.'
'No,' replied Tarek softly. 'This concerns you greatly, son of Isha.'
'How so ?' The sneer in the warlord's voice was unmistakable, and surely must be so even to Tarek's human ears. But he did not take outrage, and merely continued talking, his voice entirely too calm for the world-shaking news it delivered :
'Because when the Forsaken Sons waged war on Parecxis, they had many allies. Some of those were daemons, others corrupt humans. But they also had allies from a xenos species. They called them the Sha'eilat. I never fought them in person, but I saw pict-captures of them. Though twisted, they were unmistakably Eldar in aspect, and they were the servants of Slaanesh.'
The mention of She-Who-Thirsts' name had nearly as much an impact on the eldars as that of the Sha'eilat – the Children of Hell in the Eldar language. Gasps of horror rose from the onlooking Guardians, temporarily shaken from their warrior-trances by the proclamation. All of them had lived their entire lives under the threat of the Youngest Goddess, the Doom of the Eldar. From infancy, they had been taught about the dangers of emotion, every history lesson about the past glory of their species bound to another about what had brought forth their downfall. They had spent their entire lives on the Path, training and focusing their minds to prevent themselves from being dragged down the same path as their wayward forebears. To them, the idea of an eldar willingly serving Slaanesh was inconceivable. It would be like a mouse worshipping a cat, cattle paying homage to the butcher. Even Elythrea, her mind trained in threading dangerous paths, found it all but impossible to even consider the notion.
Irithiel reacted most violently of all. With all the speed that could be expected of one such as he, he drew his sword and leapt at Tarek, his aura burning with rage and denial. His action wasn't the result of any conscious thought, but merely an instinctive reaction to Tarek's words, born from the desire to silence what he perceived as blasphemy. Elythrea reached out with her mind's power, trying to stop the Autarch before he could make a terrible mistake, but she was too slow, still stunned by Tarek's proclamation. However, the psychic energy she was calling upon sharpened her senses enough to fully catch what happened next.
As the blade of Irithiel descended upon Tarek, the soulstones in his arm burst with sudden brilliance. A dome of silver energy surrounded the human, and Irithiel's strike bounced off it. The impact caused the kinetic shield to flare, and the Autarch was thrown back with great strength, flying above the circle of Guardians and tumbling to the ground more than ten meters back.
The stunned silence that followed was broken by Tarek a few seconds later. For a fraction of a second, Elythrea thought she saw surprise on his face, as if he had not expected the projection of psychic energy that had saved his life. But if she hadn't imagined it, it was gone in an instant.
'Do not do that,' he said calmly. 'I understand your anger, for I felt the same when I first saw others of my own species turning to Chaos. But it is the truth, and you must accept it. I do not know from what infernal pit the Forsaken Sons dragged them, but the Sha'eilat are real. They revel in the perversion of human genetics, creating armies of twisted flesh-things to fight for them, and are bound to the Forsaken Sons by some unholy pact. When Arken drives his legions out of the Wailing Storm, the Sha'eilat will be part of his host. If you do not prepare to face them now, how many will die in vain when you finally see them with your own eyes ?'
The Autarch rose to his feet, glaring at the man from behind his helmet. Most humans would have quaked to be the target of such anger from so potent a warrior, but Tarek remained unfazed, staring back at Irithiel with complete calm. Elythrea wondered if the man had always been like this, or if his time through the Warp and the Webway had changed him into what he now was.
'Enough, Irithiel,' she said before the Autarch could speak again. She turned toward Tarek and continued : 'Come with me. There are others who must see you too.'
Elythrea was bringing Tarek to the rest of the Farseer Council. All of its members had sensed the human's arrival upon the Craftworld, much as she had. The combined destinies of the human and the six Eldar souls he carried within his flesh had sent shock waves across the infinite sea of potential futures. Elythrea had been the closest to his arrival, and thus she had been the one to welcome him, but all the Farseers were greatly interested, even more so once she telepathically shared with them the knowledge Tarek had delivered to her. The news of the Sha'eilat had shaken them too, even those who had guided the Craftworld's fate for centuries.
Once, their failure to foretell Tarek's predicted war would have made them sceptical of the human's sincerity. But they had all failed to foresee the Ork attack on the Craftworld two centuries ago. The Council had been taught a lesson in humility that day, when greenskin barbarians had rampaged through the pristine streets of Mian-Tor, spilling the blood of the Children of Isha. They had been reminded that for all their power and wisdom, there were powers that could obscure their sight, blind them to the machinations of their foes. And the Wailing Storm certainly qualified.
