~A Path past Damnation~

~795. M30~

~Segmentum Obscurus~

~Charnac's Pride~

~Roboute Guilliman, Lord Commander of the Imperium and Imperial Regent~

"The pull is getting stronger as we approach the Womb of Destruction." Asarnil declared as the two of them poured over a wide map on the table before them. Surrounding them, the five remaining lords of Charnac gazed at the map, and at their king. The other five lords of Charnac had already broken off from the main fleet at this point, and on their independent paths to each Exodite-world in their assigned division, each one commanding over one of the vessels they had first departed with. "It's good that the younger lords had been sent off already. Otherwise we would already be having casualties."

"Hrng." One of the lords grunted behind a ceremonial war mask. He reached up to rub at his chin for a moment. "Man-Prince. Where's your next sibling-godling again?"

Guilliman had since given up on getting the various lords to stop calling him and his siblings Godlings. It was merely an exercise in frustration speaking to blank stone walls, as he had learned. Instead he reached forwards and placed a marker on where he remembered the planet Colchis being.

One of the lords, the one wearing a thick green mantle over their long cream robes, raised a hand and twisted it to the right. The map obliged by narrowing its field of view to only include the relevant regions. Guilliman himself obliged by looking at the map again, and then re-placing the token on the creatively named Colchis sector.

The lord with the green mantle curled two fingers, drawing a line between the planet and the Eye of Terror, which automatically generated a distance in Eldar numerals.

The map zoomed out, and then compared this number to how far they were currently away. The end result was that they were about twice as far away from the Eye of Terror currently, compared to how close the planet was to the Eye of Terror.

Eldar didn't mumble so much as they did twitch, mostly in the ears. It served as a quick visual indicator for how agitated they currently were. The rest of their body was typically completely still and silent. Judging from the few rapid flickers, there was quite a bit of agitation.

"The pull is lesser when near those Relics, Man-Prince. But that will only shield the ship you're currently aboard. It cannot shield the rest of us from her call." One of the lords, this one wearing a vibrant orange cloak and mantle of feathers spoke. "I'm not sure we can approach that near without more effective wards."

"It's fortunate so few of our kin live on this side of the Wheel." The lord with the green mantle commented. "The only world I can readily think of is Daethe, and I imagine their world-spirit is particularly besieged. They were almost adjacent to the Womb as it broke. They still endured in your vision?"

"Indeed. They wore a lot of white and red." Guilliman recalled, staring at the region in small amounts of frustration. It wasn't the most problematic issue to arise, but it was a notable one. If only one ship could approach, then it would be particularly vulnerable to attack. Ideally he would have at least three ships for as long as possible, but that might not be prudent here. "Remind me to plan for their evacuation if possible. I doubt that world is particularly pleasant to dwell upon."

Flickers of agreement as the Eldar looked to the map.

Guilliman was so very glad they didn't treat him with particular awe. If he had claimed he was going to evacuate an entire planet surrounded by humans of the 41st millennium, they would've broken out into hushed whispers and awe-struck prayers. Evacuation was a routine task when conducted properly, and they usually treated it as a miracle.

"Two." The aged voice of the oldest present lord spoke. The primary evidence of his incredible age being the deepened lines around his mouth and at the corners of his eyes. He was clad in heavy wraithbone plate decorated in turquoise filigree and wearing a thick cloak of the same shade. His hair was black, streaked through with white and gray, and it hung down to the middle of his chest. "You'll need at least two ships. Retrofit Vermillion Song into a ghostdragon, we had little need of Wraithlords presently. That can accompany Charnac's Pride without risk. The rest of us will fill into the other three ships and rejoin you at Athelaq."

"You'll sacrifice your ship lord Syrus?" Asarnil asked for clarification.

Lord Syrus' ears did not flicker. "I can get a new ship, Dragonlord. It can be sacrificed to ensure your escape in the event of an attack this way, only five souls will be swallowed instead of thousands." It was the sort of cold pragmatism of a veteran commander, the kind that weighed lives and materials on scales.

Guilliman heard a foot squeaking slightly against the floor behind him. He furrowed his brows together, deliberately not looking behind him. Slowly he closed his eyes, and breathed in and out.

Opening his eyes again, the looks on the faces of the assorted Eldar lords did not change, but their slightly upturned ears and amused gleams told him exactly what he had suspected. He reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose for a moment, before he called out loud. "I do hope there's no children misbehaving, possibly trying to sneak up on their older brother, who is busy in a very important meeting right now. I would be very sad if I knew that."

Asarnil smirked. Syrus' ear-tips flickered. Slight shifts in the stances around him.

Two sets of footsteps slowly backed away, before finally exiting the bridge entirely and running off. Little pitter-patters echoed through the ship as they fled the scene. Guilliman sighed and rubbed his forehead. "I apologize for that. They keep managing to slip away from their minders."

"Bear no mind to it, Man-Prince." Syrus droned out, eyes cold but kind. "Your Godling-Siblings are one of the objectives of this voyage. I'm sure the younglings here can tolerate their mischief."

