Do you wish to hear my story?
The first things I remember – when I was finally allowed to remember them – were colors. Vivid and plentiful, like nothing I ever seen before. Beautiful dream and peace that lasted for immeasurable time. Then, there were voices. Melodious, serene, utterly alien, bound to contain the meanings which eluded me at the time…
No, there was something else before that. But a flicker of flame, blink of an eye in the tapestry that is my life. It seemed so important, so grand back then.
And then there was an ending. And the beginning. Like with so many things touched by the skein, one can not differentiate one from the other.
It came with a silent storm and a smell of ozone. With a tear in reality. Irresistible pull and an endless, yet instant feeling of unbelievable pain drowning all else. Maddening screams heralding the change to come. Eternal and elusive alike.
Only after this end arrived the colors and the voices. Along with the only constant in my life to be – the soothing weight over my chest.
I don't know how long I spent in this dreamlike state, in a peaceful, timeless hallucination. Slowly colors began to gain shapes, melodic voices shifted and became alien sentences, various sensations started to make sense.
One day I simply opened my eyes and realized I wasn't dreaming anymore.
It wasn't me having a body much smaller than it used to be that caused my heart to quicken in panic. Nor was it sight sharper than I thought it possible to be. It was a simple, unadorned pendant encasing a precious-looking fist sized gem hanging from my neck.
I instinctively knew its purpose: a god-damned spirit stone!
And I realized it wasn't a dream – it was a nightmare!
Deep breaths.
It can't be real, can it? Maybe it is some sort of hallucination? It would be less ridiculous than being sucked into an almost two hundred years old fictional universe.
Yet how could I claim what is possible anymore? After all, our understanding of physics was thrown out of the window eight years ago, along with the discovery of martian caches.
Suddenly, with faster-than-light space travel at hand, hundreds of years old science-fiction novels and movies turned out to be less fictitious and more contemporary. Interest in the WH40k universe was renewed after the Singapore Incident. With rampant growth of mutation and first scientifically proven cases of telekinesis happening over the following years, the setting was heralded by some as a prophetic warning against unfettered exploration and growing scientific ignorance amongst the population.
I wasn't a big fan, but it was hard to remain ignorant of it when working with the likes of Tim. He always joked that we end up swallowed by some Cthulhu or claimed by Chaos. Turns out he wasn't that far off…
I look at my surroundings again. The room I'm in looks relatively simple, something one would expect from an infant's bedroom.
If one looked at it through a kaleidoscope.
Furniture is shaped and laid out in a fashion alien to a human eye, be it a sudden change in their symmetries, irregular curvature or just the faint but noticeable presence everything emanates. The way it blends between organic and inorganic, blurring the barriers between. Definitely a wraithbone made.
I close my eyes to get rid of the sights that I find both discomforting and aesthetically pleasing.
Irrelevant details.
Of all the universes to find yourself getting sucked into, I ended up here. Couldn't it have been a tame Star Trek? Not the one where there is only war, and everything wants to either kill, eat, burn or rape you – simultaneously or in a random order.
But hey, not everything is bleak, at least I won't end up on the receiving end of a random exterminatus instigated by some farseer in an overcomplicated ploy so that some bonesinger 100 years later won't stub her toe.
Yeah, fat chance at that. Anyone willing to bet I'll end up as a necessary sacrifice? Or pointlessly die in a screw up of executing such a plan?
I try and fail to smile.
So a slightly lesser risk of ending on the wrong side of some divination bullshit exchanged for a big chance of getting ~FUN~ with Slaanesh should something ever happen to my spirit stone or the craftworld it ends up on to receive a mockery of an afterlife in the Infinity Circuit. Just great!
My thoughts quickly spiral into an even deeper hole.
It must be said that compared to being a human, feeling emotions as an eldar is on a whole different magnitude. Like in a positive feedback loop my restlessness and fear only fed on each other, and my thoughts soon were full of sufficiently grimdark ways to die.
Worse still, I begin considering possible reasons how my ordinary work-day in the laboratory might have ended with me landing a few universes away.
Just a small thought about the storm and the passage. And immediately all they entailed starts anew.
First are maddening screams, quickly followed by ethereal, non euclidean hands. They reach for me from below the bed, slowly becoming more material. I hear a muffled chattering of countless tiny arachnids swarming them.
The room darkens, and my chest feels as if burned with white-hot rod where the now blood-red spirit stone touches it. The stench fills my nostrils, not of the burned skin but of something noxious, rotting.
I feel something that my mind refuses to even acknowledge, I imagine its searching gaze, ready to find me any moment.
There is a distant slam quickly followed by a startled voice.
A figure enters my room. She's gray-robed, numerous rune pendants hanging across her chest. Her wrists are covered with gem-adorned bracelets, soft chime of intricately crafted charms assisting her movements and keeping shadows at bay.
Short on her heels is another eldar.
Both women could be considered attractive if not for the wrongness of their features. Unlike the mutated Singapore children we've been researching, it wasn't a wrongness of hideous deformations. Human faces would be always marred by some minuscule flaw, theirs were more akin to lustrous sculptures, both featuring disturbing, uncanny symmeries and slightly alien proportions, arrogant in their perfection.
Where the first's face remains as expressionless and aloof as a statue, the other one is visibly frightened. She is also dressed far more casually – which means that her opulent robes aren't adorned with countless runes and wraithbone ornaments.
Not even a heartbeat passes as I take these sights.
Immediately, the seer approaches me, her hand raised, miniature pieces of wraithbone covered with symbols dancing around her fingers quicker than my eyes could follow. The next instant everything is swallowed by the blinding light and I feel her hands touching my temples.