The Eldar had their own name for what Tarek called the Wailing Storm, born of the visions that had haunted the Craftworld's population when it had erupted a thousand years ago. To them, the storm was Mar Daellae, the Death that Screams. It had taken several weeks for every Seer and Warlock on the Craftworld to fashion and place the runes that had finally kept the psychic cries of the Storm from entering the sleeping minds of the Eldar. Even now, all Farseers knew better than to attempt to scry its infernal depths, which Elythrea now bitterly realized might have been the plan of the Great Enemy all along. Unable to see into Mar Daellae, the Farseers could only see the impact it might have upon its surroundings, and they had cared little for the human worlds that populated the region. That had been a mistake, and one for which they might still pay greatly.
'Where are we going ?' asked Tarek as they continued their march. The human was now wearing a simple vestment of white cloth, brought at Elythrea's command. To her surprise, he had raised up the right sleeve so that the soulstones were exposed. He hadn't seemed to notice he had done so, acting as if it were natural. Just how much was the mon-keigh's mind influenced by the Eldar souls ?
'To the Dome of Crystal Seers,' she replied. 'Your presence here, and the knowledge you bring of what lies within the Warp Storm, requires the Farseers to convene. We will attempt to link with the spirits in your soulstones, and scry the future for clues as to these Forsaken Sons' next move.'
They walked for several more minutes before Tarek spoke again :
'During the war on Parecxis, I heard the Space Marines mention that the enemy had a seer of its own, a being of great power that they used to predict our moves and arrange the entire war to their advantage. Are you sure your predictions will do you any good against something like that ?'
'We are … more practiced at divination that even the most gifted practitioners of the Imperium,' said Elythrea, perhaps a touch more stiffly than she had wanted. 'If we put our collective will to the task, I am sure we can pierce whatever defenses the servants of Ruin have raised around their activities. They might have been able to conceal themselves from us when we did not know they existed, but with the focus your presence will give us, it will be a different story.'
The rest of their march went in silence. They walked through pristine streets and before the elegant buildings that housed the people of Mian-Tor. Sung into existence from the very bones of the ship, even the lowest house was a thing of supreme beauty and artistry. The group's path took them through one of the more noble districts, where lived Eldar families whose bloodlines went back to the leaders of the species' long-lost empire. Here, the buildings spoke of the glory and power of their inhabitants as well as of the skill of their builders. Great spires and towering manors rose from the ground, surrounded by beautiful gardens and decorated with elaborate sculptures of wraithbone and light. And yet, Elythrea couldn't help but notice that many of these houses were empty, or nearly so. This quarter had been where the Ork attack had struck first two centuries ago, and while the damage to the Craftworld had long since been repaired, the lives lost in the battle could not be so easily replaced. Several houses stood as little more than memorial, tombstones to entire bloodlines, while others were ghost houses were a handful of servants tended to the last surviving members of their masters' family.
What few eldars they passed only glimpsed at Tarek, their aura a mixture of surprise, curiosity and contempt for his humanity. But they saw Elythrea, Irithiel and the Guardians, and assumed he was secure, that the warriors could prevent him from causing any damage to the Craftworld. After his demonstration before the portal, the Farseer wasn't so certain. There was power in the mon-keigh that did not belong wholly to him. But he was following them quietly, and whatever threat he might pose, the Council of Farseers would be able to deal with it.
The Dome of Crystal Seers was part meditation garden and part graveyard. When the Craftworld had been built, in the twilight days of the Eldar Empire, this dome had been intended as a place of tranquillity and reflexion, where eldars could come to look upon the stars amidst carefully groomed trees. They would find peace there, away from the tumult of excess that had swallowed the greater part of their species. Now, however, few came here. The reason resided in the statues of crystal that dotted the landscape.
'What are these statues ?' asked Tarek as they marched toward the center of the dome. 'I sense … something from them.'
'They were once Farseers like myself', explained Elythrea, loath to share such knowledge but unwilling to risk antagonizing the strange man by denying it to him. 'All of their lives they threaded the Path of the Seer, until their own power consumed them and their flesh was turned into crystal by the very energies they used. Now their souls are part of the Infinite Circuit, but we keep their mortal remains here, to honor their sacrifice and to assist in our own divinations.'
'Will this be your fate ?'
'If I live that long, then yes, eventually.'
That put an end to the exchange. Speaking of inevitable death often had that effect – it was one of the few things that transcended any petty notions of species.
