Kyrazis sat in the command throne of the Aeldari Eclipse-class cruiser, black helmed head resting on the knuckles of one hand, as he stared at the various reports sent from the rest of the fleet.
"Mordraxus." He called to a hooded figure operating a different terminal in the lower level of the bridge.
"Yes, Kyrazis?" A muffled voice replied, caused by the thick cloth that covered the nose, mouth, and jaw of the resident biomancer on the fleet.
"Must you take so many from our stocks for your experiments?" Kyrazis's sing song voice was heavy with sarcasm and exasperation. This was a conversation repeated many, many times.
"I have increased efficiency, as you asked." Mordraxus mumbled back, figure bowed; unusual for the Aeldari which preferred to stand tall.
"Yes, the efficiency. The more suffering extracted, the more souls we can save." Kyrazis sighed. "Which means nothing if you take for yourself just as many as you provide for us."
"My experiments allowed for many discoveries."
"Which is why I do not throw you into the void for wasting our resources." He snarked back at Mordraxus, while lifting a hand to gesture at the reports. "Rationing has already begun, and even though we've convinced our people that the matter is temporary, I do not want a riot with so few of us left."
"Then the only solution is to increase the number of harvests."
"Do not vex me, Mordraxus." Rubbing his neck, Kyrazis gave another long sigh. "Six raiding groups have gone missing. I do not wish to suffer the same fate."
Mordraxus shrugged. "If this realm of space is becoming treacherous, the only option is to change it."
"The Mon-keigh grow stronger the deeper we go into their territory." Kyrazis replied, irritably. "We want easy pickings, not a battle. This is the remains of a patrol fleet, and I am no expert in Void-Combat."
"If only you followed in the footsteps of Vileth." Mordraxus snickered.
"It is because I followed the teachings of Qa'leh that any of us are alive." Kyrazis retorted, looking down at the wrist of his right gauntlet; twisting it as if to rearrange something underneath the armor.
"Well then, there's nothing more than to do with what we have."
"Of course." Kyrazis retorted bitterly, before throwing his head back, slouching on the throne. "Why couldn't it be some other dumber, stupider, primitive race?"
"At the very least, they only rarely eat each other when corralled in such close quarters."
"It is to us that they owe their suffering; not each other. Ensure there are no more incidents of that kind." Kyrazis retorted, still slumped backwards in the throne. "What of the Webway? Have we found a safe gate yet?"
"The sector-wide Wraithbone void-charts were abandoned during our escape, and the patrol fleet only had local maps in storage."
Kyrazis snorted. "And to think, we used to rule the stars."
"Before the Fall, it would have been a simple matter to call the knowledge from the immaterium to our minds, but that would be… inadvisable."
"I was there when it happened, Mordraxus." He spat, venomously enough to force the biomancer back a few steps. "Do not remind me."
"Yes, yes you were." Mordraxus nodded a couple of times, trying his best to remove the shudder that crawled across his skin. "Then it will be your hands that hold the lives of everyone here."
Kyrazis snorted. Of all things he thought he would be, this was never what he imagined; or wanted. A leader of exiles and refugees, like those accursed Craftworlds who had run off into deep space only years before the Fall.
Bitterness burned in him as Kyrazis remembered watching the various sizes and shapes of the ships leaving the planet's orbit, as he and the others beside him laughed and jeered at the overly cautious, antiquated, and idealistic activists and protestors leaving the planets they said they loved and cared about more than the rest of them.
'Young fools, the lot of them.'
That was the sentiment they all had at the time. Then somebody said they saw a harlequin, and they all went to throw rocks at the even more backwards performers of ancient fairy tales.
'Well, who are the fools now...' Kyrazis closed his eyes, remembering the huddled form of the dancer; bleeding from the head by the stone he had thrown as they surrounded her; defiant look in her eye even as her lips were pursed with pain. She was a tough one. Not a single scream until her body gave out, forcing her soul off into the immaterium to await a new body.
"They probably enjoy it." Said one of his sister acolytes. "Why else would they keep on trying to put on their little performances when they know the ending is always the same." She grinned, slipping her knife back into its sheath.
"Well then, we must make a great audience to become so immersed in their act." Another said, pulling gristle out her hair.
Murder was an impossible crime for them. Why worry about doom and death, when they were touched by neither?
Kyrazis shook his head. His mind was slowing down.
No. It was his soul. It was weakening.
"Chart a course to the next Mon-keigh world." He ordered the navigator, before turning to one of the operators of the short-range Wraithbone communicators they used for ship-to-ship contact. "Tell the fleet to move as one. I leave the details to the mariners. Just get us there in one piece."
The bridge crew nodded, and headed back to their stations.
'How long has it been?' Kyrazis asked himself, the immediate responsibility of giving orders fulfilled, allowing him more time to sink into memory before he had to rise back from the depths to deal with another crisis.
Several decades had passed since the Fall, but he could still remember everything.
The mad rush with the few survivors from the arena.
The look of hope in the eyes of those people at the starport, and those black pools staring into him.
The voice and promise of that creature that haunted his every waking moment.
And the eternal never ending scream of the Aeldari who was forced to show them what awaited them all.
It was only with the assistance of the narcotics confiscated from some of the followers of Shaimesh they'd thrown overboard that he was able to sleep. Even then, dark shadows grew under his eyes, and the color from his skin drained every day; as if to show the gradual sucking away of his ethereal soul on his physical form.
If he could end it, he would have. Many a night he'd caught himself staring down at the stolen Shuriken catapult he had taken in order to escape. But, in the end, he would always put it down as the memories of blood, offal, and endless screaming came back with crystal clarity.