"Only younglings to you, withered root." The lord wearing the war-mask jabbed back, a very blunt and unsubtle insult. This seemed more typical among their military and dragon-knights, who didn't indulge in the contests of wit as often. There was likely a joke to be made with that fact.

"Where were we?" Asarnil interrupted the argument before it could begin, causing much twitching of ears and resumed staring at the map on the table before them. They still had a route to revamp, and limits of mental endurance to test.

—

"You have my deepest apologies, Slayer of Evil." The maid bowed low before him. "I was unable to keep them from the bridge. I shall request another to take my place if that is your wish."

He raised a hand. "You have no need to apologize, I know how difficult it is to keep track of them. Simply continue with your best efforts, and I will be satisfied with that."

The maid rose from her bow, but kept her head low. He nodded at her, before stepping forwards into the room that served as the bedchambers of his sisters. Inside was a meticulously cleaned chamber, with soft warm cream-color walls and numerous rugs and blankets and fabrics, mostly of cloth and silk and animal pelts of various kinds.

And on one of the five beds in the large chamber, his sisters sat together and deliberately didn't look at him, busying themselves with a large Eldar book. He raised a brow, they were playing innocent then?

He leaned against the doorway, and waited with a quirked mouth.

Petra sent a glance his way, before quickly pretending to have not seen him.

Kassandra, as Petra had declared her new sister would be named, sent her own glance his way, before flinching down and burying her head in the furs and quilts that served as blankets.

It didn't sink in what it would mean to have retrieved his siblings so soon. That he would effectively be raising them for the next five to ten years. He knew that on an intellectual level, of course, someone had to do it properly and they had landed on atrocious planets.

He had almost called in for a complete military takeover of Nostramo before remembering he didn't have his legions with him. A massively inefficient planet filled to the brim with a valuable resource. A resource that was being harvested and refined in some of the most offensively poor conditions he had ever personally seen. Even the Cult Mechanicus and their habit of using corpse-slaves would be preferable, because at least their labors would be maximally efficient given what they had to work with.

The Cult Mechanicus was many things Guilliman hated, and would become even more things he loathed, but they were absolutely effective when it came to the extraction of a planet's mineral wealth. Their great flaw was that they didn't usually leave a useful planet behind afterwards. And would it be so bad for a planet like Nostramo to cease existence? He wasn't seeing many moral arguments against erasing that dim ball of misery and suffering.

Russ had many jokes made at Konrad's expense, mostly pointing towards his twitchy habits and apparently deluded ramblings. Guilliman had politely chuckled along at the time. He couldn't find it in himself to laugh anymore. Not at that.

Not after finding the tiny, starving, shivering thing that was his sister, mouth and hands stained in the gore of raw meat, body covered in cuts and bruises. Crying over a loaf of bread.

Guilliman thinks he might just hate Nostramo. His hands itched to write plans to fix it, even knowing that he had no time to waste on a planet so far away from his intended theater.

"It's so quiet in here. I wonder where my sisters could be." He said aloud in pretend-confusion. "I wanted to spend time with them, but I can't seem to find them anywhere."

Petra continued to stare at the book, only to blink in shock as she realized Kassandra was no longer by her side, and instead power-walking over to his position. She quickly threw herself from the bed and raced to follow.

Two very small primarchs crashed into his legs, one after another. He smiled and reached down, grabbing both by the back of their shirts and lifting them up to scramble onto his shoulders.

They had fallen for his trap. He raised his hands to gently hold onto their legs, making sure they wouldn't fall off by accident, and ignoring how Kassandra latched onto his head. He began to move, leaving the room and heading for the hangar. He was going to make them talk to the oldest wraith.

"So…" He began after some time. "Why'd you try to sneak up on me earlier?"

"...We didn't." Petra poorly denied.

"Oh, so I heard some other tiny little sister footsteps during my very important meeting earlier?"

"...Yes." Petra was very bad at lying. Kassandra wasn't even trying to, and she was doing slightly better.

"Ah. I see." He gave a fake nod. "I suppose I need to find and spend time with them instead." He swiveled on a dime and started taking them back towards their room.

"We did it!" Kassandra blurted out. "We did." Petra quickly agreed, also now latching onto his head. Their little hands began to pull and stretch his face.

They were entirely too old for this. It had been a few months since retrieving Kassandra, and they had grown appropriately. Now they looked like they were… 13 or so, were they human. Kassandra, of course, was substantially younger in terms of actual age. She had simply been forced to grow faster by her environment.

By the time they returned to Charnac, Guilliman was certain they would be as tall as the Eldar were, and still have a few more years of growth in them. He was simply glad his planned curriculum was keeping up thus far, they were voracious learners.

"I told you two that it was important. Why did you try to sneak into it?" He patiently asked them. His sisters fidgeted for a while, before eventually Kassandra answered.

"Wanted to see." Petra nodded against his head.

Guilliman raised a brow. "It was mostly boring technicalities and revisions. I can tell you after the meetings if you really want me to."

"Wanted to see you." Petra corrected. Guilliman sighed, letting his shoulders slump slightly.

"I was only going to be gone for a few hours."

"Every day." Kassandra muttered. Goodness was he ever this clingy as a child?