The Council awaited them in an artificial clearing, surrounded by a ring of carefully groomed trees whose green leaves glistened in the artificial sunlight. A handful of crystal statues could be glimpsed among the trees, where Farseers had chosen to spend their final moments in the shade. One statue stood in the center of the clearing, the dead Farseer having met his fate on his feet, looking up at the translucent dome.
Despite the transformation, its traits remained clear, and Elythrea knew them well. This was Taranath Wyngel, first Farseer of Mian-Tor. He had been the one who had led the Craftworld away from the Empire in its final days, and the one who had guided it during the cataclysmic days that had followed the Fall. He had been powerful and wise, but it was said that the sorrow of his people's fate had accelerated his transformation into pure crystal. He had been the first on Mian-Tor to suffer that doom, but he hadn't feared it, accepting it instead as a release from the doubts and torments of his life. Taranath had led his people through the darkest of times – Elythrea hoped his spirit watched over them still, and would aid them in what they must do this day.
Eleven eldars waited for them as they entered the clearing. Only Elythrea, Irithiel and Tarek came, the Guardians left behind. Even the Autarch shouldn't have been here, but Elythrea hadn't even tried to tell him to turn back. She had needed no foresight to know how that would have gone. Still, Irithiel also had sense enough to remain on the edge of the clearing, close enough to intervene if he felt he was needed but far enough to show he understood this was, primarily, a matter for seers.
The other Farseers stood around the statue of Taranath in a loose circle. As Elythrea took her place and completed the circle, Tarek continued to advance unprompted, drawn to the crystal image of the dead eldar in their center. He examined it for several seconds, before turning to face half of those who now surrounded him. He spread his arms outward, one mundane and one shining to the Farseers' sight with contained power and unspoken futures. He raised his head to the dome and the stars beyond, his eyes glazing at the wondrous sight. How long had it been since he had last seen a sky freed of the madness of Chaos or the pollution clouds so common to Imperial worlds ?
'Let us begin, then,' he said, and the Council of Farseers cast their minds into the Aether around him.
The minds of the eldars acted as one, following paths of thought that they had been trained to thread. They combined their power and sight, and Elythrea felt herself be chosen to be the voice of the resulting union. She spoke, and her voice was no longer fully her own, for it now echoed with the power of the twelve Farseers.
'We will begin with Parecxis.'
An image began to appear in the circle, a floating map of floating stars and worlds surrounding Tarek and the crystal statue. It wasn't an exact map, of course – the distances that would have involved would have required either the heavenly bodies be so small as to be invisible, or the map stretch out for kilometers around them. Instead, it was a mental construct, a projection of how the region of space that was now lost to the Mar Daellae, with planets orbiting stars untainted by the corruption of the Warp. The information needed for it came from the mind of Keryth Yesnala, a Farseer who was rightfully proud of his knowledge of the past.
'Show us which star it is your Imperium knew as Parecxis.'
Tarek wandered amidst the project image, his gaze jumping from one star to the next.
'I was a sea captain once,' he said to no one in particular. 'My maps were flat then, two-dimensional – yet they carried much information encoded in them. I remember seeing a star chart once. It had seemed so … blank, lacking in details. Numbers and pictographs, names and distances. I always wondered what its makers were trying to hide with such mundanity. Now I know.'
He pointed to a star orbited by two worlds, and Elythrea felt Keryth gasp in recognition.
'You know this system,' noted Tarek.
And she did. Through the link, Keryth's knowledge flowed through her. Once, Parecxis had been a colony of her people – but not part of the Empire. It had been a lair of outcasts and renegades, those who went too far even by the decadent standards of the Eldar at the height of their power. A haven for madmen and monsters, thought destroyed during the Fall. Then, to the horror of those who had lived in those time, it had been discovered that the system had survived. Keryth did not know how, nor what had become of those who inhabited it. The records were scarce, as if their authors had been unwilling to write down details about what they had witnessed in their psychic explorations. Perhaps the sealed archives held more, but consulting them would have to wait. For now, it was enough to know that there was more to Tarek's claims of corrupted Eldar than mere fancy or madness. It provided an anchor, a point from which the Farseers could start their work.
