The village lay silent.

The hoary frosts of winter had long since surrendered to the advance of spring, and now summer stirred fitfully. A hot sirocco blew dust through fallow fields and drying leaves. Tendrils of new shoots had encroached upon abandoned houses, vines climbing up walls half-rotted with mildew. The dry ground was riven with cracks, and the well in the center of the village offered but little stale water. Night had quelled the calls of animals, though insects still buzzed angrily through patches of vegetation, vainly seeking the flowers that were their due.

Above, clouds veiled the stars and the awful wound that consumed half the sky. They had withheld their rain for days, teasing a drop or two before scudding on to other lands. The air was heavy with anticipation of their downpour.

Liriel walked through the village hunched over, hunger binding her stomach to her spine. There was little fat on an aeldar's body in the usual case, and Liriel had been lean even for her race. Now, skin of a ghastly pallor stretched between jutting bones from her gaunt frame, a moving skeleton in tattered cloth.

Hunting had been poor. The spring had not offered its bounty. Plants withered rather than bloomed and the animals that were not sick were sickly. The land was not generous, as it had been in ages past. As if the planet itself turned against them, turned inward to conserve its strength.

She could have laughed at the thought, a fever to burn the parasite of the aeldar off the world, if her throat did not ache with thirst. If mirth had any place in her. Perhaps the idea had merit; the aeldar were not infected with a sickness, the aeldar were the sickness. A dying race stubbornly clinging to lives they no longer had a right to and a galaxy they had no place in.

The distraction that dark thoughts offered was sweet. It kept her mind from the steel spike of hunger driven through her gut.

There was, half-hidden in the outskirts of the town, one dwelling with a light still shining in its single window. Quiet sounds of cooking food and subdued conversation floated through that open portal. Adjoining it was an animal pen, a pair of scrawny grazing cattle sleeping fitfully on the ground.

Liriel licked her lips, the thought of their meat consuming her mind. As a child, the calculus would have been easy. Here was she, hungry. Here was food, to be taken. Everything had been that simple. Take, because life had already taken so much from her.

She cursed the gift of knowledge, and approached the house openly.

Some guard animal caught her scent and cried out. The light flickered, conversation stopped. Liriel halted her advance as an aeldar came barrelling out the rough door. He was old, old enough for the madness to have set in. Thinning hair, roughly cut to keep out of his eyes, framed a weathered face with high-set, suspicious eyes. Fear glittered in their depths.

In times long past, the land had been bountiful, and the people generous. She knew this because she had read it. In times long past, when gods and heroes had walked among them, when the aeldar had been the pinnacle of creation, they would welcome a stranger with open arms, with shelter and warm nourishment. Now, she stood before a half-mad hermit, the first miserable drizzle of rain finally slipping out of the skies above, hoping that even this small thing was not too much to ask. "I need food."

The man looked at her, looked around as if expecting some force of raiders, before returning his attention to her. "We want no trouble," he said.

Liriel said nothing. She could almost taste the food cooking inside the simple hut. She imagined the rich scent of roasting grains, sweet berries. She thought she could smell meat, practically hear it frying in its own fat. Her mouth salivated, and a predatory cast came over her eyes.

The man was holding some kind of farming tool; she had seen others use it, but had never bothered to learn its name. He held it in front of him like a weapon, as if he could stop her. "I have a family inside. Children. Just leave."

Lies. Everything she needed, she could take. It would be so simple. A voice inside of her spoke sweetly, softly, imploring her. Is your life so unimportant that you would risk it to save a useless hermit? He's doomed anyway; some wild animal or raider will come through here and kill him within the year. "All I want," she repeated, her voice emerging as a cracked, hoarse whisper from disuse, "is some food."

The man's eyes were hardened, his grip on the "weapon" tight. Too tight, his stance awkward. He had never killed before. Weak as her body was, her mind had grown ever sharper. The seductive, repugnant power of the Warp called to her, called her to rip this fool apart, take what she needed.

His face tightened, as if he could sense her thoughts. He raised the farming implement, shaking it at her. "We don't have enough as it is! We don't have any food to give you!"

The lash of power emerged without her conscious bidding, the Warp filling her and striking nearly of its own accord. The wooden haft of the tool glowed an incandescent red, the only warning before it exploded. The old man stumbled and shrieked, splinters coating his arms and face. Blinded. Inside the house, someone screamed. A shape, backlit by a candleflame, moved in the window. Shard of wood sizzled in the tepid rain.

With difficulty, Liriel fought the flare of power down, remaining still as the animals woke in a panic and began to race around their tiny enclosure. A simple twist in her mind and their meat would be hers too-

The man scratched at the door, trying to climb to his feet. He fell to the floor again as it was yanked open, an older woman filling the door frame with a bowl in her hand.

Liriel paid attention to nothing else. Her feet rooted, she exerted only a tiny sliver of power to jerk the vessel out of the woman's hands. She caught the rough-hewn wooden bowl in midair, barely glancing at its contents. The stew was meager, old vegetables in watery broth and a pauper's portion of near-rotten meat.

Liriel had never eaten anything so good. She crouched on the balls of her feet and shoveled the scalding hot food into her mouth, hardly bothered to chew it. She was dimly aware of the woman's shocked gasp, the couple's fearful gazes. She could not bring herself to care.

The food was finished in seconds, the fallen Seer licking the bowl clean. The woman was still staring at her, with no expression that Liriel could read. It was as if the world had simply worn her down, cumulative disappointments and tragedies eroding the capacity for any emotion but weary resignation.

In another life, Liriel could imagine sympathy for the creature.

But there had been too many such faces on the journey westward, too many villages with the same story to tell. Liriel had no time to weep for the dead, whether or not they still moved. She stood, leaving the bowl behind. Unnecessary weight on her journey. It was a long way to the wild lands, and to the World Stone that nestled in their heart, amidst the ruins of the cities lost to the exodites on the Day of Sorrow. The closest thing to a holy place this world could conjure up.

The sister of the place where Anathan, in an arweh-blind stupor, had told her he had first heard the voices of gods and spirits, and had learned the truth of this place.