The eldar releases me, and I just lie, all concerns gone.
The seer nods and the other eldar immediately grabs me and cuddles.
"Iriath, my son, are you alright? What happened to him?"
"It's not my place to explain. Farseer Arhorwal is the one who saw the threads. Your boy is calm for now, but his tranquility will fade soon. We must heed to the Farseer and you'll find the answers."
I stare vacantly, unheeding to what's going on, at the time not understanding a word spoken by birdsong voices of the eldar.
I'm taken out of the house, and we board a shuttle. The transport takes off and speeds to its destination. The views of the craftworld pass in front of my eyes, but I barely register its bizarre architecture, the monumental spires extending towards the sky, piercing artificial clouds… and almost touching the mirroring spires extending from the ceiling, making a mockery of gravity.
As I am right now, focusing thoughts feels like an exercise in futility, not worth the effort. There is just apathy.
Soon the shuttle lands and I am carried into the maze of chambers and corridors. Sometimes there is a brief flicker of color emanating from the circuits engraved into walls.
The eldar guiding us suddenly stops and the wall next to her opens.
"The Farseer will see you now."
The chamber is almost bare, save for an oversized pouf and three chairs around it. One of them is occupied by another seer, an older male, who smiles encouragingly and waves us to approach. The effect is somewhat diminished, as some of his teeth flare up with a bizarre, crystalline inner light.
"Don't be afraid, Talanne of Starlight Dome, it is to this point that the tapestry of Morai-Heg led us. Please, make yourself comfortable."
"What do you mean?" the eldar carrying me asks defensively.
She's probably my mother - or rather mother of the elf in which body I somehow ended.
Was I born as him, or somehow usurped the body?
I start to think more coherently once more, the strange sluggishness of my thoughts waning. For a moment I take a view of the room again, the briefly flickering crystalline structure permanenting the wraithbone walls immediately catching my attention. I could swear the whispers are coming out of it.
Is this the Infinity Circuit?
The next moment I catch the movement from the seated farseer and I find myself looking in the impossibly old, cold-blue eyes. The feeling of apathy sweeps over me once more.
"Now that everyone is present we can begin," The farseer nods as another eldar enters the chamber.
"Eraethel!" my mother exclaims.
"I heard that something happened to our son, is he all right?"
My parents talk for a moment before hesitantly putting me on the pouf and seating themselves next to the farseer. The door closes and the other seer takes position behind the elder one.
"Like with every newborn, the runes were cast after delivery. To see if no illnesses were to befell on your son. To get a glimpse into his future. The second most of the seers consider a futile effort, as the fate of an individual so young is a fleeting, capricious thing that is hard to locate. However, the threads of your son were the most peculiar.
"Where a child's threads should be a tapestry of possibilities, the Myriad Paths, his always converged to the same event, sometimes in a few cycles, sometimes in a few passes. Danger and turning point. I deemed it enough to warrant the presence of younger seers nearby."
"But now the danger is gone? Iriath is safe?"
"We are here to find out."
The farseer stands up, reaching for his pouch. The runes leave it before spreading in an arcane pattern around me, freezing mid-air.
"Biel-Tan and Yme-Loc, shadowed by Harlequin," the eldar whispers, probably too silent for anyone to hear. "An expected portent. Yet to what end?"
Having analyzed the runes for a while, the farseer recalls them, before repeating the process a few more times, the array growing larger with each casting. Then, he extends his hand towards me, and somehow I know that my mind is being touched by the alien. However, with the psyker sorcery still in place, I find myself neither caring nor considering if or how much of my identity is revealed.
He sits back and is still for a moment. Then a fleeting smile passes his face.
"The child has natural power, manifesting it far earlier than I even thought possible. He knows not how to suppress it nor how to control it and lacks the means to learn both at his age. He saw horrifying images piercing the skein without protection nor training. Sees them even now, clueless to their dangers and meanings."
This elects a horrified gasp from my mother.
"What will become of him? As he is, he'd be vulnerable to the attention of the Great Enemy!"
"We could let him stay here, within the protection of the Dome of Crystal Seers until he becomes ready to learn."
"You want to force an infant upon the Path of the Seer?" the younger seer asks in bewilderment.
"To teach him to suppress the power, to close his mind," the farseer shakes his head. "He hadn't even got the chance to tread any Path yet, it would be a monstrous thing to steer him on this one, without ever experiencing another. Even ignoring its traps and pitfalls, for which he wouldn't be prepared…"
"But being so close to the Infinity Circuit even I can hear them. The thoughts of those that passed, like a background noise in my mind. It would be a thousandfold worse for Iriath," a gaze of my father is full of concern.
The farseer nods.
"The voices of those-who-walked-before-us would be his constant companions, protecting him from the memories of his visions. If left unattended, they would only grow and fester inside his psyche, becoming an unending, inner turmoil which would unnaturally shape him. Yet, I also perceive another Path for Iriath, one which would lead to him returning with you almost immediately. If he forgets what happened, there won't be a similar episode in the future."
"You want to wipe the mind of the child?" the seer voices her outrage.
"What is the significance of the memories of barely five passes? And it will be naught but a memory lock, it will fade when he'd be ready to remember."
"If it means that he would grow with us…" Eraethel whispers.
"That way he'd be," the farseer said. Seeing the other seer's doubtful expression, he elaborates. "It might seem excessive, but children are our greatest treasure, and we must do what it takes to ensure their safety. This is the thread of fate which leads to the betterment of both Iriath and Il'sariadh Craftworld."
This is how I died.
This is how I was born anew.
Like with so many things touched by the skein, one can not differentiate one from the other.