With a flicker of her mind, Elythrea opened her pouch, and rune-etched stones flew out and began to swirl around her. The rest of the circle brought forth their own runes, and soon the Farseers resembled the star map they had created, with the tools of their craft orbiting around them. Together they sent their minds across the streams of time, threading back the thread of Tarek's journey through the Sea of Souls toward Parecxis, and from that system to those who had brought it to heel. The star map contorted and twisted, becoming an image of the Mar Daellae, voracious and all-consuming, inhabited by a primitive form of malevolence. Even with her eyes closed and her mind set onto the myriad paths of possibilities, Elythrea could still see the blaze from Tarek's soulstones as the spirits within reacted to the psychic undertaking around them.
The Farseers dared not dwell into the Warp Storm too long, even together, even with the twin focuses granted by Tarek's presence and the knowledge of Parecxis. Even though they were only observing it through the medium of runes and psyche, the very concept of the Mar Daellae beat at their very souls with ravenous hunger. They must hurry.
The psychic construct of the Farseers' combined minds took the shape of a ship sailing the currents of time, with each eldar becoming a crew member and Tarek standing on the bridge, compass and anchor all at once. They reached Parecxis, and Elythrea saw that two worlds turned around that star. One was dead, populated only by the ghosts of dead soldiers and the echoes of ancient nightmares. But the other, the one closest to the system's sun, was alive and pulsing with corruption. Cities rose on its surface, each in the throes of a different evil. A ruin held within it the very heart of the Mar Daellae, beating in rhythm with the screams of an immortal captive.
'We must find those who are responsible for this horror,' Elythrea heard herself say. 'We must go back to when they were here.'
The spiritual ship tumbled back through time, further and further away from the present until they saw the fall of Parecxis to the powers of Ruin. Cities grew smaller, less tainted, less whole, until at last a flotilla of Chaos-marked ships returned into the system, their prow facing backward.
On the bridge of the illusionary vessel, Tarek pointed toward the greatest of the new vessels. It was a monstrously huge thing, over ten kilometers in length, bristling with weaponry and hangar bays.
'The Hand of Ruin,' he said, all Farseers somehow hearing his mundane voice. 'This is the flagship of the Forsaken Sons, and aboard which Arken will have sailed.'
'Then there is the thread we must follow.'
The Farseers exerted their will, and the past began to unfold once more. The thread of the Hand of Ruin, and that of the Chaos Lord who ruled it, sped forward into the more recent past. As Tarek had thought, with the conquest of Parecxis complete the Forsaken Sons had started a campaign to bring the entire Warp Storm under their control. There would have been much to learn from watching how they had done so, what difficulties they had encountered and what fell powers they had consorted with during that war. But there was no time. The power of the Mar Daellae would destroy them. Instead, the Farseers looked upon the thread of the Hand of Ruin, and propelled themselves further ahead, abandoning the past to instead look upon the potential futures. The vision swam, and they departed the image of the Wailing Storm, emerging on the shores of what the mon-keighs called the Azarok Sector.
And that was when they started to scream.
If not for Irithiel's presence and quick reaction, Elythrea doubted she would have survived. As the Farseers reached into the future of Arken and his flagship, seeking to divine the plans of the lord of the damned, a ripple of pure Chaos hit them like the fist of Kaela Mensha Khaine itself. It shattered their psychic shields and cast down their defenses without even slowing.
Insanity poured from the Warp and into the linked seers. The runestones shattered the pieces under the strain as the tides of destiny themselves turned against those who would peer through them. Something had sensed their attempt, something vast and terrible, and it had struck at the circle through time and space. For a moment, Elythrea felt the presence behind the attack, vast and terrible in its hatred, bearing the mark of the Primordial Annihilator. But before the attack could reach her, Irithiel slammed into her and, with his warrior-aura surrounding hers, severed her connection to the circle even as he dragged her away from the clearing. Her vision cleared from the fog of pain, and she looked to see what was happening to her colleagues.
Eleven eldars hovered above the ground, arcs of black and purple lightning jumping between them. At the center of the circle, Tarek was shouting wordlessly, pale light bursting from his arm and battling the Warp-lightning, forcing it back wherever it struck. Agony radiated from the captive seers, burning into Elythrea's mind with its intensity. Yet even in their pain, they screamed, not meaningless moans of suffering, but prophecies glimpsed through the haze of suffering and the madness of the power that sought to blind them.
Keryth spoke first, forcing his mouth to form words rather than screams.
'I see the tides open, and the armies of despair and damnation pour forth from the hell they created ! I see a sea of blood, and hear the laughter of the four Chaos Gods ! I see ...'