He recalled the streets of Nostramo, and felt guilt about having that thought. Instead, he nodded slowly and spoke gently. "Yes Kassandra. I have many duties to attend to. I can't be around at all times. That's why I want you to learn as much as possible from the tutors, so that you can take care of yourselves while I'm away."

There was no reply. He shook the two of them gently. "Can you do this for me, please? Can you learn all you can so I don't worry for you?"

"...Okay." Petra replied. "I'll make sure Kassadra learns too."

"Kassandra?"

"...okay." She muttered.

They were still in their clingy phase, he supposed. That would change as they got older. They were Primarchs after all, not normal humans. Soon enough their instincts would start churning for leadership and war, something ingrained into all of them.

They were tools of their Father, after all. Tools that had a humanity to protect.

But not right now, the proper conquests could wait for when they got back to Charnac. On this voyage at least, they could be children. They could simply have a childhood. Something Guilliman had received, and from what he had seen thus far, something few of his brothers had gotten.

It was the least he could do, if he wanted to be a better brother to them this time around.

—

There were four distinct categories of war-automata, in terms of size. This was a very general scale, of course, as the galaxy was a very large place with many different races that produce such large scale machines. For simplicity's sake, the Imperial planners often divided them into four broad categories and then narrowed the scope from there dependent on mission profiles.

Certain scales were simply unusable for certain missions. You wouldn't send a giant of 30 meters to clear out a habitat-block. You'd send it if you wanted that habitat-block destroyed.

The smallest scale was often referred to as 'Plebeian'. It was used to refer to any construct of roughly human-scale. All constructs up to roughly five meters in height were in this category. Rarely seen outside of certain technological cults, these were usually replaced with menial labor or standard soldiers. The Wraithguards of the Eldar were in this category.

The second-smallest scale was often referred to as 'Armiger'. High Gothic for 'Squire' and based on the classification of war-construct found on Knight-Worlds, the Imperial Knight-Armiger. Ranging from six to twelve meters in height, and often deployed alongside a large group of heavy-infantry or as part of a large group supporting a larger form of war-construct. The Dreadnoughts of the Adeptus Astartes were in this class of war-construct as well, standing roughly five point four meters.

The second-largest (and one of the most common) categories was often referred to as 'Eques'. High Gothic for 'Knight', and referring to any construct of twelve to forty-five meters in scale. This name, too, was based on a form of war-construct found on Knight-Worlds, the Imperial-Knight and all its various makes and models. The Wraith-Knight was technically not considered such, but as Eldar war-constructs were often taller and thinner than human equivalents, it was classified as such for simplicity.

The Wraith-Knight sitting before him was a giant of eighteen meters. Plated in the same standard cream-white plating of normal wraithbone, decorated in curling vines and leaves of pure gold, and bearing a knight-scale cloak of emerald green dragon-hide and a massive mantle of dragon-crest feathers. The center of its chest bore a massive spirit-stone of a blood-red hue, and all across its body he could see prayers inscribed in Eldar runes faintly shimmering.

A cloak that large, with no marks of being stitched together from multiple individuals, means that the dragon it came from must have been absurdly large in scale.

Currently the giant of mystic bone, controlled by a long-dead Eldar, was telling a story to his sisters. Its colossal wraithbone sword was resting by its side, and the segmented psychic shield-projector on its left arm was folding in on itself and deactivated.

"It was in those days that a world named Uthumil was green, and its trees grew mighty branches, and its waters were blue and deep. As was good. Uthumil bore three mighty mountain ranges, and from these ranges a kind of large hunting bird would swoop down and peck at the eyes of those that dwelled in that place. This was not good."

"These birds were a kind of delicacy to the Aeldar of the city Vaul-Moraiheg, for their meat was tender and sweet. But they were a vicious breed, and spat lightning from their eyes. It was the style of the time for a man to declare his affections and prowess by hunting one of these birds and presenting the meal to his woman. This was a very fashionable thing to do."

"It became so that eventually such contests became so frequent that…"

"Venerable Malwyrn. You were telling them about how the city of Commorragh got its name." The wraithspeaker at the side of the massive Wraithknight spoke up, reminding that ancient soul of what it was doing before its thinking started to slip off topic. In battle, a wraithspeaker was critical to ensure that the Wraiths were at fullest awareness. Outside of battle, it seemed that was still the case.

"Oh? I was, wasn't I?" The Wraithknight paused, raising its hand up to the large plate of smooth material that served as its effective chin. Its rumbling voice echoed through the large chamber as it pondered the idea. Eventually coming to a conclusion, the Wraithknight started once more.

"So after winning the hand of the princess of Vas-Letai, the warrior who would eventually become known as Falynesh, but was currently known as Falwyrn, had to defend himself in three contests of skill. One of which involved taming a beast native to the world Ynd-ald-Shash known as the tanzletof. The world of Ynd-ald-Shash was red planet in those days, filled with warring life such as the…"

Guilliman smiled as he worked through his next line of work. The Wraithknight hadn't noticed that his audience, the two young primarchs, had fallen asleep awhile ago, bored by the long winded story that wasn't really going anywhere. He smiled and nodded at the wraithspeaker, who smiled and nodded in turn.