'Perhaps I should go down to the pits.' Kyrazis though. He was higher up in this new stratified society they had begun building, being the one who had gotten most of them off planet. He could always justify the extra rations to the others.
'If only those Mon-keigh were not so disgusting.' He hated those creatures. Their weeping eyes and terrified faces disgusted him. What right did they have to be afraid? They were not the ones with an eternal noose around their neck. 'Although…' he mused, 'considering where we send their souls, perhaps they have every right to be afraid… But they are just so disgusting.'
Of course, such feelings of disgust were wiped away while he replenished himself. The sound of cracking bones, and tearing tendons was as exhilarating as it had always been back home. The adrenaline high of dodging out of the way of a blade at the very last second, and the satisfaction of having the opponent at his physical mercy was always enough for him to forget everything; all his troubles, all his pains, all his fears.
"No…" Kyrazis whispered as he pulled himself out of the ecstasies of the previous feeding. It was getting harder to come back, every time. The freedom from fear was intoxicating; to be free from endless nightmares, dark nights of despair, and the ever present terror of promised endless torment.
There were too many Aeldari, and not enough Mon-keigh. If he was to have freedom from this, then he would need more.
Kyrazis looked down at the rest of the bridge crew.
They all felt the same neverending depression and desperate fear. If he didn't do something, he was certain he would be quickly replaced. He had noticed a rather marked increase in the number of eyes staring at him when his back was turned since the rationing had begun.
On their homeworld, he was just another student of one of the arenas dedicated to the Dark Muse Qa'leh; the Mistress of Blades. Naturally, he was lower down in the arena's hierarchy because of his sex, but as all the other acolytes, he too strived to be the strongest and fastest in single combat; and enjoyed both the sweet joys of victory as well as the burning pain of defeat.
However, that also meant he didn't have the void-combat and mariner skills of a follower of Vileth, or the raiding knowledge that one of Hekatii's Iconoclasts would have had. All the people around him knew that; and while they allowed him to lead for now, the moment they found him wanting…
Kyrazis stifled a shudder.
'Perhaps I was too hasty, assigning status based on the usefulness of one's skills.' He thought to himself; but there were just so many overspecialized Aeldari. There wasn't much work for some of the hanger-ons to the pretend nobility; those masochistic flatterers and self-debasing fan wavers. Even sound-weavers and throat-callers were more useful; using sonic vibrations and melody to help alleviate some of the darkness among the survivors.
Those without useful skills were last in line for everything, but abandoning them when there were so few of them was out of the question.
At the very least, he left a method of upward mobility.
'To the victor, the spoils!' Those were the words screamed in the arena before every fight. A reminder that only the strongest deserve anything. So, Kyrazis had used those same words to mold the new social order that was required. Anyone who could show some use for their skills, or master a new useful one could rise the ranks.
It was easier said than done, however. Aeldari tendencies to over focus often meant that those without useful skills had little interest in much else.
'Well, not all things.' Kyrazis thought to himself. Violence seemed to be the one thing that they were all getting better at.
Whether it was from the way they now had to feed, or some whisper to the subconscious, or the sudden isolation from the warmth of the psychic connection they all used to share and could use at any time; he didn't know.
Whatever the cause, their penchant for brutality and killing was growing.
He'd watched a previously reedy and frail self-styled slave girl to the nobility laugh maniacally as she flayed one of the Mon-keigh with the whips she used to have her master use on her. Personal knowledge of how each whip stung, and the safest places to strike had opened up a new career; extracting the most amount of suffering from the Mon-keigh before they expired.
Kyrazis closed his eyes, trying to shut out the images flowing through his head.
'If only you were here… sister.' He thought to himself. Not one of the many women of Qa'leh, he fought with and against in the arena, but his biological sister who he had shared over 5000 years reincarnating endlessly together. She was always the more decisive of the two of them; less inhibited by doubt while equally more reckless.
'At the very least, I would have someone to talk to.' The last memories of her in the stands of the arena flashed across his mind, along with the memories of the last morning they shared together.
Suddenly, he felt a great tug from inside him, and for a panicked moment he feared She was here to claim him as She had their first pilot; suddenly and without warning. But he did not collapse to the ground, and he didn't feel the whispers, claws, or fangs of Hir daemons.
Instead, he felt a feeling of warmth, and childish nostalgia. Long forgotten smells of fresh linen and wet grass, of sunlight and open air.
He looked down at the rest of the Aeldari on the bridge, and saw them all looking around, as if they had all felt the same thing he did.
"Mordraxus!" Kyrazis barked.
"Yes?"
"What was that?"
"I have no idea."
Kyrazis stifled the urge to jump down and break every bone in the biomancer's bent body.
"Were all your experiments on the Mon-keigh for nothing?" He finally hissed.
"I experimented with Mon-keigh bodies. Everything about the soul is an inference, for I am not a seer."
"Then give me your best guess."
"Whatever it is, it is powerful; powerful enough to reach out and touch all of us, and there was only one other being that did that to us."
"A god." Kyrazis said quietly.
"Most likely."
Before Kyrazis could fully process the thought, he felt information flow into him; the long forgotten feeling of using his psychic senses to absorb knowledge relaxed muscles and wrinkles he hadn't known he had.
"Navigator." He spoke quietly. "Take us there as fast as you can. Travel through the immaterium if you have to."
For the first time in a long while, Kyrazis felt something other than grim depression. Something warm, something familiar.
But, as water began to bead in his eyes, he could also feel everything he had bottled up for the past several decades bubbling up from the depths. Suppressed emotions, trauma, and a burning meaningless question that he had forced to the very bottom of his mind.