He was silenced when, without warning, his head exploded with a sickening pop, sending bone shards and brain matter all around his decapitated body, still hung in the air by sorcerous energies. As if on cue, another Farseer – Jandar, who had wielded his power for five hours without pause to save his class of Eldar children from the Orks – began to shout :
'The Angels will fall and rise on blood-stained wings. Iron shall turn against iron and sanity give way to madness. The daughter of ancient sin will kill the watchers of the eye and blind the two-headed eagle to the truth ...'
He too was made silent by death, his entire body suddenly transforming into dust that was scattered by the winds of the unnatural storm, his clothes still hovering two meters above the ground, lightning coursing through them. For a moment Elythrea could see Jandar's soul, before it vanished, and horror and grief bit through her heart as she glimpsed his soulstone on the grass. Jandar's death had been too quick for his spirit to have time to seek refuge within it, and was now lost to the Warp, denied the peace of the Infinity Circuit and damned to an eternity in the claws of She-Who-Thirsts.
'The divine work shall be profaned anew, monsters bred from tainted light !' screamed Mnuvae Ianrona, her voice filled with terror. 'The doomed shall fight the damned, and the crimes of the one who does not sleep shall draw the silver knights from their fortress of myth and into war !'
She burned in white-hot fire, reduced to ash in seconds, her last words nearly lost over the sound of her body's combustion. Her soulstone fell, shining with heat and – to Elythrea's relief – the inner light of Mnuvae's soul, salvaged from the horrors of the Warp. Her attention was swiftly diverted, however, as Nelaeryn Vaqen began to speak in a monotone, emotionless drone in stark contrast to his convulsing body :
'The Hand of Sin and the Hand of Death shall clash upon a world lit by the fire of burning tombs. The silver light shall shine brightest in the darkness of hopelessness. The grave of heroes and monsters shall be cracked open …'
His death came in the form of a dramatically accelerated ageing, his muscles withering away on his bones before he became no more than wrinkled, desiccated skin hung over brittle, rotten bones. Yet his part of the prophecy – for surely that was what this was – was completed, as Yhendorn Oridi picked it up. The synchronization was so perfect that Elythrea wondered just where the prophecy was coming from that held all the Council in its grasp, and whether it could be trusted at all.
'… and all shall be lost if it cannot be sealed forevermore with the blood of the martyred child.'
Then Yhendorn died, her body simply vanishing from the feet up in a cascade of glimmering golden particles that ceased to exist mere moments after their appearance. From the side, Elythrea thought that she caught a smile on her colleague's face, a look of pure exaltation that transformed into naked horror just before her head too ceased to be.
'ENOUGH !' shouted Tarek in a voice that was not his own, that echoed many times across the entire Dome of Crystal Seers.
The cold light of his soulstone-incrusted arm flared to blinding intensity, and at last the storm of dark lightning faded, dissipated by the blast of power that had come from the trapped Eldar spirits. The Farseers, alive and dead, collapsed to the ground like puppets with their strings cut. Elythrea could still feel the souls of those who had not been destroyed by the power of the prophecy they had received. As silence fell upon the clearing, Elythrea heard alarmed shouts in the distance, calls for help and distant motion. But she did not look back through the trees, nor at Irithiel, who stood next to her, helping her up. She stared at what lay on the ground next to Tarek.
The crystal remains of Taranath Wyngel had been destroyed, reduced to nothing more than a pile of shards glistening in the light of the false sun.
The painting was as beautiful as it was terrifying. It had been painted on the back wall of a private shrine, in the house of Irithiel's family. The Autarch had brought Elythrea – and, at her insistence, Tarek – after the disaster in the Dome of Crystal Seers. He had heard the prophecies of the Farseers while in the throes of the Warp-wrought trap, and believed that he had recognized something in one of them. On their way there, Elythrea's mind had already begun to interpret what she had heard. Some things were obvious. "The one who does not sleep", for instance, had to be a reference to the warlord Arken, who according to Tarek was named the Awakened One by his followers. "The doomed" must be the Eldar, who often bore that name in visions and prophecies. And "the damned" was obviously whatever force the Forsaken Sons would bring with them out of the Wailing Storm. As for the "silver light" … who else could it be but Tarek, who had saved the surviving seven Farseers from what had happened ? Of course, one of the first lessons those on the Path of the Seer learned was that any prophecy could be interpreted in many different ways.
Yet so many questions remained. Who was the "daughter of the ancient sin" ? The "watchers of the eye" ? The angels fated to fall and rise on bloodied wings ? It would take long hours of meditation to divine the meaning of each sentence, and longer hours still to decide what the proper reaction to them was. The efforts of everyone on the Craftworld who walked the Path of the Seer would be required, not just those of the Farseers, who had walked it too far and could now never turn back. However, all these questions paled in comparison to the most obvious one : what in the name of Asuryan had just happened ?
Elythrea had told Tarek her people would be able to pierce through the Forsaken Sons' defences against scrying. Clearly she had been wrong, but she had never felt or heard about anything like what had struck at them. Four Farseers dead, and one lost beyond all salvation. The seven survivors who had been caught in the attack were still unconscious, surrounded by healers who directed all their power to heal their flesh and spirit. Their prognostic was still uncertain, but none of them were optimistic. It was possible that the other Farseeers would never recover, a thought that sent ice down Elythrea's spine.
Something had struck at them, something with the ability to see and act from beyond the veil of time. Texts from the Fall and the previous Farseers told of entities having such power : the Greater Daemons of the God of Change, for instance, delected in manipulating the visions of seers to satisfy their own inscrutable ends. But to actually attack the seer, and in a place as sacred and warded as the Dome of a Craftworld was … What manner of power had the Forsaken Sons allied with that could grant them so powerful a protection ? Was it something they had encountered during their conquest of the Mar Daellae, bartering even more of their souls away to gain ? Or – and that possibility unnerved the Farseer even more – was it something that had not yet appeared, an echo from possible futures striking at those whose actions might prevent its birth ?
She did not know, but if Irithiel's hunch was right, then only one line of prophecy was truly important. She looked at the painting, focusing her mind on it. It was huge, covering the entire surface of a wall that was four meters high and more than a dozen long. On a background of blackness and distant stars, hundreds – thousands – of vessels fought. About a third of those were of an elegant design, created for beauty as much as power. The painter had worked hard to render the impression of speed and precision that had gone into their conception. But for all their majesty, they were badly outnumbered by their foe, whose vessels were twisted leviathans of metal and flesh. No two of the dark ships were identical, each a variation on a pattern of horrors. Some were brutish constructions that would have shamed an Ork Rok ship with their armor, while others were spindly things that seemed impossibly fragile. A great number of wrecks were also shown on the painting, and the ratio of kills for each side clearly indicated that, at the battle's beginning, the two armadas had been equal in number, only for the twisted ships to inflict two kills for every loss of their own.
'What is this ?' asked Tarek. 'Some of these ships are clearly Eldar, but the others … I have never seen anything like them.'
'Riaway Noara,' answered Elythrea. Her voice was low, yet the name still seemed to echo in the memorial chamber. 'The Nightmare Fleet.'
'That is singularly unhelpful. Are those daemons in the guise of ships ?'
The Farseer sighed. In truth, she knew little of the Riaway Noara, and doubted even Irithiel knew much more. Like the exiled of Parecxis, this was a part of the Eldar's past few wished to remember, though the reasons for that varied.
'No. The Nightmare Fleet was created by human hands,' she began, and she saw Tarek's eyes widen at the declaration. She felt a small degree of pleasure at teaching him of one of his own species' sins this time around. 'During the period your kind calls the Dark Age of Technology, when they reached into the stars with unbridled ambition, both illuminated beyond anything your species had ever known or ever will know, and blind beyond imagining. In this region of space, they built sentient ships, driven by artificial intelligences enslaved to their own will. They were powerful, very powerful, and they waged war against all they crossed, even their own kind. At that time, we Eldar were still at the height of our power, our downfall still centuries in the future, though the first signs were already there.
'The Empire sent an army to destroy them, but they underestimated the foe, and that army was destroyed instead. However, before they lost they scared the techno-lords enough that they turned to avenues of research that even they had feared to contemplate. In order to gain the strength to win, the techno-lords used sorcery, building weapons that used the power of the Warp. It twisted their vessels and themselves, altering the artificial minds of the ships until the ships and their masters were one. Each ship of the fleet was alive, and insane. Several Eldar worlds burned under their wrath, and they received the name of Riaway Noara.
'The Empire then sent another fleet, one equipped with the tools it needed to remove the threat of the Nightmare Fleet. All I know is this : they succeeded, but were never heard of again. Do you know why, Irithiel ?'
'Indeed I do, Farseer. This painting depicts the final battle against the Nightmare Fleet,' Irithiel explained. 'Painted from the artist's memory, seconds before the trap was sprung and Eldar and mon-keigh constructs alike were trapped together, removed from existence by a dimensional oubliette, one of the most dangerous tools our ancestors had at their disposal before the fall of our empire.'
'We have lost much of our knowledge about how such devices worked,' continued the Autarch, 'but ancient legends tell of them being employed before, to contain dangers to the Empire until such a time as they could be safely dealt with. That implies that there is a way to release the contents of the oubliette, and that they would still be dangerous. I do not know if any other oubliettes remain across the galaxy, but this one, the one holding the Nightmare Fleet and the Eldar armada sent to destroy it, lies within the Azarok Sector.'
'"The grave of heroes and monsters",' quoted Elythrea. 'Yes, this would fit. It is difficult to imagine that the Forsaken Sons would know of it, let alone know how to open it, but if they do ...'
'Then the galaxy will face a threat the likes of which even our ancestors could not destroy.'
Elythrea looked at Irithiel. The Autarch's aura was aflame with conflicting emotions – doubt, anger, and fear, but also exaltation and hope. Why he would feel the latter, the Farseer did not now, though she suspected the Autarch might have walked the Path of Command too long, and was starting to be subsumed by its lure. It would be unfortunate to lose him that way. Less than a day ago, she would have brought the matter before the Council and raised the motion that he be removed from the Path of Command and set upon another, more peaceful one. Each Eldar might have to find his or her own way on the Paths, but that did not prevent others from helping. Yet with the coming threat of the Forsaken Sons, the Craftworld could not afford to spare him.
'We are in agreement, then,' she declared. 'If this is the target of the Forsaken Sons, they cannot be allowed to succeed. And even if it is not, the possibility alone is too great to risk it. I will speak with the rest of the Council when they are healed from their injuries, and you will prepare the Craftworld for war. Mian-Tor will return to the Azarok Sector.'
'You will not be able to stand against them alone,' said Tarek, still staring at the image of the battling fleets. His voice was distant, and Elythrea fancied she could hear faint echoes of other voices in it. 'Even with only the resources they had at Parecxis they would have broken you, and they will have gathered much more from the worlds trapped within the Storm.'
Irithiel bristled with anger at the implication of weakness, but Elythrea agreed with Tarek.
'The Imperium will gather its own armies against the Forsaken Sons once they launch their attack,' she began. 'We will coordinate our forces with their own, using our visions to avoid direct contact. They would likely assume us to be enemies, and neither them or us can afford to fight each other.'
'We must use them to weaken the foe,' said Irithiel. 'Ensure they are between the armies of Chaos and the location of the Nightmare Fleet's prison.'
Elythrea quickly glanced at Tarek, but he didn't seem to have heard the Autarch's careless words, instead still lost in contemplation of the image of god-like desolation.
'We shall see,' she replied out loud, before switching to telepathic sending : +Do not speak like this where he can hear you, fool ! Do you wish to turn him against us ? Have you already forgotten the power he wields, the part he might play in the prophecies we just heard ?
That power is not his came the reply, bitter and proud. +It belongs to the ghosts of our kin, enslaved to his will by foul necromancy.
You do not understand the nature of the bond between Human and Eldar that exists in him. That he would come to us in this way, bring us this warning, cannot be a coincidence. It is a sign.
+A sign of what, Farseer ?+
+That in order to defeat this latest move of the Great Enemy, we must align ourselves with the humans. We cannot triumph alone, and your plan would put everything at risk. +
+So you would have us grovel before the mon-keigh and beg for their help ? Even if what this … creature said about tainted eldars is true, it is their own kindred who will lead the assault ! Mon-keighs cannot be trusted. They will turn on us even if they do not succumb to the corruption of Chaos in the first place !+
We will not openly ally with the Imperium – such a thing simply cannot be done, for you were right in claiming they would see us as another foe. But in the past and future, there have been instances of select individuals proving capable of looking beyond their prejudices and self-centred vision, and see the wisdom of following Eldar advice. That will be our path in the coming war, and Tarek will be invaluable in ensuring those receptive to our words listen to them in the first place.
'Yes,' said Tarek out loud. 'I suspect I would be.'
The two eldars swirled in place and looked straight at his back. Tarek was still looking at the painting, yet his words left no place for doubt. He had heard their psychic exchange, which not even another eldar could have done had he been in his position. Elythrea had been careful to shield their exchange, precisely because, after Tarek's display of his mastery of psychic energies in the Dome, she had been wary of him being able to listen in on them. Yet her efforts had meant nothing, and judging by Tarek's relaxed pose, he had not even had to try to intercept their psychic transmissions.
'Do not be so surprised. Of course I can hear you. You are right there.'
Tarek's glowing eyes and arm contrasted with the image of apocalyptic destruction depicted on the mural behind him. For the first time since she had first laid eyes upon him, Elythrea felt fear not because of the disturbing truths Tarek had brought, nor the dire warning he had delivered, or the disaster his presence had nearly caused. For the first time, she was afraid of the mon-keigh himself, and the strange, doomed-forged powers he possessed.
Seven we were, one we are.
The warlord hates us, but that is not the threat from him. His ambition will guide him down a dark path if he is not stopped before the pride of his breed catches up with him. Glory beckons to him, the hateful lie that has damned so many souls before him.
The seer doesn't trust us. She does not know what we are. She does not understand what we have become, and from that lack of understanding comes her fear. That fear will turn into hatred, given enough time. It is the way of things for all species, no matter how elevated they might believe themselves to be …
Do even we understand what we are ? We were seven, now we are one. Six dead, one living, bound together in the twilight realm with chains forged of the stuff of our melted souls. Neither Man nor Eldar, body and soul twisted into something unique.
We think ourselves pure of the touch of the Enemy, but are we really ? So much of what we were has been lost to become what we are, we do not even recall the shape of the voids it left in us, nor do we see what might have filled them. Perhaps we are the monster the Autarch thinks us to be. Our thoughts are in disarray, shattered splinters that wax and wane with the tides of the Great Ocean. We are broken, and we hide the madness with a calm mask made of the shards of the personality whose body we now inhabit.
My body. My body. Mine mine mine mine thieves kill you cast you out it is mine mine mine mine oh Emperor my arm what happened to me …
We have nothing but our hate. We have no goal but our vengeance. Parecxis was taken, our world was damned, our spirits were stolen from our resting places and bound into slavery by the slaves of Ruin, bartered away like a trophy by the Lord of Shadows to the Prophet in Rags. We escaped, but they will come for us. They will come for all that is and all that will be.
The hound is still screaming as his soul bleeds for their amusement, but they will let him loose again soon. They will grow weary of his pain and seek to have him bring new toys for them to torment. They will want us, even if we are broken. But they will not have us. Never !
The cage must not be opened. We must fight again. We must make them fight, or all is lost. Few now can stand against what is sealed, and in doing so they would grow too weak to resist the other horrors that await us all down the inevitable path of destiny.
They will fight, out of fear if not duty. But alone, they cannot win.
Then they shall not be alone. By their very nature, the Forsaken Sons will draw others to this coming war, those who would maintain order and sanity where the servants of Chaos would breed madness. The Imperium will call its armies, and the Eldar will ally with them – they have no choice, whether they admit it or not. Their strength is faded, their time as masters of the galaxy passed. Only the doom they made for themselves await.
Oh God-Emperor please let it end please please please please …
We remember the Fall. We remember the flight from the death-birth of our god-destroyer, the panic and the despair. We knew it would come, and we thought we were prepared, but we were not.
No one can ever be truly prepared to face Chaos. We thought we were prepared on Parecxis …
Never prepared, never ready, never strong enough. The sins of the past follow us through time and space. Children all around us, who never committed the crimes that created the Eldar's doom, and yet they will pay the price all the same. Where is the justice in this ?
There is no justice left. Justice died in fire and betrayal, under the claws of the Deceived Prince.
Seven we were, one we are …
AN : ... well, that was quicker than I anticipated. Tarek is back, and Zarl Korak has been confirmed as still "alive" (though believe me : he wishes he wasn't). I have also introduced the Nightmare Fleet, something I have been thinking about for quite a long time now. Don't worry, we will learn a lot more about it in what is to come.
Considering it has barely been more than a week since the last chapter, I don't have much to say. Work continues on the Roboutian Heresy : Times of Ending. Plans for the Black Crusade are almost completed, but I need to finish listening to the excellent The Crimson King, recently released, before I can set up the last details. For ... reasons that I cannot go into here without spoilers.
On another note, the story trailer for the upcoming video game Shadow of War was just released, and I love it. You owe that trailer the quick release of this chapter - seeing it filled me with inspiration.
As usual, if you have a question or an idea for what comes next, or an interpretation of the prophecies (I already know what they all mean, but I am curious to see if anyone can figure it out), then please leave a review or contact me by PM. If you enjoyed reading this, also please leave a review. It helps me know what I am doing right (and wrong).
Zahariel out.